word-and-sacrament-july-august-2011 by Modern Reformation

IS CATECHISM STILL NEEDED? ❘ DISCIPLESHIP IN A FACEBOOK WORLD ❘ THE CHURCH AND MEDIA

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Word and Sacrament: Making Disciples of All Nations V O L U M E 2 0 , N U M B E R 4 , J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 , $ 6 . 5 0

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Trees or Tumbleweeds? Instead of focusing on new programs, strategies, and techniques for spiritual and numerical growth, we need desperately to recover the neglected practice of catechesis in Christian homes and churches. By Michael S. Horton

Face-to-Face Discipleship in a Facebook World Facebook and other social networks are displacing interpersonal mediums of discipling and finding a welcome home in the church—the very entity designed by God to provide a different solution to communal disengagement. Now more than ever the church must reestablish face-to-face discipleship to recover our humanity. By John J. Bombaro

What Does “This Means” Mean? As our congregations make choices about how to “get their message across,” shouldn’t they be aware that the means used are often part of the message itself? By Rick Ritchie

Creed or Chaos? In her famous essay, Dorothy Sayers argues why the central doctrines of Christianity are still necessary and relevant to the modern church. This is an excerpt from her collection of essays in Letters to a Diminished Church. By Dorothy L. Sayers

Coming of Age in the Facebook Age If the overload of technology and social media make it difficult to raise leaders in the kingdom of man, how much more do they threaten the training of the next generation in the kingdom of God? By Alex Chediak

No Doctrinal Education, No Disciples: A Look at Yullin Presbyterian Church in Korea A South Korean pastor discusses the vital role of catechism in making healthy disciples. By Nam-Joon Kim

Baptism and Discipleship The author demonstrates the vital bond between baptism and discipleship by looking at the nature and character of baptism and how this theology bears strongly upon our lives as Christ’s disciples. By J. V. Fesko J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1

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Focus on Missions Just Being a Christian Church: An Update from the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Filadelfia, Milan, Italy By Andrea Ferrari From the Hallway: Perspectives on Evangelical Theology “Hi, I’m a Sinner” By Anonymous For a Modern Reformation Word & Sacrament Ministry By Michael S. Horton

The Latest Ideas Sweeping the Land…

Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Horton Executive Editor Ryan Glomsrud

Studies in Acts Acts 4: The Community of the Kingdom By Dennis E. Johnson

Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Should Know By Wayne A. Grudem and Elliot Grudem Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe By Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears Reviewed by Rick Ritchie A Dialogue: In and Out of Our Circles Why We Still Need Catechism White Horse Inn Interview with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary By Fred G. Zaspel Reviewed by David Gibson Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence By John Jefferson Davis Reviewed by Jon D. Payne The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr Reviewed by Andy Wilson Point of Contact: Books Your Neighbors Are Reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother By Amy Chua Reviewed by Brooke Mintun COVER ART: THINKSTOCK/COMSTOCK/JUPITER IMAGES. COMPOSITE BY LORI COOK

IN THIS ISSUE

Learning the A, B, Cs

ne of the first things that gripped me about Reformation theology was its straightforward understanding of Christian discipleship. Cutting away distractions, early Protestant churches were marvelously focused and humble in their approach to Christian evangelism and ministry because that’s what they discovered in the pages of Scripture, laid out in the Gospels and ultimately issued by Jesus himself in the Great Commission. What is the secret key for growth in the Christian life? It is the gospel of the died and risen Savior that gives life, delivered by means of the preached Word, and then signed, sealed, and confirmed by the “visible word” in the Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Teaching and discipline come to bear immediately in a well-ordered church that is growing and maturing. These things have little or nothing to do with nostalgia for an earlier, simpler time. They are God’s way of helping us get out of our own way, to let the Father do the work of redemption and discipleship through the Son in the power of the Spirit. In this issue, we want to help realign the church’s mission from helpful but ultimately inessential programs to these specific means that Christ ordained for the expansion of his kingdom. Toward that end, Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton sets out our need for catechesis in discipleship, which is a theme you will frequently encounter in this issue because of its relevance to the phrase of the commission, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” We believe that both the message and the methods of discipleship are of central concern. Technology is an important theme, though not for its own sake. Lutheran pastor John Bombaro argues that discipleship necessarily involves a communal setting, including personal representation as being of the essence of Christian disciple-making. Developing a reference to Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: Extensions of Man, regular contributor Rick Ritchie helps us think about our choices of media. He suggests that sometimes our methods seem more effective than they actually are because of our fallenness. Although we feel altogether strengthened when a tool extends one of our natural abilities, we don’t always notice the corresponding atrophy of another ability. Globalization has meant that most things in our culture are pragmatic, technocratic, and depersonalized. Andrea Ferrari and Alex Chediak challenge us with articles about both churches and children who are coming of age in a Facebook age. One of the best ways for us all to “grow up,” in the sense of being built up into a mature faith, is to rigorously catechize every believer, literally from cradle to grave. As it is refreshing to learn lessons about discipleship from another culture, Korean pastor Nam-Joon Kim relates the extensive discipleship and teaching ministry at Yullin Presbyterian Church. An interview with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett further reiterates the importance of recovering the grammar of the Christian faith. As learning the language of Zion begins with God’s grace poured out in baptism, Presbyterian minister and seminary professor J. V. Fesko persuades us that its abiding value does not simply rest in the moment of its administration, but has the strongest links to a lifetime of discipleship. We should always remember our baptism, especially as we struggle in personal holiness in this life. An anonymous author writes about setbacks in this life because of our sinful condition, which is sometimes manifested in addiction. Joyously, the author explains, the gospel addresses first the condemning power of sin and then gives us strength to fight against its controlling power. Left to ourselves, we tend to trip over our own feet by creating needless complications. But what is impossible with man is possible with God. In the book of Acts, the Great Commission unfolded as the church was born by Word and Spirit and then “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Word and Sacrament ministry, in other words, is the full mission of the church. This is how God directs our hearts and minds to Christ. It is his rescue mission for the nations.

Ryan Glomsrud Executive Editor

NEXT ISSUES September/October 2011 Social Justice, Social Gospel? November/December 2011 The Great Assurance J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3

STUDIES IN ACTS

Acts 4: The Community of the Kingdom

hen Christ poured out his Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, he

are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God will call ushered his “kingdom community” into the age to come. to himself” (2:38–39). Their change of heart (repenPentecost is sometimes described as the birthday of the church, tance) must be attested publicly by submission to but that is not quite accurate. Far earlier in the Bible baptism in Jesus’ name. And thus it was: “So those the Greek term ekklesia, which our English versions who received his word were baptized, and there were render “church,” had been applied to the “day of the added that day about three thousand souls” (2:41). assembly”1 when Israel gathered at the foot of Mount From the core of one hundred twenty who had awaited the Spirit’s descent (1:15), the church swelled Sinai as Moses received the Lord’s covenant on the as thousands took a public stand, confessing allemountaintop (Deut. 9:10). From that point forward giance to Jesus the Messiah, whose name laid claim the term appears regularly in the Old Testament to to them in baptism. As in Abraham’s day, God spoke designate the congregation of Israel assembled to his promise not only to repenting and believing adults, worship in God’s presence (for example, 1 Kings 8:14, but also to their children (see Gen. 17:5–11). 22, 55, 65; 1 Chron. 13:2–4; 29:20; 2 Chron. 29:31– Moreover, as God had promised to bless all nations 32; Ps. 22:35; 35:18).2 When Simon Peter confessed through Abraham (12:3), now this blessing would that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, reach pagan Gentiles “far off,” whom God would call Jesus himself promised to build his ekklesia, his assemthrough the gospel (see Isa. 57:19; Eph. 2:11–18). bly, his church (Matt. 16:18). Not surprisingly, thereIndividuals’ transition from death to life, originating fore, in the interim between Jesus’ ascension to in the Spirit’s hidden touch (John 3:8), became visiheaven and his bestowal of the Spirit from his throne ble as they joined the community that confessed Jesus at God’s right hand (Acts 2:33), we are shown a comas Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). munity of believers “with one accord…devoting themActs 2:42–47 is the first of several transitional sumselves to prayer,” awaiting the empowering Spirit of maries in which Luke offers portraits of the life of the God, whom their Lord would soon send (1:4–5, 8, church in the aftermath of the Spirit’s arrival.3 This 14). The Spirit of God applies Christ’s redemptive achievement personally to individuals (in the mystetransition opens with the four activities that characrious rebirth that draws us to faith), yet his agenda is terized the church’s life together and fostered its memnot primarily individualistic but rather communal. bers’ growth: “They devoted themselves to the The Father’s call and the Spirit’s power rescue rebels apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of from wrath for the purpose of incorporating the bread and the prayers” (2:42). Luke elaborates on these redeemed into the assembly of the Lord. four components in his later transitions (4:32–35; The churchly communal focus of the kingdom is 5:12–16; 6:7; 12:24; 13:49; 19:20; see also 9:31; 16:5), evident both in the immediate response to Peter’s showing that they are the means by which disciples sermon on Pentecost (Acts 2:37–41) and in the afterwho entered the church through baptism were taught math of that event (2:42–47). As the Word of God “to observe all that I have commanded you,” as Jesus “cut to the heart” thousands of Peter’s listeners and had instructed (Matt. 28:20). they asked how they should respond, he answered, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name The Apostles’ Teaching of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and Extensive space is devoted in Acts to the content of you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the sermons in which the apostles and others proclaimed promise is to you and to your children and to all who the gospel of the kingdom. With one notable excep4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

tion (of the major speeches in Acts, only Paul’s farewell message to the elders of the church at Ephesus is spoken specifically to Christian listeners [Acts 20:18–35]), the venues of these sermons were not Christian worship services, and the audiences were those outside the community of the kingdom. They were gatherings of Jews and Gentile proselytes in the temple or in synagogues, or they were Gentile pagans in city squares. Do these samples of the apostles’ evangelistic preaching to uncommitted (or even hostile) audiences tell us anything about their teaching to the baptized? Some scholars have drawn a sharp differentiation between the content of the apostles’ kerygma (gospel proclamation) to unbelievers and their didache (teaching) to Christian congregations.4 To be sure, various audiences’ diverse spiritual needs influenced the apostles’ apologetic arguments and applications of God’s truth. Therefore, the sermons of Acts focus on demonstrating to the unconvinced that Jesus is the promised Messiah, both Savior and Judge, and on summoning them to a radical shift of trust and allegiance. Within the congregation of those already committed to Christ, however, the focus would be on deepening faith and showing the implications of grace for relationships and conduct in the king’s community. Nonetheless, the sermons of Acts reflect the content that the apostles taught believers, as well as the message they proclaimed to those outside. Paul’s Epistles, which are addressed to Christian congregations, reflect in writing what he taught to churches in person. These Epistles reinforce the centrality of the gospel truths that first drew us to faith (Gal. 3:1–5; 1 Cor. 15:1–4), and they show that the redemption wrought by Jesus sets the agenda and provides the power for our life as his disciples (Col. 2:6–7; Rom. 6:1–14). Moreover, the prologue to Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:1– 4) shows that the evangelistic sermons in Acts express truths that would strengthen the certainty of those, such as Theophilus, who had been catechized in the Christian faith.5 Of course, Luke’s two volumes encompass more than the gospel truths of the incarnation, sacrifice, and resurrection/exaltation of the Son of God. But “all that Jesus began to do and teach,” recorded in the third Gospel (Acts 1:1), focused on his suffering and entrance into glory (Luke 24:25–27); and all that he continued to do and teach as the risen Lord, building and growing his church (as narrated in Acts), flowed from those events. Later passages in Acts highlight the prominence of the apostles’ teaching in the life and witness of the church. Luke reports that “with great power the apostles were giving testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all” (Acts

4:33). The apostles’ “testimony” was addressed to those outside the church, but it also bore fruit among believers, who responded to God’s grace in generosity toward others (4:32, 34–35). The truths about Jesus to which the apostles testified drove the growth of the church, both in numerical expansion and in depth of spiritual maturity. Therefore Luke’s later transitions simply equate church growth with “word growth”: “And the word of God continued to increase”6 (6:7); “But the word of God increased and multiplied” (12:24); “So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily” (19:20). The Fellowship This second component of the church’s life poses challenges both to our understanding and to our practice in twenty-first-century America. If “fellowship” brings to our mind’s eye images of light conversation over hot coffee in a “fellowship hall” during a “fellowship hour,” we will misunderstand what Luke and the Holy Spirit mean by “fellowship.” The Greek term, which found its way into English usage in some Christian circles several decades ago, is koinönia. Its focus is on a shared life and commitment to one another, a “partnership” that often includes giving to others and receiving from others (Phil. 1:5; 4:15). In the context of Acts 2:42, Luke immediately identifies the practice that koinönia expresses, reporting that “all who believed were together and had all things in common [koinos, the adjective cognate of koinönia]” (2:44). The Reformer Martin Bucer rightly recognized that the “fellowship” mentioned in Acts 2:42 was the church’s “alms,” the openhearted liberality by which affluent Christians contributed financial resources to relieve the poor.7 This readiness to share material things with needy brothers and sisters not only characterized the earliest church in Jerusalem (4:32–35), but also found expression later in believers’ generosity toward each other even across vast geographical and ethnic distances (Acts 11:27–30; 2 Cor. 8–9; Rom. 15:25–27). Here is where the early church’s costly compassion challenges our practices and our hearts’ priorities. Despite—or because of—the affluence that Western Christians enjoy even in times of recession (in comparison with most of the world), we are too often captive to our private property. Our possessions own us more than we own them. Generosity that impinges on our lifestyle or jeopardizes our financial security (as we imagine it) is all too rare among us. By contrast, although Joseph Barnabas stood out in the apostles’ estimation for his character and faith (Acts 11:24), in one sense he was just one typical example of how many cheerfully forewent comforts or security to relieve others’ needs (4:36–37).8 J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 5

The Breaking of the Bread Although English versions often omit it, the Greek original contains a definite article that is significant: “The breaking of the bread.” Luke will go on to report that believers gathered regularly to break bread (no article) and to eat meals together (Acts 2:46). However, references to breaking “the bread” elsewhere in Luke and Acts direct our attention to that evening when Jesus, on his way to the cross, constituted the Lord’s Supper by breaking the bread and offering the cup as signs and seals of his impending sacrifice to inaugurate the new covenant (Luke 22:19–20). After his death, his disciples recognized their risen Lord when he took “the bread,” blessed, broke it, and gave it to them (24:30–31). Later, the church at Troas gathered on the first day of the week “to break bread,” and in the wee hours of the morning, after a lengthy sermon, Paul finally broke “the bread” and ate with them (Acts 20:7, 11). It appears that in those early years this sacramental participation in the bread and the cup (1 Cor. 10:16–17), in which believers “proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (11:26), may have been integrated with the meals that believers regularly shared together (Acts 2:46; see 6:1–7). Paul rebuked the Corinthians’ drunkenness, selfishness, and contempt for the poor in the common meals, because these abuses had so poisoned the atmosphere by the time they received the elements that signified Christ’s death that the sacramental portion of the meal could hardly be called “the Lord’s Supper” (1 Cor. 11:17–22). Better to satisfy your appetites at home than to split the church by conspicuous consumption! But the schismatic suppers at Corinth were a far cry from the oneness of heart and soul that we see in the portraits of the church’s life together in the early chapters of Acts. When Christians recognize, as those early believers in Jerusalem did, the priceless sacrifice of Christ that is proclaimed in the bread and the cup whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table, the Savior’s love, sealed to our hearts by faith, will move us to gratitude for his grace and to love for one another. The Prayers The kingdom community that listens to God (through the apostles’ teaching and through the bread, the visible Word of the Lord’s Supper) replies to God in prayer. Even before Pentecost, believers were devoting themselves to prayer, claiming Jesus’ promise that he would soon send the Spirit (Acts 1:14). They asked their risen Lord, who chose his apostles (1:2) and who sees human hearts (see Mark 2:8), to designate a replacement for Judas the traitor (Acts 1:24–25). Then, when the Spirit arrived, his 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

presence in their midst evoked continuous devotion to “the prayers.” Not only did they participate in Israel’s prayers at the temple (Acts 3:1), but also their own gatherings in homes became houses of prayer in which they offered thanksgiving and petition in Jesus’ name. The presence of Christ in the midst of his assembly mobilized their prayer when threats and persecution could have jeopardized their joy. Rather than retreating or lamenting, believers “lifted their voices together to God,” repeating back to God words that he himself had spoken ages earlier (Acts 4:24–31). Alluding to Psalm 146:6 and quoting Psalm 2:1–2, they affirmed that the conspirators who assaulted Jesus had simply fulfilled God’s Word and accomplished God’s purpose. Through the apostles’ teaching they were learning to read their Bibles, so the Lord’s Word molded their words and the Lord’s glory captured their hearts. Instead of begging to be shielded from suffering, they asked “to speak your word with all boldness,” so that the power of Jesus’ name might be shown. Luke’s transitional summaries repeatedly show how the church grows, both in breadth and in depth. As the message of Jesus the Christ is proclaimed, the Spirit pierces hearts, producing repentance and faith. Believers and their families are embraced into the King’s community through baptism in his name, nurtured by his Word and “the bread” (and wine) of the Supper, moved to express their unity in costly and tangible compassion, and drawn together in prayer before God’s throne of grace to “find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

Dennis E. Johnson is professor of practical theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido and author of The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption (P&R 1997).

The Greek Septuagint (LXX) characteristically conveyed the sense of the Hebrew qahal (“assembly”) with the Greek noun ekklesia. See Acts 7:38, where Stephen refers to the covenant-making at Sinai. (Here the ESV renders ekklesia as “congregation.”) 2In the LXX, the psalm references are 21:26; 34:18. 3Technically, the first such transition is Acts 1:14, the bridge between the account of Jesus’ ascension (1:4–13) and the appointment of an apostolic successor for Judas (1:15–26). Luke sets off these transitional summaries from the events surrounding them by changing the tense of Greek verbs from aorist (simple or unmarked past) in 1

(continued on page 8)

FOCUS ON MISSIONS

Just Being a Christian Church: An Update from the Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Filadelfia, Milan, Italy

hat Dr. Sinclair Ferguson recently said at Westminster

thirty-five to forty people were gathered together. Seminary California about the ministry of Word and Sacrament Though he came from a large charismatic church, is applicable to the missional witness of every Christian for some reason he continued to participate in our services in spite of his difficulties with the language. church: it is tough but also terrific. We spontaneously invited him to stay for our monthly It is tough because our missionary mandate is agape meals. He began to feel welcome among us as understood through the lens of the theology of the some of our families opened their homes to him. cross. Not many among our members are wise accordAfter a few months, Anna—his Italian fiancée—visited ing to worldly standards; not many are powerful, rich him. Matthew met Anna when he landed on the and influential. Since Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Sicilian shore at the end of his two-year journey from Filadelfia (CERF) was constituted in 2003, we’ve Nigeria to Libya. At that time, Anna worked as a volgradually been realizing that it takes the vigor origiunteer in a center where first aid was given to these nating in the weakness of the theology of the cross to desperate people in search of a job and of a better life be a church that confesses historic Reformed theology in a foreign country. So we began also to know Anna in its worship, preaching, catechetical instruction, little by little. and family worship. In the midst of the glamorous, Matthew continued to attend CERF, becoming boastful, self-promoting, and sophisticated culture in more involved in the life of the church. In the sumMilan, Italy, our theology of the cross teaches us that mer of 2010, he studied the Heidelberg Catechism under our methodology must arise out of our theology, and the guidance of Mr. Chris Coleman, a Westminster that the forms in which we present the message of the California student who helped CERF as an intern. In cross must be conformed to the contents of the mesthe meantime, we’d been helping Matthew deal with sage of the cross. After all, the wellspring of our theItalian bureaucracy in order to have all his documents ology of mission is the authority given the Lord Jesus right, so he could have lawful status and a legitimate himself, the authority of the Crucified One, the Man job. In the providence of God, at the end of last sumof Sorrows who had no beauty to make him and his mer, Matthew was forced to leave the room he rented message desirable to men and to their cultures. because some immigrants living with him were vioMore practically, in the midst of the scheming, lent and often drunk and were in trouble with the subtle, seductive, selfish, split, swinging as well as police. Matthew could not afford to rent a room, so spiritual “Milanese” culture, we are trying to imitate one of our families hosted him for a few months. We the apostolic application of the theology of the cross helped Anna find a job in Milan, and on December 17, by devoting ourselves to doctrinal teaching, practicing 2010, Matthew and Anna were married, and now brotherly love, growing in our appreciation of the Matthew will start a new job. sacraments, persevering in corporate prayers, and It has been tough, but it is also terrific to see learning to abound in works of mercy toward those Matthew and Anna worshipping with us each Lord’s who are in need (cf. Acts 2:42–47). To give you an Day, and we pray that their children and their chilidea of how this works in our small congregation, I’ll dren’s children will worship as members of CERF. tell you a little about Matthew, a young man who It is tough for our small confessional congregation arrived in Italy three years ago from Nigeria. to be mission minded in our pragmatic, technocratic, In September 2009, Matthew showed up at our and depersonalized culture, but it is also terrific to see worship service one Sunday morning when about J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 7

some new families regularly attending our services, participating in the catechism class as well as our weekly meetings. It is terrific to see the power of gospel reconciliation at work not only in the lives of Italians, but also among a few Chinese and Hispanic people in our midst. It has been tough and terrific also for our Lord. It was tough for him to be misunderstood in his mission by John the Baptist, even though he prepared the way for him as the Messiah (cf. Matt. 11:2–19). It was also tough to be rejected in his mission by the people of the villages he went around to preach and to do good (cf. Matt. 11:20–24). However, in the midst of misunderstanding and rejection, the Lord Jesus rejoiced in the terrific unfolding and application of the covenant of grace: At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matt. 11:25–27, emphasis added)

Andrea Ferrari (masters in philosophy, University of Wales, and masters in philosophy, Università Statale, Milan) is an associate pastor of Christ United Reformed Church in Santee, California, with the specific calling of a missionary to the Filadelfia Church in Milan and to establish a federation of Reformed Churches in Italy.

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

Studies in Acts (continued from page 6) narrating events to imperfect (continuous or repeated past actions) in portraying the pattern of behavior over extended periods. 4See C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1938). 5The Greek term rendered “you have been taught” in Luke 1:4 is katecheo, from which we get “catechize” and “catechism.” Here and in Galatians 6:6 this verb seems to have the sense that we associate with these terms—that is, systematic instruction in the fundamental truths of the Christian faith. 6In all these passages the Greek word translated “increase” (ESV) is auxano, an agricultural metaphor related to the growth of crops and other plants. See Jesus’ parable of the sower (Mark 4:8) and Paul’s use of this imagery in Col. 1:6, 10. 7Bucer’s interpretation is summarized in Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture, rev. and expanded ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 153. 8Donation for the poor in the apostolic church was voluntary, not mandatory (Acts 5:4). The sin of Ananias and Sapphira, which precipitated their deaths at the hand of God, was not a refusal to contribute all that they had (or even the whole proceeds from their recent sale of land), but rather their contempt for the Holy Spirit’s omniscience and purity, shown in the audacity of their daring to “lie to the Holy Spirit…to God” (5:3–4).

FROM THE HALLWAY p e r s p e c t i v e s

o n

e v a n g e l i c a l

t h e o l o g y

“Hi, I’m a Sinner”

have a disease. I was born with it. I will die with it. In fact, I will die of it. An autopsy that could see everything about me would prove it to be the underSome of it I knew; some I did not. But whether the realities were known or unknown, hearing the specifics rehearsed was devastating. Professionals have told me that these things, which could manifest themselves whether I was drinking or not, are in fact “character flaws” or “alcoholic thinking and behaving.” It turns out that alcoholics are self-centered, selfish, self-absorbed, prone to self-pity, often resentful, wanting control of people and circumstances, and frequently manipulative. But they are this way with or without drinking. Evidently, drinking does not cause these ugly traits; it exacerbates them. (In my case, “alcoholic drinking” occurred until I was approaching the end of the sixth decade of my life.) That is one of the reasons I resist being told I am an alcoholic who has a physical disease just like any other. (Often, people who abuse alcohol are told that one of the tests of their progress is whether they have accepted that they have a disease.) I have known lots of people with the same character flaws who do not abuse alcohol or other substances. In fact, though there are often fewer destructive effects, it seems to me that these things are pretty much universal. Furthermore, what other physical disease is treated by a searching and brutally honest cataloging of one’s character flaws? You can’t imagine a diabetic being told that she suffers from diabetic thinking or a cancer patient that he engages in malignant behavior. When I say I have a disease, I mean disease in the metaphorical sense as the Bible does. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick,” says Jeremiah 17:10. Surely this spiritual disease has physical consequences, and since it affects the whole person, it may have physical components, such as genetic predispositions. But this is not the way the vast majority of addiction specialists use the term. They teach that it is a physical disease that medical science may someday cure, though “it hasn’t done so yet.” But the most important reason I do not call myself (continued on page 49)

lying cause of my death. While not all realize this and fewer acknowledge it,

I have this malady in common with all of humanity. In my case it has been treated by divine intervention (human, too, at points), but it has not been eradicated. In fact, the most obvious manifestations of symptoms have occurred since it was treated early in my life. This is one of the mysteries of this disease. It can be radically treated. For those who receive it, the treatment is always successful. But the disease does not go away. It is always there. At times I would swear the disease is just as powerful and destructive as it would be had it not been treated. But I am assured that this is not the case, and I try to believe that. At times I feel pretty optimistic. Right now is one of those times. But I am not sanguine. The disease is still there. I could suffer a serious relapse at anytime. My memories of previous relapses are too vivid, and my knowledge of the way the disease works is too clear for me to think I am done with it. I hope future relapses will not take the same form nor be as serious as some of the past ones. But mainly I hope that when relapses come, serious or not so serious, I will not despair. Despair is the worst thing that can happen with this disease. Despair can be deadly. Sometimes, when an outbreak of the disease would not be fatal, the despair is. It almost turned out that way for me. One of the most obvious and consequential manifestations of my disease is the abuse of alcohol. But my problem isn’t really alcohol. I do not object to being called an “alcoholic” in the sense of being a person who has and still could drink uncontrollably and with severe consequences. But I do object to being told that the identity of my disease is “alcoholism” and that hence I am an alcoholic in the sense that this is my disease or allergy. One of the reasons I object is because I know that my disease predated any abuse of alcohol. If I had not known that, I surely would by now, as others have told me of the ways this disease manifested itself to them.

