Westminster Magazine | Volume 2 | Issue 2

Volume 2 | Issue 2 Spring 2022

ENDURE IN GRACE

IN THIS ISSUE: A New Portrait in Machen Hall

4 | HONOR

EVERYONE William Edgar

56 | HONOR THE EMPEROR

Nathan Shannon

10 | LOVE THE

BROTHERHOOD

48 | FEAR GOD Mark Garcia

David E. Briones

PLUS

[

J.I. PACKER’S “MINISTRY OF THE WORD” REFLECTIONS ON CAMPUS MINISTRY AN INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN GIBSON

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood.

Fear God. Honor the emperor.

1 Peter 2:16-17

FROM THE PRESIDENT

I

count it a high privilege to greet you once again at the beginning of another issue of Westminster Magazine! I’m so grateful for the message, content, scholarship, and beauty that are part of each issue.

Our theme in this issue is “Enduring Grace,” from the Apostle Peter’s teaching about the Christian and authority in 1 Peter 2:13–25. In four related essays, faculty explore Peter’s four challenging imperatives from verse 17 with an eye to what those mean for us in our context today. To set the tone, I want to draw your attention to something Peter wrote earlier in the chapter.

In 1 Peter 2:9–10, the apostle says, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Mercy is a beautiful truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It suggests kindness in the face of our need, a need that we cannot meet ourselves. Marvelous mercy and enduring grace are bound together in the gospel, and they must inform our responsibility as Christians living under authorities that do not treasure them as we do.

Believers celebrate the mercy and grace of our redemption when we reflect on the persevering commitment of our God to save, to bless, and to keep his people. God’s “enduring grace” means that in the midst of ups and downs, uncertainties, challenges, heartaches, indeed, amid all the vicissitudes and blessings of life, our God is always watching over us for our eternal good and working all things for our blessing. And as we strive for the perfection Christ calls us to, we too must strive to live lives of enduring grace.

With this in mind, I’m pleased that in this edition, we reflect on the extraordinary service for Christ performed by Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. His long career as a professor at Westminster well highlights the grace of Christ via his life, teaching, and enduring ministry. I am so thankful for his example to Westminster of the themes explored in this issue.

May the steadfast grace of God characterize our lives and labors for Christ and His Kingdom. May his grace strengthen you now as you trust him who alone provides every spiritual blessing in Christ.

WESTMINSTER MAGAZINE

Volume 2 | Issue 2 | Spring 2022

Editor–in–Chief

Peter A. Lillback

Executive Editor Jerry Timmis

Editor

Josh Currie

Associate Editor

Nathan Nocchi

Contributing Editors

Abram Hammer Pierce Taylor Hibbs Jared Oliphint Joel Richards B. McLean Smith Anna Timmis

Cover Design

Jessica Hiatt

Design Assistant Jenny Picard

Layout

Angela Messinger

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Westminster Magazine is published twice annually by Westminster Theological Seminary, 2960 Church Road, Glenside, Pennsylvania 19038. No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations.

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Cover art: Michael Neher (1798–1876): The Wine Harvest in Esslingen (1849)

SPRING 2022

4

HONOR EVERYONE William Edgar

10

LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD

48

FEAR GOD

David E. Briones

Mark Garcia

56 HONOR THE EMPEROR Nathan D. Shannon

Faculty Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Westminster News and Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Alumni News and Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Faculty Interview: Jonathan Gibson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 From the Archive: Ministry of the Word Today | J.I. Packer . . . . . . . . . . 26 An Appreciation of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. | Jared Oliphint . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Jerusalem and Athens, Part 1 | Juan Carlos Martinez . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

HONOR EVERYONE Wi l lia m E d ga r

Adolf Pirsch (1858–1929): Landsknecht und Fähnrich (1883)

O

ne of the most misunderstood passages in the Synoptic Gospels is Jesus’s answer to the Pharisees and the Herodians about paying taxes: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matt. 22:15–22; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26). On one popular reading, the Lord is saying certain things belong to the civil realm, such as paying taxes, voting, and the like; others belong to the religious realm, such as attending church, tithing, and praying. It is as though believers should (often grudgingly) live in the real world where we have certain obligations, but have a higher allegiance to God’s kingdom, which is “not of this world” (John 18:36).

The implications of this view are widespread. Some things are directly connected to eternity; others are not.

Some professions are considered “full-time Christian service,” whereas others are in a support role. Making money is permissible as long as much of it is destined to the church or to missions. We talk about some people being “called,” say into the ministry, but others taking a “secular” job. Even the great Augustine dichotomizes the “two loves” as though only one is of eternal significance.

The other is valuable as far as it goes, but not ultimately important. In the City of God he says, “In the earthly city, then, temporal goods are to be used with a view to the enjoyment of earthly peace, whereas, in the heavenly City, they are used with a view to the enjoyment of eternal peace.” 1 Earthly peace is good, but heavenly peace is better.

But this view clearly misses the genius of Jesus’s reply to the snare of his critics. Whose face is on the coin?

Caesar’s. So, we owe him taxes. But where is God’s face?

Not on the other side of the coin—an absurd idea. No, his face is everywhere in the creation, including government. His image is imprinted on every realm of human endeavor, from our work to our citizenship, even to eating and drinking (1 Cor. 10:31; Eccles. 3:1–8). The problem of the sacred-secular view is that it is not grounded in a proper view of the creation. We should know better.

Sin is the problem, not the world qua creation. Indeed, the creation is not a sort of confinement, or something second best to other things. We do look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, to resurrected bodies and institutions, but the transformation in view is not a renovation against the creation itself but against the cancer of sin that has invaded it.

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Having said this, it is important to stress that God relates to the different parts of his creation in diverse ways. Accordingly, our responsibility to each aspect of our world and calling must vary, and our choices often need a great deal of wisdom. When the apostle Peter enjoins us to “honor everyone,” he does not mean that absolutely everything deserves our praise in an undifferentiated way. The context for his remarks is hardship and persecution. He warns against vengeance or vigilante justice. In this portion of his letter, he does draw attention to proper allegiance to governing authorities and to employers, in this case, “masters,” and later husbands (1 Pet. 2:12ff.), but it is not servile or blind obedience. Peter wants his readers to be alert to the best ways of behaving righteously. If we suffer, then so be it. But suffering should not be self-inflicted, nor does he tell us to seek martyrdom.

“The defense of our hope must be considerate of our interrogators, including gentleness, respect, and a good conscience. In today’s culture, there is a distinct absence of this kind of civility.”

To whom does “everyone” refer? In his classic passage on apologetics, Peter specified hostile interlocutors (3:13–17). The defense of our hope must be considerate of our interrogators, including gentleness, respect, and a good conscience. In today’s culture, there is a distinct absence of this kind of civility. Admittedly, it is hard to maintain composure and honor those we disagree with.

But it is a biblical requirement.

To honor everyone means avoiding two opposite postures. (1) Anarchy is the position that denies the legitimacy of government. It has a long history, culminating in the 19th century. Its more noble claim is “law and freedom without force.” Legendarily, however, anarchy collapses from its own excesses. The anarchy of

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the French Reign of Terror (1793–1794) was doomed to disintegrate into chaos. Many critics of anarchy point out that in its pure form it is unsustainable. But a more biblical retort is that it refuses to submit to legitimate authority, “legitimate” because ordained by God (Rom. 13:1–7). There are many kinds of anarchy. For instance, you have the “hard” anarchy of Émile Armand (1872– 1962), who recommended free love and the refusal of all moral norms. “Softer” kinds might include various forms of libertarianism, refusing to wear seat belts, opposing Roosevelt’s New Deal, and the like. One is reminded of the cowboy song “Don’t Fence Me In.” The opposite posture would be (2) acquiescence. This says that even though something may be wrong, we need to “go with the flow.” At the extreme, one can find supporters of slavery based on the misguided notion that some people are born to serve, others to rule, and that neither government nor the church has the right to dictate otherwise. However, honoring everyone does not mean accepting injustice. Of course, there are various ways to fight against injustice. But nothing encourages us to accept the status quo without question. This can get tricky because on the surface certain passages in Scripture appear to be saying just that. For example, Paul tells the Corinthians to be contented with their present condition (1 Cor. 7:17). There are certainly times when it is wise to endure our condition. But the Bible is not against reform or any kind of change. When Paul discusses slavery, he appears to say: don’t try to change your status (1 Cor. 7:20–24). But the general force of Scripture, including this passage (“if you can gain freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity,” v. 21) is to honor institutions not by laying down like a doormat, but by interacting with them in order to effect justice without anarchy. Paul exemplified this in his own life.

As we know, he appealed to Caesar rather than simply letting his adversaries go unopposed. That was his right (Acts 25:12).

In addition to understanding honor by avoiding the two postures just outlined, we can also understand it culturally. It is perhaps a bit of a cliché to say that Asian cultures are based on honor and Western ones on individual rights. This is not the place to engage in an extensive anthropological analysis of these differences.

The truth is complicated anyway. But there is something to the generality. The story goes, two older women were standing in line, one Caucasian and the other Japanese.

The Japanese woman asked the other one her age. As a Westerner, she took offense, not realizing that the Japanese woman was trying to assess her seniority in order to show the proper respect. Certainly, Asian culture, influenced by Confucianism, can exaggerate deference to the point of obsequiousness. But to this Westerner there is something refreshing about the respect for parents, the respect for the elderly, and for teachers (!) in places such as Japan and Korea. On the other hand, a healthy sense of individualism and a critical spirit (which can admittedly go awry) are virtues, as long as they are practiced with the appropriate honor.

In many ways, the cultural context of the first century is similar to ours (there are of course obvious differences). Thus, the appeal to “honor everyone” in the apostolic letters was obviously in tension with the great pressure on Christians either to rebel or to conform. It is the same today. Instead, proper respect of office-bearers is called for, without sacrificing backbone. When Ananias ordered his minions to strike Paul on the mouth, Paul immediately retorted, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall” (Acts 23:3). But then, upon learning Ananias was the High Priest, Paul stepped back with something like an apology. Leviticus 19:15 commands that there be no partial judgments. But Paul also recognized that one may never speak evil of the ruler of the people (Exod. 22:28). Here is a perfect example of proper honor without compromising on principle.

My friend Robert Kramer served for eight years in the Maryland State Legislature. Because he was “prolife,” he expected considerable pushback from the more liberal deputies. So, he decided to spend his first few months on issues where there was agreement on all sides: the environment, teenage drug abuse, and care for the elderly. When he eventually did address the question of abortion, he had rapt attention from the House. Why? Because he had honored his colleagues and refused to demonize them. At the end of his mandate, one woman told him she was still a liberal, but she was going to miss the way Kramer honored all his associates, including his opponents.

