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TRUE FAITH

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FEATURES 22

Is Christianity an Opiate or a Truth Serum? A Homage to John W. Montgomery’s “Sensible Christianity” BY SCOTT KEITH

Knowing the Truth A N I N T E RV I E W W I T H S T E P H E N C . M E Y E R

Come and See JA M E S H . G I L M O R E

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

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN ED DE VERA

TELL US YOUR STORY What have White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation meant to you, your family, or your church? Your stories encourage us in our work, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d love to hear them.

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V O L .2 6 | N O.4 | J U LY-AU G U S T 2 0 17

DEPARTMENTS

BOOK REVIEWS

GEEK SQUAD

John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography

Talking about Faith in Non-Western Contexts

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

Tears and Hope BY BRIAN LEE

10 T H E O LO GY

Is That Really the Gospel, YWAM?

B Y JAY S O N G E O R G E S

REVIEWED BY R YA N G L O M S R U D

BY MARK STROMBERG AND M A R K H . VA N D E R P O L

15 B I B L E S T U DY

One in Christ Jesus

Biblical Authority after Babel

REVIEWED BY JOHN RAINES

B A C K PA G E

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society

There Are No Nonessentials B Y M I C H A E L S. H O R T O N

R E V I E W E D B Y D. G . H A R T

BY MIKA EDMONDSON

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Associate Editor Brooke Ventura Marketing Director Michele Tedrick

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Creative Direction & Design Metaleap Creative Review Editor Ryan Glomsrud Copy Editor Elizabeth Isaac Proofreader Ann Smith

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LETTER from the EDITOR

Keith asserts that Christians must rely on the historical truth-claims of Christianity in order to defend not just the helpfulness of the faith but also its reality. Next, we’re honored to feature an interview with Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, Washington. We asked Dr. Meyer to help us understand what difference (if any) exists between scientific and religious knowledge. Along the way, he also weighed in on human agency in the method of philosophical inquiry and how to spot “fake news.” n protest of the new president of the Our good friend James Gilmore—a respected United States, TIME magazine recently resbusiness consultant and adjunct lecturer at the urrected one of their most infamous covers, Weatherhead School of Management at Case which instead of asking if God is dead now Western Reserve University, the University asks, “Is Truth Dead?” The difficulty of answerof Virginia, and Westminster Seminar y ing that question seems like a modern problem, California—is most recently the author of Look: but even Pilate cynically asked our A Practical Guide for Improving Lord, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). Your Observational Skills. We Christians are under greater presasked Jim to apply the principles sure than we have faced in some time he discovered to our faith: How do “ HOW CAN to relativize our claims of truth, to we use our own natural abilities WE KNOW call them “private opinions” rather of observation to strengthen our ANYTHING than “public facts” that must be conunderstanding of Scripture and the fronted. The whole world seems to be world in which God has placed us? AT ALL?” wrestling with one of the most basic We conclude with our editorquestions of humanity: How can we in-chief, Michael Horton, who know anything at all? reminds us that the Christian faith In this issue of Modern Reformation, we assert is not faith in a system of beliefs, an institution, that it is possible to know the truth: about God, or even in the concept of faith itself. The distinabout this world, even about yourself. What we guishing characteristic of Christianity is that know about the world doesn’t depend on a way we call on men, women, and children to believe of knowing that is different from the way we a person—Jesus of Nazareth—and the claims and arrive at knowledge about God. The same skills promises he made. of observation and reason apply to all forms of In the Garden of Eden, the very first temptaknowledge. To demonstrate this, we’ve asked sevtion took aim at truth. We should therefore not eral good friends to help us know what we know be surprised that humanity continues to strugand why we know it! gle to understand and live by truth. Our hope First up is Lutheran theologian Scott Keith, with this issue is that you will be encouraged in who tackles a common claim about truth and your study of the truth. religious faith: It doesn’t matter what you believe; belief itself is a kind of comfort that is not dependent on specific truth-claims. Dr. ERIC LANDRY exec utive editor

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

Tears and Hope: A Son’s Sermon at His Father’s Funeral By Brian Lee

here’s no way I can follow my brother in eulogizing my father, so I’m not going to try. I’m not going to speak as a son on the passing of my father. I do want to tell one story about my dad, but before I get to that let me tell you what I want to talk about today. I want to speak to you as a minister of the gospel. I want to give you a message about tears and hope. I want to talk about sorrow and the end of sorrow. Two things I know are true: Jesus wept, but he will also wipe away every tear. Two things are important: tears and the end of

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tears. We are all powerless in the face of death, and it comes for us all. Grandchildren, you are young, and your death seems like it is a long ways away. The passing of Grandpa, while sad, is an opportunity to reflect on the fact that middle age, later middle age, older age, your last breath, and your last heartbeat will come far sooner than you can imagine. Take it from someone who still feels like the youngest of six children who rides in the back of the station wagon; think about how you want to live your life in the light of your coming death.

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I am a minister of the gospel, which means I am a messenger. I am someone sent from the front lines of a great battle to bring to you news—news of a great victory. I want to portray to you the reality of death and point you to the only one who is not powerless in the face of death—the one who conquered death by dying in our place. We have already heard his words today: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” He alone has the words of eternal life. To whom or to what shall we go for any greater comfort? To whom or to what shall we go for any comfort in the face of an enemy, a foe as horrible, as implacable as death? It is his message, his words, that I want to convey to you. There are just two points: First, death is a horrible and unnatural thing—that is why Jesus wept, and that is why we should weep at the grave. We should weep. We may need to learn to weep, but we should weep in the face of death. The second point is that there is hope in the grave. Not because the benefits of death outweigh its costs, but because death has been defeated, and very soon, death will be no more.

DAD TAUGHT ME TO CRY I said that I would tell you a story about my dad, and here it is. The first time I saw my dad cry was when he relayed the news to me and to my family that our brother, his son, had died. It was July 19, 1981. He had heard the news privately from a police officer, and he came to the family and he broke down. I wept when I saw my dad cry, because I didn’t know why he was crying. It’s Dad. He’s a rock. But in the coming days, I struggled. I stopped crying; I bottled it up. I was only nine years old, about my daughter’s age now. By the time the funeral came and went, I had gone a few days without any tears. Death disorients and terrifies us.

Dad was softer than he let on—he didn’t want us to know how soft he was. He saw my distress; I was literally sick in my stomach. He took me upstairs into his bedroom, into that gold swivel chair we liked to spin around on, and he set me on his knee and said, “It’s okay to cry. I miss David too.” He started crying. I started crying. We bawled. We just bawled together, and I instantly felt so much better, because I knew, and I felt the love and compassion he had for his children and his family. Dad taught me to cry. He wasn’t a religious man, but he knew this: the death of his son was horribly wrong. So it is good for us to cry today, because the death of a father is horribly wrong. Dad taught me that tears are necessary to get through the grief, because they open us up to the reality of how bad death really is. It might sound silly that we need to learn to cry in response to death, but it is true. There is an opposite force at play when we encounter the death of a loved one, a force working against sorrow at the grave. That force is fear—when we look at the grave of a dad or a son or a brother or a friend, we see our own grave. That’s terrifying—so terrifying that we flee it. We ignore it. We pretend it doesn’t exist. We live in a death-defying age where eightyyear-old women can recover the luster of their twenties by putting plastic in their face. There are no more “cemeteries” and “funerals”; we “celebrate life” when someone dies. We rarely see death, because people don’t die in their homes anymore. (We are thankful for hospice care, for all they did to make my dad comfortable in his final days and keep him close to us as he died. I strongly encourage it for those who know they are drawing near to the end.) We rationalize the grave. And we have been doing this for thousands of years—the ancient Greeks said bodies are bad and the soul is good. If we can just escape the body, everything will be better. In the soul, we can be free; we can live forever. But if that’s true, then why do we cry when bodies die? Why do we cry when the soul is torn apart from the flesh it has inhabited for a lifetime?

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“Four score and seven years”: Abraham Lincoln’s famous words at those killing fields of Gettysburg, the time between the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. For eighty-seven years, my dad’s soul was not some spirit floating around; but it was the life force of a heart and lungs that worked together to keep a body warm, to feed a family, to fly people all over the globe, to love people. That’s what life is. Life is meant to be lived in a body. We are meant to love one another in our bodies.

“God did not create us to stop loving or living; he created us to join his eternal love…. He didn’t create us to say goodbye to our fathers. . . . Death tears us away from those we love.”

IS DEATH A BETTER PLACE? We say the dead are in a better place, but how do we know? When the doctor came in to talk to my dad about palliative care, about how medicine could make him comfortable in the face of his death, she asked him what his spiritual state was. My dad said, “Well, I’m kind of an atheist, and I’m kind of a Methodist.” I think he was just being descriptive. He was baptized a Methodist, and for a long part of his life, he was a professed atheist. When I was a kid, I asked him, “Dad, what do you think is going to happen when you die?” He answered, “My body is going to go into the grave, and it is going to rot and that’s that.” That’s what he believed. I’m sure some of you here today believe that. That is a terrifying thought, no matter how hard or painful your life is—and life is hard and painful. The idea that the end is just darkness and silence and worms is a terrifying thought. I don’t think many of us can actually wrap our heads around that idea and consistently behave like that. People have been burying their dead for thousands of years, because they believe there is something more. But what?

DEATH ENDS RELATIONSHIPS Let me give you just one good reason why death is a horrible, unnatural thing. It’s because death ends relationships. Human beings were made

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for relationship. The God of the Bible is a God of relationship—he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a Triune God that was (and is) eternally loving, even before he made us. The Father loving the Son; the Son loving his Father; the Spirit drawing together in perfect, obedient, eternal love. We were created to join them in that love, because God loves us too. But death cuts us off, putting a stop to that. God did not create us to stop loving or living; he created us to join his eternal love. He did. He didn’t create us to say goodbye to our fathers. He did not create dads to say goodbye to their sons or moms. That’s why it is so hard, so tragic, when parents bury their child. Death tears us away from those we love.

“JESUS WEPT” Let me give you a biblical argument. If you want to be an expert and memorize Bible verses, then John 11:35 is the one for you. It’s just two words; the shortest verse in the Bible (and probably the easiest): “Jesus wept.” (You should read the whole chapter—you might not believe in God; you might not believe the Bible is his inspired word; but as a piece of literature, the eleventh chapter of John’s Gospel is one of the most remarkable stories you will ever run your eyes over.)

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

Jesus wept at the sight of his friend’s grave. That’s what moved him to tears. Remember, this is Jesus! The story itself says, “He could have healed Lazarus, he healed so many.” Why didn’t he do anything for his friend? It took him a long time to get there. They came and told him, “Your friend is sick,” and it took him four days to get there! He didn’t arrive until Lazarus was cold in the tomb. Lazarus’s two sisters, Mary and Martha, came out to him, and Mary said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” (John 11:32). God, why did you let them die? Isn’t this the same question we ask in the face of death? Such a true, human story. And John, who wrote this down, tells us that Jesus saw Mary weeping. His dear friend was dead, and he was “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (v. 33). The English translation we read here is highly sanitized—Jesus was outraged. In the original language we see that he was furious and trying to hold it in. When he wept, it was not a little “Precious Moments” tear curling its way down its cheek. He wailed like Middle-Eastern mourners around the dead body. He raged out loud at death. The crazy thing is that Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus up in just a few minutes. He knew that Lazarus’s death this first time around was a death and a resurrection, a foretaste of what Christ himself was going to do a few weeks later on Easter Sunday. He knew he was going to raise him up; and yet Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, couldn’t stand to not cry at the grave. Death is a horrible thing, and he knew he would soon join his friend Lazarus in the grave. Take it from Jesus. Take it from my dad. It’s okay to cry.

NOT WITHOUT HOPE AT THE GRAVE And yet, as the apostle Paul says, “We may not—as those who believe in Jesus—we may not grieve as others do, as others do who have no

hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). What’s our hope? What’s your hope? “For since we believe,” Paul continues, “that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (v. 14). Because Jesus has gone into the tomb, into the grave and died and risen, he will bring everyone who believes in him up out of the grave. He doesn’t just give us something better after death: he undoes death and he defeats it, which are two different things. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future, and a hope” (Jer. 29:11). We have a hope even in the darkest valley of the shadow of death. Our future hope is not that on the whole it is better to just be a spirit freefloating out in space. Our hope is in the defeat of death. Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. (Isa. 43:1–3) “I have redeemed you,” Jesus says, “I am your Savior.” This is our hope. Jesus died for us. He entered the grave to free us from it. He paid the price for our selfishness. One of the most difficult things the Bible says is that death is the wages of sin. We all deserve this horrible end, and deep down, we know it. We all live a lot of our lives pretty selfishly—I know I do. My dad was often selfless, but he could be a selfish man. He was selfish every time he threw one of those caustic remarks that were a little more stinging than funny. He took some perverse pleasure in inflicting that pain. The greatest curse of our selfishness is that we get what we want. We end up all alone in the grave. That’s what Dad deserved, but it’s not what he got. My dad was not, and is not, alone in death.

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“You need not be alone in the grave; you need not be without hope; for Jesus went to the depths of hell to deliver you from it.”

A FRIEND IN THE GRAVE Allow me to get a little graphic for a moment about the hospice care experience with my father. Dad died, mercifully, at home, surrounded by his family. As a result, his body was with us in the living room for a few hours after he breathed his last at 2:34 pm on March 14, a Tuesday. Over the course of that time, before the mortician came, Dad’s body began to cool; and the evidence of that precious vital union between soul and flesh, which is a living life here on earth, began to fade. As I touched his cooling forehead, I thought about Jesus. I have never before thought so tangibly, so concretely, about the death and resurrection of my Lord. I thought about how Jesus must have grown cold in that tomb for about forty hours of darkness, in a way no one has experienced death. His death was far more horrible, because he bore all of our iniquities, all of our sorrows, all of our pain. He who had eternally dwelt in loving communion with his eternal Father took on all of our selfishness, and he became alone, forsaken in the grave. I touched my dad’s cooling forehead and thought, “You’re not alone in the grave,” because he knew his heavenly father loved him, and he received that love. Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, went into the grave to be with you. To be in relationship with you even in the darkness of your death, that you might not be alone, that he might rise from the grave and bring you with him. The story

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of Jesus and Lazarus is the story of Jesus and Clare. Jesus and Brian. Jesus and you. When Jesus wept, they said, “See how much he loved him!” (John 11:36). See how much he loves you. When you get up in the morning and you lift your head off the pillow, the rest of your body follows. It has to because they are united. The Bible uses this image that Jesus is our head and that we are his body, united to him. When your head leaves the pillow, your flesh is surely leaving slumber for the light of a new day. Jesus’ departure from the grave was like our head lifting off the pillow, shaking off death, the defeated foe, and walking into the light of the new day, bringing us all along with him. This might sound odd to say at a funeral. My dad was a good man, hardworking and ethical. But he was not a Christian man. So I’m not going to paint a romantic picture of a life well lived. Being a Christian won’t save you from death— only Christ can save you from death. Jesus himself said, “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26). That’s what’s important. We don’t grieve for my dad as those without hope, because despite a life full of many sins and sorrows, he seemed to stumble his way toward faith, to be transformed, to grow. He stumbled toward a faith, a weak faith that clung to a strong Savior, a strong Christ. Our hope is in nothing less than a new creation, a new heavens, a new earth, where there will be no more tears. Where Dad will once again be shooting hoops in the yard. We await that body; we await that vital living union of body and soul. We confess that we believe in the resurrection of the dead. Whether you are young or old, ask yourself if you want to be alone in the grave. You need not be alone in the grave; you need not be without hope; for Jesus went to the depths of hell to deliver you from it. And that is our only hope. That is the amazing grace of which we are going to sing as we close our service today. REV. BRIAN LEE is the pastor of Christ Reformed Church

(URCNA) in Washington, DC.

THEOLOGY

Is That Really the Gospel, YWAM? By Mark Stromberg and Mark H. Vander Pol

or the past two millennia, the church has wrestled with the questions of how she should best grow in her faith and what exactly it is she’s called to do in the world. People from ascetic hermits to monastic orders to parachurch organizations have attempted to answer these most basic questions concerning the Christian life. For the past fifty years, one of the world’s largest missions agencies, Youth With a Mission (YWAM), has also attempted to answer these questions. Founded by Loren Cunningham in

1960, YWAM currently works in over 1,100 locations in 180 countries with a staff of 18,000. They are “dedicated to serving Jesus throughout the world” (what are we called to do?) and “united in a common purpose to know God and to make 1 Him known” (how are we to grow in our faith?). YWAM’s service to the vulnerable and disadvantaged throughout the world is commendable. As a Christian organization, it is proper to remember the poor and suffering and to remember that whatever we do for the least of these, we do for our Savior. However, precisely because YWAM is a Christian organization, it would be

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helpful for us to examine their teaching in the light of the word of God (Acts 17:11). This article intends to highlight a few of the theological and even practical concerns of YWAM and its teaching. While we are grateful for the laudable zeal the organization has for the glory of Christ, the ease with which YWAM’s problematic understanding of Scripture and the gospel has infiltrated the churches—some of which claim to be confessionally Reformed—is troubling.

