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Who VOL.24 | NO.6 | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015 | $6.95

The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

Is Jesus?

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features VOL.24 | NO.6 | NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015

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PART I:

Who Is Jesus?

14 The Story of the Lamb

BY NA NCY GUTHRIE

20 In Christ Two Natures Met to Be Thy Cure

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BY S COT T R. SWAIN

PART II:

Who Isn’t Jesus?

26 False Jesuses: A Brief History of Heresies

BY K I M RI DD L EBARGER

34 Jesus According to Pop Culture

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BY DAVI D ZAHL

PART III:

Following Jesus 42 Come and See

BY T I MOT HY KEL L ER

48 The Good News of Christ’s Kingship

BY MI KA E D MON D S ON

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departments 04

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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CHRIST & CULTURE ››

BY E RI C LA NDRY

Discovering the Hidden History of Lucas Cranach the Younger

BY BE CKY G A RRI S O N

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BOOK REVIEWS

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PI PE R, NO LL, A ND BRO O K S

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LETTER from the EDITOR

ERIC LANDRY executive editor

The good news is that Jesus is one of the most popular figures of history. A few years ago, a polling company asked Americans of all faiths and no faith who they thought was the most popular historical figure. Jesus, alas, didn’t come in first.

He was beaten by Abraham Lincoln. But a 90 percent popularity rating is cause for rejoicing, right?

The problem, of course, is that the Jesus of the popular modern imagination bears little resemblance to the Jesus testified to by the Gospel accounts and historical records. The Jesus we all like is mostly a projection of our own desires and needs, a bobble-headed deity who agrees with everything we say and do.

The popularity and malleability of Jesus in our day makes him an unwilling accomplice to politicians, entertainers, and religious charlatans. The more Jesus is used and abused in the pursuit of someone else’s goals, the harder it is to determine where the Jesus of our imaginations ends and the Jesus of history begins. This issue of Modern Reformation is intended to help us remember the profound revelation given to Peter—that Jesus is the Christ,

the son of the living God (Matt. 16:15).

In this “Discipleship Issue,” the feature articles are presented under three main headings.

First, “Who Is Jesus?” To answer that question, we’ve asked popular author and speaker Nancy Guthrie to trace the promise of Jesus, the Lamb of God, through the Bible. Scott Swain, professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando), helps us understand the most significant mystery of Jesus’ identity: the union in his one person of both divine and human natures.

Our second main section asks the question, “Who Isn’t Jesus?” Kim Riddlebarger, cohost of the White Horse Inn, unmasks many of the false Jesuses in the history of the church; and David Zahl, executive director of Mockingbird Ministries, takes us on a rousing romp through pop culture’s vain imagination of Jesus.

Our third and final section, “Following Jesus,” takes up the task of discipleship, because knowing Jesus isn’t just an intellectual exercise; it is the first step of a pilgrimage. Mika Edmondson, an inner-city Presbyterian church planter, helps us see how we participate in the kingdom Jesus is bringing; and Pastor Tim Keller returns to our pages with his sermon, “Come and See.” If you are already a faithful disciple of Jesus, then read this issue and renew your worship of the God-man who even now rules and reigns at the Father’s right hand.

If you are curious about Jesus or skeptical of his claims, then work your way through these articles and encounter a Jesus who is often reimagined for our own era but whose radical message of forgiveness and grace still rings true.

“ THE JESUS WE ALL LIKE IS MOSTLY A PROJECTION OF OUR OWN DESIRES AND NEEDS.”

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

DISCOVERING THE

HIDDEN HISTORY of LUCAS CRANACH the YOUNGER

by BECKY GARRISON

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

H U R C H H I STO R I A N S

have documented

1517, the year Martin Luther published his ninety-five theses, as a starting point of the Reformation and chronicled in depth his public persona and private life.

But in depicting Reformation-era personalities and politics, they seemed to have overlooked the important role played by the Cranach family. The earlier creation of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1436 spearheaded the dawning of a new media era that enabled the Cranach workshop to mass produce flysheets advancing Reformation ideas that were written in German and illustrated with woodcuts and pictures.

As part of the Luther Decade (2008–2017) celebrating the birth of the Reformation, 2015 was designated as the year of “Image and Bible,” replete with exhibits and activities designed to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Lucas Cranach the Younger (1515–1586).

Throughout his life, he stood in the shadow of his father, Lucas Cranach the Elder, a court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career and a close friend of Luther. As a boy, Lucas developed his skills in the art of painting and printmaking by working in his father’s workshop. He learned how to utilize these mediums to advance the political and theological views of the newly formed Protestant faith.

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Later, he expanded his father’s trade into an enterprise staffed by students who reproduced the Cranachs’ iconic paintings, thus enabling them to distribute the pictorial messages of the Reformation to a wider audience.

WI T T E NBE RG Between June 26 and November 1, 2015, Lutherstadt Wittenberg became Cranach City when Augus-teum/Luther House, the largest Reformation museum in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site, hosted the national exhibit “Lucas Cranach the Younger—Discovery of a PAINTING ON PREVIOUS PAGE: THE VINEYARD OF THE LORD, 1569;

BY LUCAS CRANACH THE YOUNGER

Reformation Altar in the Town Church of St. Mary’s in Wittenberg

LEFT PANEL: Philipp Melanchthon performing a baptism, assisted by Martin Luther CENTER PANEL: The Last Supper, with Luther among the apostles RIGHT PANEL: Luther makes his confession

Master.” By walking through this exhibit, visitors could soak in the manifold aspects of the Cranach family as painters, patriarchs, politicians, and entrepreneurs. The accompanying “Pop-up Cranach” exhibit allowed visitors to experience Cranach’s world via a series of interactive exhibits, walk-in exhibition modules, and an activity workshop.

The Town Church of St. Mary’s, the oldest building in Wittenberg, is home to several original Cranach paintings that have been recently restored, including the Reformation Altar. In this church, Cranach listened to Luther’s sermons. He was also most likely baptized and married here, and it’s where his grave and tomb can be found.

Other sites in Wittenberg that hosted Cranach’s work include the birth house of Cranach the Younger and the Melanchthon House, built on the site of the home of the humanist and reformer Philipp Melanchthon.

The Schiller Museum, in its “Cranach in Weimar” exhibit (April 15 to June 15), offered a further analysis of this famous altarpiece, highlighting the political nature of the Cranachs’ art.

In placing the now-famous pictures of Luther and his wife Katharina von Bora side by side, the Cranachs sent a clear message to the Vatican that the marriage of a former priest and nun was indeed valid.

Also, a seemingly innocent pastoral depiction of the famous biblical stories (such as Jesus welcoming children to him and the woman caught in adultery) were viewed as scandalous in the sixteenth century for depicting people touching the human form of Jesus. A collection of flysheets depict the anti-papal sentiment with a voracity similar to recent battles over religious drawings, such as the cartoons of Muhammad published by the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

WEIMA R

E RFU RT

This town was home to Lucas Cranach the Elder during the last three years of his life, as well as the site where he is buried. Here one can see signs of the Cranachs’ ecclesial influence, particularly in the Cranach altar (also known as the Weimar Altarpiece) at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. This altar, which Lucas Cranach the Elder probably started and his son completed in 1555, depicts the crucifixion of Christ in the center. A stream of blood pours from the wound on Christ’s body onto Cranach, who is depicted in a side panel with Luther off to his right.

From June 27 to September 20, the Erfurt Angermuseum hosted “Controversy and Compromise. The Column Picture Cycle of Mariendom and the Culture of Dual-Confessionalism in Erfurt in the 1st Century.” This exhibit placed the Catholic images depicted in the Cathedral of St. Mary’s within the context of the newly forming Protestant culture. Here one could also see depictions of artwork by other sixteenth-century Protestant and Catholic artists influenced by the Cranach workshop.

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

The infamous print of the pope’s crown appearing on the whore of Babylon;

by Lucas Cranach the Elder; published in Luther’s September Testament The Fall of Man, 1549; produced by Lucas Cranach the Younger

Portrait of Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1550; painting by Lucas Cranach the Younger

Law & Gospel, 1529; painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder

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GOTH A The exhibit at the Herzoglichen Museum (Ducal Museum Gotha), “Cranach in the Service of Court and Reformation” (March 29 to July 19), depicted the Cranach workshop’s work set against the background of the political and spiritual changes that were developing at the time in Reformation-era Germany. Artifacts such as Luther’s September Testament and his seminal translation of the Bible into the German language depict an early form of “picture propaganda.” Among the woodcut drawings are depictions of the pope’s tiara carved onto the heads of figures such as the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the Whore of Babylon. These images were deemed so scandalous that the December Testament printed several months later contained prints with these drawings removed. Additional paintings on display included the woman caught in adultery and the then-controversial Law & Gospel painting that illustrates the concept of receiving salvation solely through grace without the need for papal indulgences. In 2016, an exhibit of these works will be coming to New York City and Minneapolis.

EISENB ACH The Wartburg Castle where Luther wrote the September Testament hosted the exhibit “The Luther Portraits of the Cranach Workshop” (April 2 to July 19). Visitors were able to see different portraits of Martin Luther painted between 1520 and 1546, all of which were developed in the Cranach workshop. These portraits show Luther’s progression from a young Catholic monk to the Reformer at peace at the moment of his death.

TORG AU In Torgau in 1530 (the former seat of the Elector of Saxony), Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Justus Jonas, and Johannes Bugenhagen drafted the Torgau Articles. Later that year, these articles were incorporated into the Augsburg Confession, the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church.

“ THE LUTHER DECADE”

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n 2016, the Luther Decade will focus on “Reformation and the One World,” emphasizing the global power of the

Reformation’s influence as this message spread from Wittenberg to Western Europe and later to the rest of the world. This decade will culminate in 2017 with a yearlong celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Further information about Cranach 2015 can be found at cranach2015.de and wege-zu-cranach.de/ english.html, with additional materials focusing on the Luther decade available at visit-luther .com and luther2017.de/en.

This town now has the distinction of hosting the first of four national exhibitions marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. In this exhibit, the Cranachs’ paintings were viewed alongside clothing and other artifacts from this era, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the cultural milieu of this era. Among the items on display were the jeweled mitre of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, the signet ring of Martin Luther, and the ceremonial sword and armor of the electors of Saxony.

Other exhibits in the Thüringen region that paid homage to Lucas Cranach the Younger included “Cranach in Anhalt,” “Cranach in Neustadt,” and “Cranach in the Gothic House” in Wörlitzer Park.

Twelve German towns and cities came together to create a walking tour called “Routes to Cranach,” which enabled visitors to walk through areas that Lucas Cranach the Younger and his father had visited, offering an interesting and interactive experience in what their daily lives might have looked like.

Becky Garrison’s latest book is Roger Williams’ Little Book of Virtues. Her writing credits include work for Washingtonpost .com (On Faith), American Atheist, Free Inquiry, Religion Dispatches, Killing the Buddha, and The Revealer.

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features

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PA R T I

PA R T I I

PA R T I I I

Who Is Jesus?

Who Isn’t Jesus?

Following Jesus

14 The Story of the Lamb

26 False Jesuses: A Brief History of Heresies

42 Come and See

20 In Christ Two Natures Met to Be Thy Cure

34 Jesus According to Pop Culture

48 The Good News of Christ’s Kingship MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

12

PA R T I

Who Is Jesus?

T h e

Story o f

t h e

Lamb

by NANCY GUTHRIE

The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

W

hen I walked into the art gallery, it was the painting that simultaneously took my breath away and brought me to tears. It was a lamb, but it was like

no other lamb. A slim stream of blood was draining from the lamb’s neck, and the title beside the painting read, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” When I describe it, perhaps it sounds more gruesome than beautiful to you. We like our lambs fluffy and white, frolicking in a field or nestled close to their mothers. But when we read the story of the Lamb that we find in the Bible, it is not a pretty story.

It would not be a stretch to say that the Bible is the story of the Lamb from beginning to end. At the beginning, when Adam and Eve sinned and realized they were naked, God made coverings for them from animal skins. We know that Adam and Eve’s son, Abel, was a keeper of sheep and brought an offering of his flock to God. From the first need for a covering for sin, the first sacrifice offered for sin, we see a lamb. But the story of the Lamb begins in earnest with Abraham.

THE R A M I N THE T H IC K ET God promised Abraham he would have so many children that he wouldn’t be able to count them. But

there was a problem. His wife Sarah was barren.

Month after month they tried to hold on to God’s promise, but she still wasn’t with child. And then her child-bearing years came to an end. No wonder Sarah laughed when, at ninety years old, she overheard the Lord telling Abraham that in the next year she would give birth to a son. It was laughable. And that’s what they named him. This one whose name means laughter brought so much joy and laughter to their tent. Isaac was the child that God had promised would be the first of unnumbered descendants, so when God called to Abraham and told him to take his son Isaac to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering, it simply made no sense.