Honoring everyone might include a whole range of people, institutions, and even states of being besides government, parents, etc. No doubt, one of the most prevalent forms of refusal to “honor everyone” today is the politics of identity. For example, the contemporary refusal to accept the sex of one’s birth (gender dysphoria)

is a form of dishonoring the way we have been made. I realize this issue is fraught with complexity. To move quickly over some intricate ground, we may safely generalize that at least since Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the idea of “self-love” is no longer considered morally evil, but increasingly acceptable. We have our original identity, but it has been shaped and even corrupted by cultural forces, he said. A precursor to psychoanalysis, Rousseau favored going back into childhood to discover one’s authentic identity.2 In a long succession of iterations leading to views Rousseau would not have recognized, movements such as transgenderism argue that we may freely choose to become the opposite sex if that is our true inclination. But biblically, to honor everyone does not mean to bow before such a radical option, but to accept the way we were created.

“In a long succession of iterations leading to views Rousseau would not have recognized, movements such as transgenderism argue that we may freely choose to become the opposite sex if that is our true inclination. But biblically, to honor everyone does not mean to bow before such a radical option, but to accept the way we were created.”

This has tremendous implications, some very practical and down-to-earth. Edith Schaeffer, a heroine of mine, often complained of her finitude. Her family letters were full of protests against not being able to accomplish everything she wanted to. She was a woman

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of considerable energy, compared to most of us, but it was not enough for her. In her case, she was so compelled to reach out to others that it became frustrating to her when she could not embrace everyone. Most of us would like to accomplish half of what she did. I tremble to suggest she was not honoring her limitations. This is very difficult for all of us. A few years ago, I had a massive heart attack, which nearly sent me to the beyond. Thanks to the Lord’s kindness and to the skill of the surgeons, I am alive today. But I struggle, almost daily, with my limitations as a heart diseased person. I used to run up and down the soccer field, play numerous concerts, accept many speaking engagements, travel all over the world.

No longer. I am still learning to honor my restrictions, sent by God’s kind providence.

Jesus, of course, is the great model for proper honoring. As a young boy in the temple, though he was the Son of God, he did not, as it were, pull rank on his teachers (Luke 2:46). He honored the woman at the well despite her lower status in the eyes of society (John 4). He honored the disciples by washing their feet (John 13:1–11). In his series of sobering “woes” against the scribes and the Pharisees, he never suggested they were sub-human, nor did he tell the people to rebel against them. They should receive proper honor, because they sit on Moses’s seat—even though they themselves do not practice what they preach (Matt. 23:2–3). Most tellingly, during his trial before Pilate, he did not call down the legions of angels at his disposal but endured the cross at Pilate’s behest. Jesus shows us how to honor others, just as he shows us how to do everything else in the kingdom.

In ending, let us go back to the immediate context for the requirement to honor everyone. Peter’s guiding principle was, “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.” The distorted view he was refuting is called antinomianism. This view, widespread then as it is now, says that since my sins are forgiven, it matters little whether I go on sinning. Stated this way, it sounds fairly evident. In Romans, Peter’s colleague the apostle Paul asks rhetorically whether we should go on sinning that grace may abound. He denounces this with the strongest language (Rom. 6:1–2).

But to the Corinthians, in chapter 9 of his first letter, Paul argues rather extensively that he is free. This gives him the right to get paid, take a wife, and receive honor

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as an apostle. He is not free to go on sinning. But the issue here was of his use of power. Having established his rights as an apostle, surprisingly, he says he will not exercise those rights (1 Cor. 9:12). Why? Because freedom is balanced by obedience? No. It is because he does not want to put any obstacle before his audience. He states powerfully, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them” (v. 19). These are convicting words. He puts a higher priority on winning others than on claiming his rights.

When I perform a wedding, I often reference a wise saying: If you get into an argument, it is sometimes appropriate to think, “I’d rather be married than right!”

Does this mean agreement always trumps differences?

Not at all. Some issues are non-negotiable. But you get the idea: think first of your companionship and only second of your being right.

When Peter connects freedom with honor, he is doing the same thing. We should honor others because we are servants of others, not because of a set of rules.

“Whose face is on this coin?” Caesar’s. He should be honored. Where is God’s face? Everywhere. When we honor him, we are free to honor everyone.

1 A ugustine, The City of God, XIX, ch. 14, 459. I owe this insight to James Skillen in The Good of Politics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 54–55.

2 P eter Abbs, “The Full Revelation of the Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Birth of Deep Autobiography,” Philosophy Now, 68 (2008), https://philosophynow.org/issues/68/The_Full_Revelation _of_the_Self_Jean-Jacques_Rousseau_and_the_Birth_of_Deep _Autobiography

Rev. Dr. William Edgar (DThéol, Université de Genève) is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. He is also associate professor at the Faculté Jean Calvin.

Dr. Edgar’s primary teaching and research interest is apologetics. He has spent much of his career developing and applying the tradition of covenantal apologetics to topics such as theodicy and aesthetics. He is the author of several books including Reasons of the Heart: Recovering Christian Persuasion.

ZONDERVAN ACADEMIC AVAILABLE NOW “Scott Oliphint reminds us that while the church is looking for better apologetics, God himself is looking for better apologists."

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Drawing from the rich tradition of Reformed apologetics, The Faithful Apologist proposes a marriage between wisdom and persuasion in faith conversations. Oliphint shows that, when our faith is grounded in the triune God and his sovereignty, our attempts to defend it will grow more confident and convincing. Accessible and thoroughly rooted in Scripture, this book takes the anxiety out of apologetics by revealing that success is not measured in the number of minds we change but in our faithfulness to God, the Divine Persuader and the Faithful Apologist.

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Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909): Hip, Hip, Hurrah! (1888)

LOVE THE BROTHERHOOD: A Delightful Duty David E . Briones

Biblical Love

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n America, we tend to think that if an action such as love is an obligation, then it cannot be true or sincere love. For many, an obligation is something you don’t want to do. But is that true? Are biblical commands things that you don’t want to do, but you do them anyway?

Many also read imperatives or commands, such as “love the brotherhood,” and immediately “get to work” on fulfilling this divine obligation. But is that what we, as Christians, are called to do? Are we to hear commands and swiftly carry them out, or is there an important step we’re missing?

In this article, we will consider the command to “love the brotherhood” (1 Pet. 2:17) by considering the broader and more immediate context to help us understand imperatives in the Christian life and to avoid pulling ourselves up by our “moral bootstraps.” Instead, we will see Christ, embrace the love of God in Christ, and allow God’s Spirit to make our duty our delight.

First Peter 2:13–17 says, Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. (emphasis added throughout)

The Broader Context of “Love the Brotherhood”

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eter begins 2:13 with the verb “submit” (ὑποτάγητε). This verb, recurring in 2:18, 3:1, and 3:5, unites the material from 2:13 to 3:12. This section also has a thematic connection: relationships. Peter addresses household relationships in the first century, such as masters and slaves (2:18–20) and husbands and wives (3:1–7), as well as relationships between the church and outsiders (2:13–17 and 3:8–12).

What is fascinating about this broader context (2:13–3:12) is how Peter intentionally drops the example

of Christ in the middle of it all, forming what seems to be an inverted parallelism. . .

2:13–17: instruction for everyone 2:18–20: instruction for slaves 2:21–25: the example of Christ 3:1–7: instruction for wives (and husbands) 3:8–12: instruction for everyone1

...although the example of Christ is closely connected to the specific appeal to slaves in 2:18–20,2 and this example is worth imitating.

Peter presents our Lord as the greatest example of enduring unjust hostility and excruciating suffering on behalf of others, neither committing sin nor reviling in return (2:22–23). He did not threaten those who tortured and killed him, but instead he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly (2:24). Like a lamb led to the slaughter (Isa. 53:7), he offered himself as an acceptable sacrifice to God on behalf of our sins, in order that “we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (2:24).

The example of Christ clearly applies to church-state and husband-wife relationships, not solely that of master-slave. But is Christ simply an example to follow in 1 Peter?

Christ as Gift before Example We should heed a vital word of caution from Martin Luther: before Christians receive Christ as example, we must receive him as gift. In A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels (1521), Luther urges his readers to accept Christ “as a gift, as a present that God has given you and that is your own.” He continues, “This means that when you see or hear of Christ doing or suffering something, you do not doubt that Christ himself, with his deeds and suffering, belongs to you. On this you may depend as surely as if you had done it yourself; indeed as if you were Christ himself.” Only after you accept Christ as a gift can you then “take him as your example, giving yourself in service to your neighbor just as you see that Christ has given himself for you.”3 By the time you reach the example of Christ in chapter 2, Peter anticipates that his readers will have already accepted Christ as gift in chapter 1. He begins this letter in trinitarian fashion, calling them “elect exiles” (1:1) who are foreknown by God, set apart by the Spirit, for obedience to Christ (1:2). Our triune God is the

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source, the means, and the goal of our salvation. That is why Peter blesses our God who sovereignly “caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). Being “born again” is new creation language. As Peter later writes, “…since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1:23).

When we received Christ as gift through his word, we were newly created. We passed from death to life (John 5:24). Old things have passed away; new things have come into being (2 Cor. 5:17). Formerly, we were not God’s people, nor did we receive his mercy. But God showed mercy (Rom. 9:16). We are now “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9).

“Peter presents our Lord as the greatest example of enduring unjust hostility and excruciating suffering on behalf of others, neither committing sin nor reviling in return.”

Unsurprisingly, only after Peter drills the indicative down deep into our hearts does he turn to the imperative of Christ’s example, and the same can be said of the obligation “Love the brotherhood” (2:17).

“We love because he first loved us” Augustine famously prayed, “Lord, command what you will, but give what you command.” 4 When God commands us to “love the brotherhood,” we need to see the ways in which God has given what is necessary to fulfill that command. Two texts are especially illuminating.

The first is 1 Peter 1:8: “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory….” Initial faith in Christ must

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precede love for Christ (even though faith continues to work through love, Gal. 5:6). For Peter, being “born again” (1:3) precedes new creational love for Christ (1:8).

Or, put differently, being precedes loving.

The second text is 1 Peter 1:22: “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Being “born again” (1:23) and having your soul “purified” (or “set apart” [ἁγνίζω]) by obedience to the truth precedes the ability to love others sincerely from a pure heart.

Now, before you think the phrase “obedience to the truth” promotes works-righteousness, consider the fact that “obedience” can be understood as “faith.” Romans 10:16–17 is key: “But they have not all obeyed the gospel.

For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.’” “Obedience to the truth” is yielding to the divine summons to believe in the gospel of Christ.

We must live before we love. Or, in John’s words, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We must first receive Christ as the greatest gift of love. Only then, as Luther argued, can you “take [Christ] as your example, giving yourself in service to your neighbor just as you see that Christ has given himself for you.” Only then can we “love the brotherhood.”