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W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

Trees or Tumbleweeds? BY 10 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

MICHAEL S. HORTON

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Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. (Ps. 1)

y comparing “the way of the blessed” to “a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season” and “the way of the wicked” to “chaff that the wind drives away,” this opening song in the hymnal of God’s covenant people sets before us two completely irreconcilable ways of living in the world. There are sheep and goats, wheat and weeds, and one day Jesus Christ will separate them forever. With that future assize in view, it would be as senseless as it would be disastrous to find our identity in the wisdom of this age, which can only yield dry stubble that is set ablaze. Sinking roots deeply into God’s Word, meditating on it day and night, is the only way we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds instead of being conformed to the pattern of this fading age (Rom. 12:1–2). A California native, I’ve lived in radically different regions of the state: lush northern landscapes where sturdy oaks and pines reach heavenward in forested canopies, and southern semi-arid desert where sage brush and chaparral follow the Santa Ana winds to the ocean. Late winter rains may turn the hills green for a few months, but by July all will be brown kindling for September fires. Farther out, in the desert proper, tumbleweeds roll recklessly across the highways during these months. Where my grandparents used to live, in the high desert, whipping-hot winds sweep the nasty weeds into heaps against any porch that would halt their random voyage. They don’t actually bear fruit. Tumbleweeds detach entirely from their root, and although now dead, they scatter seeds or spores as they tumble. Aside from providing meager foraging material for a cow here and there, their chief significance lies in being a prop in Hollywood westerns. We are becoming more sensitive to our natural environment. But are we as aware of and concerned about the spiritual ecosystems that shape us, our families, and our neighbors? Especially in a highly individualistic and self-confident culture, it is easy to imagine that we are sturdy plants come what may,

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regardless of our environment. We’re expected simply to bloom where we’re planted. However, Psalm 1 presents a different picture. Stately oaks do not grow in the barren desert, and tumbleweeds do not blow aimlessly through forest meadows. Besides the horticultural metaphors, such as trees and vines, the Bible also uses architectural ones for the process of growth in grace, such as the verb oikodomeö, “to build up.” Peter speaks of believers as “living stones” who “are being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Pet. 2:5). Buildings and bodies merge in Paul’s image of the church. In Ephesians 4, he tells us that Christ, ascended to his royal throne, is dispensing the gift of pastors and teachers for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine….Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Eph. 4:9–16) We may compare this passage with Psalm 1. Through this ministry of pastors and teachers, each member is “built up” in love and truth (“like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither”), in contrast to those who are “carried about by every wind of doctrine” and easily deceived (“like chaff that the wind drives away”). God created us for a great city. Yet in our fallenness we have become vagabonds—spiritual tumbleweeds. Like those who prefer the artificial New York, New York Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas to the actual city, we cast longing eyes on the trivial, ephemeral, and superficial. Impatient with slow growth in the same direction, with well-watered roots and fruit-bearing branches, we are encouraged in this culture to detach ourselves, setting out on our own. We may think that we are in control of this journey, that it has purpose and an intentional destination. And for a while at least it might be interesting to bounce and roll through wide open expanses, untethered from roots. In reality, though, we are being blown to and fro by every wind of doctrine, longing to be whatever the latest fashions of this passing age J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 1

At a time when we’ve put so much emphasis on new programs, strategies, and techniques for spiritual and numerical growth, we need desperately to recover the neglected practice of catechesis in Christian homes and churches. tell us we should be, for the moment anyway. We are suckers for promises of instant gratification, parodies of the “solid joys and lasting treasure” that “none but Zion’s children know.” But what do Zion’s children know these days? How steeped are they in the solid joys and lasting treasure that rightfully belong to them as heirs of the kingdom? We may be saving up for their college or material inheritance, but are we passing on the inheritance of the faith? Do we greet the Lord’s Day as a gift of communion with the Triune God as we taste the powers of the age to come and soak up the water of life together with the saints? Do we use it as a day to be swept into the new creation, or as just another day on the calendar of this passing age? At a time when we’ve put so much emphasis on new programs, strategies, and techniques for spiritual and numerical growth, we need desperately to recover the neglected practice of catechesis in Christian homes and churches. What Is Catechesis? n their enormously helpful book, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way (Baker, 2010), J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett call for a recovery of catechesis (for more on this, see the White Horse Inn interview on page 52). After explaining the history of this practice in the ancient church and its revival in the Reformation, they explore some of the reasons for and the devastating impact of its decline. The balance of the book is given to practical counsel for recovering catechesis in the church and home. Early in the church’s history, the path to adult baptism and church membership was considered part and parcel of a person’s conversion. At the initial stage, Jews and Gentiles interested in learning the Christian faith would become inquirers. Immersed in the Scriptures through question-and-answer guides, the candidate would then meet at the end of the course with the minister/bishop and elders. Together, they would decide whether it was time to become a catechumen (“one who is taught,” as in Galatians 6:6). Catechesis was considered so important (being, as it

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is, an essential part of the Great Commission) that even famous ministers of immense congregations led it—notables such as Chrysostom and Augustine. Identified now as “hearers of the Word,” catechumens were included in worship but were then dismissed at the celebration of Communion. As incipient disciples, catechumens were expected not only to learn the “steps,” but to dance them as well, active in prayer and good deeds. Then sponsors in the church would vouch for them, along with the elders, and after yet a final stage of intense instruction, they were qualified for baptism. It is from such local practices that we have the earliest fragments of the ancient creeds. Reciting the creed from memory, the adult candidate with his or her children would be baptized. The “neophytes,” as the adult baptized were now called (from “new plant/child”), were immediately admitted to the Lord’s Supper, while the children were catechized with the goal of full participation in covenant membership—namely, their own public profession of faith and admission to the Supper. Yet the catechesis continued for all members throughout their pilgrimage. This is what it meant to fulfill the Great Commission: preaching the gospel, baptizing, and teaching. “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). The Biblical Basis for Catechesis esides the Great Commission and the example of discipleship in Christ’s ministry, there are many other references to regular instruction as essential not only for entering into the faith but also for living in it to the end. “The faith once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is an objective body of doctrine. Although each of us exercises personal faith in Christ, when Scripture speaks of the faith, it refers to this common creed. The faith that believes (fides qua creditur) and the faith that is believed (fides quae creditur) are both crucial, and “faith” (pistis) is used in both senses throughout the New Testament. The faith delivered to the saints by Christ, through his apostles, is not something that each believer discovers or constructs based on his or her personal experience. Each of us must believe, but what we believe is delivered to us as a body from generation to generation and in every place. Like our own act of faith, the faith is a gift that we receive. Paul speaks of a summary of the gospel that he received, even as he also delivered it to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:3–5). The same formula is found in chapter 11: “I received from

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the Lord what I also delivered to you” (v. 12), just as in verse 2 he lauds them because they “maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.” Paul reminds Timothy, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (2 Tim. 1:13–14). Scattered throughout the New Testament Epistles are apostolic exhortations to receive, pass on, and guard “the teaching you have learned” and “received from us” (Rom. 16:17; 1 Tim. 6:1; 2 Thess. 3:6). Timothy is told to “charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3) and to live in such a way “that the teaching may not be reviled” (1 Tim. 6:1). “If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing” (1 Tim. 6:3–4). Underscoring the fact that mission drift is a perennial problem for the church throughout this passing evil age, Paul reminds his young protégé, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:3). He reminds Titus that an elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). Peter also warns believers to avoid the example of apostates by being grounded in the truth: “It would have been better for them not to have

KNOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE… “Faith” (pistis) is used in Scripture in at least two different ways, sometimes called by theologians as “subjective” and “objective” faith. Both are referred to in the article here, the first as “the faith that believes” (fides qua creditor). This is the personal faith by which you know what you believe and why you believe it. The term “subjective” faith shouldn’t lead to any confusion as it doesn’t mean that faith is a feeling or mood, but simply that faith is exercised by a person or a “subject.” The second usage is “objective” faith (fides quae creditur), or “the faith that is believed.” This is the substance and content of “the Christian faith” that is the object of the personal act of believing, “the faith” once for all handed down to the saints.

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known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them” (2 Pet. 2:21). John adds, “Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9). As the “little flock” of Christ witnessed even under severe persecution to the saving gospel, the church expanded rapidly throughout Caesar’s empire. Eventually, however, the church became a privileged institution. The Greek word for church, ekklesia, means “called out.” With the conversion of Constantine, Christianity became the empire’s official religion, and in both the East and the West the sense of being “called out” of the world to belong to Christ diminished. No longer having to be converted from Judaism or paganism, like the first Christians, many professing Christians were nominal in their convictions and practices. Throughout the Middle Ages, the written Scriptures were not available except to monks and clergy, in Latin. In any case, the masses were largely illiterate (including many priests), and the simple service of preaching and participation of the whole congregation in the prayers, psalm singing, and the Supper was transformed into elaborate theater with the congregation assuming the role of spectators. They did not regularly participate in Communion (the norm was once a year) and received only the bread, not the cup. Gospel narratives blended with pagan folktales and festivals in a kind of civil religion. Who was the average layperson to distinguish fact from fiction, Scripture from folk culture? There was no formal process of catechesis—certainly no official catechism. In fact, the Counter-Reformation drew up its own catechism only in reaction to those of the Reformation. Into this dilapidated condition stepped Martin Luther. He wrote his own Small Catechism after pastoral visitations, as he explains in his preface: The deplorable conditions which I recently encountered when I was a visitor constrained me to prepare this brief and simple catechism or statement of Christian teaching. Good God, what wretchedness I beheld! The common people, especially those who live in the country, have no knowledge whatever of Christian teaching, and unfortunately many pastors are quite incompetent and unfitted for teaching. Although the people are supposed to be Christian, are baptized, and receive the holy sacrament, they do not know the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, or the Ten Commandments, they J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 3

live as if they were pigs and irrational beasts, and now that the Gospel has been restored they have mastered the fine art of abusing liberty. (Quoted by Packer and Parrett, 61) So Luther’s catechism drew together clusters of questions and answers around the overarching structure of the Lord’s Prayer, the creed, and the Ten Commandments. Like Chrysostom and Augustine, Luther was an enormously busy pastor who nevertheless regarded it as his vocation to teach the congregation, especially the youth. So he began regular catechism classes throughout the week. John Calvin did the same in Geneva with his Geneva Catechism, and after 1563 the Heidelberg Catechism became the most widely used Reformed tool of instruction, from the Ottoman lands of Hungary to the Church of England. Like Luther’s, the Heidelberg Catechism— and later the Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms—are organized around the creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Why We Need Catechesis hatever our time and place, it belongs to “this passing evil age.” Yet because of Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and the descent of the Spirit, the powers of the age to come are breaking in on it. Similar to Psalm 1, Paul’s counsel works in any age and in any culture:

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving….If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col 2:6–7; 3:1–4) Christ didn’t leave his body and history in the grave, but was raised in glory. He did not ascend away from this world, but away from this age under the reign of sin, crushing the head of the serpent and freeing captives from the fear of death. As our head, pioneer, forerunner, and firstfruits, Jesus Christ radically changed the course of our own history. As he now is, so we will be one day. Like boxcars attached to the engine, we belong to him. Our destiny is inseparable from his. Adam plunged us all into death, but Christ 14 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

has already arrived in the station, with us in tow. That’s where we are in history. Whether a fourthcentury African, a sixteenth-century German, an eighteenth-century Pacific Islander, or a twenty-firstcentury Korean-American, every believer is living at the intersection of these two ages. The one age is passing away and the other is everlasting. The one is defined by the “nowhere man, living in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.” The other is defined by the plans, promises, and achievements of the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit. But make no mistake about it: Whatever our time and place, the cultures of this present age are catechizing us all. We may see this more evidently in places other than our own. For example, it’s been a privilege to learn from African students who come to our seminary. There are more confessional Reformed churches in Nigeria than North America, and students who come from these churches tell me they have a rigorous catechetical process. In fact, it’s very close to the early church procedure. Why so much instruction before baptism? “Well,” students reply, “most have come either from pagan animism (spirit worship) or Islam.” Conversion is definitive in that sort of situation. But that’s “over there,” right? This is America, after all, born in the cradle of Judeo-Christian civilization. We forget that ever since our founding, our culture (including religion) has been a mixture of traditional Christianity and successive waves of infidelity, pseudo-Christian sects and cults, and esoteric spiritualities. We are catechized more by the rituals of the market than those of historic Christianity. Although bells rarely announce the assembly of saints today, the ringing of the opening bell on Wall Street is a daily ritual. We may recognize idolatry in the tribesman’s dependence on the carved amulet in his pocket, but it doesn’t occur to us that we may be idolaters as we clutch our iPhone for security, look to the market’s daily news for our hope, entertain ourselves to death, and crave an identity that is shaped by the fashions of the moment. Visiting with Christian families in their homes is often a rewarding perk of pastoral ministry. Yet it can also be disappointing. Break the ice with some mention of sports, and sometimes the younger members of the family eagerly engage, rattling off statistics, players, and plays. Or break out a piece of technology and they can actually show you what it does! Movies make for easy conversation. But then you break open the Scriptures, ask a catechism question or two, and try to talk about God, and the room often falls silent. Parents hide their sweaty palms, nervously offering to refresh the drinks, while the children begin to stare off into space or break out their cell phones and

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videogames. We all have to ask ourselves: What really matters? And what really matters to our children is at least some indication of what really matters to us. Actually, churches in Africa and Asia are growing rapidly. Some, too influenced by American trends (especially the prosperity gospel), spread tumbleweeds. Yet others, grounded in the gospel, are also growing in depth and in size. They are forming the base stations for the next wave of world missions. The statistics are in. Most professing evangelicals in North America are biblically and doctrinally illiterate. It’s therefore not surprising that there is virtually no difference between the “churched” and the “unchurched” in terms of values and lifestyle. We’re learning the hard way that “deeds” cannot live long without “creeds”—that you can’t have the fruit without the tree. And you can’t have a healthy and fruitful tree unless it’s “planted by streams of water.” As long as we are living in this present age, the church will always be “called out” to belong to Christ in the power of the Spirit who works through his Word. The “way of the righteous” will always be a stream in the desert—not out of this world, but a different environment where strange trees grow. Disciples experience many things and do many things, but first and foremost they are recipients of many things—especially, of the gospel story from Genesis to Revelation that creates and sustains our faith, fuels our hope, and produces the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, and peace. “He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.” The Way of the Righteous: Catechesis Is More than Downloading Information orldly wisdom is a perversion of godly wisdom. Of course, there are still brilliant remnants of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in this passing evil age. Because they cannot completely eradicate the image of God in them and the common grace by which the Spirit of Life stirs up and fortifies the natural gifts of their creation, our nonChristian neighbors contribute to our common good. In the arts and sciences, law and medicine, government and education, we are co-laborers with them. Yet in Christ alone is found the source of all wisdom and the content of that highest wisdom. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, Christ is not only the Light to whom we look, but the one in whose light we see everything else. The wisdom of this age knows nothing of a history with a meaningful origin and destiny, but only the cycle of life and death. Not the festivals of Israel and the church, celebrating the “new thing” that God has done in our midst, but rather the repet-

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itive rhythms of nature’s course—winter, spring, summer, and fall—mark the path of one’s life. Meaningful catechesis involves a surrender of the script that has been handed down to us from our cultural forebears, so that we may be written into the unfolding drama whose playwright, central character, and producer is the Triune God. Effective catechesis is not merely memorizing the script and saying our lines, but actually taking our place in the chorus that surrounds the Lamb in praise. There is so much talk about “practical application” today, as if the wisdom of God— chiefly, the gospel—was already well known. Yet, as J. Gresham Machen said in the 1920s, “We are rapidly approaching the state in which there is so much ‘applied Christianity’ that there is no ‘Christianity’ to apply.” It’s precisely a condition such as ours that requires a conscious, serious, and sustained commitment to catechesis. It won’t solve everything, but without it nothing stands. We cannot “just live the faith” unless we understand it. We can’t play the music if we don’t have the music. And catechesis is not merely a matter of downloading information. As important as the names, dates, and books of the Bible certainly are, the goal of catechesis is to draw strangers and saints into the drama of redemption. Following the grain of natural development, good catechesis begins with repetition and memorization in young children, but challenges teenagers to question and explore. Not only teaching what we believe, but knowing why we believe it, we are ready to heed Peter’s exhortation: “Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Pet. 3:15–16). Our culture has an insatiable craving for information, but without knowledge there is no context, and without wisdom there is no facility for interpreting it as anything more than random data. T. S. Eliot put the matter eloquently in his 1934 poem, “Choruses from the Rock”: Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 5

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. Our Urgent Need to Recover Catechesis lmost as ubiquitous as its native weed, the high desert is also a place where, during the boom of the 1980s and 90s, gated communities emerged overnight—mainly as distant but affordable bedroom neighborhoods for the sprawling L.A. Basin. Many, however, are virtual ghost towns today. On the outside, many of the houses built in Southern California during that famous boom (including my own) have “curb appeal.” They are spacious. Some even have faux brickwork and stones to add charm. Yet upon closer inspection, we often discover that they are cheaply built and require repairs as soon as the “new” wears off. Something similar is happening in the church. At first glance, many churches seem fine. They advertise themselves as “Christ centered” and “Bible believing.” There is a lot of activity for all ages, always something new for the weekly announcements. Yet upon closer inspection, they are frequently taken up with other concerns, more urgent operations to make themselves relevant, meaningful, and important in the community. The ministry of Word and Sacrament instituted by Christ in Scripture is subordinate to myriad ministries and programs created by our own ingenuity. There’s always something to do for Jesus, but what’s often lost is the work that Jesus did—and still does—for us. A few years ago, a leading megachurch in suburban Chicago launched a study that discovered widespread discontent among its most highly committed attendees, who complained that they were not really growing in their faith. Although most attributed “burn-out” to the lack of serious teaching and worship, the leadership drew a different conclusion— namely, that as Christians mature they need the church less. Like a coach at the gym, believers need their own customized workout plan. They need to become “self-feeders.” This is a recipe for creating tumbleweeds rather than trees. Think of all the varied images for the relationship of Christ and his church in the New Testament, such as vine and branches, cornerstone and sanctuary, shepherd and sheep. Christ placed undershepherds over the flock precisely so they would be led to the rich pastures. Through the ministry of pastors and teachers, every part of the body grows up into Christ as the head. The “way of the righteous” is not detachment and rootless tumbling toward death, but being “planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.”

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Paul challenged the Corinthians to give up their worldly divisions, reminding them, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17). However, many younger believers I’ve met, who were reared in the church, have never really belonged to the church as members and cannot recall having received Communion in the regular services, although they may have done so at a youth retreat, summer camp, or some other meeting where they were separated from the local expression of “one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” Tumbleweeds start out well enough. They look green at first, flush with winter rains. However, they are like the seed in Jesus’ parable that fell on rocky ground, without sufficient soil in which to sink down its roots and grow. Elsewhere Jesus says that wheat and weeds look similar at first, until the harvest when he will separate them. Before long, beaten down by the scorching sun, the weed withers and is blown away. Pastors, you can have thousands of people pass through your doors. You can sell millions of books promising how to have meaning, happiness, better relationships, and control over your finances, your family, and your personal well-being. You can have the town’s most coveted campus, organ, choir, praise band, or youth ministry. You can have lots of people engaged in spiritual disciplines or participating in evangelistic and social outreach in the community. Yet if the proclamation of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, teaching, and corporate discipline are not the “core values” of a church’s mission statement, then it isn’t a church. The Great Commission, not our own strategic plans, determines what constitutes a true church. Otherwise, it’s just another selfhelp group, spiritual mall, entertainment center, or community service agency. You don’t have to break a sweat for tumbleweeds. Like all weeds, they can take care of themselves. But planting and growing trees takes a lot of time and energy on everyone’s part. And it’s not enough to plant them; let’s allow Christ to determine the ecology or environment that will make them “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18). ■

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

W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

Face-to-Face Discipleship in a Facebook World By John J. Bombaro

hree decades of data have revealed near systemic evangelical ignorance of the Scriptures, ignorance of theology, church history, Christian art, architecture, and iconography and, correspondingly, ignorance of Christian deportment, both social and practical.1 Ignorance abounds with the information superhighway literally at our fingertips and Kindles glutted with books. This ignorance, however, has little to do with intelligence or ability, and everything to do with literacy— the kind of literacy that results from catechesis, interpersonal catechesis. Our evangelical churches are illiterate because catechesis rarely takes place, and when it does it is usually unremarkable and undemanding, thanks to our seeker-sensitivity complex. And it is only interpersonal, challenging catechesis—face-to-face discipleship between the catechist and catechumen—that can dispel such illiteracy, so that the baptized may not

only recognize the story in its various manifestations (the contents of the Bible, confessional articles, liturgical appointments and rites, and so forth), but also own it as their integrated worldview and lifestyle. It was this kind of discipling that Jesus expected from his ministerium (Matt. 28:19; John 21:15–18). Interpersonal discipleship fortifies the church against flaccid nominalism. Modern technologies, for all their usefulness and genius, have not and cannot fill the gap between Christian initiation and catechetical confirmation; only face-to-face discipleship can. After decades of unbridled optimism, catechists were beginning to make a U-turn on the necessity of employing modern technologies as the principal means of discipling. To be sure, cautionary statements have been issued since the 1980s by the likes of Neil Postman, C. John Sommerville, D. G. Hart, and Neal Gabler, that modern technology was not all it was

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cracked up to be, particularly in connection with religious learning.2 Biblical literacy rates are down, learning is increasingly a passive activity, the line of demarcation between educating and entertaining has been blurred, and—for all the time spent in front of electronic media devices (averaging nine hours a day for high school students)—American pupils are scoring lower than their Eastern and Sub-Continent counterparts in the fields of mathematics, science, language acquisition and proficiency, to say nothing of catechetical retention.3 As one Sudanese pastor said, “I’ll take any one of my catechumens over a dozen of yours in America.” This Anglican priest was making the point that discipleship is about quality, not quantity. It is baptism that gives us quantity. Face-to-face discipleship gives us quality. But then came Facebook as the latest Christian-consumer expectation within the church. Face-to-face discipleship now competes with Facebook discipleship. Old School Discipling through Personal Presence iblical models of discipleship entail corporate settings (cf. Acts 2:42; Heb. 10:25) and more intimate contexts for mentoring (cf. Acts 8:26ff; 10:27–48; the Pastoral Epistles). Jesus’ ministry to the assembled masses and pedagogical retreats with his disciples provide paradigmatic case studies for intentional catechetical ministry that has been replicated by the apostles and succeeding generations within the church. Indeed, when Jesus commissioned his disciples as apostles (hoi apostoloi) in John 20:21–23, he intended a personal, intimate, and present ministry. The Father “sent” (apestalken) the Son in human flesh to “be with us” (John 1:14), to minister grace and truth. In the same way (kathos) the Son sends his personal representatives—the apostoloi—to minister the grace and truth of God. Anything otherwise would yield Docetism, impinging upon God’s incarnational purposes and presence.4 Personal, present representation is therefore the essence of Christian ministry— the ministry of disciple-making through holy baptism and the formation of the disciple through catechetical instruction (Matt. 28:19–20). Given this biblical precedence and two millennia of ecclesial emulation of the discipling process, is it possible to take a digital approach to, say, the Lenten form of Christian discipleship? I don’t think so. Cybersocial networks such as Facebook facilitate neither the corporate setting nor the context for mentoring as intended by the Father and the Son. The tradition of Lent is the liturgical calendar season of forty weekdays before Easter, observed by many Reformation traditions and consisting of penitence and fasting. It stretches from Ash Wednesday to Holy

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Saturday. Despite attempts to spin the significance of the biblical number “40” into something wonderfully transformative (à la Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life), forty-day periods in the Bible always are associated with trials of temptation, affliction, fasting, repentance, and suffering while entreating God for grace. One thinks of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus himself fasting in the wilderness. One also thinks of global judgment for forty days in Noah’s lifetime, as well as the first generation of Hebrews that experienced the Exodus, who also spent forty years wandering and never entering the Promised Land. Lenten seasons, be it with Moses and the Hebrews, Elijah and the Israelites, or Jesus and his “last Adam” representation of humanity, were never exclusively about individual self-discovery. They have always been far more corporate in the disciplines of repentance and entreaty. These experiences necessitated challenging encounters with familial (head of household) and communal spiritual shepherds (prophets and priests). Maintaining continuity with the Old Testament and holding Jesus’ wilderness trial as the paragon, the church enters the season of Lent. Since the third century, entire congregations have embraced and participated in the drama of Lent that reaches its apogee on Good Friday when the Messiah was crucified “for us and for our salvation,” only to give way to corporate relief on Easter morning. Lent was a church affair, and it was bound up with the formation of disciples by way of catechetical preaching, instructing baptismal candidates and confirmands, and shaping