Surely Abraham struggled to harmonize this command of God to sacrifice Isaac with the promise of MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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Abraham and Isaac arrived at the place, built the altar, and “In Abraham’s answer to Isaac’s arranged the wood. There was nothing left to do but bind Isaac and place him on the pile of wood and plunge the knife into innocent question, we hear deliberate his tender flesh. Only when the knife was lifted high did God restrain Abraham. vagueness but also an element On that day, on that mountain, God provided a ram whose head was caught in a thorny thicket so of hope: ‘G O D W I L L P R OV I D E that the father did not have to sacrifice his beloved son to pay the debt for his sin. It foreshadowed F O R H I M S E L F T H E L A M B for a another day when God, the Father, would walk his own beloved son up that very same hill. This son too would carry the wood upon which burnt offering, my son.’” he would be sacrificed. But for this son there would be no last-minute reprieve. It would be his head that would be bound by thorns. Jesus was the Lamb that God provided God, who had said, “I will establish my covenant for himself as an offering for the sin of all Abraham’s with Isaac” (Gen. 17:21). On this day the laughter descendants by faith. God “did not spare his own Son must have come to an abrupt end in Abraham’s life. but gave him up for us all.”

His heart must have been broken. But Abraham also understood that God could require the death of any A LA MB I N T HE HOU SE sinner and that the firstborn son was the representative of the family. As Ed Clowney writes, “For Abraham to give the fruit of his body for the sin of The next chapter in the story of the Lamb takes his soul would not be too great a price.”1 Genesis 21:3 place in Egypt, where Jacob’s twelve sons and records that “Abraham rose early in the morning, their families lived and multiplied for four hundred saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men years, going from welcome guests of the Pharaoh with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for to Pharaoh’s slave labor force. But they were not the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of forgotten or unseen by their God. God heard his which God had told him.” people’s cries and sent a savior to them. Moses went Abraham fully intended to sacrifice Isaac as God to Pharaoh and demanded that he let the Hebrews had commanded, but after three days of thinking it go so that they could serve God and not Pharaoh. through, his calm conclusion was that God would When Pharaoh refused to let God’s people go, God raise Isaac from the dead. His confidence in his rained down judgment through a series of plagues. conclusion, however, must have been tested when The first few plagues were a mess and a nuisance, Isaac finally broke the silence of the climb, asking, but it was about to get worse. Egypt was reduced to “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb an ecological, environmental, and economic disasfor a burnt offering?” (Gen. 22:7). ter. And then the scene went dark. Really dark. But In Abraham’s answer to Isaac’s innocent question, the final plague would be the worst. In Exodus 11:4, we hear deliberate vagueness but also an element Moses tells Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About of hope: “God will provide for himself the lamb for a midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and burnt offering, my son” (Gen. 22:8). every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.’”

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Judgment was about to come down. But God also the priests. The priests would sprinkle the blood provided a way of salvation through judgment—the of the animals against the veil of the tabernacle second chapter in the story of the Lamb—a lamb in and upon the horns of the altar of incense, symthe house. The congregation of Israel was instructed bolically transferring the sins of the people into the to “take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a sanctuary. But there was one day a year when the lamb for a household.” They were to “kill their lambs sanctuary was ceremonially cleansed of the accuat twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood mulated sins of the people: the Day of Atonement. and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the On this day two goats were brought to the High houses in which they eat it” (Exod. 12:3–7).

Priest. The people saw the high priest slit the throat Because we have the benefit of hindsight, we think of the first goat and carry its blood behind the veil that certainly we would have taken Moses’ words into the Most Holy Place. And they thought, “That to heart and killed the lamb and brushed the blood. should be our blood. That is what our sin deserves.

But perhaps that is only because we have the whole But God has allowed the death sentence we deserve Bible to help us put this story of the lamb into conto be passed onto this animal instead of us.” As the text. We have to admit, apart from the rest of the priest sprinkled the blood over the mercy seat and Bible’s story that shows us the picture again and again of a lamb being sacrificed in our place, we would find it difficult to believe that blood on a doorpost would have any saving power.

“Anyone who wants to be made In the same way, many people today find it difficult to believe that blood shed on a cross two right with God can only do so thousand years ago has any saving power for them. This makes sense only if we understand that God on the basis of T H E L A M B T H AT “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). This is the substituG O D H A S P R OV I D E D .” tion that saves us. Either the lamb dies or we die. The Lamb has died, God’s very own firstborn Son, in our place, so that we need not die.

TWO G OATS AT TH E TA B ER NACL E Once God’s people were brought out of Egypt to be a holy nation, God’s treasured possession, God gave to them his law so they would know how to live as his people in the land he was giving to them.

He gave them instructions for offerings and sacrifices, feasts and festivals that would mark them as his own.

Throughout the year, the Israelites brought the prescribed sacrifices for sin and presented them to

on the horns of the altar, it became a cleansing agent, washing away the collected sins of the people in the sight of God. Then the high priest put his hands on the second goat’s head and began to confess the sins of the people, ceremonially transferring their guilt to the goat. They would have watched as this goat, on which all of their sin had been laid, was led away through the sea of tents, outside the camp, and into the wilderness, never to be seen again, and they would have felt relief that their sin-guilt had been carried far away.

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“ AT

THIS P OINT THEY EXPECTED HIM TO

D O W H AT T H E PAT R I A R C H L E A D I N G T H E PA S S OV E R M E A L A LWAY S D I D —

pick up the bread and say

the familiar words of the Passover feast: ‘This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.’ But instead...”

Throughout the Old Testament this is pictured again and again—that anyone who wants to be made right with God can do so only on the basis of the lamb that God has provided. Isaac was spared when God provided a lamb to be sacrificed instead.

In that case, God provided one lamb as a substitute for one person, Abraham’s son Isaac. In Egypt at the Passover, God made provision for one lamb to be sacrificed for one household. On the Day of Atonement, a single animal was sacrificed, and its blood sprinkled against the veil of the tabernacle and upon the horns of the altar of incense, for the sins of the whole nation of Israel.2 But all these lambs were merely preparing God’s people to recognize God’s provision in Mary’s little

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lamb. Finally the day came when John the Baptist stood by the Jordan River and “saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’” (John 1:29). Jesus was God’s provision of one Lamb to die, not for one person, or for one family, or for one nation, but for one world.

T HE LA MB AT T HE TA BLE From the time of Moses up to the time of Jesus, the Israelites celebrated the Passover each spring.

People from all over the country would go to Jerusalem to sacrifice a lamb for the Passover feast.

In fact, the day Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem was the very day herds of Passover lambs were being driven into the city to be sacrificed. Later that week Jesus told his disciples, “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified” (Matt.

26:2). Ever since John the Baptist identified Jesus as the “Lamb of God,” Jesus’ entire ministry had been driving toward this day, this celebration of Passover when Christ, “our Passover Lamb” (1 Cor. 5:7), would be sacrificed. Luke 22 tells us, “When the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer’” (Luke 22:14–15).

At this point they expected him to do what the patriarch leading the Passover meal always did— pick up the bread and say the familiar words of the Passover feast: “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.” But instead, Luke 22 tells us, He took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

blood of the Lamb so that their robes are white, and those who see no need to be washed in that blood and covered in his robes. The former have nothing to fear—the latter have everything to fear.

There are those who have hidden themselves in the Lamb and those who try to hide from the Lamb. Those who persisted in their sin, who saw no need for confession or cleansing, will have no ability to stand before the throne of God and will fall down in terror, hoping the rocks and mountains will fall on top of them. But those who submitted to his cleansing work and fall on their faces before the Lamb will fall down, not in terror, hiding from the Lamb, but in adoration, praising the Lamb (Rev. 6:15–17).

Those who have been cleansed have no need for protection from the Lamb but will be protected forever by the Lamb. The blood of Christ that not only covers but also conquers sin will have completed its sanctifying work, and they will live forever in a purified environment as purified people (Rev. 7:14–17).

The new heaven and new earth will be populated by flagrant but forgiven sinners who have been washed with the only cleansing agent that has the power to eradicate sin and enable us to stand before our holy God: the blood of the Lamb. The final chapter in the story of the Lamb is actually the beginning of a far greater story:

At the Last Supper, Jesus endowed the Feast of the Passover with new meaning. Instead of celebrating the redemption of Israel from Egypt, it became clear that these elements now symbolize redemption from the slavery of sin—redemption provided by his death as the Lamb of God. His death was the central event toward which all of history had been moving and from which it draws its meaning.

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. (Rev. 22:3–5)

THE L A M B O N THE T H RO NE Nancy Guthrie is a member of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee. She teaches the Bible at her

The Lamb of God will still be at the center of God’s purposes in his world when he brings human history to a conclusion. When John was enabled to see into the heart of ultimate reality, the center of everything, he saw the Lamb on the throne, “a Lamb standing as though it had been slain.”

Before this Lamb gather two different groups of people—those who have been washed in the

church, at churches and conferences around the country, and through books and DVDs including the Seeing Jesus in the Old Testament Bible study series (Crossway), from which portions of this article were adapted.

1 Edmund Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1988), 54.

2 Philip Graham Ryken provides this insightful tracing of the story of the Lamb throughout God’s story in Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 330.

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In Christ

T W O

N A T U R E S

M E T

t o

Thy Cure

by S COTT R. SWAIN

The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

B E

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“

n Christ two natures met to be thy cure.” George Herbert’s elegant line captures two essential features of Christian teaching about Jesus Christ.

The first feature concerns the consequence of the incarnation: “In Christ

two natures met.” At the Father’s sovereign behest, by the Spirit’s power, the Son of God became one of us, assuming human nature in Mary’s womb, with the result that two natures, divine and human, “met” in one person. The second feature concerns the ends of the incarnation: “to be thy cure.” The Word became flesh, not to benefit himself but to benefit us, to be our “cure.” The Father sent the Son into the world because we needed a brother, a redeemer, and a Lord.

If we are to appreciate the biblical significance of the person of Jesus Christ, then we must consider both of these features.

“IN CH R I ST TWO NAT U RE S M ET ”: THE NAT U R E A N D C O NS E Q U E NC E OF TH E I NCA R NAT IO N

2. The object of the incarnation is “flesh”—not simply a human body, but human nature in its entirety, body and soul, in its miserable condition east of Eden (Isa. 40:6–7).

In order to understand the implications of the incarnation for Jesus’ person, we must first consider the nature of the incarnation itself. John 1:14 well expresses the grammar of this concept: “The Word became flesh.”

3. The verb of the incarnation, “became,” indicates that incarnation is not a matter of the Son coming to indwell a human person, as God indwells the tabernacle or temple or as the Spirit indwells the saints. No, the Second Person of the Trinity became human, assuming human nature into union with his own person. As Thomas F. Torrance so ably puts it, in the incarnation the Son of God came to dwell among us as one of us.

1. The subject of the incarnation is “the Word”— the one who existed “in the beginning,” who was “with God” and who “was God” (John 1:1). While all three persons of the Trinity are operative in the incarnation (the Father sending, the Spirit empowering), it is the Son who personally became incarnate.

As a consequence of the incarnation, two natures exist in one person. In Christ two natures meet. This MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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personal, or hypostatic, union of divine and human natures in the Son of God is a great mystery (1 Tim. 3:16) that outstrips the “We praise the incarnate Lord, powers of human comprehension and transcends our highest capacities for praise. The hypostatic FOR IN HIM GOD’S SUPREME union is, nevertheless, a luminous mystery, characterized by its own intrinsic intelligibility, that we may grasp through the SpiritG L O R Y I S R E V E A L E D ...and in him inspired testimony of prophets and apostles and by faith. Bathed in this great light, we may come to our nature’s supreme happiness is adore the person of Jesus in truth and to avoid christological error.

The union of two natures in realized at the Father’s right hand.”

Christ surpasses all other unions that occur between God and his creatures. In providence, God and his creatures cooperate in fulfilling divinely appointed ends. In the covenant of grace, God binds himself to elect sinners for the sake of union and communion. us “in every respect” (Heb. 2:17), “yet without sin” In the incarnation, the Son of God unites divine (Heb. 4:15). Furthermore, the hypostatic union and human natures in his person with the result does not bring about any confusion of Jesus’ two that everything he is and everything he does is natures. In Christ two natures meet, but they do not simultaneously fully divine and fully human. The mix, becoming some “third thing” (tertium quid) God-man never is and never acts in separation from that is neither divine nor human. When horses and his divine and human natures. Thus when Jesus humans meet, we have a centaur, no longer horse or pronounces the forgiveness of sins, he does so by human. When deity and humanity meet in Jesus means of his own divine authority and by means of Christ, we have a perfect Mediator, fully God and his own human vocal cords (Mark 2:1–12). When fully man.

Jesus dies on the cross, the Second Person of the Trinity simultaneously suffers an all-too-human “TO BE T HY CU RE”: fate and enacts a work of divine wisdom and power E N DS OF T HE I NCA RNAT I ON (1 Cor. 1:23–25). When Jesus ascends into heaven, he returns to his own native state of divine glory (John 17:5) and raises the now glorified DNA of Mention of Jesus’ mediatorial office brings us to the Abraham, David, and Mary to the Father’s right reason for his incarnation. Here we must address the hand (Ps. 110:1). question, “Why did the Son of God become human?”

The intimacy of two natures in Jesus Christ As we noted above, the Son of God did not assume transcends all other divine-human unions. human nature for his own benefit but for our “cure.”