The Immediate Context of “Love the Brotherhood”

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ntriguingly, this imperative appears within a section focused on the church’s relationship to the state.

Peter begins with a word many despise today: “submit” (ὑποτάγητε, 2:13). To whom? “Every human institution,” but specifically “the emperor” and “governors” (2:13–14). However, Peter elevates the Lord as supreme over these earthly powers.

Our submission to human authorities is “on account of the Lord” (διὰ τὸν κύριον, 2:13). In other words, we submit to God by submitting to them, but our ultimate allegiance is to God. As Peter and the apostles declared, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

But what does submission to them look like? For Peter, it is “doing good” (ἀγαθοποιῶν), for that is how

one receives praise rather than punishment (2:14). But the praise one receives from man is ultimately praise from God, the one who instituted these earthly powers. “For” (ὅτι), Peter continues, we carry out “the will of God” (τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ) when “by doing good [ἀγαθοποιοῦντας], we silence the ignorance of foolish men” (2:15). Notice how Peter purposely blends obedience to the “will of God” by obeying the “will” of governing officials, the purpose of which is to silence “foolish men.”

Apparently, some “foolish men” were insisting that, as Christians, they were free from the political and moral restraints of Roman law. They declared that “Jesus Christ is Lord, and Caesar is not!” They used their freedom in Christ as a cover-up for evil. To this, Peter responds in verse 16: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil but living as servants of God.” We are “free” (ἐλεύθεροι), yet “servants of God” (θεοῦ δοῦλοι); liberated, yet enslaved.

It seems contradictory, but this is precisely how Martin Luther famously defined Christian freedom in The Freedom of a Christian. “The Christian individual is a completely free lord of all, subject to none. The Christian individual is a completely dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”5 For Luther, this defines the Christian because it first and foremost defines Christ. During his earthly ministry, he was simultaneously in “the form of God” (free Lord) and “the form of a slave” (dutiful servant).

By faith, we are united to Christ and conformed to his image. We are freed from the power of sin and enslaved to God (Rom. 6:22). We are freed to serve. Or, perhaps better, we are freed to love. As Paul writes, we “were called to freedom…only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Gal. 5:13).

Freed to Love the Brotherhood, but Why?

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t seems strange to go from the relationship between church and state in 2:13–16 to the specific imperative to “love the brotherhood” in 2:17. In the former, we are dealing with the church’s relationship toward outsiders; in the latter, the church’s relationship toward insiders. The other imperatives of 2:17 have an easier time connecting to the immediate context. “Honor everyone” and “Honor the emperor” are straightforward

connections. Even “Fear God” makes sense. He is the Lord above all earthly powers, so that fearing them is fearing God. But why does Peter include “love the brotherhood”?

There are at least two reasons. The first is that the world is watching. Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Would the church’s love for one another have influenced the state’s perception of the church? Does Peter include their love for one another as the honorable conduct that leads many Gentiles to “see [their] good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Pet. 2:12)? Would this have been assumed in the “doing good” that receives their praise (2:14)? It’s difficult to say with certainty, but it seems probable. Love impacts people, even unbelievers.

“Believers have been corporately ‘born again’ by a common ‘imperishable seed,’ ‘the living and abiding word of God’…

That makes the waters of baptism thicker than blood.”

The second reason Peter includes “love the brotherhood” in this specific context is that your church family needs you. The word “brotherhood” (τὴν ἀδελφότητα) only appears twice in the NT (2:17; 5:9).6 It captures the familial nature of the church. Believers have been corporately “born again” by a common “imperishable seed,” “the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23). That makes the waters of baptism thicker than blood.

But how does this relate to the state? A parallel use of the term “brotherhood” in 4 Maccabees, a book in the Apocrypha, may illumine Peter’s use. Both 4 Maccabees and 1 Peter were concerned with faithfulness in the face of hostility (hence, the weighty example of Christ in 2:21–25). This leads one scholar to gloss “brotherhood”

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as “the family of believers called to faithful testimony in the face of hostility.”7 Peter may be alluding to the need to love one another as the state and society oppress the church. He will say more on this in 3:8–17, where he calls the church to “brotherly love” (φιλάδελφοι, 3:8) and encourages them “not to repay evil for evil” but, on the contrary, to “bless” (3:9).

The command to “love the brotherhood” has at least two purposes: to bear witness to the love of God in Christ toward outsiders and to uphold fellow believers through love as they withstand hostility from outsiders.

Freed to Love the Brotherhood, but How?

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hat is God calling his church to do in our present day? I see at least two ways this text exhorts us to love one another.

Love One Another before a Watching World In our current, politically polarized climate, we have allowed masks and vaccinations to breed hostility (even church splits!) rather than promote love. Cultural emphases have, slowly and subtly, crept into our churches, corrupting the ways we treat one another.

“Welcome one another” (Rom. 15:7) becomes “exclude one another.” “Tolerate one another in love” (Eph. 4:2) becomes “discredit one another in apathy.” “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom. 12:10) becomes “outdo one another in gaining honor.” “In humility count one another more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3) becomes “in pride count one another more insignificant than yourselves.” Our lives should exhibit the way of the cross, not the way of the world. Our delightful duty is to display Christ in our lives, not the hallmarks of our culture. For when we “love one another” as Christ has loved us, then “all people will know that [we] are [Christ’s] disciples” (John 13:34–35). But when we “hate one another,” the world won’t be able to distinguish us from unbelievers.

Love One Another against a Hostile World As much as we need to display our love before the world, we also need to love against it. Love builds up the church (Eph. 4:16). But God, who is love (1 John 4:16), remains the source of all our love. Jesus Christ, the epitome of love, who reigns “far above all rule and authority and

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power and dominion,” is the head of the church (Eph. 1:20–23; 4:15–16). We draw from his inexhaustible resources to love our Christian brothers and sisters amid hostility. The government will increasingly become more volatile toward churches and Christian institutions. The state continues to indoctrinate our children with an unabashedly liberal agenda. Unbelieving employers are irrepressibly imposing mandates contrary to one’s Christian conscience.

But none of this should surprise us. “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you” (1 John 3:13).

Why? Because you are not “of the world” but belong to the one whom the world hated first, Jesus Christ (John 15:18–19).

May our love be the very thing that defines us, whether in word or deed, as it shines before and against a world diametrically opposed to the gospel of God. 1 J oel Green, 1 Peter, THNTC (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 72; slightly adapted.

2 P aul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 194.

3 Kirsi L. Stjerna, The Annotated Luther: Word and Faith (Fortress Press, 2015), 30.

4 A lbert C. Outler (trans.), Mark Vessey (rev.), Augustine, Confessions (Barnes and Noble, 2007), 168.

5 “ The Freedom of a Christian (1520),” in The Annotated Luther Study Edition, ed. Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 488.

6 Th ough it does appear seven times in the Apocrypha (1 Macc.

12:10, 17; 4 Macc. 9:23; 10:3, 15; 13:19, 27).

7 Green, 1 Peter, 76n34.

David E. Briones (PhD, Durham) is associate professor of New Testament.

He is the author of Paul’s Financial Policy: A Socio-Theological Approach (T&T Clarrk, 2013) and is in the process of writing a commentary on Philemon (Philemon, International Theological Commentary Series; T&T Clark) and co-authoring Reading Paul: A Reformed Primer.

Preservation, Education, and Publication

The Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards at Westminster Theological Seminary was established in 2002 to facilitate the study of, and education about, the Westminster Assembly and its writings, members, and theology. As a formal research center at Westminster, the Center endeavors to contribute to the spiritual and intellectual life of Westminster Theological Seminary by equipping students and laymen with knowledge of the historical, systematic, biblical, and practical contours of the tradition of Reformed theology for which the seminary stands. Toward that end, the Center undertakes a number of specialized projects, ranging from the creation of bibliographies, the collection of relevant materials, and encouraging further research and scholarly discussion through seminars and conferences.

Follow the Craig Center on Facebook to stay up-to-date on upcoming seminars, announcements, and content related to the Westminster Assembly.

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THE CRAIG CENTER

FACULT Y UPDATES David Briones has a number of upcoming popular-level articles, including “Greco-Roman Control of the Jews,” in Tabletalk (February 2022), “God Loves through Human Love: How Grace Breeds Generosity,” at Desiring God (February 2022), and “Philemon and Forgiveness: Reconcilable Differences in Christ,” in New Horizons (forthcoming). David is also presently writing a scholarly article that engages the meaning and significance of the term “equality” in 2 Corinthians 8:13–15 in its broader context of 2 Corinthians 8–9. Additionally, David has been translating Spanish scholarly articles written on Philemon and 2 Corinthians 8:9 for the broader world of scholarship. David will also be the retreat speaker for the Calvary OPC family retreat in May 2022.

Stephen Coleman has two publications forthcoming from Crossway. The first, The Minor Prophets: Seek the Lord and Love, was co-authored with Paul R. House and will appear in the Preaching the Word commentary series. He has also contributed an essay to Ruined Sinners to Proclaim, edited by David and Jonathan Gibson.

Brandon Crowe has recently published two essays, one academic and one popular. The academic essay was published in Studies in the History of Exegesis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022) and is entitled “Reading the Acts of the Apostles with Francis Turretin: Continuity and Discontinuity.” The popular-level essay entitled “Idleness and Temptation” was published in Tabletalk in January 2022. His essay, “Both Son and Priest, Then and Now: Christology and Redemptive History in Hebrews in Light of the History of Interpretation.” appeared in the Spring issue of Westminster Theological Journal.

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John Currie began a study leave in February in order to pursue a number of writing projects. John recently spoke at The Center for Missions and Evangelism’s conference “More Salt, More Light: Church in an Age of Opportunity” on January 27, 2022.

Iain Duguid will speak at Senior Connect Day for Catawba Presbytery of the ARP on March 18.

William Edgar’s A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel is due out in June 2022 from IVP. Bill recently preached a sermon on 2 Corinthians 13:14 entitled “The Richest Blessing” for Westminster Theological Seminary’s chapel series Communion with the Triune God. Bill will introduce Dan Strange at the Gaffin Lecture, which will occur on March 23, 2022.

His lecture, “Are We Really Secular”, will appear in The Pastor and the Modern World (Westminster Seminary Press) this Spring.

David Garner recently taught a series in February at Proclamation Presbyterian Church (Bryn Mawr, PA) on the sacraments entitled “Visible Words.”

In March, Dave will deliver a special lecture at Westminster Theological Seminary entitled “‘The Son of God in Power’: Further Considerations.” Dave also has a number of upcoming publications to note. He is the co-author of A Call To Faithful Mission: The Southgate Fellowship Statement (Crossway, forthcoming) and co-editor of Word and Spirit: The Shorter Writings of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Westminster Seminary Press, forthcoming). Finally, Dave has the immense privilege of serving as the commencement speaker for the first graduating class of Santiago Theological Seminary in Santiago, Dominican Republic in July.