“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:19–25

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Christian character through the rigors of spiritual disciplines—praying, fasting, meditating, self-denying, serving, and studying. It was all very corporate, all quite interpersonal. We repented together, we mourned together, we celebrated together. Moreover, it was decidedly low tech: personal presence, Word, sacraments, brotherly consolation, encouragement. Christians touched and ate together in 3-D. Today, Lent seems to have suffered from the encroachment of our Facebook society. I say this because, like so much else in American evangelicalism, even Lent seems to have been reduced to an exercise in isolation, militating against biblical categories of discipleship. What was once a parish exercise is now more frequently referred to as an individual experience enjoyed from the comforts of home or wherever one can WiFi a 4G network. Evidencing this trend are not only sparsely attended Lenten services (in the ever-shrinking sphere in which it remains), but the way we as evangelicals think about the world. A Facebook instant message (IM) exchange shared by a friend may be typical: A: Doing lent? B: You mean giving up something? A: No u know the whole lent thing—church and all. B: Not really. How about you? A: Me neither tho I was thinking I’d renew my new years resolutions. B: Cool. I’ll pray for you. This exchange came from a West Coast evangelical church’s Facebook forum titled, “The Fellowship Wall.” For this and other churches, posting, texting, and blogging sometimes constitutes Christian fellowship and the substance of discipleship. Where once catechisms were employed and midweek Lenten services pocked calendars, now it is good enough simply to have connected electronically. Clip, paste, send. And we all say “Amen.” New School Discipleship through Facebook here can be no doubt that Facebook and social networks such as Myspace and Twitter are displacing interpersonal mediums of discipling. In a broader sense, they are filling a socialization vacuum about which Robert D. Putnam so ably wrote in his groundbreaking book, Bowling Alone.5 Putnam’s data showed how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, our democratic structures, and church. He concluded that radical individualism, narcissism, consumerism, moral relativism, and a profound sense of entitlement fragment communities and organizations that, by their very

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nature and existence, operate on a fundamentally different principle than autonomy. With the loss of this social capital through civil engagement new, more convenient, and personally defined civic forms have arisen, but have done so by accommodating an America that is radically individualistic, narcissistic, consumerist, morally relative, and entitled. Facebook is the most successful new civil forum, and it is finding a welcome home in the church—the very entity designed by God to provide a totally different solution to communal disengagement from docetic enterprises like Facebook. The gravitation toward employing cyber-social networks for activities once understood to require personal presence is seen in every corner of evangelicalism. Church Facebook pages abound. A decade ago a common query was, “Does this church have a website?” Now the question is, “Is this church on Facebook?” That is because Facebook provides unique features, carries a certain status, and facilitates particular expectations for its nearly 650 million patrons. Facebook is an innovative cultural force shaping societal expectations about identity and a sense of belonging, which is why churches are enlisting its novel methodology. Per usual, evangelicalism is eager to give people what they want (convenience and low commitment) instead of what disciples need (challenging and engaging discipleship). The contents on church Facebook pages range from posting intimations to sermon podcasting to forums for discipleship. Subscribers say that the need to employ Facebook-type interfaces is natural and fitting: It’s just another tool for marketing, conveniently connecting believers, evangelistic endeavors, and Christian education. After all, the church has a history of technological employments—the printing press, Christian radio, television, theater. Evangelicals expect that the utilization of technology will terminate in enriching humanity with the Word of God or, synonymously, increasing catechetical literacy. At the same time, we would do well to remember the observations of Marshall McLuhan: “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”6 If the ideas of McLuhan have any traction, and the medium of social networking is really a message about virtuosity or unreality (corresponding to McLuhan’s aphorism: “The medium is the message”), then church-via-Facebook will have the opposite effect upon discipleship and enriching Christian communities because it is not, by design, a conducive forum for the biblical discipleship of believers. It promotes tweets not tomes. It is not demanding but user friendly. It does not foster spiritual disciplines as there’s no accountability. How, then, can we expect a tool that truncates our sensory engagement with reality J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 1 9

(limiting it to an LCD panel) to play a role in reversing catechetical illiteracy? A related conversation emerged in my University of San Diego class, “Protestantism in the USA.” My students confirmed a suspicion I held. They believe that old “brick and mortar” churches are becoming increasingly redundant because evangelicalism is leading the way toward a fully personalized spirituality— done at home online. They reasoned, “You choose your friends online. Why not choose your church?” By this they did not mean utilizing a search engine to ascertain which church you would like to attend, but rather choosing whom you would like to have in your self-determined cyber-congregation, something quite different from the Body of Christ where those you might otherwise decline an invitation to view your page sit down next to you, hold your hand during the Lord’s Prayer, and may even share the chalice with you during Holy Communion. They were saying that there will be no need to attend church because there is even now the possibility of forming your own virtuchurch in the same way one customizes an iTunes collection. And in good keeping with the evangelical accommodation of individualism through self-application Bibles and a flattened ecclesiological topography, virtu-church provides the ideal setting for self-feeding where, when, how, and with whom you like. It’s the next logical step in consumerist Christianity. They reported that this was not only a possibility, but a present reality: “I hardly ever go to church,” confessed one student, “I stay connected through Facebook and I can do it from anywhere.” The class nodded in universal agreement—assembling with believers is superfluous when Facebook is omnipresent. There was no perceived need to improve their catechetical literacy: they knew how to navigate the site. Facebooked fter class, however, a student told me how her Emergent church went belly-up through Facebook, confirming another suspicion I held. This particular fellowship did all of its intimations, connecting, and correspondence through the online social network. Before long, the homilies and prayers were simply posted, and assembling took place online, with the discipling of new believers being facilitated by way of the IM tool. “It was so exciting,” she said. The Facebook app on your phone allowed you to carry the church in your pocket and contribute through PayPal. Then, of course, the social networking within the church became more exclusive. Facebook is, after all, a gateway or filter. Consequently, undesirables were

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precluded or excluded. (So much for evangelism.) The IM walls became forums for gossip. (So much for fellowship.) Mentors and neophytes never actually met for discipleship because the gateway fixed a buffer between catechist and catechumen. The church emerged and disbanded within four years. Facebook’s exclusivity principle cut them off from the wider Christian world and, in fact, one another. The medium mangled the message. In the end, they were still “bowling alone.” Facebook changed their church dynamics because there was no need to leave the house for the lanes of corporate or catechetical discipleship. They were taught that it was enough that they were bowling on Wii. The cyber-solution to civic engagement resulted, in this case, in greater exclusion and isolation, proving once again that disciples cannot be made or discipled online: there’s no water, no bread and wine, no living thing transmitted through 1s and 0s. It was never intended to be so in a church that requires its catechumens to “take, eat” (Matt. 26:26). Facebook’s methodology cannot establish a mentoring context where interpersonal engagement entails the entire person in the discipling process, addressing issues of character, disposition, emotions, and body language. This only happens when someone is there, really there. To give one’s time writing an e-mail is one thing, but to give of the self through personal presence sets discipleship on an entirely different and elevated plane. Personal presence is the essence of gift giving (John 3:16). For all the “friendships” being made online, there are still no hugs, handshakes, or looking in the eye. And that's the irony of online social networks. The medium of Facebook is the message of the unreal; Myspace is no place; "friends" are files; chat is voiceless; templates establish individuation. What is more, when the whole world is denying that God is real, for churches or catechists to resort to the domain of virtuosity sends the wrong theological message. If the sheep are suspended in the Ethernet, then what of the Shepherd? The domain of virtuosity cannot convert ecclesial settings where catechist/catechumen relationships envelop the totality of our humanity—mind, will, emotions, and physicality. Discipleship therefore must take place face to face since the church curates the substance of Christian faith and practice through embodied transmission. Stated differently, authentic discipleship requires personal presence because the living medium remanates the living message to living recipients. As an ordained minister, it is one thing for me to text, e-mail, or phone a parishioner, and another thing

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for me to be present. Pastoral visitations hold significantly different weight from electronic communications, and the effect they have is likewise dissimilar. That’s because disciples who have cut their teeth on old school catechesis expect their pastor to be there instead of stockpiling e-messages. The Son of God showed up to take away the sins of the world. In like manner, the pastor needs to show up to baptize, absolve, commune, commiserate, counsel, and catechize if Christ’s apostolic commissioning is to be accomplished. Being a disciple of Jesus (whether catechist or catechumen) means that loving others comes at the price of sacrifice. There is something real, urgent, and authenticating for our humanity about having to be there in person. The physics of voice and sound, the force of human emotion and passions, and indeed, touching are effective tools in the ministry of the Holy Spirit through earthen vessels. This is the high expectation of Christ and discipleship in the real world. Conversely, the expectations of Christians who live in a Facebook world are low. The pastor is a flat screen image, like a celebrity pastor whose multicampus sermon broadcasts are streamed to smartphones. You may never meet your pastor in person let alone receive catechesis or a hospital visit from him: hence, discipleship happens on your time, when you want to log in. The convenience of cyber-socializing in a risk-free domain devoid of self-giving love perpetuates evangelical ignorance precisely because one is not being a disciple, a learner of Christ, which takes place in the context of where two or more are gathered—really gathered. Principles of Facebook s far as discipleship is concerned, Facebook must be placed in the same category of brilliant technologies that, when misappropriated, “bite back.” Edward Tenner has convincingly argued in his well-documented Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect that technologies in fact do have their appropriate sphere of utility that, when transgressed, results in unforeseen and unintended consequences.7 Christian discipleship and fellowship are at least two planes that, when transected with Facebook, have the opposite effect; that’s because, as far as compatibility with Christian community building and discipleship is concerned, the fundamental premises upon which Facebook rests (viz., exclusivity, self-identification, and convenience) are antithetical to the kingdom Christ created. Just ask the Galatians to whom Paul wrote. The fundamental premises behind Facebook are the concepts of adolescent clique, exclusivity, and reliving (in a virtual way) high school and college popularity and posturing. Individually and collec-

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tively, these principles are ill-suited for Christian discipleship. “Clique” is antithetical to the building of Christian communities, expanding conversation, and communion in both its vertical and horizontal dimensions. Jesus, Paul explains, broke down walls of separation (Eph. 2:16), and so the revolutionary social network of the church was sexless, ageless, raceless, and without socioeconomic status (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). The Facebook principle of clique erects walls of separation by way of “friendship” segregation. It dissolves fellowshipping into Facebooking among those we discriminate as worthy brethren. While biblical discipleship advances maturation, America’s prevailing social network promotes a return to adolescence— the period of life where our self-identity is most confused and unfounded, indeed, self-referential. No wonder we’re attracted to Facebook and Myspace: they facilitate opportunities to go back and remake ourselves in an ideally self-determined fashion. You can upload your independent spiritual profile by tweeting the new you. This attraction will persist so long as no event-oriented, identity-making fixtures such as holy baptism, Holy Communion, holy confirmation, and holy matrimony (the things of face-toface discipleship) persevere with us. And since God-given means of disciple making and discipling cannot be experienced in the two-dimensional realm, then identity makers default to pop culture rites of passage such as driving age, drinking age, launching your Facebook profile, and sexual encounters. Don’t believe me? Ask a teen or collegian or, better yet, any “real housewife.” British author A. S. Byatt, an avowed atheist who openly describes herself as “anti-Christian,” has seen this quite clearly.8 In a recent interview, Byatt laments the loss of the Christian metanarrative that once provided her Western culture with its existential orientation manifested through conversation, communities, and communion.9 Now, she says, with the grand biblical story effectively purged from public discourse, all we have are autobiographies, anonymity, and autonomy. It was this Christian metanarrative—passed on through the catechetical process—she explains, that told us who we are, where we are going, and what it all means.10 Without that picture of reality, observes Byatt, we Facebook. Facebook is synonymous with “Selfbook” (my term) where living takes place before the cyber-mirror through which the virtual self legitimates the spatiotemporal self (if the spatiotemporal matters anymore). “It is a mirror,” she explains, “because there’s no picture.” By “picture” Byatt means an objective world about which we live and move and J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 2 1

have our being, the external referent to the real. To sustain that picture requires work: storytelling, rituals, contextualizing, the discipline of self-sacrifice, and deference to the governing story. To sustain existence in a Facebook world, however, one must blog, upload, or tweet. I tweet, therefore I am. One’s identity is forged and altered and altered again to sustain selfactualization. It doesn’t matter that no one is listening, because you are engaging a mirror—the projection of your ideal self, however conceived (regardless, none of it happens in real time in a real community anyway). This, I believe, is why Byatt says that Facebook and Twitter are gods. Life lived not only through but literally in front of the digital portal to the unreal world is life lived coram Deo, before the face of God or, which is to say the same thing, yourself. In this sense, Byatt intimates that we confirm McLuhan’s prophecy: “We become what we behold.” Without a comprehensive picture of reality to either embrace or discuss in dispute, all we are left with is ourselves or, more accurately, the ideal of ourselves. It naturally follows that we are selfobsessed, but now it is an obsession not with our incarnational existence but a dehumanized virtual one. Plato would be proud. But that’s a scary prospect: detachment from reality to retreat into the pseudoself, where one projects a hologram to those deemed worthy of “friendship.” No wonder Byatt worries about the loss of conversation, communities, and communion. Discipleship is impossible when the catechist and catechumen are the same person. In the 1980s and 90s one was remade or, better, renamed by way of consumption of phenomenological goods, be it clothing, cars, or house. Matter mattered, even if it was too much. Personal presentation and personality were inseparable from you. Today, however, one need only tweet the new you—personal presentation and personality edited and “photoshopped” before posting. Before, Madonna was the paragon of change, but that took time, even if it was only two years between album releases. Facebook has retired her “material girl” paradigm for an immediate ethereal one. We don’t need her example of postmodern transformation that, one could argue, was tethered to her vocation, because one can be instantly born again by way of texting. Texting or blogging about yourself is the new revelation—a fresh word from you about you. Unlike God’s real-world elocution, in a Facebook world the word is ours. We are the sovereign speakers, and therein lies our evangelical ignorance: news about me is never the good news. It has to come from outside of me to save me from me. We need God’s Word to save us from the 22 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

tools we’ve misappropriated that have us sinking deeper into ourselves. It is for the sake of the gospel that we need face-to-face discipleship in a Facebook world. Self-Giving in Discipleship irtual living reflects negatively upon the incarnation and our own “enfleshment.” It must— just like the Roman Catholic Church’s “Confession App” (where there is no real person, no real voice, behind that “Confession App”; no one is present in persona Christi),11 so too with the imago Dei: there need not be a real person behind my Facebook page. There is no image of God in us when what we are is a digitized self-projection, a two-dimensional facade. We’re right back to the First Commandment. It’s just about the image of me, the idea of you. It is fantasy living, a kind of voyeurism, because through this nonreality we project ideas of idyllic perfection. Perhaps it is a way to deal with sin, a form of self-justification. But I suspect that we know better because our expectations for friendship are low on Facebook, and that tells me our expectations of God and ourselves are equally low. With no living encounters there can be no accountability or responsibility for oneself, let alone another. It should come as no surprise that Facebook is now the preferred forum for posting suicide notes. We have to get in touch with reality again. When banking can be done online, filling the tank happens at the pump, self-checkout eliminates human interaction, and social networking is two dimensional (like the image of ourselves), then perhaps now more than ever the church must reestablish face-to-face discipleship to recover our humanity. Perhaps an unimpressed utilitarian approach toward this Internet tool might be the church’s best approach to the social networking phenomenon since, at least in this case, the adage, “We make the tools and then the tools make us,” seems to obtain. Don’t get me wrong; I’m no Luddite. There’s some usefulness to Facebook. It’s just that I am still working on what that may be, since a good deal of my time is spent counseling couples whose marriages have been obliterated by affairs started on social networks. Still, when the premise of what is now a global institution divides, distorts, and dilutes, then at least within the church we have to recognize that this medium (in which the spatiotemporal self is suspended for the hologram life) is perfectly ill-suited for virtually everything that pertains to Christian life and faith, except for maybe the intimations. The Facebook blog is no substitute for the fellowship hall, to say nothing of the Communion rail. For

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all of their admirable qualities, social network technologies simply cannot facilitate corporate repentance or the interpersonal bond between catechumen and catechist. Mind you, they were never intended to do so. Their genius has other applications; thank God for that. I never want to go back to the days without modern plumbing, dentistry, or computers. But given the way Christ built the church, we have to acknowledge that there is no “spiritual discipline” app. The art of discipleship requires work with difficulty, which is why the church meets together. The catechist “sounds down” to where the catechumen is at so that in turn the catechumen may “sound again” the catechism. All of it presupposes being present with one another, having personal relationships in spatiotemporality. There is therefore no hiding or anonymity in biblical discipleship. It comes with risk— someone may see your secondhand couch, the dishes in the sink, or the pimple on your nose. But that is what God’s household is like: all are called out of the blogosphere to their Father’s table to break bread. We’re not supposed to stay in our rooms texting or tweeting or Facebooking. The church is a social network with real beings, real warmth, real self-giving, real challenges—challenges to love the “other,” the “different,” the not-your-demographic, and to do so as an expression of our baptismal identity. The ethos of baptism leads the disciple to Communion—the “with union” meal. Jesus made us “friends” in the church; and as members of the Body of Christ, our lives are intertwined. We need the mutual support and encouragement we offer to one another as we reflect on our sin and seek God’s mercy in Jesus the Son for relief, sounding again the catechism that dispels ignorance and liberates us from the bondage of contemporary Zeitgeists like dehumanizing social networks. ■

Rev. John J. Bombaro (PhD, King’s College, University of London) is senior minister at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, and lecturer in theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego.

The abiding mass media and academic depiction of the average evangelical as an emotive, anti-intellectual fundamentalist given to cult of personality groupthink, in fact does have a basis in credible research. While we may sense misrepresentations on South Park and The Simpsons, data evidences that popular opinions about evangelicals may be more stereotype than unfair caricature. See, e.g., David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids: 1

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Eerdmans, 1993); Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); and Michael S. Horton, Made in America: The Shaping of Modern American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991). 2See Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1984) and Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993); Sommerville’s How the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society (Downers Grove: IVP, 1999); Bruce Kuklick and D. G. Hart, eds., Religious Advocacy and American History (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997); and Gabler’s Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality–Starring Everyone (New York: Vintage, 2000). 3See Gary M. Burge, “The Greatest Story Never Read: Recovering Biblical Literacy in the Church,” Christianity Today 43, no.9 (1999): 45–49; E. Christian Kopff, The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1999); and Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008). 4Docetism (from the Greek dokeo, “to seem”) refers to a heretical Gnostic doctrine in the early church that held that Jesus only appeared (seemed) to have a human body, and so his incarnate representation, suffering, and death on the cross were merely apparent (virtual), not real. 5Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). I thank Brian Thomas, vicar at Grace Lutheran Church, San Diego, for this insight and his conversation on much that follows. 6Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), xi. 7Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect (London: Fourth Estate, 1996). 8See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/25/ as-byatt-interview. 9 See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2010/ aug/25/as-byatt-facebook. 10Hence the definition of catecheo: “to sound again,” i.e., the catechumen repeats or reproduces the catechism. Cf. Bombaro, “A Catechetical Imitation of Christ,” Modern Reformation 18, no. 2 (March/April 2009): 31–35. 11See http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/LatestNews-Wires/2011/0208/Confession-app-for-iPhoneapproved-by-Catholic-Church.

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W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

What Does “This Means” Mean? By Rick Ritchie

hat do questions of media have to do with Word and Sacrament? We can find the latter discussed in the Bible, while the former is a late twentieth-century construct, isn’t it? When I first started to think about this, that was how it appeared. But these two kinds of questions are more closely related than I once imagined. As our congregations make choices about how to “get their message across,” they need to be aware that the means used are often part of the message itself. This is true first and foremost in the incarnation itself. God sent his Son. He could not just as easily have sent a postcard or a DVD. And later, when God chose to bring us news of that through Word and Sacrament, these means were not accidental. It makes little sense, in our attempt to make disciples of all the world, to ignore questions of appropriate medium—or to fail to see how certain choices of media actually seem more effective than they are because of our fallenness. Means of Grace and Media here is an interesting linguistic connection between the words “media” and “the means of grace.” They don’t merely come from the same root. They are basically the same word. The term

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“means of grace” in English can be traced back to the Latin media gratiae. Is this an accident of language, or is there some common meaning here? If I trust my Random House College Dictionary, it offers these definitions of media: “1. plural of medium. 2. the media. Also called mass media. The means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, etc., that reach very large numbers of people.” Under “medium,” I find “6. an agency, means or instrument, usually of something specified: a communications medium.” So we have things that can be used as means or instruments of communication, and things that can be used as means or instruments of grace. Lutherans consider the ministry of the Word and the sacraments to be the means of grace. People come to saving faith through these means. So some media have already been set aside for the purposes of communicating grace: preaching, water for baptism, and bread and wine for Holy Communion. These are some of the most humble elements of which we can think. St. Paul even speaks of the “foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21) by which God confounds the wisdom of men. Water is so common that in the Small Catechism, after Luther has described how baptism “works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death

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and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe,” he includes the question, “How can water do such great things?” He answers, “It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God in the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water.” What is conveyed in these means of grace is the gospel itself. Yet we are given humble means, so that we might not begin to think that it is the quality of these things themselves that save us. Yet, when we start thinking that some new communications medium is going to make salvation flow to all the world because its attractive format will catch everybody’s eye, we are falling for the old lie. Extending Our Reach n his 1964 book Understanding Media: Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan introduced the idea that “the medium is the message.” Before this, many people would have argued that media was a neutral vehicle that could convey all kinds of content, good or bad. McLuhan said that we need look not only at the content of what we receive through media, but also at the forms of media. Often, the forms themselves carry messages that we can end up receiving without being aware. This idea has been applied by many thinkers, and not merely to television and books or those things we usually think of as “media.” As McLuhan presented the idea, almost any human invention is a medium. A new medium is a new tool we might use to gain more control over our world. In the church we often see the possibilities of new media for outreach. If our reach is extended, outreach will be easier, won’t it? Perhaps. There have been times when changes in media have improved things. The printing press certainly helped to spread the ideas of the Protestant Reformation more rapidly than was possible even a century before. But a powerful medium can convey a message of power, and when we look at the Christian message, its very message as a medium may be at odds with the message it is being used to convey. To begin with, let us consider how we first got into our mess, according to Scripture. The first temptation involved an incident of false advertising. Eve saw the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She saw three things in it: that it was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise (Gen. 3:6). In each case, the fruit was seen as a means to an end. The first end, that it was good for food, was likely true and a legitimate end. Other trees were given for that purpose (Gen. 2:16), so it was recognized by God as a good purpose. The second end, the delight of the eye, is not to be an end in itself. Scripture elsewhere refers

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to the “desire of the eye” (1 John 2:16) as a mark of worldliness. The last end, the making wise of the eater, was an outright lie. The serpent asserted that the tree would make a person wise. Instead, it made Eve foolish. If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 111:10), then she chose to leave wisdom behind. It is noteworthy that as Eve’s thought process is listed, the three things she saw would almost appear to be her own ideas. But the third one was planted by another. And perhaps that third one caused the second. Her eyes were delighted because someone else talked up the product. What she could have passed by any number of times in the past, she took unusual interest in. The tree appeared to be a means to only good things, but its promises proved mostly false, especially those beyond the mundane. We do not know what makes for our good. When humanity has fallen into sin, God must save. And God offers salvation to man through the apparently unpromising means of grace. That our trouble began with attempts at self-extension and that our remedy was given in humble form should make us wary of glittering promises made by new media. So let’s consider this idea of media as extensions of man. What does it mean to extend humanity? In some cases this is quite obvious. Eyeglasses or contact lenses extend the eye. Where wearers could see only close objects before, they can now see far. A car is an extension of the leg. Where people could only walk a few miles in the past, they can now go many miles and in less time. A book is an extension of the voice. We can write down our words at one point in time, and our words can be heard later, even after we are dead. A gun is an extension of the arm. Where we might have thrown a spear in the past, our projectile can now go much farther to hit its target. In many of these cases, exactly which faculty of man is extended might be answered in different ways. And perhaps there has been a slow accumulation of technology with one replacing another in such a way that we don’t even remember the entire series. When television replaced radio, an extension of the eye (the word “tele-vision” or “far-vision” almost says as much by itself) replaced an extension of the ear. This suggests that when we change technologies, we don’t merely make a sense stronger than it was, but we may do so at the expense of another sense. We are innately limited, but when our tools extend one of our capabilities, we feel altogether strengthened. We don’t notice corresponding atrophy. As with the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we see only promise. Each new technology promises to change the world. The world does change, sometimes dramatically. But we often forget just how great the claims of J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 2 5

Talk to older people to get a sense of what earlier technologies offered. I doubt that older will always be better. But you will probably learn interesting things about the tradeoffs experienced in adopting new methods. the older technologies once were. We imagine our generation was the first to be dazzled. This is far from true. If you ever doubt this, find a magazine from early in the last century and look through the ads. They all promise the good life. They all lie. We can easily see through the older claims. People who come after us will laugh at the ads we find motivating. These extensions of man don’t change us as they promise to—and media that appear to bring us life also fail. How Lovely Are the Satellites That Bring Good News ow there is some sense in which a case can be made that when we use a new technology in church, all we are really trying to do is bust through some inconvenient restraints to the spread of the gospel. And it needs to be spread, does it not? How often when the specter of universalism appears do we hear the line quoted, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14). It is clearly scriptural to think that people need to carry the gospel. We are further told, “How lovely are the feet of him who brings good news” (Rom. 10:15). So surely we have to send missionaries, don’t we? St. Paul does make it clear that it is God’s will for the gospel to be spread by people following the Great Commission. They are to go into all the world. Their feet will move to do this. But there is another side to this message. God has not left himself without witness (Acts 14), and even the heavens declare his glory (Rom. 10:18). It seems that the Word of God is all over the place, but people suppress it. Yet missionaries bring the Word to people who are lost without it. However far we take either side of this picture, it might be best not to trust communications media to do our evangelizing for us. If universal coverage is what is needed, God has put his message in the heavens. If people are needed, they need feet to bring that message personally to those who don’t have it. Our shiny inventions are not the means God has chosen to bring the gospel to the world. We are bringing the message to those who have already invented

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their own shiny technologies to reach God. The missionaries must tell them no. It is not your golden idol that connects you to God, but rather this humble water, connected to God’s Word. And it is not the water that does this; it is the water with God’s Word according to God’s command, something your idol lacks. Some years ago there was a movie called The Mosquito Coast that seemed to catch on to how we often imagine that it’s our technologies the lost are in need of to get to God. The Reverend Spellgood, a fundamentalist missionary, has installed satellite communications that can beam his sermons into the jungle so the lost can hear them. When he wishes to illustrate how prayer works, he uses a telephone. These are people who never had telephones, and instead of a living, breathing missionary, they are listening to a television, and instead of using regular person-to-person communication as his illustration of prayer, he uses a telephone. And this is supposed to bridge the gap between God and humanity. These technologies, rather than closing the gap, are often used to maintain the gap. I don’t want to be with you, so I’ll send the television in my place. And God probably doesn’t want to be with you either, so you can talk to him long distance. These ironies of what technology is supposed to do versus what it actually achieves seem to be clear to the biblical writers. Unfortunately we often forget our own wisdom and have to hear it from a jaded outsider.