Nevertheless, the hypostatic union does not bring The Son of God assumed human nature into union about any modification to Jesus’ two natures. Jesus with his person in order that he might become the is wholly and truly God and wholly and truly man. perfect Mediator between God and human beings, In him the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily that he might reconcile two estranged parties for our form (Col. 1:19; 2:9). In him the fullness of human good and God’s glory. The God-man’s mediatorial nature exists in its integrity: he has been made like

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role may be summarized in terms of the threefold relationship he holds with his elect people: the Word became flesh in order to be our brother, our redeemer, and our Lord.

The Word became flesh in order to be our brother.

The incarnation creates a kinship relation between God’s eternal Son and God’s elect children. As it is the kinsman-redeemer’s responsibility in Scripture to deliver his family members from ruin (Ruth 3–4), so Jesus is a brother born for adversity (Prov. 17:17).

The Son of God “had to be made like his brothers in every respect” if he was to be a fit Mediator (Heb. 2:17; 1 Tim. 2:5). But Jesus’ kinship relation to us is not merely a function of the human nature he assumed. Through the incarnation and in the work that follows, the Son of God extends to us a creaturely fellowship in his unique relationship to the Father: his Father becomes our Father, his God becomes our God (John 20:17; Gal. 4:4–7). “See what kind of love the Father has given us”—in and with the God-man—“that we should be called children of God” (1 John 3:1; with 1 John 1:1–3)!

The Word became flesh in order to be our redeemer. Jesus’ identity as the God-man informs his redemptive work in both its passive and active dimensions. The Mediator’s humanity is requisite to his suffering and death on the cross, since his divine nature is immortal and impassible. The Mediator’s humanity is also requisite to his obedience as the second Adam, since it is the human race, not the divine Son, who owes a debt of obedience to God’s law. That said, the Mediator’s divine Sonship is no less significant for his redemptive work. The value of Jesus’ sacrificial death lies in his identity as God’s beloved Son (John 3:16; Rom. 8:32). This is what makes his blood more precious than silver or gold (1 Pet. 1:18–19) and thus more than sufficient as a ransom for our souls (Ps. 49:7–9, 15). Moreover, the human obedience Jesus offers to the Father in Gethsemane and Golgotha (Matt. 26:36–46; Phil.

2:8) is the creaturely form of the divine filial obedience he offers to the Father in coming into the world (John 6:38; 10:36). The former draws its infallibility and strength from the latter.

The Word became flesh in order to be our Lord.

Strictly speaking, the Son of God is our Lord before and apart from the incarnation by virtue of his deity. However, by means of his mediatorial office and work, he assumes a lordship relation toward

us that goes beyond the relation he holds toward us as our creator and providential ruler. Through his obedient death, our kinsman-redeemer has purchased us for himself (Titus 2:14). Therefore we belong to him (1 Cor. 6:19–20) and acclaim him as our Lord (John 20:20; Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11).

Certainly, we worship him because of his deity and because of the divine favor he has exhibited toward us in reclaiming us as his own. But we also worship him in his humanity. It is in his person as the Lamb who sits upon the throne—in his person as the Godman—that he receives “blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13). We praise the incarnate Lord, for in him God’s supreme glory is revealed (Heb. 1:3) and in him our nature’s supreme happiness is realized at the Father’s right hand (Ps. 16:11).

Indeed, I believe the Bible pushes us to say that the ultimate reason for the Son’s incarnation was not so that he could save us, but so that we could be saved for him. God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Gal. 4:4–7; Rom. 8:29), that in all things he, the incarnate Son of God, might be preeminent (Col. 1:18; Heb. 1:2, 4). For this reason, the incarnate lordship of the Son will endure forever (Ps. 45:6; Heb. 1:8).

C O NCLU SI ON “In Christ two natures met to be thy cure.” This is true, wonderfully so—for now, our cure lies in belonging to the God-man, our brother, our redeemer, our Lord (1 John 3:1). Ultimately, our cure will be perfected in beholding the glory he had with the Father before the world was, the glory he now and forever radiates in and through his incarnate person as the firstborn among an innumerable host of redeemed siblings (1 John 3:2; John 17:24– 26; Rev. 7:9–10).

Scott R. Swain is professor of systematic theology and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He is author of several books, including The God of the Gospel: Robert Jenson’s Trinitarian Theology and, with Michael Allen, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation.

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The

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PA R T I I

Who Isn’t Jesus?

False Jesuses A

B R I E F o f

H I S T O R Y

H E R E S I E S

by KIM RIDDLEBARGER

The

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iven two thousand years of church history, and the large number of TV evangelists, spiritual gurus, and cult leaders running around—all of whom seem bent on conjuring up tailor-made

Jesuses to suit their purposes—there are plenty of false Jesuses to for us to consider. We begin by noting that the nature of our Lord’s incarnation almost guarantees the presence of false Jesuses. The very idea of God tak-

ing to himself a true human nature is in and of itself a unique and somewhat mysterious historical event. That Jesus was a real flesh and blood human, who is also the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, while remaining as one person, raises many profound and important questions.

Those who heard Jesus preach about the kingdom of God were said to have marveled at his words, for he spoke as someone having authority—unlike anyone they had heard preach previously. He performed miraculous signs and wonders that were obviously not trickery or chicanery. He instantaneously healed people known to the crowds following him and even raised the dead. All of this confirmed that his preaching had its origin in the will of YHWH. The buzz surrounding Jesus was that he might be the longexpected messianic prophet.

It was impossible to hear or see Jesus and not ask, “Who is this? Where is he from?” In Matthew 16:13–15, we read an interesting exchange between Jesus and his disciples regarding this very matter.

When Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

People have been attempting to answer Jesus’ question ever since.

A ST U MBLI NG BLOCK A ND A FOLLY Then there were others so convinced that the Bible is God’s word and so zealous to defend one point MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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of doctrine to the exclusion of all others that they formulated an answer to Jesus’ question by considering only one slice of New Testament teaching. One example is those who sought to preserve the unity of God while allowing for a special role for Jesus.

Others developed their Christology to satisfy prevailing philosophical considerations. The most famous of such groups, the so-called Arians, identified Jesus as God’s first and preeminent creature, the “firstborn of all creation,” who in turn created everything else. Their answers are profoundly and dangerously wrong.

We must not overlook the fact that when Jesus asked his disciples this question, he accepted Peter’s answer before answering his own question.

to the Father, which at the very least implies that Jesus shares in the Father’s divine essence; that is, Jesus is in some sense God). After accepting Peter’s answer, Jesus told the disciples that his true identity could be known only through God’s revelation—that is, only through God’s revealed word. If we want to know who Jesus is, then we must go to the one place where Jesus’ question is definitively answered: in the New Testament testimony of Jesus’ true identity.

There are three inescapable conclusions from even a brief survey of the pages of the New Testament regarding the person of Jesus: (1) Jesus is fully human and at the same time (2) Jesus is truly God, and (3) these two natures are united in such a way that Jesus remains one true human person.

Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Therefore, the sure-fire way to spot a “false Jesus” Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered is to determine whether Jesus’ true deity or his true him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For humanity is in any way denied, compromised, or flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but ignored. Any “Jesus” who is not fully human or truly my Father who is in heaven.”

God is a false Jesus.

But these two natures—one human and one Jesus accepted Peter’s answer as a confession divine coexisting in one person—raise additional of faith and an acknowledgment that Jesus is the questions. How do these two natures relate to each Christ (Israel’s Messiah) as well as the Son of the other? Are they blended into one? Are they united living God (a reference to Jesus’ eternal relationship like two boards glued together? Are they arranged in such a way that we can determine from the Gospel accounts whether Jesus acts as God or only as a man? If Jesus has two natures united in one person, then how does this work? Is he really one person? This is why “The S U R E - F I R E WAY T O S P O T the very nature of the incarnation generates “false Jesuses.”

We begin with the affirmation A ‘ FA L S E J E S U S ’ is to determine that Jesus is as human as any of us, and then consider some of the ways in which our Lord’s whether Jesus’ true deity or his humanity is denied by false teachers. The New Testament writers universally affirm Jesus’ humanity, and routinely describe true humanity is in any way denied, Jesus as demonstrating real human needs and attributes. The Gospels speak of Jesus’ birth as compromised, or ignored.” natural; it was his conception by the Holy Spirit that was miraculous. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ early life, Luke tells us that Jesus

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grew in wisdom and knowledge just as any human does (Luke 2:40, 52). The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus experienced temptation as any human does, except that Jesus did not have a sinful nature as we do (Heb. 2:10, 18). Jesus learned obedience through suffering (Heb. 5:8), which tells us that his growth and development were as necessary to his personality as they would be for any human. This means Jesus was once a toddler. Jesus was once a kid. Jesus was once a teenager. Jesus had friends, played, learned, and grew to adulthood—just as every one of us has done. We read of Jesus being hungry, growing weary, and needing sleep. We read of Jesus weeping angrily at the sight of the tomb of his friend Lazarus, and then suffering deep anguish of soul while praying in Gethsemane (when he was praying for himself, for his disciples, and for us). We read of Jesus experiencing human emotions such as anger (Mark 3:5).

The question, however, remains: Was Jesus truly human? Was he divine yet merely appeared to be human? I ask this particular question because there have been notable but infrequent occasions throughout church history when certain teachers (especially those influenced by Greek thought or proto/full-blown Gnosticism) denied that Jesus was truly human.

DOCETI SM The ancient version of this is the heresy of Docetism—which comes to us from the Greek word dokein (to seem) or dókesis (apparition, phantom).

Operating on the assumption that there is an absolute dualism between pure spirit and matter, if Jesus is God in some sense, then his essence must be pure spirit. Since matter is defective, a flawed copy of the ideal form, how could God ever be united in any real sense to human flesh that, being material, is flawed or even evil? God manifest in the flesh is understood as God’s presence among us, his divinity veiled or concealed by a physical appearance or form; but Jesus does not possess a true human nature, so these teachers claim.

Not long ago someone asked me what the outcome would be if Jesus took a DNA test. The question is profound, because if Jesus swabbed his cheek and had the cells analyzed, his maternal line

(mitochondrial DNA) no doubt would take us back to Eve, just as Luke reports in his genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:23–38. As for Jesus’ paternal line, Jesus’ y-DNA must have been miraculously created and then united to Mary’s. The question seems speculative, but it actually raises an important theological point: God incarnate had human DNA, just as he had RH-typable blood, shed for the complete remission of our sins. If Jesus could submit his cheek swab to one of the DNA companies, he would have received a concrete result. Jesus is not God in human disguise.

Jesus is fully human.

The New Testament specifically addresses this particular heresy of Docetism. In the prologue to his Gospel, John speaks of Jesus as becoming flesh and dwelling among us, the human race. In John 8:40, Jesus identifies himself as a man. In 1 John 1:1–3, the apostle takes direct aim at those who question Jesus’ true humanity: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.

John spent three years with Jesus. He saw Jesus in the flesh, doing all the things humans do. He heard Jesus speak, preach, and teach, and his voice didn’t sound like it had been modulated by reverb unit.

Jesus is truly human in every sense of the word. In fact, it is John in his second epistle (2 John 7) who warns the apostolic church: “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.”

To deny the human nature of Jesus is to imbibe from the spirit of the antichrist. That is a strong and serious charge. The prophecy pundits have done us a massive disservice by playing “pin the tail on the antichrist,” instead of focusing upon what John actually says about the antichrist. John uses the term not for a future ruler who makes a peace treaty with Israel, but for anyone who denies that Jesus has MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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a true human nature—in other words, anyone who teaches the Docetic heresy.

I’ve long thought that Bible-believing Christians have a much harder time with Christ’s humanity than with his deity. As best humans can, we grasp the idea of God coming to us in the flesh. This is easier for us to embrace because of our reverence for Jesus as our Lord, Savior, Redeemer, Creator, friend. We have a harder time thinking of Jesus needing to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. The very nature of the incarnation forces us to wrestle with the question, “Just how human is Jesus?” The answer given by Jesus himself and as he is described in the New Testament is that he is fully human—a man. To deny this is to preach a false Jesus. It is to do the work of antichrist.

THE D I V I N E CHR I ST Space precludes me from doing full justice to this aspect of Christ’s divine nature, so I will refer to only a few significant passages. There are the seven “I am” statements in John’s Gospel, where Jesus speaks of himself as “I am” (ego emi), which is a direct allusion to YHWH, the great “I am.” The most famous of these “I am” sayings is Jesus’ declaration in John 8:58. After accusing Jesus of being demon possessed, the Jewish Bible scholars asked him, “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

In these words, Jesus is claiming to be the I am (YHWH) who spoke to Moses from the burning bush (Exod. 3:14). We know this is how the Jews understood Jesus’ words because we read in verse 59 that “they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.” The penalty for blasphemy was death by stoning. If Jesus was not one with YHWH, then the death penalty was completely appropriate. If Jesus was not who he claimed, then he was blaspheming! But from the Jews’ immediate reaction, it is pretty clear that Jesus was claiming he was the one who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. In other words, he is God. And then there is Jesus’ question and answer as recounted in Matthew 16, mentioned earlier. Jesus

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accepted Peter’s assertion that he himself was both Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God (that is, in some way Jesus is identified as one with YHWH). In other words, Jesus is God in human flesh. Peter believed as much, confessed it, and more importantly, Jesus accepted his answer and gave it his blessing.