Jonathan Gibson’s Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship was recently released in December. Jonny’s edited volume, I Will Build My Church: Selected Writings on Church Polity, Baptism, and the Sabbath, was also released in January 2022. The Acrostic of Jesus: A Rhyming Christology for Kids (New Growth Press), co-authored with Timothy Brindle, will be released in March. Finally, Jonny’s text entitled Isaiah: Good News for the Wayward and Wandering (New Growth Press) is due out August 2022.

Jonny will also present the paper, “Theological Anthropology” at the Philadelphia Conference for Reformed Theology (Philadelphia: March 11–12; Grand Rapids: April 29).

Scott Oliphint has a recently published volume titled The Faithful Apologist: Rethinking the Role of Persuasion in Apologetics (Zondervan, 2022). In this text, Scott articulates the importance of relying on divine providence in our apologetics.

Vern Poythress has two upcoming publications with Crossway. The first is Redeeming Our Thinking about History: A God-centered Approach (March 2022), and the second, Truth, Theology, and Perspective: An Approach to Understanding Biblical Doctrine (July 2022).

Alfred Poirier recently preached at a number of local churches, including Trinity Church in Harrisburg on January 16 and Willow Grove PCA on February 6. In March, Alfred will give a seminar entitled “Preaching and Peacemaking” at Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Newark, DE, in March 2022. His lecture, “Gregory of Nazianzus: The Pastor as Physician of Souls” will be published in The Pastor and the Modern World (Westminster Seminary Press) this spring.

Todd Rester has several writing and research projects underway.

First, he is the editor of a new diglot series of Reformation and post-Reformation texts with Westminster Seminary Press. Stemming from his post-doctoral project with the European Union at Queen’s University Belfast on war and religion in early modern Europe, volume 2, Roman Catholic Politics Beyond Aquinas: Translations of Franciscans and Scotists on War and Politics in the Counter-Reformation, will be published with Routledge at the end of 2022. This is the companion to Volume 1, which will be released in spring 2022, Protestant Politics Beyond Calvin: Reformed Theologians on War in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, translated by Floris Verhaart and edited by Ian Campbell. Todd also has an article, “Comfort My People: Early Modern Protestant Approaches to Congregational Comfort and Pastoral Calling” that will be published in the Journal of Christian Studies this year. He also has forthcoming articles and translations in Modern Reformation on the Lutheran Friedrich Balduin (1575–1627), Scripture and the Augsburg Confession, and an article in Tabletalk (May 2022) on cessationism.

Chad Van Dixhoorn will take a sabbatical this 2022 Spring term and will return to teach in Fall 2022.

During this study leave, Chad will pursue a number of writing projects, as well as give the Rob Taber Lecture at Western Reformed Seminary in early April 2022. In May, Chad will teach for the OPC’s Ministerial Training Institute (MTIOPC). He has two books due to be published in the coming months: Gospel Shaped Marriage (co-authored with his wife, Emily Van Dixhoorn) and Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader’s Edition, both from Crossway.

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WESTMINSTER NEWS & EVENTS z Faith in the Public Square’s 2022 conference Christian in America: The Failures and Faithfulness of our Fathers will occur on Friday, March 18, 2022, at Bay Presbyterian Church in Bonita Springs, Florida. Many people today are asking what it means to be Christian in America, especially in light of our country’s history with slavery and racism. Have our founders left a legacy of faithfulness or failure? At this year’s Faith in the Public Square conference, we will explore these questions and more. Speakers include Peter Lillback and Harry Reeder III. Join us for Christian in America: The Failures and Faithfulness of our Fathers. For more information and tickets, please visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/faith-in-the-public-squarechristian-in-america-tickets-239303411947?aff=erelexpmlt. z Westminster Theological Seminary, in conjunction with The Center for Science and Culture, is pleased to announce the upcoming Westminster Conference on Science & Faith, which will occur in April. At this important conference, scientists and theologians will meet to explore this year’s theme: Design & Designer: The Convergence of Science & Theology. Speakers and special guests include Vern Poythress, K. Scott Oliphint, Stephen Meyer, Eric Metaxas, and many others. The conference will occur April 1–2, 2022, at Covenant Fellowship Church, Glenn Mills, Pennsylvania. For more information and tickets, please visit wtsscienceandfaith.com. z Westminster’s ninety-third commencement ceremony will occur on May 26, 2022, on Westminster’s campus.

z The 16th Annual Gaffin Lecture will occur on March 23rd, 2022. Dr. Daniel Strange (Director of Crosslands Forum, a Center for cultural engagement and missional innovation) will give a lecture entitled “Elenctics Redux: Recovering a Lost Theological Discipline.” The lecture will be hosted in person on Westminster’s campus as well as livestreamed. z The Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards recently made three new appointments. Dr. Todd Rester (PhD, Calvin Theological Seminary) will serve as the Craig Center’s curator to undertake the collection and collation of pertinent printed and manuscript materials regarding the Westminster Assembly, its members, their writings, and receptions of their work. Nathan Nocchi (PhD Student, Westminster Theological Seminary) will serve as the Craig Center’s Assistant Director, carrying out research-related activities on the Westminster Assembly, supporting the Director and Curator in the acquisition of relevant scholarly materials, and formulating project plans according to the stipulations of the Director of the Center. Nathan will also oversee student research, foster relationships with likeminded research centers, and organize seminars and conferences. Dr. John Bower (MD, ThM) will serve as Chair of the Advisory Board. John will not only provide unique insight and guidance for the expanding staff at the Craig Center but will also help establish principles for practice and outlines for strategic planning so as to situate the Craig Center as a premier research center for the Westminster Assembly. z The Craig Seminar is a formal academic seminar funded by the Craig Center. These seminars afford scholars the opportunity to present papers that relate to the theology, history, and philosophy of the Reformation and post-Reformation periods. The seminars occur on the last Thursday of each month of each semester for the 2021–2022 academic year at 4:30 PM in the Craig Room of the Montgomery Library. For more information, visit the events page on wm.wts.edu.

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I Will Build My Church

Faculty Interview: Jonathan Gibson This Winter, Westminster Magazine had the chance to sit down with Dr. Jonathan Gibson and reflect on his first five years at Westminster and his recent publications. The following interview has been lightly edited and compressed for clarity and concision.

Westminster Magazine (WM): You recently crossed the five-year mark of teaching at Westminster. What feels different to you at this point? What’s changed at the seminary culturally or even institutionally in those five years?

Jonathan Gibson (JG): Well, I think the infrastructure of Westminster has really improved in the last five years.

The lecture rooms are better equipped. . . certainly from a technological point of view there’s been some great advancements.

I think at the seminary overall, I would say I’ve seen an increased focus on training people for pastoral ministry. More guys are coming in wanting to be pastors and more are leaving feeling called to the pastoral ministry.

I think that’s really down to Dr. Oliphint when he was Dean, and Dr. Kent Hughes—they really helped rebuild the PT department and did a lot of ground work. And then the appointment of Drs. Currie, Poirier, and Edwards has really helped us solidify and strengthen that.

WM: Is there a conscious effort to make other programs, apart from pastoral theology, more pastorally oriented?

How does that work out for you in the Old Testament department?

JG: I can’t speak for other classes, but for the Old Testament department—myself, Iain, Stephen—we’ve all been pastors at different points, and came with experiences of ministry in different settings, e.g., the mission field. And I know each of us teaches very much from that perspective. . . we’re always trying to show how the text leads to certain pastoral applications, asking “How would you preach from this text?”

WM: What are you excited to see happen at the seminary over the next five years? What would you like to accomplish?

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JG: Staying focused on the main thing. Keeping the main thing the main thing. And that is training men for ministry and training women for ministry in appropriate female contexts. But staying focused on the main thing, not trying to become too big or broad, but basically staying narrow and focused on what Westminster was founded as. And that is to train people to be faithful ministers of the gospel, not just in America, but across the world.

The other thing I would say that’s really encouraged me in the last five years is that I think there’s been a renewed interest and focus on orthopraxy as much as orthodoxy. We’ve been known as a seminary for fighting battles that have to do with doctrine and the truth of the Scriptures, which were all good and necessary. But there are also battles to fight on personal piety and godliness, integrity and faithfulness in ministry and marriage. And I think those are just as important. In 1 Timothy 4:16, Paul says to Timothy, “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” And I’ve certainly seen that become a greater focus among faculty and the student body and in our classes in my time here.

WM: Do you see that as a larger area of focus now in the Presbyterian church? Has that been neglected perhaps, in Reformed churches and seminaries?

JG: I think so, yes. In evangelical and Reformed seminaries and churches I think there has been a disconnect between orthopraxy and orthodoxy at times. Charles Spurgeon famously said during the Downgrade Controversy that doctrine was the coal to fuel the fires of Christian piety. . . But I would also put it the other way around as well—the coals of Christian piety are needed to stoke the fires of orthodoxy. If you read the Pastoral Epistles, that relationship between godliness and

doctrine is a two-way relationship. People deviate from the truth because they have a seared conscience or are living an ungodly life. They don’t always start with false doctrine and get led into ungodliness. That is, of course, possible; but they also start with ungodliness and get led into false doctrine.

WM: How do we emphasize orthopraxy at a seminary where the focus can easily become simply equipping a pastor or theologian with knowledge, and not necessarily with character? How do you build that into curriculum?

JG: Well, we’ve got three C’s that we’re focusing on: Convictions, Competence, and Character. Mentoring groups are one of the new initiatives that we’re implementing, where faculty will spend an hour a week with a group of ten to twelve students. As a faculty, we’re aiming to address issues of character in this weekly slot.

For example, I did six weeks on godliness in the Pastoral Epistles in my mentoring group, where we made our way through different aspects of Paul’s focus of encouraging Timothy to be godly.

WM: On top of teaching, mentoring, your family, you’ve also published a few books in the last six months: Be Thou My Vision (Crossway), the first two installments in your Acrostic series with Timothy Brindle (New Growth Press), and I Will Build My Church, which our Westminster Seminary Press released in January. How did you manage to get that much work done in such a short period?

JG: Well, it was really due to a six-month sabbatical kindly granted by the seminary administration and board. The key thing I found most conducive for my productivity was switching off my email for six months. I redirected all my Westminster emails into another folder rather than my inbox. I could have looked at the folder if I wanted, but I chose not to. So that meant every day when I went to work on my computer, I wasn’t distracted by emails that required my urgent attention or took up my mental space unnecessarily. I was able in a very real way to apply the time-honored principle of “not sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent.” And so, by God’s grace, it was a very productive time.