PRACTICAL CONCERNS Although individual experiences of YWAMers (their official title) vary greatly, it is the authors’ experience that those who finish a YWAM mission seem to struggle with identity issues and a lack of purpose once they leave the intense subculture of the group. While on a mission, YWAMers viewed themselves as “storm troopers for God”; but once they were home, nothing could compare with the heightened emotional experience they had while serving the Lord in “combat.” The transition from battling demons and casting out evil spirits to pounding nails, sitting in a college class room, or cleaning your house is difficult if being a Christian is first and foremost about what you are doing—working for God. Can you truly obey the Great Commission to “go” in ordinary life? It appears that many ex-YWAMers don’t believe they are doing enough; thus they struggle with guilt, their identity as Christians, and their sense of purpose. This is possibly because YWAM’s founder, Loren Cunningham, provides a somewhat confused definition of the gospel. In his book Is That Really You, God? Hearing the Voice of God, he wrote: That night, there in the church with the storm battering the island, I realized that many of us were in danger of not stressing properly one major part of the Gospel message. Jesus told us there were two important things to do. One was to love God with all

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our hearts, souls, minds, and strength— teaching people to do that is evangelism. The other command was to love our neighbors as ourselves—to take care of people, as much as in our power to do. These were the two sides of the same Gospel: loving God and loving our neighbor. The two should be almost indistinguishable—so linked that it 2 would be hard to tell them apart. This is later reiterated: “I could now imagine hundreds of thousands going out, until every continent was covered by people bringing the twin-natured message of the Gospel: Love the Lord with all your heart, and love your neighbor 3 as yourself.” It’s easy to see how Cunningham’s fervor for sharing the gospel perhaps caused him (as it has others) to rush carelessly past what precisely the gospel is. Like many who are eager to bring the light of Christ to the nations, the desire to save the lost can overcome the biblical truth that accurately articulates what the lost are being saved from and the means God uses to effectually call his own.

THEOLOGICAL CONCERNS Law/Gospel Distinction According to Cunningham, the mission of YWAM is to spread Jesus’ message to “love God and love neighbor.” This is certainly worthy of being proclaimed broadly—even among Christians—but a problem arises when that message is proclaimed as the gospel, when it is in fact a summary of God’s perfect law. One of the most important distinctions in the Bible is the distinction between the law and the gospel. In his second letter to the church at Corinth, the apostle Paul writes that the law is the ministry of death and condemnation, and it is powerless to deliver sinners from the guilt and bondage of sin (2 Cor. 3:7–14). This confusion and conflation of the law and the gospel means that those who think the gospel

THEOLOGY

is “loving God and neighbor” are never assured of their salvation because they don’t think they have loved enough. This very basic understanding was at the heart of the Reformation: Martin Luther and many after him came to understand that the righteousness that saves us is not a righteousness we need to (or can) earn; instead, we are saved by a righteousness God gives us through faith in Christ (Rom. 1:16–17; 4:4–5; 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:21). Compare Loren Cunningham’s “the twinnatured message of the Gospel: Love the Lord with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself” to that of Paul’s: Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you… that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Cor. 15:1, 3b–4; emphasis added) Paul states here that the gospel is something Christ did in history (he died, was buried, was raised, and subsequently appeared to many). There is nothing in Paul’s definition of the gospel that we need to act on. This is why the gospel is truly “good news”—we don’t have to do anything to be right with God. Christ has accomplished it all. We accept this with faith and a believing heart, which too is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8). Zacharias Ursinus summarizes this beautifully: 4 The law is called the Decalogue , and the gospel is the doctrine concerning Christ the Mediator, and the free remission of

sins through faith. . . . The law prescribes and enjoins what is to be done, and forbids what ought to be avoided; while the gospel announces the free remission of sins, 5 through and for the sake of Christ. Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone The title of Cunningham’s book, Is That Really You, God?, suggests that its topic is hearing God and determining if it is really him speaking to “hearing” individuals. In fact, the final pages of the book are titled “Twelve Points to Remember: Hearing the Voice of God.” These serve as a summary of the many principles and practices Cunningham used during his life that were foundational to the formation and mission of YWAM. He states, “Jesus always checked with his Father and so should we. Hearing the voice of the heavenly Father is a basic right of every child of God. In this book, we have tried to describe a few of the many ways of fine-tuning this experi6 ence.” YWAM shared their values at a recent pastors’ luncheon: YWAM is committed to creating with God through listening to him, praying his prayers and obeying his commands in matters great and small. We are dependent upon hearing his voice as individuals, together in team contexts and in larger corporate gatherings as an integral part of our process for 7 decision making. Following this lunch, a young lady of our church, who previously served in YWAM before coming to understand confessional Christianity, was told,

“This is why the gospel is truly ‘good news’—we don’t have to do anything to be right with God. Christ has accomplished it all. We accept this with faith and a believing heart, which too is a gift of God.” 12

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“You can read your Bible, but more importantly you need to hear the voice of God every day.” While it is excellent for an organization to seek, and conform themselves to, God’s will, a scriptural understanding of how and where God reveals himself is necessary in order to do this well. To seek God’s voice in any other way undermines the sufficiency and authority of God’s word (his revealed word—the Bible). One of the five solas of the Reformation is sola scriptura, “Scripture alone.” This means that God speaks to us and guides us through his revealed word and through the preaching of it. For everyday living and decision-making, he gives us wisdom to put into practice what he has revealed in his word. We don’t need extrabiblical guidelines or procedures to listen for “the still small voice.” Ecclesiology: The Doctrine of the Church Even though Loren Cunningham began the YWAM movement while he was a minister in the Assemblies of God, he ended up leaving that denomination because the leaders above him did 8 not share his vision. We see this in the ninth of his “Twelve Principles” to hear God’s voice: Opposition of man is sometimes guidance from God. In our own story, we recognized much later that what seemed like blockage from our denomination was, in fact, God leading us to a broader scope of ministry. The important lesson here, again, is yieldedness [sic] to the Lord. Rebellion is never of God, but sometimes he asks you to step away from your elders in a way that is not rebellion but part of his plan. Trust that he 9 will show your heart the difference. Cunningham gives three Scripture proofs for this guidance principle: two of them (Dan. 6:6–23; Acts 4:18–21) are in relation to God’s people being required to sin against the Lord and follow the commands of men. The other

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Scripture reference used is Acts 21:10–14 when Agabus prophesies that Paul will be bound in Jerusalem, which causes many of those around Paul to oppose him and discourage him from moving forward—which he ignores. The problem with using this text as a proof-text is that (1) Paul was an apostle, and (2) he was not opposed by ordained local church leaders. YWAM’s guidance to “step away from your elders” is in direct conflict with God’s word, which clearly says: Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. (Heb. 13:17) Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Pet. 5:5) Counseling young people to go against the wise counsel of the leaders God has placed over them in favor of the counsel of parachurch leaders undermines the authority of the local church. In many respects, the youth (those who particularly need wise guidance from their fathers and mothers in the faith) are called upon to provide the vision for YWAM: YWAM is called to champion youth. We believe God has gifted and called young people to spearhead vision and ministry. We are committed to value them, trust them, train them, support them, make 10 space for them and release them. With such freedom and authority given to those with so little training and accountability, it’s little wonder that ex-YWAMers are sometimes hostile to the oversight and authority exercised within the local church.

THEOLOGY

“We must distinguish between the way God has promised us in his word and the ways he is able (if he is willing) to use us to accomplish his purposes.”

LIVING ORDINARY LIVES There is an underlying current in American evangelicalism—one to which YWAM’s theological distortions have contributed—that in order to be true Christians, we must be “radical Christians.” There is certainly a place for relinquishing the comforts of privilege and familiarity for the sake of serving the oppressed and suffering. Christ said that if we do not take up our cross and follow him, we are not worthy of him, and we are admonished to go and make disciples of all nations. But taking up our cross is not always selling all our possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, and making disciples of all nations doesn’t always necessitate a sixmonth stint in a developing country. Sometimes it’s as simple and as ordinary as sharing what we have with someone in need, or catechizing our rambunctious children when it would be easier to watch Netflix. The idea that Christians needed to address the material and social problems in the world in order to change the world is precisely what Cunningham envisioned as waves of young people crashing onto the shores of all the continents of the globe, going from house to house, 11 preaching the gospel, and caring for people. God has given us his revealed word, which has been breathed out by him; it is suitable for teaching, reproof, and correction (2 Tim. 3:16).

It is in this light that we looked into YWAM. While their zeal and fervor are commendable, their fundamental teachings and core methods conflict with (and in some cases, are directly opposed to) what God has clearly revealed. God has promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church (Matt. 16:18) and that he will build up his body into a royal priesthood and a holy nation called out of darkness and into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). God certainly can use his children—including young people—in profound ways for the advancement of his kingdom, and he has done so for two thousand years through the church. But we must distinguish between the way God has promised us in his word and the ways he is able (if he is willing) to use us to accomplish his purposes. Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom. 16:25–27) MARK STROMBERG, preaching pastor, and MARK VANDER POL,

pastor of congregational life, serve the United Reformed Church of Lynden in Lynden, Washington. 1 http://www.ywam.org/about-us, accessed November 2, 2016. Parenthetical statements are from the authors of this article. 2 Loren Cunningham, Is That Really You, God? Hearing the Voice of God, 2nd ed. (Seattle: YWAM Publishing, 2001), 74; emphasis added. 3 Cunningham, 196; emphasis added. See also pages 107 and 155. 4 We can include here Christ’s summary of the law (which Cunningham calls the gospel). 5 Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1852 ed.), 2–3. 6 Cunningham, 200. 7 “What Is YWAM?” handout received June 21, 2016; emphasis added. 8 Cunningham, 78–81. 9 Cunningham, 202. 10 http://www.ywam.org/about-us/values, accessed November 2, 2016; emphasis added. 11 Cunningham, 32–33.

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One in Christ Jesus: An Exposition of Galatians 3:28 By Mika Edmondson

s part of his daily prayers, a typical first-century Jewish man began by thanking God for not making him a Gentile, a slave— and finally—for not making him a woman. In a fallen world, we are socially conditioned by messages about who’s important and who’s not, who’s precious and who’s expendable, who should be in and who should be out. Race, class, and gender are the fault lines of sinful disparity and division that pass from the world right into the church. When the Judaizers infiltrated the churches of Galatia, they brought

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these attitudes with them. Looking to their Jewish ethnicity, cultural, and ceremonial trappings to guarantee their acceptance with God, they treated Gentile Christians as culturally inferior and pressured them to assimilate in order to really belong among God’s people. It was against this backdrop that Paul penned Galatians 3:27–29: For as many of you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for

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you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. We know from 1 Corinthians 12:13 and Colossians 3:11 that when he wrote Galatians 3:28, Paul was almost certainly quoting an ancient baptismal formula. As believers prepared to enter life in the community of faith, the Lord gave them a reorientation that challenged their previous thinking. Jews, who were used to being preeminent among the people of God, confessed that there is “neither Jew nor Greek”—in other words, “It is Christ alone, not my race or culture, that affords my place in God’s house.” Men who were used to having greater access and status in every other place in society confessed that “there is neither male nor female”—“It is Christ alone, not my gender, that affords my place in God’s house.” The wealthy who were accustomed to social and economic prominence confessed that “there is neither slave nor free”—“It is Christ alone, not my wealth, earthly citizenship, or political affiliation that affords my place in God’s house.” We all need the same blood and the same empty tomb. In Christ, we all (regardless of race, class, or gender) have equal status, equal access, and an equal inheritance as coheirs in the household of God. As Martin Luther explained in his commentary on Galatians 3:28, “There is much disparity among men in the world, but there is no such disparity before God.” This liberating truth challenges the powerful and longstanding racial ideologies that have plagued American Christianity since the early

seventeenth century. In her helpful book, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Rebecca Goetz highlights the practical threat that Christian baptism posed to the racial caste system in colonial Virginia. Southern planters knew that if they baptized enslaved African and Native Americans, it would mean they had an equal standing with Anglo-Virginians as coheirs in Christ, a spiritual reality that undermined the ideology of black inferiority. In response, the planters engineered the doctrine of hereditary heathenism, the idea that Africans and Native Americans could never really become Christians and so were not to be baptized. This was really a not-so-subtle form of legalism—in this instance, the belief that whiteness (rather than union with Christ) was what afforded special access to God’s household. The planters who did baptize enslaved Africans worked hard to reformulate baptism (and the doctrine of adoption and union with Christ) in a way that could maintain the social disparities of the slave system. This began a long and tragic history of interpreting these doctrines in such a way that they could peacefully coexist with the entrenched racial, class, and gender disparities in America (Goetz, 170–73). Even today, our theologies of baptism and adoption in Christ have precious little to say about practical ways in which Christians across the race, class, and gender divides relate to one another. But what would happen if we understood our baptism through the lens of Galatians 3:28 and applied it to race, class, and gender disparities

“As Martin Luther explained in his commentary on Galatians 3:28, ‘There is much disparity among men in the world, but there is no such disparity before God.’” 16

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in America? It could be a powerful force for dignity, liberation, and gospel witness. The Civil Rights icon Mary McLeod Bethune recalled the impact that Galatians 3:28 had on her sense of dignity and self-worth: With these words the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away: “Whosoever,” it said. No Jew nor Gentile… no black nor white; just “whosoever.” It meant that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God.

“In a society that historically asserted black inferiority, Galatians 3:28 told Mary Bethune that as a poor, black girl before God she had equal access, equal standing, and an equal inheritance as a coheir in Christ.”

(Quoted in J. K. Riches, Galatians through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentaries [Malden: Blackwell, 2008], 209.) In a society that historically asserted black inferiority, Galatians 3:28 told Mary Bethune that as a poor, black girl before God she had equal access, equal standing, and an equal inheritance as a coheir in Christ. Although the world treated her as a nobody, in Christ she saw herself as a somebody, a first-class citizen, an insider, equally accepted, equally beloved, equally received, and equally blessed. That gospelgrounded understanding of her place before God informed her perspective on all of life. Out of that gospel-grounded sense of dignity, Bethune went on to become a renowned educator, stateswoman, humanitarian, and civil rights activist. At this point, I need to address a common misconception about Galatians 3:28. First, people often mistakenly assume the passage is about erasing distinctions. They think Paul is calling us to be colorblind. But Paul is not talking about erasing distinctions; rather he is talking about erasing disparities. The context of the passage centers on access and standing as adopted heirs in God’s house: Who’s in? Who’s out? On what basis are they in or out? Paul affirms that we have distinctions, but he insists that our distinctions don’t define our access to God’s inheritance. That is much more biblical,

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liberating, and practical than pretending that in some spiritual way we don’t have distinctions at all or that our distinctions don’t matter. The Lord intentionally included ethnic distinctions in the gospel when he promised Abraham that in his seed (the coming Christ) all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18). In Revelation 7:9, John saw the redeemed people of God in their ethnic and cultural distinctiveness: “A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” From this we see that Galatians 3:28 cannot be suggesting that the gospel erases ethnic distinctions, even in a spiritual sense. The problem is not our distinctions; it’s our use of those distinctions to establish sinful disparities. Sin perverts our distinctions to create disparities that demean and divide the saints. Colorblind theology essentially says, “If we don’t acknowledge the distinctions, then we can avoid the disparities and divisions. Let’s not talk about race in the church.” But that loses something key about what the Lord is doing to bring the

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divided nations together at his one table under the lordship of Christ (see Isa. 49:6). It also suggests that racialized sin is too entrenched and powerful for the gospel to heal. Because colorblind theology refuses to acknowledge racial distinctions, it also refuses to address sinful disparities. Much like the theology engineered by the seventeenthcentury Virginia planters, colorblind theology leaves racial disparities and biases essentially untouched by the gospel. Without any acknowledgement of the particularity of historic and contemporary racialized sin in America, the church remains unable to “repent of particular sins particularly” (Westminster Confession of Faith, ch. 15.5). Additionally, it strips the church of its ability to fulfill the requirements of the sixth commandment, including “resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any… comforting and succouring the distressed and protecting and defending the innocent” (Westminster Larger Catechism Q 745). Under sins forbidden, the catechism specifically includes the sin of “oppression.” Its source text for this sin is Exodus 1:14 and the race-based discrimination and enslavement of the Hebrews under Egyptian bondage. There are confessional as well as biblicaltheological resources within the Reformed tradition to specifically counteract the racial disparities that find their way into the church. We must acknowledge our ethnic distinctions and intentionally hold those distinctions in a

way that makes our full equality in Christ clear. We can talk about cultural, class, and gender distinctions, but we must hold them in a way that shows equal status in the household of God. The OPC Book of Church Order puts it this way: The unity and catholicity of the covenant people are to be manifest in public worship. Accordingly, the service is to be conducted in a manner that enables and expects all the members of the covenant community— male and female, old and young, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, healthy and infirm, people from every race and nation—to worship together. That’s not just a social program; it’s a principle that reflects something about our adoption into the family of God and about the gospel itself. Divisions and disparities in race, class, and gender can only be truly and lastingly overcome in Christ. Consider the words of Galatians 3:28 again: “You are all one in Christ Jesus.” You cannot imagine a closer scenario than multiple people from a wide array of racial, economic, and social backgrounds who are joined together in one person. When we were joined to Jesus by faith and marked by him in baptism, we were also joined to everyone else Jesus is joined to—a diverse people from every tribe, nation, and tongue. As we were united in Christ, the practical concerns of others—their burdens, joys, and sorrows—became our practical concerns; our burdens, joys, and sorrows. Their well-being matters deeply to us, and we

“When we were joined to Jesus by faith and marked by him in baptism, we were also joined to everyone else Jesus is joined to—a diverse people from every tribe, nation, and tongue.” 18

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“If we knew what our baptism really meant, then we wouldn’t ignore one another’s pain. That’s a powerful principle that should make a real difference in how we respond and relate to one another around a host of practical and social issues.”

should carry those interests and concerns into our civic life, because our union broadens our moral perspective beyond the boundaries of our own ethnic, class, and gender group. Wealthy business-owning American citizens baptized in Christ, for example, must deeply consider the practical well-being of the undocumented migrant worker and refugee who are also baptized in Christ. Christian civil engagement is not fundamentally self-interested. At every step Christians should think: How can I serve the diverse brothers and sisters who sit on the pews across the tracks or all around me every single Sunday? How can I engage in a way that I can look them in the eye and say I also care about their interests and not just my own? When we consider the interests of the saints across the racial, class, and gender divide, we bear witness to the catholicity and unity of the kingdom of our Lord. If we knew what our baptism really meant, then we wouldn’t ignore one another’s pain. That’s a powerful principle that should make a real difference in how we respond and relate to one another around a host of practical

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and social issues. Because our union with Christ is the basis of our unity with one another, we have hope for true reconciliation, and as we lean on Christ, he will give us the grace to share one another’s concerns, burdens, joys, and sorrows and grace to overcome our racial disparities and divisions. In 1908, guided by the words of Galatians 3:28, the English journalist, novelist, and poet William Dunkerley wrote the great hymn “in Christ, There Is No East or West.” Think about what was going on in the United States in 1908— segregation and Jim Crow ruled the land. Blacks and whites couldn’t swim in the same pools, drink from the same water fountains, or eat at the same lunch counters. You could be killed if you were seen consorting with people of a different race. Even the churches reflected this sinful division. Yet the Scriptures gave Dunkerley eyes to see what the world around him couldn’t see—that there was a reality and a power made available in Christ that would scandalize the world. In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth. In Christ shall true hearts everywhere their high communion find; his service is the golden cord close-binding humankind. Join hands, disciples of the faith, whate’er your race may be. All children of the living God are surely kin to me. MIKA EDMONDSON (PhD, Calvin Seminary) is pastor of New City Fellowship OPC, a church plant in southeast Grand Rapids. His dissertation on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s theology of suffering was published in December 2016 as The Power of Unearned Suffering: The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Theodicy. It is the inaugural volume in the new Religion and Race series by Lexington Books.

