using-god-novemeber-december-2007 by Modern Reformation

PASTORS ON PRAISE ❘ PIPER ON GLORY ❘ WORK AND WORSHIP

MODERN REFORMATION

Using God

VOLUME

16, NUMBER 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2007, $6.00

MODERN REFORMATION Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Eric Landry Managing Editor Patricia Anders Department Editors William Edgar, Why We Believe MR Editors, Required Reading Eric Landry, Common Grace Diana Frazier, Reviews Starr Meade, Family Matters Staff | Editors Ann Henderson Hart, Staff Writer Alyson S. Platt, Copy Editor Lori A. Cook, Layout and Design Ben Conarroe, Proofreader Contributing Scholars Peter D. Anders S. M. Baugh Gerald Bray Jerry Bridges D. A. Carson Bryan Chapell R. Scott Clark Marva Dawn Mark Dever J. Ligon Duncan Adam S. Francisco W. Robert Godfrey T. David Gordon Donald A. Hagner Gillis Harp D. G. Hart Paul Helm Hywel R. Jones Ken Jones Peter Jones Richard Lints Korey Maas Keith Mathison Donald G. Matzat John Muether John Nunes Craig Parton John Piper Kim Riddlebarger Rod Rosenbladt Philip G. Ryken R. C. Sproul A. Craig Troxel Carl Trueman David VanDrunen Gene E. Veith William Willimon Todd Wilken Paul F. M. Zahl Modern Reformation © 2007 All rights reserved. For more information, call or write us at: Modern Reformation 1725 Bear Valley Pkwy. Escondido, CA 92027 (800) 890-7556 info@modernreformation.org www.modernreformation.org ISSN-1076-7169

1 YR 1 YR 1 YR 1 YR 1 YR

$29 $22 $35 $52 $59

2007

volume

n u m be r

Using God 10 Using God Do Americans worship God or manipulate God to achieve their own glory? The author shows how our obsession with spiritual mechanics leaves us pulling levers and pushing buttons on a god of our own making. by Kim Riddlebarger

15 Can We Give God Glory? Can a creature give God glory; isn’t the distinction between creature and Creator too great? The author shows us how humanity, made in God’s image, reflects God’s glory both after the Fall and in their redemption from sin. by Michael Horton Plus: “To the Glory of God and the Restoration of the Heart: Worship and Theology in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach”

22 Our Calling and God’s Glory One of the forgotten insights of the Reformation was Martin Luther’s recovery of the doctrine of vocation. The author walks us through our daily callings to show us how our work is glorifying to God. by Gene Veith

29 Worship in the Church: Pastors’ Roundtable The editor-in-chief sits down with three pastors—Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian—to discover how God’s people in worship give glory to God and receive God’s gifts of peace, righteousness, and satisfaction. by Michael Horton with John Bombaro, Daniel Hyde, and Eric Landry

34 To God Alone Be Glory Forever Surveying Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, the author traces soli Deo gloria as a major theme of Paul and the belt that unites all the solas together. by John Piper

PHOTO COMPOSITE BY LORI COOK

S UBSCRIPTION I NFORMATION US US Student Canada Europe Other

TABLE OF CONTENTS novemb er/d ecember

2 YR $52 2 YR $63 2 YR $94 2 YR $107

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 1

KEEPING TIME i n

t hi s

is su e

Apostles Creed Jesus Christ Victorious

325 A.D. NICENE CREED Bust of Constantine

c. 500 A.D. ATHANASIAN CREED Triquetra

1561–1619 THREE FORMS OF UNITY T.U.L.I.P.

1563–1571 THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES Cross of St. George

1580 BOOK OF CONCORD

Martin Luther’s Seal

1646 WESTMINSTER CONFESSION Westminster Abbey

1689 LONDON BAPTIST

CONFESSION Baptismal

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

The Christmas Sola

t is fitting that we end the year, looking forward to the Christmas holiday, with an issue on soli Deo gloria. Not only do the familiar Christmas carols and stories of angel voices singing “glory” to the Lord remind us of our celebration of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the entire Christmas story is of glory shrouded in weakness and hidden from the powerful. Far from being the triumphant last note of a Christmas cantata, soli Deo gloria is the underlying counterpoint directing our eyes and thoughts thirty-three years into the future when the babe in a manger hangs on a cross. Soli Deo gloria reflects the Reformation’s emphasis on a theology of the cross as much as any other sola. But American Christians, particularly, have rejected the theology of the cross—of glory hidden in meekness, of wisdom revealed through foolishness, of power made powerful in weakness—in favor of a theology of glory that does not worship God so much as it uses God. Reformed pastor and co-host of the White Horse Inn radio show Kim Riddlebarger exposes the folly of so much of our own thinking about God in his piece titled, “Using God.” The question must be asked, however, is it possible for a human to give the transcendent God glory? Does God lack something that only we can provide? What does such thinking do to our understanding of the great distinction between God as Creator and ourselves as creatures? Editor-in-chief and Reformed theologian Michael Horton tackles these questions and takes us to the Old Testament prophet Isaiah for answers—and along the way also gives us an astronomy lesson! “All this is well and good,” you might say, “but, how, exactly, do I give God glory?” We have two answers to that question. The first comes from Gene E. Veith, Lutheran theologian and academic dean at Patrick Henry College, who reveals an often forgotten recovery of Reformation theology—the doctrine of vocation—in “Our Calling and God’s Glory.” The second answer comes from a group of pastors who sat down recently with Michael Horton to talk about the Christian’s service of worship in the corporate worship of the church. Finishing up our series on the solas, Baptist pastor John Piper takes us back to the Book of Romans and weaves a compelling picture of soli Deo gloria through the epistle, showing how each of the other solas points to the glory of God. Thank you for keeping time with us this year. I hope you have been encouraged in your faith through our extended series in the solas. Give us a call if you missed an issue, or if you want to give an entire year’s worth of back issues— the entire series—to a friend or ministry associate. What’s in store next year? Christless Christianity. Six issues tackling topics like race, atheism, new spiritualities, the abandonment of the local church, the risk of orthodoxy, and the challenges to Evangelicalism as we’ve known it for the last fifty years. You won’t want to miss this new series, and you probably know someone who needs to read along with you. So, fill out our gift subscription card and send it in today. We’ll add a copy of this issue to your gift, making each gift subscription you send even more valuable.

Eric Landry Executive Editor

NEXT ISSUES: January/February 2008: Grace over Race March/April 2008: The New Atheism

LETTERS your

We have now had two issues of Modern Reformation with the feature, "Diaries of a Postmodern Christian." The March/April issue vaguely disturbed me and the same feature in the May/June issue produced an even greater feeling of disquiet. I receive other Christian magazines of a lesser caliber than Modern Reformation. They are rife with articles and columns focused on the "big me"—my reactions, my understanding, my journey, etc. Modern Reformation has always been a sanctuary from that sort of focus. Please consider this a humble appeal from a faithful reader to dispense with this type of approach. The beauty of Modern Reformation is the solid, well-researched, well-presented articles that do not focus on the human writer, but rather the mysteries of our great God and the truth of sound theological teaching. Janet McCullough Anchorage, Alaska

The name Michael S. Horton has always represented a mountain peak in orthodoxy and trueness to the Bible, and I do not want to see that change. The last thing I read in Modern Reformation magazine leaves me in doubt of the orthodoxy of the magazine he began. I read Ciudad Blanco by Dwain Lee and it left me wondering how such an article would be chosen for this magazine. While the story is captivating and very sad, some conclusions made in it have me even more sad. I certainly do not disagree with the deplorable conditions of this so-called orphanage—but the conclusion of the author seems totally inappropriate for a Bible–believing Christian. First, he expresses anger at God for these

deplorable conditions. God’s words in Jonah come to mind: “Do you have a right to be angry?” when the gord died and Jonah had more compassion on the gord than he did on the Ninevites. Also, does not Scripture say, “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God?” For these reasons I see no room for anger at God. Next, I was blown away by the words in his article: “Looking into the boy’s eyes, I tried using my crude Spanish skill to tell him that he was a child of God. I gently whispered, ‘Tu eres el hijo de Dios.’ As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that I had actually said, ‘You are the Son of God.’ I got up and walked away, wondering if what I told him accidentally was more accurate than what I had intended.” And then he uses Matthew 25:40 to justify this statement: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it for me.” Telling this pitiful boy that he is a child of God has no justification— except that he like all men are the “offspring of God” (Acts 17:28) as the poets in Athens used to say—which agreed with Paul’s statement, “in him we live and move and have our being” (17:28). But that does not make them born again Christians. This little boy gave no indication of any such conversion. And then to top off the shock of this statement he adds that maybe his mistranslation, “son of God,” was actually more accurate is more shocking. This all sounds like the message of universalism—all men are saved and all are children of God. Next, Matthew 25:40 has nothing to do with what he did with this young man. It has to do with whatever kindness you do to the Jews (Christ’s brethren) you did in effect to him. If I am wrong in this assessment of the article please correct me. James A. Deweerd Grand Rapids, Michigan

thoughts

a n d

ou rs

Editorial response: The editors do not believe that Dwain Lee's personal reflections present a challenge to biblical orthodoxy. "Postmodern Diaries" has been a space for readers to submit their stories and experiences of living out Reformation truths. Although this department will not appear in 2008, more stories like this can be found on our website under the heading "Reformation Diaries."

I had a good chuckle after I read "God Loves Movies," until I realized the author was probably serious. Considering you put the article immediately after "The Western Heresy," I would be happy to suggest a different title: "Americans Love Movies, Therefore God Does Too, Right?" Richard Draper email

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

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 3

WHY WE BELIEVE de f en d i ng

th e

faith

Sentimentality and Its Costs

n the time that I spent writing a book on cynicism, Seeing Through Cynicism (IVP, 2006),

to feel passionately, but with little “sense of I have been intrigued by its polar opposite, sentimentality. Oscar Wilde quipped that other.” The extraordinary response to the sentimentality is what happens when cynicism goes on a bank holiday. Having spent death of Princess Diana has been noted in interso much time on cynicism, I thought it would be worth view after interview in which people experienced her looking at the other side. I was stimulated to think more death as something that had happened to them and about it by a course at Regent College last summer wanted to talk about how it had made them feel. taught by Jeremy Begbie. Begbie speaks of three parts Third, there is no appropriate action response to feelof a sentimental way of understanding and living in the ings, especially if the appropriate response is costly. This world: sentimentality denies, evades, or trivializes evil; follows naturally if I think that there is nothing seriousit centers on self-referential emotion; and it resists any ly wrong in the world that demands change, and if our appropriate, costly action into the world. These three lives are centered on our own attempt to feel good about form a certain perverse coherence. ourselves. Then we are unlikely to reach out very far to First, honesty about the depth of evil in the world is other people. Of all the emotions that we have experieclipsed by entertainment, distraction, and a preoccupaenced while watching television, how often were we tion with niceness, warmth, comfort, and peace of mind. moved to do anything? Neil Postman suggested that Children are told by Barney that the world is wonderful, (apart from advertising) the only thing on television that everybody loves them, and that they can have what we actually do anything about is the weather report. they want by wishing for it. Disney has given us, in the Given that sentimentality, understood in this way, words of one scholar, a world “without dirt, cruelty or jars very hard against biblical faith and practice, we complexity”—and also without God, but with plenty of might expect the Christian community to be an oasis or niceness, simplicity, optimism, and superb marketing. shelter from sentimentality. The sad thing is that How many people maintain a total diet of stories in film Christians with the message to confront sentimentality and print which have impossibly unrealistic happy endhave instead too often been seduced by it. Many of the ings? This amounts to not facing or dealing with the themes that we emphasize so hard in L’Abri are correcbrokenness that is in myself, my neighbor, and in the tives to a sentimental consciousness in the Christian world. It is a deep self-deception. community and in society at large. We challenge the Second, self-referential emotion is a little harder to cynicism that comes as an understandable response to grasp. An example would be loving another person not sentimentality shocked into disillusionment. We talk of for who they are, but loving the way that person makes the radical fallenness and brokenness of the world to me feel about myself. There is quite a difference. people who seem never to have taken its measure Sentimentality is not so much empathy for another perexcept as theory. We talk of both looking for and living son in their joy or pain, but an involvement in their life out not just what is comfortable, nice, and builds selffor the sake of enjoying the experience of my own feelesteem, but what is true—and we get blank stares. The ings about them. Injustice may be the occasion for my idea of God can be co-opted to serve the full sentimenanger. But my anger may actually be driven more by my tal agenda in such a way that his actual word is not approval of myself for these strong feelings of righteous heard at all—but this is not new news. indignation than it is by my actual care for the victims of God warned Ezekiel (Ezek. 33) that when he spoke the injustice. We are not talking about a legitimate and God’s words to the people about their approaching necessary self-awareness. It is “pathos feasting on destruction, they would hear him only as a crooner of itself.” Tennyson’s fifty-page poem, “In Memoriam,” love songs. Jesus got similar treatment in his hometown about the death of his close friend, is actually about synagogue (Luke 4) when he announced that the mesTennyson’s own faith and emotions in crisis, telling us sianic age, the hinge pin of human history, had at last almost nothing about the man who died. It is possible arrived in the hearing of that congregation on that very

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

called to image him. We will not find life in self-protection from engagand focusing on good feelings about oneself is going ing in the world with all its “dirt, cruelty and complexito be a life of superficiality and disillusionment. ty.” The Apostle Paul’s life experience was not of shying away from this brokenday! Were they excited? Amazed? Afraid? ness. He wrote, “We are treated as impostors, and yet Challenged? Not really. They were impressed, though, are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying by his nice use of language, the fine words that he used. and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as When he finally forced his way through their sentimensorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor yet making tality, they mobbed him and tried to throw him off the many rich; as having nothing and yet possessing everynearest cliff. thing” (2 Cor. 6:8–10). Paradoxically, in serving God in When the Apostle Paul wrote that we should “rejoice God’s power, Paul was willing to suffer in his full battle with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep” against darkness and evil in the world, but experienced (Rom. 12:15), he intended our emotions to go beyond life at its depth with profound fulfillment and vitality. the self-referential, to be engaged and respond to the precious dignity of another person who is real, valued, and important to God. Unless we have a “sense of other,” we Richard B. Keyes (B.A. Harvard; M.Div. Westminster might get it exactly backwards. We might weep with Theological Seminary, Philadelphia) is the director of L’Abri their rejoicing because it makes us feel that we missed Fellowship in Southborough, Massachusetts. He is the author out on what they have or rejoice with their weeping of several books, including Beyond Identity, True Heroism, because it makes us feel more successful by comparison. and, most recently, Seeing Through Cynicism. The Apostle James also tangled with sentimentality. He wrote, “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (James 2:15–17). It is possible to have wonderful sentiments about peace, warmth, and nourishment for others—but do nothing whatever to help those same people. It is even possible to think very well of yourself for having these warm, charitable sentiments. James nails all three aspects of sentimentality in what he called “dead faith.” These people were trivializing the evil of another’s suffering. They were pleased with their own self-referenced feelings of compassion. They allowed the needy person to go away distraught, cold, and hungry. The irony of it all is that sentimentality does not deliver the comfort, peace, and niceness that it promises. Collectively, sentimental niceness tends to discourage honesty, which then obstructs open discussion of upsetting issues and so prevents the possible healing of conflict. Individually, sentimentality also leads to frustration. A life spent in denial of what is wrong in the world and focusing on good feelings about oneself is going to be a life of superficiality and disillusionment that even today’s entertainment industry may not be able to silence or mask. The poet David McCord wrote about someone that he knew: “Deep down, he is very shallow.” What better way to guarantee shallowness than sentimentality? Jesus matched his beatitude, “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4), with the malattitude, “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep” (Luke 6:25). God has engaged fully in this broken world and we are

A life spent in denial of what is wrong in the world

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5

COMMON GRACE G o d’s

tr u t h

a rt

and

culture

Shadow Psalms Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine Meltin’ in a pot of thieves Wild card up my sleeve Thick heart of stone My sins my own They belong to me, me People say beware! But I don’t care The words are just Rules and regulations to me, me Patti Smith, “Gloria”

hroughout the history of American popular music, critics have argued over the moral and spiritual significance of styles, composers, performers, and songs. It is no surprise that Christians have criticized much secular popular music, since at best it seldom aligns with the mission of the church and at worst it seems to advocate flat-out rebellion against basic moral codes. Rarely will a critic condemn an entire sub-style of classical music because she finds it to be depraved, but whole styles of popular music (for example jazz, rock and roll, heavy metal, and hip hop) have been rejected as inappropriate for Christian ears or unedifying for society in general. We often fail to consider how secular popular music can express truth, even truth that is foundational to the gospel. When Christians talk about Christianity and secular music, we usually discuss "Christian Contemporary Music" or Christians who have ventured into the field of mainstream popular music. Perhaps we think of U2, an internationally successful band that manages to get away with paraphrases of the Psalms ("40") and Latin lyrics that praise the Lord by name ("Gloria"). Less often do we have in mind music that is written by, about, and for people who are downcast, abject, or otherwise unlovely. Might we find something of the gospel not just in that music about goodness and love but also in songs about the meaner aspects of life? What could we learn about truth from popular genres that have a penchant for the depressing, the offensive, or hopeless? The style that first comes to mind, of course, is the blues. As far as historians can tell, African Americans first developed the blues in the American South beginning in the late nineteenth century. In the first several decades of the twentieth century, blues style figured into many genres of American popular music, including jazz, country, and gospel until it forced its way into the mainstream of American culture in the form of rock and roll in the mid-

6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

1950s. Often associated with the suffering of African Americans, the blues has become a mode of expression for people who “have the blues”; that is to say, people who are downtrodden, down and out, lonely, afraid, or rejected, often in the arena of romantic relationships. The blues as a musical form is based on a pattern of chords and lyrics that repeats for several verses, often without a chorus. Writing a song in the blues format (though, admittedly, not necessarily a “good” blues song) is relatively straightforward because the underlying chord structure is predetermined and the lyrics follow an “AAB” pattern, as in the following familiar lines from one of Elvis Presley’s early hits: (A) You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time (A) You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time (B) Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit and you ain’t no friend of mine While the blues form at first appears to be repetitive, it provides an opportunity for an individual performer to display artistic creativity. For example, as a singer sings the second line of a verse (ostensibly a repeat of the first line’s lyrics and melody), he might change the melody slightly to emphasize certain words, inflect certain notes, or exhibit vocal skill. In live performances, the changes are often improvised. In the blues, nothing is sung or played the same way twice. As many of us know, when Elvis sang the second line above, he sang it not as written but as “You ain’t-ta-nothin’.” A small change, no doubt, but the kind that when applied in all the right places makes for a compelling performance. What do the workings of the blues have to do with the gospel? As a way of approaching this question, we need to visit blues lyrics more representative in content of the genre than those sung by Elvis. The following is the opening verse to W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” a song published in 1914 about romantic jealousy sung from a woman’s perspective : (A) I hate to see the evening sun go down (A) I hate to see the evening sun go down (B) It makes me think I’m on my last go ‘round Some versions replace the last line with the following: “‘Cause my baby he done left this town.” Whether implying the subject’s death (as in the first version) or lamenting

lost love (as in the second version), the blues relishes in misfortune. Like large sections of Job and the Psalms, the blues identifies personal troubles without attempts to dismiss them, apply a quick fix, or explain them away. As listeners, we are forced to reckon with the reality of life’s difficulties without immediately moving on to solutions. As a singer repeats that she “hate[s] to see the evening sun go down,” we are asked to experience her pain again, because it is so profound as to be worth repeating. Not all blues lyrics describe this level of despair, but many show us the consequences of living in a fallen world, a world full of infidelity, racism, fear, and death. But perhaps the style of popular music most honest about human depravity is a strain of rock music called punk. First formed in the early 1970s in New York City and London, the punk movement developed as the polar opposite to the romantic “peace and love” aesthetic of the counterculture. In its music, lyrics, and fashion, punk set out to shock and offend (think multiple body piercings, ripped clothing, dramatic make-up, and “unnatural” hairstyles). Consider the opening lyrics to “Anarchy in the UK,” a song by England’s most famous punk rock band, the Sex Pistols: I am an antichrist I am an anarchist Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it I wanna destroy passerby ’cause I wanna be anarchy!!!! Music historians and critics have interpreted punk as a reaction to the hopelessness of modern life and a refusal to believe in the idealism of the counterculture. Punk musicians and fans stared official culture in the face and found it vapid, boring, and fake. In their anger and frustration they wrote songs that featured personas who were somehow social misfits, deviants, or losers, meant to shock and offend listeners not in the know. In the Sex Pistols’ song quoted above, the subject threatens practically everyone in Western society: Christians (“I am an antichrist”); those who believe in government (“I am an anarchist”); and everyone else (“I wanna destroy passerby”). His proclamation is so outrageous as to be ridiculous, and in many cases, punk lyrics were intended to be humorous and to present an exaggerated persona. A survey of song titles by the New York City band the Ramones provides evidence of this: “I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue,” “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment,” “I Don’t Care,” “I Just Wanna Have Something to Do,” “Teenage Lobotomy.” Punk was originally performed by people who had little musical training or experience playing rock instruments, and as a result it sounds raw, rough, and energetic. Like its lyrics, punk music can be assaultive; songs highlight loud, basic drumbeats and loud, distorted electric guitars, while lyrics are often shouted or chanted. Instead of long, LSD-inspired songs featuring overblown guitar solos, punk

songs are nasty, brutish, and short (to borrow a phrase). That musicians did not have formal training or “refined” skills was not seen as a weakness but a point of pride; it was part of a self-consciously iconoclastic aesthetic. Again, where is the gospel? Songs that declare their subject to be the antichrist or that deny the efficacy of Christ’s atoning death (“Gloria,” quoted above) would seem to be as antithetical to Christian values as they could possibly be. But as with the blues, we see that punk conveys a certain aspect of the spiritual state of human beings that most art ignores. Patti Smith’s 1975 song “Gloria” serves as an example of the kind of brutal honesty of which punk was capable. Smith’s song remade a 1964 song of the same title by a group called Them, an Irish “British Invasion” band fronted by Van Morrison. Both songs are about a sexual encounter, heterosexual in the original version and homosexual in Smith’s. (As an aside, both versions must have been in the minds of U2, an Irish band with roots in punk, when they composed their “Gloria”). Smith’s lyrics reflect a deep understanding of the sinful nature; she does not make excuses for herself but takes responsibility for her own corruption (“my sins my own, they belong to me”). As she moves on to state that she doesn’t take “rules and regulations” seriously, she seems to wallow in her decadence, but all the while exposing it for what it is. In both punk and the blues, as well as in many other styles of popular music, the music doesn’t often proffer a substantive solution. If the main repertoires of these styles do not overtly (or even covertly) address redemption itself, they point us to the realities of life for most people. They show us the consequences of human sin and admit, often in very intimate and personal ways, that there are deeply rooted problems in all of us. They remind us that music, like all other art forms, can serve truth by manifesting its uglier side, instead of just the glorious.