WM: Be Thou My Vision seems like it’s really found an audience in Reformed circles and beyond. There’s been

a trend of retrieval of liturgy in the American church in recent years, maybe even accelerated by your earlier collection, Reformation Worship. How did this interest in liturgy originally develop for you?

JG: Yeah, liturgy is presently cool again, but my own journey happened a little differently, in two ways. In God’s providence, professional and personal experiences led me into it. In 2015, I was commissioned by my Presbytery to put together some liturgical resources for ministers. That bit of research led to me gathering together a bunch of liturgies from the Reformation era, which then formed the basis for Reformation Worship, which I edited with my friend Mark Earngey. And then the other providence was personal. In 2016, our daughter Leila died at full-term in the womb, and as Jackie and I wrestled through the deep pain of her death we very quickly became interested in [heavenly worship]. . . So Hebrews 12:22–24 became very meaningful for us, that we “have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”

It was that phrase, “the spirits of the righteous made perfect”, that really stood out for us. It gave new significance to what it meant to gather for worship on the Lord’s Day. Be Thou My Vision then came about during the COVID-19 lockdowns. During that time, I became a bit bored and disillusioned with my devotional life, and so I thought about how I could I enrich it. My liturgy for my quiet time was: pray, read, pray. That is, I’d pray a quick prayer for God to speak to me, read my Bible, and then pray some praises to God. But really, I was mainly rattling off petitions. And so I thought, is there some better way to do this? My son goes to school at a Reformed Episcopal church, and they do Mattins and Evensong.

And I started to appreciate what he experiences every day and then thought, well, why not use those kind of elements in my daily quiet time? And so that’s what led to Be Thou My Vision.

WM: So maybe that’s an interesting point to ask you about I Will Build My Church, because that is a book that is very much concerned with the distinctions between

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Presbyterians and Anglicans and Baptists, etc. What was it about Witherow that motivated you to bring these works back into print and to write the biography that’s in the book as well?

JG: . . .Well, if you read Witherow, then you’ll see why— he’s so clear, so cogent, so coherent, and so persuasive.

Witherow has dropped off the Presbyterian map in many ways in the last century, but hopefully this book will put him back on the map. I’m hoping people will see what a seminal scholar and pastor he was. When he died, one of the local newspapers said, “a prince has fallen in Presbyterian Ireland.” Hence the title I gave to the biography that I’ve written about him: A Prince of Irish Presbyterianism.

WM: There might be some dyed in the wool Presbyterians who are reading this, thinking “this would be a great present for my Reformed Baptist friend.” But is there a reason for Presbyterians, even Presbyterians

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who’ve been through a Presbyterian seminary, to pick this up?

JG: Yes. In his last chapter of The Apostolic Church Withrow laments—and this is in the mid-nineteenth century—that the policies and principles of Presbyterian governance had not been taught in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland. The pulpit, he says, had been silent on these matters, and the church was none the better for it. . . To draw an analogy: it’s not unlike the gospel—every generation needs to reaffirm the gospel. If we don’t, then it can easily become assumed. And once you go from believing the gospel to assuming the gospel, you’re only one generation away from denying the gospel. And I think that’s what happens in Presbyterian circles: the principles of Presbyterian polity, the covenant basis for baptism of children, and the Sabbath as the Lord’s Day, a day set apart for worship—they all just become assumed. And once you move from really practicing and believing such distinctives to just assuming them, then you’re really only

a generation away from denying them. And so maybe in recent decades, a generation of people have been raised in Presbyterianism that have just assumed the principles of Presbyterianism, without actually being taught them.

WM: You weren’t born into the Presbyterian church yourself. How did your own journey into the Presbyterian church affect your faith?

JG: Yes, I was raised in churches of different denominations: Anglican, congregational, Christian Brethren, Baptist, but the shift toward Presbyterianism really started when I was at Moore Theological College in Sydney. I had to do a lot of reading in church history. . . and as I did so, I started to have a greater respect for folk in church history who baptized babies, and I realized that I couldn’t really have these simplistic responses that they just didn’t take the Reformation far enough. . . And then over time, as I taught Bible overviews in different settings, I just kept seeing covenantal continuity everywhere, and I saw the movement of the Bible storyline from one of exclusion to inclusion. The way I like to say it is, “The paradigm overwhelmed me.” Also, a comment by a close friend, Paul Levy, was also very significant.

Paul had moved from being a Baptist to being a Presbyterian, and one day he said to me: “If you’re a Baptist, then as you move from the Old Testament to the New Testament, you really do go from the greater to the lesser with how God related to children. But if you’re a Presbyterian, you go from lesser to greater.” When I became a Presbyterian, I felt like I arrived home theologically. Of course, I will always be grateful for the experiences I had in other Christian denominations, but becoming Presbyterian was when I felt like my Bible clicked into place for the first time. . . I [started to] read my Bible from left to right, instead of from right to left.

WM: The inclusion of Witherow’s lecture The Sabbath is unique. When you think about recent popular books about the importance of observing the Sabbath. . . very few titles come to mind! In general, it seems like a safe generalization that the Sabbath isn’t a priority for most of the American church today. Should that change?

JG: Well, Witherow’s main argument in his lecture on the Sabbath is really an argument for the perpetuity of

the Sabbath. He argues that while the Sabbath came to its fulfillment in Christ, there is a new sign to signify the Sabbath rest that Christ brings and which also still points to the Sabbath rest yet to come. So, for Witherow, the Sabbath did not cease to exist with the coming of Christ. It just took on a new form: the Lord’s Day. The sign moved from the last day of the week to the first day of the week to demonstrate the new world order that Christ inaugurated in his first coming and which he will consummate in his second coming. In his lecture, Witherow is sensitive to redemptive history: he says the focus in the Old Testament is more on rest than worship. And the focus in the New Testament shifts to worship more than rest. You do both on the day, but his point is it takes on a new focus and form in the New. For Witherow, we need to let the most Mosaic form of the Sabbath fall away and have the Christian form of the Lord’s Day take its place. But his overall argument is that the principle of the Sabbath remains in perpetuity between both dispensations of the old and new covenants.

So that’s his central argument in his book, the perpetuity of the Sabbath. Hebrews 4 tells us that there yet remains a Sabbath for the people of God. If that is true, then there yet remains a sign of the Sabbath for the people of God. The sign of the Sabbath only becomes obsolete when the reality of the Sabbath has fully dawned.

WM: What do you think is missing for folk in the pews when we have a deficient view of the Sabbath?

JG: If we don’t observe the Lord’s Day, then I think it shows we are too earthly minded; we’ve become too focused on the things of this world and not on the things of the world to come. Of course, there are emotional and physical benefits from resting one day a week. Even secular societies know this: they don’t work seven days a week. They have a day off or two days off at the weekend.

So there are benefits from resting one day a week, but the real focus of the Sabbath and Lord’s Day is worship—the worship of the triune God. If we don’t have that focus in our lives, then it reveals that we’re too busy worshiping the things of the earth and not the God who dwells in the heavens.

The Sabbath day is a day to remind us that we’re pilgrims on this earth, and we’re on our way to the heavenly city. And when we worship on the Lord’s

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Day by faith, we join in the heavenly worship of those above: the angels and archangels, the martyrs and saints who have gone before us. They worship by sight and we by faith, but it’s the same worship service. On the Lord’s Day, the church militant on earth joins the church triumphant in heaven, and together we worship our triune God. Witherow captures this well when he says that the Sabbath “is a shadow and an earnest of the everlasting rest, which the servants of God, through the obedience and sufferings of the Lord Jesus, count upon enjoying in the presence of the angels.” So you can see how he’s really showing us how the Sabbath points us from this world to another world. And it’s a sign, a shadow of a greater reality, of the life of the world to come.

Witherow in his time was also concerned about shops opening and amusements opening on the Sabbath because he feared it would make the day just an ordinary day of the week, instead of functioning as a sign of a future heaven and heavenly rest. If we get rid of the Lord’s Day, then I think he’s right, we lose something as a society and a culture if we make Sundays just another day where you can do everything we normally do. It is, first and foremost, a day set apart for the worship of God, and that was what Witherow was aiming to preserve in his day.

WM: The theme of this issue of Westminster Magazine is “Endure in Grace.” We’re drawing on 1 Peter and asking what the Christian’s responsibilities are in an unfriendly world. As we’re talking about church governance and Sabbath observance, one response could be, is it really time to focus on what separates the church? Isn’t it right to put our differences aside and put the unity of the church first?

JG: In regard to the unity of the church, we need to keep Christ central as the only Head of his church. And so all those united to him are fellow Christians with us, no matter their denominational affiliation. The Westminster Confession of Faith is very ecumenical at this point: it says that all those who profess the truth of Christianity are Christians and members of his church along with their children (WCF 25.2). So I think that should be our starting point. As Presbyterians, we want to exhibit a catholic-spirited unity to Christians from all denominations. We have lots to learn from those outside our fold.

Hopefully I’ve shown that in my two books Reformation Worship and Be Thou My Vision.

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However, once we confess ourselves to be Christians in unity with other Christians, then we will have to work out what kind of church government structure we are willing to submit to, and how we are prepared to receive the sacrament of baptism for ourselves and our children, and how we are going to spend the first day of every week. All Christians will have to decide what they think on these matters and therefore what kind of a church they are willing to attend.

Related to this, I would point people to the first chapter of Witherow’s The Apostolic Church, where [Witherow] engages the idea that, in writing about polity, he’s talking about something peripheral and unimportant. Well, Witherow says, if we’re going to be consistent on this line of reasoning, then we’d have to say that the vast majority of Scripture is taken up with unimportant matters; the salvation passages do not comprise the vast majority of some books of Scripture. But Witherow makes the point that just because something’s not essential to salvation doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. On page 87, he uses a great analogy in shipbuilding to make his point: “In ship building, the screws and bolts that gird the ship together are insignificant, as compared with the beams of oak and masts of pine, but they contribute their full share to the safety of the vessel and the security of the passenger. So in the Christian system, every fact, great or small, that God has been pleased to insert in the Bible, is, by its very position, invested with importance, answers its end, and, though perhaps justly considered as non-essential to salvation, does not deserve to be accounted as worthless.”

So, yes, some of these issues are not essential to salvation, but they are not unimportant either—otherwise why would our good God have included them in his holy book? One way I like to think of it is like this: polity, baptism, and the Sabbath are not salvation issues for the church, but they are health issues for the church. How a church thinks about these kind of issues will reveal how healthy a church is in its life and discipleship of its members. Witherow thinks Presbyterianism is the best (albeit imperfect) expression of these important priniciples for the life of the church. I’ll end with this somewhat provocative statement by him: “There is such a thing as being a Presbyterian without being a Christian, and it is possible to be a Christian without being a Presbyterian. Depend upon it, it is best to be both.”