HERE’S TO 25 MORE YEARS Get your copy of The Reformation Then and Now as a thank you for your gift of $50 or more! As a part of our 25th Anniversary celebration, we partnered with Hendrickson Publishers to release a new book filled with Modern Reformation articles celebrating 500 years of the Reformation. White Horse Inn and Modern Reformation are possible because of your support. So, thank you! We’re looking forward to many years to come.

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V O L .2 6 | N O.4

FEATURES

“What if the Truth, at a particular point in history, broke through the veil of our perpetual quest for the ultimate placebo and revealed himself to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life?”

IS CHRISTIANITY AN OPIATE OR A TRUTH SERUM?

KNOWING THE TRUTH

COME AND SEE

TRUE FAITH

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SC OTT KEITH

photo illustrations by MLC

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“RELIGION . . . IS THE OPIATE OF THE PEOPLE.” 1

IS CHRISTIANITY A N O P I AT E O R A TRUTH SERUM?

A Homage to John W. Montgomery’s “Sensible Christianity”

Karl Marx’s well-known maxim illustrates a disturbing reality: Too often religion merely makes people feel better about themselves. Some say that religion is no more than a placebo, a deceptively ineffectual medicine, meant to fool the patient into having hope where no real hope exists. Sadly, this is too often true—some religious groups are no more than opiates providing transient highs based on individual feelings rather than on verifiable, ultimate truths. If theology underwent an epistemological metamorphosis by girding itself with verifiable 2 facts, the game would change dramatically. What if the Truth, at a particular point in history, broke through the veil of our perpetual quest for the ultimate placebo and revealed himself to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life? What if his existence, life, death, and resurrection were verifiable events that occurred in real time, real space, and real history? Would the “religion” he preached be a mere placebo? Or would it be the powerful medicine of the Most High God, literally erupting with certainty and power? Though our postmodern world sometimes claims to be “spiritual,” Christianity is nevertheless constantly questioned and attacked on the basis of the placebo perception. As a defense against these attacks, it is essential that Christians understand the case for Christianity. The role of apologetics is to defend the exclusive claims of Christianity—specifically, that God came down to earth incarnate as a man, died on the cross for the sins of humanity, was raised three days later, and thus secured salvation 3 for all who believe. How can such miraculous claims withstand scrutiny in a world in which science determines what constitutes knowledge and exercises an exclusive right to truth-claims? Quite simply, one must question science’s presupposition that “religion cannot convey truth,” or that religion only speaks to “religious” ideas (thus making it the opiate of the masses). In order to adequately show the truth-value of the claims of Christianity and question these presuppositions, this article will examine those elements of proof necessary to substantiate any claim of truth.

If our postmodern society will allow (or subconsciously uses) anything approaching a consistent framework that could make up a theory of knowledge, then understanding the tenets of this framework is the first important task in discussing and evaluating truth-claims. Therefore, we must understand some basic aspects of epistemology—the study of how we know what we know—that are peculiar to twentieth-century philosophy, specifically the 4 tenets of the so-called Analytic Movement.

IF OUR POSTMODERN

SOCIETY WILL ALLOW

VARIOUS TYPES OF STATEMENTS According to most proponents of the Analytic Movement, there are three types of propositions; truth-claims are analytic, synthetic, or nonsensical. To better explain, I’ll describe each of these three types and assess their respective capacities to reveal truth. To begin, analytic statements are those that are mathematical in nature, or that consist of strictly logical definitions and deductions. Here’s an example: “Two plus two equals four.” Analytic statements such as these are purely definitional, and thus are absolutely true. Further, the fact that analytic statements are strictly definitional means they can’t tell us anything except the information contained within the statement. (So, in our example of “two plus two equals four,” it can’t tell us where the concept of the number “two” comes from, or why it is that two and two equal four and not five.) Next, synthetic statements are those propositions concerning the world, nature, or the universe that are not internally defined as true. These statements typically rely on empirical testing or external observation to be confirmed or denied. Here’s an example: “I live at 1234 Every Street, Sometown, California 56789.” Demonstrating synthetic truth-claims is usually done by means of inductive argumentation, of which the scientific method is the premier example. This type of argument seeks to supply strong evidence for the truth of the proposition. In our example, to evaluate this truth-claim, an observer must empirically examine the evidence

( O R S U B C O N S C I O U S LY

USES) ANY THING APPROACHING

A CONSISTENT FRAMEWORK

T H AT C O U L D M A K E U P A

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE, THEN

U N D E R S TA N D I N G T H E T E N E T S

OF THIS FRAMEWORK IS THE

F I R S T I M P O R TA N T TA S K I N

D I S C U S S I N G A N D E VA L U AT I N G

TRUTH-CLAIMS.

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in its favor. The most obvious test would be to go to the address and determine if it is, in fact, my home. Barring such an observation, one could accept this proposition on faith. Synthetic propositions begin with the specific and work slowly upward toward the general, by means of corroboration and confirmation. However, because empirical testing and observation are used to evaluate synthetic truth-claims, there generally can’t be anything approaching the definite, 100-percent certainty of analytic statements. Bias, inappropriate testing materials and subjects, insufficient data, and data tampering are all possible pressures that potentially serve to undercut the veracity of synthetic statements. This is why synthetic truth-claims must be tested! The tests need not be highly formalized examinations, but they should be investigated with reasonable rigor. Whatever the test used, our point is this: Judging the truth or falsity of a synthetic statement in the absence of evidence—that is, provisionally—necessitates a type of faith. Here’s why this is important: If we can treat synthetic truth-claims as provisionally true, then faith is not solely a religious concept. Synthetic, provisional truth-claims are those propositions that are effectively probable in nature, since they are based on empirically verifiable evidence. This means that our everyday, common experiences provide robust defenses for these truth-claims. For example, I have faith that when I get into my car it will start and I will be able to drive to work. I have no compelling reason to doubt this proposition, because my car has started every morning since I purchased it. Even so, this remains a provisional truth-claim. Here’s the point: You and I routinely—and without question—live as if probable synthetic statements (e.g., my car will start this morning) were certain, even when certainty cannot be conclusively determined. My car could, in fact, fail to start this morning—the battery could be dead, the starter could be broken, or thieves might have stolen my engine. This concept directly addresses a common attack on Christianity, which goes like this: “You believers must take certain propositions on

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faith! That’s not rational!” Richard Dawkins purportedly defines faith as “believing in something that you know isn’t true.” But the discerning questioner might ask, “Aren’t most things upon which we rely taken on faith?” Trusting or having faith in the probability of observed data is an essential aspect of the human experience and one that can adjudge truth. Finally, there are truth-claims that are neither analytic nor synthetic. Nonsensical statements are completely nonverifiable either by definition or by objective evidence. They are not even subjective in nature and are often termed “meaningless.” Nonsensical statements are neither true by definition nor do they lend themselves to any means of testing or observation. A classic instance is Noam Chomsky’s example: 5 “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” This is a perfectly fine English sentence—grammatically correct, intelligible—but completely nonsensical. There is no truth proposition in this statement, and there are no means by which its truth can be tested. Since such statements are neither true nor false, they communicate no understanding of either their own internal logic (as in analytic statements) or information about the external world (as in synthetic statements). Many have relegated all religious statements to this nonsensical category, and it’s true that some religious statements are nonsensical. Here’s an example: There is a god who is said to have made all the coffee in the universe and bestowed it on humanity as a gift. The worshipers of this god claim that he exists in a separate realm in which no human method of observation can apprehend him. Belief in this coffee-god is, in fact, nonsensical, given that he cannot be determined to exist either analytically or synthetically. Some examples of these three types of statements can provide a view into the working difference between them. Imagine that you are attending a history lecture and the lecturer asks, “How many kings in the kingdom are rulers?” This question merits an analytic statement in response (e.g., “One king rules the kingdom”) since the definitions of “king,” “kingdom,” and “ruler” necessarily determine the answer. Next, the lecturer asks, “How many servants does each

king have?” This question necessarily begets a synthetic statement (e.g., “The king has two hundred servants”), since each servant must be counted in order to determine the answer. Now, an element of faith enters the picture—if the number of servants is reported by a trustworthy source, you might place your faith in the demographers who gathered the data. You must believe that these analysts did not change, miss, or record incorrectly the number of servants that served under each king. The lecturer then proclaims, “An ancient king created the universe, then immediately died.” This statement is nonsensical, since the truth of this statement is neither definitional nor is there a means by which the statement can be tested in order to prove that such a king either existed or created the universe.

WHAT IS MEANT BY “TRUE”? Religious claims tend to fall into this nonsensical category, because most of them are not falsifiable—that is, there’s no way to prove whether they’re true or false, as in our coffee-god example earlier. So, to transcend the nonsensical category, the defender of a religious proposition must either prove that it is axiomatically true (i.e., show that it is an analytic statement) or show that it is a synthetic claim (i.e., show that it can be proved by observation and testing). No religion apart from Christianity makes an attempt to support inquiry by synthetic statements. Christianity alone rises above all other religions in this respect. The core claim of Christianity—that Jesus Christ, who is God, the Creator of the universe, became a man, was legally tried by the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate, killed on a cross, and rose from the dead three days later, thus securing salvation for all who believe—is empirical (synthetic) in character. The fact that these claims about Jesus occurred in the natural world renders them open to empirical testing. Christianity appeals not strictly to an analytic definitional claim, but to a synthetic claim; thus Christianity’s account of its own foundation falls into the

same knowledge (or epistemological) category as scientific truth. Accordingly, Christianity can make truth-claims about the world, nature, and the universe. These truth-claims can thereby be known as probable fact, even though there are certain elements of the narrative that require faith. This faith is not a specialized type of faith unique to the Christian confession, but it is actually the same kind of faith that is universally necessary for humanity to operate. So, the synthetic claims of science, which inform and enable the epistemology of the postmodern thinker, are of the same type as the synthetic claims of Christianity. That, in turn, means one of science’s prominent presuppositions—“No truth can be found in religion”—is baseless. Since every proposition that science asserts as true also requires faith, the scientist cannot use faith to discount the truth-claims of Christianity. In this way, the rejoinder “Well, it is a matter of faith” is rendered powerless, because all positive assertions in the absence of direct observation are built on a foundation of faith. The Christian faith is not a “blind faith”; it is a faith informed by both evidence and reason. Even the most materialist scientist lives in accordance with this proposition. While postmodernity may indeed be “spiritual,” this spirituality serves not as a means of finding truth, but is instead a system for living a peaceful or fulfilling life. Thus, according to this ideology, the propositions of a religion are not fact but a placebo that allows those who engage in religious behaviors to feel good. An example is the “Coexist” movement, which argues that all religions should drop claims of exclusivity and accept the claims of the others. According to this paradigm (whether the proponent realizes it or not), all religions are nonsensical. Religion exists not as a means of accruing knowledge of truth, but instead imparts only desirable feelings to the believer.

“YOU DO YOU” Similarly, this impulse is manifested in the popular, postmodern, quasi-ethical statement

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CHRISTIANITY TRANSCENDS

THE POSTMODERN SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE;

IT IS SUBJECT TO THE SYNTHETIC

PROPOSITIONS OF EMPIRICAL DATA AND

O B S E RVAT I O N ; I T L I V E S I N T H E R E A L WO R L D

T H AT I S , M O R E O F T E N T H A N N OT,

THE REALM OF SCIENCE.

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often emoted by Millennials, “You do you.” This statement suggests that individuals are to ignore external recommendations regarding how to live life and instead be guided by what feels best—not that anything external should define “best” for you either! Since ethics, daily practice, and religion hold no objective truth, postmodern individuals place a premium on personal gratification and self-satisfaction. Christianity transcends the postmodern spiritual experience; it is subject to the synthetic propositions of empirical data and observation; it lives in the real world that is, more often than not, the realm of science. Because the synthetic claims of Christianity occurred in the past, and can thus be judged using the historical method, Christianity not only serves as a robust foundation of knowledge for believers, but it can do the same for curious unbelievers—even in the postmodern world. This means that written records, external dating, and archaeological evidence can all be leveraged to assess the veracity of Christian truth-claims. The essential Christian claims concerning Christ are referred to as “the gospel.” This gospel message is, among world religions, uniquely historical. That is, the gospel claims are based on events that happened in real time, in real places, and in real, verifiable history. Thus when the apostle Paul seeks to define the “gospel message,” he tells his reader the historical story of Christ and lists the witnesses who can attest to the veracity of the claims made in the story: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. (1 Cor. 15:3–8 ESV)

Among the world’s religions, Christianity is notable not only for the fact that it makes historical claims, but also that it proposes the means of its own falsification. Later in that same chapter, Paul provides the mechanism by which the Christian claim can be solidly debunked: And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:14–19 ESV) That is, if its own claims about the resurrection of Christ were proven historically false—e.g., the bones of Jesus Christ were found somewhere in a cave in Palestine— then the religion itself would be proven false. Christianity not only utilizes history as a setting for its significant events, but it wholly depends on history for the verification and validation of its central claims. Christianity makes several historical claims that are dependent on each other. Consequently, were any one of these claims shown to be false, then the entire foundation would crumble. In order for Christianity to offer truth, at least these three events must have actually happened: 1. Jesus Christ must have been God incarnate; 2. H e must have been tried by Pontius Pilate, convicted, and crucified (died) on a cross; and 3. He must have risen from the dead three days later.

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The impact on the truth of Christianity is as follows: 1. If Jesus were not God, then he would not have been able to atone for the sins of the whole world;

T H I S FA I T H CA N N OT

B E B L I N D FA I T H , B U T I N S T E A D

IT MUST BE—LIKE THE

FA I T H R E Q U I R E D O F A N Y

2. If Jesus did not die, then the claim that he conquered sin, death, and the power of the devil by means of his sacrifice is nullified since no sacrifice occurred; and 3. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then his claim to be God is false, and he could not have been victorious over death nor could he have secured life for all believers. The most essential question of all must be whether the claims about Jesus are supported by historical evidence. That is, are they true?

SYNTHETIC TRUTH- CL AIM—

BASED ON THE SAME

PRINCIPLES BY WHICH

THE SCIENCES DETERMINE

FAC T A N D BY W H I C H W E M A K E

E V E R Y D AY D E C I S I O N S .

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EXAMINING THE EVIDENCE In order to conclude whether the available historical evidence supports the claims made about Jesus Christ, we must examine that historical data using the same historical process, critical methodology, and body of evidence used to determine claims made about any historical figure. That body of evidence must comprise reliable, historical accounts that clearly record events of that figure’s life. These historical accounts form the source material—the data, if you will— that must withstand the empirical testing and critical observation of the synthetic line of reasoning. Only then can such sources be deemed credible. While absolute certainty will never be possible, the plausibility of the source material should be sufficient to act on. Thus faith will be essential to this historical enterprise. (Again, this faith cannot be a blind faith, but instead it must be—like the faith required of any synthetic truth-claim—based on the same principles by which the sciences determine fact and by which we make everyday decisions.)