The Four Spiritual Laws of Media he medium of a subheading exists to grab attention. Now that I have grabbed it, I won’t discuss the Four Spiritual Laws, which probably violates some laws of media themselves. McLuhan does, however, discuss four things new technologies invariably do. What I love about these four observations is that they make clear how technologies both give and take away. The fans of new and improved only see the benefits. The curmudgeons always think the older technology was better. McLuhan is clear that this was usually a two-edged sword, so his observations are worth considering.

1. Enhance Enhancement is what technologies always promise. And to some degree, most deliver at least partially. As was mentioned earlier, examples of this easily come to mind. Eyeglasses enhance vision. Recordings enhance hearing. Microphones enhance the voice.

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What is enhanced in church? Hymnals enhance musical memory. We can now have a larger repertoire of hymns and songs to sing. Printing enhances the hand. One set of hands can make many more copies of the Scriptures for people to use. 2. Obsolete New technologies make older technologies obsolete. Think of the television. Out goes radio. This is a particularly good example, as we can see true but not total displacement. What was done on radio, such as game shows or westerns, moves to television. The eye displaces the ear. One generation that could easily picture what they heard is followed by another that cannot. We quickly see how the eye has been extended. We might miss how the ear has been made smaller. How many are aware of how hymns replaced the singing of psalms in many churches? I wonder when proverbs were made obsolete as a wisdom medium, and what took their place. 3. Retrieve New technologies bring back what previous new technologies made obsolete. McLuhan saw the car as bringing back the knight in shining armor. How so? Like the knights of old, we too began going our own way rather than riding public transportation. More recently, I saw this retrieval happen when I bought my Kindle. Suddenly, all sorts of material that had been long out of print were instantly accessible. Books that I could not have found in a local library could be in my hands in seconds. I imagine some Christmas future where technological advance has made it safe to have candles on the Christmas tree again (sensors? safer burning materials? perhaps live trees that cannot burn?). A good friend of mine explained everything he saw wrong with using screens in front of the church for music. He rightly saw how they would eventually replace hymnals, and had some observations of ways this would be damaging. I pointed out, however, that something was retrieved: the stance once again of looking forward while singing. As with many things, the benefits and liabilities must be weighed. But this is best done when both are noted. 4. Reverse Reversal is the hardest of the McLuhan categories to understand. The question is, how does a technology end up leading to the reverse of what is promised? One of his examples was the automobile. It seemed to make us all very individual again, shut up in our own private space, going where we wanted to go. Yet in a traffic jam, the reverse happens. We are all stuck

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together again, and going nowhere. Examples of this happening in the Christian church are legion. Think of printing. This should have extended memory. Instead of having the Scriptures available that one could only hear and remember, one now had the whole Bible. Yet this has led to flabby memories and scriptural illiteracy in many churches. There are psychological technologies that have been used. Back in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards followed John Locke in believing in the importance of imagery in conveying emotion, and he saw value in George Whitefield’s emotional style of preaching. He honed his skills at this and produced the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In terms of psychological impact, the results were astounding. (Readers are free to have their own opinions as to the ultimate results and how much was directly of God.) While Edwards delivered his sermon in a monotone voice, as he was a shy person (the opposite of what you will see if portions of this are dramatized on television), those in the audience shouted to heaven and begged him to stop. Yet these same methods have been used on people in churches and in advertisements and television commercials for so long that they no longer do what they once did. We grow jaded. Few people react strongly unless someone dear to them is in immediate danger, and some even have a hard time reacting when they see dire news on television, as real disasters remind them of the movies. At least when Charles Finney introduced excitements, he admitted they couldn’t be expected to work past his own generation. Yet we still employ them. True reversal would be seen in a case where church growth techniques emptied churches where they were tried. I’m sure it has happened. This is especially true with the young, who don’t believe in the manufactured community that is marketed in so many congregations. What Does “This Means” Mean? n Lutheran circles, you often hear the question asked, “What does this mean?” This comes from Luther’s Small Catechism. We need to become more adept at asking the catechism question of the various media in the churches. I suggest that we take this as broadly as possible. Begin with elements you find in your own congregation and in other churches. What is the meaning of a choir? worship band? pew? pulpit? sermon? hymnal? screen? Ask the four questions McLuhan offers. Talk to older people to get a sense of what earlier technologies offered. I doubt that older will always be better. But you will probably learn interesting things about the trade-offs experienced in adopting new methods.

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Also, try to become more aware of the kinds of means that are instituted in the Bible itself. Do some of them seem to have a perennial wisdom to them? Did you find any abuse recorded in the pages of Scripture itself? Means are often invisible to us. We think that all we get on the receiving end of means is the content intended by those who are using them. This is often not the case. We tend to become enamored of the means itself and forget the message. Those who have tried to use television to spread the gospel find that television uses them. To pay the enormous bills, they must keep a steady stream of entertainment, and the focus shifts. This happens more subtly throughout the church. While I am inviting my readers to engage in a McLuhanesque inventory of their church practices, I want to leave them with one last observation. The humble means of grace are still at our disposal when

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the shiny media are losing their luster. When you’re sitting in a boring committee meeting pondering the details of your new program and how to keep it afloat, instead of enjoying fellowship with the brethren, a word of gospel can still be spoken. You can remember your baptism. You can remember the last time you partook of Holy Communion and look forward to the next time. The burden that you imagine is on your shoulders really isn’t. God is better than that. He brought his word of grace to you long ago without the need of these newer technologies. He will continue to save others through his Word even if you can’t master the new media. ■

Rick Ritchie resides in Southern California and is a longtime contributor to Modern Reformation. He is a graduate of Christ College Irvine and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

Creed or Chaos? And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more; Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. John 16:8â&#x20AC;&#x201C;11

t is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is vitally necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one per-

son in a hundred has the faintest notion what the Church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ. If you think I am exaggerating, ask the army chaplains. Apart from a possible one percent of intelligent and instructed Christians, there are three kinds of people we have to deal with. There are the frank and open heathen, whose notions of Christianity are a dreadful jumble of rags and tags of Bible anecdotes and clotted mythological nonsense. There are the ignorant Christians, who combine a mild, gentleJesus sentimentality with vaguely humanistic ethicsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; most of these are Arian heretics.* Finally, there are the more-or-less instructed churchgoers, who know all the arguments about divorce and auricular confession and communion in two kinds, but are about as well equipped to do battle on fundamentals against a Marxian atheist or a Wellsian agnostic as a boy with a peashooter facing a fan-fire of machine guns. Theologically, this country is at present in a state of utter chaos, established in the name of religious toleration, and rapidly degenerating into the flight from

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The thing that is in danger is the whole structure of society, and it is necessary to persuade thinking men and women of the vital and intimate connection between the structure of society and the theological doctrines of Christianity. reason and the death of hope. We are not happy in this condition, and there are signs of a very great eagerness, especially among the younger people, to find a creed to which they can give wholehearted adherence. This is the Church’s opportunity, if she chooses to take it. So far as the people’s readiness to listen goes, she has not been in so strong a position for at least two centuries. The rival philosophies of humanism, enlightened self-interest, and mechanical progress have broken down badly; the antagonism of science has proved to be far more apparent than real; and the happy-go-lucky doctrine of laissez-faire is completely discredited. But no good whatever will be done by a retreat into personal piety or by mere exhortation to a recall to prayer. The thing that is in danger is the whole structure of society, and it is necessary to persuade thinking men and women of the vital and intimate connection between the structure of society and the theological doctrines of Christianity. The task is not made easier by the obstinate refusal of a great body of nominal Christians, both lay and clerical, to face the theological question. “Take away theology and give us some nice religion” has been a popular slogan for so long that we are likely to accept it, without inquiring whether religion without theology has any meaning. And however unpopular I may make myself, I shall and will affirm that the reason why the churches are discredited today is not that they are too bigoted about theology, but that they have run away from theology. The Church of Rome is a theological society, in a sense in which the Church of England, taken as a whole, is not, and that because of this insistence of theology, she is a body disciplined, honored, and sociologically important. I should like to do two things. First, to point out that if we really want a Christian society, we must teach Christianity, and that it is absolutely impossible to teach Christianity without teaching Christian dogma. Secondly, to put before you a list of half a dozen or so main doctrinal points that the world most especially needs to have drummed into its ears at this moment—doctrines forgotten or misinterpreted but 30 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

which (if they are true as the Church maintains them to be) are cornerstones in that rational structure of human society that is the alternative to world chaos. I will begin with this matter of the inevitability of dogma, if Christianity is to be anything more than a little, mild, wishful thinking about ethical behavior. Writing in The Spectator, Dr. Selbie, former Principal of Mansfield College, discussed the subject of “The Army and the Churches.” In the course of this article there occurs a passage that exposes the root cause of the failure of the churches to influence the life of the common people. ...the rise of the new dogmatism, whether in its Calvinist or Thomist form, constitutes a fresh and serious threat to Christian unity. The tragedy is that all this, however interesting to theologians, is hopelessly irrelevant to the life and thought of the average man, who is more puzzled than ever by the disunion of the Churches, and by the theological and ecclesiastical differences on which it is based.

Now I am perfectly ready to agree that disputes between the churches constitute a menace to Christendom. And I will admit that I am not quite sure what is meant by the new dogmatism; it might, I suppose, mean the appearance of new dogmas among the followers of St. Thomas and Calvin, respectively. But I rather fancy it means a fresh attention to, and reassertion of, old dogma, and that when Dr. Selbie says that all this is irrelevant to the life and thought of the average man, he is deliberately saying that Christian dogma, as such, is irrelevant. But if Christian dogma is irrelevant to life, to what, in Heaven’s name, is it relevant?—since religious dogma is in fact nothing but a statement of doctrines concerning the nature of life and the universe. If Christian ministers really believe it is only an intellectual game for theologians and has no bearing upon human life, it is no wonder that their congregations are ignorant, bored, and bewildered. And, indeed, in the very next paragraph, Dr. Selbie recognizes the relation of Christian dogma to life: ...peace can come about only through a practical application of Christian principles and values. But this must have behind it something more than a reaction against that pagan humanism that has been found wanting.

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The “something more” is dogma, and cannot be anything else, for between humanism and Christianity and between paganism and theism there is no distinction whatever except a distinction of dogma. That you cannot have Christian principles without Christ is becoming increasingly clear because their validity as principles depends on Christ’s authority; and as we have seen, the totalitarian states, having ceased to believe in Christ’s authority, are logically quite justified in repudiating Christian principles. If the average man is required to believe in Christ and accept His authority for Christian principles, it is surely relevant to inquire who or what Christ is, and why His authority should be accepted. But the question, “What think ye of Christ?” lands the average man at once in the very knottiest kind of dogmatic riddle. It is quite useless to say that it doesn’t matter particularly who or what Christ was or by what authority he did those things, and that even if he was only a man, he was a very nice man and we ought to live by his principles; for that is merely humanism, and if the average man in Germany chooses to think that Hitler is a nicer sort of man with still more attractive principles, the Christian humanist has no answer to make. It is not true at all that dogma is hopelessly irrelevant to the life and thought of the average man. What is true is that ministers of the Christian religion often assert that it is, present it for consideration as though it were, and, in fact, by their faulty exposition of it make it so. The central dogma of the Incarnation is that by which relevance stands or falls. If Christ were only man, then he is entirely irrelevant to any thought about God; if he is only God, then he is entirely irrelevant to any experience of human life. It is, in the strictest sense, necessary to the salvation of relevance that a man should believe rightly the Incarnation of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Unless he believes rightly, there is not the faintest reason why he should believe at all. And in that case, it is wholly irrelevant to chatter about Christian principles. If the average man is going to be interested in Christ at all, it is the dogma that will provide the interest. The trouble is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has never been offered the dogma. What he has been offered is a set of technical theological terms that nobody has taken the trouble to translate into language relevant to ordinary life. “... Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.” What does this suggest, except that God the Creator (the irritable, old gentleman with the beard) in some mysterious manner fathered upon the Virgin Mary something amphibious, neither one thing nor t’other, like a merman? And, like human sons, wholly distinct from and (with some excuse) probably antagonistic to

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the father? And what, in any case, has this remarkable hybrid to do with John Doe or Jane Doe? This attitude of mind is that called by theologians Nestorianism, or perhaps a debased form of Arianism. But we really cannot just give it a technical label and brush it aside as something irrelevant to the thought of the average man. The average man produced it. It is, in fact, an immediate and unsophisticated expression of the thought of the average man. And at the risk of plunging him into the abominable heresy of the Patripassians or the Theopaschites, we must unite with Athanasius to assure John and Jane Doe that the God who lived and died in the world was the same God who made the world, and that, therefore, God himself has the best possible reasons for understanding and sympathizing with John and Jane’s personal troubles. “But,” John Doe and Jane Doe will instantly object, “it can’t have mattered very much to him if he was God. A god can’t really suffer like you and me. Besides, the parson says we are to try and be like Christ; but that’s all nonsense—we can’t be God, and it’s silly to ask us to try.” This able exposition of the Eutychian heresy can scarcely be dismissed as merely “interesting to theologians”; it appears to interest John and Jane to the point of irritation. Willy-nilly, we are forced to involve ourselves further in dogmatic theology and insist that Christ is perfect God and perfect man. At this point, language will trip us up. The average man is not to be restrained from thinking that “perfect God” implies a comparison with gods less perfect, and that “perfect man” means “the best kind of man you can possibly have.” While both these propositions are quite true, they are not precisely what we want to convey. It will perhaps be better to say, “altogether God and altogether man”—God and man at the same time, in every respect and completely; God from eternity to eternity and from the womb to the grave, a man also from the womb to the grave and now. “That,” replies John Doe, “is all very well, but it leaves me cold. Because, if he was God all the time, he must have known that his sufferings and death and so on wouldn’t last, and he could have stopped them by a miracle if he had liked, so his pretending to be an ordinary man was nothing but playacting.” And Jane Doe adds, “You can’t call a person ‘altogether man’ if he was God and didn’t want to do anything wrong. It was easy enough for him to be good, but it’s not at all the same thing for me. How about all that temptation stuff? Playacting again. It doesn’t help me to live what you call a Christian life.” John and Jane are now on the way to becoming convinced Apollinarians, a fact which, however interesting to theologians, has a distinct relevance also to the lives of those average men, since they propose, on J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 3 1

the strength of it, to dismiss Christian principles as impracticable. There is no help for it. We must insist upon Christ’s possession of a reasonable soul as well as human flesh; we must admit the human limitations of knowledge and intellect; we must take a hint from Christ himself and suggest that miracles belong to the Son of Man as well as to the Son of God; we must postulate a human will liable to temptation; and we must be quite firm about “equal to the Father as touching his Godhead and inferior to the Father as touching his manhood.” Complicated as the theology is, the average man has walked straight into the heart of the Athanasian Creed, and we are bound to follow. Teachers and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy. And heresy is, as I have tried to show, largely the expression of opinion of the untutored average man, trying to grapple with the problems of the universe at the point where they begin to interfere with daily life and thought. To me, engaged in my diabolical occupation of going to and fro in the world and walking up and down in it, conversations and correspondence bring daily a magnificent crop of all the standard heresies. I am extremely well familiar with them as practical examples of the life and thought of the average man, though I had to hunt through the encyclopedia to fit them with their proper theological titles for the purposes of this address. For the answers I need not go so far; they are compendiously set forth in the creeds. But an interesting fact is this: that nine out of ten of my heretics are exceedingly surprised to discover that the creeds contain any statements that bear a practical and comprehensible meaning. If I tell them it is an article of faith that the same God who made the world endured the suffering of the world, they ask in perfect good faith what connection there is between that statement and the story of Jesus. If I draw their attention to the dogma that the same Jesus who was the divine love was also the light of light, the divine wisdom, they are surprised. Some of them thank me very heartily for this entirely novel and original interpretation of Scripture, which they never heard of before and suppose me to have invented. Others say irritably that they don’t like to think that wisdom and religion have anything to do with each other, and that I should do much better to cut out the wisdom and reason and intelligence and stick to a simple gospel of love. But whether they are pleased or annoyed, they are interested; and the thing that inter32 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

ests them, whether or not they suppose it to be my invention, is the resolute assertion of the dogma. As regards Dr. Selbie’s complaint that insistence on dogma only affronts people and throws into relief the internecine quarrels of Christendom, may I say two things? First, I believe it to be a grave mistake to present Christianity as something charming and popular with no offense in it. Seeing that Christ went about the world giving the most violent offense to all kinds of people, it would seem absurd to expect that the doctrine of his person can be so presented as to offend nobody. We cannot blink at the fact that gentle Jesus, meek and mild, was so stiff in his opinions and so inflammatory in his language that he was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbeted as a firebrand and a public danger. Whatever his peace was, it was not the peace of an amiable indifference; and he said in so many words that what he brought with him was fire and sword. That being so, nobody need be too much surprised or disconcerted at finding that a determined preaching of Christian dogma may sometimes result in a few angry letters of protest or a difference of opinion on the parish council. The other thing is this: that I find by experience there is a very large measure of agreement among Christian denominations on all doctrine that is really ecumenical. A rigidly Catholic interpretation of the creeds, for example—including the Athanasian Creed—will find support both in Rome and in Geneva. Objections will come chiefly from the heathen, and from a noisy but not very representative bunch of heretical parsons who once in their youth read Robertson or Conybeare and have never got over it. But what is urgently necessary is that certain fundamentals should be restated in terms that make their meaning—and indeed, the mere fact that they have a meaning—dear to the ordinary, uninstructed heathen to whom technical theological language has become a dead letter. ■ Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) was an English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator, and Christian humanist. The above material was extracted from the essay entitled “Creed or Chaos?” from Sayers’ book, Letters to a Diminished Church (2004). Reprinted by permission. Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, Tennesssee. All rights reserved.

Or possibly Adoptionists; they do not formulate their theories with any great precision.—D.L.S. *

W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

Coming of Age in the Facebook Age

By Alex Chediak

n a speech delivered in October 2009 to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, cultural critic William Deresiewicz made the point that leadership requires solitude.1 The leadership theme made sense—the men and women gathered in that room were preparing to command platoons or perhaps companies of troops. What they lacked was solitude, both presently (as students in common living quarters) and in their anticipated futures (as officers at the forefront of worldwide conflicts). No doubt his message was counterintuitive: after all, leaders by definition are out in front of other people, articulating goals, motivating them to pursue a vision of a better future. So why the need for solitude? Deresiewicz’s point was that casting a vision worth following would first require intense thinking— actual thinking, not just reciting facts and figures, or even mastering the arguments of others. And thinking in turn required solitude—concentrated time in which to work out one’s thoughts, to interact with whatever content is being presented in a classroom, a seminar, or a book. If the information overload of technology and social media makes it difficult to raise military leaders in the kingdom of man, how much more does it

threaten the training of saints in the kingdom of God? After all, the latter advances invisibly in the world and without the aid of physical weaponry or earthly governments. To put the question more broadly, what unique challenges do young Christians face in recognizing their God-assigned vocation and taking their place in this theater of God’s glory as stewards of God’s grace, putting their talents and skills to work in the service of God and neighbor, and contributing their prayers and tithes toward the fulfillment of the Great Commission? Distractions and Diminished Productivity urs is an age of multitasking, as a 2006 Time magazine cover story reported.2 High school students don’t just do their homework after dinner; they write a paper while instant messaging (IMing) with three friends (simultaneously), while listening to iTunes, while perhaps catching up on an episode of their favorite TV program (streamed over the Internet). A 2005 survey of the Kaiser Family Foundation found that eight- to eighteen-year-olds were spending an average of 6.5 hours per day using electronic media. That figure wasn’t particularly new. What was

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We need to turn off our cell phones and log off of Facebook when it’s time to work, not only so we can honor God in our work, but also so we can reach our potential, in order to better honor God in our future work. new, however, was that they were cramming in (on average) 8.5 hours per day worth of media exposure due to “media multitasking.” A quarter to a third of those surveyed said they simultaneously absorbed more than one electronic medium “most of the time.” No doubt there’s an attraction in having stimuli come from a variety of sources. There’s never a dull moment; unpleasant tasks such as math homework can be punctuated with blinking lights at the lower right corner of the computer screen, each associated with a close friend sharing her latest thoughts or reflections on the day. The uncertainty of how others will respond to your most recent text or tweet brings an added layer of excitement. Patricia Wallace, a techno-psychologist who directs the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program, likens this attraction to the rush experienced by those who pull slot machines in a casino. “You have intermittent, variable reinforcement,” she explains. “You are not sure you are going to get a reward every time or how often you will, so you keep pulling that handle.” (Is that why people tweet what they had for breakfast?) But that lack of “dullness” has a price tag: It’s harder to “get in a zone”—to achieve the kind of focused intensity from which maximum creativity and your best work can naturally flow. If our high school and college students find it more difficult to lose themselves in a particular task, they’ll miss out on the joy that Eric Liddell famously expressed in the phrase, “When I run I feel His pleasure.” The pleasure of which Liddell spoke was one that comes from doing the task God made us to do and doing it with excellence—the excellence that comes only from a combination of talent and hours of preparation. It’s the joy of performing at one’s very best, and doing it consciously for the glory of God. We need to turn off our cell phones and log off of Facebook when it’s time to work, not only so we can honor God in our work, but also so we can reach our potential, in order to better honor God in our future work. In not doing this, I fear many remain adrift, 34 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

unable to recognize God-given talents, and unaccustomed to the need for genuine productivity, not just idealistic intentions. I’m not lamenting the fact that it takes people longer to establish their careers, as a growing number of fields require additional years of higher education. Ours is increasingly a knowledge-based economy, which is neither sinful nor a virtue. It’s just reality. But precisely because of this economic reality, it is concerning that the average high school student today has a relatively short attention span—an inability to harness the mental concentration needed to master challenging concepts, and a tendency to give up too easily.3 This suggests they will be less capable of academic and professional excellence. For example, a survey conducted in 2008 on 517 high school students in California found that those who interacted on social media sites, used instant messaging clients, and had cell phones tended to have lower grades (particularly if they sent and received text messages).4 But even beyond the academic world, a constant need for diversion (a need cultivated by hours spent on Facebook and YouTube) hinders our character by making us unable to delay gratification and persevere through pain or difficulty. It weakens our work ethic and eats away at our spiritual disciplines such as Bible-reading and prayer, which require solitude and concentration. It turns out that multitaskers produce not only lower quality work than nonmultitaskers, ironically enough, they even multitask worse than nonmultitaskers. An August 2009 research study at Stanford University found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.5 Multitasking not only makes us bad workers and bad multitaskers, but it can also greatly diminish our ability to truly come away from our labors and rest. With multitasking making us less comfortable with silence or with doing just one activity, we have more trouble disconnecting, falling asleep, or simply recreating. With iPhones and Androids, our responsibilities can pursue us everywhere we go, at all hours of the day or night. Cell Phone as Umbilical Cord he technological addiction of some young adults is also slowing their transition to adulthood. My wife remembers a night during her high school