Now Available from "There is such a things as being a Presbyterian without being a Christian, and it is possible to be a Christian without being a Presbyterian.

Depend upon it, it is best to be both."

–Thomas Witherow Edited by Jonathan Gibson | Foreword by Sinclair Ferguson

Collecting three of Witherow's most important works on the church–The Apostolic Church, Scriptural Baptism, and The Sabbath–this book presents a cohesive, trenchant, and imitable apology for the Presbyterian tradition. Preceding the three works is A Prince of Irish Presbyterianism, a new and illuminating biography of Witherow by Jonathan Gibson.

$29.99 | 9781733627269 | Hardcover with Dust Jacket

MINISTRY OF THE WORD TODAY J a m e s I . Pa c k e r

In 1964, J.I. Packer, who served as the Warden of Latimer house at Oxford at the time, spent six weeks as a Special Lecturer here at Westminster. He gave two series of lectures during this time. The first was on English Puritanism, and the second was on the Doctrine of the Work of Christ in its development throughout the centuries. During this time, Dr. Packer was also invited to deliver a commencement address.

What follows is that commencement address, “Ministry of the Word Today.”

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n 2 Timothy 4:5, Paul summons Timothy to “make full proof” of his ministry. Other versions have “fulfill thy ministry.” The ministry in view is, of course, the ministry of the Word—the service of God and men through the service of God’s revealed truth.

Ministers of the Word are privileged and responsible men. The New Testament describes them as stewards of God’s mysteries, heralds, ambassadors for Christ, teachers in the Lord’s name. As messengers of God, they stand in the true prophetic succession, and also in the true apostolic succession, which (may I, as an Anglican, remind you!) has nothing to do with bishops, but everything to do with preaching the gospel.

The New Testament also calls ministers pastors—that is, shepherds, charged to feed and guard Christ’s flock.

How do they feed Christ’s flock? Precisely by their ministry of the Word. This point needs stressing. In Britain, and in America too, I suspect, the modern custom is to define pastoring in terms of visitation and sympathy. We say of a man, “To be sure, he’s no preacher, he can’t teach, but yet he’s a good pastor.” Scripture, however, obliges us to define pastoral care in terms of the public and private ministry of the Word of God. It is not enough to visit and show sympathy. Only as one preaches and teaches the Word is one a true pastor, feeding the flock. Only so

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does one’s ministry become a ministration of the Spirit.

Only so does the minister fulfill his calling.

Application

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eeding Christ’s sheep by ministering the Word to them involves two problems. First, there is the problem of content—for the whole counsel of God must be made known to them. Second, there is the problem of application, ethical and experiential—for the truth must be brought to bear on their lives, so that it meets them where they are to draw them closer to Christ.

Application is no rule-of-thumb affair, but a diagnostic and prescriptive science demanding as much skill as does the formulating of the truth to be applied; indeed, it is in many ways easier to grasp biblical doctrine than it is to apply it to the heart-needs of men and women.

Hence, as a Puritan once put it, the pastor must study two books, not just one. Certainly, he must know the book of Scripture—”Brethren,” said C. H. Spurgeon to his students, “if in your pastorates you are not theologians, you are just nothing at all”—but this is not enough. He must also be a master in reading the book of the human heart. He must know men no less well than he knows his Bible. “Who is sufficient for these things?” we cry. Paul gives us the answer: “Our sufficiency is of God.” Here is the burden, and the glory, of the ministry. The task seems superhuman, and impossibly demanding; yet in God’s strength it can be done.

My theme is ministry of the Word today. Was there ever a time, I wonder, when the minister’s task appeared more difficult and daunting than it does today? Here I would mention two things in particular which seem to me to raise the acutest difficulties for us: first, the disintegrated vision of evangelicals, and second, the

opposition of decadent Protestantism. Let me say a word about each.

Disintegrated Vision

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hen I speak of the disintegrated vision of evangelicals, I am not thinking of the fragmenting of churches, or the break-up of organizations, or the presence a rivalries or rogue elephants in our ranks. I have in mind a trouble deeper than any of these. I am thinking of the way in which our vision of the Christian life, the true life of the redeemed people of God, has been split and shattered, so that values which belong together are now isolated and opposed to each other, and we all appear partial and lopsided in our Christian outlook.

Look at the evangelical world, and what do you see?

Some are concerned for purity of doctrine, others for aggressive evangelism, others for personal holiness, others for an evangelical social conscience and cultural contribution. These are all proper Christian concerns; but which of us succeeds in maintaining them all, in a proper relation and balance? Who cares equally for purity of doctrine and aggressive evangelism, for personal holiness and Christian culture, for social justice and separation from the world?

We are all inclined, through the conditioning we have received in that section of the evangelical world where, humanly speaking, our roots are, to overlook and neglect some of these concerns as we prosecute others. And the authentic Reformed and biblical vision of the life of the redeemed—the vision, that is, of the purest doctrine working the profoundest all-round transformation of life, the vision of a genuinely godly humanism springing from a genuinely human godliness, the Puritan vision, Kuyper’s vision—that vision has been obscured and lost.

To say that we need to recover it is easy, but actually to do so will be hard; meanwhile, our inveterate lopsidedness makes it desperately difficult to achieve true biblical balance and breadth in our ministry of the Word.

Decadent Protestantism

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hen we must face the opposition of decadent Protestantism. Decadence is a melancholy thing, doubly so when it regards itself as progressive and demands to hold the helm and steer the ship; and

decadence, we know, has actually taken over in many, indeed most, of the older Protestant churches. Of course, this dominant outlook does not recognize itself as decadence, but such it demonstrably is, for one distinctive mark of decadence is reversion, and the reversionary tendencies of modern Protestantism are plain for all to see.

Forty years ago, Dr. J. Gresham Machen, in his invaluable Christianity and Liberalism, showed that the liberalism of his day, the liberalism which saw God as the universal Father, kind but not holy, pervasive but not fully personal, was not Christianity, but a reversion from Christianity to a type of pantheizing paganism that was in the world before Christianity came on the scene, and which in fact Christianity had displaced.

This naturalistic liberalism is still, we know, very much alive. Neo-orthodox theologians have labored for a generation to re-introduce supernatural elements of the biblical gospel into the liberal matrix, but in this they are like men running up an escalator that is constantly moving down: sooner or later their breath will give out, and they will find themselves back at the bottom. For while they work (as they do work) with a fundamentally naturalistic view of revelation and knowledge of God,

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they cannot consistently maintain a supernaturalistic view of redemption, but can only hold to any elements of Christian supernaturalism by sheer will-power, against the logic of their own systems. They have not overcome the reversionary tendencies of liberalism, but rather fallen victim to them.

“Honest to God”

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gain, in Britain, we have recently been occupied with the so-called “Honest to God debate” (now exported to America, I understand!).

The position which Bishop Robinson, in his somewhat bumbling way, sketched out in Honest to God appears to be this: that the ultimate religious reality is not the living and speaking God of the Bible, but rather the story of Jesus regarded as a therapeutic symbol or myth. According to this view, Jesus’ death and resurrection, regarded as historical events, have no ultimate saving significance, and the resurrection is indeed historically doubtful.

Now, what is this professedly “radical,” avant-garde, super-modern teaching but a return in principle to that pagan Gnosticism of which the Christian church washed its hands in the second century A.D.?

“Scripture, however, obliges us to define pastoral care in terms of the public and private ministry of the Word of God.” Again, what is the modern spirit of ecumenical inclusivism, with its relativizing of doctrinal differences about salvation and grace, its welcoming attitude to Eastern Orthodoxy, its readiness to flirt with Rome, but a reversion to the doctrinal immaturity which almost ruined the church in the days of Arianism, when most Christians could not see that clear doctrine about the person and place of the Lord Jesus Christ mattered at all, one way or the other?

Here are some of the phenomena of contemporary Protestant decadence. They are pervasive and perplexing;

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they infect men’s minds, as a kind of theological smog; and in this tainted atmosphere clear and faithful ministry of the Word becomes more than ordinarily difficult.

Yet the principles relating to our ministry remain unchanged. On the one hand, where the Word of God is faithfully expounded and applied the promise is that life will follow: the Word will not return to God void. On the other hand, where this ministry of the Word fails neither the individual nor the world as a whole has any hope whatever. The issue is as stark as that. The first need of this age, as of every age, is faithful ministry of the Word of God. And if we who are called to this ministry are to sustain it faithfully and fruitfully, to the glory of God and the good of men, there are two necessities which we must bring to it: first, faith in a God who speaks; second, faith in the adequacy of the gospel. This is a further unchanging principle. Let me elaborate it a little.

I said there must be faith in a God who speaks. I hope that form of words did not suggest to you that I was lurching into Barthianism! What I have in mind here is actually the biblical corrective to Barthianism. Let me explain.

God Has Spoken

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he basis of evangelical faith and theology is the conviction that, as the opening sentence of Hebrews puts it, God has spoken. He has accommodated himself to human language in order to convey his thoughts to our minds. He has talked—talked through the lips of prophets, and apostles, and his Son; talked in and through the written words of Holy Scripture. It is to this process of divine talking in history that the word “inspiration” points.

Scripture exhibits more than one type of inspiration.

There is the dualistic inspiration of the prophet delivering a message which he knows to have been given him from without. There is the lyric inspiration of the psalmist, responding to God in exalted accents of praise, and prayer, and meditation. There is the organic inspiration of the prose writers of Scripture, the historians and teachers, whose own thoughts were fused with God’s without their mental processes being altered or heightened in any psychologically distinctive way. Yet the fact of inspiration—the fact that in each case the human word is also, and equally, and indeed primarily, a divine word, the fact that what Scripture says, God says—remains constant.

Thus, Holy Scripture is more than a human record of revelation in history; it is itself a divine revelation in writing. God has spoken, and the Bible is his Word. This we maintain against all modern views which substitute private revelation by existential encounter for public revelation by once-for-all inspired writing, and on this basis claim liberty to deviate from what is written.

God Speaks Still

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ut this is not all that has to be said. On this basis, and with equal emphasis, we must now go on to insist that God speaks still. What he has said, he continues to say. The instruction which he gave oncefor-all, in application to the original recipients of the biblical books, he gives afresh in application to each subsequent reader, and generation of readers. The biblical Word of God is a message—a message addressed to us in our day no less directly than it was addressed to those for whose instruction the sixty-six books of Scripture were written long ago.

There will be no dispute that, regarded as a human product, Holy Scripture has the nature of preaching, in the sense that it was all written for the purpose for which sermons are preached — namely, to instruct and edify. The biblical books, we may say, were written ad hominem, to man, to help him know and serve his Maker; they were written ad peccatorem, to the sinner, to tell him of his need and of God’s grace; they were written ad credentem, to the believer, to nourish his faith and devotion and obedience. What we must now grasp, however, is that what is true of Scripture from the standpoint of its human character is no less true from the standpoint of its divine character. Whether for purposes of devotion, or theology, or ministry, it is both right and fruitful to think of Holy Scripture as God’s sermon, which he is even now preaching to us who approach his Word.