As would be the case for any historical figure, the evidence for Jesus would necessarily be varied. Specifically, to substantiate the three items listed above, we would require accounts and records of Jesus existing and living under the Roman rule; there would need to be reliable records that the Roman prefect of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sentenced Jesus to death; and finally, we must have accounts of Jesus physically living and appearing after his death. All of the events in question are recorded in the New Testament, particularly in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. As we would expect, the Gospels record the events of Jesus’ human birth and his incarnate nature as God. They make clear Jesus’ death at the hands of representatives of the Roman Empire. And finally, the Gospels boldly proclaim his resurrection from the dead and recount his appearance to over five hundred people (as referenced in 1 Cor. 15) after his victory over death. Lest the skeptic quickly dismiss the New Testament as mere fairy tales, it is critical to note and to know that the Gospels have been examined as historical documents under the harshly critical eyes of historians, archaeologists, exegetes, theologians, and various other 6 experts. They have stood up remarkably well under scrutiny; indeed, in all respects (other than those for which no empirical examination can be structured, such as the miracles), the Gospels have proven to be among the most historically accurate documents of antiquity in the whole world. For example, the Gospels are astonishingly accurate regarding the political figures of the time. References to historical persons such as Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Pontius Pilate are not only specific as to title, dates, and location, they also all enjoy independent verification in other, nonbiblical texts. The culture of first-century Judea enjoys no better testimony than the Gospels. If these texts so accurately convey the realities of life in the early first century, then we can give reasonable credence to the claims that are less easily verified. The composition of each of the Gospels has been dated—even by most skeptical scholars—at

no later than seventy years after the resurrection of Christ (i.e., before AD 100). Relative to most ancient documents, these dates of composition place the Gospels very close to the events they record. Even though the earliest surviving Gospel manuscripts date to the second century, these are still comparatively contemporary to the composition of these texts. The oldest known manuscripts of the works of Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, date nine centuries after his life and death. Despite the intervening millennium, no one seriously doubts that this ancient philosopher truly lived, so it’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that the accounts of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection are extremely reliable. Not only are the Gospel accounts exceptionally contemporary with the dates of the events they document, but they are also, as noted above, supported by external documents and sources. 7 Flavius Josephus, who recorded the experiences of the Jews under Roman rule, and Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who referenced the crucifixion 8 and Pontius Pilate’s involvement in his Annales, are both non-Christian authors who recount elements of the Gospel narrative. Josephus even makes note of Jesus’ claim to be God. To these corroborations can be added archaeological finds—such as the Caiaphas Ossuary, the Pilate Stone, and the Ossuary of James—that also support the personages of the Gospels. The available historical evidence confirms that the Gospels are indeed accurate and trustworthy sources of synthetic knowledge. The three claims concerning Jesus with which we dealt earlier fall in line as respectable truth-claims. The Gospels—and other testimonies—accurately record not only that Jesus claimed to be God but also that many people believed this claim. The Gospels—and other testimonies—clearly record that Pontius Pilate put Jesus to death and that his execution was publicly observed outside of Jerusalem proper. The Gospels clearly record that Jesus’ body was publicly laid to rest in a tomb owned by a man named Joseph from Arimathea, and that a Roman guard was placed outside this tomb. The Gospels record—then proclaim—that three days after this execution, Jesus physically rose from

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the dead. Over the course of the subsequent forty days, Jesus ate with his disciples and appeared to more than five hundred people. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead affirmed his claim that he was God. The historical underpinnings of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and times are incontrovertible. Several of the major events of Jesus’ life can be corroborated in external, non-Christian sources. Therefore, Jesus’ historicity passes the litmus test of synthetic knowledge. We can rely on the historical personage of Jesus because we can rely on the authenticity of the Gospels. If the Gospels are correct in so much of this incidental detail, then why should we not suspect they are credible in the most important detail: the deity of Christ?

A REASONABLE FAITH This is a reasonable faith claim. If we can be reasonably confident that the events recorded in the Gospels are accurate, and no evidence that establishes the falsehood of Christ’s claim to be the Messiah has been found (e.g., his body), then other faith claims predicated on the divinity of Christ begin to make sense according to the rules of synthetic knowledge. Knowing that Jesus truly was God in turn suggests that he came to earth solely to save humanity from sin and secure salvation for all who believe in him, as he claimed. The knowledge that Jesus Christ saved humanity from sin, death, and the power of the devil requires faith; but because of the veracity of the Gospels, this faith occupies the same epistemological category as scientific knowledge. This faith is no opiate-induced, feel-good hallucination, nor is it founded in any nonsensical statement. Christianity is in a uniquely defensible position existing in today’s postmodern world. Synthetic, empirical claims demonstrate conclusively (using the same methodology employed by the sciences themselves) that Christianity and the claims of Jesus’ deity are true facts. We arrive at the conclusion that Jesus is God, not through spiritual enlightenment or tapping into the universal divine, but by

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the same methodology through which we establish the facticity of the American Revolution, or that gravity is an attractive force relative to the mass of an object. The postmodern ideas of the “Coexist” movement and the “You do you” mantra are refuted by Jesus’ universalizing claim that he is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). The historical and empirical nature of Christianity breaks out of the realm of myth and into the realm of flesh-and-blood reality. Christians who are subjected to questioning and attack can rely on more than just blind faith to refute claims against their beliefs. Our reliance on Christ as our only hope of life, salvation, and freedom is assuredly a leap of faith, but it is not a blind leap. To defend against these attacks, it is essential that Christians understand the epistemology of theology, proclaim the exclusive claims of Christianity, and defend the true faith with apologetics. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, died and rose for your sins. Live boldly in this truth! SCOTT L. KEITH (PhD, Foundation House Oxford, under the

sponsorship of the Graduate Theological Foundation) is the executive director of 1517 The Legacy Project and cohost of the Thinking Fellows podcast.

1 The full quote from Marx is: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” See Karl Marx, Preface and Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), 1. 2 It is the opinion of this author that every church ought to own a copy of the audio lecture series Dr. John W. Montgomery’s “Sensible Christianity,” and place it in their library to be made available to its members. “Sensible Christianity” can be found for purchase at: https://shop.1517legacy.com/products/sensible-christianity-mp3. 3 Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:3–4. 4 For more on this, see A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth & Logic (Mount Vernon, NY: Gould Media, 1980). Also see John Warwick Montgomery, Tractatus Logico-Theologicus (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012); and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, and C. K. Ogden, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). 5 Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957), 15. 6 A wonderful synopsis of the historical veracity of the Gospels can be found in John Warwick Montgomery, History, Law and Christianity (Irvine, CA: New Reformation Publications, 2014). 7 See Flavius Josephus, The Works of Flavius Josephus; Comprising the Antiquities of the Jews; a History of the Jewish Wars; and Life of Flavius Josephus, Written by Himself ... And Three Dissertations, Concerning Jesus Christ, John the Baptist, James the Just, God’s Command to Abraham, Etc., trans. William Whiston (Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton Co., 1917). 8 See Cornelius Tacitus, The Annals, trans. A. J. Woodman (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).

An Interview with

STEPHEN C. MEYER

Knowing the Truth illustration by

CARLOS ARROJO

n his Essays, Civil, and Moral, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that the difficulty with lies is not just that truth requires hard work, or that it (truth) inconveniently imposes itself by obliging us to submit to it, but that we love lies themselves. With a glut of information at our fingertips and “credible sources” for everything, from the man-on-the-moon conspiracy to a rare Costa Rican fruit that will shrink your waistline, Pilate’s question can seem less like an evasion and more like honest bewilderment. What is true? What is real? How can we know? We spoke with Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, Washington, about the difference between scientific and religious knowledge, human agency in the method of philosophical inquiry, and how to spot “fake news.” MR: You’ve said that a person’s definition of sci-

ence largely determines what is and what is not considered scientific knowledge. Would you elaborate on that? SM: This question of the definition of science comes up in the debate about biological origins, cosmological origins, and also in the debate about the nature of the human person (what’s called in the philosophy of mind, the mind-body discussion). If someone defines science as a strictly materialistic enterprise—that the only theories that can be rightly considered are the

theories that invoke materialistic causal entities—then they necessarily limit the possible range of explanatory hypotheses. For example, if you’re trying to explain human behavior, and you limit yourself to a materialistic definition of science (and by the way, that definition has a name; it’s called methodological naturalism) to be scientific, you must limit yourself to explanations that invoke only naturalistic or materialistic entities. If you decide in advance that human behavior must be explained only by materialistic entities, then you’re going to be limited to explaining all behavior by reference to genes, environments, neuro-physiological impulses or chemistry in the brain; in other words, some form of naturalism or materialism. Alternatively, if you accept that there exists something like a mind or a soul, or that persons have the freedom to choose and initiate new lines of cause and effect on the basis of their singular choices, then your explanations of behavior may be very different. You may be willing to consider the role of human agency as a real thing and look to the reasons people have for acting the way they do, or character traits that incline them to act a certain way. You won’t limit yourself to simply genes and environment; that question of what you allow as a possible explanation is closely related to the question of the definition of science, because people have very often defined science according to what kinds of explanations or theories they will consider. Methodological naturalism in particular has said that we will consider as scientific only those explanations that are materialistic in character.

MR: It sounds like the scientific methodology is

driven by metaphysical and philosophical considerations, as well as a desire to quantify natural phenomena. Is that somewhat accurate? SM: It really depends on the time or historical

period we’re talking about and the particular scientists involved. We’re currently in a significant debate about the origin of life (which encompasses the new forms of animal and plant life, as well as the history of life and the debate about

Darwinian evolution and chemical evolution). Those of us who are part of the intelligent design research community are arguing that there are certain features of biological systems that are best explained by reference to the action of a designing intelligence, by reference to a mind, not strictly a material process. That postulation—the design hypothesis—runs directly afoul of the convention that has largely governed science since the late nineteenth century: the idea that to be scientific, we must limit ourselves to strictly materialistic explanations. Our critique of that convention is twofold. The first one is that it is historically contingent; it has not always been part of science. During the period of the scientific revolution, many early modern scientists not only presupposed that nature was intelligible because they thought it had been designed by a rational mind—namely, God—but they also thought they were seeing evidence of design in nature. You see this in the works of Kepler, Newton, Robert Boyle, and others. During that period of time, the design hypothesis was a perfectly acceptable way to explain certain sorts of phenomena, particularly the causal origins of the delicate balance of the solar system, or the origin of the universe, or the origin of various forms of life. After Darwin, during the late nineteenth century, that began to change. So methodological naturalism is not a given; it’s a rule that has been applied during some time periods of science, but not others. Our second critique is that if you presuppose methodological naturalism as a normative rule for scientific practice, then you will necessarily exclude from consideration certain types of hypotheses that may be true. What the scientific community wants is not the best hypothesis of a predetermined kind (in this case, the best materialistic hypothesis); we want the best hypothesis, period: the one that is most likely to be true and can best explain the data. So if we’re looking at the evidence for an intelligent design and we presuppose that “intelligence” cannot be part of a scientific explanation, then we’re going to disregard crucial evidence; and we (those in intelligent design research) think that we are looking at such evidence.

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MANY EARLY MODERN SCIENTISTS NOT ONLY PRESUPPOSED THAT NATURE WAS INTELLIGIBLE BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT IT HAD BEEN DESIGNED BY A RATIONAL MIND—NAMELY, GOD—BUT THEY ALSO THOUGHT THEY WERE SEEING EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE. MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

One of the most striking features about biological systems that we’ve come to appreciate since the molecular biological revolution in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s is that biological systems, even the simplest living cells, contain information in a digital form inscribed along the spine of the DNA molecule. Now we know from experience that information invariably arises from intelligent agents, so an analogy I often use to explain the problem with methodological naturalism is this: Imagine you go into the British Museum, and you see the beautifully carved Rosetta Stone. You are asked, “How did those inscriptions arise?” If you’re committed to methodological naturalism or materialism, you’re going to say, “It must have been through some materialistic process. Maybe it was wind, maybe it was erosion…” It was anything but the actual explanation, which was that an intelligent scribe etched those markings in the rock and that the information they contain is the product of the mind of the person who did the etching. That hypothesis would be excluded by methodological naturalism, and yet it ends up being the true hypothesis. Our concern about imposing that as a definition of science is that it’s not truth-friendly: it excludes from consideration some possibly true hypotheses; and in science, our highest obligation is to follow the evidence where it leads, to the most-likely-to-be true explanation. Our problem with methodological naturalism is that it prevents us from doing that, especially in these questions of origins and human nature.

MR: What, in your estimation, would constitute

religious knowledge? How does it differ from scientific knowledge? We’ve discussed a bit about how different presuppositions and different a priori commitments inform scientific knowledge. Would you say the same thing could be said to apply to religious knowledge? SM: Knowledge in the classical definition was actually equated with the word from which we get science, scientia. I think knowledge is knowledge; it’s the object of our knowledge that

can be different. The object of religious knowledge is presumably God, his attributes and his moral commands (the latter would maybe be ethical knowledge). We now associate the word science with the natural sciences, so scientific knowledge is knowledge about the natural world or knowledge derived from the natural world. What’s really interesting is that knowledge we derive from the natural world (scientific knowledge, if you like) can actually be knowledge of God (religious knowledge); it can point us to a creator or a designing agent. So I think the attempt to demarcate the types of knowledge on anything other than subject matter is an artifact of an inadequate philosophy of science called logical positivism or neo-positivism, schools of thought that were dominant in philosophy in the early and middle part of the twentieth century. Increasingly, philosophers of sciences are realizing that it’s difficult to distinguish science from pseudo-science—or science from religion, or science from philosophy—on the basis of differences in rationality or rational method or methods of investigation. There’s a method of investigation I think is important but is often overlooked in science called inference to the best explanation, or the method of multiple competing hypotheses. When I was first studying this method and observing the way in which Darwin used it in the Origin of Species, I had the sense that I had encountered this method of reasoning before. Then I realized it was actually in some of the presuppositional apologetic work of the Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer. I realized that some of the same methods are used in the philosophy of religion, as well as in historical science or theoretical physics. So I don’t think there’s a hard and fast distinction between different kinds of knowledge that can be based solely on methodology. I think reason can be applied to many different questions—questions about the reality of God, the nature of nature, or the laws of nature. There are different types of inferences (deductive, abductive, inductive), but some of the same forms of reasoning that are used to investigate, for example, biological or cosmological origins can also be used to investigate

the reality of God. I think the inference to design that we make based on biological, physical, cosmological evidences may have implications that are friendly to theism as a worldview; that is to say, we may have scientific evidence that possibly implies the existence of God. I think the attempt to firmly compartmentalize different kinds of knowledge has largely failed in the philosophy of science, and I think it opens up the exciting possibility that nature may in fact provide us with the basis for a kind of theological knowledge—not exhaustive theological knowledge. As a Christian, I believe that general revelation doesn’t exhaust what we need to know about God. I believe that special revelation through Scripture is far more important, but I think we can know about God in different ways, and our knowledge is not confined to a special category that is distinct from empirically based scientific types of reasoning.

M R : In your paper “A Scientific History and

Philosophical Defense: The Theory of Intelligent Design,” you wrote that historical scientists can make inferences about the past with confidence when they discover evidence or artifacts for which there is only one cause known to be capable of producing. How similar is this method to the method of historians and archaeologists attempting to establish the historical facticity of an event with significant religious implications, like the resurrection? How much does the way in which we try to establish the truth or falsehood of something influence our ability to acknowledge it as true or false? SM: First, it’s interesting that I was just talking about the method of inference to the best explanation. William Lane Craig, who did a second PhD under the famous German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, wrote a magisterial thesis (perhaps the first one in English in modern times) defending the historicity of the resurrection, and he did so by deliberately using the method of inference to the best explanation. How you judge Craig’s case will depend on how you read it and sense how he evaluated the evidence. But I think his use of that method

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underscores the point I was just making: that there’s no principal difference between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge that can be made on the basis of methods of reasoning. Most of the attempts to demarcate science from non-science, from pseudoscience, from philosophy, from religion, have been made on the basis of characterizations of “the scientific method.” One of the points I showed in my own PhD work was that there is not one scientific method; there are several. One common method that is used in many different types of sciences— namely, inference to the best explanation—is also used by detectives, lawyers, philosophers, philosophers of religion, and theologians. This method of reasoning is something used quite widely by rational human beings, even in a pretheoretic context. People who aren’t trained as lawyers, detectives, or scientists use this because it’s part of the rational endowment that we humans have. That’s a lot of what I’ve done in my work in philosophy of science, as well as in my arguments for intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of the digital information that built the first living cell.

MR: How much, then, would you say the way in

which we try to establish the truth or falsehood of something influences our ability to acknowledge it, and to what extent do you think humans determine what is or isn’t true based on what they want to be true? How much does human agency inform our capacity to grant or withhold assent to the veracity of something? SM: This is a deep question, and there are many facets to assessing the relationship between evidence and conclusion or hypothesis and explanation. Philosophers of science have pointed out that our background knowledge will often play a big role in assessing the plausibility of a hypothesis. What we think we know, for example, about the cause-and-effect structure of the world may determine a lot about how we assess which hypothesis might be the best one for a given class of evidence. So our background knowledge, which can be entirely true

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or partially true due to some false assumptions, can influence our assessment. There is a kind of iterative or reflexive relationship between the evidence that we encounter in the world and the way in which we explain it and our background knowledge. As we learn more and attempt to become more and more rational people in our evaluation of the world, each of those things might in turn influence the other. So if I have some false background knowledge and I come to a hypothesis based on that, I may then later encounter some evidence that convinces me to adjust my background knowledge and realize that I was making some assumptions that weren’t justified, and that may in turn cause me to rethink the conclusion I came to about a particular question. So we see there is a kind of iterative aspect to human rationality. This plays itself out, interestingly, in Christian apologetics. There has been a longstanding debate among Christians about whether or not we should use evidentially based arguments or presuppositional arguments in defending the historic faith. I actually think that is something of a false dichotomy. There can be a difference in emphasis, but from the standpoint of the structure of reasoning, there isn’t a principal difference between starting with a set of presuppositions and then justifying them on the basis of their supposedly superior explanatory power, and starting with a body of evidence we can observe in the natural world or even in our own cognitive structures—or, on the other hand, starting with some body of evidence and asking, “Based on what we know, what best explains this?” I think the difference between evidential and presuppositional argumentation in service of the Christian faith is largely a distinction in our starting point. Do we infer the explanations and then argue for them on the basis of their explanatory power? Or do we start with explanations and presuppositions, and then go out and look at the world and say, “These presuppositions explain the world better than this other set of presuppositions”? In both cases, both presuppositional and evidential apologists often use the same method of reasoning—the inference to the best explanation.