Olivia Carter Mather holds a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her primary field is American popular music and her dissertation focused on country rock in the 1960s and 1970s. Her most recent work includes a forthcoming article on musician Gram Parsons for an anthology on alt.country.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 7

DIARIES OF A POSTMODERN CHRISTIAN t he

c a n d i d

c h r istian

life

Lonely Sundays by Betty Bevan

My husband and I are the only Reformed believers in a 200-mile radius. Is the postmodern age an extreme form of the generation gap, creating a culture that makes obsolete (or ignores) those who still remember and believe in the old “modern” days? Mondays through Saturdays, the two of us make a weekly trip to town to get our mail and check out the specials at the one and only grocery store. But these are not the lonely days. The lonely days are the Sundays we attend church. The 16-mile drive to church is delightful as we pass through high desert vistas of sagebrush, juniper, and pine. As we crest the mountain and look down on the idyllic town, population 150, nestled in the valley that is home to two churches, one for each day of the weekend, it looks like a Grandma Moses painting. Living in this quiet ranching, logging, farming community is a 30-year dream come true for us, a gift from our loving God. We chose to live in this rural community in order to find relief from the chaos of an urban setting, but we have encountered a “sanctified” form of disorder and mediocrity in this little country church. The people in our church are so engrossed in their pre-service conversations that despite prelude music, the pastor is halfway through his opening prayer before they take their seats. Have they not come to worship God and hear his Word? Do they really think it is cute when the pastor’s four-yearold daughter walks back and forth on the pew saying that she wants to dance while a CD is blaring some pop “hymn” we are supposed to sing along with? Where is the reverence, respect, serious attention, and worship I once knew? If these brothers and sisters represent postmodern Christianity, we don’t fit in. How does a congregant approach an elder or the pastor when they, along with the congregation, appear satisfied with the existing format of our church service? The Bible’s admonition to respect gray hair is not practiced here, unless you have the “gift” of working with youth (which means you’re already so deaf that you don’t notice the decibels of the music). Here it seems the older folks are irrelevant because their experience and wisdom are old-fashioned. It is lonely when one is made to feel useless. If I mention the sovereignty of God or the covenant of redemption, my eyes meet blank stares of incomprehension or indifference. It seems folks express the most enthusiasm over biblical ideas when they relate to the latest temple-rebuilding plan or jet planes with fuselages emblazoned “Wings of Eagles” airlifting Jews to Israel. I wonder why they are not enthusiastic about God’s great plan of redemption, beginning with the eternal covenant. Ever since converting from “garden-variety” Christianity to Reformed theology about ten years ago, I have longed for face-to-face conversations and fellowship with kindred spirits. So far this companionship is limited to the printed page, radio programs, and CDs. These resources accentuate my disappointment with our church. There are a few other churches we could visit, but we have little hope of finding anything better. So for us, the challenge of living as a Christian in the postmodern age is found not outside but inside the church. It has not provided a sanctuary from the world’s relativism and narcissism. The children set the agenda, further ingraining the “me-first” mentality. The music is from and for the youth. Knowing that God never leaves or forsakes us offers immeasurable comfort. But do we try again to express to the church leaders our different viewpoint, when they may write us off as “old fogies” who just don’t like contemporary music? Do we bother to clarify that our concern is for reverence and holiness? Or do we quietly fade away?

Betty Bevan and her husband reside in Mount Vernon, Oregon.

8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

Life in Romans 7 by Jay Lemke

I find it soulfully frustrating and disconcerting—while at the same time intellectually fascinating—that I can go from the heights of praising God to the depths of sin in, oh, five seconds. This happens in so many ways. I can be in worship, singing as loud as I dare, and even twitching my arm slightly with the possibility that it might rise to praise a Holy and wonderful God (I never get it much past my waist though—we’re Lutherans, after all). And the next thing I know, like flipping a light switch, I’m getting angry thinking about how much I dislike someone at work, and how much I’d like revenge. Jesus called such sins murder. Recently, I was alone at night peering up into the starry sky. I was overwhelmed with how small I am and how big God is—and I was humbled with the thought that he would condescend to take on human form and actually die for one such as me. I sank to my knees, and actually raised my arms. I praised him as best as I know how. The next day I was in a foul mood, filled with anxiety. I know of Christians who talk as if sin is purely an intellectual exercise: “Ah yes, sin, I have heard of such a thing inflicting some Christians, but if you would only walk in the spirit—that is the key, walking in the spirit.” I have no idea what “walking in the spirit” means or exactly how I am supposed to be doing it. Neither do I understand the logistics of how “giving it up to God” works, or really how I am to “breath spiritually.” All of these things sound good, but for me, it feels like a trick or a secret I am not getting. I have listened to so many sermons on getting rid of sin, and yet it is always there with me. I have read so many Bible verses telling me to shed the old nature and to put off the old man; and yet the old Adam is always there. Second Corinthians 5:17 says that in Christ we are a new creation. I believe that. But much of my Christian life seems to be spent not in 2 Corinthians 5, but in Romans 7. If Paul hadn’t written Romans 7, I’m not sure where I’d be. Oh, I’d probably still be a Christian because the evidence is overwhelming that God created the universe, that Jesus rose from the dead, that the Bible is God’s revelation for how he would save sinners from his own punishment—and that Jesus is the only way to heaven. I would believe it, and I would trust in Jesus for my eternal salvation. But without Romans 7, I wouldn’t understand that my Christian life, struggles, anxiety, sin, and neuroticism are more normal than not. The Apostle Paul said that the good he wanted to do he didn’t do, and the bad that he didn’t want to do is what he regularly practiced. That is my life. In my heart, I know the law of God is good and holy and perfect, but I do not carry it out. So with Paul I also scream out, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And with Paul, I come up with the same answer: Jesus. Henric Schartau (1757–1825), the Swedish pastor, summed it up well in his famous sermon: “Only Jesus”: It is a blessed thing when the believing soul in prayer fixes his uplifted eyes of faith upon Jesus only, not looking about for his dispersed thoughts, nor backward upon Satan, who threatens with the assertion that the prayers are to no avail, nor inwardly upon his own slothfulness and slight devotion, but above himself to Jesus, “who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.”

Jay Lemke attends Risen Christ Lutheran Church in Stillwater, Minnesota. He is married and has three children.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 9

USING GOD

Using God by Kim Riddlebarger

1 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

U S I N G

t has been said that pride is the oldest sin in the universe and that it shows no signs of growing weaker with age. Pride is the overestimation of our own worth and the inevitable tendency to exaggerate our own accomplishments. If the Bible is clear about anything, it is that ours is a fallen race and that human pride is the inevitable consequence of the Fall. God warned the people of Israel to exercise great care in this regard, Lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…. Beware lest you say in your heart, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” (Deut. 8:11–14, 17)

In Romans 1:22, Paul speaks of human pride in these terms: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” Because of sin, we suppress the fact that God is the source of all that we have. We see ourselves as far more important than we are. We act as though all of life rises and sets upon our own shadow. Therefore, we are constantly tempted to use God to suit our own sinful ends. Perhaps it might help to frame the matter like this: When we become great in our own eyes, our estimation of God and his purposes is necessarily diminished. Like two people sitting on opposite ends of a playground teetertotter, when the person sitting on one end goes up, the other person goes down. The same applies to our estimation of God. When our own desires and whims are elevated over God and his glory—the very essence of sinful pride—God is necessarily diminished in our estimation. When this happens, our own skewed self-estimation replaces the uncomfortable truth we seek to evade—that God is great and we are not. A great God makes proud sinners uncomfortable, a diminished God less so. Given our sinful proclivity to exalt ourselves, the diminished God can easily become a means to an end. While such a God is still much bigger and more powerful than we are, nevertheless the smaller we make him, the greater the opportunity to manipulate his power to further our sinful ends. Unlike the God of the Bible, who has decreed whatsoever comes to pass (Eph. 1:11) and who does whatever pleases him (Ps. 115:3), the diminished God exists to do whatever pleases us. On call 24/7, he is there to attend to all our whims and respond to our constant whining. This God is not to be served and adored, rather, he is a means to an end. Like the genie freed from his bottle, this God is there to answer our prayers and give us what we wish. Sometimes we use God quite intentionally; other times

G O D

we do it without even knowing it. The bottom line is that we use God to suit our own ends because we live our lives through the distorted lens of human pride. Inevitably, we see our own interests and agendas as far more important than they really are. From this distorted perspective God exists to enable us to achieve that which we have decreed, that which pleases us—the complete reversal of the two biblical passages just cited. This, of course, is the height of human folly and the sad consequence of sinful pride. Some of the ways in which we use God are much more obvious than others. Several instances of this sinful tendency can be found within the pages of the New Testament. In the opening chapters of Mark’s Gospel, Mark recounts for us the early days of Jesus’ messianic mission around Capernaum. When Jesus cast out demons and healed the sick, it was not long before word spread throughout Galilee that a healer/exorcist extraordinaire was in their midst. Soon, Jesus could not eat or rest because multitudes of sick and suffering people swarmed around him (Mark 3:8–10, 20), making his messianic mission nearly impossible to complete. While Jesus demonstrated nearly unlimited compassion on those who were sick and suffering—he healed countless of them—these poor people serve as a sad example to us of people who see in God a means to an end without even knowing they are doing it. As the gospel narrative unfolds, we learn that Jesus did not come to heal the sick or cast out demons, but to deal with the root cause of all human suffering—the guilt and power of sin. Jesus’ messianic mission was not to serve as a walking emergency room or medical clinic. Instead his mission would take him to the cross, the very place the suffering crowds did not want to see him go. The multitudes who sought out Jesus didn’t care about the root cause of their suffering. They just wanted to be healed, right then and there. And they could not see, nor did they much care, how a crucified Jesus would save them from something much greater than sickness. In this tragic set of circumstances, we see how the symptoms (sickness and demon possession) of the deeper human condition (the pride stemming from our fallen nature) blinded these people to the fact that in Jesus’ death and resurrection the human condition would find its ultimate and final cure. Desperate people do desperate things. Sufferers don’t want ultimate solutions as much as they want immediate relief. These crowds saw in Jesus a means to an end. In their eyes, it didn’t matter why Jesus came, it only mattered that he had the power to heal them. Because of human sin and pride, they saw in Jesus an opportunity to gain relief. They were using God without even knowing that they were doing so. Then there are those who seek to use God’s power with much more transparent motives. In Acts 19:11–20, we read of the seven sons of a certain Sceva, a Jewish high priest. In this passage, Luke recounts how God was doing remarkable things through the ministry of the Apostle Paul to confirm the preaching of the gospel and call people N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 11

giving money to the preacher, who, of course, never quite puts matters that were being warned about men within the church directly. Suffering folk are promised healing, a reversal who would claim the leading or the prompting of the of their present circumstances, and greater prosHoly Spirit to ask for money, is a very good indication perity, if only they exercise faith. And the way you that this was not an uncommon occurrence. exercise your faith in these circles is to part with your to faith. God’s power was so clearly manifest in Ephesus hard-earned greenbacks. That which you treasure the that people were healed simply by touching handkerchiefs most becomes the measure of your faith. And since you and aprons that Paul had touched. We read that demons cannot give your money to God directly, you give your fled in terror and that many who witnessed this money to God through the auspices of the manifestation of the kingdom of God subsequently healer/prosperity preacher. extolled the name of Jesus. Just as some in the early church were doing, a number But others saw this manifestation of the power of God of our contemporaries use the healing power of God as the as a “golden” opportunity. Seeing in the ministry of Paul means to solve people’s problems and alleviate their a model for their own personal gain, the seven sons of suffering. They claim to control this power because they Sceva likewise sought to perform exorcisms in the name of have supposedly mastered those divine laws of healing this Jesus “whom Paul proclaims.” As we read in verse 15, and prosperity that enable those with faith to receive the much to their chagrin, one of the demons these seven men desired outcome. Many of these healers and prosperity attempted to cast out “answered them, ‘Jesus I know, and preachers own expensive jet-aircraft and live in absolute Paul I recognize, but who are you?’ And the man in whom luxury, the “proof” that the laws of divine prosperity was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them actually work—at least for those who claim to have and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house mastered them and who claim they can teach these laws naked and wounded.” In attempting to use the power of to others, for a price of course. God for personal gain, these men ended up on the short While critics of the prosperity gospel (both within and end of a good old-fashioned whipping. So much for their without the church) call attention to what would seem to foolish attempt to use the name of Jesus to serve their own be obvious—these men are getting rich off the gospel— ends! God will not be mocked. their critics often miss the obvious. Of course, they are That people in the post-apostolic period continued to use getting rich from the gospel! That’s the whole point. It is the name of Jesus for personal gain can be seen in the hard to tell others how to be prosperous if you yourself warning set forth in the Didache (“Teaching”), which was show no signs of mastering the laws of prosperity. A poor likely written around the end of the first century. Readers prosperity preacher, or a sick faith-healer, is someone in of the Didache are warned that “whoever says in the Spirit, need of a new career! The irony is that the more ‘give me money,’ or anything else [like that], do not listen audacious the preacher/healer is in extending promises of to him.” While the seven sons of Sceva operated on the health, wealth, and happiness, the more ostentatious they fringe of the church, the warning found in the Didache must be. This is why these preachers shamelessly flaunt indicates some were using the gospel ministry itself as a their lavish lifestyles in the face of those poor suffering means of personal gain. The fact that in the earliest days of people who seek them out. The garish excess is the proof the church Christians were being warned about men that these preachers do indeed practice what they preach within the church who would claim the leading or the and that they know what they are talking about—“how to prompting of the Holy Spirit to ask for money, is a very get more from God.” good indication that this was not an uncommon It should come as no surprise to those who know the occurrence. The author of the Didache warns Christians not New Testament that there are people preaching Christ for to heed these appeals, because it should be clear to anyone personal gain. Paul warned us that this would be the case with a modicum of Bible knowledge and common sense (Phil. 1:15–18). From the time of the early church until that the Holy Spirit would not lead anyone to do this. the end of the age, Paul warns, people will attempt to The shameless appeal mentioned in the Didache is not tickle itching ears. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul bound to the post-apostolic age. We can see similar warns his young pastor friend that in the last days “there appeals today on Christian television, in churches, hotel will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of meeting rooms, and convention centers where faithself, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient healers and prosperity preachers promise their eager to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, audiences that God will heal and/or bless them—if only unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not those in attendance prove they have enough faith by loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit,

The fact that in the earliest days of the church Christians

1 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

U S I N G

lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people” (2 Tim. 3:1–5). We can find almost every one of these “difficulties” somewhere in the contemporary church. There is a selfesteem gospel for those who are proud because they love themselves. There is a prosperity gospel for those who love money. There is a healing gospel for those not content to accept the will of God should he bring suffering into their lives. And those preaching these gospels seem to be doing quite well in difficult times, thank you. Preachers who seek to preach to the proud have an eager audience and can preach of a God who is there to meet all their needs. If promising health and prosperity is an obvious (albeit tragic) way to turn God into a product to sell to eager consumers, selling salvation is surely the lowest form of the sinful attempt to use God for sinful ends. Promising health and wealth to desperate people is one thing. Promising to ensure the salvation of lost loved ones, or shortening their time in purgatory, is quite another. One of the most infamous religious hucksters of all time was Martin Luther’s adversary, John Tetzel (1465–1519). Tetzel was a Dominican friar best known for what is perhaps the most notorious commercial jingle of all time, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Tetzel was zealously raising funds from German peasants to be used for the construction of the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. To enhance sales of his indulgences—for which he claimed papal endorsement—Tetzel even prepared a chart showing the amount of money required to shorten the time in purgatory for each particular sin someone was known to have committed. Luther was sufficiently angered by Tetzel’s antics that he posted his famous 95 Theses on the university chapel door in Wittenberg. So egregious were Tetzel’s methods that the Roman church roundly condemned his actions. While historians quibble about whether or not Luther exaggerated Tetzel’s offenses and whether or not Rome really opposed what Tetzel was doing, the fact of the matter is that John Tetzel has become the poster-boy for preachers who promise salvation in exchange for money. While Tetzel is perhaps the most notable case of using God for personal gain, some of our own contemporaries have come rather close. When the Assemblies of God tried to block Jimmy Swaggart from returning to the pulpit after a number of very public and embarrassing sexual peccadilloes, Swaggart proclaimed that “if I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.” Such hubris shocks us. And then there was Oral Robert’s notorious 1987 fund-raising drive in which Roberts announced to his television audience that unless he raised $8 million by that March, God would “call him home.” Reportedly, the appeal generated $9.1 million in gifts from people wanting to prolong Roberts’ life. Swaggart and Roberts were not selling salvation per se, but