Let Scripture Talk

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he position can be illustrated from another mode of instruction. Reading Scripture, or hearing it read, is like joining God’s seminar. In a seminar, a group of students will go to a tutor, one will take and read a written essay, and then the tutor will comment on it in the presence of the group. If he is a wise instructor, he will so angle and adapt his comments that they

will contain an application to everybody present. Thus, all learn by overhearing words addressed in the first instance to the essayist. So, with us when we read the Bible. We overhear God talking to Abraham, to Moses, to Israel, to the Jews of Christ’s day, to the Roman and Corinthian churches, and so forth, and the Holy Spirit enables us to apply his words to ourselves in our own situation and so to see, from what he said to them, what he now has to say to us. Similarly, by watching how he dealt with men in Bible times, we learn the principles of his dealing with us. And in this way, we come to know him and have fellowship with him through his Word.

It is vital that we understand this, if we would effectively preach God’s Word. For this is the essential idea of Christian preaching—to take a text from Scripture and let it talk, delivering its own message in application to the hearers. Nor is there any divine authority, or liberty, or power, in preaching, nor any warrant to expect blessing, save when the preacher is clear that he is doing no more than explaining and applying the Word of God, thus seeking simply to be the mouthpiece Whereby God himself addresses his people. This is why faith in a God who speaks is basic to effective ministry of the Word, today as in every age.

Adequacy of the Gospel

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he second requirement for such ministry is faith in the adequacy of the gospel. On this, too, we must dwell for a moment.

In the true apostolic succession, which is the true prophetic succession, we are shut up to the rule which Paul imposed on himself when he went to Corinth—”I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2). By this Paul does not mean, of course, that he never preached any truth but the atonement; what he means is that, in all his preaching of the whole counsel of God, he kept the cross at the center, and never let his hearers lose sight of the hill called Calvary. We must learn to do as he did, if we would see fruit in our ministry.

The wisest thing I ever heard said was a remark by an old clergyman which, as it seemed to me, summed up the whole of Christianity in two clauses and fourteen words!

The remark was this: “God is sovereign in all things, and all problems find their solution at Calvary.” I have lived with that dictum for years, and I have not exhausted

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its meaning yet. It is the star by which I seek to steer in my ministry, and I commend it to you as a guiding star for yours. To see that in a world governed by a sovereign God all spiritual problems—all problems, that is, concerning man’s relation to God, and God’s to man— must be solved at the foot of the cross is the beginning of ministerial wisdom. Let me illustrate from some of the commonest kinds of spiritual problems.

There are some whose basic trouble is lack of assurance as to the reality of their peace with God. We can only help them by pointing them to Calvary, where Jesus “made peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20) and teaching them what it means to trust and glory in the cross.

Point to the Cross

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here are others who need to realize—in trouble or loneliness or special personal difficulty, perhaps—the reality of God’s love for them. “He doesn’t seem to care,” is their complaint. We can only help them as we remind them that “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8), and as we teach them to measure God’s love to them by Calvary.

Some need reassurance concerning the sufficiency of God as they face costly choices and decisions. “Yes,” they say, “I know this is the way God would have me go; but dare I take it? It will be hard; it will be lonely; it involves risk. Can I trust God to uphold me and provide for me?”

We can only help these people by pointing them to the cross and to Paul’s reasoning about it—“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?… in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Rom. 8:32, 37).

Some seek to evade moral challenges. How can we help them? Only, in the last analysis, by making them feel the force of Paul’s argument in II Corinthians 5:14 f. — “The love of Christ constraineth us… he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”

Others, again, are troubled with besetting sins; they, too, must be taken back to Calvary, to learn both that there they were bought with a price, to glorify God in their body (I Cor. 6:20) , and also that “our old man is crucified with him… that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:6).

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And so, we might go on with our demonstration that spiritual problems get settled at Calvary alone, or else not at all.

Spiritual Solution

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et us see to it, then, that the message which we preach to men as the solution to their deepest problems is the apostolic message of the cross— “all problems find their solution at Calvary.” And let us not be hasty to exchange it for fashionable techniques of so-called pastoral psychology which rest on a secular analysis of human nature, and which, when used, have the effect of leading men and women out of sight of the cross, and teaching them to look elsewhere for the healing of their souls. I am not saying that pastoral psychology, as a study, is a complete waste of time, but I am saying that spiritual needs cannot be met by the counseling techniques of a naturalistic psychiatry, and woe betide us—and our people!—if we ministers go astray at this point.

What I am really pleading for in all this is a new Puritanism. That, of course, is a question-begging phrase which might mean many things; what I mean by it, however, is this. We need ministers, and churches, that combine strong faith in Scripture as the living Word of the living God with an equally strong faith in the adequacy of the gospel of the cross to bring life, and joy, and peace, and edifying, and victory, to needy sinners. We need a ministry of the Word that has both breadth and depth, that is both doctrinal and practical, evangelical and experiential. We need, in other words, what the Puritans actually had. May each generation of Westminster men catch the true Puritan spirit, and so “fulfill their ministry” to the glory of the God of truth and the blessing of those whom they serve in the gospel in these difficult and dangerous days.

J. I. Packer (PhD, University of Oxford) was a wellknown and prodigiously important theologian and scholar in the twenty-first century. He taught theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and wrote a number of influential theology texts including Knowing God. His theology strongly displayed Calvinistic and orthodox features.

ALUMNI NEWS & UPDATES For this issue we asked alumni to share updates along with a favorite memory of their time at Westminster. We want to hear more from our alumni family. If you have a piece of news or a Westminster story you’d like to share, please send us an email. You can reach Joel, our alumni associate, at jrichards@wts.edu.

Arthur Ames (1960) wrote, “My favorite memory: when another couple along with my wife and I put on our Halloween costumes and rang the bell at Cornelius Van Til’s home. He and his wife were thrilled to see us and invited us in. They rushed into their kitchen pantry grabbing anything they could and treated us to oranges and candy bars.” ______ William Edgar (1969) shared, “One memory is walking around with professor Murray when a dog approached us. ‘You seem nice but not very dogmatic,’ Murray exclaimed. There was something beguiling in his simple sense of humor. He seemed free from the jaded jest practiced by the rest of us.

Speaking of which, Dr. E. J. Young told us he had met Keil and Delitzsch. One of the students opened his desk drawer and showed him his two pet turtles: Keil and Delitzsch. Almost childlike delight characterized the great scholar.”

Note: Westminster Magazine is grateful to William and Barbara Edgar for permission to use their photograph of the Gaffins on page 41. ______ Stanley Gale (1985) recently published his book Re:Velation: Seeing Jesus, Seeing Self, Standing Firm with Reformation Heritage. Copies are available at wtsbooks.com and wherever Reformation Heritage books are sold. ______ John J. Hughes (1973) shared a photograph of O. Palmer Robertson and Jack Miller, circa 1979 (see

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opposite page). John wrote, “I believe this was taken on campus, not sure by whom. I got the photo from Mike Graham, whose biography of Jack called Cheer Up! we recently published [at P&R]. . . Palmer, age 84, is still active and productively focused on writing. We are about to publish the first volume of a NT biblical theology trilogy he is working on. I love the smiles on Jack’s and Palmer’s faces in the photo, not to mention the absolutely horrendous 70s clothes and the ‘big hair’!”

My three years at WTS (1970–73) were the most spiritually and intellectually formative years of my life, thanks to the teaching and lives of godly men like Palmer, Jack, John Frame, Dick Gaffin, Cornelius Van Til, Ed Clowney, Jay Adams, Bob Strimple, John Skilton, Ray Dillard, Norman Shepherd, Clare Davis, Paul Woolley, and others. The combination of profound intellect and deep spirituality among WTS professors is, in my mind, a hallmark of the school. ______ Dr. Willie L. James, Jr. (2008) sent in this anecdote: “One of my favorite theological and practical life-changing moments at Westminster was when I asked Dr. Scott Oliphint, if he had to preach or teach one last message in his lifetime to the nations, what would it be? And he replied, ‘The exclusiveness of Christ.’ Even though I came to Westminster knowing that Christ is exclusive, as it relates to our salvation, when he replied to this being his last message, I realized just how vital and crucial Christ was and is. His reply has taken my life and ministry to a deeper level. As you know, in the 21st century, there has been an all-out attack on the exclusiveness of Christ, so I did five-message sermon series on the Holy Trinity, as it relates to the exclusiveness of Christ’s divinity as the Eternal Son of God. ______ Scott Limkeman (M.Div. 2017) wrote, “Some of my favorite memories from Westminster were when different artistic performances or screenings were put on by the

school or by those associated with the school. Dr. Edgar’s piano performances were one highlight. I also enjoyed one occasion when one of the student associations did a screening of the movie Silence, with Makoto Fujimura attending for a follow up Q&A. It was great to have other people from the surrounding community involved with Westminster on some level who wouldn’t usually be, and I appreciated the opportunity to explore the arts in the context of the mission of the seminary to give glory to God in all of life.”

Brian Nolder (1997) wrote that he may be the only person who’s ever gotten engaged in Van Til Hall. Brian promised more details to come. . . Brian, if you’re reading this, we’d love to hear more! ______ Richard Smith (1996) recently published Such a Mind as This: A Biblical-Theological Study of Thinking in the Old Testament, available now through Wipf and Stock.

O. Palmer Robertson (L) and Jack Miller (R), c. 1979. Photo courtesy of John Hughes.

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Allison Hill-Edgar: Portrait of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (2021)

A LEGACY OF ENDURING GRACE: An Appreciation of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

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ne of the first things prospective students do at Westminster is take a tour of the portraits in Machen Hall. These portraits memorialize some of our most influential, world-renowned faculty: J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, and John Murray, to name just a few. The men in these portraits represent the core of Westminster through their academic rigor, their service to the church, and their leadership within the Reformed world and beyond. So, it should surprise no one familiar with Westminster that beginning in 2022, visitors to Machen Hall will find a new portrait hanging on the wood paneled walls of Machen Hall— that of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. There couldn’t be a more fitting time to unveil this portrait. In 2022, readers will be treated to not one, but two new volumes by Dr. Gaffin: this spring, Crossway will publish the highly-anticipated In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul, which painstakingly crafts his well-known course on Acts and Paul into book form, and later in the year, Westminster Seminary Press will release a definitive collection of his shorter writings, Word & Spirit, edited by David B. Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters. Finally, Westminster will award an annual Richard B. Gaffin Jr. PhD Scholarship & Stipend that provides complete tuition coverage as well as a competitive stipend to allow recipients the opportunity for singular focus on developing their expertise in the footsteps of Dr. Gaffin. Learning in-residence on our Glenside campus, Gaffin scholars work alongside expert faculty in both research and teaching in their field.