Although few today preach the false Jesus of the Gnostics and Docetics, many of our contemporaries deny that Jesus was truly God in human flesh, because in their estimation such a thing is impossible. But the real reason why people deny Jesus’ divine nature is virtually self-evident. If Jesus is God in human flesh, then he is the only Savior, his words are God’s words, and all other religions and religious claims are false. Jesus has a remarkable way of opening the ground under the feet of all those who encounter him. When he declares that he is God in human flesh—“before Abraham was, I am”—you must either jump into his arms or fall into the chasm now open under your feet. You cannot hear Jesus’ claim, ignore it, and then go merrily on your way.

A DI FFE RE NT KI ND OF A DOP T I ON The Jews of Jesus’ day knew exactly what he was claiming—that he was God. They rejected his claim and put him to death. In light of the difficulties the Jews faced in accepting the fact that YHWH— the one true and living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—took on true human nature in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, we should not be surprised that one of the earliest false Jesuses arose early in the second century among a sect of Jewish Christians called “Ebionites.” Ebionites were Jews who believed that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah and that he was given God’s Spirit at his baptism. The Ebionites believed that Jesus had no preexistent divine nature and was merely human until “adopted” by God. This is known as adoptionism, in which it is argued that God “divinized” the man Jesus through the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit given to him at his birth, or his baptism, and which departed from Jesus before his crucifixion, leaving him to die as a mere man.

The appeal of the Ebionite (adoptionist) version of Jesus is that this notion allows the adherent to defend monotheism by stressing that Jesus is not eternally God, even if for a time Jesus functioned as a semi-divine figure with divine attributes.

Ebionites held tightly to Jewish monotheism is greater meant that Jesus was subordinate to the and ritual customs, yet they allowed for Jesus’ Father as to Jesus’ very nature and therefore in a messianic office (ironically) by denying his eterprofound sense inferior to the Father in essence. nal relationship to the Father. Adoptionists were The logical consequence of Arianism is that reacting against the problem supposedly created Jesus was understood to be a creature (albeit by affirming the deity of Jesus. If the Father is God, the greatest creature), who had his origin in a and Jesus is also God, then why are there not two moment in time, however long ago, and who Gods? If the Holy Spirit is also God, then why are possessed a different and inferior essence from there not three Gods? Defenders of adoptionist that of the Father. As Christians began to realize Christologies explain references to Jesus’ deity and the depths and extent of Arius’ error, some (the manifestations of divine attributes to be tempoorthodox) rejected this notion altogether, corrary endowments added to the man Jesus and then rectly renouncing Arianism as a heresy. Others taken away from him, which also explains Jesus’ death, because God cannot die.

False Jesuses most often arise within the Christian community because the advocates are trying “False Jesuses most often arise to protect something they think vital. In the case of Ebionites, they were protecting monothewithin the Christian community ism from what they perceived to be a denial of monotheism— namely, the Christian doctrine because the advocates are T R Y I N G of the Trinity.

Although Ebionite and adoptionist Christologies were among the earliest false Jesuses, the TO PROTECT SOMETHING most pernicious false Jesus was that of the Arians and other socalled subordinationists arising T H E Y T H I N K V I TA L .” a century or so later.

A RIA N I SM Arianism comes to us from its principal teacher, Arius (c. AD 250–336), a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt. Arius argued that Jesus (the Son of God) did not always exist (that is, he was not eternal), but was created by and is therefore different from the Father. Arius and his followers appealed to John 14:28 (as well as other texts affirming that God is one) as biblical support for his view. In John 14, Jesus says, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’

If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” For Arius, Jesus’ assertion that the Father

attempted to synthesize Arianism (which was surprisingly popular) with the orthodox view by slightly moderating Arius’s teaching, affirming that Jesus possessed a similar essence with the Father (homoiousia), not the same essence (homoousia) as the orthodox affirmed.

The result of all forms of subordinationism— which means that the Son is under the Father and subordinate as to his divine essence—is denial that Jesus is fully God. Whether Arianism or Sabellianism (from the false teacher Sabellius, who lived a bit earlier than Arius), the basic idea is that MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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“The logical consequence of Arianism is that J E S U S

WA S

U N D E R S TO O D TO B E A C R E AT U R E …

WHO HAD HIS ORIGIN IN A MOMENT I N T I M E … and

who possessed

a different and inferior essence from that of the Father.”

Jesus is inferior to the Father as to his essence, and although possessing divine attributes and exercising divine prerogatives, Jesus is not eternal. This arose largely in an attempt to preserve the oneness of God, and to explain Jesus’ exalted nature against the backdrop of Greek thought that permeated North Africa where Arius lived. But since Arians reject the full deity of the Son, then their Jesus is a false Jesus just as the subordinationist Jesus is a false Jesus.

Whenever anyone denies Jesus’ eternal divine essence and contends that Jesus is inferior to the Father and/or a creature (no matter how exalted), you can be sure you have encountered a false Jesus.

ONE PE R S O N, TWO NAT U RE S The third way to spot a false Jesus is to look closely to see how the two natures of Jesus relate to each other. One group—the fourth-century Apollinarians—argued that while Jesus was truly human in most ways, the divine Logos in the incarnation took the place of Jesus’ rational nature (his mind). The goal here was to explain the incarnation to Greeks, who believed that the Logos was the universal principle of human reason. Physically, Jesus was a true human—he had kidneys, a heart, and so on—but the Logos (reason) took the place of Jesus’ soul/spirit. The divine Logos then provided Jesus with his thinking, his rational nature. But as Gregory of Nazianzus once affirmed, that which Jesus did not assume he did not redeem. If Jesus did not possess human reason (a true human mind), then he wasn’t fully human.

Another controversial group known as the Nestorians—who embraced a fifth-century heresy taught by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople— argued that the divine Logos indwelt Jesus in a moral sense but not essentially. Nestorians sought to explain how Jesus could die when God cannot.

But the Nestorian answer to this conundrum was to erroneously affirm that Jesus’ human nature was completely distinct from and completely controlled by the divine nature, making the man Jesus essentially like us; only that he—being possessed by the Logos—was completely submissive to the divine will, unlike the rest of humanity. In other words, we understand the divine and human natures in Jesus to be like two boards glued together. As

Nestorius put it, there is a difference between the temple and the one who lives in it. Jesus is that one person in whom God manifests himself more than all others. Nestorius famously refused to refer to Mary as Theotokos, the “God-bearer” or “mother of God.” For Nestorius, Christians could only properly refer to Mary as Christotokos, the mother of Jesus, because there was no union of any kind between Jesus’ divine and human natures.

Another fifth-century group worth mentioning is the Eutychians. The Eutychians affirmed that our Lord’s true human nature was swallowed up by the divine nature, so as to create what amounts to a third thing—a tertium quid—a unique nature composed of Jesus’ divine and human natures. The goal here was to reject and prevent the error made by the Nestorians. But the consequence created a new error: a Jesus who was truly one person but with no real distinction between the divine and human natures. Rejecting the Nestorian idea of two boards glued together, the Eutychians understood Jesus’ two natures to be like particle board—a mixture of two different things (wood and glue), forming a new third kind of thing.

Although it’s clear that any discussion of Jesus’ two natures can quickly become complicated, we can keep the matter relatively simple. Whatever attributes we ascribe to either nature (divine or human) we simply affirm of the person. For example, we know that God cannot die. We know that God cannot be hungry or tired. We also know that humans cannot raise the dead or die a death that can save others from their sins. So we simply affirm that Jesus was tired, he grew to manhood, he died on the cross. We do not divide him in two; nor do we mix the two natures or try to identity which nature was active—even though such implications do arise from within the accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry. But we do acknowledge that both natures are present in one person—Jesus of Nazareth, who is Israel’s Messiah and the Son of God.

Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church (Anaheim, California) and co-host of the White Horse Inn radio broadcast. He is author of A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times and Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth about the Antichrist (Baker, 2006). Kim blogs at www.kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com.

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J E S U S

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Pop Culture

by DAVID ZAHL

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ack in 2005, the satirical newspaper The Onion issued one of its better mock headlines, “Vatican Gives Popular Jesus Character a Whole New Look.” According to their sources, “the shabby

robe-and-sandals look is out, as Vatican makeover artists unveil a new, sleeker son of God featuring a white leather trench coat, short gelled hair, and a throwing star of David.” They went on to quote fictional Vatican PR executive Giovanni Ramola: “We tried to think of it as, ‘What if Jesus wasn’t the son of God, but the son of Vin Diesel?’”

As with most of The Onion’s material, the report contained more than an element of truth. Like a blockbuster franchise that gets rebooted every decade, Jesus Christ is constantly being repackaged for popular consumption. In fact, the writers of the report explicitly invoke Hollywood language, positioning Christ as one character in a stable full of them. Their motives may be cynical, but they are not mistaken. When we talk about Jesus in pop culture, we are talking about Jesus the Character, not Jesus the Second Person of the Trinity.

Of course, Jesus isn’t just any character. His name carries weight, regardless of context. Old, young, male, female, white, black, blue state or red—it is impossible to grow up in our culture without developing some picture of Christ. The associations may be positive, or they may be negative, but they are there. I would not be the first person to suggest that popular conceptions of Jesus can tell us quite a bit about the world in which we live. What we choose to emphasize or omit about him is always revealing. Pop Christ is a repository for our projections and preoccupations, our fears and our hopes, and so on. He has proven to be remarkably malleable in this regard.

A couple of qualifications at the outset: One of the main challenges in discussing Jesus in pop culture has to do with the pace of said culture. Technology has quickened exponentially the rate at which we consume cultural artifacts. Social media and

smartphones can create (or squash) a cultural phenomenon in a matter of hours. Trends often pass as soon as they are identified. Hashtags evolve by the hour. Plus, there’s so much of it! Any attempt to take the pulse of the culture will therefore be both incomplete and quickly outmoded. It might be helpful, then, to limit our survey to portrayals of Christ himself—which means no “Christ figures,” as tempting as they may be. We are interested here in explicit depictions of Jesus.

I’m taking the term “pop culture” as a euphemism for mainstream culture, which tends to be secular.

Christian communities have produced innumerable variations of Jesus, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous (and sometimes, horrifying). While there may be points of contact with religious “riffs” on the object of our faith, the interest of this article lies with the larger culture—with Hollywood and prime-time television, Top 40 radio, the major Internet outlets, and so on.

It should be acknowledged that a number of these portrayals can be offensive to those who confess faith in the historic Jesus Christ. None of us like to see Christ openly mischaracterized or mocked.

It is troubling to see him coopted by preordained agendas. We know full well how harmful such distortions can be. That said, if we honestly want to point those around us to the Jesus of the Bible, then it is important to have an idea of the Jesus they’re familiar with. Plus, some of these images are also so MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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outlandish that they’re amusing.

The Onion was right to pick up on the potential humor. The point of “N OW H E R E I N P O P C U LT U R E this overview is not so much to incense as to inform, and maybe laugh a little.

DOES JESUS GET MORE AIRTIME Jesus is, by and large, a positive figure in pop culture. The precise contours of that positivity vary than among professional athletes, according to what attributes of his identity are being highlighted, but Christ himself remains well liked—if not revered—appreciated especially after Super Bowl victories, and seldom reviled, especially if he can affirm an opinion we hold dear. There are minor instances prize fights, and playoff games.” of malice on the fringes of society, yet as we will see almost every significant portrayal of Christ in the wider culture is flattering in some way. Most people like him, but that doesn’t mean they see themselves as needing him.

Of course, his followers are a different story. Religion is not a happy topic in Jesus). Yet each of these three characterizations our culture. It’s the target of immense skepticism has established some kind of a beachhead, whether and the source of deep division, and we see this at it be earnest or ironic or both. pretty much every level of pop culture. To avoid disMacho Jesus is probably the most well-known, sonance, culture-makers have tended to separate and he goes by other names. You may know him as Jesus from his church as much as possible, someMuscle Jesus, or Coach Jesus, or Super Jesus. He times even setting him up as antireligious. “Why I boasts a highly Anglicized appearance—white skin, Hate Religion, but Love Jesus” was the title of an light brown hair, sometimes blue eyes—and espouses enormously popular viral video in 2012 (30 million American values. Macho Jesus is often depicted views on YouTube)—a perfect distillation of antiwith formidable biceps and bears a suspicious clerical, pro-Jesus sentiment. The fact that young resemblance to a long-haired Bruce Springsteen. Or, Christians have adopted the same attitude should more appropriately, Billy Ray Cyrus, since Macho come as no surprise.

Jesus often doubles as Country Music Jesus.

So what exactly do we like about Jesus? Who The emergence of Macho Jesus represents a notexactly is being celebrated, and what relation, if any, so-subtle rejoinder, one presumes, to the perceived does he have to the Jesus of the Bible? feminization of the church that was trumpeted so loudly a decade ago. In fact, many blue-state JESUS A N D THE C H RIST dwellers first learned of Macho Jesus’ popularity via Molly Worthen’s 2009 profile of Mark Driscoll, titled “Who Would Jesus Smack Down?” in the New There are, to my eyes, three main faces that are culYork Times Magazine. Macho Jesus is brazen and turally ascendant and/or dominant at the moment: tough—on sin and on those who don’t believe in him Macho Jesus, Hipster Jesus, and Urban Jesus. (or believe differently). He is unafraid of “hard sayAgain, this is not a comprehensive list. Several ings.” In the post-Driscoll era, depictions of Macho archetypes are conspicuously absent (such as Jesus haven’t gone away as much as become transHippie Jesus and Revolutionary Che Guevara parently non-serious.