MR: So both evidentialists and presuppositional-

ists say, “There is some sort of postulate I want to establish.” Then they either work toward that based on what they see, or they try to establish that based off of what they’ve presupposed. SM : What the presuppositional apologists do

AS YOU EXAMINE THE METHOD OF REASONING AND WHAT GIVES THE CONCLUSIONS WARRANT OR JUSTIFICATION IS PRECISELY THE EXPLANATORY POWER OF THE POSTULATES, WHETHER YOU START WITH THEM OR INFER TO THEM. 38

is this: they start with the postulate, and then they go out and look at the world, starting with the assumption that God exists. Right away they’re not using standard deductive forms of reasoning. They say, “I can’t prove that, but on the basis of this assumption, I can show that all these things we presuppose make better sense when we start with a presupposition of theism than they do when we start with a presupposition of materialism or pantheism or some other metaphysical system you could regard as an explanation.” So they start with the explanation, and then they go and look at the world, and it makes a lot more sense in light of that initial presupposition. Therefore, they hold it as the most rational thing to believe, because they can live consistently with their belief and their beliefs about the world and their presuppositions about the ultimate source of the world. So that’s one way of reasoning. Evidentialists will say, “I’m going to go look at the world—I see that DNA has lots of information in it, or the universe had a beginning, or humans have an innate moral sense,” and so on. Then they’re going to find what explains that observation best. They (those Christian apologists who agree that God provides the best explanation) end up in the same place. What’s really different is the starting point in the investigation. But I think as you examine the method of reasoning and what gives the conclusions warrant or justification is precisely the explanatory power of the postulates, whether you start with them or infer to them.

MR: There has been a great deal of discussion

lately about “alternative facts” and “fake news.” What principles should Christians use when they want to assess the reliability of the information that’s being given to them or the evidence that’s

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being offered in support of the information being given to them, whether it’s to do with politics, the economy, social change, or whatever it may be? SM: I think just having multiple sources of information by which to check is helpful. The standard of two or more witnesses is a good guide. Oftentimes, I detect bias in reporting not so much by the facts that are reported but by the facts that are left out—the selective omission of other facts that might put the reported facts in proper context. That’s one thing I’ve found helpful. Consider the source first; it’s good to know the bias of the source. Then the second principle would be to check the source. What else can be known? Oftentimes, those “alternative facts” that aren’t being reported aren’t disputed, they’re just being ignored. So that tends to give us a fuller picture, and we move back to inference to the best explanation. This method of reasoning is tentative and provisional, based on the facts at hand. If you get more facts, more data points, then often a different hypothesis will appear to be the better one, so we need to always be open to new sources of information. Our sources need to be checked and cross-checked to get to the bottom of things. One example that’s particularly important to my own work is the whole question of consensus in science. I often tell my colleagues that you know there isn’t a consensus when people have to appeal to consensus in order to prove that there is one. There is a consensus among chemists that water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Nobody spends any time arguing about that, and no one appeals to consensus to get the point across. It’s really about contentious issues where consensus is invoked, and it’s usually invoked to shut down dissent, which shows there isn’t a consensus. For example, when we hear a discussion on human-caused global warming, we’re told over and over again that there’s a consensus on this. Well, there’s a website by a scientist in Oregon where he has compiled over thirty thousand signatures of scientists who have expressed public dissent from the hypothesis that humans are causing climate change or

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global warming. Now, that’s a lot of scientists; that’s hardly a consensus. Some of the names on that list are prominent people such as Dick Lindzen, a climate scientist at MIT, or William Happer at Princeton. When I hear claims about consensus in science, my radar flashes and I want to find out the other side of the argument. Science advances as scientists argue about how to interpret the evidence, so that process of argumentation is critical to both the development and function of scientific understanding and inquiry. When that’s shut down by an appeal to an alleged consensus, then usually the people making that kind of appeal are guilty of a profoundly antiscientific approach. Science depends on this open form of inquiry that allows iron to sharpen iron, competing hypotheses to be tested against other competing hypotheses in the marketplace of ideas and contend for their interpretation in a community of their peers to see which one does in fact best explain the evidence. This is critical to finding the truth. One of my supervisors at Cambridge told me in my first year, “Beware the sound of one hand clapping.” If there’s an argument on one side, it’s pretty certain there’s an argument on the other side. When you’ve heard one side of the argument, be sure you hear the other side as well before you determine which one is correct, because it’s that process of argumentation that is an integral part of human reason that allows us to move toward the truth. If we shut that down by appeals to consensus or dogma, then we’re less likely to get to the truth. That’s what makes it important in evaluating the news as well: you want to hear the other side of the argument, because when you do, you’re in a better position to assess what the truth really is. STEPHEN C. MEYER (PhD, Philosophy of Science, University

of Cambridge) is a former geophysicist and college professor. He is the author of the New York Times best-seller Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013) and Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009).

JAMES H. GILMORE

C O M E

A N D illustration by

S E E MUTI | FOLIO ART

W While delivering an address at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, Richard Lucas, the longtime pastor of St. Helen’s Bishopgate Church in London, England, once said that the phrase “and he also made the stars” at the end of Genesis 1:16 was perhaps the greatest throwaway line in all of Scripture. Having God’s galaxiescreating act described in such a succinct way should give every reader pause, considering the number of created stars—about 100 octillion (1 followed by 27 zeroes) of them, according to some astronomical estimates. In reading the creation account of Genesis 1, we are prone to roll past this phrase very quickly, not pausing to fully consider the enormity of this great work of God: “He also made the stars.” Indeed, we should heed the counsel of the author of Hebrews, who, after citing Old Testament testimony of God’s infinite greatness, calls us to “pay much closer attention to what we have heard” (Heb. 2:1). Consider God’s own pattern of paying attention. After completing each day of creation, what was God’s next immediate act? It was to look: “…and God saw that it was good” (emphasis added). It was to observe—God looked upon creation, paying close attention to what he had created. Observation is arguably inherent to the recognition of goodness, for what can be declared good without first being seen? During his earthly mission, Jesus exhibited perfect observation. Consider his encounter with the widow of Nain, as recorded in Luke 7. As Jesus and his disciples approached the city gate, he was accompanied by “a great crowd,” and as he entered, a widow who had recently lost her only son was leaving, accompanied by the funeral procession. Imagine the commotion as the two parties collided, each

trying to make its way past the other. Amid the certain chaos, what did Jesus do? Before he had compassion on the woman, before he comforted her, before he restored her son to life and gave him back to her, Luke tells us that “the Lord saw 1 her” (Luke 7:13). We find accounts of looking throughout the four Gospels. The wise men saw a star rising in the east, recognized its significance, and were led to see the promised child. The devil took Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and then to the top of a mountain—for improved vantage points from which to view and offer temptation. Jesus sees each individual before he calls them as disciples. Amid the many crowds he encounters, Jesus sees the sick, the lame, and the blind before healing them. He sees a withering fig tree and curses it; he looks upon Jerusalem and weeps over it. Not surprisingly, Jesus has much to say about the use of our eyes: • “ The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.” (Matt. 6:22–23a) • “ First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” (Matt. 7:5)

Before he had compassion on the woman, before he comforted her, before he restored her son to life and gave him back to her, Luke tells us that “the Lord saw her.”

• “ Woe to you, blind guides…. You blind fools.” (Matt. 16–17) • “ C ould you not watch for one hour?” (Mark 14:37b) • “ What did you go out to see?” (said three times in Luke 7 in vv. 24, 25, 26) • “ Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see the fields are white for harvest.” (John 4:35b) Clearly, looking is an activity that receives considerable attention throughout the Bible. Not

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only do we discover Jesus always looking skillfully and lovingly, but we ourselves are called to be good observers, to use our eyes wisely. Consider how any evangelistic appeal must call people to look at the evidence for Jesus’ incarnation, humiliation, death, resurrection, and ascension, all of which are based on the eyewitness testimonies of the Gospels. It comes as no surprise that we are told that at Jesus’ return, “every eye shall see him” (Rev. 1:7). Much attention also focuses on blindness— the inability to see. We have the account in John 9 of Jesus restoring the sight of a man blind from birth. John tells us, “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind!” (John 9:32). Moreover, we know that even those with eyesight may fail to truly observe—the prophet Isaiah spoke of one who “sees many things, but does not observe them” (Isa. 42:20a). Even our popular cultural phrase “eyes wide open” suggests there are occasions when our open eyes are not completely open, when we miss perceiving some aspect of the world before us. Indeed, we are often inattentive to what exists right around us. We look, but we don’t see, or (to borrow Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s phrase) we see but do not observe.

LOOKING AS A SKILL here are a number of recently published books that discuss looking as a skill. Amy Herman’s contribution, Visual Intelligence, draws from her work helping law enforcement (police detectives, FBI agents, State Department investigators, and the like) to improve their observational skills. Her method involves looking at various art paintings, noting what details onlookers fail to notice, and then leveraging such discoveries to examine what gets missed when looking in other settings, such as crime scenes. Her plea for greater visual acumen finds many other applications, for example, in examining medical patients. Herman notes, “We can

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train our brains to see more, and to observe more 2 accurately.” Gary Klein’s Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights (Public Affairs, 2015) provides a study in how various observations, even a single incident, can trigger changes in a person’s beliefs. These treatments of the subject of observation provide long overdue amplification of the themes advanced in John Berger’s seminal tome Ways of Seeing (Penguin Books, 1990), a book based on the fourpart 1972 BBC television series of the same name. Berger’s groundbreaking contention (and challenge to traditional understanding of how art is to be viewed) was that all visual images contain latent ideological messages; we often fail to see below the surface level. Today we live in an age of unprecedented exposure to visual images, “distracted from distraction from distraction” as T. S. Eliot presciently described “this twittering world” in his Four Quartets. (This reality is most vividly demonstrated to this author’s eyes when observing people three screens deep in digital distraction—with smartphone, tablet, and laptop all turned on and commanding complete and divided attention.) At such a time, we would be wise to consider three lessons provided by Herman, Berger, and Klein, respectively: 1. We often fail to see what is there to be seen—even at a surface level. 2. Even when we do observe what’s there, we fail to see the underlying message. 3. Uncovering or discovering the previously unseen can sometimes transform the thoughts and beliefs of the observer. In my own contribution to the subject, Look: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Observational Skills, I note that this simple progression is always at work: Looking  Thinking  Acting Thought and action do not occur in a vacuum. Simply put: What you observe informs what you

Thought and action do not occur in a vacuum. Simply put: What you observe informs what you think about, which in turn influences what you act upon.

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think about, which in turn influences what you act upon. Observation is the fountainhead from which any thought and action take place. If we hope to have unbelievers come to faith—if we want them to think differently about the claims of Christianity, and to act upon the evidence and believe—then they must be encouraged to first look, to see anew. Similarly, if we hope to strengthen the faith of those who do believe, then they must be encouraged to look more richly at the storehouse of material recorded in Scripture. (I’m speaking humanly here, of course; for all such observations must be illuminated by the work of the Holy Spirit.)

SIX LOOKING GLASSES ools can aid in the effort to improve observational capabilities by introducing new skills to the observer. The Six Lo oking Glasses metho d helps improve observational skills by using a distinct set of metaphorical 3 “looking glasses.” Just as wearing physical glasses helps people to better see and interact with the world around them, so it is with “wearing” the Six Looking Glasses. Each promotes a different way of making observations by functioning as a unique viewfinder, and each viewfinder (or way of looking) is named after a particular device or apparatus designed to enhance one’s looking in order to help the individual explore, see, and discover. Each function should be readily understood based upon the name of the associated device and its primary purpose:

1. Binoculars are used to look across and survey at a distance. 2. Bifocals are used to alternatingly look between two contrasting views or directions. 3. Magnifying glasses are used to look closely at one main spot.

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4. Microscopes are used to look for more and greater details. 5. Rose-colored glasses are used to look at something better than it actually is. 6. Blindfolds are used to look back and recall. Binoculars-Looking Binoculars are useful when you “can’t see the forest for the trees.” Binoculars-looking takes place at a distance from what is being observed, surveying all there is to be seen. It involves being aware of your environment and its limitations, and picking a vantage point that will enable you to better observe the overall scene. It sees the “big picture” and establishes the context for further discovery. Years ago, football coaches were confined to the sidelines; now they occupy elevated press boxes in order to better see the plays develop below. Similarly, one can only appreciate the pattern-making maneuvers of a better marching band, such as The Ohio State University’s formation of the word Ohio, from a distant elevation. The assortment of stores in a shopping district is best observed from the far side of the street; a good seat at a show is found by first surveying all the possibilities. We find examples of such binoculars-looking in the Bible. Think of Zacchaeus climbing a sycamore tree because he couldn’t see Jesus for the crowd, and the father of the Prodigal Son seeing the arrival of his long-lost child even when he “was still a long way off ” (Luke 15:20). This sighting could happen only because the father was constantly surveying and scanning to see if his son was coming. Bifocals-Looking Bifocals take two different views of any situation to compare and contrast them in order to see various similarities and differences. It pairs obvious opposites, or it looks for not-so-obvious combinations to pair as opposites, and then

alternates between these two different views in order to identify ignored perspectives. In doing so, it challenges an observer’s dominant point of view, helping overcome what psychologists call “confirmation bias.” In business, many design opportunities can be uncovered by comparing and contrasting opposites. Think of how differently a car might be manufactured if designers took time to observe how women (versus men) enter and occupy automobiles. Consider how family dynamics might be affected if parents examined how everyone interacted at breakfast versus dinner, on weekdays versus weekends, school days versus weekends (or a host of other paired opposites), in order to better determine ways to foster healthier relationships. Scripture offers looks at many paired opposites as a means to uncover greater truths: good/evil, light/darkness, life/death, freedom/ bondage, law/gospel. Many people are paired as opposites—Cain/Abel, Saul/David, Mary/ Martha, Sarah/Hagar—as are places—Mt. Sinai/ Mt. Zion, temple of God/temple of idols, heaven/ earth. Seeing these contrasting views often sheds light on understanding many passages of Scripture. Yet it is often necessary to compare and contrast nonobvious pairings as well. For example, the obvious pairing in the parable of the Prodigal Son is to compare and contrast the two sons. But both sons fail to understand grace. Far more insightful is pairing the father with either son to see the father’s grace versus the sons’ law focus. Magnifying-Glass-Looking Looking through a magnifying glass helps examine something more closely, pinpointing that which may not otherwise be noticed, putting all else aside in order to identify a particularly significant aspect as meaningful. It spots the one particular element that stands out as most noteworthy. It sees what stands out, concentrating on one main point, and looks closely to locate the critical essence of any scene. In the 1970s, Frank Wills was a security guard in the Watergate building in Washington, DC.

One night, he spotted a piece of duct tape fixed to the side of the door, covering the latch plate. He removed it and continued his rounds. When he returned later, he again found the latch covered by tape. He called the police, and five burglars breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters were arrested. A scandal unfolds, a president resigns, and the course of history is changed—all because Mr. Wills spotted that tape. When the apostle Paul visited Athens (Acts 17), he encountered a city “full of idols.” Later when he stood in the Areopagus and spoke before a gathering of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, he called specific attention to just one of these idols, the one that bore the inscription “to the unknown god.” Of all the idols in town, when it came time to share his thoughts on what he had observed during his tour of the city, Paul highlighted just one object with his Greek audience. He focused on the one detail that held the most significance—the one he spotted as representing the very essence of all that he had seen in the greater cityscape. Microscope-Looking Looking with a microscope involves looking for more and greater details. Rather than zeroing in on one particular point, microscope-looking moves up and down, left and right with painstaking care to scrutinize and study each minute detail. It looks around and around again, noticing every nuance, looking closer and closer at everything there is to be seen. Most of us can sense when another’s eyes are fixed upon us. A friend of mine who has dealt with various skin issues over the years says he can actually feel the difference between an inferior and a superior dermatologist—the latter will examine the skin more carefully and delicately. The best poker players constantly practice microscope-looking, supplementing their intimate knowledge of the various odds for different hands with acute observation of other players’ “tells”—facial expressions, nervous twitches, and other body language—that may signal what kind of cards are being held.

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Consider this example of microscope-looking: when Jesus looks upon the silent Pharisees in Mark 3:5, “he looked around at them with anger.” It was through the intense looking that the Pharisees felt the intense anger, as Jesus’ gaze turned on their hardened hearts. This is the kind of looking we should emulate, surveying the breadth and length and height and depth of all there is to be seen in any circumstance. Jesus’ admonition to “look at the birds” and to “consider the lilies of the field” in Matthew 6 is not only a rebuke against personal inward anxiety, but also a call to look outward at the wonder of creation in all its various details. Rose-Colored-Glasses-Looking Looking with rose-colored glasses enables the observer to see the positive that may not be readily apparent. It looks past obvious flaws to see the opportunities present, and it filters through the bad in order to see only the good, thus identifying “the rightness” behind any otherwise poorly displayed or poorly executed item. It doesn’t represent an unreal possibility, but it looks for a ray of hope, focusing on the unrealized reality in any (already-but-not-yet) scene. The unmerited favor of God’s grace could be considered an example of rose-coloredglasses-looking: in Christ, the Father sees only the righteousness of his Son and not our unrighteousness. (It’s truly what makes grace amazing!) It’s the kind of looking that we are called to practice in keeping the ninth commandment, as the Heidelberg Catechism explains in its answer to Question 112: “defend and promote my neighbor’s good name.” Living up to this standard usually requires seeing only our neighbors’ virtues, not their vices. In his book, The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched (Oxford University Press, 2008), Paul Woodruff notes that a major factor in today’s homeless being homeless is that they often feel they are not seen—never noticed by anybody—let alone seen with rose-colored glasses. Sometimes the only thing it takes to improve someone’s life is for that person just to be seen.