G O D

they were clearly using the salvation of others as a form of blackmail to further their ministry’s fund-raising, and in Swaggart’s case, to keep his face before the camera. Because Tetzel’s, Swaggart’s, and Robert’s antics were so repugnant, they make easy targets. Their attempts to use their sacred calling for personal gain are easy to see, as their motives are hardly hidden. But another instance where people seek to use God in dangerous ways often goes unnoticed by many—especially by those Christians who find ethics and politics far more interesting (and in some cases, far more important) than theology. I’m thinking of those cases in which groups of people seek to use God for their collective (and most often political) ends. One manifestation of this tendency to use God on a grand scale is that of religious nationalism, in which the unofficial national motto is “God is on our side.” The corollary of such a statement is obvious. Those who hold to such notions tend to see their national identity as inseparable from the larger kingdom and purposes of God. To put it in more concrete terms, if theirs is a Christian nation, it must logically follow that their nation’s actions are almost always justified. After all, God is on their side. Sadly, a number of American Christians have been prone to this way of thinking. While the Bible clearly teaches that God ordains all the affairs of men and nations (e.g., Job 12:23; Ps. 33:10; Dan. 2:37; Acts 17:26), since the time of the New Covenant and the Jewish Diaspora, no nation on earth can claim to be the apple of God’s eye and the exclusive focus of his divine purposes. In this sense, America is no more of a “Christian nation” than is Saudi Arabia. And yet, there is also no doubt that God has blessed America with the presence of many Christians who have served as salt and light throughout our history. It is clear that God has provided our nation with countless material blessings, liberty, and economic prosperity. Furthermore, God has clearly used America to further his providential purposes. It was America that defeated the great Fascist regimes (think of Hitler’s envisioned Third Reich) and it was America that ultimately brought an end to Soviet Communism. Just as pride exists in sinful individuals, it exists in nations. The danger in using God in this way is that people invoke “Christian America”—if you wish, you can substitute any other nation here—over against those “pagan” and godless nations they happen to oppose. “God is on our side” easily becomes the moral justification for military and/or political action on virtually any scale. Yes, God’s favor is invoked when the cause may be just and right. But this can also be done when the cause may be nothing but sinful national interest. Sadly, people who think that God is on their side because of national identity have trouble making the important distinction between God’s providential purposes and some sort of divine right attached to their national identity. It is also important to consider the corollary I mentioned earlier. When God is used in this manner, those who are not on “God’s side” are easily demonized on N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 13

a national basis. They are considered “godless” and beyond the blessing and favor of God. The Scriptures can be twisted so that their opponents become the modern Amalekites, Canaanites, and Jebusites, subject to the just judgment of God, just as God commanded Joshua to do when Israel entered Canaan. While Israel was a theocracy with a type of Christ (Joshua) serving as its covenant mediator and military leader, those categories cannot be transferred to contemporary situations without grave theological error and a serious misapplication of the biblical narrative. It is to use God in the worst possible way, when he becomes a mascot for national interest and as an excuse for all kinds of nefarious behavior. Because of their designs of world conquest and their subjugation of countless millions of people, as Americans we had every right—indeed it was our national duty—to oppose the despotic Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. But we could not do so as “Christian America” righteously fighting against godless tyrants. America went to war against Germany, Italy, and Japan because they attacked sovereign nations and sought world domination. Just as we have the obligation to defend our families from grave danger, so too nations have the obligation to defend themselves against hostile invaders who seek their subjugation and/or elimination. But this is not the same thing as invoking God as our defender on a national basis, because we are supposedly his people and our national purpose is identified with his. The nationalist who uses God proclaims “God will smite our enemies” before taking up the sword in his righteous cause, while the Christian should pray “thy will be done” before he takes up his. The point is that God is not an American. He is not Dutch or German. He is not Irish or Italian. We cannot invoke him as the king and defender of our nation, although his providential purposes may indeed be to preserve us and use our nation to further his mysterious ends. To invoke God as our national defender is an especially egregious example of using God to further sinful and proud human ends. While Israel could invoke the name of Yhwh as defender under the terms of the covenant God made with them at Mount Sinai, we cannot. It is that simple. The same “God is on our side” motto surely is at work in much of contemporary American politics. Yes, God has spoken about many moral issues in his Word, and yes, every Christian votes as a Christian citizen of a secular nation. And yet in many instances, well-intended Christians frame political debate in the same terms described above. This thinking runs as follows: Since certain candidates support particular moral issues, then it is often implied “God is on their side.” Again, the corollary is clear. God does not favor those candidates who don’t support a particular moral issue. They can be demonized as those who oppose God and his kingdom. The irony is that it is possible that the former candidate might not be a Christian and yet stand on the right side of a certain moral issue, while the latter just may be a believer who does not 1 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

yet see the full implications of those things taught in God’s Word. But then, this is what happens when we use God to political ends. Instead of letting God be God, our sinful pride leads us to make such pronouncements that are not ours to make. In these cases, God is not sovereign, he is a mascot. Aside from the fact that God raises up rulers and uses them to further his providential purposes—Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, and Herod come to mind—to invoke the “God is on our side” motto in the midst of political discourse is surely to use God in a crass manner. Some of these moral issues that just happen to be the subject of political debate—say, pro-life issues, the sanctity of marriage, and so on—take on great significance, since God’s word speaks very directly to these matters. Others are not quite in the same category—such as tax policy, national defense, education, and more. Surely when God has spoken it is a sin to ignore what he says and not apply our knowledge of God’s will to our thinking and doing. But is it not a sin to elevate something about which God has not specifically spoken to the status of the former, and then to use these things to demonize a political opponent? Not only does this “God is on our side” mindset generate great animus and polarization in public discourse (political debate becomes the righteous against the unrighteous), it surely cheapens God’s reputation before the watching world. When God becomes the mascot for our cause, we are shamelessly using him for our own sinful purposes. We attempt to diminish his person and his power. In our minds, the sovereign becomes the subject, his power is a means to an end. And that end is our own self-centered and distorted perspective as individuals or nations. If pride is a result of the Fall, then using God for selfinterest is the tragic fruit of our sinful nature. It is just as Paul said, we claim to be wise but in actuality we are fools. We all do it, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes intentionally. That is why we must do everything in our power to focus on the greatness of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. Focusing upon a great God who does as he pleases keeps us in our place. And focusing upon the cross of Christ reminds us of the cost God paid to forgive us for all of those times we sought to use him and his power for our own sinful ends. ■

Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ Reformed Church (Anaheim, California) and co-host of the White Horse Inn radio program.

USING GOD

Can We Give God Glory? T

he Jewish historian Josephus recounts the sight of Herod’s temple before its destruction. As the sun rose, its gilded surface became so brilliant that pilgrims could see it from miles away as they approached the city. Isaiah 60 envisions a still more remarkable scene. The context is the Babylonian exile. Here Zion is lying in sackcloth and ashes, mourning her exile, longing for redemption and restoration. The Spirit of Glory having evacuated the sanctuary, Solomon’s great temple itself lies in ruins, claimed (like Eden) by weeds and thorns. In chapter 59, the people had presumed to put God on trial, but as covenant attorney the prophet reverses the charges presenting the people’s own eyes, ears, hands, tongues, and feet as evidence of their disloyalty to the covenant. The people finally confess their sins and that unfaithfulness lies with them rather than with their Covenant Lord. It is because of their sins that they are “like blind men groping in the dark” (Isa. 59:9). However, as often happens in Isaiah (and in the prophetic writings generally), after law there is always gospel. Where the people finally realize their guilt and the Judge becomes the Redeemer, there is the marvelous prophecy of a great sunrise. The prophet declares, “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Just as in Ezekiel 37, where the prophet preaches to the dry bones in the valley and they come to life, here God speaks through the prophet and there appears the reality of which he speaks. The condition is like that of the first creation. Darkness and void cover the whole earth, not just Jerusalem, and God declares, “Let there be light!” God is not asking the light to appear or fanning existing

embers into a brilliant flame. Nor is he giving Israel the conditions it must meet in order for God’s light to dawn. God said “Let there be light” when there was only darkness; he spoke life into Sarah’s barren womb, and his Word became flesh in the womb of a Jewish virgin above all natural processes of conception. It is this divine speech that declares the wicked to be just and then makes them so, the declaration that transfers us from lo-ammi (notmy-people) to the chosen people of God (1 Pet. 2:9–10). In fact, Paul compared God’s declaration in justification to God’s “Let there be light!” In both cases, God “gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” He “was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he [God] had promised he was also able to perform. And therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us” (Rom. 4:17–23). Israel Is the Moon, Not the Sun ack to Isaiah 60. “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” But not quite yet: “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the LORD will arise over you, and his glory will be seen upon you” (v. 1). Zion has no resources for “rising” and “shining,” yet she does arise and shine because her light has come. Zion is the moon, reflecting the radiance of the

by Michael Horton

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 15

was made that is made.” Just at the time when God’s people, like the world the “children of light,” living stones that, far more than generally, was stumbling around in the dark, John the golden surface of the earthly temple, collectively announces, “In him was life and the life was the light of yield a glow to the ships of distant shores, beckoning men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the them to the feast on God’s holy hill. darkness did not comprehend it…. And the Word became sun. She has no inherent radiance; she is in no sense a flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory source of light, even a lesser source. The glory of the one as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” is qualitatively, not just quantitatively, different. Only (John 1:4, 14). He is the Sun. He is the Word spoken by the when the sun rises upon her, declaring the darkness to be Father that creates a world out of nothing but sin and death. over and the morning to dawn, does God’s holy people Commenting on Isaiah 60, Calvin writes, “Isaiah alludes begin to reflect his glory. Nevertheless, the glory that to the dawn; for, as the morning star begins the day in one shines upon Zion is not something creaturely; it is the very quarter of heaven, and immediately the sun enlightens the glory of God himself. The sunrise reveals a remarkable whole world, so the daybreak was first in Judea, from scene: Gentiles streaming into the light, kings into its which the light arose, and then was diffused throughout brightness. the whole world; for there is no corner of the earth which God is the light; his people are reflectors. God is the the Lord has not enlightened by this light.” The Puritan Redeemer; we are the redeemed. The church is always on Thomas Goodwin put it in these terms: “God hath made the receiving end of God’s activity. “The LORD will arise a new world, whereof Jesus Christ is its Sun.” over you and his glory will be seen upon you.” Zion, the He is the temple, the high priest, and the sacrifice; but ruined city, the mother now barren and bereaved of her we are his living stones, reflecting his light. If Israel had no children, the desolate city, is a ghost town now, but in this inherent light to offer the world, how much less do we new creation she will be a glorious city, inhabited not only who are Gentiles have a cause to boast? by a returning remnant of Israelites consecrated to the Lord, but by a remnant from all the nations of the earth— Coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed including the ones that have oppressed her (see also Isa. by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, 19). New creation language converges with new exodus as living stones, are being built up into a spiritual language, as we see repeatedly in the Servant Songs of house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual Isaiah (see especially Isa. 48:12–16, 20–22; 49:1–7, 11–13). sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ . . . Zion’s radiant face, beaming with excitement at hosting that you may proclaim the praises of him who called this global festival with kings and their people bringing you out of darkness into his marvelous light. You treasures makes her heart pound with joy and amazement once were not a people, but are now the people of at what the Lord has done. The kings are coming not to God; you had once not received mercy, but now Zion itself, but to the Messiah, the source of Zion’s light: have obtained mercy. (1 Pet. 2:4–10) “You are my Servant … a light to the Gentiles” (Isa. 42:6). Their sacrifices of praise are now accepted (v. 7). Because the light has shone upon Zion, adds Peter, “I beg Zechariah 1:7 similarly declares, “Be silent in the presence you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts of God. For the day of the Lord is at hand. For the LORD that war against the soul, maintaining honorable conduct has prepared a sacrifice, he has invited his guests.” Isaiah among the Gentiles, so that when they speak against you 60 prophesies nothing less than a new creation, with the as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they procession of the creature-kings before the Great King observe, glorify God in the day of visitation” (vv. 11–12). who is enthroned in his Sabbath splendor (vv. 13–16). At Christ is the Sun; we are the moon, lying in darkness the heart of this Sabbath-life is righteousness, both in until he rises upon us. By virtue of our union with him, relation to God and neighbor (vv. 17–18). God will finally we are called the “children of light,” living stones that, far dwell forever in the midst of his people, as their light and more than the golden surface of the earthly temple, their righteousness (vv. 19–22). collectively yield a glow to the ships of distant shores, beckoning them to the feast on God’s holy hill. Finally, in Your Light Has Come! Revelation 21:22–25, there is the vision of the end-time eminiscent of Genesis 1 as well as Isaiah 60, John sanctuary, with no temple, sun or moon, because “the begins his Gospel with the announcement, “In the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple [and] the beginning was the Word and the Word was with Lamb is its light….And the nations [of those who are God and the Word was God. And without him nothing saved] shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth

By virtue of our union with Christ, we are called

1 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

C A N

bring their glory [and honor] into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there).” Reflecting God’s Glory in Our High Calling in Christ o what do you give someone who already has everything? No one can give God a gift. Even if we did everything he commanded, it would still not constitute anything over and beyond the call of duty. Unlike the gods of the nations (including our own) that can be manipulated, nothing we do can put God in our debt. “For who has ever given him anything that he should repay him? For of him and through him and to him are all things, to whom be the glory forever” (Rom. 11:35–36). Not a single ray of God’s glory would be diminished without us. Nevertheless, God has created a choir for his praise— image-bearers who are being re-created in Christ, who is “the image of the invisible God” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:15, 19). God has chosen us in Christ, redeemed us by Christ, and called us into union with Christ, so that, in Calvin’s words, “in a certain sense, God has bound up his own glory with the church’s salvation.” God’s Word alone brings salvation (sola scriptura), a salvation that is by God’s grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide), in Christ alone (solus Christus), so that God may receive all the glory (soli Deo gloria). Idolaters lay their works and goods at the feet of their speechless idols and many professing Christians around the world turn God into an idol that they think they can pacify and control; but as Paul announced to the Athenians, “God, who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is he worshiped with human hands, as though he needed anything, since he is the one who gives life, breath, and all things.” In fact, it is this God who raised his Son, Jesus Christ, from the dead (Acts 17:22–31). This is bad news for the human ego, but great news for image-bearers who are weary of trying to make themselves suns. Although we cannot give God anything that would improve his lot or make him indebted to us, God has given us everything necessary for life and salvation, and he makes us means through whom he gives temporal blessings to our neighbors. If we give God glory and praise, it is only as a mirror reflecting his face, a moon reflecting his light. Therefore, we no longer serve God as debtors but glorify God as witnesses. Witnesses are not the main story; they only report it. They give public testimony to what they have seen and heard. The mirror does not make the image, but only reflects it. It tells the truth, but doesn’t create it. This is what it means to belong to that great cast of characters or “cloud of witnesses” that Isaiah prophesied. That is what it means to give God glory. Not giving him our good works as a bribe to justice, but “letting [our] light so shine before men that they may see [our] good works

W E

G I V E

G O D

G L O R Y ?

and glorify [our] Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Notice the difference between the reflection and the Light itself, as John the Baptist realized when he pointed away from himself to the Lamb. “This man came for a witness,” says the evangelist, “to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness to that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to everyone coming into the world” (John 1:6–9). John gave his witness to the Pharisees, announcing that he was simply the one who was preparing the way for the Christ. “It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose” (v. 27). As the story unfolds, the witnesses multiply. With all due respect to Sunday school teachers everywhere, Jesus does not want you “for a sunbeam”; he wants you for a moon. He wants witnesses who point away from themselves to him and to his achievements for the redemption of the ungodly and the restoration of creation at the end of the age. It is not surprising, then, that the Great Commission, like the Great Mandate of our creation—but even greater—is to be made Christ’s witnesses to the end of the earth (Matt. 24:14; Acts 22:15). “Who will go for us?” God asks the heavenly court in Isaiah 6. No wonder Isaiah, after being faced with his sinfulness and then assured of pardon, responded, “Here I am, LORD. Send me!” “How blessed on the hills are the feet of those who bring good news!” When Jesus commissions his disciples to go as reflectors reaching outward to the ends of the earth, he bases this imperative on the prior declaration, “Let there be light!” First drawing them into the light of his gospel, he made them a light to the nations. Therefore, this mission is assured of its success. For it was he who declared, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” “Arise, shine; for your light has come!” Reflecting God’s Glory in Our Secular Callings n Romans 4, Paul tells us that we are justified through faith alone so that it may be by grace alone so that, finally, we may “give glory to God” alone (v. 20). Historians have frequently observed that the Reformation brought enormous vitality for ordinary life in its wake. It did not set out to transform culture but to bear witness to the light of the gospel that had been eclipsed in the dark night of superstition and ignorance. Nevertheless, it liberated believers to pursue their callings in the world. Instead of putting the monk, nun, or priest on the pedestal, it celebrated family life. It called saints into the world, not away from it, as light in the darkness. Think of J. S. Bach, who signed his compositions—both secular and ecclesiastical—with the Reformation slogan, soli Deo gloria,

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 17

should stop talking about themselves. God is far more interesting. This, in fact, we find our neighbors a delightful treasure. No longer was God’s rebuke to Israel in its proud harlotry: “Your is the neighbor seen as an opportunity for us to fame went out among the nations because of your score points, but as the object of our love. It is the beauty, but it was perfect through my splendor which gospel that motivates this love. I had bestowed on you” (Ezek. 16:14). and even had it carved into the organ at Leipzig. I was Under the law, in Adam, one is trapped in the cycle of struck, in visiting the old sections of Heidelberg and sin and death, resentment and despair, self-righteousness Amsterdam, to see this slogan carved even above taverns. and self-condemnation. Yet under grace, in Christ, one is Wherever the Reformation gathered support, there was a not only justified apart from the law but is able for the first disproportionate influence on every area of culture. Not only time to respond to that law of love that calls from the families, but guilds, universities, societies for the promotion deepest recesses of our being as covenantally constituted of the arts and sciences, hospitals, and missions flourished. creatures. It is not the law itself that changes, but our Gustav Wingren nicely summarizes Luther’s concern relation to it that makes all the difference. A new day has with the neighbor as the recipient of the believer’s good dawned on this side of the resurrection, and through faith works. Instead of living in monasteries, committing in Christ the law no longer takes on an awful specter, their lives in service to themselves and their own exciting sin and leading to judgment. Notice how John salvation, Luther argues believers should love and serve speaks of the law here as the same, yet because of Christ, their neighbors through their vocations in the world, in a sense, new: where their neighbors need them. “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”1 “When one Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, presents works before God in the kingdom of heaven, but an old commandment that you have had from God’s order is disrupted in both realms,” Wingren the beginning; the old commandment is the word summarizes. Offering our own works to God is in effect that you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new to try to “depose Christ from his throne,” while it also commandment that is true in him and in you, deprives our neighbors of good works since they are because the darkness is passing away and the true light done “not for the sake of one’s neighbor, but to parade is already shining. Whoever says, “I am in the before God.”2 In this way, no one is actually served. light,” while hating a brother or sister, is still in the “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and comes darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no in the light, and in such a person there is no cause variation or shadow of turning. He brought us forth by for stumbling.…I am writing to you, little the word of truth, to be a kind of firstfruits of creation” children, because your sins are forgiven on account of (James 1:17–18). On the basis of this indicative (the his name. I am writing to you, fathers, because vertical line pointing downward from God), James you know him who is from the beginning. I am follows with the imperative (horizontal line) to be doers writing to you, young people, because you have as well as hearers of the Word, caring for our neighbors conquered the evil one. I write to you, children, (vv. 21–27). God descends to serve humanity through because you know the Father….I write to you, our vocations, so instead of seeing good works as our young people, because you are strong and the word works for God, they are now to be seen as God’s work of God abides in you, and you have overcome the for our neighbor, which God performs through us. In evil one. (1 John 2:7–14) this way, God is the only true giver of gifts and therefore only he deserves all the glory. Once we receive the Gift The grand indicatives here propel the imperatives, of all gifts—Jesus Christ—we find our neighbors a liberating us from being turned in on ourselves. delightful treasure. No longer is the neighbor seen as an Freedom, in the economy of this fading age, means selfopportunity for us to score points, but as the object of possession and self-determination: the ability to choose for our love. It is the gospel that motivates this love. oneself apart from any external constraints. God’s Word, Because the Light has arisen upon us, we can begin to by contrast, exposes this autonomous freedom as the reflect that light as his moon. original bondage of humanity as, in Augustine’s apt We do not “live the gospel.” The gospel is good news phrase, “curved in on itself,” as the gospel frees us to look because it’s about Christ and his work, not about us and up to the Sun of mercy in faith and out to our neighbor in our work. If Christians and churches want to create love. “But what is this strange gift of evangelical “buzz” in the culture and generate conversation, they freedom?” asks John Webster.