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Of the two most memorable paintings of Macho Jesus that have made the rounds on the Internet, one depicts Jesus in a white t-shirt and blue jeans, showing off his heart-shaped Father tattoo. The other shows a shirtless Christ leaning confidently against the ropes of a boxing ring, holding his gloves. We have Kentucky-based artist Stephen Sawyer to thank for both of these images. He once memorably pointed out, “I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who’s built like a brick house.”1 Again, one wonders how serious the whole thing is.

A slightly less offensive but no less absurd iteration of Macho Jesus is Coach Jesus. This Jesus isn’t as much a fighter as a father, one who takes a special interest in his children’s athletic endeavors. Coach Jesus entered popular consciousness via a series of top-selling statues manufactured by Catholic gift retailer Devon Trading Corp. and which have only gained notoriety since debuting fifteen years ago. These six-inch, Franklin Mint-esque figurines depict a fully robed Jesus playing a variety of sports with little (white) children, from hockey and soccer to Tai Kwon Do. The most popular is probably the basketball one, in which Christ appears to be scoring over two much smaller kids. Sports Illustrated spotlighted the statues in a tongue-andcheek column, and late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien famously featured them on his broadcast.

While the statues themselves are indefensibly kitsch—doubtless part of their popularity is due to those who are looking to lampoon sincere belief— they point to the clear affinity that Macho Jesus finds in sports circles. Indeed, nowhere in pop culture does Jesus get more airtime than among professional athletes, especially after Super Bowl victories, prize fights, and playoff games.

That Christ would come to be linked with sports culture should come as no surprise. But that doesn’t make it any less strange. Outside of the Apostle Paul writing about races to be run, sports are noticeably absent from the New Testament.

And the stadium spectacles most closely associated with Christian history have to do with lions, not touchdowns.

Of course, one can hardly begrudge exhausted players from expressing their gratitude to their Lord and Savior after a draining performance.

One wonders, though, if the unintended result of all the locker room shout-outs is that Jesus is more concerned with improved performance on the field than, say, the salvation of souls. Indeed, the implicit message broadcast across pop culture is that Macho Jesus cares more about victory than suffering.

Macho Jesus also has a cousin—Super Jesus, the perfect icon for a culture saturated with superheroes. After all, comic books have not just invaded the multiplex over the past decade; they have conquered it completely. Batman, Spiderman, The Avengers, even Ant-Man—these guys are everywhere. What was once a novelty on the screen has become something of a default, as Hollywood cranks out sequel after sequel and the dollars follow. It was only a matter of time until Jesus himself took the plunge.

After all, he already had the muscles.2 Super Jesus made his big screen debut in 2013 in director Zack Snyder’s film about Superman, Man of Steel. I know I promised at the outset to avoid “Christ figures,” but this one cannot be passed up.

Snyder seized upon the opportunity to play the Superman myth as an on-the-nose allegory to the New Testament—a brazen choice.

When Russell Crowe, playing Superman’s father Jor-El, sends his only begotten on a ship to Earth, he promises his wife that “he will be like a God to them.”

As he grows up, Clark Kent does his feats of strength and charity in secret, waiting until his thirty-third birthday to reveal himself to the world—or until a hologram of his Father in Outer Space charges him to “save all of them.” Supes then strikes a Jesus pose and heads to Earth, before torpedoing the allegorical potential with an endless (and surprisingly boring) scene of climatic violence. He turns out to be just as caught up as his Macho brothers in a theology of glory; that is, a view of God as revealed in strength and power, rather than humility and defeat. A man of steel rather than a man of sorrows, you might say.

Of course, as fun as they can be, superheroes are predominantly fantasies of empowerment. They are the opposite of Philippians 2.

T HE COU NT E RCU LT U RA L C U LT U RE CLU B The next major pop culture Jesus on our list would not have come into being had he not become a meme.

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I’m talking about Hipster Jesus—a “hipster” being a largely pejorative term for the fashion-conscious liberal arts grads who congregate in Brooklyn and Portland(ia); that is, modern-day bohemians who are both more materialistic and more cynical than their Boomer forebears. Hipster Jesus wears horn-rimmed glasses and asks that you follow him—but not just on Twitter. He turns water into PBR. He is highly conversant in irony. He “loved you before you were cool.”

Hipster Jesus first made a noticeable splash in 2010 with the release of author Brett McCracken’s book Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide, which was accompanied by a viral editorial in The Wall Street Journal. McCracken put into words what many in the wider culture had already noticed, namely, the attempt by Christians to rebrand Christianity, and Jesus in particular, as “cool.” Since beards and carpentry had come back into fashion among a particular class of urban males, it probably would have been strange if perceptive believers had not tried to make the connection.

In mid-2012, Newsweek went so far as to feature Hipster Jesus on its cover, wearing both plaid and a crown of thorns, walking through Times Square in Manhattan in a nonthreatening manner. The occasion for the image was an article by popular blogger Andrew Sullivan titled, unsurprisingly, “Forget the Church: Follow Jesus.” Again, the divorce between Jesus and religion here should be a foregone conclusion, part and parcel of the countercultural appeal.

One could easily theorize that Hipster Jesus is a blue-state response to Macho Jesus: unassuming, nonaggressive, technologically savvy yet environmentally conscious—at times a tongue-in-cheek update of Jesus-meek-and-mild. Hipster Jesus has a lot to say about community but relatively little to say about eternal life. He takes an interest in social causes, but not so much in personal morality. These are broad strokes, perhaps, but you get the idea.

Y EEZU S, NOT CHRIST No overview of Jesus in pop culture would be complete without a mention of the ubiquitous Mr. Kardashian. Kanye West is far from the first hiphop artist to incorporate explicitly Christocentric imagery into his public identity. Tupac Shakur, for example, made numerous appearances on a cross, even performing from one in the video for Scarface’s

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“Smile.” But Kanye has been the most successful at it. After his song “Jesus Walks” became an international smash in 2004, he adorned the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns. This was not just Jesus as person of interest or object of devotion.

Kanye seemed to identify with Christ, in both the majesty and the martyrdom. The hubris may have been off the charts, but it was also deeply compelling if by no other measure than the accompanying record sales.

But Kanye was only warming up when it came to self-deification. In 2013, he released his record Yeezus to universal acclaim. Of particular note was the track “I Am God,” in which he infamously bragged: “I know he the most high / But I am a close high.” There’s a shock value clearly at work (Kanye is a master of the art), but that’s not all. On his subsequent tour, Kanye had a Jesus impersonator join him on stage during his performance. He explained the decision by saying, “One of the things I wanted to get across…is that you can have a relationship with Jesus, that you can talk to Jesus.” Perhaps his fixation on Christ is more than merely artistic.

Whatever the true motivations may be, Kanye’s curious mix of blasphemy and reverence succeeded in making Jesus/Yeezus both cutting edge and commercially viable. His Jesus is the champion of the misbegotten, their comfort but also their model.

This Christ inspires his followers to persevere when they are persecuted, holding out the promise of eventual glory, commercial as well as spiritual.

This may not be the most humble version of Jesus— or his followers!—but it is certainly one acquainted with suffering. Writing for The Atlantic in 2013, Pete Tosiello set out to answer the question, “Why Do So Many Rappers Impersonate Christ?”

The Christ archetype has resonated with Nas, West, and Shakur’s personae because of their humble beginnings and the persecution they perceived from media and competitors in the rap landscape. Their music claims martyrdom by communicating that these rappers would sacrifice anything to have their voices heard and messages spread. As Blum says, “For hip hop artists, the resurrection stands not simply as vindication, but as hoped-for promise. They can rise from poverty, obscurity, media attacks, and economic setbacks to tell their stories and spread ‘the word.’”3

“This was not just Jesus as person of interest or object of devotion.

KANYE SEEMED

TO IDENTIFY WITH CHRIST,

in both the

majesty and the martyrdom.”

I could go on—there are many more Jesuses to contend with in pop culture. (I haven’t even mentioned my favorite pop culture Jesus of recent years, the powerful turn Liam Neeson did in the third season of BBC’s church comedy Rev.). But hopefully that is enough to get a sense of the Jesus we engineer for ourselves, the Jesus we sell one another.

This Jesus is benevolent and he is wise. He wants to help and possibly laugh a little. He rarely says anything we don’t already agree with. He has enemies but they are those other people, not us. This Jesus may be our champion and friend, but he is no one’s mediator. The news he brings may be pleasant, or it may be harsh, but it is not urgent or particularly new—not for those who are perishing. In sum, there is much to emulate in the Jesus we find in pop culture, maybe even respect. But there is curiously little to crucify.

And yet, oddly enough, he still has our attention.

Twist and turn his likeness as we may, make him over and repackage all we like, we cannot seem to rid ourselves of this Son of Man. He still looms

large. Perhaps there is something hopeful about that.

Because someone who goes to the New Testament looking for Hipster Jesus or Wrestling Coach Jesus is going to find something else in there—something that may detain them: a Jesus who does not leave sinful men and women to their portrayals of him.

Thanks be to Pops for that.

David Zahl is the director and founder of Mockingbird Ministries, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting the historic truths of the gospel with the realities of everyday life. He edited Mockingbird’s recent publication Grace in Addiction: What the Church Can Learn from Alcoholics Anonymous, and co-edited The Gospel According to Pixar. He also serves on the staff of Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia.

1 http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/aug/26/ jesus-macho-makeover.

2 It should come as no surprise that in the name of reaching kids, Christian culture has latched onto Super Jesus. Hillsong went so far as to release a full album of kids’ worship songs entitled Jesus Is My Superhero.

3 http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/06/yeezus-everlasting-why-do-so-many-rappers-impersonate-christ/277000/.

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The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

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PA R T I I I

Following Jesus

Come a n d

See

by TIMOTHY KELLER

The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

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n his book After Heaven, Robert Wuthnow says the watchword of Americans today is spiritual. People say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious. I am searching for spiritual reality, but I don’t expect to find

it in religious institutions or sets of dogmas.” What Wuthnow articulates so well here is Americans’ combined rejection of the idea that secular science and reason alone can give us meaning in life or a life worth liv-

ing—that their real interest is in the supernatural and in the eternal. They don’t want to go back to the perceived creativity-stifling, smug moralism of “traditional religion,” so they say, “Ah, the new spirituality, not the old traditional religion.”

In John 1:35–51, we see the account of how Jesus Christ met his first disciples. We see something offered to us that is neither the new spirituality nor the old traditional religion. It’s not a vague or general sense of spiritual well-being or a new set of rules. It’s an encounter with a living Person.

I have chosen this biblical passage because there are patterns here. If you want to find this spiritual reality through Jesus—this man who bridges the gap between spirituality and religion, and who offers us something different from either the new spirituality or the old traditional religion—then you need to see what the key is. The key is this repeated phrase: “Come and see.” What does that mean? Let’s look at it together.

“COME AND SEE” MEANS “COME AND THINK: EXAMINE THE EVIDENCE” The first time “Come and see” happens, the disciples are kind of nervous. They were just told Jesus is this

incredible person, so they follow. He says, “What do you want?” What they want is to know if what they have heard is really true.

Jesus doesn’t demand belief at the moment. He doesn’t say, “Well, let me tell you who I am and how I demand obedience.” He says, “Come and get to know me. Come and see how I live. Come and see how I speak. Come and see what I do.” The second time we see “Come and see” in the Gospel passage is when Philip says to his friend, Nathanael, “I found the Messiah.”

Nathanael responds with a valid question.

Everybody at that time knew the Messiah would come out of Bethlehem, out of the line of David.

So Nathanael looks at Philip and says, “He is from Galilee. He is from Nazareth. How could he be the Messiah?” Philip’s answer is to say, “Let’s go find out. Come and see.”

The question we ask today is: “How could there be a loving and merciful God when the world is the way it is with all the injustice?” This is another valid question, so let’s see how Jesus would answer it.

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He doesn’t define the “new spirituality” by saying, “It doesn’t matter what you believe. Figure out what works for you.” Although “Although the Gospel writer that would be convenient—no critical thinking, no assessment— instead he says, “Come and think.” was addressing people who lived He does not say to you what traditional religion has often said: “Don’t question. Just believe what two thousand years ago, T H O S E we’re telling you because we’ve told you.” No, Jesus says, “Come and think.” How different this is PEOPLE WERE IN THE SAME from either the neo-spirituality or old religion.

Although the Gospel writer was B OAT A S W E A R E T O DAY .” addressing people who lived two thousand years ago, those people were in the same boat as we are today. How can they go and look at Jesus? How can they listen to him? How can they look at the evidence of what he said and how he lived? Here is the answer: “The read my account, you will be able to come and see next day John [the Baptist] was there.…When he saw and examine the evidence the way we did.”

Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look…’”

How can you come and see? Read the account of There are two important points here. All through the Gospels. Then you will have to decide whether the first chapter of John, we’re told that John the you believe these were deliberate, intricate lies by Baptist saw and said. The Greek word used here people who died for those lies, or that a human being means essentially, “I was actually there. I really saw was the Creator God who came to earth to save us. this, and now my testimony is admissible evidence But there is nothing in the middle that is warranted. in court.” John the Baptist is not talking about an The only way you know you’ve come and seen is if inward experience. He’s not talking about an impresyou have a position that, frankly, is extremely hard. sion. John is saying, “I’m seeing this.”