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years when she took a wrong turn driving home from an evening event and ended up on a long bridge that sent her in the wrong direction and to a bad place for a sixteen-year-old girl to be, especially alone. In the precell phone dark ages, she needed to figure something out. It was somewhat frightening, but formative. These experiences help us become adults, as we’re forced to remember what we’ve been taught, and to exercise judgment as best we can. I had a similar experience when at the age of twenty I was in a nasty car accident. I had taken a turn a bit too fast and slipped on the ice, hit a guardrail, and flipped the car onto its side. Thankfully, nobody was hurt. In fact, no other vehicles or people were involved. Alone, I had to figure out how to flag down help and rent another vehicle to drive the remaining one hundred fifty miles home. I had another car accident two years ago with a college student who was about the same age I was at the time of my accident. From inside her badly damaged car blocking two lanes on a crowded freeway, her first call was not to AAA, the police, or her insurance. It was to her mom. I watched as they remained on the phone for a good ten to fifteen minutes as she no doubt explained to Mom in detail what had transpired. Her mom, I am sure, was able to give her precise instructions as to what she should do next. Whereas previous generations grew up leaving for the day with a plan for doing X,Y, and Z, and having to adjust on the fly for the unexpected (but inevitable) mishaps or delays, this generation has grown up with just one line: If something happens, call. Yet social observers are wondering if the same technology that keeps us so close to others, especially early in our adult lives, is actually making it harder to establish our personal identity and take ownership for decisions. Hana Estroff Marano writes: Think of the cell phone as the eternal umbilical cord. One of the ways we grow up is by internalizing an image of Mom and Dad and the values and advice they’ve imparted over the early years. Then, whenever we find ourselves faced with uncertainty or difficulty, we call on that internalized image. We become, in a way, all the wise adults we’ve had the privilege to know.6 It’s far easier for young adults today to make a phone call (or send a text message) than to engage in deep reflection and critical thinking for themselves. Yet the development of these mental muscles is absolutely crucial for making hard decisions with incomplete information—a fundamental real-world skill. Today, college students can ask Dad for advice about dropping a class while walking to the class. They can

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call Mom in the cafeteria line to get her thoughts on the lunch menu. And in so doing, they stunt their growth by missing out on opportunities to grow in discernment, and to crown their parents’ labors by proceeding toward functional independence without delay. Even those who want to be relieved of the obligation to obey Mom and Dad (and therefore don’t invite micromanagement) often wish to have adult freedoms without adult responsibilities. Their parents, in turn, are often all too willing to run to their aid when they do stumble, rather than letting them deal with the consequences of their actions. Bad grades? Parents get on the phone with the administration to try to save their college scholarships or student loans. Trouble with credit card debt? Mom and Dad rush in to pay it off, lest their child’s credit score suffers (or their own, if they cosigned). While they can occur independently of one another, it is not uncommon for the phenomena of “delayed adolescence” and “helicopter parents” to be mutually reinforcing. Narcissism, Participation Trophies, and Grade Inflation arcissism is self-esteem on steroids. It’s egocentrism—the belief that reality revolves around me. Social media often breeds this trait: with Facebook we tally our friends, with Twitter we count our followers, and with blogging we monitor our traffic, measuring our worth by how much attention we’re able to generate, and from whom. In a June 2009 national poll of over one thousand college students, two out of three agreed with the statement, “My generation is more self-promoting, narcissistic, overconfident, and attention-seeking than previous generations.”7 This is college students speaking of their own generation—it isn’t older folks merely criticizing “kids these days.” In late 2009, New York Times columnist David Brooks reflected on the tendency for self-promotion in our day. We recall singer Kanye West’s opinionated interruption of Taylor Swift’s Video Music Awards speech, Michael Jordan’s egotistical, longwinded Basketball Hall of Fame acceptance speech, or even the brashness of Dr. House on the popular TV series. Brooks contrasted the chestthumping of our day with the humility and restraint of war veterans (and, by extension, America as a whole) the day World War II ended. The ticker tape parades came later. The initial response, from President Truman on down, was solemnity, even awe, at the enormity of what had transpired. Writes Brooks, “The nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.”8 In our day, it’s the exact reverse: the rising gener-

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ation has a more than healthy dose of self-esteem, but that self-esteem is often not grounded in reality. Our accomplishments may be modest, but we feel really good about ourselves. It’s fitting—many of us were awarded a trophy in Little League just for being on a team. A recent study found that 39 percent of American eighth graders were confident of their math skills, compared to only 6 percent of Korean eighth graders.9 But I probably don’t have to tell you which were actually better at math. It’s one thing for parents to want their children to carry themselves with confidence into new situations. Fear of failure is far too often a self-fulfilling prophecy. But our society has swung the pendulum to the other extreme. It conflates a sense of dignity and self-worth (appropriate for God’s image bearers) from actual achievement, and hence diminishes the value of excellence. It breeds not self-confidence but rather blind confidence—the notion that positive thinking somehow assures success. Ours is a day in which everybody is apparently above average. I survey my students at the start of every semester to ask what grade they expect to earn in my courses. Invariably, 50 to 70 percent say “A”— a grade that once meant “excellent” in comparison to one’s peers. The average college student in 1961 earned about a 2.5 to 2.6 GPA. Over the last decade that number has swelled to well over 3.0.10 Harder working students? Not exactly: Students studied twenty-four hours a week in 1961 as compared to only fourteen hours a week in 2003.11 Better prepared, more capable students? Not according to trends in K–12 education or evaluations taken during or immediately after a four-year undergraduate program.12 The topic of grade inflation is controversial and well beyond the bounds of this essay. I merely make these observations to speak to the point that the self-estimation of many young adults in our culture is not always tethered to reality. By coddling them in childhood with “participation trophies” (lest they feel bad), by giving them Bs and As for mediocre work, by constantly reminding them how special and talented they are, it’s no wonder they’re shocked and depressed when shuffled off the stage (post-graduation), like another failed American Idol contestant. They’re set up to underperform, if not fail. Concluding Thoughts he Bible speaks of children and adults. It doesn’t have a category for a nebulous, multiyear stage of adolescence in which we can enjoy increased liberty while little is expected of us. We must teach our teens that they are to be exemplary (1

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Tim. 4:12), that toil and hardship are to be embraced as the means of preparation for the good works God has in store for them (Lam. 3:27; Eph. 2:10), that they must grow to accept the responsibilities of adulthood in proportion to their enjoyment of its liberties. Indeed, they must recognize, and be thankful, that taking their place in the adult world is to be the aim and orientation of their early years. It’s an honor to be embraced, not a duty to be avoided. We must teach them to cultivate a sober estimation of themselves (Rom. 12:1), to distrust their own inflated opinions, and to seek honest feedback and truth-in-love critique from caring adults they trust. We don’t discover our talents by staring at our navels but by challenging ourselves—by trying something, then seeing how it went, and getting feedback from those more skilled than ourselves. We must teach them that nothing worth doing comes easy. And as they discover their God-given talents and disposition, we must help them stay humble, grounded in the truth that everything we have has been given to us by God, not to fuel pride (1 Cor. 4:7) but to stoke self-forgetting service (Eph. 4:28; Phil. 2:3–4). As we raise our children, let us remain mindful of the awesome responsibility and wary of the dangers of both structureless liberty and reactionary legalism. Technology in itself is not evil. On the contrary, the devices that connect us with others can be tremendous tools if used for good—that is, to increase our ability to edify others, reach the lost, and honor the Lord in the workplace by being more productive. But we must wisely guard our use of these devices lest the tail wag the dog, lest they cease to be our servant and we unwittingly become their slave. Slavery to our tools yields a life of diminished effectiveness—which means Christians less able to lead others, less able to rise in their vocation, and less able to fulfill the great work of the Great Commission. ■

Alex Chediak (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) is associate professor of physics and engineering at California Baptist University. He is the author of Thriving at College: Make Great Friends, Keep Your Faith, and Get Ready for the Real World! (Tyndale House, April 2011), and was previously an apprentice at The Bethlehem Institute under the leadership of John Piper and Tom Steller of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He maintains a website and blog at www. alexchediak.com. Aspects of this article were adapted from Thriving at College by Alex Chediak. Copyright 2011 by Alex Chediak. Used with permission from Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The full text of this lecture was published on 1 March 2010 by The American Scholar, at this URL: http://www.the americanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/print. 2Claudia Wallis, “The Multitasking Generation,” Time (19 March 2006). 3For example, math education researcher Alan Schoenfeld (a professor at U.C. Berkeley) once asked a group of high school students how long they spent on a math problem before concluding it was too difficult for them. The average answer was two minutes. However, Schoenfeld’s research has found that it takes about twenty minutes—time mainly spent understanding how to approach the problem—to really understand what’s happening and to make significant progress in mathematics. This story is recounted in Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Outliers (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008). 4Brittney Moore, “The Myth Behind Multitasking,” The Michigan Journal (16 February 2010). 5Adam Gorlick, “Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price, Stanford Study Shows,” Stanford Report (24 August 2009): 1

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http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/august24/multitask-research-study-082409.html. 6Hana Estroff Marano, “A Nation of Wimps,” Psychology Today (1 November 2004). 7Jean Twenge, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement (New York: Free Press, 2009). 8David Brooks, “High-Five Nation,” The New York Times (15 September 2009): http://www.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 09/15/opinion/15brooks.html. 9Jay Mathews, “For Math Students, Self-Esteem Might Not Equal High Scores,” Washington Post (18 October 2006): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701298.html. 10E.g., Valen Johnson, Grade Inflation: A Crisis in College Education (New York: Springer, 2003). 11Philip Babcock and Mindy Marks, “Leisure College, USA” (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, August 2010). 12Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

“When Alex Chediak talks about thriving at college, he speaks from experience. After all, he’s spent a lot of time on campus: from undergrad to professor. Yet he’s also been involved for many years in college and singles ministry. Put all of that together, along with a wide knowledge of Scripture, and you have the ideal author of a really helpful book. However, this book lacks a lot that one might expect, like a condescending tone, easy formulas, and clichés. Thriving at College is full of wisdom on every major aspect of this wonderful episode in the life of many people today: spiritual, relational, ethical, and even economic.” — Michael S. Horton

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W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

No Doctrinal Education, No Disciples: A Look at Yullin Presbyterian Church in Korea

four-year-old boy was boisterously arguing with a girl roughly the same age in the corridor of Yullin Church, where I serve as senior minister. In the middle of the fight, the boy quipped, “Do you know why we are fighting?” She answered him back, “You were cruel to me first.” “No,” the boy replied. “We are fighting because our inner being is dirty.” A parent of these children thought this was funny and said, “I am sure this is a scene that can be found only in Yullin Church!” Though very young, the children were basing their arguments on the doctrinal knowledge they had learned in Sunday school of Yullin Church. To the boy’s mind, the doctrine of man’s total depravity

could explain the cause of their fight. When I regularly encounter young children exchanging remarks about the glory of God in the gospel of Christ, and the excitement of older teens exploring and defending the Christian faith in response to religious pluralism and relativism, my passion for catechesis only deepens. And it is not only intellectual; it shapes their lives as they bear witness to Christ to their neighbors in words and deeds. Value Standards No Longer Found in Today’s Age oday the Christian church is widely steeped in the spirit of the age, which can be summed up as rejecting the absolute value standard and

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taking relativism as a whole instead. By secularization of the church I do not mean leaning toward materialism or hedonism but rather shifting, in essence, its value standard from God to man himself. Far from being a distraction from Christian living and outreach, theology gives us a specific logic for truthful relationships with God, others, and the whole creation. Tragically, the de-theologizing of the church has resulted in the weakening of its spiritual immune system and has shifted our focus from the glory of God to our own prosperity. Today there are many speculative reflections as to why the line between the world and the church has been blurred. Some infer that the church needs to improve morally. Others argue that a new pastoral approach should now determine the growth of the church. But I do not think those are the main issues. It is frustrating to us that the majority of church members are ignorant of what they should believe and how they should live as Christians. As Scottish theologian James Orr pointed out, it has been proved that Christian ministry not founded on biblical logic and solid theological thoughts has never lasted long.1 Christian Doctrine as Wisdom of Life et us think for a moment about how the gospel was first given to the Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles listened to the apostle Paul when he went around the cities of the Roman Empire and taught the teachings of Jesus, because he talked about new ways of life. Since ancient Greece, people have pursued ways to achieve a happy and virtuous life. What was attractive to people about Paul’s proclamation was their new way of life and the impression that they were living with a strong belief in morality and the values within them. The most concise summary of the gospel is: “Christ died for us.” We do not need a great deal of biblical knowledge to be saved. With this short phrase, the Holy Spirit can convict a person to repentance and salvation. People do not need complex formulae or a lot of systematic knowledge to repent and believe in Jesus. To live as true Christians, however, they need various kinds of doctrinal knowledge about God, man, and creation. That is why John Owen, the great Reformed Puritan theologian of England, once said that to know the gospel is to know the gospel itself and gospel doctrine.2 Although simple, the gospel is far from simplistic; we spend our lives plumbing its depths without ever reaching bottom, and it has myriad effects in every aspect of our lives, individually and corporately. It is the very merit of Christian religion for men to weave piety and life just like embroidered bro-

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cade, with a needle of doctrinal knowledge and a thread of gracious affection. The Values of Babel and Jerusalem he true idea of Christianity does not lie in size. The desire to have more is not the value of Jerusalem but rather of Babel. If God had wanted to apply the size principle to religion, he would not have chosen the Israelites. Instead, he would have chosen a larger nation such as the Roman Empire, Egypt, or China. The true ideal of the church is not to become a body that wins over the world with size and scale, prosperity and success. Confusing the gospel with capitalism, the prosperity gospel in Korea (as in the U.S.) is an example of what can happen when God’s people are poorly taught. The true value of a lighthouse on a dark sea does not lie in its magnificent grandeur. Just emitting light clearly and brightly is all it is required to do. Such is the value of the church. Remember, presence is the best proclamation. Even if Jerusalem was just a small city and Israel a meager nation in the history of ancient Palestine, God made Jerusalem his footstool and Israel his priestly nation and the light for all other nations. Without Israel, people could not have seen clearly through the history of the world nor rightly known God. The world came to know who God is through his economy that made covenant with his people and governed them. Therefore, the value of the church is not in becoming bigger and higher but in remaining true and right. For it is impossible for the church to become more church-like without its saints becoming true Christians.

Whatever Happened to Conversion? od’s glory is not only the cause but the end or goal of creation. It is falling short of that glory that measures the terrifying character of sin. In some circles, it was common to talk about conversion instead of justification. Increasingly, however, a more therapeutic way of speaking has arisen and we hear more about transformation than we do about regeneration and conversion. Regeneration is a miracle of God’s grace. Once dead in trespasses and sins, one becomes conscious of this fact and trusts in Christ. The repentance and faith that arise from this regenerating grace belong to conversion. All of this is a gift of grace. Yet in regeneration we are passive, and in conversion we are active. We repent and believe. In conversion, God gives us the grace to give up the idea that we are the center of the universe and that our own happiness is the highest value. Instead, we recognize God as the center of the entire universe and

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his glory as the highest value. The crisis of today’s Christianity is the disappearing of fervent outcries of preachers urging for regeneration and conversion of the unconverted. In fact, there has been a wide-scale reversal: no longer sinners who need to turn away from ourselves to Christ, we are good people who need God to adjust himself to us and to our goals. But conversion, unlike regeneration, is not simply a one-time event. God gives us preserving grace for a life of continual conversion—that is, perpetual repentance and faith in Christ. From the gospel we embraced at the beginning, we receive continual life. From this source, we die daily to ourselves (mortification) and live to God in Christ by his Spirit (vivification). This is the vitality of gospel holiness. By God’s grace, believers cannot help but grow in their trust in Christ and bear the fruit of this faith in their affections and actions. A truly new creation has entered into this old creation. Though still corrupt, we can—and do— begin even now to experience what it means to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Knowing God in Jesus Christ eepening our understanding of Scripture and its doctrines is therefore essential for any genuinely Christian piety. Conversion involves the whole person: thinking as well as experience and action. In all of our catechism classes at Yullin Church, we point out the importance of understanding God, his creation, and ourselves. We say, “Since the knowledge of these three objects is revealed in the Incarnate Christ, I have to study God, his creation, and myself through Jesus Christ.” All we need to give a person is a simple statement of the gospel. Through the Word, the Holy Spirit reveals the gospel and gives us the grace to know a holy God, our sinfulness, and Christ’s redemptive death on the cross for us. The law and gospel give us repentance and trust in Jesus Christ. We can die for the gospel because of the deep assurance of the truth we have obtained from it. However, it is not so simple for a believer to live a life on this earth as a Christian in compliance with the purpose to which God has called him. Gospel doctrine is the construction material for the house of thoughts. Two main structures of our faith are regulae credendi, namely, what ought to be believed, and praecepta vivendi, what ought to be lived out. They are not randomly mixed like beads in a bag. They must be logical and systematically structured. The establishment of firm believers lies in the completeness and comprehensiveness of such thoughts. Today, the loss of systematic knowledge of faith and belief has made vague the distinction between the church and the world.

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Recovering Serious Doctrinal Training: Experiences of Yullin Church t is not enough for a denomination with many local churches under it to hold fast to the Reformed faith. A theological standpoint of a denomination is difficult to figure out, barely disclosing itself even during a theological disputation. Most of the time, it does not reach the practical life of congregations of individual churches. This may stem from the fact that pastors and church political leaders do not have a firm belief in and experience of Reformed theology. The first step in dealing with this issue is that individual churches need to clearly teach church members the rules of faith to be believed and what the Bible specifies for wise living and action. Teaching should not be sporadic but rather systematic, detailed, extensive, effective, and practical. I would like to share what my Yullin Church is doing. We are active in evangelizing, and for at least twenty weeks we teach new believers Christian doctrines such as the Holy Trinity and the Fall of man, the redemption of Christ and the salvation of human beings, the church, the kingdom of God, end times, the perfection of the world, and so forth. Throughout the course, trainees need to do homework and assignments every week and study with a pastoral instructor once a week. They study about worship, salvation, the cross, and our pastoral ministry. Only after completion of the course can they become official church members. As in the ancient church, adult converts first complete a month-long doctrine course and then make a profession of faith before the elders and pastors. They are instructed in the privileges and responsibilities of church membership, and after a period of further catechesis, they receive baptism and become members. Assessments by parish pastors and lay leaders play important roles for the period of instruction. That is just the beginning of doctrinal education in our church. New believers are then deployed to a cell group and encouraged to engage in a weekly cell Bible study. In a cell group, one gets to study not only devotional books for the laity but also doctrinal books for specialized theological knowledge, such as Our Reasonable Faith by Herman Bavinck or other books by Puritan writers.3 Members are then entitled to take the elementary doctrine course. Every year, between 250 and 350 people start and finish the course. A typical course lasts about sixteen weeks; we use The Manual of Christian Doctrine by Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof as the main textbook, and several other doctrinal books.4 In this course, members write a review of the sermon and the assigned reading each week. Those who take this course, upon scoring 95%

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or higher, may teach. This is true even of those who teach our children. The catechism used for questions asked during the confirmation and baptism ceremonies at our church is the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Repetition and memorization of the catechism is a special trait of doctrinal education at our church. When people have a wedding, they need to pass the catechism test even if they have already been baptized. If they do not pass the catechism test, they are not allowed to use the church facilities or to ask a pastor of the church to speak or officiate at the ceremony. When parents want to have their infant baptized, they must pass the catechism test again. In my pastoral experience, even this much training is not sufficient, for to know right doctrine also requires the ability to criticize faulty doctrines. The duty of defending the truth is enormous and consists of these three aspects: a logical understanding of the content of one’s belief; a present religious experience of the content; and the apologetic faculty to argue one’s belief correctly. That is why at our church anyone who has finished the elementary doctrine course is allowed to take an advanced doctrine course two years after taking the elementary doctrine course. In the advanced doctrine course, students study Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated directly into Korean from Latin, for sixteen weeks. Students are required to listen to one sermon on doctrine or a theological seminar every week and to do reading assignments and practice piety such as prayer, evangelism, Bible meditation, and so forth. Weekly quizzes, as well as a midterm and a final exam, prepare students for election to service in the church. When pastors, elders, and deacons are so thoroughly instructed in a common faith, there is consistency. The whole church is built up into Christ together in this way, from teachers who shape the early lives of children to the elders who visit members and the deacons who care for the temporal welfare of the flock. I have come to realize from my own experience that the most ideal way of teaching is by preaching during worship services. The most ideal way of doctrinal training is to learn from preaching in a worship service that one offers to God with reverence and obedience. There are three official worship services at our church: Sunday morning service, Sunday afternoon service, and Wednesday service. All of my sermons deal with doctrine, but I give an intense doctrinal sermon for at least one of the three official services. Yullin Church also has Bible Training Meetings four times a year. In traditional Korean church settings, Sakyunghoe or Bible Training Meeting is a conference where participants are blessed by closely contemplat-

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ing the Word of God, constantly asking “Is it really so?”5 The four Bible Training Meetings are: New Year Bible Training Meeting in the second week of January; Passion Bible Training Meeting during the Passion Week; Summer Family Bible Training Camp in August; and Fall Bible Training Meeting in the middle of October. Sermons during these meetings mostly deal with theology and Christian doctrine, but also occasionally practical issues.6 Afterwards, sermon texts of each meeting are made into a book so that church members can use them for one or two months in their Bible studies and discuss what they have learned and what blessings they have received. Although it is true that teachings on the Reformed doctrines should be a foundation for piety, we need to know not only static doctrinal information but also the dynamic history of the world in order to understand the significance of the Reformed faith in today’s context. To address this issue, we came up with the idea of a special seminar for all church members called Seminar on the Mountain, which is offered two or three times a year.7 All church members go to a camping facility on a mountain far away from the city and spend a Sunday afternoon in fellowship, eating, resting, and learning the wisdom necessary for them to live in this age and world according to the Reformed faith. While interacting with nature, they learn knowledge that may not be provided at regular worship services. Philosophical history from the Renaissance up to the Reformation and the modern and postmodern eras is delivered for a better understanding of general and intellectual history. Events of interactions between the church and the world are examined and explained in interpreting the history and the meaning and significance they give us today. Furthermore, the seminar addresses basic questions in Christian theology—not only to train believers to lecture, but also to help them draw out doctrine while meditating on the Word. This is why our church encourages the congregation to read the works of not only the Reformers and Calvinistic Puritans but also modern writers in the Reformed tradition. Merits of Doctrinal Education to the Ministry he church is reaping the following harvest by educating everyone from young children to the elderly. First, we can achieve theological unity between pastors and laity. Yullin Church was established seventeen years ago by seven seed members, and currently 4,500 people attend every Sunday. During these seventeen years, however, there has not been a single incident of theological dispute between church members or between pastors, for every pastor is first

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required to complete doctrinal training with his wife. Second, preachers can preach theologically without worry, which is an attractive feature to a minister. To build a storehouse of knowledge, one necessarily needs logic. If you build a pile by dumping a load of bricks on the ground from a truck, you can heap only so much; but if you squarely stack them one by one according to a predetermined design, you can easily stack tens of truckloads of bricks. Today, the educational function of worship has lost its merit, and people cannot discern between worship and ritual. Worship today has become a ritual, like a convention on a national holiday. But worship is where we meet God in spirit and in truth. Giving glory to God means that we acknowledge God by meeting him. We need clear truth, the working of the Holy Spirit, and a desperate desire to meet God. The best preparation of a worshiper is an intellectual desire for God’s Word, the truth. God takes the heart of a worshiper from the world and floods it with God’s fullness by revealing his goodness and beauty in a glorious way through preaching. Another reason why man needs to study doctrine, Jonathan Edwards says, is that studying theology is just fun.8 In Korea, just as in America, a popular entertainer can be an idol to young people. They have a deep interest in every move the entertainer makes, and they collect a lot of information on this person. The more complex the information, the merrier they are, for they love the subject of the information—the entertainer. To love God means to enjoy what he has done and to be happy to know of his existence and attributes exhibited through his works. And when learning who God is and the attributes exhibited through his works, one’s ways of thinking and living are affected—love accompanied by knowledge will influence the whole person. To enjoy something means a final pleasure of it without any other end than itself. Third, it protects your congregation from dangerous teachings. Like America, Korea has seen in the last decade several influential errors the church must not ignore. Oddly enough, the primary target of those in error is not unbelievers but believers who regularly attend the church. However, when church members are well taught through systematic doctrinal education, they will not be swayed by those teaching false doctrine. Christian development, after all, is the maturation of knowledge and love. “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen” (2 Pet. 3:18). Fourth, doctrinal education provides the church congregation with a worldview that can encompass all 42 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

phases of life. Originally, the word “doctrine” had the same meaning as the Greek word sapientia, which is used frequently in philosophy. It is in the same line of thought of Petrus van Mastricht, one of the great theologians in the seventeenth century’s Reformed orthodox tradition: “Theology...is doctrines to live with God through Christ.”9 Thus one should not regard doctrine as mere knowledge or speculation. Through doctrine we can be armed with Christian thoughts, overcoming notions of vague religious dependence on God. Right knowledge of God shapes our relationships with our neighbors. And the death of the incarnate Christ on the cross—who showed God’s holy justice, our sinfulness, and the love of God toward us—is the gateway to all sound knowledge. Reverence for God and indescribable love toward him draw his people to learn piety. Unbelievers will be reminded of God’s holiness by watching the lives of holy saints who had a relationship with God who is highly exalted above all creation. This is the true meaning of missions, which is about God’s activities of raising true worshippers. Nowadays, it is hard to find extraordinary evidence of success in evangelism and the gospel ministry, for true success is determined not by the number of church attendants but by true worshippers. By focusing our lives on trivial matters, we distort our calling as Christians in crucial matters with an unbiblical yielding spirit. True and earnest pious living comes only out of systematic doctrinal knowledge. Thus we need to put our lives on the ground of knowledge, and by our living prove that this knowledge is true.10 The goal of Christian education is to raise a generation of Christian thinkers. Fifth, doctrinal education moves us away from the fierce competition of church growth. If a pastor wants to plant or grow a church in Korea by employing marketing strategies, discipleship training, cultural ministries, the prosperity gospel, mysticism, or psychological approaches, he would have severe competition from many churches in the neighborhood, for they too employ similar tactics to try to increase the size of their congregations. In that environment, the harder you try, the fiercer the market will become among the other churches. But when you want to grow your church with doctrinal education in Korea, competition is very loose. In the seventeen-year history of Yullin Church, I have never found that a large church in the vicinity has prevented our growth or put us in a difficult situation. Every year, we plan goals for evangelism but never set a goal for a specific number of members, which has not been in our interest. The glory of the church is not in size or number but in purity, as the essence of a lamp lies in emitting light.