Once we receive the Gift of all gifts—Jesus Christ—

1 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

C A N

It is a strange gift because it can only be known and exercised as we are converted from a lie—the lie that liberty is unformed and unconstrained selfactualization. It is evangelical because it is grounded in the joyful reversal and reconstitution of the human situation of which the gospel speaks. We may define it thus: In evangelical freedom I am so bound to God’s grace and God’s call that I am liberated from all other bonds and set free to live in the truth. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Rom. 8:2)3 Yet in the context of American religion, which Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as “Protestantism without the Reformation,” these insights are often muted at best.4 Justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is not only the basis for our salvation; it is the motive for glorifying God and enjoying him forever—in fulfillment of the whole purpose for which we were created. As G. C. Berkouwer once quipped, “Grace is the essence of theology and gratitude is the essence of ethics.” Interpreting Lutheran ethicist Paul Lehmann, Philip G. Ziegler adds, An ethic of justification will be one that “takes seriously the activity of the God who acts,” since the advent of justification establishes the reality—the moral field—within which the question of ethics is to be firmly set. Justification, says Lehmann following Calvin closely at this point, is that act of God by which our “true position in the world—as a pilgrim between creation and redemption—is put within the orbit of [human] knowledge and behaviour in the world.” It is the task of Christian ethics therefore to raise the question of the good and the right in light of the “disconcerting consequences” of God’s gracious action for the human creature in Jesus Christ. The repentance that flows from faith in this regard, transforms worry about virtue into desire for obedience, the strictures of duty into the gift of vocation.5

W E

G I V E

G O D

G L O R Y ?

our heart’s delight. We can at last glorify and enjoy God in our praise of his grace and in our love for our neighbors. God declares to you even now, in your native darkness, “Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.” ■

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California).

WORKS CITED 1 Gustav Wingren, Luther on Vocation, trans. Carl C. Rasmussen (Evansville, Ind.: Ballast Press, 1994; reprinted from Augsburg-Fortress edition), p. 10. 2 Wingren, pp. 13, 31. 3 John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 92–93. 4 Philip G. Ziegler, “Justification and Justice” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, eds. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004), p. 119, citing “Protestantism without the Reformation” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1928–1936, ed. Edwin H. Robertson, trans. Edwin H. Robertson and John Bowden (London: Collins, 1965), pp. 92–118. 5 Ziegler, p. 128. The author also recommends Gene Edward Veith, God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2002).

Speaking Of…

he poets are more correct who acknowledge that all which is suggested by nature comes from God;

that all the arts emanate from Him, and therefore ought to be accounted divine inventions. —John Calvin

Do you see how God’s unilateral gift sets into motion gift-giving between human beings? We do not serve God (Acts 17:25), but God serves us and, through us, our neighbors. We have no debts to God that he has not already paid. In this scheme, our praise is directed upward, exclusively to God, but there is literally nowhere for our works to go but outward to the world. God’s works come down to us, and our works go out to our neighbor in need. Apart from the gospel, when we hear that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever,” our consciences are overwhelmed with dread. Yet when in Christ we are liberated from trying to give something to God rather than reflect his lavish benevolence, it becomes

Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart; Not thankful when it pleaseth me, As if Thy blessings had spare days, But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise. —-George Herbert

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 19

“To the Glory of God and the Restoration of the Heart” Worship and Theology in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach by Patricia Anders Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage, Rühmet, was heute der Höchste getan! Lasset das Zagen, verbannet die Klage, Stimmet voll Jauchzen und Fröhlichkeit an! Dienet dem Höchsten mit herrlichen Chören, Laßt uns den Namen des Herrschers verehren! Rejoice, exult! Up, glorify the days, praise what the All Highest this day has done! Set aside fear, banish lamentation, strike up a song full of joy and mirth! Serve the All Highest with glorious choirs! Let us worship the name of the Lord! (“For the First Day of Christmas”1) Johann Sebastian Bach was born March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Germany, into a family of respected composers and musicians, to which he continued the legacy through two of his 20 children (Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Christian). It may seem strange to us that in his day Johann Sebastian was known primarily as an organist and not for his some 60 volumes of music—only nine or ten compositions were actually published during his lifetime. After Bach’s death in 1750, his music was soon considered old-fashioned. Mozart appreciated Bach, but it was not until Felix Mendelssohn revived a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829 that his genius was finally recognized. Mendelssohn and other Romantic composers discovered in Bach not only forgotten values but a personal humanity that struck a chord within their own sensitive souls. That these values and experiences are so completely connected to the Word of God is what has given Bach a place among the best of the religious composers. Although Bach was born nearly 140 years after the death of Luther, he followed closely in the musical footsteps of the Reformation. Friedrich Smend, theologian and musicologist, says that Bach’s cantatas “are not intended to be works of music or art on their own, but to carry on, by their own means, the work of Luther, the preaching of the word and nothing but the word.” Martin J. Naumann in “Bach the Preacher” eloquently agrees: “We do not hear the sermons of Luther. We read them as we read the sermons of other great preachers who have long since joined the Church triumphant. We do, however, hear Bach’s sermons. The works of other great musicians speak to us, but the works of Bach preach to us. These sermons, his cantatas, and particularly his St. Matthew Passion, proclaim the glory of the God of the Bible in a thousand voices.”2 2 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

This godly characteristic of Bach’s music takes on even greater importance in that his was a voice for the Reformation during the Aufklärung—the period of the German Enlightenment following the Thirty Years War— when previously accepted doctrine, such as the Trinity and salvation through Christ, came under attack. At the same time that Bach was composing and performing, some of the most influential early Enlightenment thinkers were having a strong impact upon the intellectual world: Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Newton and Reimarus (the German deist who was the first to assert a division between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith). As Bach lived and worked within the very heart of these new challenges to the Christian faith, it is not surprising that he turned to Luther in an effort to remain orthodox in his own musical context. Bach agreed with Luther that after theology music should have the “highest place and the greatest honor.”3 Consequently, Bach understood the importance of proper theology in music. It was not enough for him that his music stirred the soul, but that the words were also doctrinally sound according to Scripture—and therefore in keeping with the accepted creeds of the Church as well as with Lutheran theology. One of the highlights of his Mass in B Minor is the magnificent musical setting of the Nicene Creed. An example of this passion for orthodox teaching is found within Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1729). His most famous part, “O bleeding head and wounded,” comes from a medieval poem Salve caput cruentatum (“Hail, head, stained with blood”) that some attribute to Bernard of Clairvaux; but the text can also be traced to Anselm of Canterbury and his Cur deus homo (“Why God Became Man”) where emphasis is placed upon the sacrificial atoning death of Christ. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, “Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion may be seen as the most powerful vindication ever composed of that medieval theory.” To this important theology Bach adds his heartrending musical setting that translates our grief and sorrow through godly repentance. Who can keep from tears when hearing or singing these ancient words? O bleeding head and wounded, With grief and shame weighted down, Now scornfully surrounded With thorns, Thine only crown. O sacred head, what glory, What bliss, till now was Thine! Yet, tho’ despised and gory, I joy to call Thee mine. Although the St. Matthew and St. John passions are magnificent in their own right, it is Bach’s Mass in B Minor

(which he began in 1733) that culminates a lifetime of work and faith. Many have hailed this as the greatest work ever written, transcending boundaries of time or place. Musicologist Christoph Wolff writes: “Such an undertaking could not but be close to Bach’s heart, for it was the supreme opportunity to unite his creed as a Christian with his creed as a musician in a single statement.”4 The most important goal for Bach in his music was that it glorified God. When Bach began a piece, he wrote “JJ” for “Jesu, Juva!” (“Jesus, help!”); and when he finished, he inscribed “SDG” for “Soli Deo Gloria” (“To God alone be the glory!”).5 The Reformation not only influenced Bach’s musical content but also music itself within the context of the Church. As seen in the excerpt from the St. Matthew Passion and in the passage below from his Christmas Oratorio, the genius of Bach is that he knew how to musically transform words to move the Christian’s will and heart to worship. Jesu, my joy and bliss, my hope, treasure and lot, my Redeemer, defence and Salvation, Shepherd and King, light and sun! Oh, how shall I worthily, praise Thee, My Lord Jesus? I will live only to glorify Thee; my Saviour, give me strength and courage, that my heart may so do right zealously. Strengthen me, that I may worthily and with gratitude, extol Thy goodness. Bach wrote to his students that they should play their instruments “so that a sweet-sounding harmony may result to the glory of God and for an allowable delight of the heart. And as in the case of all music, so also the purpose and final goal…should be nothing else but only the glory of God and the restoration of the heart [Recreation des Gemüths]. Where this is not observed, there you have no real music, only devilish bleating and harping.”6 This echoes Luther’s comments in his preface to the first evangelical hymnal (1524) and as recorded in ‘Table Talk’: “God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling Him…. St. Paul encouraged the use of music in order that through it the Word of God and Christian doctrine might be preached, taught, and put into practice…. The whole purpose of harmony is the glory of God; all other use is but the idle juggling of Satan.”7 This is the reason Bach wrote “Jesu, Juva!” at the beginning and “Soli Deo Gloria!” at the end of each work—whether sacred music written for the Church or secular music composed

for nobility. This consistent objective shows that Bach understood the chief end of humanity: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Bach would be pleased that his music is not only still performed today on a regular basis (our church recently gave a soul-stirring performance of his Mass in B Minor), but is as close to us as our stereo (or even as a downloadable file from the Internet!). He would be more pleased, however, if in his music God continues to be truly glorified and our own hearts restored as we join Johann Sebastian and the choir universal in communal worship. This is something we can experience this season in his Christmas Oratorio—which is not so much a straightforward retelling of the Christmas story as worshipful meditations on the wonder of Christ’s birth and atonement for our sins. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying: Glory be to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. Then fittingly, you angels, rejoice and sing, that things turn out so favorably for us this day. Up then! We will join in with you, for we can rejoice just as you. We sing to Thee in Thy host with all our might and main: praise, honour and glory, that Thou, o long-desired Guest, hast now appeared.

Patricia Anders is managing editor of Modern Reformation.

WORKS CITED: 1 John Eliot Gardiner, dir., Christmas Oratorio, by Johann Sebastian Bach, The Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists (London: Archiv Produktion, 1987). 2 Jaroslav Pelikan, Bach among the Theologians (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987). 3 Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Mentor Book/New American Library, 1950). 4 Christoph Wolff, “The Kantor, the Kapellmeister and the Musical Scholar: Remarks on the History and Performance of Bach’s Mass in B Minor,” John Eliot Gardiner, dir., Mass in B Minor, by Johann Sebastian Bach, The Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists (London: Archiv Produktion, 1985). 5 Pelikan. 6 Günther Stiller, Johann Sebastian Bach and the Liturgical Life in Leipzig (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1984). 7 Wilfrid Mellers, Bach and the Dance of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 21

USING GOD

Our Calling and

God’s Glory by Gene Edward Veith Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned him, and to which God has called him. 1 Corinthians 7:17

“Justification by faith alone” is surely the most important contribution of the Reformation. The second most important, arguably, is the “doctrine of vocation.” Whereas the doctrine of justification has wide currency, the doctrine of vocation has been all but forgotten. The word vocation can still be heard sometimes, but the concept is generally misunderstood or incompletely understood. The doctrine of vocation is not 2 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

O U R

“occupationalism,” a particular focus upon one’s job. The term means “calling,” but it does not have to do with God’s voice summoning you to do a great work for him. It does not mean serving God by evangelizing on the job. Nor does the doctrine of vocation mean that everyone is a minister, though it is about the priesthood of all believers. It does not even mean doing everything for God’s glory, or doing our very best as a way to glorify God, though it is about God’s glory, at the expense of our own. The doctrine of vocation is the theology of the Christian life. It solves the much-vexed problems of the relationship between faith and works, Christ and culture, how Christians are to live in the world. Less theoretically, vocation is the key to strong marriages and successful parenting. It contains the Christian perspective on politics and government. It shows the value, as well as the limits, of the secular world. And it shows Christians the meaning of their lives. The Swedish theologian Einar Billing, in his book Our Calling, noted how our tendency is to look for our religion in the realm of the extraordinary, rather than in the ordinary.1 In vocation, however, God is hidden even in the mundane activities of our everyday lives. And this is his glory. Luther’s Doctrine of Vocation o understand fully the doctrine of vocation, one should begin not with the Puritans—who tended to turn the doctrine of vocation into a work ethic—but with Luther and with Lutherans, from the composers of the Book of Concord to modern theologians such as Billing and Gustaf Wingren. It goes something like this: When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And he does. The way he gives us our daily bread is through the vocations of farmers, millers, and bakers. We might add truck drivers, factory workers, bankers, warehouse attendants, and the lady at the checkout counter. Virtually every step of our whole economic system contributes to that piece of toast you had for breakfast. And when you thanked God for the food that he provided, you were right to do so. God could have chosen to create new human beings to populate the earth out of the dust, as he did with the first man. But instead, he chose to create new life—which, however commonplace, is no less miraculous—by means of mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, the vocations of the family. God protects us through the vocations of earthly government, as detailed in Romans 13. He gives his gifts of healing usually not through out-and-out miracles (though he can) but by means of the medical vocations. He proclaims his word by means of human pastors. He teaches by means of teachers. He creates works of beauty and meaning by means of human artists, whom he has given particular talents. Many treatments of the doctrine of vocation emphasize what we do, or are supposed to do, in our various callings.

C A L L I N G

A N D

G O D ’ S

G L O R Y

T HE FAMILY by Gene Edward Veith The family comprises many different vocations. A particular person may have, at the same time, the vocation of being the husband to his wife, a father to his children, and a son to his own parents as long as they are living. Each of these family vocations has a specific—and limited—number of neighbors who are to be loved and served according to the proper responsibilities of each calling. The vocation of marriage entails just one neighbor. The husband is to love and serve his wife. The wife is to love and serve her husband. Too often, Christians distort what the Bible teaches about the various vocations by reducing everything to power and authority: who has to obey whom? But, as Jesus teaches, that is the mindset of nonbelievers: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant” (Mark 10:42–43). How does each member of the marriage couple serve each other? Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Eph. 5:23–25) Notice how Christ is hidden in marriage. Wives love and serve their husbands by submitting to him, as to Christ. But this does not mean husbands should “lord it over” their wives. Christ does not relate to his bride the church as a tyrant or dictator. Rather, Christ “gave himself up.” Husbands are to love and serve their wives by giving themselves up for their wives. Both the husband and the wife exercise their royal priesthood by sacrificing their own needs for the other. But in that mutual selfdenial, both of their needs are met. In the vocation of parenthood, the father and mother love and serve their neighbors, namely, their children. And children are to love and serve their parents. In this vocation, too, God is hidden, as the Father and Son are the origins of human fatherhood and human childhood.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 23

T HE SOCIETY by Gene Edward Veith For all of our pretensions of independence, it is clear that God did not create us to be alone. Few people have to kill their own meat, grow their own grain, build their own houses, weave their own clothing, and protect themselves against predators, all alone. Rather, people are interdependent. Human beings always exist in cultures, and this is by God’s design. That we were born in a particular place and time is part of God’s assignment for each of us. We have a vocation as citizen. Some have a further calling as rulers. Some are subjects. In a democratic republic such as ours, the rulers are themselves subject to the people who elect them, who are therefore simultaneously subjects and rulers. Romans 13 spells out in explicit detail how God works through the agency of vocation: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. (Rom. 13:1–4) All authority belongs to God. He, in turn, institutes human authorities and works through them to restrain and to punish the most flagrant external outbreaks of sin, to make societies possible. Thus, holding governmental offices and positions in the legal system—such as judges, police officers, jailers, and even (according to Luther) executioners—are legitimate vocations for Christians to hold. So too (according to Luther), are the military vocations, those who “bear the sword” in a lawful chain of command. But rulers are to exercise their God-lent authority in love and service to their neighbors. God calls no one to be a tyrant, the sort who punishes good conduct and rewards wrongdoers. Romans 13 must not be used as a pretext for political quietism. But it leaves no doubt that God himself is present in earthly governments and that he works through human institutions.

2 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

This is part of it, as are the various aspects that I outlined above, but it is essential in grasping the magnitude of this teaching to understand first the sense in which vocation is God’s work. God is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid, said Luther. According to Luther, vocation is a “mask of God.”2 He is hidden in vocation. We see the milkmaid, or the farmer, or the doctor or pastor or artist. But, looming behind this human mask, God is genuinely present and active in what they do for us. The sense of God acting in vocation is characteristically Lutheran in the way it emphasizes that God works through physical means. Luther and his followers stress how God has chosen to bestow his spiritual gifts by means of his Word (ink on paper; the sound waves emanating from a pulpit) and Sacrament (water; bread and wine). And he bestows his earthly gifts by means of human vocations. More broadly, in terms Reformed folk can relate to, vocation is part of God’s providence. God is intimately involved in the governance of his creation in its every detail, and his activity in human labor is a manifestation of how he exercises his providential care. For a Christian, conscious of vocation as the mask of God, all of life, even the most mundane facets of our existence, become occasions to glorify God. Whenever someone does something for you—brings your meal at a restaurant, cleans up after you, builds your house, preaches a sermon—be grateful for the human beings whom God is using to bless you and praise him for his unmerited gifts. Do you savor your food? Glorify God for the hands that prepared it. Are you moved by a work of art—a piece of music, a novel, a movie? Glorify God who has given such artistic gifts to human beings. Of course, that vocation is a mask of God means that God also works through you, in your various callings. That God is hidden in what we do is often obscured by our own sinful and selfish motivations. But that does not prevent God from acting. Faith and Works as the farmer who grew the grain that went into that piece of toast I had this morning a Christian? How about the artist whose movie made such a powerful impression? I happen to know that he is not a Christian. How can I glorify God for the work— or farming—of an unbeliever? The doctrine of vocation answers that question. In his governance of the world, God uses those who do not know him, as well as those who do. Every good and perfect gift comes from God (James 1:17). But human beings sin in their vocations and sin against their vocations, resisting and fighting against God’s purpose. On the surface, there does not seem to be a great deal of difference between a Christian farmer tilling his field and a non-Christian farmer who does essentially the same thing. God can use both to bring forth daily bread, which

O U R

he, in turn, distributes to Christian and non-Christian alike. But there is a huge difference. The Christian farmer works out of faith, while the non-Christian farmer works out of unbelief. Luther actually uses two different words for what I have so far been collapsing under the general term vocation: “station” (Stand) and “calling” (Beruf). Non-Christians are given a station in life, a place where God has assigned them. Christians, though, are the ones who hear God’s voice in his Word, so they understand their station in terms of God’s personal “calling.” God’s Word calls people to faith. This is the Christian’s primary vocation, being a child of God. But God has also stationed that Christian to live a life in the world. The Christian, in faith, now understands his life and what God gives him to do as a calling from the Lord. As contemporary theologian John Pless explains it, Luther understood that the Christian is genuinely bivocational. He is called first through the Gospel to faith in Jesus Christ and he is called to occupy a particular station or place in life. The second sense of this calling embraces all that the Christian does in service to the neighbor not only in a particular occupation but also as a member of the church, a citizen, a spouse, parent, or child, and worker. Here the Christian lives in love toward other human beings and is the instrument by which God does His work in the world.3 “We conclude, therefore, that a Christian lives not in himself, but in Christ and the neighbor,” said Luther. “He lives in Christ through faith, and in his neighbor through love.”4 The Christian’s relationship to God, for Luther, has nothing to do with our good works, but everything to do with the work of Christ for our behalf. But God, having justified us freely through the Cross of Jesus Christ, calls us back into the world, changed, to love and serve our neighbors. Luther’s monastic opponents argued that we are saved by our good works, by which they meant rejecting the world, performing spiritual exercises, and by their vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience having nothing to do with “secular” vocations. But Luther denied that such private, isolated piety intended to serve God had anything to do with good works. He would ask, Who are you helping? Good works are not to be done for God. Rather, they must be done for one’s neighbor. God does not need our good works, said Wingren summarizing Luther, but our neighbor does. If you find yourself in a work by which you accomplish something good for God, or the holy, or yourself, but not for your neighbor alone, then you should know that that work is not a good work. For each one ought to live, speak, act, hear, suffer, and