It’s very hard to believe that a human being would be As we read this passage, we see it has the marks God, and it’s very hard to believe that this incredible of an eyewitness account. It says they saw where he movement and these incredible people, who died for was staying and they spent the day with him until this, consciously and deliberately told us lies about the tenth hour, which is 4:00 pm. it. You have to decide which one is easier for you to In Reynolds Price’s introduction to his book Three believe, but don’t you dare stand in the middle. If you Gospels, he makes the interesting point that in the have, it means you haven’t come and seen. ancient world, fictional narratives such as epics, legends, and myths never used details. You don’t “C OME A ND SE E” ME A NS “COME see, “Oedipus went to see the Oracle at Delphi, and AN D FOLLOW: CHA NGE YOU R LI FE” she came out around 4:00.” Our Gospel passage, however, states, “The next day…,” not “Once upon a time…” Price says that when you see such detail, it The word come means that I move from where I means that the author is signaling the reader that am to here. I make a change. The reason Jesus says this is a legal testimony, not an urban legend. This is “Come” is because he wants them to follow. He John’s way of saying, “This is an eyewitness account. doesn’t just want them to believe. The text gets that I’m showing you exactly what he said and did. If you

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across in a couple of ways, but here is the best one. In John 1:29, the Baptist says to his disciples, “Look, the Lamb of God…” It’s not until verse 35 that they actually follow. This is a way for us to see the difference.

When John the Baptist told his disciples “This is the Messiah,” surely they believed, but they weren’t “followers” until they actually began to follow Jesus.

That’s the difference between being just a person who ascribes to beliefs, who says, “Oh, I like Jesus.

I believe in Jesus. I’m trying to follow Jesus,” and knowing Jesus personally and becoming a follower, a disciple. Now how does that happen in your life?

In verse 51, Jesus says, “I tell you the truth…” What the Gospel writer tells us he really says is, “Amen, amen…” The word amen is an Aramaic word that means, “This is true.” Every commentator and historian, anybody who knows ancient cultures, knows this is a unique usage of it. As one commentator puts it, “Jesus Christ’s use of amen to introduce his own words is without analogy in all of Judaism and among any other New Testament writers.… Amen was only used to affirm and approve and accredit the words of another.”

For example, when someone was preaching in the synagogue, the elders would stand up. When they were all done, they would say, “Amen.” Why? That was their way of saying, “We’ve checked out what this person says with our understanding of the Scripture, and it’s true.” Maybe all the people would say, “Amen.”

Of course, Jesus Christ made it even harder for us because he affirms the Bible. It’s not that just his words printed in red in your Bible are the ones we have to obey. Jesus himself says, “The Scriptures shall not be broken. Not a jot or a tittle will pass away until all is fulfilled.” We need to remember that all those who wrote the New Testament or provided the material for it were trained by Jesus. If you want to come and see and believe—that is, investigate the evidence—all you have to do is believe that the Bible is reliable reporting. But if you want to be a disciple and if you want to know Jesus personally, you have to be willing to listen to what the Word of God says, whether you like it or not.

Personal following without an infallible Bible is impossible. If you read the words of Jesus and say “That’s great” about some things and “I can’t believe that; that’s primitive” about others, what kind of Jesus do you have at the end of your reading? You

have a Jesus of your own heart’s making. You think you’re following Jesus, but you’re following your own heart under the guise of following Jesus.

Unless Jesus compels you to say, “I’m going to do this. I’m going to listen to this. I’m going to wrestle with this. I’m going to submit to this even where I hate it”—if you don’t have that, then you don’t have a personal Jesus.

“C OME A ND SE E” ME A NS “P ROCE SS T HI S WI T H FRI E NDS” What’s really interesting about this encounter in the Gospel account is that John the Baptist leads Andrew and the other person, whoever it is, to Jesus.

Andrew leads his brother Peter to Jesus. Philip leads Nathanael to Jesus. When Philip says, “Come and see,” what he means is, “Let’s go together. Let’s figure this out.” This is a very important point. While there are exceptions, the general rule is that the way to find Jesus is almost always through someone you know. In this case, it was a friend who had already found Jesus.

Christianity is not a philosophy through some great teacher by which you can save yourself. No, Christianity is an encounter with a Person, and we see in the Bible that people find Jesus through their friends. After being introduced to Jesus, then we need friends who are a couple of steps ahead of us spiritually to help us in our walk.

There are some of you who have already experienced the blessing of having found Jesus through friends. Some of you have a lot to offer, but you’re not finding anybody for Jesus. If you want to know how you can finally be effective and really be helpful to people, then look at the Gospel text. There are three things we see here.

First, patience. John the Baptist says repeatedly, “Look, the Lamb of God.” Finally, they follow Jesus.

You have to be patient. Who knows how many times you have to say “Look” before they follow.

Second, courage. Philip says, “We found the Messiah, and here he is.” Nathanael asks him a tough question that he has no idea how to answer. Isn’t this the reason why we’re all such chickens? Aren’t we afraid of being asked a question we don’t know the answer to? But the way to get good at answering those questions is practice by floundering and MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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“We need to remember that all those who wrote the New Testament or provided the material for it W E R E T R A I N E D B Y J E S U S .”

blowing it for years. Unless you’re willing, unless you have the courage to do that, you’re never going to be effective.

Third, confident humility. What does Philip do when he gets the total stump question of “Isn’t the Messiah supposed to be from Bethlehem?” He says, “I don’t know. Let’s talk about it. Let’s study. Let’s go talk to him. Let’s go look.” There is a humility here because he takes Nathanael seriously enough to say, “We do need to think about this, and I don’t know the answer.” But he also has the confidence to say, “If you come, you will see.”

“COM E A N D SE E” M E AN S “COM E A N D WO N D E R” When Nathanael meets Jesus, Jesus says, “You believe because.…You will see greater things than you can imagine. ‘Come and see’ means come and wonder.

I am calling you into an adventure so wonderful that it is beyond your imagination.” How does he do this?

First of all, he calls us to the wondrous adventure of personal transformation. I’ll put it to you this

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way. Do you remember ever meeting somebody you suddenly realized really understood you? It could have been a counselor, a new friend, or an older, wiser person. It could have been somebody you were falling in love with. Why was it so heady and addicting? I’ll tell you why. To begin with, you’re excited about the possibility of finally being able to figure yourself out. We’re all riddles to ourselves. “Why do I do what I do? Why do I feel what I feel?” You’re also excited that this wise person, this person you love and respect, thinks about you, considers you significant enough to think of you, to ponder you, to consider you. The two together, the prospect of new information and that incredible affirmation, just blow you through the roof. But even this kind of revelation and fulfillment has its boundaries—ultimately, you always find there is a limit to how much that person really knows you and loves you.

When Nathanael walks up to Jesus, he is blown away by something no rabbi ever has done or ever will do. Jesus says to him, “Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile” (KJV). What Jesus is talking about is his character. He uses a word that means

unpretentious and transparent. Nathanael looks at him and says, “You nailed me. Yeah, I am that kind of person. I’m plain spoken. I’m kind of blunt. How do you know me?” Then Jesus says, “Know you? I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael’s eyes get as big as saucers. He says, “How could you…? How could any…? You are the Messiah!”

What does that mean? I don’t know. We don’t know. That’s one of the marks of an eyewitness account. But I’ll tell you, it was something so private, so significant, so absolutely impossible that any human being could know that Nathanael is astounded. “This is not just somebody who knows me somewhat; he knows me completely.”

That’s not the only reason he is blown away. Jesus Christ is not just saying, “I know you.” He is praising him, even though Nathanael doesn’t know him.

Isn’t that astounding? Jesus Christ knows you to the bottom and praises you to the skies. There has never been a Counselor like this. There has never been a friend like this. There has never been a lover like this. This is the Wonderful Counselor. This is the friend you’ve always been looking for. When God comes and calls you in love, by his call he makes you what he calls you.

First, Jesus says, “Nathanael, I will give you greater things than that. You have no idea what you’re going to become, transformed by my love.”

Second, Jesus talks about an upward journey, an outward journey. He says, “Verily, verily I say to you, you will see heaven open and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” What he is saying here is astounding.

In the Old Testament story of Jacob, Jacob was running through the desert, fleeing for his life, despairing that he had lost God, that he had lost everything. Going to sleep for the night, he dreams of a ladder on which angels were ascending and descending.

Jesus Christ says to Nathanael, “Let me tell you something beyond your imagination. I am the gate of heaven Jacob saw. That was not just a dream; that was a promise. I am the way through that wall into that cosmic reality that is behind this world.”

What does it mean? It means that story is about him. It means all the stories in the Old Testament are about him.

When John the Baptist says, “Look, the Lamb of God,” what is he saying? He is referring to that

night long ago in Egypt when the angel of death passed over those who had blood on their doorframes. For those who didn’t have the blood of the lamb on their doors, the firstborn of that house died. John the Baptist says, “Jesus is that slain Lamb. That story was about him, about his life, about his death.”

But it goes beyond that. When Jesus Christ says, “I am the door and the gateway into the cosmic reality behind everything,” he is not just saying, “All the biblical stories are about me.” He is saying, “All the stories are about me.” Jesus says, “My story is the story to which all the other stories are pointing.

Therefore, the stories are true. You can know me, and this same cosmic power from that cosmic, glorious center will come into your life. You will be in the story. Evil spells will be broken. I am the reality to which all the legends point.”

“Come and see” means you can get in. “Come and see” means I can’t even begin to describe what is going to happen in your life if you come and follow him. You say, “Okay, I have to change my life, right?

Obey the Bible, right?” You’re excited. You’re ready.

“I have to tell my friends about Jesus. I have to study the Bible.”

No. The key to getting in is not to do anything.

Jesus does not say, “I’m at the top of the ladder.” He doesn’t say, “Angels are ascending and descending to the Son of Man.” He doesn’t say, “If you try really hard, you can ascend.” No, you can’t. Psalm 24 says, “Who shall ascend into the presence of God? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”

How are we ever going to get up there? Jesus says, “I am the ladder. I came down to bring you to God. I lived the life you should have lived, died the death you should have died. Trust in me. If you do, you get in.”

Come and see. Think. Come and see. Follow.

Come and see with friends. “Come and see” means be amazed at his grace. He can’t wait to show you what he is going to do for you. Come and see.

Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church and the New York Times best-selling author of The Reason for God, The Prodigal God, and Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. This sermon was originally preached on November 15, 1998, and is reprinted here by kind permission of Redeemer City to City.

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T h e

Good News o f

C H R I S T ’ S

K I N G S H I P

by MIKA EDMONDS ON

The

DISCIPLESHIP Issue

J

esus’ reign as “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16) is an essential aspect of the gospel we believe. He is the God who has come with might to reign for the Lord and satisfy the deepest needs and longings of his people (see Isa. 40:9–10).

Throughout redemptive history, the Messiah was revealed as the promised Savior-King who would rescue, govern, and from the throne of David defend the people of God (see 2 Sam. 7:12–13). His reign marks the fulfillment of Israel’s monarchy, the true purpose of every good and legitimate kingship throughout salvation history.

When we confess Jesus as the Christ, we confess that he is that promised king, whose reign means eternal life and peace for the people of God and eternal judgment for the enemies of God. He is called the Christ (the anointed one) in part because he has been ordained, empowered, and accepted by God to reign as the eternal king over the creation and especially over the church. This article seeks to address three aspects of Jesus’ glorious kingship: (1) how Jesus is a king; (2) how Jesus’ kingdom is already and not yet; and (3) how we can participate in Jesus’ kingdom.

HOW JE SU S I S A K ING As with his priesthood, Jesus Christ did not take upon himself the honor of becoming king (see Heb. 5:5). Rather, the Father appointed and declared Jesus to be king. God has ordained, empowered, and accepted him as supreme ruler over all creation, particularly the church. This means that the Lord appointed Jesus to be the king over his people.

Although this can be seen in many places throughout Scripture, it was especially revealed at his conception and baptism.

In Luke 1:32, the angel Gabriel announces Jesus’ kingship to the virgin Mary saying, “And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” At his baptism, the Holy Spirit visibly descended upon Jesus to publicly anoint him as the Father pronounced the words of coronation over him, “You

are my beloved Son” (Mark 1:11). These words fulfill Psalm 2:6–7, which says, “‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”

The Lord also empowered Jesus Christ to fulfill his duties as king, some of which include governing, protecting, preserving, enabling the people of God to enjoy the blessings of his kingdom, and conquering the enemies of his kingdom. Not only has the Lord ordained and empowered Christ as king over the church and over creation, but he has promised to accept Christ’s labors in that office by granting him supreme authority now and forever. This eternal reign as king is a divine gift given for the glory of God and for the benefit of the church (Eph. 1:21–22).

H OW CHRI ST ’S KI NGDOM IS A LRE A DY A ND NOT YET Christ’s reign has an already-and-not-yet aspect to it. Ephesians 1:22 emphasizes the “already” aspect by telling us that “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.” God has already appointed Christ as ruler over all things—he is king over all right now, and this reign has been established for the benefit of the church. However, there is also a sense in which Christ’s universal kingship has yet to be fully realized. First Corinthians 15:25 says that “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” This indicates that in some way, there are enemies whose defeat has not been fully realized.