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Blindfold-Looking Blindfold-looking is looking back and recalling. As such, it fundamentally differs from the other five looking glasses. Rather than look at what’s “out there,” blindfold-looking reflects upon what was seen (or not seen) and how it was seen (or not) in the mind’s eye. It recalls what has already been seen in order to accurately assess prior observations to reflect on how and why something may have been missed or mistaken. In this sense, it looks at looking itself. Too often, after we have seen something (especially something of importance), we fail to register the observation for future recollection. We are like the man who looks in the mirror and, as James describes him, “goes away and at once forgets what he was like” (James 1:24). Consider prayer: the neglect of prayer can simply stem from an insufficient use and practice of blindfold looking. We often fail to recall the many mercies we have received at God’s hand and all those people for whom we ought to intercede. Maybe this is one reason Jesus tells us to “enter thy closet” (as the King James puts it in Matt. 6:6); it’s a reminder to begin prayer with blindfold-looking. Consider the ten lepers healed by Jesus. Once they had been healed, each left to go present themselves to the priests as commanded; but only one, “when he saw that he was healed, turned back,” for he immediately saw Jesus in his mind’s eye and returned to give thanks. The other nine lepers failed to do such blindfoldlooking; they were so focused on their healed bodies that they forgot to look back (and thus go back) to the healer. How often do we see only that which lies immediately before us in the here and now, neglecting to recall what we’ve previously encountered?

WHERE TO LOOK The Six Looking Glasses provide a tool to help improve anyone’s observational skills, by practicing each of the six different methods of

looking. So where do we look? Here are a handful of suggestions worth considering: 1. Scripture 2. Congregations 3. Communities 4. Culture 5. Commerce Looking at Scripture The renowned Bible teacher Howard Hendricks famously advanced this three-step method for studying the Bible: observation, interpretation, and application. The initial step in the process is to observe, to see beyond the mere words in the passage in order to really see the text, not just perfunctorily read it. What’s the difference? Well, just as reading alone does not guarantee comprehension, so too, reading without observation may hinder a rich and full appreciation of any text. Surveying and scanning a passage for its genre, structure, and form may lead to spotting key words; opposing terms might be compared and contrasted, certain words scrutinized for their placement and phrasing, and difficult terms noted. These different kinds of looking aid the reader in interpreting and applying the truths of Scripture. Looking at Congregations As the body of Christ, how are we to be “bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2) if we do not first see one another? Paul tells us that the whole body grows into Christ when “each part is working properly” (Eph. 4:16). This proper functioning must begin with looking. How can the parts work together if they are alienated from and ignorant of each other—if they don’t see each other’s respective gifts and needs? Local congregations and collective denominations suffer when they neglect fellowship. Much good can come from greater survey and observation of all the different types of people in our midst. Looking at different pairings of people in any congregation—male/female, adult/child,

Much good can come from greater survey and observation of all the different types of people in our midst. Looking at different pairings of people in any congregation… should yield greater love for all.

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young/old, married/single, divorced/widowed, familied/orphaned—should yield greater love for all. Efforts should be made to spot unspoken pain and suffering—not just the obvious physical and medical, but also the mental and emotional, and certainly the spiritual. Looking at Communities We are called to love our neighbor. Picture the behavior of both the priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan—both saw the half-dead man on the side of the road, but in “passing by the other side” each chose to avert their eyes from further observation. Only the Samaritan “went to him,” looking through the ethnic heritage and ritual uncleanliness with the magnifying glass of grace and focusing in with microscopic attention to his many wounds. Only when we observe our neighbors with similarly close attention might we hope to point them to Jesus. Right before telling this parable, Jesus told his disciples, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see” (Luke 10:23). So we should don the various looking glasses if we would love our neighbor as we have been commanded to do. Explore your towns and neighborhoods. See who and what is there to see. Looking at Culture Peter Drucker has been credited with saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The implication is that any course of action is best informed by a rich understanding of the external culture in which any enterprise makes decisions. In Everyday Theology: How to Read Culture Texts and Interpret Trends (Baker Academic, 2007), Kevin Vanhoozer advances the study of “cultural hermeneutics,” or treating broader culture as an interpretable text. (This field expands the insights of John Berger in whole new ways.) Consider the following as observable cultural texts: millions upon millions of apps, adult coloring books, the dogma of diversity, environmentalism, all things sustainable and green, happiness literature, mindfulness retreats, pleasure-seeking

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experiences, selfies, tattoos, veganism, and yoga. See what’s happening? What latent message might be seen by looking beneath these collective behaviors? Perhaps this: Many people today are practicing functional Hinduism! Looking at Commerce Admittedly a subset of broader culture, commerce is nevertheless worth separating out as a distinct observational category, because what people willingly pay for is significantly indicative of what is most valued in the culture they occupy. Commerce is codified culture. Pay particular attention to new genres of commercial offerings, for they indicate that certain cultural sensibilities have become so prevalent that some enterprise believes there is enough demand to merit selling commodities that will satisfy them. Today we find new businesses that sell time doing some activity in an individual room. These encompass everything from escape rooms, salt-relaxation rooms, to nap rooms and rage rooms—a venue in a Las Vegas resort casino even offered time in a man-cave for a fee. Each type of room—as with any commercial offering—instantiates a particular consumption preference, and each speaks volumes about your neighbor’s (and perhaps your own) wants and needs. We are called to be observers. There is no lack of things worth observing. Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves: How do we spend time with our eyes? How should we? JAMES H. GILMORE is author of Look: A Practical Guide for Improving Your Observational Skills (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2016) and serves on the board of White Horse Inn.

1 I am indebted to Paul Miller for his treatment of this encounter in Love Walked Among Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus (Carol Stream, IL: NavPress/Tyndale, 2014), particularly in pointing out how Jesus’ observation was the first of five steps taken in Jesus’ love for this woman. 2 Amy Herman, Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life (Boston: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), xv. 3 Those familiar with the work of Dr. Edward de Bono will recognize these Six Looking Glasses as a sort of prequel to de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and Six Action Shoes methods.

MICHAEL S. HORTON

TRUE FAITH

illustration by

ELENI DEB O

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ccording to reports, Prince Charles intends—if he ever ascends the British throne —to change his title from “Defender of the Faith” to “Defender of Faith.” What’s the loss in dropping a definite article? Everything, actually—the traditional title refers to the defense of a particular confession, a body of doctrine concerning the Triune God who has rescued us from our sins by the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son, Jesus Christ. With the proposed change, the intention is to encourage the act of faith— regardless of the object. Better by far to drop the title entirely, if you ask me (Buckingham Palace has not returned my calls). The point isn’t what you believe or the one in whom you trust, but your own believing. “You gotta have faith,” as the unroyal George Michael put it. Everyone has to believe in something, even if it’s just yourself. In fact, making faith itself the object of faith is just another way of believing in yourself. The important thing is the integrity, sincerity and strength of your believing. “But she really believes it,” we say when someone challenges the view of a friend. Well, then, if she really believes it, who am I to question?

FROM “THE FAITH” TO “FAITH” This shift from “the faith” (the object) to “faith” (the act) is due to a variety of factors. One is that since the Enlightenment, faith became unhinged from knowledge. In the old days, people believed that what you believed was important. It mattered whether you believed in God or Fate. It mattered whether you worshipped the Triune God or denied the deity of the Son and the Spirit. These truths

were revealed miraculously by God through his prophets and apostles. So they were above reason, but not against it. How we know what we know depends on what it is that we want to know. In other words, knowing my wife is different from knowing the second law of thermodynamics. And knowing God is different from knowing atomic particles or mathematical theorems. But this isn’t a difference between faith and knowledge, but between knowing different things. In the modern age, faith came to be identified with the realm of the unknowable. You cannot really know anything about God, but you should assume that there is some sort of creator and judge in order to affirm a moral order. Eventually, even Christian colleges and universities changed the name of the theology department to the religion department. Theology, of course, is the study of God. But if God himself cannot be the object of a discipline—that is, if God has not truly revealed himself to us, then we cannot know God; we can only know what people have said about God. The study of God, in this view, is actually the study of humans and their religious experience, ideas, and rituals. Where all religions agree is on morality. That’s what’s really important and universal, moderns have insisted. Of course, every religion makes additional claims, wrapping this universal moral faith in the garments of various myths. That’s where religions part ways. For instance, Christians alone believe that Jesus rose from the dead. If this is intended to be a literal historical claim, then who can judge whether it is true? In any case, it is not important. In fact, it is when religions emphasize these historical claims, as if their myths were actually real events, that

things heat up. The more convinced one is on such points, the more likely a religious war is around the corner. So let’s just emphasize the moral core of religious faith that transcends particular creeds. It’s this principle—love your neighbor, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and so forth—that is most valuable and reasonable. The rest of it is beyond our ability to test and therefore to know. Have faith, by all means—in whatever you want—but don’t call it knowledge. Faith is the realm of cuddly bears and the favorite blanket of childhood. Eventually, you grow up and learn to face life by acquiring real knowledge. The tragedy is that many Christians have bought into this dichotomy as well. They will make a factual claim, such as “Jesus rose from the dead, literally and bodily in history”; but then, when understandably challenged, they will resort to something like, “Are you questioning my personal experience?” or “I know he lives within my heart.” Pietistic Protestantism has perpetuated (in fact, helped lay the ground for) the modern opposition of faith and knowledge. But we cannot cut and run like this—anyone who makes a historical claim (especially one that counters our everyday experience) has an obligation to articulate reasons for believing that it actually occurred. Resurrections are by definition miracles and are therefore exceptions rather than the rule. Our questioner has every right to demand of us some account for such a large claim, especially when we add that everything—including our eternal destiny—rests on it. Based on its pietistic heritage, liberal theology has depended on the split between faith and knowledge. We don’t really know anything about the Jesus of history, said Rudolf Bultmann, but that’s actually good news because we only meet the Christ of faith in a crisis decision 1 here and now. He described faith as “venture.” Notice how this makes faith about me rather than Christ: my journey or venture instead of Christ’s person and work. “Faith is a ‘leap in the dark,’” he adds. “For man is not asked whether he will accept a theory about God that may possibly be false, but whether he is willing to obey God’s will.” Faith then slips into the category

of a work that we perform. Justifying faith is no longer seen as throwing ourselves on God’s mercy as destitute sinners to be clothed with Christ, but is now our act of “crucifying the affections and lusts,… overcoming our natural dread of suffering,… and the perfection of our detachment from the world.” This constitutes 2 “the judgment… and deliverance of man.” For Bultmann, as Julius Schniewind points out, “The ‘crucifixion of our passions’ is then no more than a striking euphemism for self-mastery, which is the quest of all the higher religions 3 and philosophies.” So the first thing we have to do when talking to people today is move the central truths of the Christian faith from the category of “faith” (understood as a mere leap based on will) to “truth” (understood as an objective state of affairs). The apostle Paul did not say that the most important stuff in religion is true regardless of whether Christ was raised; on the contrary, he insisted that if Christ was not raised, then our faith is futile, we are still in our sins, we have lied about God, and “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:12–19). There is nothing left of Christianity if Christ has not been raised and, consequently, no reason at all to be religious. The Christian faith is based not on faith—that is, on the subjective religiosity and sincerity of pious individuals—but on historical events of saving significance.

FROM “FAITH” TO “THE FAITH” But there is another way of misunderstanding faith. The opposite of the previous view, this approach treats faith as nothing more than knowledge of certain doctrines. This was the view that the Protestant Reformers challenged in the sixteenth century. According to Roman Catholic teaching, faith is assent to everything the church teaches. Of course, the average person cannot know everything that the church teaches, so it all gets reduced to one: believe in the church and rely on its authority. Thomas Aquinas argued that assent is true faith (Summa Theologiae 2b.21; 3.69.5; 3.69.8).

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The same view was given dogmatic form at the Council of Trent. One may not know to what precisely one is yielding assent, but an unreserved and obedient acceptance of all that the church teaches is at least the beginning of justification. In response, Calvin thundered, “It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered 4 by humility ‘faith’!” He says elsewhere, Faith then is not a naked knowledge either of God or of his truth; nor is it a simple persuasion that God is, that his word is the truth; but a sure knowledge of God’s mercy, which is received from the gospel, and brings peace of conscience with regard to God, and rest to the mind. The sum of the matter is this—that salvation depends on the keeping of the law, the soul can entertain no confidence respecting it, yea, that all the promises offered to us by God will become void: we must thus become wretched and lost, if we are sent back to works to find out the cause or the certainty of salvation . . . for as the law generates nothing but vengeance, 5 it cannot bring grace. “I believe whatever the church teaches.” This is a view of faith one finds often not only in Roman Catholic circles but also among Protestants who surrender their personal responsibility for knowing God. “I believe whatever Lutherans believe.” “I just accept the Reformed confession.” “I don’t know, I’m a Baptist and we believe that…” These are lazy ways of substituting someone else’s faith for our own. Faith is never private, the Reformers insisted, but it is personal. It is true that our act of faith participates in the confession of the whole church in all times and places. The New Testament, however, repeatedly exhorts us, every person, to trust in Christ for salvation.

FAITH IN CHRIST AS KNOWN IN THE FAITH To counter both of these extremes, it is important to follow the classic distinction between

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the faith that is believed (fides quae creditur) and the faith that believes (fides qua creditur). Sometimes the Bible speaks of “the faith once and for all delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3; cf. Acts 6:7; Phil. 1:27; 1 Tim. 6:12; Titus 1:4), and at other times understands faith as the human act of trusting in the gospel. In Scripture, our personal act of faith is directed to the objective person and work of Christ as he is clothed in his gospel. My faith is determined by the faith that is believed everywhere and at all times by all Christians. However, most people on the street today would say that one’s subjective act of faith has nothing to do with the object. The significance of faith becomes determined entirely by the quality of our choosing rather than on the quality of what is chosen. So it is important to see that faith, according to Scripture, is not less than knowledge but is more than belief in the truth of certain doctrines. The Reformers recognized from Scripture that faith includes three elements: knowledge, assent, and trust. It involves knowledge, to be sure—even in our natural relationships, we can hardly claim to know loved ones without knowing anything about them. “I want to know Jesus, not about Jesus,” we sometimes hear. But we do not talk like that about anyone else we care about. We recognize that we grow in our relationships with people we love the more we know about them. The Reformers also acknowledged that faith involves assent. We not only know the claims that God is triune and that Jesus died for our sins, but we also acknowledge these claims as true. But the ultimate aim of such knowledge and assent is trust. Christ not only died and was raised, but he was crucified and rose again for me. As John Calvin put the matter, “Faith is not mere belief… but involves a relation to the Word of God that enables people to rest and trust in God.” Faith is not something we drum up inside of ourselves. It comes by hearing Christ speak his gospel to us through a preacher (Rom. 10:8–17). The Reformers emphasized that faith is not just confidence in certain convictions but confidence in a person. In the Geneva Catechism, Calvin defines faith as “a sure and steadfast

knowledge of the fatherly goodwill of God toward us, as he declares in the gospel that for the sake of Christ he will be our Father and 6 Savior.” It is not the quality of the act of faith, but of the object, that is saving. “Faith then is not a naked knowledge either of God or of his truth; nor is it a simple persuasion that God is, that his word is the truth; but a sure knowledge of God’s mercy, which is received from the 7 gospel.” The object of faith is not merely “God,” Calvin argues against what he says is “taught in the schools.” Rather, the object is the Triune God. Yet even that target is not yet specific enough. Faith looks to the Triune God, revealed 8 in Christ as he is clothed in the gospel. There is some danger in using the shorthand, “justification by faith.” We are not actually justified by faith, but by Christ through faith. Faith is not the easier little work we did that God then counts as our righteousness. “Righteousness,” Calvin continues, “is not something we have in ourselves but that we obtain by imputation, in that God accounts our faith as righteousness.” In other words, like Abraham, we are justified through faith apart from works, not because of the value of our belief but because of the sufficiency of Christ. Scripture does not say that faith is our righteousness, but that Christ is our righteousness. We are therefore said to be justified by faith, not because faith infuses into us some habit or quality but because we are accepted by God. Faith is only the instrumental cause of our justification. Properly speaking, our righteousness is nothing but God’s free acceptance of us, on which our salvation is founded. . . . Righteousness is not a quality inherent in human beings but the pure gift of God and it is possessed by faith only. It is not even a reward for our faith, because faith is only the means by which we receive what God freely gives. We are justified by the grace of God. Christ is our righteousness, the mercy of God is the cause of our righteousness, righteousness has been obtained for us by the death and resurrection of Christ, righteousness is bestowed on

us through the gospel, we obtain righteous9 ness by faith. Even the weakest faith embraces the strongest Savior. Similarly, Lutherans confess, For faith justifies, not for this cause and reason that it is so good a work and so fair a virtue, but because it lays hold of and accepts the merit of Christ in the promise of the holy Gospel; for this must be applied and appropriated to us by faith, if we are to be justified thereby. Therefore the righteousness which is imputed to faith or to the believer out of pure grace is the obedience, suffering, and resurrection of Christ, since He has made satisfaction for us to the Law, 10 and paid for [expiated] our sins. Faith is therefore knowledge, but it is personal knowledge—that is, it is a personal act of knowing another person. To trust an oncologist to diagnose and treat your cancer, you have to be convinced of his or her trustworthiness. You can’t just tell yourself, “I have to just believe.” If the physician is worthy of your trust, then the more you know about the doctor, the stronger your confidence in him or her. And, of course, the opposite is true as well: if the doctor is not worthy of your confidence, then your trust weakens by investigating his or her credentials and track record. Throughout the Psalms we discover reviews of God’s triumphs, which reveal his character and lead us to deeper confidence in his saving power. The more we learn about what God has done and who he is, the more our faith grows. Therefore, we should avoid both extremes: on one hand, imagining that faith in God is possible apart from factual knowledge; on the other hand, reducing faith to factual knowledge. Faith is not a leap. It is not the opposite of knowledge, turning off our brain. The will cannot (or at least should not) embrace anything or anyone the intellect has not approved. And yet, at some point, we have to make a decision. Can you recall the day you decided to ask or accept your marriage proposal? Of course,

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THROUGHOUT THE PSALMS WE DISCOVER REVIEWS OF GODâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S TRIUMPHS, WHICH REVEAL HIS CHARACTER AND LEAD US TO DEEPER CONFIDENCE IN HIS SAVING POWER. THE MORE WE LEARN ABOUT WHAT GOD HAS DONE AND WHO HE IS, THE MORE OUR FAITH GROWS.

it would be foolish to ask the first person you saw at the mall to marry you—you need to get to know the person. But if you wait until you have absolutely no doubts, questions, or reservations, then you will never marry anyone. How much more urgent it is to commit ourselves to Christ. We are not given the luxury of standing aloof, treating the gospel’s central claims as interesting ideas we can investigate. Our salvation is at stake.