C A L L I N G

A N D

G O D ’ S

G L O R Y

T HE CHURCH by Gene Edward Veith “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). And these he has placed into the church. Christ is hidden in his church, present in his Word and Sacraments, so that the church is described as the body of Christ. And it consists of individuals who are utterly different from each other, and yet, like the discrete persons of the Trinity, constitute a profound unity. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Cor. 12:19–27) The members are called to love and serve each other. The people who perform all of the seemingly mundane tasks in a local church—the musicians, the ushers, the committee members, those who prepare the fellowship dinners—are helping each other, in tangible ways, to worship God. Callings from God are also mediated. Congregations call pastors. They are to love and serve their congregations by preaching God’s Word— not their own—distributing Christ’s sacraments and giving spiritual care to Christ’s flock. Faithful pastors are channels of God’s work. Christ baptizes and distributes his body and blood through the hands of the pastor, whom he has called to this work. The typical local church may not seem to be so significant. The members squabble with each other and with their pastor, who, in turn is exasperated with his people. The sermon may be dull, the music poor, and the worship seemingly perfunctory. But behind these insignificantseeming appearances, where God’s Word is proclaimed faithfully, Christ animates his body. N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 25

Likewise, those who are fathers or mothers, who rule their households well to make ends meet, living their mundane lives “are all and who beget children for the service of God are in a state of holiness,” according to Luther, “living holy also in a truly holy estate, doing a holy work, and lives before God.” members of a holy order. In the same way when die in love and service for another, even for one’s children or servants are obedient to their parents or enemies, a husband for his wife and children, a wife masters, this also is true holiness and those living in for her husband, children for their parents, servants such estate are true saints on earth. for their masters, masters for their servants, rulers for their subjects and subjects for their rulers, so that This for Luther is the estate of the household. This one’s hand, mouth, eye, foot, heart and desire is for includes above all the family, which itself contains multiple others; these are Christian works, good in nature.5 callings: marriage, parenthood, childhood. This estate also involves the labor by which households make their livings. We sometimes talk about serving God in our vocations. Luther had in mind what is expressed in the Greek word Luther might take issue with this formulation, if by it we oikonomia, referring to “the management and the imagine that we are performing great deeds to impress the regulation of the resources of the household,”7 the term Lord and if we neglect our families or mistreat our from which we derive our word economy. Thus, the estate colleagues in doing so. But Jesus himself tells us that of the household includes both the family vocations and what we do—or do not do—for our neighbor in need, we the vocations of the workplace. do (or do not do) to him (Matt. 25: 31-46). So when we Luther conflates human labor also with the third estate, serve our neighbor, we do serve God, though neither the the state, which includes, more generally, the society and sheep nor the goats realized whom they were really culture: dealing with. God is hidden in vocation. Christ is hidden in our neighbors. Similarly princes and overlords, judges, officials and chancellors, clerks, men servants and maids, and all The Four Estates other retainers, as well as all who render the service that is their due, are all in a state of holiness and are s Christians live their ordinary lives, God assigns living holy lives before God, because these three them certain neighbors to love and calls them to estates or orders are all included in God’s Word and multiple realms of service. These constitute the commandment. Whatever is included in God’s order Christian’s vocations in the world. must be holy, for God’s Word is holy and hallows all Vocations are multiple. Luther spoke of God’s callings it touches and all it includes. in terms of three institutions that God has established, along with a fourth realm of human activity. The doctrine Medieval Catholicism exalted religious and monastic of vocation and the doctrine of the four estates are themes orders as the way of spiritual perfection. In doing so, the that run throughout Luther’s writings. A particularly required clerical vows—such as celibacy and poverty—in succinct treatment can be found in Luther’s Confession of effect denigrated the so-called secular lifestyles of 1528. After criticizing monasticism, by which some think marriage, parenthood, and economic activity. Luther, they can merit salvation, Luther contrasts these humanly though, boldly reverses that paradigm. Fathers, mothers, devised orders with the orders devised by God himself: and children; servants, maids, clerks, and rulers—these are “But the true holy orders and pious foundations the true holy orders. established by God,” Luther writes, “are these three: the Christians preoccupied with their families, struggling to priestly office, the family and the civil government.”6 make ends meet, living their mundane lives “are all in a All those who are engaged in the pastoral office or state of holiness,” according to Luther, “living holy lives the ministry of the Word, are in a good, honest, holy before God.” order and station, that is well pleasing to God, as they And then Luther goes beyond the specific roles God has preach, administer the Sacraments, preside over the given us to play in this world to an overarching estate: poor funds and direct the sextons and other servants who assist in such labors, etc. These are all holy Above these three estates and orders is the common works in God’s sight. order of Christian love, by which we minister not only to those of these three orders but in general to This Luther would term the estate of the church. everyone who is in need, as when we feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, etc., forgive

Christians preoccupied with their families, struggling

2 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

O U R

enemies, pray for all men on earth, suffer all kinds of evil in our earthly life, etc. Here is another of Luther’s great phrases: “the common order of Christian love.” This is the realm of the Good Samaritan. People of all three orders come together here, ministering to each other and “to everyone who is in need.” The Priesthood of All Believers he doctrine of vocation is an integral part of the Reformation teaching of the priesthood of all believers. This does not mean, at least for Luther, that the pastoral office is no longer necessary. Rather, being a pastor is a distinct vocation. God calls certain individuals into the pastoral ministry, and he works through them to give his Word and Sacraments to his flock. The priesthood of all believers means, among other things, that one does not have to be a pastor or to do pastoral functions in order to be a priest. John Pless shows how the medieval Roman Catholic view, which considered callings to the religious orders to be the only holy vocation from God, is replicated in American evangelicalism:

Medieval Roman Catholicism presupposed a dichotomy between life in the religious orders and life in ordinary callings. It was assumed that the monastic life guided by the evangelical counsels (i.e., the Sermon on the Mount) provided a more certain path to salvation than secular life regulated by the decalog. American Evangelicalism has spawned what may be referred to as “neo-monasticism.” Like its medieval counterpart, neo-monasticism gives the impression that religious work is more God-pleasing than other tasks and duties associated with life in the world. According to this mindset, the believer who makes an evangelism call, serves on a congregational committee, or reads a lesson in the church service is performing more spiritually significant work than the Christian mother who tends to her children or the Christian who works with integrity in a factory. For the believer, all work is holy because he or she is holy and righteous through faith in Christ. Similar to neo-monasticism is the neo-clericalism that lurks behind the slogan, “Everyone a minister.” This phrase implies that work is worthwhile only insofar as it resembles the work done by pastors. Lay readers are called “Assisting Ministers” and this practice is advocated on the grounds that it will involve others in the church as though the faithful reception of Christ’s gifts was insufficient. It is no longer enough to think of your daily life and work as your vocation, now it must be called “your ministry.”8 Einar Billing made the point that Luther and the Lutherans displaced the monastic spiritual disciplines away

C A L L I N G

A N D

G O D ’ S

G L O R Y

from the cloister and into the world, to be practiced in vocation.9 Celibacy? Be sexually faithful within marriage. Poverty? Struggle to make a living for your family. Obedience? Do what the law and your employer tell you to do. Almsgiving? Be generous to your neighbors. Selfdiscipline? Steel yourself against the temptations that you will encounter in everyday life. Priests perform sacrifices. Christ’s sacrifice for our sins was once and for all. We no longer need to repeat that sacrifice, which is taught to happen in the Mass. But Christ’s disciples are called to take up their own crosses and to follow him. His royal priesthood will sacrifice themselves in their callings, as they love and serve their spouses, children, customers, employees, and fellow citizens. “Luther relocated sacrifice,” says Pless. “He removed it from the altar and re-positioned it in the world.”10 “The Christian brings his sacrifice as he renders the obedience, offers the service, and proves the love which his work and calling require of him,” writes Vilmos Vatja. “The work of the Christian in his calling becomes a function of his priesthood, his bodily sacrifice. His work in the calling is a work of faith, the worship of the kingdom of the world.”11 “You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5). “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). These sacrifices are, precisely, “eucharistic sacrifices”; that is, “sacrifices of thanksgiving” in response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.12 It may seem strange to think that such mundane activities as spending time with your spouse and children, going to work, and taking part in your community are part of your “holy” calling, and that the daily grind can be a “spiritual sacrifice.” It is not as strange, though, as what currently tears many Christians apart: a “spiritual” life that has little to do with their families, their work, and their cultural life. Many Christians treat other people horribly, including their spouses and children, while cultivating their own personal piety. Many well-intentioned Christians lose themselves in church work and church activities, while neglecting their marriages, their children, and their other callings. But ordinary life is where God has placed us. The family, the workplace, the local church, the culture, and the public square are where he has called us. Vocation is where sanctification takes place. True, we sin badly in all of these vocations. Instead of loving and serving our neighbors, we want to be loved and to be served, putting ourselves first. But every Sunday, we can go to be nourished by God’s Word, where we find forgiveness for our vocational sins and are built up in our faith. That faith, in turn, can bear fruit in our daily vocations. N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 27

The divorce rate among evangelical Christians, their spiritual escapism, and their cultural invisibility are all symptoms of the loss of vocation. Conversely, recovering vocation can transfigure all of life, suffusing every relationship and every task put before us with the glory of God. ■

Speaking Of…

here is little that we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God’s wrath. Our

best moments have been mostly grotesque Gene Veith is academic dean at Patrick Henry College (Purcellville, Virginia) and cultural editor for World magazine.

parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything

WORKS CITED 1 Einar Billing, Our Calling (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), p. 30. 2 Exposition of Psalm 147, quoted by Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Evansville, Ind.: Ballast Press, 1994), p. 138. 3 John T. Pless, “Taking the Divine Service into the Week: Liturgy and Vocation.” Concordia Theological Seminary. Online at http://www.ctsfw.edu/academics/faculty/ pless/DS_Into_Week.html. 4 “Freedom of the Christian,” in Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House and Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–1986), 31:371. 5 Adventspostille, 1522, quoted by Wingren, p. 120. 6 Quotations from Luther’s Confession of March 1528 are taken from The Augsburg Confession: A Collection of Sources, ed. M. Reu, in the public domain and posted online at http://showcase.netins.net/web/bilarson/pc.html. 7 “Political Economy,” Catholic Encyclopedia. Online at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12213b.htm. 8 Pless, “Liturgy and Vocation.” 9 Billing, Our Calling, pp. 30 ff. 10 Pless, “Liturgy and Vocation.” 11 Vilmos Vatja, Luther on Worship (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958), p. 169. 12 The point is made in Pless, “Liturgy and Vocation.”

that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet. —Frederick Buechner

ow many of us would rather fashion God in

our own image so that God's pleasures and

peeves will merge conveniently with our own? Believers, not just secularists, exchange "the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being" (Rom. 1:23). —Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way it is Supposed to Be

t seems then," said Tirian, smiling himself,

"that the stable seen from within and the

stable seen from without are two different places." "Yes," said the Lord Digory. "Its inside is bigger than its outside." "Yes," said Queen Lucy. "In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world." —C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle

2 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

USING GOD

Worship in the Church: Pastors’ Roundtable Michael Horton talks with pastors from three denominations — Lutheran, Reformed, and Presbyterian — about what it means to give glory to God through worship in the church, and in turn receive God's gifts of peace, righteousness, and satisfaction.

HORTON: Welcome to a special roundtable discussion about worship. We’re taking up this topic not because we like controversy or because we like to stir things up, but because we believe that worship is the reason we were created. We were created to love God and to enjoy him, and to receive the benefits of his being our creator. As those who have been redeemed by Christ as fallen creatures, we have a marvelous privilege to be in God’s presence and to worship him, so it’s out of concern for what worship is, what we’re actually doing in the presence of God that we’re raising these issues. We have a terrific panel here to take up this topic: John Bombaro is a minister at Grace Lutheran Church, with a congregation of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod; Danny Hyde is the pastor of Oceanside United Reformed Church; and Eric Landry, who is known to most of you as the executive editor of Modern Reformation magazine. Eric is also the pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church, a church plant with the PCA in Temecula, California. It’s a pleasure to have you guys with us as we talk about these challenging issues. First of all, what is worship? Some say that the era of the church is over. You can satisfy your own spiritual needs on the Internet, or in just getting together with other Christians informally. You don’t need to go to church. Why do we get dressed on Sunday and go to church? BOMBARO: I think this first part, namely ‘the definition,’ is where we begin to go astray. There is the dictionary definition: “Worship is a reverence, adoration, homage paid to a divine being in a formal or perhaps informal setting.” Though that’s true, it’s only half the N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 2 9

what we do in response to gifts. Lutherans God’s understand that what takes aspect of grace where God condescends to us. place in the Divine Liturgy and the divine service, from As we’re there meeting with him, God comes and raises the Augsburg Confession onwards, is always going to us up; we are enabled by the power of grace to emphasize that what God does is primary; he is the respond appropriately. principal actor, and we respond to his gracious gifts. The gospel is the power of story; and if we only take that as “worship is what we do,” God not only to save, but to sanctify; and when we gather then yes, we could stay at home. But worship also entails together in the worship service on Sunday, God has a service. Service is what God does when God comes to meet message for his kingdom people: For those who have with us, imparting his grace and bolstering our faith sinned not only against his law all week long, but for those through the means of grace. This requires the assembly of who are Christians, we also bear the guilt of sinning believers being in the environment in which God has against his grace. When we walk in, we’re kind of attached his “for you” promises. That doesn’t happen scratching our heads saying, “I wonder where I stand with when I’m in my car listening to Amy Grant at the red light; the great King this week”; but his message to us is always it does happen when I’m sitting under preaching and good news. when I attend to the sacrament at the altar. HYDE: I think that’s where the Reformed emphasis on LANDRY: I think that’s a definition the four of us can the covenant brings all this together. It is the great agree with. It’s what marks a reformational church apart suzerain-king, who comes to his vassal servants, and he from an evangelical church, that it’s not just something not only comes as Lord, but he comes as Savior. that we’re doing for our own benefit. The way I explain it to my congregation is that we gather together to converse HORTON: And Father. with God; that God has called us to his assembly to give us his words of life. We respond with prayer and praise, but LANDRY: He also tenderly speaks to us his gospel. The these truly are the words of life; we need them just as idea of the covenant brings together that primary aspect of much as we need to eat, to drink, to breathe. grace where God condescends to us. As we’re there meeting with him, God comes and raises us up; we are HYDE: I’ve always found it so amazing how most enabled by the power of grace to respond appropriately. evangelical Christians talk about ‘grace,’ but when it And that’s why our liturgy has to reflect that reality. I tell comes to their worship they treat worship simply as their my congregation: “It doesn’t matter that you planned on work. In our church-planting setting, we have had many attending worship this morning. You are a called people, visitors who’ve expressed that very thing. They’ll say, “The you’re here because your Shepherd has called you by difference between your church and what we’re used to is name.” From the very beginning to the very end, worship that you believe that worship is about God, Word, and is a reflexive action of God’s people; it is always in sacrament, as opposed to us bringing our best on Sunday response. God has the first word in the call to worship; he and dressing up appropriately.” has the last word in the benediction. We are always engaged in that ‘call-and-response’ with our Father. HORTON: Doesn’t it seem like in a lot of the ‘worship wars,’ as they’ve been called, the traditionalists and the HYDE: When I utter the opening words of our liturgy— progressives are really in basic agreement? They agree “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”— that worship is our work. Worship isn’t about us and our something happens; we are set apart from the world at that needs, worship is about God and his glory—we are the moment, we are distinct, we have been called out of the actors, and he is the one receiving our praise. It’s not world, and we’ve actually been ushered into heaven itself about us and what this modern, man-centered worship is into the presence of God, into his holy assembly. trying to make it as. HORTON: There are a lot of people who’ll say, “I BOMBARO: Yes, and I think it principally begins when understand that the covenant of grace is based on God’s the conversation focuses on style of worship. Styles are faithfulness to his people even though they are faithless.” always going to run their course, and they’re always going But when you say something like that, Danny, when you to be man centered. When we start talking about a introduce the service with the name of the Father, the Son, theology of worship, then we understand that worship is and the Holy Spirit, something happens and people are set

The idea of the covenant brings together that primary

3 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

P A S T O R S ’

apart. Aren’t they set apart on Tuesday as well as Sunday? Does something happen that makes them something that they’re not in relation to God on other days of the week? HYDE: There’s obviously a pretty clear distinction, in my understanding, in Scripture of Christians being members of the body of Christ, living their lives in the world; but yet there’s something different when the Old Testament speaks of ‘the holy assembly,’ or when Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians as “when you come together as the church.” Yes, we are living a life of gratitude, laying our lives down (Romans 12), our whole life; but there’s something special, something particular that God says he’s going to do when we show up at his beck and call. LANDRY: God doesn’t attach certain promises to our getting together with our Christian next-door neighbors over a beer and a barbecue; God does attach certain promises to the preaching of the Word, to the words of absolution, to baptism, to the Lord’s Supper; those are where the promises of God are located. That’s where God’s people then have a certain responsibility to come and to receive those words of life from the hands of the ministers. HORTON: Isn’t that a completely different motivation than, “Where were you last Sunday?” BOMBARO: I often say that there are ‘musts’ in going to church. “I must go to church because if I don’t go, then Tony / Betty / Sally’s going to think I’ve fallen off the wagon, and of course I must make a good showing there.” The second must could be, “I must to go because the law is driving me.” So I’m going out of servile fear. We need to go because we have a need to hear God’s word and to receive his gifts; we need to go because we love our Father; we love the Son and we love the Holy Spirit, and God wants to meet with us and give us good gifts. That’s what worship means—that we ascribe worth to God. LANDRY: Somebody here once wrote that in the worship service all of our individual strands of life, all of the individual stories that we’re following Monday through Saturday get rewritten back into the grand narrative of redemption by our Father on Sunday. That, I think, is so encouraging to people who are wondering where they are in their relationship to God, wondering about the fact that they have sinned against God’s grace. Every Sunday they’re reminded, not only of the good news of God’s gospel for them as Christians, but that what is going on in their life is part of the grand story of redemption that God is authoring. BOMBARO: God’s invocation, in his own Triune name, the name into which we are baptized (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). I find that as sort of a jolt for people: “Snap out of it! Here is the greater reality!” When I hear those words, what I think about it is God’s speech-action; he is

R O U N D T A B L E

doing something, he is establishing and creating a reality with his Word. HORTON: Both of our traditions here refer to the church as the ‘creation of the Word.’ We talk a lot about the Word in broader evangelical circles, but there’s often a sense that the Bible is a dead letter that we have to make relevant rather than seeing it as Scripture describes itself, as living and active. It’s not just talking about the Bible, or the Bible talking about God and this ‘new world’ that might happen if you let it, but rather it is itself creating that world. BOMBARO: Our Reformation tradition stands upon going back to the original biblical definition of what the church is, which is the manifestation of the body of Christ. Luther tells us in Augsburg 7 that the church is the assembly of all and any believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and where the sacraments are administered according to the gospel. Our Reformation tradition says that if you want to see the church, come gather around God’s Word, gather around his table, and you will see the head of Christ manifest with his body. HORTON: The invisible becoming visible. It sounds grand, but you’re not describing the average worship of probably even our denominations. What do you do if it just seems like there’s a greeting from God at the beginning, there’s a sermon, there are prayers, confession, absolution, a creed, an offering and a Lord’s Supper, and then you’re out of there? HYDE: That’s what it is. It seems mundane; it seems completely of this world, but it is. I’ve told my congregation many times that what we experience in worship, in terms of the ordinariness of it, is a picture of the incarnation of Christ. The Son of God himself became human with all the infirmities that we have. We see this ordinary bread that we just bought at a store, we have wine that was just in a bottle that we uncorked, we have water that came out of the tap. Yet when those sacred words are uttered and when those prayers are offered, they’re set apart. The same thing happens with us as a people—we come with all our anxieties and our stress and our burdens and our sins, but yet God is declaring to us that we are now his people. HORTON: It’s really fascinating to me how often John 6 has been appealed to: “The Spirit gives life, the flesh profits but nothing.” Down through the ages, many sects have emphasized this and said, “See, it’s not external things like preaching, that’s just some man up front; it’s not external things like formal ways of teaching, called catechism, or formal ways of confessing, called confessions, or formal liturgies; it’s not the external stuff, certainly not bread, wine and water; it’s the exciting, extraordinary, direct, immediate work of the Spirit!” And yet Jesus says N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 31

We’re not talking about an ecstatic, overwhelming sense of God’s majesty and my smallness, his grace and my need; but acknowledging afresh God’s word

helpful tips for being a better parent, a better husband, a better wife—then everything we structure our liturgy to accomplish we take away with just a pallid sermon.

of judgment and justification in Christ. Isn’t that what takes place in worship? immediately after that sentence, “The words that I am speaking to you right now are Spirit, and they are life.” HYDE: We see this also in Hebrews 6 where Paul describes those who have been enlightened, which we would take as a reference of baptism, or those who have tasted the powers of the age to come, or the goodness of the Word of God. Those outside-of-us, ordinary, mundane ‘things’ are those things. BOMBARO: But isn’t that what our incarnational theology is all about? Our God was squeezed through a birth canal; he was hanging from an umbilical cord at one point and breast-fed to sustain himself. Our eternal salvation was carried out in grossly physical terms and categories that are too easy for us to kind of look over and disregard. But this is what God has done to redeem humanity. LANDRY: And I think when that is expressed to people who are tired of the spiritual rat-race found in other churches, they latch on to it like there’s no tomorrow. They want to know that it is through these ordinary, mundane things that God comes to meet with them, because frankly, their lives are not exciting; their lives are not filled with spiritual signs and wonders. So it’s a great comfort to them to know that it is in the simple gifts that God comes and is present with them. People who come to our church from a non-church background would not be impressed by any kind of entertainment that our little group could muster up; but when they come here they know that something special is going on, even if it’s not flashy; it’s something that is still very important to them. BOMBARO: And it’s not all mundane; the story itself is absolutely extraordinary. If you can’t get passionate about the idea that God has come down to rescue humanity by taking on human flesh, by being born of a virgin, crucified, raised up in a human body and taken up into the midmost mysteries of the Holy Trinity—if you can’t get excited about that, then I don’t know what! The drama itself has the passion and the charisma. LANDRY: And that word had better be expressed in our sermons. The liturgy might be perfect, but if our sermons don’t express that reality—if all we’re doing is giving them 3 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

HORTON: Now, we’re not anti-law; we believe that the law has an important function to drive us to Christ, to keep on driving us to Christ. We do give God glory, we do respond in the worship service, and so forth, but aren’t we saying here that once we get the priority of God’s action front and center, that response will follow from the gospel rather than be manufactured by human manipulation?