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In this case, 1 Corinthians is speaking of death as an enemy whose complete subjection has yet to be fully revealed. Christ already abolished death through his righteous life, atoning death, and justifying resurrection (1 Tim. 1:10), but the universal effects of this victory are not yet fully seen. Death has already been stripped of its power to permanently hold the people of God in its icy grip, but it has not yet been permanently done away with. We still weep at the funerals of the saints who have been separated from us through death. But on the last day,

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Christ’s decisive victory will swallow up death and his reign over it will be fully revealed (1 Cor. 15:54– 55). Death’s effects will be completely subsumed by Christ’s glorious reign of eternal life.

Similarly, the other enemies of the people of God— namely, sin and Satan—have also been conquered, stripped of their power to do any lasting harm to Christ’s flock. The serpent has been defanged, and through his saving work, Christ has indeed destroyed the works of the devil. He has liberated his people from the bondage of sin, but Christians

(through the Spirit) must continue to resist and mortify these already-defeated foes. This period of not-yet is the outworking of Christ’s already reign.

Until he returns, King Jesus gathers, justifies, and sanctifies more of his kingdom citizens by the Holy Spirit. He displays his authority through the preservation and protection of his people as their king and, in so doing, is glorified by them. However, God promises that when Christ returns in his kingly glory, not only his own people but every person’s knee will bow in submission and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10–11).

HOW W E CA N PA RT IC IPAT E IN JE SU S’ K I NG D O M At his ascension, Jesus announces his kingship to his disciples, telling them of the universal authority that has been granted to him by the Father. It is by this authority that Jesus commands his disciples to spread his kingdom throughout the nations by baptizing and making disciples (Matt. 28:18–20). He tells them that there are three primary ways people participate in the kingdom, ways in which his reign of redemption will come to the ends of the earth.

1 . B Y FA I T H . They are to preach the gospel because people participate in the kingdom by faith (Mark 16:15). By faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we come to belong to King Jesus as his people and to enjoy the blessings of his reign. Faith in Christ means entrusting oneself in loving submission to the kingship of Christ as he presents himself to us in his word. Rather than using sociopolitical or military means to establish his reign, Jesus established his kingship through perfect obedience to the Father, faithfully loving, serving, and giving his life as a ransom for his people. As the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the glory of Christ’s reign of redemption, we embrace him and submit to him as our Lord. At present, Jesus exercises his lordship in our lives by the Spirit of Christ through the proclamation of the word and partaking of the sacraments. He uses both to transform our lives in conformity to his will.

Even unbelievers submit to Jesus’ universal reign, whether they know it or not! According

to Colossians 1:16, “all things were created through him and for him.” But they don’t participate in his reign of redemption unless they repent and believe the gospel.

Jesus tells his disciples not only to teach his commands but also to teach others to obey his commands (Matt. 28:20).

Obedience is an essential aspect of participation in the kingdom of Christ. In Luke 6:46, Jesus asks a crowd, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” According to King Jesus, participation in his kingdom means practical obedience to his commands by continual repentance from sin in submission to his lordship. The Bible reveals Christ’s commands so that we might obey him. Therefore, we must study and obey Scripture in submission to Jesus’ lordship and teach others to obey for the furtherance of the kingdom. Obedience here assumes the context of faithful participation in the life of the local church. As we are reminded and challenged by the gospel witness of the local church, we spur one another on in obedience and hence greater submission to the lordship of Christ.

2. BY OBEDIENCE.

3 . B Y T H E S A C R A M E N T S . Baptism marks a person’s entrance into the church, the visible expression of the kingdom of God. Anyone who seeks to participate in the kingdom should bear the visible sign of the kingdom. Baptism is Christ’s mark upon his citizens, which visibly distinguishes them from the world. By faith, it strengthens them in their warfare against sin and Satan by reminding them of their union with King Jesus as one of his people. The Lord’s Supper reminds us of Christ’s public victory over evil, sin, and death at the cross. But it also unites us across ethnic, class, national, and gender lines as citizens of one kingdom under the reign of Christ.

Mika Edmondson is pastor of New City Fellowship Orthodox Presbyterian Church, a church plant in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

He recently earned a PhD in systematic theology from Calvin Seminary, where he wrote a dissertation on Martin Luther King Jr.’s theology of suffering.

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book reviews 56

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“We don’t become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves.”

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BOOK REVIEWS

Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully: The Power of Poetic Effort in the Work of George Herbert, George Whitefield, and C. S. Lewis

BY JOHN PIPER Crossway, 2014 160 pages (hardcover), $19.99

S

eeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully by John Piper is the sixth book in a series titled The Swans Are Not Silent, taken from the words of Augustine’s successor Eraclius.

Eraclius preached a sermon immediately after the mantle had been passed, and sensing his own inadequacy to fill Augustine’s shoes said, “The cricket chirps. The swan is silent.” Piper’s series is a testament to the lasting influence that Augustine and others have had throughout history. Whereas the preceding five books focus on issues such as divine sovereignty, suffering, perseverance, truth, and missions, Seeing Beauty focuses on George Herbert’s poetry, George Whitefield’s sermons, and C. S. Lewis’s imaginative writing, all of which display “poetic effort,” which Piper defines as not necessarily writing poetry but selecting “words that…make an impact and force people to wake up and think” (23).

Piper uses a lengthy introduction to unpack one of the most important topics of the book: the appropriate use of eloquence. The character Socrates in Plato’s Republic provokes discussion by proposing absurdities (for example, let’s banish poets and anyone over the age of ten from the ideal city), and Piper argues that Paul provokes discussion when he denounces eloquence. Therefore, just as in Plato’s case, anyone wanting to readmit the poets to ancient Kallipolis (“the good city”) must work hard to justify their existence there, so also

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in Paul’s case anyone using eloquence must have biblical reasons for doing so. As careful readers discover, the problem with Paul’s eloquencedenouncing claims (1 Cor. 1:17; 2:1), similar to the problem with Plato’s poetry-denouncing claims, is that he proves too much. Just as Plato is too poetic for readers to take the banishment of poets absolutely, so also is Paul too eloquent for readers to take the denunciation of eloquence absolutely.

Thus the issue is to determine not only what kind of eloquence Paul is criticizing but also what kind he is not criticizing. Piper concludes his introduction by enumerating criteria for appropriate eloquence (self-humbling and Christ exalting), a subject that may be equal in importance to the thesis of the book.

Piper’s thesis is that someone who makes the effort to express God’s goodness sees even more of God’s goodness than would have been possible by simply experiencing God’s goodness: “This effort to say beautifully is, perhaps surprisingly, a way of seeing and savoring beauty” (17). Each of the main chapters provides a biographical sketch (in which Piper manages to address their failures gracefully), and newcomers to the life of George Herbert (seventeenth century) learn that he “never published a single poem in English during his lifetime and died as an obscure country pastor when he was thirty-nine” (43). None of his sermons have survived, but the poet-priest’s influence extends to figures such as Richard Baxter, William Cowper, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, T. S. Eliot, and Simone Weil.

George Whitefield (eighteenth century), who was not a poet, was perfectly suited to be an actor: his voice projection was uniquely powerful, and he had a natural flair for dramatic performance. Piper emphasizes the fact that

this enormously popular evangelist’s “acting ” was intentional, which even caught the attention of Benjamin Franklin. Whitefield wanted his hearers to understand the urgency and reality of his message.

C. S. Lewis (twentieth century) was probably the foremost expert on medieval English literature in his day, yet he was an expert in many other areas as well, impressing readers with his logic, making them long to experience his fantasy worlds, pointing to significance beyond this world in such a way that readers saw deeper meaning to this world, and translating Christian doctrine into the vernacular.

Piper concludes by urging Christians to “first taste, then tell” (147). If in Think! (2010) Piper is pleading for Christians to think better, in Seeing Beauty he is pleading for Christians to say better.

On the critical side, the book contains many repeated block quotations, which seem unnecessary in a relatively short book; and Piper spends a fair amount of time on the subject of Calvinism, which seems tangential to his overall aims. Two areas of improvement for the “Swans” series as a whole would be, first, to include others besides dead white males who have done great things for God, and second, to cover some Christians from the medieval period. Of the eighteen individuals covered in the six-book series, two died before AD 430, and sixteen were born after AD 1483. Even contemporary Reformed thinkers have rightly pointed out that if we believe the Holy Spirit did not go on vacation for a thousand years, then we should pay attention to what God was doing during the Middle Ages.

Nevertheless, Piper is qualified to point readers to others who have been careful with language in an attempt to see, savor, and show beauty. Piper, who has published his own poetry, writes poetically in his prose, and throughout this book the writing constantly awakens readers to appreciate both what Piper says and how he says it. Furthermore, the structure of the book makes for a quick read as each chapter is divided into short sections, often only half a page long. Keeping in mind that Piper is not a specialist on any of these men, the depth of scholarship is considerable.

Jeremy Larson is a PhD candidate at Baylor University and a member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Waco, Texas.

“THIS EFFORT TO SAY BEAUTIFULLY IS, PERHAPS SURPRISINGLY, A WAY OF SEEING AND SAVORING BEAUTY.” From Every Tribe and Nation: A Historian’s Discovery of the Global Christian Story

BY MARK A. NOLL Baker Academic, 2014 224 pages (paperback), $19.99

M

ark Noll, professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and former long-time professor at Wheaton College, has written a compelling spiritual memoir. The book is a personal and professional journey into the author’s deepening appreciation of the gospel and how it is communicated worldwide. Along the way, we are introduced to the people, institutions, and books that have proven pivotal to Noll’s own development.

In the introduction to From Every Tribe and Nation, Noll admits he was reluctant to write such a personal work. Yet a series editor, who is also a friend, urged him to endeavor a personal excavation on missions and global Christianity. Noll quips that “observing a historian undertake his vocation reminded him of an old Monty Python sketch— watching Thomas Hardy write a novel.”

Yet in crafting this inward and outward journey of discovery, Noll overcomes the concern of too stationary a story. As many readers know, Noll is an esteemed historian who is also a serious Christian.

He draws the memoir’s title from the book of Revelation, “By your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation.” While his work is a wise backward glance, he maintains an ultimate hope in the future. We accompany Noll from his childhood Conservative Baptist church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, his undergraduate days at Wheaton College, and almost a MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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BOOK REVIEWS

decade of graduate studies, including Trinity Divinity School, the University of Iowa, and Vanderbilt University. The book then chronicles the joys and discoveries of the academic life.

The beauty of the work is in the evocative details. He describes his pious parents’ dining room where one wall featured a world map with colored pins representing countries where his church supported missionaries. While growing up in a small town in the heartland, Noll writes about how the church opened a wider world to him. Missionaries home on furlough piqued his interest in foreign lands through requisite slideshows, speaking of distant cultures and the need for the world to know Christ. “Missionaries were the exemplars, and for me they helped crack open the world.”

Noll speaks for generations of evangelicals who were challenged by missionary calling and sacrifice. He speaks of the five young men who in 1956 made the ultimate sacrifice serving the Auca Indians in Ecuador. If anyone approached sainthood in these churches it would be the missionaries who died in “full-time Christian service.” Noll lauds his home church’s members who were passionate about sharing the gospel and supporting missions. Yet this fundamental background was long on legalism and short on deep theology. And few thought critically about how missions might be better undertaken.

In a chapter titled “Rescued by the Reformation,” Noll writes of the stark contrast with his youth when he was introduced to Martin Luther’s writings: “From internalizing much preaching about what I needed to do to be saved, I experienced existentially Martin Luther’s message about what God endured in order to save me.” The Christian message he received in his childhood

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“seemed very strong on law and disconcertingly ambiguous about grace.” He quotes from a letter that Luther wrote to his friend Melanchthon: “As long as we are here...we have to sin....It is enough that by the riches of God’s glory we have come to know the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.” Noll was being schooled in a richer faith.

And then begin the friendships, teachers, and mentors in books and face-to-face encounters, who acted as guides along the way to his maturity. At every step, the author expresses gratitude for God’s grace in his life. In a chapter on “First Teachers,” Noll details how his worldview expanded in college, and he credits several Wheaton professors for powerfully influencing him in crosscultural awareness including: philosophy professor Arthur Holmes from Dover, England; English professor Clyde Kilby, promoter of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien’s work; and Robert Warburton, who captivated students by recounting trips to the People’s Republic of China to teach English as a Second Language. The seeds were now sown for thinking about Christianity and missions beyond America’s shores.

After graduate school, Noll took a few short teaching assignments before putting down roots at Wheaton—where course preparation was a thrilling learning experience: Almost every year I was…responsible for a one-semester general survey of church history from the apostles to the present.

Its divisions were conventional: the early church with a concentration on creed, canon and episcopate; the Middle Ages with special attention to Roman Catholic structures, reform and theology; Catholic reformers struggling to elbow Martin Luther

“THE READER IS REMINDED THAT AMERICAN CHRISTIANS ARE NOT THE CENTER OF THE GLOBAL CHRISTIAN STORY, NOR IS THE WESTERN CHURCH. ‘THE EVER-EXPANDING NUMBERS WHO ARE TURNING TO CHRIST IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH CONSTITUTE THE GREAT MARVEL OF RECENT HISTORY.’”

in each of Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda than did Anglicans in Britain and Episcopalians in the United States combined (the number of Anglicans at church in Nigeria was several times the number in these other African countries).