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Therefore, we have to be sure about the gospel truth that we have received, experience it in our daily lives, and teach and spread it to our neighbors as covered with our sweat and blood. It may seem that not all people would like sophisticated systems of doctrine and strict training. But a lot more people than we think have a desperate desire to hear and understand in a short time comprehensive explanations of God, this world, and themselves. I have personally seen so many people whose hearts seem dead, although they know about the gospel and attend church services. But when they think about the meaning of the gospel from sermons that cover the universe, the world, and the birth and death of men, their perspective on the gospel changes and leads them to true conversion. Sixth, doctrinal education spurs the spiritual growth of a pastor. When the congregation is armed with doctrinal knowledge and grows in it, the pastor feels more responsible for his ministry, for he must continue to study Christian truth. Moreover, he needs to experience presently and directly the doctrine in order to speak about it in the way of Jesus, and not as a picky teacher. In 1740, during a revival in Cambuslang, Scotland, many were blessed by a sermon when tears flowed down the cheek of a grayhaired elder. He was a professor in the local seminary and confessed to the congregation: “All my life, I have taught the doctrine of atonement, but finally I am meeting the Christ who redeemed me.”11 The most important duty of a pastor is to study Christian truth and become the person who points to this truth. When that happens, he becomes a witness, not to cold pedantic knowledge, but to the truth. As Gisbertus Voetius, the famous Reformed orthodox theologian, once said, “One of the most elevated elements of piety toward God is prayer in the Holy Spirit.”12 By surveying the lives of the Reformers and Reformed orthodox theologians, the Puritan theologians of England, and the fathers of the early Christian church, I am challenged in fear and trembling at how much pastors need to study. Before being pastors and preachers, they were truth-seekers, which is evident in the affinities to truth and affections for doctrines flowing consistently in their preaching and writing. Therefore, preachers must devote every second of every day to studying the Bible and theology, except the hours to be allotted for ministerial chores and family and social obligations. Conclusion hurches thrive when they combine deep Christian thinking with genuine religious experience. The duty of a pastor is to proclaim

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and to teach God’s Word, with God—his glory and grace in Christ, rather than human flattery, as the goal and substance. The glorious means of grace entrusted to us are great instruments for such tasks. Thus our worship needs to be filled with glorious emotions for meeting the holy God, and our preaching needs to be an honest and pure proclamation of God’s truth. Our sacraments must also be conducted in reverence and grace with a congregation who understands their meaning. Pastors are not tour guides but leaders of soldiers of Christ gathered for the kingdom of God. Having said so much about the need for rigorous catechesis, I should not forget to underscore an important point. God’s grace is not only a doctrine that we teach, but it is the constant source of any growth. Faithful ministry is utterly dependent on God’s blessing, which keeps us on our knees in earnest prayer. Without this grace, our preaching and doctrinal education cannot change a single soul. Nevertheless, God has promised to bless his chosen means of grace. Likely, the next generation will be even more uncertain and relativistic in their value system, overflowing with religious pluralism. In the face of this challenge, we need to build up believers intellectually and arm them through doctrinal education so as to raise the next generation on the foundation of knowledge, inspired by the love of the cross of Christ. This must be the vision of which pastors dream. ■

Pastor Nam-Joon Kim (Master of Divinity and Master of Theology from Chongshin University) is senior pastor of Yullin Church and teaches practical theology at Chongshin University. He has served as a full-time lecturer and an assistant professor at An-Yang University and Chon-An University. Writing on devotional and theological issues in Korea, Pastor Kim is the author of over fifty books.

Cf. David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 6–13. 2John Owen, On the Nature and Causes of Apostasy, and the Punishment of Apostates in The Works of John Owen, vol. 7, ed. William H. Goold (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1988), chapter 3. 3Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002). 4Louis Berkhof, Manual of Christian Doctrine (Arlington Heights: Christian Liberty Press, 2007). 5“Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). 1

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We need to build up believers intel-

2:10).” Jonathan Edwards, “The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough lectually and arm them through doc- Knowledge of Divine Truth,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 22, ed. Harry S. Stout (New Haven: Yale University Press, trinal education so as to raise the 2003), 100. 9“Theologia...est doctrina deo vivendi next generation on the foundation per Christum.” Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretico-Practica Theologia, qua, per capita theoof knowledge, inspired by the love logica, pars dogmatica, elenchtica et practica, perpetua successione conjugantux., Tomus of the cross of Christ. This must be Primus (Trajecti: Thomae Appels, 1699), 1. Cf. Adriaan C. Neele, Petrus van Mastricht the vision of which pastors dream. (1630–1706), Reformed Orthodoxy: Method and 6Following are an example of the titles of theological Piety in Brill’s Series in Church History, vol. 35 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), chapter 2. sermons of the series delivered during the Bible Training 10Francis Turretin, a Reformed Orthodox theologian, Meeting: “Doctrine on Keeping Heart,” “God’s Plan for our Salvation,” “The End for which God Created the once said, “[So] neither can that knowledge of God be World,” “The Church and God’s Love,” “Sanctification true unless attended by practice. Nor can that practice be and Weariness of Souls,” “Sanctification and Uprightright and saving which is not directed by knowledge.” ness,” “Christ: the Mystery of Piety,” “Doctrine on OverFrancis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 1, trans. coming Tests and Temptations,” “On Man’s Happiness,” George Musgrave Giger (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, “On Creation and Holy Trinity,” “On the Order of the 1992), 22. 11For the Cambuslang Revival, cf. Historical Collections of Church and God’s Governance,” “The Beauty of the Church and Blessed Saints of God,” “Mortification of Sin, Accounts of Revival, ed. John Gillies (Edinburgh: The BanDominion of Sin and Grace,” “Ways to Overcoming Dener of Truth Trust, 1981), 433–64; Arthur Fawcett, The ceits of Sin,” “Excellency of Christ and Duties of Men,” Cambuslang Revival: The Scottish Evangelical Revival of the “Grace and Corruption,” “Doctrine of Recapitulation of Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, Christ.” 1971). 7Following are the titles of such seminars: “A Study of 12“The most elevated part of the practice of piety conthe Role of Christians as Truth-Communicators in Global sists in prayer in the Spirit, in meditation, or in both. For Society,” also presented at the Periodical Academic Semin these all parts of theology come together.” Aza Goudriinar of Reformed Theological Society hosted by the Korea aan, professor of patristics of the Free University, AmsReformed Theological Society in Chongshin University terdam, “What Piety Is Needed?” Second Reformed (15 March 2008); “The Growth of the Korean Church Orthodox Theological Seminar held under the theme of and Its Future Role,” also presented at Global Legacy and “Voetius on Piety and Learning,” Yullin Presbyterian Mission: Korean-North American Diaspora Consultation Church (October 2010). For books on prayer by Voetius, (5–6 May 2010), jointly sponsored by Torch Trinity Gradcf. C. A. de Niet, ed., Gisbertus Voetius: De praktijd der godza– uate School of Theology in Seoul of Korea and Westminligheid (Ta asketiva sive Exercitia pietatis, 1664), chapter 3. ster Seminary California. Other titles of seminars include “Current Trend of Contemporary Evangelicalism,” “Time and Eternity,” “Wonderful Symmetry of the World and Its Consummation,” “Immanent and Economic Trinity,” “Lectio Divina: Christian Tradition, Uprightness of Human Will through Sanctification.” 8“Third. This is a pleasant way of improving time. Knowledge is pleasant and delightful to intelligent creatures, and above all the knowledge of divine things; for in them are the most excellent truths, and the most beautiful and amiable objects held forth to view. However tedious the labor necessarily attending this business may be, yet the knowledge once obtained will richly requite the pains taken to obtain it. ‘When wisdom entereth the heart, [and] knowledge is pleasant to the soul’ (Proverbs 44 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

W O R D & S A C R A M E N T: M A K I N G D I S C I P L E S O F A L L N AT I O N S

Baptism and Discipleship

By J. V. Fesko

ne of the more common questions I have heard over the years from my Baptist friends is, “How can an infant benefit from baptism?” The common assumption is that an infant has no capacity for faith, and therefore the child has no concept of what is occurring in his or her baptism; hence, baptism cannot benefit the child. Another assumption that lies behind this common question is that the abiding value of baptism rests in the moment of its administration. In other words, baptism is of little lasting value in the life of a Christian because it serves only as a memory of one moment where a person professed his or her faith. Despite the popularity of these ideas and the question it generates, a full-orbed understanding of the sacrament of baptism has the strongest of links with discipleship. To demonstrate the vital bond between baptism and discipleship, we will briefly survey the nature and character of baptism and then examine how this theology bears upon our lives as Christ’s disciples. The Nature and Character of Baptism

Creation Chances are if you ask someone why they were baptized they will tell you that it is commanded in the Bible, or Jesus was baptized and set an example for us, or perhaps they will simply shrug and defer to tradition. I suspect, however, that few can give a solid biblically grounded answer as to why the church baptizes new converts and their children. We must begin, not with the baptism of Christ, or the baptism of John, or Pentecost, but with the opening chapters of the Bible. In Genesis 1:2 we read of the Spirit of God hovering over the waters like a bird (cf. Deut. 32:11). This same imagery appears in Genesis 8:1 as the author uses a double entendre J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 4 5

when he writes that God sent a wind (ruach), the same word for “spirit,” which caused the floodwaters to subside. In many ways, the flood was a re-creation of the earth, and the author wanted his readers to recall the Spirit’s presence and involvement in the initial creation. Water and the Spirit are intimately connected throughout the Scriptures and appear in other passages that relate to baptism. The Flood Things get interesting when we note how the apostle Peter characterizes the Noahic flood. Peter explains that eight people, Noah and his family, were saved through the flood, but that there is now “an antitype which now saves us—baptism” (1 Pet. 3:21 NKJV). That Peter invokes the term “antitype” in his explanation of the relationship between the flood and baptism is important. A type is a person, place, or thing that foreshadows or anticipates a person, place, or thing in the New Testament. The counterpart of a type is its antitype. In this case, the Noahic flood is a type (or foreshadow) of the antitype of baptism. What Peter means, therefore, is that the flood anticipates the realities that stand behind baptism. The Red Sea Crossing Water and Spirit appear again in the biblical narrative in one of Israel’s most formative moments—the Red Sea crossing. We can place the presence of the Holy Spirit at the Red Sea crossing from the words of Haggai the prophet: “Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts, according to the covenant that I made with you when you came out of Egypt. My Spirit remains in your midst” (Hag. 2:4b–5). Most readers of the biblical narrative are more familiar with the Spirit’s presence as he is described as the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exod. 13:21). Once again, when we turn to the New Testament’s interpretation of this event, we find the apostle Paul characterizing the Red Sea crossing as a baptism: “For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:1–2). We find the presence of water and Spirit associated with an act of new creation, as the exodus marked Israel’s birth as a nation. Israel, God’s son, came up out of the waters of the Red Sea and was guided into the wilderness by the Spirit (Exod. 4.23). The Baptism of Christ The culmination of these Old Testament events arrives in the baptism of Jesus when he comes out of 46 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

the water, and the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove. Recall that Noah released a dove over the waters of the flood (Gen 8:8–11), and the Spirit hovered over the waters of creation like a bird (Gen 1:2; Deut. 32:11). And the voice of God thundered from the clouds, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). The Spirit, like Israel of old, led God’s Son into the wilderness to be tested. But unlike Israel, Jesus was faithful in his wilderness probation (Matt. 4:1–11). The creation, the flood, and the Red Sea crossing, however, were anticipating not only the person and work of Christ but also the work of the Holy Spirit. When John was asked what he was doing by baptizing people in the Jordan River, he responded: “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matt. 3:11). Pentecost John baptized with water but clearly stated that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. Christ’s baptism did not arise de novo with John’s proclamation on the banks of the Jordan, but from a number of Old Testament prophecies, such as Ezekiel’s promise that God would sprinkle his people with water, remove their sins, and place his Spirit within them (Ezek. 36:26–27). Note that once again we find the mention of both water and Spirit. Another prophecy comes from the end of Ezekiel where he has a vision of a perfect temple, and from under its threshold flows a stream of water that eventually fills the whole earth (Ezek. 47:1–9). Perhaps one of the best-known prophecies is the utterance of Joel: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28a). The baptism, then, of which John prophesied was the outpouring of the Spirit that Christ would perform upon the church. The apostle Peter confirms this conclusion when he preached at Pentecost: “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he [Jesus] has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing” (Acts 2.32–33). Putting It All Together his collage of biblical events and imagery informs our understanding of baptism. We baptize converts and their children with water not only because this rite has been commanded by Christ in his Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20), but because, like the Word of God, baptism as the visible Word of God proclaims that Christ has come and poured out the Spirit. Through the work of the out-

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poured Spirit, the people of God are gathered from the four corners of the earth, are given faith, are cleansed of their sin, and are being renewed, transformed, and conformed to the perfect image of Jesus Christ (John 1:12–13; 3:3–8; Ezek. 36:24–27). Moreover, baptism continues to proclaim that Christ’s outpouring of the Spirit will reach epic proportions: the Spirit will eventually flood the creation just as the waters of the Noahic flood once covered the earth. Echoing Ezekiel’s prophecy of the water that flows from beneath the threshold of the final temple (cf. Ezek. 47; Rev. 22:1–2; John 7:38–39), the apostle Peter compares the Noahic flood to the fire of the Spirit that will flood the earth (cf. Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16): For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. (2 Pet. 3:5–7) This baptism of the Spirit is not one that is restricted to isolated individuals or simply the church, but indeed will cover the whole creation. The baptism of the Spirit is not restricted to the one-time event of a person’s profession of faith. Far from it, Christ’s outpouring of the Spirit is a present ongoing reality, one that began at Pentecost and will continue until the consummation of all things. In other words, baptism is not primarily about a person’s personal faith, but rather about what God has done and continues to do through Christ and the Spirit. In common theological parlance, God proclaims the gospel of Christ through ministers who herald the gospel through Word and Sacrament. What the Word is to the ears, the sacraments—baptism in this case—are to the other senses. The sacraments never stand alone but always require the preaching of the Word; one can have the Word alone but never the sacraments alone. Understanding these basic scriptural and theological points about baptism is of the utmost importance in grasping the relationship between baptism and discipleship. The Bond between Baptism and Discipleship hen the church baptizes a new convert with water, it does so in obedience to the Great Commission of Christ. The church baptizes with a view to discipleship: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the

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name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). This life of discipleship is true not only for the adult convert but also for the infant. Catechetical Instruction about Who God Is or infants baptized into the church, make no mistake, they are baptized into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:1–4). To this end, they should be catechized and instructed in the faith. Infants will hopefully grow up to be children who are taught, among many other things, the Lord’s Prayer. They should be taught to call upon God as Father and be reminded that they have been given their Father’s covenantal sign and seal. The covenantal sign and seal of baptism is no guarantee of a person’s salvation, whether for the infant or the adult convert. Just as circumcision did not save but was a sign and seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:11), so too baptism points to the one who saves, to Christ who has poured out the Spirit upon the whole church, young and old, male and female. Ideally, infants who receive the sign and grow up within the covenant community should be instructed not only from the Word and the message of the gospel, but also in the rites of the covenant, such as baptism. They should be instructed and taught of the Old Testament baptisms, the creation, the flood, and the Red Sea crossing. They should be taught of the double-edged nature of God’s revelation—namely, there are no neutral encounters with the living God. One does not encounter the living God and walk away unchanged. A person is either blessed or cursed in his or her encounter with the one true living God. In the baptism-flood, Noah and his family were saved through this typical baptism, but the unbelieving world was drowned in judgment. In the baptism-Red Sea crossing, Israel was saved, but Pharaoh and his army were drowned in judgment in the very waters that delivered Israel. Just as the gospel is the aroma of life for those who are being saved and the aroma of death for those who are perishing (2 Cor. 2:15–16), so the sacrament of baptism echoes this message. Equipped with this information about baptism, whenever young children observe the baptism of others, the minister should explain to his congregation, especially the children, that the whole church benefits from the sacrament of baptism. Far too often people believe that the only one to benefit from baptism is the one who gets wet. But if we realize that the one who is being baptized is simply one among many who have been a part of Christ’s baptism of the Spirit

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upon the church, then we understand that we are part of a covenantal community. Those who look to Christ by faith alone are part of the inaugurated new creation Christ has brought about through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. But at the same time, while the new creation has been inaugurated, it has not been consummated. We live between the two great epochs of redemptive history, this present evil age and the age to come (Matt. 12:32; Gal. 1:4). Subject to the Discipline of Christ’s Church s those who have been baptized into Christ, whether adult or infant, we are all subject to the rule of the enthroned Messiah who reigns over his people. We are accountable as baptized members of his church to the discipline of the Christ. Recall that the church is supposed to instruct the church in everything Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:20). Discipline, of course, does not begin with formal church discipline, whether in censure or excommunication. Rather, discipline begins with discipleship, accountability, and instruction. For those who stray from the faith in which they have been baptized and catechized, they must be put under some form of church discipline. It is under church discipline that they are reminded of the double-edged nature of God’s revelation, of the double-edged nature of the sacraments, and of the double-edged nature of Christ’s rule. Christ is either the rock upon whom we must fall or the rock that will fall upon us in judgment.

The Lifelong Echo of Baptism n all of these things we are reminded of the lifelong echo of baptism. Baptism is not one punctuated moment in our lives in which we declared our faithfulness to Christ. Rather, our one baptism is a small part of a greater baptism that has been poured out upon the church by Christ and that continues until the consummation of the age. This is one of the key missing dimensions for the church’s understanding of baptism—namely, baptism is the visible Word of God and therefore nourishes the body of Christ and is part of the church’s corporate and individual discipleship. Herman Witsius (1636–1738), a Dutch Reformed theologian, recounts the lifelong value of infant baptism in the following:

Here certainly appears the extraordinary love of our God, in that as soon as we are born, and just as we come from our mother, he has commanded us to be solemnly brought from her bosom, as it were into his own arms, that he should bestow upon us, in the very cradle, the tokens of our dignity and future kingdom; that 48 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

he should put that song in our mouth, “thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breast: I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly” (Psa 22.9–10) that, in a word, he should join us to himself in the most solemn covenant from our most tender years: the remembrance of which, as it is glorious and full of consolation to us, so in like manner it tends to promote Christian virtues, and the strictest holiness, through the whole course of our lives. Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man (Phillipsburg: The Den Dulk Foundation, 1990), 4.16.47 (emphasis added). In other words, when we were in our most helpless of states, incapable of reaching out to God, he reached out to us by marking us with the sign and seal of the gospel—a lifelong signpost of God’s grace in Christ. Conclusion o then, how does baptism benefit an infant? Since baptism is first and foremost the sign and seal of God’s covenant with his people, it is the visible Word of God’s promise. As an infant grows up within the bosom of the church, and as her parents raise her in the fear and admonition of the Lord, the child learns who God is, learns into whose name she has been baptized, watches other baptisms, and hears the gospel of Christ preached to her ears and sees the gospel preached to her eyes. The child grows up to learn that she is part of a covenant community, the body of Christ, which has been redeemed through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. And in his ascension, Christ has poured out the life-giving Holy Spirit to redeem a bride for himself and to present her spotless and without blemish before our heavenly Father on the last day. A person’s baptism, therefore, echoes throughout her life and continues to preach the gospel to her long after the day she was given the rite. What has baptism to do with discipleship in the life of a covenant child? In a word, everything. ■

J. V. Fesko is academic dean and associate professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California in Escondido. He is the author of Word, Water, and Spirit: A Reformed Perspective on Baptism (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010).

From the Hallway (continued from page 9) an alcoholic is because there is a divinely revealed diagnosis of the problem. The disease I have is sin. I was born with it, I am living with it, and I will never in this age be free of it. It affects every part of my being, every relationship in my life, everything I think, say, and do. I find myself in the company of the apostle Paul, who near the end of his life was still calling himself a sinner, even “the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15). After a life of service and sacrifice and no doubt a lot of righteous thinking, feeling, and acting, Paul was still depending on the mercy of the God who sent his Son to save sinners. I hate this disease. I wish to God I could be free of it. But sometimes I seem to love it and even enjoy it. As I read Paul, who to all evidence never struggled with alcohol and who said no drunkard could inherit the kingdom of heaven, he experienced what I have experienced. He said of himself as a Christian believer: For we know the law is spiritual but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate….I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing….So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. (Rom. 7:15, 15, 18–20) That’s me. How often have I said in desperation with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). This inborn and incurable disease is first treated by God, not by attacking the disease’s controlling power, but by addressing its condemning power. This is where the Christian gospel differs from the standard treatment of addictions. It is true that people are powerless over the disease and that they cannot change themselves. But the next word to the person in despair is not that “God could and would if he were sought.” When I was at my lowest I found a ray of light first in this: “When iniquities prevail against me, you atone for our transgressions” (Ps. 65:3). Would others forgive? Maybe, maybe not. How genuine was my desire to change? I was pretty sure I was about as sincere as I have ever been, but others, with reason, had their doubts. What I knew was that someone else (the psalmist) knew the experience of being overwhelmed by sin yet believed God would provide atonement. And by his using “my” and “our,” he held out the

same hope to others. What the disease of sin requires, no matter its particular manifestations, is atonement and forgiveness. We cannot atone for our own sins, nor can we or others do the forgiving. Others may not be able to forgive us; we cannot declare or will ourselves forgiven. As the Pharisees said when Jesus pronounced a man’s sins forgiven, none but God can forgive sins. To put the gospel in grammatical terms, the indicative must precede the imperative. What is goes before what must be. You must be a Christian before you can be told to live like one. To put the gospel in theological terms, justification always goes before sanctification. Your sins must be forgiven and you must be declared righteous by faith apart from anything at all that you do or try to do before you can begin to develop a holy character or engage in holy conduct. Furthermore, the necessary renovation of the heart and reformation of life cannot progress apart from regular massive doses of the gospel. God does radically treat sin when we come to faith. Paul, who later describes his struggle, first tells us that faith unites us to Christ and that the power of his death and resurrection means we have died to sin and that we are alive to God and righteousness. But this radical treatment does not eradicate the problem. And nothing save forgiveness can deal with daily struggle. In fact, in some way that I do not fully comprehend, I must never forget that the struggle, even the successful struggle, does not get me God’s favor. Nothing but the forgiveness of sins received by faith in Jesus and his atoning death can get God to smile at me and like me. And nothing but that acceptance by God can enable the struggle. At least that’s the way I see it now. Yes, I knew and believed all this before a recent crisis. Why then did I crash and burn? Looked at in one way, these articles of my faith explain it. The problem is permanent and its symptoms recurrent. Looked at in another way, to borrow words from a secular group that offers understanding and help to those with alcohol problems, “It works if you work it.” What they mean is that if you follow the program, you are much less likely to experience what they call a “relapse.” In these terms I was not “working my program.” I was not really believing and practicing my faith. That just about guaranteed some kind of crash and burn scenario. I don’t mind if you call me an alcoholic. But my self-identification is this: I’m a sinner saved, being saved, yet to be saved—by grace.

The author of this piece has asked to remain anonymous.