BOMBARO: Michael, you said it yourself that we were created for worship. We do worship, we ascribe worth to him and we pay him honor and respect. It comes quite naturally, and the setting for doing that is one in which there is fear and awe, appreciation, love commingled with fear. Hearing the great King’s message, sensing his presence as his Word grasps the water, grasps the bread and wine, grasps me in holy absolution—then I worship and I do it naturally. HORTON: I think of Isaiah 6 where the prophet has received a commission to declare God’s judgment on the nations and on Israel. What’s really interesting is he has this vision of God in all of his glory and majesty, and he pronounces a judgment on himself: “Woe to me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and dwell among a people of unclean lips and I have seen the Holy One of heaven.” Isn’t that exactly what should happen in worship? We’re not talking about an ecstatic, overwhelming sense of God’s majesty and my smallness, his grace and my need; but acknowledging afresh God’s word of judgment and justification in Christ. Isn’t that what takes place in worship? BOMBARO: Absolutely. I think back to the traditions of the church: in holy absolution we gather before the great King and finally speak honestly to God: “I, a poor, miserable sinner.” We confess to God all the sins that we have committed; sins of omission, sins of commission. LANDRY: Dealing with the guilt that’s present is a psychiatrist’s dream. As our Reformed and Presbyterian church liturgies place it, the first thing we do as a gathered people is to hear the words of law and of gospel, and then God’s words of peace as absolution. It’s only in that point that I think we can honestly turn to our people and say, “You can worship God in peace this morning.” HORTON: Charles Wesley couldn’t help but expose the wonder of the gospel as the reformers understood it in his

P A S T O R S ’

hymn, And Can it Be?: “My chains fell off. My heart was free.” He was dead and then he was suddenly made alive, and now his tongue is loosened to be able to sing God’s praises. HYDE: I think of texts like Hebrews 12, which uses the illustration of Mount Sinai, describing the fact that the mountain was blazing with fire, thunder, trumpets. They would be put to death if they touched it. Then the text says, “But you have come to the heavenly Mount Zion, the new Jerusalem, an assembly which is filled with an innumerable amount of saints to those whose spirits have been made just, and to Jesus.” It seems like a lot of the worship that many of us have grown up in is a worship that takes us back to Sinai; a worship that might be very tangible, very exciting and very outward. Yet at the same time it puts us back under law. In the Reformation tradition of worship we have already moved beyond Sinai; let’s not go back. Here we have the gospel and Christ himself is actually speaking from the top of that heavenly mountain to his people, welcoming us up in there. It is, again, the primacy of grace. HORTON: So we need to gently take our parishioners aside when they tell us, “I didn’t get anything out of that this morning,” and say, “What do you mean when you say you didn’t get anything out of that this morning?” Nine times out of ten, it’s going to be, “It wasn’t about how to fix my life this week,” and we have to gently tell them, “Something greater has happened this morning, and it’s not even the level of your excitement about it. I’m going to tell you what you got: you got a promise that is greater than any fix-it book or manual of life that you’ve ever looked at. It’s not about you; it’s about God and about what he has done for us.” And that, ironically, is the only way of generating love, good works, praise, thanksgiving, and that’s what God desires—genuine praise. BOMBARO: I think the greatest act of worship and the most God-honoring is receiving the Lord’s promise-gifts in Christ through faith. So, what is it that God ultimately wants from us? Is it prayer, is it praise, is it thanksgiving? I say ultimately, no; but rather that we receive his gifts. This is what faith is all about, this is the foundation of worship, namely receiving him, receiving his promises, his benefits in belief.

R O U N D T A B L E

BOMBARO: I think a big issue for a lot of the churches is this, “Is God having his say during the worship event?” The liturgy, and I mean liturgy in the broadest sense, allows God to have his say. It also does two other things: it protects the minister from the whims of the congregation and it protects the congregation from the whims of the minister. HYDE: And we as pastors need to reorient our parishioners to thinking in those terms; to think that when they come to worship, when they come with an eagerness, because they know that they’re going to be meeting with God, and to expect that God is going to meet them in grace, then we can respond. To reorient the way we think. It ought to be, “Show up. Hear, listen, believe.” BOMBARO: We say to our parishioners, “Brothers, come up higher.” We need to preach and teach the drama and have the preaching spill over into the sacramental culmination of the divine presence—God coming to meet with us in his self-giving act of forgiving our sins through Word and sacrament. HORTON: Obviously, Lutheran and Reformed traditions have different interpretations at some points regarding the Supper, but we can all agree here with the Apostle Paul when he says, “This bread that we break, is this not a participation in the body of Christ? This cup that we bless, is this not a sharing in the blood of Christ?” This is for the forgiveness of sins. If you don’t get it in God’s greeting, if you don’t get it in the absolution, you got the sermon around the corner, you get it in the Supper. To summarize: we believe the biblical approach to worship is that God directs our worship, not because he’s a cosmic legalist (although he could because he’s the lawgiver of all the earth), but he directs our worship primarily so that it will lead us to salvation rather than judgment. Saving us from ourselves again. BOMBARO: Bringing glory to himself through Jesus Christ our Lord. HORTON: And that’s how he brings glory to himself. All we can do is celebrate and thank God for his grace. ■

HORTON: The first part of a lot of psalms start out like this, “This is who God is, this is what he has done for us, this is what we did in return (basically slapping him in the face), and yet he forgave us. We will therefore worship him, we will therefore bring an offering, we will therefore celebrate his grace” and so forth. Or as Paul writes in his letters: “Here is our sin and misery, this is what God has done for us in Christ, and here is the way a life of praise and thanksgiving ought to look.”

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 33

USING GOD

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)

n his last words of his great letter to the Romans, Paul bows his head, as it were, and lifts his hands, no longer teaching or defending or explaining or confirming; he is simply worshiping. “To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

To God Alone Be Glory Forever

Our Focus: The Glory of God In this brief article, I will first try to do the impossible and define the indefinable, the glory of God; second, we will look at the words “to him be glory” in Romans 16:27, and ask what it means to say “glory be” to something. And third, instead of a systematic treatment of Paul’s understanding of the glory of God, we will start with chapter 1 of Romans and simply walk through the entire book and see the role that the glory of God plays in the letter as a whole. My prayer is that you see and love the glory of God for what it is. Defining the Glory of God First, an attempt at the impossible—a definition of the glory of God. The reason I say it is impossible is that glory is more like the word beauty than it is like the word basketball. You can define a basketball by saying it’s round, inflated, about nine or ten inches in diameter; it’s used in a game to bounce and put through a hoop. But you can’t do the same with the word beauty. We all

BY 3 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

JOHN PIPER

T O

know it exists, but the reason we can talk about it is because we have seen it, not because we can say it. What might help to get at a definition of the glory of God is to contrast it with the holiness of God. God is holy means that God is in a class of perfection and greatness and value by himself. He is incomparable. His holiness is his utterly unique and perfect divine essence. It determines all that he is and does, and is determined by nothing and no one outside of himself. His holiness is what he is as God, which no one else is or ever will be, and it signifies his intrinsic, infinite worth. Then we hear the angels in Isaiah 6:3 say, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.” The glory of God is the manifestation of his holiness. God’s holiness is the incomparable perfection and greatness of his divine nature; his glory is the display of that holiness. His glory is the open revelation of the secret of his holiness. In Leviticus 10:3, God says, “I will be shown to be holy among those who are near me, and before all the people I will be glorified.” When God shows himself to be holy, what we see is his glory—the beauty of holiness. The holiness of God is his concealed glory. The glory of God is his revealed holiness. So here’s my effort at a definition: The glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of his manifold perfections. To God Be Glory Second, what do we mean, for example, in verse 27, when we say, “To God be glory”? In the way Paul wrote it there is no verb at all. It simply says literally, “To him, glory!” I think the absence of any verb opens the meaning to both a worshipful statement of fact and a worshipful expression of longing. The statement of fact would be: “To him belongs glory!” In other words, we are heralding the truth in worship: God is glorious! Whether you or I see it or not, God has it and displays it. On the other hand, the expression of longing would be, “May glory be given to him!” That is, may people see him as glorious and praise him as glorious. “Give him glory,” not in the sense of adding anything to his glory, but acknowledging it and treasuring it. So when Paul leaves the verb out and simply says, “To the only wise God, glory!” I think he has both of these in mind: God is glorious! And the longing, the prayer: May all the nations see it and acknowledge it and value it as their highest treasure! So as we turn to chapter 1 and our walk through Romans, keep this in mind. Paul’s final word in Romans (just before “through Jesus Christ! Amen.”) is his acclamation of the greatest fact of all: God is glorious! And his aspiration for all the nations: May you see it and savor it above all things! The Glory of God in Romans I think we need to start with Romans 1:5—even though the word glory is not there—because the substance is there so clearly as the goal of Paul’s life and

G O D

A L O N E

B E

G L O R Y

ministry—and ours! “We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.” For the sake of his name among all the nations means that Paul’s goal is that the name of Christ be seen as infinitely glorious above all other names and all other persons and all other ideas and all other possessions and all other possible dreams. In other words, his aim is that the glory of Christ be known and valued in all the world above all other things. Exchanging the Glory of God But the presence of Jesus Christ assumes the need for a Savior. Paul backs up and explains why there is a universal need for a Savior. First, he addresses the condition of the nations outside Israel in Romans 1:21 and says, “For although they knew God, they did not honor [the word is “glorify,” doxasan] him as God or give thanks to him.” How did they not glorify him? What have human beings done? Verse 23 gives the answer: They “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.” And, of course, the image most common then and today is not one that we carve in wood or stone, but the one we see in the mirror. (This is why the gospel is designed by the wisdom of God to strip us of all grounds for boasting in ourselves and make the Lord the only object of our exultation—this is the universal need of the nations who have exchanged the glory of God.) Blaspheming the Glory of God Then Paul turns to his own Jewish people and shows that they are in a similar condition and need a Savior. For example, after multiple indictments, he says in Romans 2:24, “For, as it is written, ‘The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’” In other words, you do not glorify God’s name; you bring it into reproach. Lacking the Glory of God Paul sums up the condition of all humans in Romans 3:23 with this virtual definition of sin: “For all have sinned and fall short of [literally, lack] the glory of God.” This links back to Romans 1:23. We have all exchanged the glory of God for other things. That is why we “lack” it, or “fall short” of it, and that is the very essence of sin. We are created to treasure the glory of God above all things, and none of us does that, which means we have committed an outrageous crime against God that is far more serious than murder or rape or theft or lying. Therefore, we stand under the wrath of God and need a Savior. Faith Glorifies God It’s tempting here to move immediately to Romans 3:24 (and the following verses) and talk about how Jesus saves us through his death, but I will stay on the track of glory and keep going. The salvation from sin N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 35

If you grasp the biblical vision of God and his glory as the highest value of the universe, you will become a strong and gracious and useful person in the world— for the glory of God. and death and judgment that Christ brings is received by faith. Paul illustrates this faith with the case of Abraham in Romans 4:20 and shows how it relates to the glory of God: “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God [literally, giving glory to God].” In other words, one reason that faith is the way God saves us is that faith gives glory to God. That is, faith calls attention to and magnifies the glory of God. Faith puts us in the position of weak and dependent, and puts God in the position of strong and independent and merciful. So faith is essential to displaying the glory of God. The Hope of Glory Then in chapters 5 and 8, Paul shows that our salvation through Christ secures for us the hope of the glory of God. This is the ultimate gift of the gospel. But this hope happens to us in two senses: We see and experience the glory of God in full display, instead of in a mirror dimly, and we are transformed by it into glorious, God-reflecting beings ourselves. First, consider Romans 5:1–2, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We are justified now by faith. We are declared righteous now. That gives us incomparable peace with God—in fact and in feeling. But in this life, there are many hard things emotionally, physically, and relationally. Without the hope of something more, we would be of all men most to be pitied. And there is more. And the greatest thing that Christians hope for is to see and enjoy the greatest beauty in the universe—the greatest good and the greatest power and the greatest justice and grace, namely, the glory of God—the beautiful totality of God’s infinite and manifold perfections. Verse 2: “We have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” The Glory That Will Be Revealed to Us In Romans 8:18, Paul says this hope makes all the sufferings we have to experience in this life worth it: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” The glory of God will be so overwhelmingly satisfying that the horrors of a long 3 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

illness and a painful death will be as nothing in comparison. “For this slight momentary affliction [this whole painful life seen as momentary!] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

The Glory of the Children of God Then in Romans 8:21 and 8:30, Paul speaks of our sharing in that glory so that we become glorious, Godreflecting persons. Verse 21: “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” First, we are made glorious at the resurrection; then the whole creation is made a suitable habitation for the glorious children of God. Then verse 30 says that it is so certain that Paul can speak of it as virtually completed: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” So the glory of God is our supreme hope, both in the sense of seeing and being— we see it and all our longings for beauty are satisfied, and we are changed by it and all our longings for being beautiful, uncontaminated reflectors of God’s glory are satisfied. Beholding and becoming. To Make Known the Riches of His Glory Then in chapter 9, Paul begins to tackle the question of God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel, and the related question arises in verse 14 about God’s righteousness in view of his sovereignty over so much lostness and so much evil. In verses 22–23, Paul gives his ultimate and final answer to the question, and he does it with a view to the glory of God. He says, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory?” In other words, the final argument for the righteousness of God in a world with so much evil and destruction is that this evil serves the revelation of God’s glory. That is, God’s just judgment of it and God’s gracious rescue from it display more fully the glory of God than if there had been no evil. It is hard to overstate the centrality and ultimacy of the glory of God in view of Romans 9:23. The highest and deepest and most ultimate answer to why the world is the way it is when God is sovereign is that in his infinite wisdom this world reveals the fullness of his glory—including the glory of wrath and power (v. 22) as well as mercy. If you grasp the biblical vision of God and his glory as the highest value of the universe, you will become a strong and gracious and useful person in the world—for the glory of God.

T O

To Him Be Glory Forever As Paul finishes his description of the inscrutable ways of God in dealing with Israel and the nations in Romans 9 to 11, he concludes with the doxology: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). God is the ultimate origin, the ultimate sustaining power, and the ultimate goal of all things. Therefore, to him, glory! To him belongs the glory. And may all praises rise to him! With One Voice, Glorify Jesus’ Father In Romans 15, as Paul is finishing his handling of how weak and strong Christians should relate to each other in the church, he tells them the purpose of the church and how Christ set the pattern for how to build the church. The purpose of the church is in verses 5–6: “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s why Christ bought and builds the church. Not just isolated, individual worship, but united voices, whether speaking or singing, that glorify God. Displaying the glory of God is the aim of the church. Welcome One Another for the Glory of God Then in verse 7, Paul gives Christ as the pattern for building this church. He says, “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” Christ does everything he does—including welcoming you into his family, building his church— “for the glory of God.” You are saved by Christ for the glory of God. You are welcomed into his friendship for the glory of God. This is humbling because we are never the final reason for anything; God is. And it is gloriously good news, because we wouldn’t want it any other way. God gets the glory; we get the joy. To Glorify God for His Mercy Paul then underscores Christ’s pattern of building the church in verses 8–9 by showing that this is the very reason he came for the nations: “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.” Christ came to prove that God is faithful to his promises and to be glorified among the nations. That is why evangelism and missions and church planting and our churches and this magazine exist.

G O D

A L O N E

B E

G L O R Y

every day because Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” And Isaiah 6:3 says, “The whole earth is full of his glory!” God is calling out to you: Behold my glory! And as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, the climactic display of the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God” is “the face of Jesus Christ.” The gospel itself—the gospel of Christ crucified and risen—is radiant with the glory of God in the face of Christ. Do you see it and do you love it? You were made for this. Something deep in your soul is saying to you: I was made for this—to behold the glory of God in the gospel and to become a glorious, God-reflecting person. Believer and nonbeliever alike, receive the Lord Jesus Christ and his supremely God-glorifying life and crosswork for you. Behold him and love him and grow up— all the way up—to be like him. Unspeakably glorious. ■

John Piper is Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is the author of more than 30 books.

Speaking Of…

h look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of

Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? —Calvin & Hobbes

The Glory of God in the Gospel Which brings us finally back to where we started in the closing doxology of Romans 16:27, “To the only wise God, glory! Forevermore, through Jesus Christ! Amen.” Is that the cry of your heart? Do you love the glory of God? God is calling for your attention and admiration N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 37

REQUIRED READING FOR 21ST CENTURY CHRISTIANS mo der n

r e f o r m ation

must-reads

Readings on Soli Deo Gloria What would Modern Reformation choose for you to read for further understanding of soli Deo gloria? “Required Reading” features books that we believe are worth your time. We hope you’ll consider adding these titles to the treasury of your mind.

Luther on Vocation

A Better Way by Michael Horton Baker Books, 2003 256 pages, paperback The author gives us a picture of the church at worship that is as big as that of the whole scriptural drama of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Rediscovering the dramatic elements of our worship service helps him chart a course between narrow traditionalism and “hipperthan-thou” progressivism in the worship wars.

by Gustaf Wingren Wipf and Stock, 2004 268 pages, paperback Forging a dynamic view of creation and vocation, the author shows how Martin Luther’s rediscovery of the doctrine of vocation relates to the comprehensive structures of his theology as a whole.