The reader is reminded that American Christians are not the center of the global Christian story, nor is the Western church. “The ever-expanding numbers who are turning to Christ in the global South constitute the great marvel of recent history,” he writes. As Noll comments toward the end of the book, “Global Christian history is unfolding at a dizzying pace, with ever multiplying questions about how the present has grown out of the past.” As a reader, you realize at the close of this memoir that you, too, have taken a journey. You have thought more deeply than perhaps you ever have before about how the gospel has—and is—spread around the world.

Ann Henderson Hart is a freelance writer and editor.

aside; and the modern period with a gallop through pietism, the Wesleys, secularization, Kierkegaard, Newman, Lightfoot, Barth and the Second Vatican Council.

And his learning was not limited to the classroom.

Over the decades, colleagues—such as George Rawlyk from Queens College in Canada—encouraged him to join them on trips to Romania, Belfast, and Africa. Few things compare, he says, to seeing people worship God in their own countries.

He writes of learning from his graduate students at Wheaton and more recently at Notre Dame, in their theses on missions, giving examples that circle the world. In teaching a course on “World Christianity since the Nineteenth Century,” Noll discovered how the shape of world Christianity has changed dramatically over the past century. The statistics are stunning, which he shows from this excerpt from another writer: Last Sunday, it is probable that more Chinese believers were in church than in all of so-called “Christian Europe”; as recently as 1970 there had been no legally open churches in China.

Last Sunday, more Anglicans attended church

The Road to Character

BY DAVID BROOKS Random House, 2015 320 pages (hardback), $28.00

N

ew York Times columnist David Brooks is one of the most read, listened to, and discussed social commentators of our time.

While often representing the “Right” in such venues, Brooks is more commonly known for his moderate political views and personal temperament. Through his newspaper column, his weekly appearances on NPR and PBS, or in his best-selling nonfiction pieces, Brooks has become known for his keen ability to diagnose and to see what others miss—doing it with humor and grace. Possessing a unique ability to help readers understand those with whom they disagree, he exhibits intellectual humility and curiosity, subjects we will discuss later.

In his most recent work, The Road to Character, Brooks’s decade-long intellectual journey continues by way of an investigation of some profound and fundamental questions, not just about society in general but about himself. While this book is clearly not MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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BOOK REVIEWS

OTHER BOOKS

BY DAVID BROOKS

O

ver the years, David Brooks has been on a kind of pilgrimage. Beginning with his insightful cultural observa-

tions in Bobos in Paradise (2001), he recognized the formation of a new bohemian upper class, mixing together what he deemed to be “hippie values” with capitalist enterprise. In this class, you are encouraged to spend $600 on a mountain-climbing jacket, but you feel good about it because the company claims that by purchasing the coat you are helping the rainforest. In other words, Brooks senses some of the ironies and paradoxes of American cultural trends; and with wit and creativity, he examines several of

meant to be autobiographical, he admits it became deeply personal for him. Having come to acknowledge himself as undeniably successful in terms of his career, he nevertheless sensed he was deeply lacking in some of the classic character values.

He distinguishes what he calls résumé and eulogy virtues: the former are things you list in order to get a job and prove your external success; the latter are the qualities said about you at your funeral. While admitting he wasn’t sure he could personally follow the “road to character,” he wanted at least to “know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it” (xiv).

Yet he believed this was not merely personally important: Might it be possible to illuminate the dark narcissistic route so many of us find ourselves on? We live in a time that cries out for authenticity but too often produces shallowness and self-absorption.

these ideas in different ways in On Paradise Drive (2005).

In The Social Animal (2011), Brooks makes an

T HE P OWE R OF NA RRAT I VE FOR FORMAT I ON

interesting move, turning from the external to the internal. Weaving together an imaginative couple (Harold and Erica) with summaries of recent scientific findings, Brooks explores how the human brain works in shaping an individual.

While not a trained psychologist or neuroscientist, Brooks ably wades through the literature and provides a fairly reliable—by most assessments—mapping of the landscape. Put simply, we are not as “rational” as we often imagine; emotions are of greater significance to human formation than we readily admit; and the human creature is far more complex than we have tended to appreciate. Known and unrecognized factors shape us, from infant and adult experiences to words and images, from smells and sights to habits and orientations. One thing this research clearly did for Brooks was make him ever more sensitive to the myth of human autonomy and narratives of pure meritocracy.

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Accordingly, Brooks’s book exhibits surprising passion. It is as if we are allowed to watch someone stumble upon something unexpected, finding it more beautiful, complicated, rich, and yet elusive than ever imagined. To enter this place of wonder, Brooks pulls strongly from his early themes of cultural commentary as well as astute psychological observations, but now he keeps bumping into the transcendent. We see this repeatedly surface in his micro-biographies.

While the volume begins and ends with broader cultural observations, the large center of the book is composed of chapters that tend to focus on a key classic moral theme (e.g., selfconquest, ordered love, dignity, humility). Rather than first discussing these ideas philosophically, he gives primacy to narrative. His earlier work in psychology has clearly taught him the power of formation through story. Employing the life histories of a diverse group, from Eisenhower to Augustine, from George Marshall to George Elliot, from Dorothy Day to Samuel Johnson,

Brooks discovers no single path but rather diverse ways these people learned to question themselves, struggle against their baser instincts, and aim to grow out of their egotism.

Though they represent different backgrounds (male and female, rich and needy, extrovert and introvert), each recognized in some way the need to look not merely internally but externally, seeking strength, vocation, and value that could not simply emerge from one’s divided self. Readers will find here not sinless heroes, but messy humans who in some ways discovered some kind of “grace,” to use Brooks’s language. And this grace fostered in them the willingness to fight for character and development in one way or another. Such grace, which was not necessarily recognized as from God but often extended from other humans, nevertheless seems to point to the transcendent. I believe this book invites further exploration about this transcendent experience: From where does it come? How might it ground the moral compass? How do we have access to this ethical call amid the flux of our ever changing cultural and psychological assumptions?

THE E M E R G E NCE OF TH E B I G M E Brooks says that a major shift has occurred in the modern world, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. Our moral moment, he believes, should not be imagined as growing out of the wild 1960s, but instead has its roots in the postwar years of the ’40s and ’50s. After the war years of austerity and self-sacrifice, there was a longing for escape, consumption, and distraction. With this move came the “Big Me,” as he calls it: from childrearing to retirement, the emphasis shifted away from trying to follow external expectations and ethical norms to becoming ever more in tune with oneself. A slow moving but nevertheless massive shift took place, he argues, from ethical self-suspicion that questions one’s desires, to an unapologetic self-centeredness

that places confidence in the individual. If I want to know what is right, then I need to look within rather than outside of myself. I am the arbiter of good, my good; others can and should seek their own good, but none can rightly impose on me.

This shift, Brooks concludes, led to the loss of a much-needed moral vocabulary. Bravery, humility, integrity, virtue, and gratitude have been replaced with the language of self-reliance, personal growth, individual happiness, and achievement. For example, Brooks argues that as language such as sin, soul, and vocation are replaced with mistake and weakness, our lives become like a ship that has its anchor cut off, leaving it vulnerable to inevitable storms.

“Sin is a necessary piece of our mental furniture because it reminds us that life is a moral affair,” and this binds us together, since we are all “sinners together” (54). We need one another to survive; we need one another for forgiveness; we need one another for wholeness and love. Recent cultural forces have encouraged us, however, to think less of the other and more of the self, the “Big Me.” Some good, he admits, can grow, and has grown, from this focus on the self. For example, too often in the past, institutions and societal structures have belittled women and demeaned minorities, maintaining selfserving prejudices under the rubric of serving the larger good. In these environments, emphasizing the value of each individual can lead to detecting and alleviating social injustice (247). But even in these cases, true liberty and dignity should connect people, placing them within a matrix of character and commitment to others, rather than making them their own idols that cannot satisfy.

Brooks points to an abiding problem: We find ourselves almost completely on the side of self-esteem, and the ethical environment today places the self at the center of everything. This is a weight too heavy for any single self to carry. Institutions thus become endangered, whether marriages or government, churches, or friendships. This is because these all MODERNREFORMATION.ORG

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BOOK REVIEWS

“BROOKS PULLS STRONGLY FROM HIS EARLY THEMES OF CULTURAL COMMENTARY AS WELL AS ASTUTE PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, BUT NOW HE KEEPS BUMPING INTO THE TRANSCENDENT.” rely on a commitment to something larger than the individual. Otherwise one should stay committed only as long as the relationship can serve one’s résumé virtues.

But let us not think that this is merely a problem “out there.” Why would one make oneself uncomfortable, building cross-cultural relationships, for example, if it risks our personal peace (they sing so differently, eat strange food, speak with different rhythms that are hard for me to understand, have different salaries, and look different from me)? While we don’t say those things out loud, we do tend to gravitate toward people who are just like us, and this points to the preference for the self over the significance of the other.

This is not merely a problem in the world; it is a problem deep in the church.

In the church, how do we distinguish between personal preferences and kingdom-ordered loves?

How can we speak of self-control and discipline without undermining grace? How can we hold up vocation without letting it become a thinly disguised version of self-actualization at the expense of others? How can we foster courage without breeding arrogance? How do we encourage conviction without settling for naive and selfish pronouncements that exalt personal privilege rather than divine concern?

Brooks seems to be on a journey, and I encourage you to join him. He has come to realize that

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“we don’t become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves” (211). As believers, we confess that we love because we have first been loved; we are humble because the Spirit of God testifies in our hearts that by adoption—rather than merit—we are children of God; we are courageous because we are safe in the strong arms of the Father; we sacrifice because the incarnate Son of God died for us, even when we were his enemies. The people of God are set free to think of others rather than themselves, to risk for others, loving them in ways that look like a cross and feel like a resurrection.

Brooks helps us better understand our cultural moment in America, and he encourages us to listen and look for the transcendent. When we do, I believe we have the opportunity to see the earthy Jesus living, dying, and rising, and to find new life in him. Only in him can we avoid mere moralism; in him we are liberated to seek character that flows from the love we have received and now participate in.

Kelly M. Kapic is professor of theological studies at Covenant College. He is the author or editor of over ten books, including God So Loved He Gave (Zondervan, 2010), A Little Book for New Theologians (IVP Academic, 2012), and Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition (IVP Academic, 2013).

KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE. With over twenty years of radio broadcasting and magazine publishing, our mission is help Christians “know what they believe and why they believe it” through conversational theology. Visit us at whitehorseinn.org to learn more and browse the archives.

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by MICHAEL S. HORTON

VER NOTICE how the latest fad seems to have a shelf life of a year or two? It’s true even of our worship songs.

The shocking novelty of introducing “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” or other choruses from the Jesus Movement, into a worship service has worn off and rock bands are now “traditional worship.” “I Keep Falling in Love With Him” (Jesus, that is) might be heard in Christian nursing homes today, but younger generations haven’t even heard of the song. That’s probably as it should be. In 1924 in The Illustrated London News, G. K. Chesterton put it well: The whole modern world has divided into conservatives and progressives. The business of progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

On one hand, conservatives seem to think that novelty is inherently wrong. The older is always best. Of course, that can’t be true, as we see even in church history: first, because the “older” is only prior to one’s own existence; and second, because wrong turns have been made by other sinners in the past. Pelagianism and Arianism are very old heresies. Out of nostalgia for the old, many have fled a recklessly “progressive” Protestantism for “Rome Sweet Rome” or the churches of the East. Before long, however, Camelot fades and they realize they’re just in another situation full of compromise where wisdom is needed.

In actual practice, history moves more organically—the new grows out of the old. The wiser in any age evaluate whatever it is, “old” or “new,” in the light of something that transcends these categories. For example, taken as

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a whole, Charles Wesley’s hymns may be richer both musically and theologically than a lot of praise choruses today. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of decent hymns he wrote that never made it into hymnals. Doubtless, some of our more contemporary songs will survive our generation.

But the key is time. Discernment takes time and a lot of godly input spanning generations.

It is the consensus of believers in churches over a few generations that weeds out the less edifying songs. If staying with the familiar (no matter how bad it may be) is the tendency of a conservative temperament, then the ideal of creativity and novelty—as an end in itself— becomes destructive of long conversations.

You don’t get healthy with fad diets and exercise gimmicks, or become a craftsperson from YouTube clips. There are no shortcuts to what we desire most. Far from being the enemy of excellence, affirming the everyday assumes there is a goal worthy enough to invest in over the long haul. It counsels patient attentiveness when we’d just as soon cut corners.

Wisdom challenges our youthful restlessness without quenching its zeal. It does not reduce the faith to a few important doctrines or offer a menu of options for creating one’s own.

Biblical wisdom comes to us not as much from living elders or even past famous voices, as from a consensus where extreme views are reined in, and faith and practice are woven into a single bolt of fabric.

We need to recover not only sound doctrine but also sounder practices that serve to deepen us—and succeeding generations—in the new creation God has called into being. We need to learn how to grow like a tree, not like a forest fire.

Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation.

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