J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 4 9

THE LATEST IDEAS SWEEPING THE LAND... r e v i e w s

The Long and Short of Systematic Theology

wo books have been published within the past couple of

tions often lack the compelling qualities found in the original. There was a years that purport to tell us what all Christians should similar history of two condensations with Francis Pieper’s Christian believe or know: Christian Beliefs: Twenty Basics Every Christian Dogmatics. This was condensed into a single volume by Mueller and condensed further by E. G. Koehler. As the books got shorter, I thought they became drier; yet I admit that Koehler made a more suitable textbook for undergraduates. When someone claims that condensation will be useful for a new audience, I believe it. I just know I’m the target audience for the original work rather than the condensation. As to Grudem’s selections, the first six chapters answer questions on: the Bible; the nature of God; the Trinity; creation; prayer; and angels, Satan, and demons. Grudem’s placement of the Bible at the beginning makes some sense, since he argues that as God’s very Word it is our authority on these subjects. The logic of how other topics follow one another, however, is less clear. Most dogmatics would discuss prayer later in the book, as the church is usually dealt with after many other matters that must first be understood if we are to grasp its essence. The table of Christian Beliefs: contents of a dogmatics book is a great place to make Twenty Basics Every the statement that all these teachings are organically Should Know by Wayne Christian Should Know A. Grudem and edited connected; Grudem missed an opportunity to make by Wayne A. Grudem this point. It was, to be sure, made at various points by Elliot Grudem; and within the text, but not as strongly as it would have Doctrine: What Christians Zondervan, 2005 160 pages (paperback), $12.99 been had he given it more attention from the start. Should Believe by Mark Driscoll’s chapters in Doctrine: What Christians Driscoll and Gerry BreDoctrine: What ChrisShould Believe all focus on God. The first six are entishears. These two titles tled: “Trinity: God Is”; “Revelation: God Speaks”; seem to agree that it is tians Should Believe “Creation: God Makes”; “Image: God Loves”; “Fall: possible to produce a by Mark Driscoll and God Judges”; and “Covenant: God Pursues.” The list of doctrines to which Gerry Breshears God-centeredness of the titles makes a strong theall Christians ought to Crossway, 2010 ological statement before we reach the opening adhere, but how would 464 pages (hardcover), $22.99 page of the book. A reader cannot get through the their authors make their table of contents without understanding that all selections? Christian doctrine has a common focus. Wayne Grudem said that his book was a condenGrudem’s book has a somewhat encyclopedic tone sation of a previous condensation of his dogmatics to it. As with an encyclopedia, the topics don’t really book. He made an initial selection and then pared it follow one another in any visible, organic arrangedown for a new audience. I find that such condensa5 0 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

ment. The style is often rather impersonal. Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has noted that an encyclopedia embodies a set of beliefs about knowledge stemming from the Enlightenment. When we choose such a framework, we may unwittingly be propagating that approach. If we aren’t careful, it might be easy for a reader to develop a conception that these twenty basics are discrete teachings that can be separately adopted or rejected, rather than an organically related body of doctrine. Driscoll has a more narrative style—a happy surprise in a book on doctrine. While his book is the longer of the two, I think it may actually be read through by more readers. One choice some might question is that he begins with an appeal to human desires, although he does note that human desires are corrupted by sin. He presents God as the legitimate fulfillment of our desires, which is the Augustinian theme of “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.” If a red flag goes up quickly, Driscoll manages to remove it quickly as well. And he has perhaps succeeded in making his readers hungry to know more about his subject. Systematics doesn’t have to be dry. There is a long history to writing such works. In the Western church, theologians began writing systems to answer some basic questions a reader might have about the Bible and knowledge of God as a whole. The opening questions asked how we could attain to knowledge of God. One such question might be, “Is the teaching of theology a science?” If in our contemporary minds this brings up the idea of test tubes and laboratories, this is not what it meant to these earlier writers. This question was asked before the science versus theology rivalry of the last few centuries. These earlier writers meant something more along the lines of whether theology is an ordered field of study rather than something that might be directly known through the heart. They would wrestle with questions like this, often drawing passages from Scripture and the writings of the church fathers who might argue one way or the other, and then harmonizing them. The idea was that if we saw only one set of these Scriptures and missed the other set, we might start off in the wrong direction and go wildly astray. These opening questions are now known as Prolegomena. They’re the first matters that need to be wrestled with in order to make progress in a subject. Later Catholic and Protestant dogmaticians often follow this format, even if some of the answers vary from those given in the Middle Ages. The earliest such writings do show a high regard for Scripture; and while some of their questions arise from the issues of their day, the writers clearly seek to submit their minds to what God has revealed. Even while they were inventing a new approach to arrang-

ing their questions, it is clear the conversation had been going on for some time. And we get to know key voices in the conversation by name. The odd thing to me is that knowing this history, it seems as if Grudem has taken on some of the chief liabilities of such writing—abstraction, encyclopedic tone, lack of Bible narrative and poetry—but without making use of its chief strength: an overarching conviction that the subject is a unity that can and must be approached as such. If the answers can be borrowed from past masters, why not also borrow their arrangements? Or if the logic of that was somewhat lost in condensation, why not work until a new one is visible? If I open to any page of his book, it is clear that Grudem has read earlier writers, and good ones. He himself knows what the questions are, and he tries to answer them for the reader in clear and simple prose. On that score, the book is quite successful, though even here there is a minor problem. Given that he has read so many of these writers in order to discover the important questions on the subject, when he doesn’t cite these writers, the questions he brings up might strike the unwary reader as being odd or idiosyncratic. Someone might wonder, “Why would he think that was important to ask?” Ironically, by leaving out references to the ancient writers who first raised his questions, Grudem has made himself seem out of touch with the times, rather than as a mediator introducing the thought of past writers to present readers. Then there is the matter of Grudem’s “Books for Further Reading in Systematic Theology.” The earliest listed system is by Jonathan Edwards. The listing itself is broad, including even The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Yet without the systems of earlier times, the questions in the more recent books are often difficult to understand. And sometimes the much older books are actually more inviting. The book from a hundred years ago might be narrowly focused on the questions of the day; but sometimes the book from four or six hundred years ago manages to be more selective, quoting only what has already stood the test of centuries. Older systems also tend to cite church fathers writing on a single topic, rather than other systematic theologians. The reader can use the systematic as a guide to a deeper reading by a writer passionate on a given subject. When the system only references other systems, the whole enterprise becomes self-referencing and sterile. The reader should see other challenging writers cited and wish to read them. Reading the thirteenth-century writer Alexander of Hales made me want to read St. Augustine’s On the Trinity. Driscoll’s book cites many writers. Most of them are (continued on page 57) J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 5 1

A DIALOGUE: IN AND OUT OF OUR CIRCLES An Interview with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett

Why We Still Need Catechism Throughout the history of the church, young believers and new converts to the faith went through a process called “catechism.” Although this is an ancient practice, it has fallen out of use in contemporary Christianity. In seeking a remedy to this, White Horse Inn talked with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett, authors of an important book entitled Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old Fashioned Way. Dr. Packer teaches theology at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., and is the author of numerous books. Dr. Parrett is associate professor of educational ministries at GordonConwell Theological Seminary, and is also the coauthor of another book on this subject, Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful: A Biblical Vision for Education in the Church. Why did you feel compelled to write Grounded in the Gospel? GP: In the garden-variety evangelical world I have moved in for most of the last thirty years, there’s very little sense of a catechetical vision or ongoing catechetical ministries. We therefore felt compelled to try to help address this. This has been on my mind for a while, largely because of seeds planted by Dr. Packer when I was his student almost twentyfive years ago. Those who don’t come from a background in Reformed, Lutheran, or Anglican traditions might say that catechism sounds Roman Catholic. What is the origin of catechism and how do you define this word? GP: It comes from the Greek word katekeo, which is used in several places in the New Testament and means “instruct.” In some ways, it is a general word for instruction; but very early on in the life of the church, it was a particular form of instruction that focused on the basics via oral communication—give and take, back 5 2 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

and forth. There’s a biblical concern for teaching the faith in substantive ways. When did this practice of catechesis start and when was it revived? GP: In the ancient church, in the second through fifth centuries in particular, anybody who came to Christ, especially from outside of the Christian community, went through a rigorous preparation for baptism that was catechizing, equipping them in the basics of Christian doctrine, Christian living, and Christian praying— often for many months, up to two or three years of instruction—before they were permitted to be baptized. Then catechesis went underground in a lot of ways for most of the Middle Ages, was revived by the Reformers with great zeal, and was the dominant feature of Protestantism, at least through the era of the Puritans. But as you suggested, ever since the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, it has been retained largely only in Reformed and Lutheran circles.

Our theme recently on the White Horse Inn was “Recovering Scripture.” Our producer visited a local Bible college, asking students if they were familiar with the book of Galatians. Here are some of their answers to the following questions: What’s the book of Galatians about? Have you ever read that book or studied it? • I’ve read it, but I don’t really remember. • Um, I haven’t studied it in depth. I’ve read it, but I can’t really recall the one firm message. • I think it’s Paul writing to the church in Galatia. I would say it’s about how a Christian ought to live their life. • Hmm. I read through that a couple months ago, but I don’t recall specifically what that one’s about. I believe it talks a lot about community in the church. • I’m not familiar with it enough to talk a lot about it, I guess. • It comes back to strengthening others in Christ, I believe. I haven’t studied that book. I grew up in the church, but never had a study on that book, not in detail at least. One of the words that pops up again and again through Galatians is “justification.” Are you familiar with that word? • No. I haven’t looked into it. • I’ve actually only heard of that concept in the last couple of years. I’ve never heard that phrase used in a church, which might just have to do with my church background. I went to one church as a kid and

that was it. They never really got very deep. That’s the same answer I’m getting from everybody. Are churches doing a poor job teaching the basic content of Scripture from kindergarten to college age? • Yeah, I agree with that. I think they need to do a better job of equipping us of how to read the Bible, and less on the topical, like how to do life. • My personal take is that they do a horrible job. Sometimes it could be teachers who don’t really know it themselves. We kind of dumb it down. • I don’t have remotely near the knowledge of the Bible that I feel I ought to have, being able to say, “I was raised in church and went to a Christian college.” • I do think that the church needs to have more in-depth teaching of the Bible, especially starting in Sunday school, because I think a lot of times it’s pretty shallow. Now what’s striking here is that this is not at a public university campus; this is at a Bible college. Is this exceptional, or is this why you wrote Grounded in the Gospel? JIP: The conversation you’ve just relayed shows that we today in the evangelical community are far out of sync with Christian discipling in the first century, in the apostolic age. We claim to be Bible people, and we talk a lot about the Bible; but whereas they in the first century drilled people in what now we may properly call Bible doctrine, we simply don’t do that. We go some distance in helping people understand a bit of the historical background and the books of the Bible; but even so, we don’t go very far in encourag-

ing people to soak themselves in the Bible. As C. H. Spurgeon once said, “A Christian’s blood should be bibline.” He was being fanciful; but that is to say, if you prick the Christian with a pin, the blood that comes out should be just oozing Scripture. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Reformers, the Puritans, the evangelicals were literally soaked in Scripture. They seemed to know their Bible backwards. They could quote it appropriately and apply it in relation to anything that came up in conversation. We simply aren’t like that, and yet we think we’re being loyal to the reformational heritage. We simply aren’t close enough to Bible doctrine, Bible truth, even to the biblical text, really to have the right to even call ourselves evangelical Bible people. In the church this last thirty years, as I’ve observed it, Bible study has come a long way. Thirty years ago, there was even less of it than there is today. That is a very encouraging feature of life today. But just as we are beginning to relearn that we must center our concern on the Bible, its text, its teaching, and its doctrine, we must also center our concern equally on drilling folk in the faith of the Scriptures— that is, catechesis. We are guided in this by the historic creeds and the Reformation confessions. Christians should know their faith thoroughly in the way that Jehovah’s Witnesses know their faith. One knows why it is that Jehovah’s Witnesses are so skilled in presenting their faith. They are taught it and they are drilled in presenting it. We need in our evangelical world something similar to this.

I think of Dorothy Sayers’ wonderful work, The Lost Tools of Learning, where she says, “Across all fields, we’re losing the grammar—the grammar of language, the grammar of music, the grammar of art, the grammar of our faith, because we have this approach to education today that says basically just let them discover the world for themselves.” So when people now get together in those Bible studies—and we have a plethora of study Bibles for every niche market on the planet, and bookstores just brimming with books on how to do this and that—is it really meaningful to get together in Bible studies when we don’t have the grammar to begin with? JIP: I think you hit the nail bang on the head. Yes, we are losing the grammar of our Christianity, which expresses itself as a life. You can’t teach the life properly, except as you teach the faith properly and show how the living is grounded on the believing. To get the believing straight in your mind, you must have the basic grammar. The faith has a basic grammar. The historic creeds and Reformation confessions express this basic grammar, as well as the catechetical pattern of instruction. As Gary said, it took two or three years before folk were admitted to baptism. This was how the early church found it necessary to work because there were so many false and misleading ideas. It took hard work to get Christian minds anchored in truth, and it was called “catechesis” because it was basic instruction. They thought of it as fulfilling the Great Commission. Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” The word “disciples”

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means “learners.” Learners learn the basics. Catechesis covers both the faith and the life. It’s focused instruction that is intended to disciple people. We have students from Nigeria come to Westminster Seminary California who are astonished that we’re so lax in some of these areas. They have that ancient church practice of intense catechesis before baptism. They have to because they’re coming out of animism, they’re coming out of ancestor worship, and they’re coming out of Islam. Do we not realize that we’re living in a culture that is every bit as averse to the faith and practices of Christianity as any other culture in the world? JIP: That is so right and so important that you can’t, I think, stress it too much. The basic trouble in the West is that we have exchanged a God-centered view of life for a mancentered, self-centered, and relativistic view of life, of truth, of wisdom. Christianity immediately gets distorted and pulled out of shape, because we treat ourselves as the central focus of interest in our personal universe, and we think of God simply as there on the edge of our lives, so to speak, to help when we need him, to supply what we feel we lack. But we don’t think in terms of God himself and God’s glory as the goal of everything, and the life of worship as being the true fulfillment of our human nature. All of that has vanished, and instead we talk about satisfaction and peace and joy, understanding all these words in terms of feeling good. And the feel-good version of Christianity falsifies the real thing at just about every point. 5 4 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

And that feel-good version of Christianity means that everything in the church has to be fun. Now what happens when that’s your criterion? Can catechism be fun? JIP: It’s not fun in the sense in which people use the word today; but it is very satisfying to the mind and heart when you begin to see how everything fits together in the Bible, with God at the center. To learn God centeredness in an orderly way delights the soul, and it makes you want to worship the God who is the source of all this truth and wisdom and beauty—because there is beauty in an orderly understanding of the faith. A feast will always be more satisfying than a fast-food meal. JIP: I have been a Christian for sixty-five years, and that has been my experience right through those sixty-five years from start to finish. Well, of course, I haven’t finished yet. Dr. Parrett, what do you say? You have a doctorate in education from Columbia; you have studied the methods of education, specifically Christian education, so you take them seriously. Have we gotten so caught up in the technique and methods—how to do this, how to do that—that we’re ignoring what it is we are trying to teach? GP: Yes, definitely. That’s been moving in my mind ever since I joined the field of Christian education. There is much emphasis on process, which can be very helpful; but there’s also this assumption that we already have clarity on what we’re trying to teach effectively, and I think that assump-

tion is not warranted at all. A lot of emphasis is on teaching effectively, on teaching in culturally relevant ways—and I affirm all of that—but it’s a complete lack of attention to what it is that we’re mandated to be teaching: the essence of the faith. We find in Scripture that concept of faith. There is the Hebrews 11 type of faith, which is sort of our subjective faith and response to the great God of the Scripture. But the other aspect of New Testament faith, which is the faith, Jude 3 style, which was once for all delivered to the saints—something objective, revelatory from God—that revelation faith has been wholly neglected in churches and in a lot of Christian education circles. So, faith as a body of teaching is subordinated to my personal experience of faith. What do you say to people who dismiss catechesis as just head knowledge, not heart knowledge? JIP: Head knowledge is the highway to heart knowledge. But you don’t have heart knowledge without head knowledge. Truth enters the heart via the understanding. You learn what God has taught us in Scripture about himself and his ways of dealing with us, his purposes, and the great story into which he’s seeking to bring us as an active part of what he’s seeking to work out in the world. That knowledge settles in the heart, and it becomes living truth—truth that makes you want to worship. You praise God for all these wonderful things. You’ve got any number of examples of that being done in the Psalms. And that’s the wavelength on which we should all be tuned in at every generation. We

praise God for the glory of his truth and the things that he’s doing and telling us about as he does them. That’s where it has to start. And if you start at the other end and say, “My heart guides me and I want it to. I shall treat as important the things that my heart responds to,” you are going to end up with a distorted view of reality. The technical name for it is “relativism,” because you are relativizing all the things that God has taught us to yourself and your present focus and field of interest. You are ignoring the things that at the moment aren’t catching your interest, so that you’re left with very few truths that give you the sense that God is there, he loves, and he’s ready to move in and help you whenever you need help, and that’s it. There are many people in our churches for whom Christianity means no more than that. But when you compare that with the presentation of himself that God gives us in the sixtysix books of the Bible, it’s almost like two religions. The truth is that our subjectivism, as we may properly call it, has strained out of our thinking a great deal of the God-focused truth that ought to be there in our minds. If we had it in our minds, as instruction from God himself, I believe that our hearts would soon find that it was glowing in our hearts, and we are getting excited about it. If we don’t start that way, we are left with a skimpy understanding of personal religion as according to the Scriptures. Most of the key things will have been left out. And of course we treat the half-truths in our minds as if they were the whole truth. We think of ourselves as fully fashioned Christians, when

in fact we are simply bankrupt spiritually. We are not honoring and praising God the way we should, and we’re not full grown as his disciples. You both talk at great length about the center of catechesis being the gospel. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who said, “No one has to be taught to be a Pelagian.” To believe in self-salvation and trusting in oneself is sort of our default setting as human beings. But you have to be taught the gospel. The gospel is completely foreign to us by nature, and we’re certainly not going to get it from Oprah or Dr. Phil or anyone else in the culture. Is catechesis essential not just for knowing the main themes of the Bible, but really for getting to the heart of what the Bible is concerned with—namely, communicating the gospel of Christ? If we don’t have that, are we endangering future generations of not being Christian, even though they go to church? GP: Sure. Actually, one of the problems I think that has affected contemporary evangelicalism is unintended consequences of the Sunday school movement, where a person could grow up in an evangelical church and feel like they’ve gotten the Bible all their lives. But for a host of reasons, what wound up happening too often in the Sunday school movement was they would pick up pieces of Bible stories, but generally speaking were wholly disconnected from the grand story of which the gospel is the center. So you’ve got the story of Jonah, of Peter, of Mary, but these stories are all disconnected from the glorious gospel. And in some cases,

even more tragically, those Sunday school stories were presented in a way actually contrary to the message of the gospel. So you read about Jonah, but it becomes a little moral lesson at the end: “Don’t be a bad rebellious boy like Jonah.” Or you read about Mary and the bottom line is, “We must be good girls like Mary.” Unless we keep the gospel central to our catechetical efforts, we do grave danger. You talk about ritual—rituals mandated by the Scriptures— as important. What do you say to people who have a fundamental approach to their Christian life and believe that everything has to be spontaneous? “I don’t want written prayers; I don’t want external authorities. I trust what happens inside of me, not what someone tells me.” How do you answer people who resist what you’re saying about catechism? JIP: I would say, first of all, that those critics ought to review their lives and realize how much ritual there already is in their daily existence: the ritual of breakfast, the ritual of cleaning their teeth. Ritual means simply things that you do over and over again because they are good to do, they are helpful to do. What we from the mainstream Christian world want to say to people is: Can you believe that some of the things that the church has done down the centuries over and over again have been health giving in just the same way? Singing hymns, for instance. I’ve never yet met anybody who says we should never sing the same hymn twice; we should always be making up our songs as we go

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along—singing in the Spirit or something like that. I think that point makes itself. And Jesus taught us a prayer to use regularly: the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a prayer indeed that starts the mind going; there are any number of lines of meditation and reflection the Lord’s Prayer begins for us. But the verbal formula is there. And in Jesus’ own day, the Psalms were regularly used in the synagogue. Jesus never challenged that. And the Christian church has been using the same Psalms— singing and repeating them and memorizing them—all down the centuries. So then to say, when it comes to prayer, that we don’t want ever to be tied to a form of words that have been used before seems to me to be thoughtless to the point of goofy. And all of us have had the experience of forms of words becoming more and more precious as we use them over and over again. Think of the words “I love you” as between spouses, used over and over again, but the meaning deepens as the years go by. The idea that prayer to God, which is supposed to be expressing love and honor and concern for God’s glory, shouldn’t involve any repetition. It shouldn’t, in other words, become ritual. I’m sure you’ve heard many times from people, and especially in younger emerging church contexts: “Okay, fine, catechisms. But let’s not go back to these dead white northern European drafted catechisms; we need new catechisms, because the gospel is always changing, it’s always addressing new issues, and these catechisms can’t possibly 5 6 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N . O R G

convey to us what we need in our time and place today.” What would you say to that? GP: I would say, first of all, that I’m personally open to the idea of local catechisms that are culturally contextual and so on, but humility demands we confess that we’re not the first persons to ask these questions or the questions of how to make disciples. Humility demands that we look at what those who have gone before us have done in this area and look at their good work. And I think that humility would demand us to confess along the lines of what Dr. Packer mentioned earlier: that the Christians who developed some of our most noted catechisms simply knew their Bibles much better than most of us do today. I wouldn’t out of hand dismiss the idea that we could find something that would be along the lines of a more culturally appropriate way to say something. The essence of the content in which we must catechize is probably not going to change from culture to culture. That’s scripturally and biblically determined. Historical precedent will be exceedingly helpful; if we look at how others spoke meaningfully into their cultures, we’ll get great guidance how to speak into ours. We are wise to connect ourselves as much as we can to those who have gone before us. In many ways, our Nigerian students are more attached to the Heidelberg Catechism than most North American Reformed Protestants. In not too much time, it looks like there will be more Nigerian Reformed Christians than North American Reformed Christians. They have this rigor-

ous catechesis, and they see it as outreach and ministry. I wonder if it’s because the Heidelberg Catechism, for example, so richly presents a faith that is across all times and places. It’s still true that Christ is our only comfort in life and in death. It’s still true that the chief end of human beings is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. JIP: I think the Heidelberg Catechism was more successful than any other of the Reformation catechisms in locking together, uniting the truths by which Christians are called to live—basic Bible truths of the gospel—and the way to live by them; that is to say, the way to take these truths through one’s mind into one’s heart and to shape one’s life accordingly. In the sixteenth century, when the Reformation burst out all over Western Europe, there was a parallel concern for education that was an overspill of the Renaissance; and the catechisms for the most part were put together in terms of question and answer to be memorized by children in the course of their overall education. Most people today when they hear the word “catechism” think of that, if indeed they think of anything at all. They think of a question-and-answer formula children must memorize, and they say, “We’re not children; we’re beyond that. And furthermore, we have not found that memorizing is a very fruitful activity; we don’t do much of it, and we don’t want to be recalled to it.” These are two strikes against the sort of catechizing that Dr. Parrett and I are beating the drum about. The Heidelberg Catechism is obviously written for thoughtful adult believers. At every

point, it maps the road from the head to the heart and the shaping of the life that makes it the most useful of the older catechisms as a model for today. But after saying all that, I agree with what Dr. Parrett said: In principle, a new age, a new era calls for new verbalizing of the old truths in new catechetical forms of instruction. And incidentally, I want to stress that in the earliest Christian centuries, catechesis focused on adult inquirers into the faith rather than on children, and it did take the form of presentations by the catechist leading the discussion to make sure that the listeners had really learned what had been presented. I suspect at this point in history that catechesis should return to that form, rather than developing a new memorizing drill for children. It’s a view you would have to say at present is untested, but it’s a view I put forward for testing and recom-

mend in conversation and in my writing. It used to be that pastors were the main catechists. Even the Reformers, as busy as they were, saw it as part of their pastoral duties during the week and on the Lord’s Day to lead the children in catechism. Today, a lot of children grow up and never know their pastor. Their pastor is the Sunday school teacher and the youth group director, and they almost really aren’t part of the larger church. They’re in their own generationally sealed compartments. And then, on top of that, a lot of parents say, “They get whatever religious instruction they get at church or at the Christian school.” So even at home there’s a disconnect. Do you think catechism requires the involvement of pastors and parents, rather than just specialists in youth ministry? GP: I think this is another

Grudem and Driscoll/Breshears Reviews (continued from page 51) current, but they are not mostly systematics writers. I think that is a strength. The systematician works to map out the subject of theology so that the reader knows how to approach it and who is worth reading. A guide to further reading should offer systematics from the entire history of the discipline. Grudem’s list is useful, and his annotations helpful, but again he missed an opportunity. To introduce modern readers to the study of systematic theology is a noble thing. But if you forget to show theology as part of what Mortimer Adler called the “Great Conversation,” something has been lost. You must make sure that many of the names you introduce to your readers are themselves great talkers. Most systematicians are not. I don’t wish to make this sound worse than it is. In 160 pages, Grudem’s book offers much more solid content than most books on sale in a Christian bookstore. I’m just surprised that somehow this key aspect

example of perhaps unintended consequences of the Sunday school movement. It was a lay movement from beginning to end, but adopted by churches though it was initially a parachurch movement, and finally charged primarily with Christian education though it was originally an evangelism and compassion ministry. Part of this outcome was that parents and especially pastors withdrew from educational leadership in these ways. So, lay people who are volunteers on behalf of the church take over a lot of the teaching tasks for the children of the church. Parents wash their hands in too many cases; pastors wash their hands in too many cases. The pastor, who is certainly most theologically equipped, often has already decided in our era that this is just not his job, that’s somebody else’s job. And it puts us in a very sad situation today.

of the dogmatic tradition was expressed better through Mark Driscoll’s communicative intuition than through Wayne Grudem’s academic discipline. Much of this probably has more to do with the nature of publishing than with a writer’s innate ability. I can’t blame Grudem for agreeing to condense his book, and I think he is right that many will find it helpful. Yet good things were left undone. What this really points out is that there is a great need for someone to write such a book for a general audience—with Mark Driscoll’s command of narrative, combined with a strong sense of how such matters have best been arranged systematically in the past. I also might have more trust in the selection of doctrines I needed to know if I could see how each was an integral part of a whole body of doctrine.