God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life

What to Expect in Reformed Worship: A Visitor’s Guide

by Gene E. Veith Crossway Books, 2002 176 pages, paperback Does God care about your life, Monday through Saturday? The author answers with a resounding “yes!” and helps us see how God is at work through the normal day-in, day-out work of our own callings as employees, spouses, and citizens.

by Daniel Hyde Wipf and Stock, 2007 26 pages, paperback What do Reformed churches mean when the minister exhorts the people to “worship the Lord”? In this helpful book, the author walks the visitor through the various elements of a Reformed worship service and explains how each element relates to our joint service to God.

See also: Work in the Spirit: Toward a Theology of Work by Miroslav Volf Freedom of the Christian by Martin Luther

3 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Holiness by John Webster With Reverence and Awe by Darryl G. Hart and John R. Muether

REVIEWS what’s

b e in g

rea d

Books That Still Matter: 15 Years in Print Each issue we’re looking at a book published during Modern Reformation’s 15-year history, with a look to why this book was and still is significant.

t is easy to recognize sin when it is packaged in the fires of an explosion.

words, sin is the anti-shalom. “God hates sin not just because it When a car bomb ripped through the World Trade Center in 1993, and then violates his law,” he argues, but “more substantively, because it eight years later two passenger planes brought down the twin towers com- violates shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes pletely, even some of with the way things are supposed to be” (14). Shalom repthe most ardent paciresents God’s plan for “creation and redemption,” while sin fists justified hell for is “blamable human vandalism of these great realities,” an the perpetrators of offense against God himself (16). Plantinga calls us to those crimes. From understand sin not as merely a theoretical category, but as the Oklahoma City the actual state of things. Sin is more than what happens bombing in 1995, to when one offends another; it is a “dynamic and progressive the London bombings phenomenon” that spreads like a “plague” and if “unarrestin July 2007 and the ed, sin despoils even its own agents, eventually causing the ongoing genocide of ‘very death of the soul’” (53). He is careful to note that Darfur, the effects of though it is a universal calamity, sin is not the absolute dicsin never cease to tator of this world. “Corruption never wholly succeeds” shock our sensibilities because “creation is stronger than sin and grace stronger when they occur in still” (199). Nevertheless, to miss the impact of sin is to such big ways. But sin, cheapen the power of grace and the work of Christ. as Cornelius Plantinga, If the New York Times Best Seller list is an indication, this Jr. tells us in Not the perspective on sin is not going to be the standard anytime Way It’s Supposed to Be: soon. Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great and Richard A Breviary of Sin,“ has a Dawkins’s God Delusion argue that pain in this world is not thousand faces” (9). human vandalism of God’s peace but simply the natural Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin Plantinga’s book process of evolution. Modern atheists identify these as misby Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. came out in 1995, but firings tied to survival mechanisms—misfirings that can Eerdmans, 1995 his subject matter is a produce good or evil—and contra Plantinga, they argue 216 pages (paperback), $20.00 human problem nearly that things are the way they are supposed to be; that is, as old as creation itself. what theologians call sin is just the way evolution plays So though times have changed—Plantinga is now the out. The only hope for improvement in this world, sixth president of Calvin Theological Seminary, member of according to the new atheism, is for evolution to succeed the board of editors of Books & Culture, and former editor of and the species to advance. The world can rest, therefore, Calvin Theological Journal—his comments are still relevant in the fact that evolution designs to improve things. these 12 years later. In the preface he notes that his purMost significantly, Hitchens argues that these evolutionpose is “to retrieve an old awareness” of sin, an awareness ary improvements will come quicker when we put aside that “used to be our shadow” but at some point turned Christianity’s outdated and superstitious views of sin and into an “inside joke” dismissed with a “grin” (ix). In this death. Religion, as Hitchens puts it, “poisons everything.” It decade, some might relegate it to a casual “my bad”; we makes us feel bad for things that are natural; it is a dictator still do not understand why it is bad. that abuses its power. For Plantinga, this concept could not Plantinga sets sin against the idea of shalom. Shalom, he be more incorrect. God is great, despite Hitchens’ declarawrites, means “universal flourishing, wholeness, and tion otherwise, and it is sin that poisons everything, includdelight,” or “the way things ought to be” (10). In other ing religion. Plantinga puts is this way: “Evil perverts reli-

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 39

gion as well as everything else that is vital and momentous. When it does, religious beliefs and practices may mutate into a self-serving substitute for the service of God” (108). Plantinga’s book represents the classic Reformation answer to the problems of this world. It is the world upside down, where humanity has a problem that is unsolvable by any tool of science. The answer to the human problem of sin lies outside of this world and in Christ. “To concentrate on our rebellion, defection, and folly,” says Plantinga, “is to forget that the center of the Christian religion is not our sin but our Savior” (199). Any view of the world that includes sin, but fails to bring in grace, minimizes “the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the Spirit and the hope of shalom” (199). In our post-9/11 world, the question of evil is just as disturbing and perhaps more publicized than ever, yet Plantinga’s pre-9/11 volume continues to offer the Christian solution, one which has given hope to millions for centuries. It points sinners to the Christ, and promises that those who hope in his redemptive work will one day live in a world that is as it is supposed to be.

Brandon G. Withrow (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) is adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School and coauthor of the History Lives series.

Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends Edited by Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson, and Michael Sleasman Baker Academic, 2007 287 pages (paperback), $23.99 Many Christian books available today seek to interpret or engage culture on our behalf. These (sometimes) wise guides attempt to critique culture in general or some aspect of it in light of the truth of the Bible. Kevin Vanhoozer, Charles Anderson, and Michael Sleasman want to do something more than interpret for us, something that may ultimately prove more useful to the thoughtful Christian desiring to share the good news about Christ in the place and time where he or she lives. While Vanhoozer shared the editorial task of putting together Everyday Theology with Anderson and Sleasman, the substance of the book flows out of his own thinking. 4 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Specifically, the book emerged from a class on cultural hermeneutics Vanhoozer has taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for many years. What makes Everyday Theology not only unique but useful is the way it presents the material of that class. First, in one introductory chapter Vanhoozer succinctly but clearly summarizes the method of cultural hermeneutics he teaches. In the second part, which takes up the bulk of the book, various authors apply his method to a cross-section of current cultural slices—anything from the content of supermarket checkout racks to megachurch architecture. Adding to the freshness of this book’s approach is the fact that each of these essays was written not by “professional” theologians but by students in Vanhoozer’s class. Whereas Part 2 puts specific cultural phenomena under the microscope, Part 3 seeks to apply Vanhoozer’s method to broader cultural trends, such as blogs and fantasy funerals. The book concludes with an essay by the two other editors that models moving from critique to praxis as they think through how a Christian might approach the fit of madness we call the modern wedding. Vanhoozer surveys the many definitions of culture available, but settles upon that of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who calls culture “a web of significance, an interconnected system of meaningful signs that cry out for interpretation and understanding.” Humans work on the raw “stuff” of nature and produce things of significance. These things become cultural “texts” that we need to “read.” These texts create “worlds,” and the creators of these worlds implicitly or explicitly invite others to join their worlds. Why bother doing cultural hermeneutics? Vanhoozer reminds us that Christian mission has always been about going to places to engage people with the claims of Christ. That travel, if it is to be successful, usually involves a great deal of preparation: studying the geography and history of the land, learning its language, becoming aware of its taboos and cultural entrance points. Vanhoozer asserts that we must also be ready to go to the worlds of culture. Doing so should involve just as much careful preparation as a mission to a place. We do this preparation, he says, by learning to read a culture’s texts and theologically interpret them, with the purpose of engagement and evangelism. Being able to read culture theologically is also important to the believer’s own walk in Christ, according to Vanhoozer. The Apostle Peter reminded his readers that the apostles “did not follow cleverly devised myths” when they “made known . . . the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:16 RSV). Reading the culture theologically enables the Christian to discern the idols that may be influencing him more than he knows. The doctrines of incarnation, general revelation, common grace, and image of God tell us that there is a message from God to be read from even fallen culture. Within the rubric of “faith seeking understanding,” the believer, Vanhoozer advises, must both “read cultural texts on their own terms and in light of the biblical text.” In setting forth his method of cultural hermeneutics, he says that we must

be aware that culture produces not just messages, but discourse. Discourse has many more levels and nuances than just propositional statements. Interpreting through biblical discourse enables us to derive the “thickest” possible meaning from culture. This recognizes, again, that cultural texts, like all texts, create whole “worlds.” Thus, Vanhoozer states that cultural texts display more than they argue. The goal of this work of cultural hermeneutics is to uncover the idols of fallen culture and expose them to the truth of God’s Word. Everyday Christians with this understanding can be equipped to engage their everyday culture as “a community of cultural agents” who together signify the “end time” reality of God’s kingdom, a “permanent revolution” displayed against the principalities and powers of this age. Vanhoozer and the others serve as excellent teachers, not only telling but demonstrating their material. Many books inform; this book truly teaches. The reader comes away with the tools needed to not only exegete but engage the culture. Especially appreciated is the passion throughout for going beyond criticism to mission. If Vanhoozer is right that the work of culture produces worlds, then we as missionaries must prepare to visit those worlds and bring the “natives” there the gospel in terms they will understand.

Mark Traphagen is a student at Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) and manages an online book service.

Sin and Evil: Moral Values in Literature by Ronald Paulson Yale University Press, 2007 432 pages (hardback), $42.00 It has been twenty years since Alan Bloom claimed that his “nice” students lacked all ability to talk about evil. This was not a living category in the surrounding culture back then, and the students’ connections with literature were too thin to supply them with a deeper view of things. The post-9/11 generation, however, has heard political rhetoric like the “Axis of Evil.” However shallow the ability to speak of it, the word evil is at least part of the modern vocabulary. We can quickly name the evil: Osama bin Laden, Jeffrey Dahmer, Enron. Acts may have to be spectacular to earn such a label, but we understand it. Not so with sin. While evil is moral transgression, sin is religious transgression. With sin, there is no human victim. God alone has been transgressed. With evil, people have been hurt.

SHORT NOTICES Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective by Robert Letham Christian Focus, 2007 319 pages (paperback), $17.99 There are around 160 million Eastern Orthodox in the world today, making it a major religious force; and recent years have seen numerous high profile conversions from Evangelicalism to the Orthodox fold. Yet the Orthodox Church seems so alien to Western Christianity and so difficult to understand. This is why Robert Letham’s new book is such an excellent resource. Telling the story of Orthodoxy from the patristic era to the present, and offering clear theological exposition and critical interaction from a Reformed perspective, this is an excellent resource for Reformed Christians. Drawing on his vast knowledge of patristic and Orthodox sources, and writing with a lucid style and a charitable and honorable tone throughout, Letham has produced an important and insightful book that shows where we can draw positive lessons from the Orthodox tradition and where we can learn from it even at those points where we must respectfully disagree. —Carl R. Trueman

Metaphysics and the God of Israel: Systematic Theology of the Old and New Testaments by Neil B. MacDonald Baker Book House, 2007 248 pages (paperback), $24.99 This book represents a major attempt by a non-evangelical to overcome the barriers, real or perceived, between biblical studies, philosophy, and systematic theology. It is being hailed as the first major effort in decades to join together these disciplines. Neil MacDonald, a Barth specialist, moves creatively and in many directions in order to argue, first, that a systematic theology of the Bible is possible, and, sec(continued on page 43) N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 41

Sin is a violation of holiness, evil a violation of morality. Evil tends to be easier to identify because the harm is visible. As the Apostle Paul tells us, “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” and “where there is no law, there is no transgression.” If we do not know the law, at least internally, we will be unaware when transgression occurs (unless there is a lockdown and coverage interrupts the regularly scheduled TV programming). Ronald Paulson’s book explains at great length the different subjects and different vocabularies involved in matters of transgression. For a generation locked in the horizontal, Paulson reminds us that transgression may be vertical as well. Paulson also discusses “wrongdoing,” where a human code has been violated, sometimes with injury to people, sometimes without. The legal system may not know good and evil, but it knows right and wrong, as this can be known from the law code. Wrongdoing and sin are similar in being defined by the law, but different in that one is the law of man and the other the law of God. Paulson’s book is not a philosophical treatise however. The proving ground for the distinction is neither speculative theory nor the world of historical events, but the world of literature. Paulson probes how these two kinds of transgression have brought about two traditions of literature: that which speaks of Sin and that which speaks of Evil. I have used capital letters because Paulson says that what he is examining is literature that speaks of Sin and Evil of great magnitude. Paulson traces literary development starting with Greek satire, Roman epic, and Georgic. All societies use literature as a way of speaking of how things go wrong. What kinds of things go wrong and how we are to look at them is what changes over time. In the Greek satires, sin was “missing the mark,” which suggested more lack of skill than viciousness. Avoidable tragedy befell people who were flawed. In Roman writings, there was more of an emphasis on how absence of civilization led to error, and more civilization was the cure. Early Christianity brought in a literature where the guilty were culpable and were punished for their guilt with punishments that fit the crime. Perhaps ironically, the switch to this outlook was a switch from tragedy to comedy, not because hell was funny, but because such a universe offered the possibility of a happy ending. Where we speak of the bin Ladens, the Dahmers, or the Enrons as evil, other ages could not only name the evil, but the sinful. Dante’s hell was a place where sinners went who loved something earthly more than God. Famous adulterers like Paolo and Francesca had evils inflicted upon them from without, but the deeper into hell he journeyed, the more the sinners inflicted punishments on each other. Near the very bottom were Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri. Ugolino had betrayed his city, while Ruggieri had betrayed Ugolino, forcing him to starve or eat his sons. In hell, Ugolino forever gnawed on Ruggieri’s skull. Placing his worst sinners at the bottom of hell, Dante expressed that the betrayers of those around them were the worst of sinners. Paulson offers us concrete examples of sinners and evil ones, 4 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

taken from Shakespeare to perpetrators of the Holocaust. In our time we see only evil, and use the word sin to mean evil with a capital E; other times only knew of sin, with evil being a mere by-product. The shift of focus and vocabulary are intriguing. Ours is but one way these matters have been discussed in time. If Bloom is right, literature is where we can find lost ways of speaking of our world and be enriched by it. Paulson’s survey can hardly be given a fair summary because in every few pages a new vocabulary and understanding is detailed. His work is itself a vast summary. It will offer the reader not only a richer vocabulary with which to discuss our fallenness and its possible solutions, but also many concrete examples of characters who concretely embody the horrors our race entered when it fell. The Greeks would consider losing the opportunity to learn from this discussion tragic. I’m tempted to say, however, that it would be a sin.

Rick Ritchie lives in Southern California, where he is a member of a congregation in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and is a longtime contributor to Modern Reformation.

James by Daniel M. Doriani P&R, 2007 216 pages (hardback), $19.99 The New Testament epistle of James emphasizes practical piety and lived-out faith, offering dozens of easily understood commands for Christians. Its simple clarity, however, is a two-edged sword. In some circles, James is known but not studied, perhaps because the instructions for godly living demand too high a standard. James asks the uncomfortably acute question, Does your life match what you believe? (1:22—do what it says!). Even more dismaying, he also indicts a purely intellectual faith as something demonic (2:19). Studying James is an exercise in balance; one must attend diligently to the essentials of the Christian life while resisting the natural slide into legalism. Doriani provides just such a balanced approach, rightly insisting that amid the exhortations, James preaches a gospel of grace. James has been famously criticized by the great Martin Luther as “an epistle of straw” because it lacks great theological doctrines like justification by faith alone. James’ focus on faith revealed in works made the letter too legalistic for Luther’s taste. The letter itself, despite its popularity among believers, has been the target of much suspicion from scholars, as Doriani points out in his preface. To

those who agree with Luther, James appears to be a lopsided pastoral handbook that any competent clergyman probably could have written but would not have bothered to. This begs the question, why did James, Jesus’ halfbrother and an elder of the church in Jerusalem, bother to write a doctrinally skimpy, performance-obsessed letter? Doriani’s answer to this question is that “the hasty reader will not see much of the gospel in James” (6). He points out the paradoxes; for example, we must control the tongue (1:26), but no one can tame the tongue (3:8). The reader who perseveres through these, however, will find the gospel of grace at James’ heart. Doriani’s contribution is an excellent addition to the Reformed Expository Commentary series, which seeks to edify the church rather than engage scholars on the finer points of theology. This is not to say that scholars would not benefit from Doriani’s book. In fact, he presents a trustworthy and practical exposition with both measured precision and pastoral warmth. An experienced pastor (currently at Central Presbyterian Church in Clayton, Missouri), he is also highly educated (Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary) and a former professor at Covenant Theological Seminary. His book is composed of sixteen expanded sermons, plus one short note (on swearing, 5:12). Unlike James Boice’s excellent collection of sermons on James (Sure I Believe, So What?), this book is written for the eye, not the ear, and invites a slow and careful reading. Presented in an accessible style, it is neither colloquial nor abstruse, but rather like a formal conversation. The tone suits the importance of the material; its very seriousness requires that one respect James as a biblical text, whatever the difficulties. Doriani is aware of current scholarship on James but does not use extensive space to interact with it, relegating this to the occasional footnote. His goal is not to provide an exegetical, verse-by-verse commentary, but rather a passage-by-passage analysis, setting the epistle’s 59 imperatives in context. He provides helpful footnotes for details but does not overwhelm the page with them. He refers to the Greek text where it contributes to his exposition, unpacking, for example, the words used to describe wisdom from heaven (124–26; 3:17–18). Helpfully, when using different English translations, Doriani takes an irenic approach, dispassionately explaining why he chooses one English word over another without distracting the reader with unnecessary evaluations of English versions, while making use of the ESV, NIV, RSV, and NAS. James, as a Jewish Christian writing to Jewish Christians, often alludes to the Old Testament. Doriani anticipates this from the first chapter, including a delightful section on “Testing and temptation in the Old Testament.” I’m not being sarcastic here. The section on testing is delightful to read because it’s true without being sanctimonious. Doriani also cites explicit references where James’ text resonates. For example, the “crown of life” for those who persevere in James 1:12 finds resonances in Proverbs 4:9 (crown of splendor for the wise), Proverbs 16:31 (crown of gray hair for the righteous), Isaiah 61:3

Short Notices (continued from page 41) ond, that at the heart of it is a God who is self-determining. It seems to me that he often comes out in the right place. For example, he wants God’s immanence to be real. So, he defends the rationality of prayer, because God has rationally entered into our world (as he puts it, first on the seventh day after creation, and throughout redemptive history, culminating in the resurrection of Christ). At the same time, he is not quite convincing when he argues that God possesses both time and space, albeit in nonmeasurable ways, and that the classical view of God as outside of space and time represents a limit upon his freedom. Either by ignoring or perhaps not wanting to take seriously the evangelical and Reformed heritage, he is not fully able to find a Creator-creature distinction in the Bible. He does discuss Calvin, but lumps him together with Aquinas and cannot appreciate the way Calvin and his successors were able to establish “Christian covenantal condescension,” a concept recently so well argued in K. Scott Oliphint’s book, Reasons for Faith. Do read this fascinating book by MacDonald. You will learn a lot. And perhaps some will feel called to reintegrate systematic and biblical studies from a more evangelical and Reformed point of view. We certainly need that in our times. —William Edgar

The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel in a Diverse & Changing World Edited by Manuel Ortiz and Susan Baker P&R, 2002 375 pages (paperback), $16.99 The Urban Face of Mission: Ministering the Gospel is a Festschrift for the late Harvie Conn (1933-1999), professor of missions at Westminster Theological Seminary from 1972 to 1998. Edited by Manuel Ortiz and Susan Baker, the book contains contributions from William Barker, Samuel T. Logan, Jr., and John Leonard, among others. The volume attempts to extend Conn’s passion for urban missions by examining topics such as the city’s role in mission, the challenges of globalization, and the interface of social changes and the message of the gospel. By touching on the themes that pervaded his own work, this volume serves as a fitting tribute to Harvie Conn’s missionary heartbeat. The Urban Face of Mission serves well as both an introduction and a guide for further (continued on page 45) N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 43

(crown of beauty for the mourners), and Isaiah 62:3 (crown of splendor for Israel). Doriani does not merely quote these but discusses the promises in a typically Jamesian way, as it were, warning that a crown is not motivation for right behavior, but a reward for it. At the same time, James echoes much of the Gospel of Matthew, and Doriani makes the connections not only with Matthew but with the rest of the New Testament, demonstrating vividly the Reformed commitment to a redemptive-historical approach that illuminates the unity of the Bible and the centrality of Christ. There are two controversial issues in James: his emphasis on works (2:24) and the practice of anointing the sick (5:14–15). Doriani gives a beautifully clear, Reformed exposition on the relationship of faith and works (93–103), demonstrating James’ correction of an erroneous concept of faith. He handles the verses on anointing clause by clause, straightforwardly considering various interpretations of the text. He includes two helpful personal anecdotes—helpful because he does not portray himself as the hero but rather God. His exposition is a model of balance—both physical and spiritual healing are in view—and also challenges the modern Western tendency to despiritualize illness. Doriani finds the rhetorical climax of James in 4:6, “But [God] gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’” In an era when the church in America has grown fat and comfortable on God’s luxurious grace, James’ emphasis on faith in action comes as a bracing reminder that grace is given for a purpose, for a task, for a mission, and not just for our personal comfort. Doriani’s book is for anyone who wants to study James in depth, but it would be especially beneficial for church leaders, Bible teachers, and seminarians, because he consciously addresses leaders (49 ff.). This book is written generously, without reproach for the reader. One who reads it will be the wiser for it.