FAITH IS NOT OUR WORK Finally, we need to remind ourselves that faith is the gift of God. We are born into this world not merely sick but “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1): But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:4–9; italics added) Having recently pored over the writings of the church fathers on this point, it has struck me how unanimous they were in attributing even faith itself to God’s grace. This is true especially of Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Chrysostom, and, of course, Augustine. “It was not by your own pains that you found out God,” proclaimed Chrysostom, “but while you 11 continued in error, He drew you to Himself.” Yet he adds, “So that the work of faith itself is not our own. ‘It is the gift,’ said he, ‘of God,’ it is ‘not of works.’” Thus faith saves apart from works because faith itself is not a work but a gift of grace, he concludes. “He did not reject us as

having works, but as abandoned of works He has saved us by grace; so that no man henceforth 12 may have whereof to boast.” According to Augustine, faith itself is the gift of God: And lest men should arrogate to themselves the merit of their own faith at least, not understanding that this too is the gift of God, this same apostle, who says in another place that he had “obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful,” here also adds: “and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: 13 not of works, lest any man should boast.” God’s sovereign grace does not efface but frees the will from bondage to sin. “It goes before the unwilling to make him willing; it follows the will14 ing to make his will effectual.” Boniface, bishop of Rome and friend of Augustine, observes, It appears obvious that our faith in Christ, like all good things, comes to individuals from the gift of divine grace and not from the power of human nature. We rejoice that your brotherhood perceived this truth in accordance with catholic faith, when a council of some bishops of Gaul was held. As you have indicated, they decided unanimously that our faith in Christ is conferred on men by the intervention of divine grace. They added that there is absolutely nothing good in God’s eyes that anyone can wish, begin, do, or complete without the grace of God, for as our Savior said, “Without me you can do nothing.” For it is both a certainty and an article of catholic faith that in all good things, the greatest of which is faith, divine mercy intervenes for us when we are not yet willing [to believe], so that we might become willing; it remains in us when we are willing [to believe]; and it follows us so 15 that we remain in faith. Clearly, statements such as these represent the church’s better days. We are so clever at transforming good news about something God has done into a work for us

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to perform in order to get God to do something, that we can even turn faith into the “one little thing” we did in order to help God save us. It is not surprising that Christians who have been taught this message eventually begin to question the adequacy of their faith. The irony is that faith actually becomes stronger when we look away from ourselves and our faith to Christ as the only proper object. The more we hear and understand concerning the gospel, the more our faith grows and strengthens. Nevertheless, the weakest faith clings to a sufficient Savior. Faith does not save us from judgment any more than it saves us from drowning when a lifeguard carries us to safety. In both cases, it is the rescuer, not the one rescued, who is praised. MICHAEL S. HORTON is the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. 1 Rudolf Bultmann, “Faith as Venture,” in Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), 57. 2 Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller, rev. ed. (NY: Harper and Row, 1961), 64–65. 3 Julius Schniewind, “A Reply to Bultmann,” in Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. Reginald H. Fuller, rev. ed. (NY: Harper and Row, 1961), 65–66. 4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.2.3. 5 John Calvin, Commentaries upon the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, in Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 19, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996), 171. 6 Geneva Catechism, 1536, in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, ed. Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, 7 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 2:132. 7 John Calvin, Commentaries upon the Epistle of Paul to the Romans, 171. 8 Calvin, Institutes 3.2.1, 32. 9 John Calvin, Commentary on Galatians, in Gerald Bray, ed., Reformation Commentary on Scripture: New Testament X: Galatians, Ephesians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 95.

THE IRONY IS THAT FAITH ACTUALLY BECOMES STRONGER WHEN WE LOOK AWAY FROM OURSELVES AND OUR FAITH TO CHRIST AS THE ONLY PROPER OBJECT.

10 Book of Concord, Solid Declaration III.13–14 at www.lcms.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=414. 11 Saint Chrysostom, Commentary on Galatians in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, Vol. XII: Saint Chrysostom (repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988): 31, 4:9. 12 Saint Chrysostom, Homily II, in Homilies on Ephesians in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, Vol. XII: Saint Chrysostom (repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 67–68; emphasis added. 13 Augustine, The Enchiridion in A Select Library of the Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff, Vol. III: St. Augustine: On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal Treatises, Moral Treatises (repr., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), ch. 31, 247–48. 14 Augustine, The Enchiridion, ch. 32, 248. 15 Quoted in William E. Klingshirn, trans., Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters, Letter 20 – Pope Boniface to Caesarius 2 (Liverpool: University Press, 1994), 125.

EQUIPPED TO ANSWER Although we are waiting for Jesus to return, we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to help Christians have joy, hope, and confidence in their faith and to share it with others. You can help people answer fundamental questions: Who is Jesus? Why do we worship the Trinity? If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? Purchase a leaderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide and start a group study today.

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BOOK REVIEWS

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y C H R I S T O P H E R D E L O R E N Z O

Book Reviews 60

John Calvinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography

Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Protestant Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society

By Bruce Gordon

By R. R. Reno

By Kevin J. Vanhoozer

REVIEWED BY

Ryan Glomsrud

John Raines

D. G. Hart

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John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A Biography By Bruce Gordon Princeton University Press, 2016 304 pages (hardcover), $27.95 he new Lives of Great Religious Books series from Princeton University Press aims to “recount the complex and fascinating histories of important religious texts”—biographies of books, in other words, not specifically authors. The books featured thus far have been chosen “for general readers,” and the biographies are written by “leading authors and experts.” Notable offerings in the history of Christianity include biogr a p h i e s o f A u g u s t i n e’s Confessions by Garry Wills, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae by the eminent historian Bernard McGinn, C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity by evangelical scholar George Marsden, and now Calvin’s Institutes from Yale Divinity School historian Bruce Gordon. Books of the Bible are also featured, such as Genesis and Job, as well as important texts from various world religions: The Book of Mormon, the Bhagavad Gita, and even the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Consisting of twelve chapters with two appendices, Gordon’s biography of the Institutes takes the reader “on a journey from the desk of the young John Calvin in Basel in 1536 to our world of social media religion” (12). Calvin is presented in lively fashion, as the biographer promises to do: “I am content to render one service, and that is to dissuade readers that the following chapters are about a dreary theological treatise by a bearded killjoy. The Institutes is an extended hymn of

praise by an exiled Frenchman to a saving God he believed never abandoned the faithful” (12). Gordon’s biography can be described as part book history, part reception history, and part summary of Calvin’s theology. I’d like to consider it under those three broad headings.

BOOK HISTORY Historians helpfully remind us that books don’t exist in and of themselves. There is no “Ur-text,” as one scholar has put it, that can be divorced from the material, physical existence of a book and what Robert Darnton, former Harvard Librarian, calls the “communication circuit” that runs from the author to the publisher, “the printer, the bookseller, and the reader” (see Robert Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History [W. W. Norton & Company, 1991]). Put simply, books come from the minds and through the fingers of writers onto a manuscript, which is then edited, set to type, laid out, proofed, printed, bound, circulated, sold, and (hopefully) read. The fact that Calvin’s Institutes, as Gordon notes, “was so heavily revised, went through so many editions, and reached so many people” invites, if not demands, some consideration of it from the perspective of “book history” (20). From this perspective, Gordon’s readers learn that the Institutes circulated among “a broad clerical and lay audience,” having “made its way to those readers as a result of Calvin’s ready access to leading printers and book distributors” (16). “Single-handedly,” our biographer explains, Calvin “transformed the printing business in Geneva, turning it from a publishing backwater into a center of Protestant

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book production that instructed the growing evangelical communities in France” (31). In my favorite section of the book, we learn about the publication of the Institutes in England. We meet Edmund Bunny, an editor of Calvin’s work who collaborated with a Parisian printer, Thomas Vautrollier, to produce the first English translation of the Institutes in 1574 (52, 58). We also meet two other mediators of Calvin’s theology: an unlicensed medical doctor, William Delaune, who published an Epitome (or a sort of Reader’s Digest version) of the Institutes in 1583 (53), along with Thomas “the rackmaster” Norton, a member of Parliament and son-in-law of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who in his spare time apparently enjoyed the art of torturing Roman Catholics as much as he did the art of rendering Calvin’s Latin into English (59). The Institutes “was not one book but a project that evolved over twenty years,” and Gordon gives a fair account of Calvin’s numerous revisions and enlargement of the text (17). On balance, however, Gordon’s book yields relatively little information about Calvin’s personal involvement in the production of the physical text and its editions beyond the generation of the original theological content. I was left wanting more: for example, some further explanation of the fascinating but baldly stated claim that Calvin was a “shrewd businessman” who “understood the interplay of learning, piety, and marketing” (16). Turning to other aspects of Gordon’s biography—namely, a summary of Calvin’s theology and a history of the reception of the Institutes—I think there is much more here for Christians and scholars to discuss and debate.

THEOLOGICAL SUMMARY Gordon offers his most sustained account of Calvin’s theology in chapter 2. He summarizes the Genevan’s magnum opus in this way: The Institutes is about God: a God who reaches out to humanity, who reveals

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“The Institutes ‘was not one book but a project that evolved over twenty years,’ and Gordon gives a fair account of Calvin’s numerous revisions and enlargement of the text.”

himself in creation and in the redemption of women and men, and who through his son, Jesus Christ, restores the relationship with his people destroyed by sin. The covenant God initiated is enduring. (46) Gordon also gives brief attention to each of what he regards as “three of the most important ideas in the Institutes: knowledge, religion, and piety” (37). Gordon captures enough of Calvin’s theology, in my view, to serve as an acceptable introduction for a very general reader. Still, there are a few shortcomings worth noting. The most significant reservation I have about the treatment of Calvin’s theology is Gordon’s attempt to remain neutral as our guide. Calvin’s thought

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has produced different reactions over the centuries, as Gordon acknowledges. And in promising a history of how readers have read the Institutes, the book delivers with a full range of diverse and contradictory interpretations. But I think the reader would have been better served by Gordon, himself an expert, by the insertion of his own perspective at certain points as to the fairness or accuracy of some of the readings of Calvin that he presents. In the end, he attempts what I think is impossible—namely, a kind of impartial account that doesn’t finally help the new or prospective reader discern what Calvin actually taught and believed. Looking at the doctrine of predestination, for example, Gordon rightly notes that Calvin had a well-developed doctrine of predestination but that it was not the singularly important doctrine (or central dogma) of his theology (42). He notes, accurately again, that “Calvin never believed that he was saying anything new; the doctrine of election, he insisted, was taught

“He notes . . . that ‘Calvin never believed that he was saying anything new; the doctrine of election, he insisted, was taught by Christ, Paul, and Augustine.’”

by Christ, Paul, and Augustine” (87). And yet, we are also told that Calvin’s doctrine was “received with widespread repugnance, even among his friends” (43), and that “among his fellow Reformed Christians, many hated his uncompromising doctrine of double predestination” (33). With friends like that, I found myself thinking, who needs enemies? And was this really the response of his “friends”? There are a number of other oddities and ambiguities of description, such as when Gordon suggests that Calvin was a “prophet of doom” who “never saw a tulip in his life,” which would seem to be a reference to what Gordon must think is a tension between Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and the teachings of the Canons of Dort (87, 8). Gordon also reports along the way that Calvin’s doctrine of predestination has been understood to make “God the author of sin” (43)—a charge he admits that Calvin “angrily refuted”—and was even a major disincentive for evangelism and missions. In the end, while it is true that these things (and worse) have been claimed of Calvin’s theology, readers aren’t given any clear answer on the question of whether these readings of Calvin are fair or accurate interpretations. I am of opinion that this does a disservice to a general reader. At the very least, one hopes that the neutrality of the biographer will serve as an invitation to “take and read” the Institutes and discover for oneself what the truth might be.

RECEPTION HISTORY In terms of reception history (i.e., the question of how Calvin’s Institutes and its theology has been received by later generations), an early passage in the book raised my eyebrows. Gordon explains that Calvin has “often been abducted by individuals and groups seeking to use his name for positions he could never have held.” This point may well be true, but then Gordon gives us an example—namely, “modern ideas of biblical inerrancy” (7). He explains that a

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“More experienced readers will want to raise questions about why those who claim loyalty [to Calvin] are denied, but those who themselves reject continuity escape criticism.”

“literary and doctrinal kidnapping took place while Calvin lived and continued unabated after his death, forcing us to ask, who was this man and what was his relationship between him and his successors” (7). Now, I do believe it would be anachronistic to claim that Calvin believed in the doctrine of inerrancy, word for word, as set forth for example in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. But nor do I believe that had such a statement been presented to Calvin in the consistory room in Geneva, he would have rejected it out of hand. The concern that this example raises, however, is not about inerrancy but about a double standard that Gordon seems to apply throughout the book as he presents and evaluates Calvin’s “heirs.” What can it mean that those successors who claimed continuity with Calvin in their development of his understanding of biblical authority or predestination are accused of serious crimes worthy of federal prosecution (i.e., kidnapping and abduction)? Meanwhile, those who openly rejected Calvin’s teaching on a vast number of points—Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example, who is also discussed by Gordon at some length—escape criticism almost entirely. One is left with the impression that Calvin’s immediate successors, the consolidators of the Reformation

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and his co-laborers for the reform of the church, potentially abused their father in the faith by developing his theology and giving it further nuance and substance. But the Protestant liberals, who came later in the nineteenth century and openly acknowledged that they understood Calvin merely as a “heritage” figure or a “symbol of a common Protestant inheritance,” are given a free pass (80). It is difficult to know what a novice reader will make of this analysis, but more experienced readers will want to raise questions about why those who claim loyalty are denied, but those who themselves reject continuity escape criticism. In conclusion, the book does raise an important question in this year of Reformation celebrations: What does it mean to be an heir of Calvin’s theology? Far more important than a laying on of hands (as in some misguided notion of apostolic succession), or a simple assertion to possess the mantle of Calvin’s authority, faithful Christians will want to consider their adherence to the confession of faith made by Calvin and the Reformers, and the question of its faithfulness as a summary of biblical teaching. RYAN GLOMSRUD has taught historical theology at West-

minster Seminary California since 2011 and serves as book review editor of Modern Reformation magazine.

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Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Protestant Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity By Kevin J. Vanhoozer Brazos Press, 2016 288 pages (hardcover), $21.99 t should be clear to the average Christian that Protestantism has long been suffering from a wildfire of denominational division. Flames emerge from every argument about whose reading of Scripture is right, and embers still smolder at the question of what a Christian is finally to believe. But what sparked the fire? What fueled the flame? Many modern scholars—theologians, socio lo g i s ts, a n d h i s t o r i a n s alike—hold the Reformation largely responsible. For with a list of theses nailed to the door of a Wittenberg church, the interpretive harmony of the Roman Catholic Church was allegedly exchanged for the interpretive anarchy of each individual’s right to read Scripture for themselves. But Kevin Vanhoozer doesn’t think this is the case. In Biblical Authority after Babel, he presents a tightly woven argument for both, defending the Reformation against charges of splintered factionalization and for recovering Protestantism as a source of interpretive and ecclesial unity. Vanhoozer’s efforts revolve around a retrieval of the five Reformation solas, along with the priesthood of all believers in an attempt to solve both the problem of interpretive anarchy and the problem of interpretive authority. But before we grapple with his attempt at a solution, we should come to terms with the dire circumstances to which he is responding.