Rick Ritchie resides in Southern California and is a longtime contributor to Modern Reformation. J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M AT I O N 5 7

The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary Fred G. Zaspel Crossway, 2010 624 pages (hardcover), $40.00 For the theologians of Old Princeton these are good days in which to be dead. Recently published is Paul Gutjhar’s biography of Charles Hodge (Oxford University Press, 2011), and Paul K. Helseth’s “Right Reason” and the Princeton Mind (P&R, 2010) has been well received. A biography of B. B. Warfield by Bradley Grundlach is forthcoming, and alongside these we now possess the subject of this review, Fred Zaspel’s systematic summary of Warfield’s theology. Zaspel has given us a great gift: he has achieved a fine compendium of Warfield’s thought that will serve as an indispensible guide to his writings. This contribution to the Princeton theologians’ renaissance is a fluent and skillful work of interpretation to be read with pleasure and profit. In Zaspel’s hands, Warfield shines as the greatest mind in the Princeton constellation, and there are numerous delightful insights that make this judgment compelling. J. Gresham Machen lamented in a letter after Warfield’s funeral that, as they carried him out, “Old Princeton went with him” (35). John DeWitt, who knew Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, and Henry B. Smith personally, was not only sure that Warfield knew a great deal more than each of them, but he was “disposed to think that he knew more than all three of them put together” (41). But the weight of this judgment is not anecdotal. What strikes the reader so clearly from Zaspel’s volume is the incredible range of Warfield’s intellectual abilities. Although his move from a New Testament appointment at Western Seminary to Hodge’s chair of Systematic Theology at Princeton was met with dismay in the biblical studies world, he never left behind his deeply exegetical frame of reference for things theological. The recurring opinion of his peers— friends and foes alike—was that Warfield held in one person a staggering breadth of learning. This viewpoint, nicely outlined in both the “Historical Context” at the beginning of the book and “Warfield in Perspective” at the conclusion, is vindi58 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

cated throughout. Zaspel organizes Warfield’s thought, culled from his vast corpus, into the traditional loci of a conservative Reformed theology. We are treated to Warfield on the following: apologetics; prolegomena; bibliology; theology proper; Christology (person and work of Christ); pneumatology; anthropology and hamartiology; soteriology; ecclesiology; and eschatology. The aim is to construct from Warfield’s occasional writings a composite systematic theology of the kind he might have written, or that is at least in keeping with his own patterns of thought. Are there highlights and lowlights along the way? The more familiar material on Warfield’s bibliology nevertheless still manages to communicate in a fresh way the sheer scale of his painstaking exegetical contribution to the doctrine of inspiration. The chapters on Christology are especially good at showing the exegetical depth of what Warfield offers, so it is here, in this area more than any other, that we touch the heart of his theology. It is a real contribution to display Warfield the Christologian so well. But the fascinating material on Warfield’s views of evolution is not crystal clear— perhaps because Warfield himself was not always clear?—and Zaspel’s suggestion that there are some unresolved conflicting ideas in Warfield on infant baptism (519) reveals, I think, more about Zaspel’s understanding of the doctrine than Warfield’s presentation. Perhaps the most useful question the reviewer of such a volume can attempt to answer is this: In providing a systematic summary, what do we gain by doing with Warfield’s thought that which Warfield himself did not attempt? Let me suggest two benefits. First, Zaspel manages to allow the reasons why Warfield did not write a systematic theology to be at the forefront of his own attempt to systematize. Zaspel is gently critical of Francis Patton’s judgment that Warfield “was less interested in the system of doctrines than in the doctrines of the system” (551), and yet he has to reckon with the fact that Warfield’s attention “was given primarily to contemporary critical thought” (553). Throughout the entire book he presents a convincing picture of Christian supernaturalism as the main driving concern animating all of Warfield’s work. His worldview was that of “a supernatural God, a supernatural redemption, accomplished by a supernatural Savior, interpreted by a supernatural revelation, and applied by the supernatural operations of his Spirit” (59). This frame of reference went hand in hand with Warfield’s “continued and vigorous assault on the naturalistic criticism of his day.” The consequence is that Warfield was really an occasional writer, an apologist who gave himself to applying biblical supernaturalism with all his might to the vast range of objections to the faith presented in his day. So, in Warfield’s case, it

would be anachronistic reinterpretation were we to see his greatness displayed in systematic overview rather than the simple fact of his being an occasional writer. We are left with the impression that one of Warfield’s greatest gifts to us is precisely that he regarded the period of time in which he was living as “critical rather than constructive” (553); he appears as a prophetic figure who wrote first and foremost to serve the churches and fellow preachers of the gospel by addressing the needs of the hour with precision and rigor. Second, what we gain in Zaspel’s volume is a biographical element embedded in the systematic summary, and the reader needs to be aware of this. If one hopes to read it in the same way as, say, Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, then a measure of frustration may lie ahead. For in attempting to read Warfield’s theology here one is continually interrupted with Warfield himself, appearing throughout in the third person and always explicitly mediating his own material. Such mediation happens, of course, in any writing; but it is less intrusive when one simply reads what an author says on a topic and enters the world of his creation, oblivious, in a sense, to his presence. This volume, however, is like reading what an author has written while the author himself is in the room, interjecting as you read. The interjection is not damaging to the text, but it can certainly be distracting. Yet at the same time the biographical element allows Zaspel to render Warfield’s theology in a chronological light one does not get in an ordinary systematics, and this has its own rewards for the Warfield aficionado. There are nice treatments, to give just two examples, of Warfield’s views on apologetics in dialogue with Kuyper and Bavinck, with reference to the fact that Warfield’s views seem to have influenced Bavinck’s later thought (79), as well as interaction with John Murray’s contention that Warfield’s Christology underwent a significant change around 1914 (274ff). Taken together, then, the constant presence of Warfield himself and the biographical refrain mean that this systematic summary will be most useful for gaining an overview of what Warfield said about a topic and how he understood its inner workings, and only secondarily useful for a thorough study of the given topic in its own right. For that we will need to turn to Warfield’s original writings themselves. And this, I imagine, is the very indication that Zaspel has achieved his purpose and that he deserves our admiration and grateful thanks. David Gibson (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is assistant minister at High Church in Hilton, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence By John Jefferson Davis IVP Academic, 2010 231 pages (paperback), $22.00 In general, American evangelicals have lost a true sense of the holiness, transcendence, and majesty of God. This is due in large part to a philosophy of public worship that appears to be focused more upon the presence of felt needs than upon the presence of God—and his divinely appointed means of grace. In an effort to reach the unchurched, well-intentioned church leaders design worship services that are informal, loud, amusing, chatty, and culturally hip. But can this trendy style of worship possibly communicate the awesome and weighty reality of the nature and redemptive work of the Triune God? In other words, have recent trends in worship placed more emphasis upon the temporal realities of this “present evil age” than upon the eternal realities of God, redemption, and the glorious age to come? In his book, Worship and the Reality of God, John Jefferson Davis helpfully addresses these and other important questions in relation to the gathered worship of God’s people. In his opening chapter, Davis writes that in order to remedy the evangelical church’s shallow view of worship—what he playfully calls “worshedutainment”—the church needs a “new ontological framework” (33). Davis explains that there are “three ontologies that are competing for shelf space in the Christian mind today.” These are “scientific materialism (the ontology of modernity)...digital virtualism (the ontology of postmodernity)...and trinitarian supernaturalism (the ontology of eternity)” (21). The first, scientific materialism, “is the ontology of the atheistic and materialistic side of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment” (21). Concerning digital virtualism, Davis explains that a person wrapped up in modern technology may “go for days at a time not noticing the natural world, since both one’s job and one’s leisure-time entertainment revolve around the center of socially constructed images, services and experiences that are the basis of the digital and information age economies” (22). Like the framework of J U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 5 9

scientific materialism, digital virtualism “places the autonomous self at the center of its universe of meanings” (22). Davis shows how these two secular constructs of reality can potentially shape the way undiscerning Christians think—and worship. Profoundly different from the first two ontologies, trinitarian supernaturalism “places the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, at the center of the universe as the ultimately and eternally real. The triune God is the central reality around which the secondary and tertiary realities of nature and virtual simulations revolve” (24). Looking through the lens of trinitarian supernaturalism, Christians will view God— along with other presently unseen eternal realities (e.g., souls, salvation, angels, Satan, judgment, heaven, and hell)—to be of more ontological weight and consequence than the trappings of this passing age (2 Cor. 4:18; 1 Cor. 7:31). Recovering this distinctively Christian ontological framework will help to restore gravitas to Christian worship. Davis rightly states that “a renewal of worship will require a deeper theology of worship, which in turn rests on a better ontology of God, of the church, and of the self” (33). Particularly helpful in chapter two is Davis’s discussion of the “personal presence of God in the ecclesia, by virtue of his covenant promises, his Word, sacraments and Spirit,” thus giving the church an “ontic weight” that is not found in mere “human organizations” (63). I would assume this includes parachurch organizations. This “ontically weighty ecclesiology” is undergirded by a “high Christology” (64). According to Davis, Christians should have a high view of the church and of her worship because Christ, the head of the church, is high and lifted up— seated at the right hand of God with all authority (Matt. 28:18). A certain gravitas, mysterium tremendum, and joyful reverence adorn Christian worship when we understand that Almighty God, through the mediation of his exalted Son and the power of the Holy Spirit, meets with his covenant people through the efficacious means of Word and Sacrament. Davis explains that God is present with his people in worship in an uncommon way—that is, different from how he is ontologically present at the kids’ soccer game or at the office. Worship on the Lord’s Day is, indeed, different from worship in all of life. God himself designed it to be so. Is this not the pattern we see in both the Old and the New Testaments (e.g., Exod. 19; Acts 2:42–43; 1 Cor. 1:18–31; 11:17–34)? Worship, therefore, is meant to be no less than the salvific in-breaking of the greater eternal realities into our lesser temporal realities through the proclamation of the gospel. Sadly, it is the lesser temporal realities that have taken center stage (pun intended) in many 60 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

of our congregations, leaving God’s people in an ongoing state of self-absorption and spiritual adolescence. Davis comments: It is essential, then, for the people of the ecclesia to have an ontology of the church “from above,” constituted by an awareness and recognition of its theanthropic, trinitarian and pneumatic character, rather than an ontology of the church “from below,” driven by functional, empirical and pragmatic categories, all of which are prone to be held captive by the impoverished doxological imagination of modernity and its consumerist and entertainment-driven concerns. (65) In chapters three and four, Davis reflects upon the impoverished state of worship and liturgy in traditional as well as in contemporary camps. He assigns part of the blame to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century iconoclasm, stating that the Protestant Reformers and Puritans were, perhaps, overzealous in their logocentricity (59, 80, 91). Davis thinks the church needs to recover a kind of medieval “doxological imagination” that encourages the use of the “visual arts as an enhancement to [the] word-oriented traditions” (91, 59). Here he reveals his Episcopal stripes (113), differing with the Reformed understanding of both the Regulative Principle of Worship and the sufficiency of Scripture. In fact, after reading Davis’s book, someone with Reformed convictions might wonder how a recovery of biblical worship is really possible if churches are free to worship in ways not prescribed in Scripture. Where are the lines to be drawn? Who determines what constitutes biblical worship? How can a normative principle of worship properly guard worship from the “imaginations and devices of men” (WCF 21.1)? Most Reformed readers will disagree with Davis’s anomalous views on theistic evolution (49–51, 65), noncessationist pneumatology (30–31, 179), and the liturgical use of symbols, images, and visual arts (59). Moreover, his lack of emphasis on the centrality and efficacy of exegetical, expository preaching will raise some eyebrows. Nevertheless, the book is teeming with brilliant and highly beneficial cultural, philosophical, and theological insights. It is truly a profitable, groundbreaking addition to the so-called worship wars debate, and thus should be read by all who long to see the recovery of God-centered worship.

Rev. Dr. Jon D. Payne is senior minister of Grace PCA in Douglasville, Georgia and author of In the Splendor of Holiness and series editor of the forthcoming Lectio Continua Expository Commentary on the New Testament.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr W. W. Norton, 2010 276 pages (hardcover), $26.95 In this book—which had its beginnings as an article in the Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”—Nicholas Carr asks how the Internet is affecting the way we think. Our use of the Internet and digital media certainly warrants serious attention. According to a statistic cited by Carr, most Americans spend at least eight and a half hours per day looking at a computer, television, or mobile phone screen (87). We need to consider what all of this screen time is doing to us because, as Marshall McLuhan observed decades ago, “The medium is the message.” The Internet is not simply an empty form that only takes on meaning depending upon the content that it is used to convey. Embedded in the form itself are assumptions about who we are and what life is all about. In Carr’s words, “As our window onto the world, and onto ourselves, a popular medium molds what we see and how we see it—and eventually, if we use it enough, it changes who we are, as individuals and as a society” (3). For this reason, we should not only be concerned about the kind of content we access through the Internet, but also about the ways in which this medium is changing the way we think and live. Carr is certainly no Luddite. In fact, he came to write this book because of his growing suspicion that his own rather extensive use of the Internet and digital media was changing him in ways he did not like. He notes that while he used to be able to sit down for lengthy periods to slowly work his way through a book, he has recently found himself to be restless and easily distracted when he tries to do so. I suspect that this is an experience with which many of us can identify. We are living in a culture of distraction, and it has an effect on us. This should be a matter of special concern for Christians, because the life of discipleship is nurtured through practices that require concentration and contemplation—practices such as listening, reading, meditating, and praying. The person who lives in the perpetually distracted state, which is

encouraged by today’s digital media, will have difficulty growing into a mature follower of Jesus Christ. Carr’s carefully researched book shows that there are neurological explanations for our weakened ability to concentrate. Numerous studies in the field of neuroscience have demonstrated that the brain is able to “reprogram” itself and change the way it functions depending on the way in which it is used. Because of this, having a short attention span is something that is shaped by our habits and behaviors. The technical term to describe this phenomenon is “neuroplasticity.” Our brains are always in a state of flux, responding to our experiences by forming synaptic connections that serve as the primary pathways for our patterns of thought and behavior. It is because of the brain’s plasticity that the media we employ to engage the world have such a shaping influence upon how our brain is “wired.” Carr explains this by contrasting our older printbased culture with our current digitally mediated culture, a culture in which images are more dominant than words. People who live in a culture where the printed word is the dominant mode of communication need to cultivate an aptitude for sustained attention. Carr writes, “As our ancestors imbued their minds with the discipline to follow a line of argument or narrative through a succession of printed pages, they became more contemplative, reflective, and imaginative” (75). For this reason, one could contend that people living in word-based cultures are more likely to see life as an opportunity to pursue that which is true, good, and beautiful. As for our current image-based culture, while it is true that people still read, the Internet and digital media foster a very different kind of reading. Carr cites numerous studies that have shown that people do not read material on a screen in the same way in which they read printed material. We devote less attention to what we read on a screen. We are less immersed in it. We scan. We browse. We multitask. Of course, there is a time and place for this less attentive kind of reading, but our technologies are making this the dominant, and in many cases exclusive, mode of reading for many people. We are losing our ability to think deeply and creatively. Our brains are running aground in “the shallows.” Our technological age is fascinated with methods and means, but it tends to neglect asking questions about ends. It is very easy for us to be captivated by a new tool without giving any consideration to where it will take us. We need to be asking questions about ends, questions such as: What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of relationships should I be cultivating? In what ways can I use a certain techJ U LY / A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 | M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N 6 1

nology to help me move in these directions? In what ways might my use of a technology actually work against this? We neglect these questions to our peril. When we use technology without giving thought to where it will take us, our assumptions about life’s priorities and meaning will be uncritically conformed to the assumptions inherent in the technologies we use. At the end of his book, Carr drives this point home with an illustration from Stanley Kubrick’s science fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey: “In the world of 2001, people have become so machinelike that the most human character turns out to be a machine. That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence” (224).

Andy Wilson is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Laconia, New Hampshire.

POINT OF CONTACT: BOOKS YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE READING

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother By Amy Chua Penguin Press, 2011 256 pages (hardcover), $25.95 No matter how Jack provoked me, I never ever struck him. When I first began babysitting him, his mother and I discussed corporal punishment, and we both agreed it wasn’t an appropriate disciplinary measure for a babysitter to use. Of course, this was before the memorable evening I caught him calmly roasting a gummy worm with his bare fingers on the gas stove where I was boiling water for pasta. Although he was only six, he knew it was wrong and I knew he knew it—only ten minutes earlier when he had been helping me pour the pasta into the pot, I had warned 62 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G

him not to put his hands near the flame. I lunged across the kitchen, snatched his hand away from the stove, and slapped it. Despite my conversation with his mother, I felt I was justified—a temporary sting was better than burned fingers, and he’d been wantonly disobedient. (For what it’s worth, his parents agreed with my actions when I told them later that evening.) When dealing with sin, our natural reaction is to revert to the law—a child breaks a rule and he’s punished; similarly, when we encounter a problem, our instinct is to create a new law (or rule) to prevent the problem. Amy Chua realized there’s a problem among the descendants of immigrant families in America today, a problem she terms “generational decline” in her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Her solution to the problem is to implement the “law” of Chinese parenting. According to Chua, the work ethic and discipline that characterize immigrant parents gradually decline upon the birth of their second-generation children, and all but disintegrates with the third, resulting in “soft, entitled” offspring who grow up “feeling that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore [are] much more likely to disobey their parents” (22). Determined to prevent this trend from manifesting itself in her daughters, Sophia and Louisa (Lulu), Chua decided to raise them “the Chinese way.” While she doesn’t strictly define “the Chinese way,” she does give a loose characterization of what it entails: no play dates or sleepovers; no participation in school plays; no complaining about not being allowed to participate in school plays; getting an A on every test; being first in every class, except gym and drama; and playing the piano and violin. It’s a formidable list but nothing in comparison to the description she gives of how she applied it. To contemporary Western eyes (even those as conservative and spare-the-rod oriented as my own), Chua’s method comes across as downright abusive. I wasn’t twenty pages into the book before I read the story of how Lulu (then three) refused to apply her chubby finger to the same key on the piano three times, and in response her mother put her outside on the doorstep (in twenty-degree weather) in nothing more than a sweater, skirt, and tights. She describes knockdown drag-out fights with both of her children, trying every trick in the book to get them to practice their piano and violin—threats, guilt-trips, name-calling, everything short of physical violence. Half-hearted attempts at birthday cards are rejected; A-minuses on tests result in dozens of practice tests being purchased and completed; and vacations are spent driving all over the East Coast in search of the most prestigious

music teachers in the country to tutor her girls. Trips to Europe are punctuated by instrument practice, until even hotel managers and restaurant owners intervene—competitions and auditions are stacked back to back, and we’re treated to measure-bymeasure notes to her daughters on how to improve their performance. All of this is recorded in unapologetic detail, punctuated by tales of her attempts to turn the family dog into a canine prodigy and incisive excursus on how the Western method of parenting falls short even on its own minimalist standards. She makes it quite clear that her husband Jed and even her own parents (who are largely responsible for her ideas on parenting) questioned her tactics and urged her in no uncertain terms to lay off. Determined not to cave and raise facile, pathetic Westerners, she plows on in the fashion of the tiger, fearlessly and recklessly, adamant that her daughters should become a credit to herself and her family. For a while, the law works. Sophia, described by her mother as having the maturity and sensitivity she herself ought to have had, patiently weathers the harsh criticisms and cutting remarks, practicing and studying with only occasional complaints and protests. Lulu, having inherited her mother’s pugilistic temperament, refuses to give in without a fight, hotly resenting her interference, and challenging her at every turn. Chua stands her ground and it pays off: the girls are praised and admired by all who meet them, and word of their musical talent quickly spreads. Sophia wins a competition and is invited to play at Carnegie Hall; Lulu becomes the protégée of a highly sought after Julliard music professor; and both girls are asked to participate in a prestigious Hungarian music festival. But each victory comes at a cost, and the battles become longer and more intense, especially with Lulu (in a violently rebellious fit, she chops off all of her own hair, refuses to go to her violin lessons, and engages her mother in public screaming matches). Over time, Chua begins to realize that the violin— which for her symbolizes excellence, refinement, and depth—has come to symbolize oppression for her daughter. She is forced to reconsider the importance of her vision for her daughter’s future, and whether or not it’s worth the price her family is beginning to pay. Things come to a screaming halt in a café in Red Square in Moscow, when Lulu threatens to smash every glass in the restaurant before she gives in to her mother’s demand that she try some caviar. At the end of her wits and patience, Chua finally gives in and tells Lulu she may give up the violin. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Online, Chua was asked what sort of relationship she currently has with her daughters. While she affirmed

that she has a wonderful relationship with both of them, she was careful to qualify her response: I certainly made mistakes and have regrets—my book is a kind of coming-of-age book (for the mom!), and the person at the beginning of the book, whose voice is reflected in the Journal excerpt, is not exactly the same person at the end of the book. In a nutshell, I get my comeuppance; much of the book is about my decision to retreat (but only partially) from the strict immigrant model. Having said that, if I had to do it all over, I would do basically the same thing, with some adjustments. At the end of the book, Chua writes that she favors the hybrid approach: “The Chinese way until the child is eighteen, to develop confidence and the value of excellence, then the Western way after that. Every individual has to find their own path” (225). But what she didn’t appear to recognize, and what is crucial for Christians to remember, is that the law does not produce righteousness. It is immaterial whether a parenting system is rooted in an established tradition, de rigueur child psychology, or a mix of both. There is no law, no method, no plan devised by the ever-innovative mind of man that can root out the laziness that desires pleasure over excellence, or the willfulness that values a roasted gummy worm over obedience. The law can cultivate external righteousness—after all, Sophia and Lulu did grow up to be intelligent, refined, and cultivated young women— but it cannot create the desire for true righteousness nor curb the sin that perverts it. Certainly the law can be edifying, which is why we’re told to bring up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4) and to not withhold the rod (or hand) of correction from disobedient little fingers (Prov. 15:22). The problem lies in the fact that within an economy of sinners, the law can only be mediated sinfully. No matter how well intentioned a parent (or babysitter) may be, eventually she will apply the law unjustly; it’s not that the law fails us but that our sin cripples us. As Christian parents who seek not only to prevent decline but also to encourage growth in children, we teach and enforce the law in light of the gospel. In this way, our ability to eschew vice is found in Christ’s righteousness through the grace of God the Father, and not by the works of our hands.

Brooke Mintun is an administrative assistant at White Horse Inn.

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Word & Sacrament Ministry

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ord and Sacrament ministry realigns the church’s

remember, experience, and rededicate ourselves. Of mission and identity from program-driven pragma- course, there is an important place for our response tism to the means of grace that Christ has ordained in the covenant, but it is just that: a response to for the creation, sustenance, and expansion of his kingdom.” what God has done and to what he has delivered to us through his means of grace. It is often said today that Christ 1. Recover the “Solas” Attracting our own converts (or gave his church an unchanging mesconsumers) is not the same thing as sage with ever-changing methods of 2. Law & Gospel making disciples of Jesus Christ. Our delivery. This assumption, however, 3. Missional & Vocational fails to reckon with the fact that in his 4. Word & Sacrament prayer for all of our churches is that Great Commission, Jesus has given they will recover their confidence in us both as inseparable aspects of a 5. Catechesis the ministry that Christ has ordained single mandate. We are bound to his 6. Confessional for the expansion of his kingdom, gathering regularly “for the apostles’ Word not only in terms of what we teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and say but also in the strategies, which our Lord identithe prayers” (Acts 2:42). This is not only the descripfies as proclamation of the gospel, the sacraments, and tion of public worship for those who are already con“teaching them to obey everything I have comverted, but the means of making and sustaining manded you.” These are therefore the marks of a disciples throughout the world. true church. Where these marks are present, Christ is exercising his saving reign. Ambassadors do not create policy, but rather they communicate it. As an embassy of grace, the church Michael S. Horton is editor-in-chief of Modern Reforis called to focus on the ministry of Word and mation. Sacrament—not only for those who are far off, but also for believers and their children. In this way, the Great Commission becomes the rule on foreign missions and also at home in the planting, nurture, and Modern Reformation is a bimonthly magazine expansion of local churches. discussing theology, apologetics, and cultural issues. Perennially tempted with “mission creep,” churches are easily drawn to pragmatism in their methods of Since 1992 we have been helping Christians “know evangelism, worship, and outreach. There are myriad what they believe and why they believe it.” We resources for personal spiritual development, yet the means of grace that Christ identifies explicitly as intentionally include voices from across the reforessential for his embassy in the world are often marmational spectrum: Anglican, Baptist, Congregaginalized or ignored. Even in public worship, human creativity (which always leads to idolatry) is often tional, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and prized over faithfulness to our Lord’s commands. Reformed. Modern Reformation is more than Instead of the means of God’s grace, preaching often collapses into moralism, baptism becomes a testimony just our name—it’s our mission. to our commitment, and the Supper becomes another opportunity for us to do something: to feel, reflect, 64 W W W. M O D E R N R E F O R M A T I O N . O R G