Meredith L. D. Riedel (M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary, Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary) is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford. Together with her husband, Detlev, she helps lead a ministry for twentysomethings at St Ebbes’ Church, Oxford.

Him We Proclaim: Preaching Christ from All the Scriptures by Dennis E. Johnson P&R, 2007 493 pages (paperback), $24.99 Many evangelicals today suspect that were they to imitate the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament, they would be getting the right doctrine from the wrong texts. Is it possible for today’s uninspired exegete to employ the 4 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

christological hermeneutic of the apostles? Drawing on a lifetime of pastoral ministry and teaching as a professor of New Testament Interpretation and Homiletics, Dennis Johnson takes you in this volume from the problems to the principles and practice of preaching Christ from all the Scriptures. Seeking to “reunite Old Testament and New Testament, apostolic doctrine and apostolic hermeneutics, biblical interpretation and biblical proclamation” (4), Johnson shows that in fact we can interpret and preach the Bible like Peter and Paul—preaching that is “redemptive-historically structured, missiologically communicated, and grace-driven” (16). The first half of the book makes “The Case for Apostolic, Christocentric Preaching.” Following an introductory chapter, Johnson surveys contemporary “Priorities and Polarities in Preaching” in chapter 2, showing the inadequacy of preaching only to convert, only to experientially or transformationally edify, or only to doctrinally or redemptive-historically instruct. Preaching must aim at each of these priorities. Johnson sympathetically but critically examines the views of Bill Hybels, Jay Adams, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and the many proponents of the redemptive-historical method, asking searching questions that each method must answer, and which ultimately the whole book answers very well. Johnson approves most of Tim Keller’s and Jack Miller’s homiletic methods. Chapter 3 outlines “Paul’s Theology of Preaching” by analyzing Colossians 1:24-2:7. Chapter 4 surveys the history of the church’s attempts to preach Christ, from its complication by the Fathers’ and Medievals’ allegorizing and fourfold sense, to its chastening by the Reformation’s return to grammatical-historical interpretation, to its rejection by the Enlightenment and historical-critical method, to its recovery by Geerhardus Vos and Reformed biblical theology. Chapter 5 carefully details modern misgivings about apostolic preaching, biblical unity, and interpretive accountability and credibility—the challenges the second half of the book must surmount—and makes explicit the watershed issue in this book: “What constitutes the appropriate context or contexts for the interpretation of biblical texts?” (147). The text’s immediate context, excluding later revelation, or the context of the canon as a whole? Affirming the latter through an appeal to the divine authorship supported by Kevin Vanhoozer, Johnson argues the grammatical-historical method must be challenged (152). In doing so, Johnson does not adequately answer Walter Kaiser’s statement that “it is a mark of eisegesis, not exegesis, to borrow freight that appears chronologically later in the text and to...unload it on an earlier passage simply because both...share the same canon”

(157), and does not affirm the full concursus of the divine and human authors. However, Johnson goes on to affirm nearly every hermeneutical concern I have that motivates me to agree with Kaiser(!), and that is why you need to read this book. It will seriously consider your biblical concerns that have made you hesitate to engage in christological, biblical-theological interpretation of the Bible, and will challenge and help pastors to become far more biblical in their preaching. Him We Proclaim is so richly, broadly, and deeply biblical, overflowing with biblical-theological insight, and so committed to responsible, accountable interpretation of Scripture in its appropriate contexts, that there are few whose interpretation would not be significantly improved by listening to this book. That improvement is the aim of the second half of the book. Chapter 6 analyzes “The Epistle to the Hebrews as an Apostolic Preaching Paradigm,” showing Hebrews to be a sermon structured around the christological exposition and application of Old Testament texts to a specific audience, preaching Christ from the Old Testament’s own proclamation of Christ. Chapter 7 traces the New Testament’s typological interpretation of the Old Testament from the more obvious texts employing the Greek word typos, to passages stating Christ “fulfilled” an Old Testament text, to unmistakable allusions to Old Testament events, applied to Christ, to subtle and debatable allusions to the Old Testament, to general Old Testament patterns fulfilled by Christ. Johnson then explains the foundations the Old Testament provides for New Testament hermeneutics: God invested events and institutions with symbolic significance recognized by the Old Testament people, the Old Testament prophets drew on God’s deeds in the past for imagery to describe the future, and through its own incompleteness directed the Old Testament people’s longings toward a greater future salvation and Savior. For these reasons, Johnson writes, “we should not conclude that it would have been impossible for faithful Israelites in Old Testament times to have discovered in their Scriptures the implications that the apostles later drew out of them” (219). In a helpful diagram on page 231, Johnson explains that typology that ignores the meaning a text or event had in the Old Testament, or that ignores its fulfillment in Christ, fails to properly connect that Old Testament type with our New Testament audience, and amounts to allegory. Similarly, Old Testament truths applied to a New Testament audience apart from Christ’s centrality amount to moralism. Scripture’s own hermeneutical method is to trace a type’s original meaning through its fulfillment in Christ to recognize its New Testament significance. In chapter 8 Johnson provides two central motifs through which many typological connections flow—Christ as “Head of the New Creation and Mediator of the New Covenant,” tracing man’s progress as the image of God through creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, and Christ as the Lord and Servant in the covenant who

Short Notices (continued from page 43) study concerning issues of urban and international ministry in a diverse world, of the place of social justice in evangelism, of the need for creative approaches to theological education, and of specific appropriation of the gospel among the diverse peoples who bear the name of Jesus. —Matthew Harmon

God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible by Vaughan Roberts InterVarsity Press, 2003 160 pages (paperback), $12.00 Imagine that you have been asked to give a book report about an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The group wants you to tell them what the book is about. Now imagine that you have only been given one chapter out of the book to read. Obviously you would find it impossible to complete your task. You might find out that the butler did it, but not be able to tell who the butler is or what he did! According to Vaughan Roberts, this is the way far too many Christians approach their Bibles. They read an individual verse or passage or chapter and try to interpret it on its own. However, so doing not only misses the forest for the trees, it loses the significance of even the individual trees. God’s Big Picture sets out to help readers find the one great story that God is telling in the Scriptures, the story that sets everything in its right place. Roberts agrees with Graeme Goldsworthy that the central character of this story is Jesus Christ and its theme is the Kingdom of God, defined as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing.” He uses that definition as the organizing principle for the remainder of the book, teaching his readers to ask of any passage, “Who are God’s people here? Where is God’s special place (to meet with them)? How are God’s rulership and blessing being manifested at this time?” Though Roberts freely admits in the preface that he is very dependent on giants of Christocentric biblical theology such as Goldsworthy and Westminster Theological Seminary’s own Edmund Clowney, his goal is to take their way of reading the Bible to the average person who may not pick up a more scholarly work on the subject. He succeeds admirably in that aim; God’s Big Picture is both easy and enjoyable to read. The book is well organized, helping the reader to keep the “big picture” in view through the use of diagrams and by constantly referring back to Robert’s major organizing prin(continued on page 47) N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 45

fulfills the roles of Prophet, Priest, and King as fallen man cannot. It is by virtue of their union with Christ that hearers receive the blessings of salvation, so this union and these blessings provide the chief lines of connection that a sermon’s application must follow. Chapter 9 gives examples of how to preach the promises of Christ from the Old Testament genres of historical narrative, law, wisdom, song, and prophecy, and chapter 10 gives examples of how to preach the promise keeper himself from the New Testament genres of the gospels, parables, epistles (doctrine and exhortation), wisdom, and prophetic vision. Two appendices follow; the first gives a step-by-step guide for moving “From Text to Sermon,” the second a sermon that demonstrates the principles taught in the book. The net effect is that this book provides a reliable guide to truly Christian and biblical preaching. Johnson ably addresses the real concerns of preachers in this decade, with rich biblical exposition and broad interaction with today’s scholarship, humbly and faithfully exalting Christ in all the Scriptures. Whether or not one is convinced of christological preaching, Him We Proclaim will greatly improve every Bible student’s interpretation and every pastor’s preaching.

Tim Black (M.Div., Westminster Theological Seminary) is a Licentiate of the Presbytery of Northern California of the OPC and a web developer.

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Free Press, 2007 353 pages (hardback), $27.99 I’ve been mulling over how to start this for several days. I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s explosive memoir, Infidel, in the context of other reading: A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini’s second novel that focuses on the suffering of women in Islamic culture; and The Known World, a novel by Edward P. Jones about the precarious lives of slaves and freed slaves set in pre-Civil War rural Virginia. All three are tales of oppression and brutality. And with each I was left with a profound sense of sadness. One thing is clear, the struggle to treat one another as image bearers, and failing belief in God, at least as fellow human beings, is pervasive. I also read Newsweek’s July 30 special report on “Islam in America.” This report, while in part concurring with 4 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

Ali’s belief that integration and not multiculturalism is the solution to influencing change in Muslim culture seems too optimistic. Ali refutes a benign view of Islam that many Americans seem to hold, at least judging by the letters to the editor in the following issue of Newsweek. Ali says, “Most Muslims never delve into theology, and we rarely read the Quran; we are taught it in Arabic, which most Muslims can’t speak. As a result, most Muslims think that Islam is about peace. It is from these people, honest and kind, that the fallacy has arisen that Islam is peaceful and tolerant“(272). Further, she asserts that the attacks on September 11 were not about frustration due to poverty or lack of power, but belief. “Every true Muslim would approve, if not support the attack” (270). Ali’s message is likely not welcome by many—on the one hand it offends the politically correct sensibilities we try so carefully to construct. And on the other, as the title of the book suggests, it challenges the very core of belief for a growing Muslim population and incites anger and violence. Hers is a personal story, but one that sheds light on universal themes of justice, triumph over adversity, the lure of power, and the effect of hope. Infidel chronicles the author’s life as best as she can remember the details and without the benefit of being able to verify her recollections (her family connections are, in her words, “fractured”). It is in part a coming of age story, but with global-sized consequences from her thought life and actions. Her youth was spent in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, moving overnight when necessary to avoid sure death as the result of her father’s political activities. And while Ali had what seems like extraordinary opportunities most Muslim women in Africa don’t receive, her world was severely limited by our Western standards. She was circumcised at age six. She willingly took on wearing a hijab, covering her full body, in an effort to please God. She sought to study the Quran, not merely learn it by rote, questioning the teaching when she was perplexed. Over time the inconsistencies she witnessed—particularly in how men and women were regarded and treated—troubled her: “If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development” (94). And her flirtations with Western thought through contraband books and movies caused her to question what she lived, what she read, and the ideals she had about justice. Even in something as banal as a Harlequin romance “was a message—women had a choice.” While traveling to Canada to join her husband after a forced marriage, Ali sought and won refugee status in Holland. From there she obtained a divorce, legitimized by

the religious leaders. She was now on her own, without family, without the clan. During her time in the refugee camps and in school, she served as interpreter for Somali men and women. But it was as she met women from Morocco, Bosnia, and other Muslim nations, that she saw that her plight and experience as a woman was universal. Due to Holland’s generous social benefits provided to refugees, Ali was able to complete her education, pursuing political science, and eventually win a seat in Parliament. Her goal was to 1) get Holland to stop tolerating oppression of Muslim women, 2) generate a debate among Muslims about reforming aspects of Islam, and 3) help Muslim women become aware of how bad and unacceptable their suffering is. In debates and papers, she openly discussed her belief that multiculturalism, a view that fosters continued identity with the home culture over integration into the host culture, is counterproductive. Following a debate where Ali critiqued Muslim culture, she noted, “This peaceful country, which thought it had reached the peak of civilization and had nothing more to worry about…was waking up to the nightmare of citizens who completely disagreed with fundamental values like free speech” (293). Her commitment to revealing the brutality Muslim women endure led to the making of a film, which resulted in the death of the producer and continued threats on her own life. In reading, I could not help but compare some of her critiques of Islam to aspects of what sometimes passes for American Christianity: A Muslim fundamentalism that focused on empty behavior and not heart change: “Islam is submission. You submit on earth, in order to earn your place in Heaven” (132). Accounts of cold stoicism in the face of extreme adversity shrugged off as the “will of Allah” because to show “bitterness, or despair, would be to fail the test of faith” (154) reminded me of suppressed heartbreak in the “name of God’s will.” What was hardest about reading this account was rooting for the author, rejoicing in her triumphs against the “odds,” only to have her replace one death for another. In the end, Ali exchanges a belief in Allah for belief in self: “I had left God behind years ago. I was an atheist….My moral compass was within myself, not in the pages of a sacred book” (281). In that she misses the logical conclusion of her own bankruptcy. But her story is not over, which is a reminder to pray for the Ali’s who are struggling against oppression—and for those who labor to bring the gospel to all those who struggle under the burden of Islam.

Diana Frazier is the Book Review editor for Modern Reformation.

Short Notices (continued from page 45) ciples. He takes the reader on a walk through the Bible, showing first that the opening chapters display a pattern for God’s kingdom. This pattern perished at the Fall but soon a renewal of the kingdom was promised to Abraham and his descendants. Much of the history of Israel that follows is a partial but woefully incomplete display of that kingdom. When it is clear that the Israelite kingdom is doomed to failure, the prophets declare a prophesied kingdom to come. In the Gospels, Jesus declares that kingdom to be now present; Acts and the Epistles begin a proclaimed kingdom that will eventually be a perfected kingdom when Christ returns. God’s Big Picture will serve as an excellent introduction to the Bible for anyone perplexed or overwhelmed by its seeming breadth and diversity. I would highly recommend it as a training manual for Sunday School or even adult class Bible teachers. Every chapter ends with study questions, making the book also ideal for small group discussions. Roberts’ style is not only easy to read but quite enjoyable. He employs illustrations to good effect, and while “keeping it simple” is never condescending to his audience. What comes across clearly throughout is not only a love for the Scriptures but also a deep passion for the Christ to whom they point. —Mark Traphagen

Join the Conversation: We Need Your Voice Modern Reformation wants you in 2008. We’re looking for lay-people, pastors, and scholars to send us articles for publication. The best articles will be those that combine solid exegetical and systematic theology with penetrating insight into a current issue or problem facing the church. For a list of topics we’re interested in, visit www.modernreformation.org and click “Submissions.” Articles should be no longer than 3,000 words in length. Please send along a cover letter with your article describing you, your role or expertise on the issue you are addressing, your education, and your church affiliation. Articles may be sent by email to letters@modernreformation.org. You should also mail a hard copy to Modern Reformation, 1725 Bear Valley Parkway, Escondido, California 92027. Articles sent to Modern Reformation become the magazine’s property for one year after receipt. If we decide to publish the article, we will send you a writer’s agreement and the article will go through several levels of editing. If we decide not to publish the article, the rights to the work will be returned to you so you can pursue publication elsewhere. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 7 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 47

FAMILY MATTERS r e sou rces

fo r

homes

Once Upon a Time…

erious Christians sometimes perceive fiction as a waste of time—or worse. I came

strict allegory, in several places almost are. All upon a self-published curriculum for children once that carefully avoided all fiction sorts of parallels to the fall of man, the activities of because fiction tells stories of what never actually happened and is, therefore, not Satan, and the salvation provided in Christ can be true. While facts and events can show us truth, these found in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In the other things do not exhaust its expression. Truths as rich as six books in the series, the various characters encounter the love of Christ for his people or the difficulty of faithsituations that provide pictures of the joys and failures of fully doing what is right or the wonder of God’s salvalife when one seeks to follow Christ, with the final book, tion may legitimately find expression in great music, The Last Battle, giving a glimpse into persecution and into visual art, poetry—and fiction. Heaven. Don’t let your children wait for the movies! When authors write of an imaginary world peopled with Every one of these books is a treasure. creatures that don’t exist, they leave themselves especially George MacDonald is a lesser-known Christian open to the accusation of writing what is “untrue.” Yet, as author who wrote some excellent fantasy tales, illustrathe title of an essay by C. S. Lewis claims, “Sometimes Fairy tive of Christian truth. One of the best is The Light Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said.” When we know Princess in which a princess has no gravity—neither in a thing well and experience it every day, no matter how her physical body nor in her personality. Not until a truly wonderful it may be, we eventually take it for granted. prince gives himself to die for her does she finally expeThe experiences of other characters in a world we’ve never rience sorrow which changes her life—for the better— seen before can startle us into realizing the wonder of our forever. At the Back of the North Wind is another of own. In his essay, Lewis explained what he hoped to MacDonald’s fantasy tales, less obvious but with plenty accomplish with his stories of the imaginary world of of material for discussion of Christian truth. Narnia. After commenting on how difficult he had found it, R. C. Sproul has recently published his third short fanas a child, to feel what he knew he ought to feel about the tasy work for children, to be easily read in one sitting (and sufferings of Christ, he wrote, “But supposing that by castthen re-read, no doubt). The Lightlings begins with ing all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them Charlie’s concern about his fear of the dark. His grandfaof their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one ther addresses this concern with a story about lightlings, could make them for the first time appear in their real creatures who came to fear light when they disobeyed potency?” Fantasy can awaken appreciation for truth in their creator, the King of Light. Grandfather ends the story much the same way that seventeenth-century Dutch still by suggesting that every light Charlie ever sees should lifes and genre painting (everyday scenes) delight us with remind him of the Light of the World, the baby given by the ordinary. The viewer looks at oil on canvas, but stops the King to bring the lightlings out of their darkness and to and sees the reflection in the rain puddle or the fuzz on the take away their fears. On every page, rich illustrations by peach and goes away freshly valuing these things in real life. Justin Gerard show children the world of the lightlings. In fantasy writing, there is strict allegory—in which each The final three “For the Parents” pages provide questions, thing represents something in the real world—and there is explanations, and Scripture references for discussion. broader fantasy, where overall themes and feelings are true to Fantasy and allegory are rich tools, for ourselves as life. Many—not all—children naturally take to fantasy tales, well as for our children, to help us grasp more fully the so allow me to offer a list of suggested reading in this genre. riches of truths we love. For a strict allegory of the Christian life, nothing beats the lasting best-seller, Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. Starr Meade is author of Training Hearts, Teaching Minds: Originally written in seventeenth-century English, a number Family Devotions Based on the Shorter Catechism (P&R, 2000). of modern and illustrated versions are available. To read Pilgrim’s Progress with your family is to provide yourselves In the preceding article, Mrs. Meade quoted C. S. Lewis, with a wealth of shared characters and experiences that you from the introduction to Letters to Children, ed. by Lyle M. will recognize repeatedly in real life as you practice your faith. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead (MacMillan, 1985). C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, while not intended as

4 8 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G