Vanhoozer identifies secularization, skepticism, and schism as three of the most potent charges recently laid at the feet of the Reformation. First, the Reformation allegedly begat secularization by shifting the locus of worldview formation from the church to the individual—leaving the door open for people to decide to build their worldview upon reason instead of upon religion. Second, the Reformation allegedly begat skepticism by rejecting the reliable paradigm of a fundamental criterion for truth and falsity for the vulnerable paradigm of arbitrary individual conviction. Third, the Reformation allegedly begat schism by sourcing its identity in opposition, which led to a proclivity to undergo division. All of these coalesce into the present Protestant dilemma. Protestants now find themselves in an interpretive crisis, where biblical meaning differs from person to person. They are in a legitimation crisis, where a reliable interpretive criterion is nowhere to be found. And they are in a community crisis, where their branch of Christianity seems more accurately depicted by its division than by its unity. How does Vanhoozer plan fo r a r e co v e r y fr o m t h i s seemingly insurmountable quandary? He argues that a solution can be found in the notion of “mere Protestant Christianity,” which he suggests offers theological unity in ecclesial diversity. He does this by treating the five solas as theological presuppositions that provide a common theological foundation, a common interpretational method, and a common ecclesial goal. Vanhoozer describes this as the ontology, economy, and teleology of interpretive authority—supported by the five solas, guided by the priesthood of all believers, and aiming at catholicity.

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From this foundation, Vanhoozer weaves together many complex but persuasive arguments organized under each sola and ultimately encapsulated in twenty theses around which Protestants might gather in unanimous agreement. He does this by retrieving each of the five solas with a view to looking back creatively while moving forward faithfully. Sola gratia (grace alone) emphasizes that God’s grace in his triune economy of communicative action precedes and reorients individual human effort in interpretation. Sola fide (faith alone) highlights the trustworthiness of God’s speech in Scripture, the rationality of trusting others, and the need to attend to the interpretations of others for a thorough knowledge of Christian thought and life. Sola scriptura (Scripture alone) provides a clear pattern of interpretive authority, beginning with God and his communicative action in Scripture and flowing into the valuable insights of church tradition throughout history. Solus Christus (in Christ alone) unites believers in a Christ-formed royal priesthood that is able to make authoritative interpretive judgments in each local church in order to preserve the integrity of the gospel. Sola Deo gloria (for the glory of God alone) gathers believers together at the local and trans-local levels to collectively pursue God’s purposes, always dedicated to mutually correcting conversation and accountability. It is through this notion of mere Protestant Christianity that Vanhoozer aims to avoid the bewilderment of Babel by essentially assuming the posture of Pentecost. The goal is not division but a unity forged out of diversity in which different voices are sources of perspectival enrichment instead of fundamental separation. The five solas taken together with the priesthood of all believers redirect interpretive anarchy and authority to God’s triune economy of the gospel and the believer’s place in that economy as part of a unified community. As a result, secularization should fade with the implementation of grace, skepticism should fade with the establishment of trust, and schism should fade with the pursuit of unity.

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“The five solas taken together with the priesthood of all believers redirect interpretive anarchy and authority to God’s triune economy of the gospel and the believer’s place in that economy as part of a unified community.”

Now while Vanhoozer is to be commended for his ambitious task of unifying those who might seem inherently divided, I do have my concerns. I found myself asking if Vanhoozer wants to solve real, practical issues of division, then why didn’t he simply articulate his proposal by responding to a handful of these divisive issues? Because of this, his work occasionally felt something like reading a book aimed at guarding one’s faith against doubts in which the author only further articulates faith but never interacts with any real doubts. I wondered why Vanhoozer didn’t structure his project around particular issues, such as divisions over the Lord’s Supper, different understandings of the person of Christ, or how one is saved. By this, he could have demonstrated how his proposal would set Protestants on an attainable trajectory

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of unitive interpretive plurality. After all, it’s one thing to equip a group for success, and another to show them how to succeed. Nevertheless, even with these concerns in mind, Vanhoozer’s work is impressive. He offers a way for Protestants to balance conviction with humility, decidedness with openness, and unity with plurality. At its best, his proposal enthralls one with a vision so eloquently articulated yet so simply presented that one really begins to believe it might just be able to cast a reconciling flood upon the fire of our discord.

“The cult of freedom in the United States also threatens to justify every ‘injustice, suffering, and social dysfunction’ as mere ‘choices.’”

JOHN RAINES is a Master of Arts in theology student at

Fuller Theological Seminary, cohost of the podcast Reconstruct, and blogs at Profitable Discourse. He lives with his wife in Seattle, Washington.

Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society By R. R. Reno Regnery Faith, 2016 256 pages (hardcover), $27.99 hen you hear the phrase “Christian society,” your mind likely turns to Christendom. In his book The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford University Press, 2007), historian Hugh McLeod described Christendom as a place where Christian leaders have close ties to civil authorities, where laws originate from Christian convictions, everyone is assumed to be a Christian, and “Christianity provides a common language” (18). For Protestants, Christendom, with the papacy as the spiritual head, is not the most congenial model society. For those Protestants who are Presbyterian, their idea of a Christian society might conjure up sixteenthcentury Scotland when the crown, Parliament, and the people all covenanted to promote and defend the true faith and oppose the false one, Roman Catholicism. Then some may remember

twentieth-century writers such as the Roman Catholic historian Christopher Dawson or the modernist poet T. S. Eliot, both of whom inspired Protestants and Romanists alike with the idea of a Christian society. As Benjamin Lockerd wrote of both Eliot and Dawson, their “central claim… based on their wide-ranging knowledge of anthropology and history, was that every culture has a cult, some religious system that serves as an ultimate source of value and meaning” (“Beyond Politics: T.S. Eliot and Christopher Dawson on Religion and Culture,” in T. S. Eliot and Christian Tradition, ed. Benjamin Lockerd [Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014], 233). Both contended that European civilization was rooted in Christianity. They added that secularization had robbed the West of its glory. Rusty Reno, editor of First Things, invokes Eliot (but not Dawson) in his new case for “the idea” of a Christian society. He agrees with Eliot that the West continues to face a choice between Christianity and paganism. The consequences of this choice are not as stark as those that Eliot confronted in the 1930s when Communism and Fascism divided Europe and sowed the seeds of world war. Even so, Reno believes the United States (at least) confronts a set of circumstances that require a reexamination of the case for a Christian society. The nation has lost a sense of “civic solidarity,” the necessary ingredient for

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democracy. The cult of freedom in the United States also threatens to justify every “injustice, suffering, and social dysfunction” as mere “choices.” What the United States needs, and Christianity arguably supplies, is a path toward recovering “solidarity, limited government, and a sense of the transcendent.” Christianity especially proposes an idea of freedom (positive as opposed to negative) that recognizes true liberty as obedience to Christ. “A society encourages human flourishing to the degree that the supernatural authority of God’s revelation is proclaimed and the natural authority of his creation sustained.” In the chapters that follow, Reno has more to say about social order, economics, and political structures than about theology or ecclesiology. He insists that his argument is not theocratic. His idea for a Christian society is a “national culture not dominated by Christians but leavened by them.” Such yeast will “defend the weak,” “raise up the poor,” “promote solidarity,” put limits on government, and “seek higher things” (all chapter titles). In his chapter on poverty in the United States, he relies on a number of social scientific analyses that document the moral and cultural effects of the increasing gap between the wealthiest and poorest Americans. Reno’s descriptions are worth considering, especially for readers who do not follow the social scientific literature. But his audience will be frustrated by the concession that he is not a policy analyst, and his determination to leave “Christians committed to the poor, and other men and women of good will, to apply themselves to the difficult task of rebuilding a decent public culture that encourages ordinary people to live dignified lives.” Reno’s reluctance to wade into the tall weeds of public policy is

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understandable, especially for a man trained in philosophical theology. But does the book’s lack of recommendations mean that Christian society remains only an “idea”? Without suggestions for remedies, the book sometimes reads like an excuse for Reno to complain about America’s woes. An equally odd feature of this book is its silence about the church or Christian institutions. Reno ends the book with a sense that a Christian society is impossible, while a Christian influence is the best believers can do. Christian aims are “not to become the next establishment but to influence, directly and indirectly, the moral and spiritual outlook” of the existing regime. Reno is fairly confident that Americans want what Christians have: “a culture of hospitality and freedom,” rather than one of “denunciation and servitude.” Still, Reno says nothing about the institutional church (which is odd for a convert to Roman Catholicism) except in his afterword. There he asserts that in a thousand years the United States will likely no longer exist but “synagogues and churches” will. “The future is God’s.” That is true, but the effect of such a concluding sentiment is to turn the idea of a Christian society into mere inspiration. That may be what contemporary Christian readers need in times when cultural developments offer little reinforcement. At the same time, it is implicitly a rejection of a Christian society this side of glory, since believers who know the future belongs to God also confess with the Epistle to the Hebrews, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (13:14). D. G. HART is the author most recently of Damning Words: The

Life and Religious Times of H. L. Mencken (Eerdmans, 2016).

GEEK SQUAD

Talking about Faith in Non-Western Contexts By Jayson Georges

any Western Christians have a problematic understanding of faith. The concept of “faith” has been reduced to a person’s religious beliefs or the mere intellectual assent of an individual to a specific set of religious doctrines or dogmas. This view of faith is not only incomplete when compared to how the Bible speaks of faith, but it also presents difficulties for non-Westerners when they are presented with the claims of Christ by missionaries. A better understanding of faith—one that is truer to what Scripture says and easier for non-Westerners to grasp—is to place the language of faith within the realm of personal relationships, specifically “patronage” or the reciprocal relationship between social unequals.

Patrons provide security and safety for their clients; the wealthy assume responsibility for people in need. Clients, in turn, are morally obligated to reciprocate by honoring their patrons—they repay with loyalty, praise, and allegiance. Patrons give material help and then receive social clout. In the first-century Greco-Roman world, patron-client relationships formed “the bedrock of society, a person’s principal assurance of aid and support in an uncertain and inse1 cure world.” The Roman philosopher Seneca claimed, “The practice of patronage constitutes the chief bond of human society.” Patronage remains the primary socioeconomic system in Majority World cultures—life runs on relationships, reciprocity, and honor. I have experienced

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“People of honor-shame cultures place a high value on relational loyalty and commitment to a group leader. Communities are closeknit kinship groups that expect individual members to remain ‘faithful’ to the group.”

the patron and to his or her obligations of gratitude.”2 The Bible’s language of faith is at home in this social context of patron-client relationships. Faith connotes a person’s trustworthiness and dependability in a relationship. People of honor-shame cultures place a high value on relational loyalty and commitment to a group leader. Communities are close-knit kinship groups that expect individual members to remain “faithful” to the group. Asian families are one example: children are expected to choose a career that reflects positively on their parents, and there is a strong sense of familial loyalty where a child’s obedience brings honor to his parents. This strongly relational notion of group loyalty best approximates the Bible’s meaning of faith, not the modern Western sense of “my personal faith.”

NEW COVENANT LOYALTIES this reality of patronage during my years as a missionary and businessman in Central Asia, and I can personally testify how confusing and frustrating patronage is for Westerners from free-market, democratic societies! The dynamics of patronage illuminate many aspects of Scripture, including the nature of faith.

THE LOYALTY OF PATRONS AND CLIENTS Patron-client relationships are not mandated by law or enforced by legal contracts. Rather, people feel compelled to reciprocate because of honor and shame. Generous patrons and grateful clients acquire positive reputations in the community. People gain honor for being trustworthy and loyal in their relationships. In collectivistic cultures, such relational reliability is a supreme virtue. David deSilva explains, “The patron needed to prove reliable in providing the assistance he or she promised to grant. The client needed to ‘keep faith’ as well, in the sense of showing loyalty and commitment to

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This sense of loyalty is evident in the New Testament’s use of pistos, which we translate in English as “faith.” In normal biblical usage, pistos “is a quality of firmness, fidelity, and reli3 ability.” For example, servants in Jesus’ parables are “referred to as pistos, clearly in the sense of ‘loyal,’ faithful,’ or ‘trustworthy’ (Matt. 24:45; 4 25:21; 1 Cor. 4:2).” In Revelation, pistos refers to one’s relationship more than private thoughts. So, one scholar translates Revelation 2:13 as “you did not deny your loyalty [pistin] to me even in the time of Antipas, who was steadfast in declaring his loyalty [pistos] to me that he was put to 5 death among you.” Undivided loyalty to Christ distinguished early Christians from pagan neighbors, who sought patronage by pledging their allegiances to Roman leaders or pagan gods. This steadfast faithfulness enhances God’s name and renown, for it demonstrates our allegiance as his clients. Professor John Barclay says that “living by faith” is “expressed in new patterns of 6 loyalty and behavior.” In Majority World societies, people display pistos by trusting in the goodwill and

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benevolence of their patrons. For Christians, pistos is bold confidence in God’s patronage: “And without pisteōs it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach him must pisteusai that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb. 11:6). Pistos is the confident expectation of God’s blessing. This notion of relational loyalty is inherent in the word lord. Western Christians profess Jesus as “my personal Lord” who forgives sins. Yet for early Christians the confession “Jesus is Lord” declared Jesus’ sovereign provision and their allegiance to him. Vinoth Ramachandra notes, “The earliest Christian profession, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ was never merely a statement of personal devotion but a claim to universal validity. Christian mission made sense only on the premise that the crucified Jesus has been enthroned as the true Lord of the whole world, and thus claiming allegiance 7 of the whole world.” Jesus’ lordship means he is the king who provides benevolent salvation to those committed to his reign. The confession “Jesus is lord” demonstrates our allegiance and subverts all other claims of false patronage. “An analogy can be drawn between the patronclient model and the relationship that Christ has with Christians. Christ is their Lord. They are joined to him. They live for him and not for 8 themselves.” This notion of covenant loyalty is not original to the New Testament. Israel’s relationship with Yahweh under the Sinai covenant was also a patron-client relationship. The Sinai covenant was a suzerain-vassal treaty, a standard form of contract in the ancient Near East for ratifying patronage relations between powerful kings and inferior nations. In the Old Testament, Yahweh provided shalom (blessings) and protections to his client nation, and Israel (should have) reciprocated with faithfulness, praise, and obedience. God expected fidelity and loyalty from Israel. The covenantal framework from the Old Testament echoes through New Testament theology and informs the response God expects from his people.

CONCLUSION When speaking to people who don’t possess the Western sensibilities of individualism and intellectualism, how can we best convey what the Bible means when it speaks of faith? We must certainly endeavor to show them that while there is an individual and intellectual side to understanding what faith means, there are other words and ideas such as “allegiance,” “loyalty,” and “faithfulness” that also inform the nature of faith between the one who believes and the one believed. In cultural contexts that understand the reciprocal obligations of patronage, we must tell the Bible’s story of God as a patron who has demonstrated his faithfulness to us by giving the gift of his Son, and we clients must honor him with unflinching loyalty and obedience for his benevolence. Because God has assumed responsibility for our salvation, our lives are committed to his glory. The sole basis of our patronclient relationship with God is his grace—a gift given without any regard to our previous worth or status. God has sovereignly elected us to be recipients of his patronage, called us to praise his lavish generosity, and transformed our hearts to be loyal and faithful to him. JAYSON GEORGES is a missiologist who serves in Central Asia. He is author of Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures (IVP Academic, 2016) and The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures (Timē Press, 2014). Jayson blogs at www.HonorShame.com. 1 David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 119. 2 DeSilva, 115. 3 Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 109. 4 Zeba A. Crook, Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004), 212. 5 William Barclay, The New Testament: A New Translation (London: Collins, 1968). 6 John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 444. 7 Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 226. 8 Peter Lampe, in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, ed. J. Paul Sampley (Harrisburg, PA: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2003), 505– 6. Verse citations have been removed from this quote.

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There Are No Nonessentials By Michael S. Horton

upertus Meldenius famously said, “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” The great strength of evangelicalism has been to unite Christians from diverse theological traditions around the central articles of the creed. But it’s often the case that strength comes with corresponding weakness. There have been recent debates on whether or not certain biblical concepts such as baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church government are “gospel issues.” It’s true that not everything in the Bible is of equal weight. But I am worried that we have drawn too stark a line between “essentials” and “nonessentials”; in fact, I am convinced that this maxim leads logically to the idea of a canon-within-a-canon, where it is no longer Scripture that is our normative authority and the confession of faith that summarizes its main teachings. Rather, each of us determines which bits of Scripture and its confessional summary we regard as authoritative and necessary. So how should we respond? Our conservative circles should avoid the temptation to lose a sense of proper proportionality. Evangelicals tend to have a reductionistic view of what they consider “gospel issues.” For example, the church and sacraments are in fact gospel issues, but this does not mean that every matter pertaining to the church and sacraments is of equal weight and clarity in Scripture. Denying the reality of the visible church as Christ’s institution is a heresy; differences over church government are not. It is a departure from the faith to reject

baptism or the Lord’s Supper, but Christians equally committed to Scripture disagree over a variety of matters related to the sacraments. These are not questions of heresy, but neither are they indifferent such that they constitute no real obstacle to unity. My Baptist brothers and sisters should not think I am at liberty to have my children baptized—if Scripture teaches that baptism is to be administered only upon profession of faith, then it is a sin to administer it to children of believers. The contrary is true as well, which is why the Westminster Confession calls it “a great sin” to neglect or withhold it from those entitled to the sacrament (28.5). Even matters that are not “gospel issues” are nevertheless essential. Meldenius’s axiom assumes that if a doctrine is not fundamental, then it is a matter of Christian freedom. But this category of things over which we may disagree doesn’t include things the Bible actually addresses; rather, liberty is allowed precisely where Scripture is silent. Everything that Scripture proposes to be believed and practiced is essential—not equally essential but essential nonetheless. Christ is king, and we are not in any position to choose which of his decrees we consider binding. Let us then have the humility to submit our consciences to God’s word together, to remain open to the mutual correction of each other by that word, in dependence on the Spirit of truth, so that we might in truth show “in all things, charity.” MICHAEL S. HORTON is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

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