Many readers of this magazine will know Dr. Gaffin well, from spending years with him in the classroom, a career that spanned six decades, from the 1960s through the 2010s. So, we thought it fitting to commemorate and

celebrate this decades-spanning legacy with a special appreciation in this issue of the Westminster Magazine.

We’ve asked an alumnus from each decade in which Dr. Gaffin taught to share a brief snapshot of how they were, as we sometimes say, “Gaffinized.” You will hear from Bill Edgar (1960s), Stafford Carson (1970s), Scott Oliphint (1980s), Rob Edwards (1990s), Brian Mattson (2000s), and Gray Sutanto (2010s). Plus you’ll read David Chen reflecting on Gaffin’s global influence.

Finally, if you’d like to hear from the man himself, you can also listen to Dr. Gaffin tell his own story of his life over those decades. In a recent video interview with Scott Oliphint and John Currie, Dr. Gaffin spoke for well over two hours about his recollections of his younger years, first as the son of a Westminster alumnus, his days as a student himself, his doctoral work, his role in the OPC, and many notable moments from his teaching career. You'll be able to view that video on Westminster's website soon.

We hope the pieces below serve to remind you of your own classroom experiences with Dr. Gaffin. Or to put it another way, while these efforts can never be a fully adequate tribute to our former professor, we hope they serve as a small token of appreciation for Dr. Gaffin’s life and work.

Jared Oliphint (MAR, 2005) is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas A&M, where he is studying philosophy, focusing especially on metaphysics and moral realism.

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The 1960s: William Edgar William Edgar is Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary I was twenty-two and a brand-new Christian. I came to Westminster in 1966, in large part because of its renowned professors, Cornelius Van Til, Edmund Clowney, E. J. Young, and others. I had never heard of Richard Gaffin. But he soon became one of my heroes.

The 30-year-old junior scholar taught “Greek C,” the second year of New Testament Greek. I then took his “Acts and Paul.” The course changed my life. This is no hyperbole. Up until that time I knew a bit about the book of Acts and, of course, Paul’s theology.

I thought I did! Many things stood out to me and still do. Perhaps the most memorable is the centrality of Acts 2:33: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.” The passage brings together a number of crucial themes. It is trinitarian. It signals the most important transition within the new covenant: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit for the spread of the Kingdom, made possible by the death, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ. This particularly hinges on the centrality of the resurrection, a theme which would inform all of Dr. Gaffin’s work henceforth.

The book just published [In the Fullness of Time] is an expansion and extension of this basic course. It builds on it, rather than supersedes it. Dr. Gaffin’s work opened the way for an understanding of the central role of the Holy Spirit, emanating from the risen Lord, informing our hope. I remember him teaching that usually the word “Spirit” should be capitalized. He illuminates enigmatic passages such as Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you,” and 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”

Other crucial themes emerge from Gaffin’s teaching. One of the most memorable is his aphorism for the Christian life, becoming what you are. Paul never tells you to roll up your sleeves, putting justification behind you, but he says you already have what you need, so live in consequence of it. I was once with him when he was asked by a skeptic if Christianity were true. He

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A young Richard Gaffin (L) with John Murray (C) and Gaffin’s father-in-law, E. J. Young (R), circa 1960s.

answered, “Remember what you know” (Rom. 1:18ff).

This is quintessential Van Tilian apologetics.

Over his long life, he has given the church so very much. His work called Perspectives on Pentecost is a careful study of the gifts of the Spirit. He is a defender of the Westminster Divines’ view of the sabbath. He upholds the historical Adam. He presents the ordo salutis in relation to systematic theology and vice-versa. Indeed, he moved from the New Testament department to Systematics (becoming the Charles Krahe Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology in 1999). We used to hold (ahem) “joint meetings” of our two departments, with Sinclair Ferguson, in the nose-bleed section of Veteran’s Stadium watching the Phillies. One of my proudest accomplishments is the inauguration of the Gaffin Lectures, an annual lectureship on theology, culture, and missions.

Let me mention two other “passions” of Dr. Gaffin’s.

The first is his devotion to the thought of Geerhardus Vos. In addition to his translation of Vos’s seminal works, he has brought to light his systematic theology. The shadow of Vos is omnipresent in all of his output. The second is missions. Born in China, Dr. Gaffin has participated forcefully on missions committees in his denomination, the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. My wife and I went on a memorable trip to Israel and Palestine with Jean and Dick a number of years ago. We stayed in Rishon Letzion and traveled to Jerusalem and Bethlehem every day. Dr. Gaffin, with his characteristic curiosity, wanted to explore every site and read every inscription.

His work was translated into Hebrew, Russian, and Arabic.

And, finally, let me mention Gaffin’s theologia crucis.

He battled with prostate cancer. He lost their beloved daughter Lisl to devastating cancer. And he lost his beloved Jean Young Gaffin suddenly and unexpectedly

on March 15, 2019, after 60 years of marriage. How can anyone overcome such destitutions? Only through the hope of the resurrection, so real for Dick Gaffin. Thank you, Lord, for this unique father and brother.

The 1970s: Stafford Carson Stafford Carson is principal and professor of ministry at Union Theological College in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

For a number of years during the 1970s, I had been an avid reader of the Westminster Catalogue (sometimes referred to as a prospectus in the UK). I was intrigued, not only by the content and quality of the theological education on offer at Westminster, but also by the exotic middle names of the faculty who served during the 1970s: Edmund Prosper Clowney, Robert Benson Strimple, John McElphatrick Frame, and Richard Birch Gaffin.

Clair Davis, Edmund Clowney, Harvie Conn, Moises Silva, Dick Gaffin, and George Fuller.

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“It was as though he was physically pressing his point home. . . securing it firmly, in our hearts and minds.” Gaffin’s characteristic mannerisms and passion for God’s Word were evident from the beginning of his career.

You can imagine my delight when my hopes of being a student at Westminster were fulfilled in 1978, and I was able to sit in classes taught by these men whom I had only known previously through their brief biographies in the Westminster catalogue. All my classes at Westminster were a delight, but those taught by R. B. Gaffin were particularly memorable.

Listening to Gaffin was like sipping a rich espresso.

Every drop was to be relished as it lingered on our auditory palate. All the flavors and aromas of the Bible passages under consideration were presented in a way that left us longing for more, and we emerged from his classes with our theological taste buds whetted for further delights.

The content of each class was delivered carefully and precisely, and it was clear that every word of every

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sentence had been carefully considered before it was spoken. The Bible passages were unpacked in an unhurried way, and on those occasions when he was unsure if he had really opened up the meaning of the passage for us, the biblical and theological thesaurus was ransacked so that the meaning of the passage was made as lucid and as comprehensible as possible.

Gaffin’s characteristic hand movement of pointing his index finger, with a simultaneous twist of the wrist, as he made his key points, added to the sense of precision and accuracy that he brought to his exegesis. It was as though he was physically pressing his point home with the intention of aiming it pointedly, and securing it firmly, in our hearts and minds.

Dick Gaffin’s classes were not only memorable but life-changing. I regularly shared lunch at the seminary with three other students. Three of us had been converted to Christ and nurtured in the faith in the Pentecostal tradition, but we had come to Reformed convictions with regard to soteriology. Still, we had not yet acquired the theological framework that allowed us to understand or critique the Pentecostal/charismatic theology of the Christian life from a Reformed perspective. One lunchtime, after having listened to Dick unfold his “perspectives on Pentecost,” we testified together that this exposition had simply been the best and most convincing analysis we had ever heard. From that moment, our lingering doubts were gone and the direction of our future ministries was established and confirmed.

What has lived with me through my forty years of ministry is the way Dick Gaffin modeled the task of biblical exegesis. It had as its key features a high view of Scripture as the living and abiding Word of God, a rigorous and detailed reflection on each passage in the original language, and how each passage fitted into the context of the biblical book in which it occurred. And then he would show its place within the great flow of redemptive history, which has as its goal and fulfillment the exaltation and worship of Jesus Christ, the Head and King of the church. The progressive, organic, and redemptive nature of biblical theology was clearly and beautifully set out in Dick Gaffin’s classes. There was no better preparation for pastoral and preaching ministry.

The task of providing theological education remains critical for the health and vitality of the church today.

Those of us whose lives were changed and shaped by teachers like Dick Gaffin are thankful to Almighty God

for such ministries as his, and for the opportunities we had, under his tutelage, to build solid foundations at an important stage in our lives.

The 1980s: K. Scott Oliphint K. Scott Oliphint is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary When I came to Westminster to be a student in 1981, I had only heard of Dr. Gaffin. But I had heard of him in glowing terms from Dr. Van Til, so I was anxious to learn from him. There are a number of things that stand out to me about Dr. Gaffin’s influence during those three years at Westminster. I’ll mention only three.

1. It was the end of the so-called “Shepherd Controversy”; I had Mr. Shepherd for his last class in the Fall of 1981. As a new student, I wasn’t privy to the complex details of the controversy that had been brewing for six or so years. I did know, however, who among the faculty was “for” Shepherd and who was “against” him. I was also aware that Dr. Gaffin, who was a supporter of Shepherd’s, was also a close friend of his. Mr. Shepherd had been Dr. Gaffin’s supervisor during Dr. Gaffin’s doctoral studies.

I suspect that faculty don’t always recognize how closely they are being watched by many among the student body. Students tend to be interested, not only in what their faculty teach, but in how their faculty live. I watched Dr. Gaffin through Mr. Shepherd’s final semester at Westminster, and then as he continued to teach and interact with us after Shepherd’s departure. I remember being struck with what a godly example Dr. Gaffin was. Given a prime occasion for bitterness and anger, everything I saw and heard from him was a model of what it meant to trust the Lord, even in difficulties. I remember thinking then, “I want to be like Dr. Gaffin when I grow up.”

2. When I came to Westminster as a student, I had been involved in an evangelistic ministry for around seven years. In that ministry, I would give evangelistic talks once a week and teach Bible studies routinely.

Because of that involvement, I came to Westminster thinking that I knew my Bible pretty well. It was Dr. Gaffin who, unbeknownst to him, exposed my ignorance of the Bible and, at the same time, made me anxious to know Scripture better. I had never heard of an “already/ not yet” when I came to Westminster. All I knew about

the Kingdom of God was that it was yet to come. Dr. Gaffin showed me from Scripture, in magnificent detail, the reality of the Kingdom of God now.

It was that biblical “now” of the Kingdom that was so mind-blowing and invigorating in those nascent seminary days. Dr. Gaffin would lecture repeatedly on the “eschatological nun” (nun is the Greek word translated as the English word “now”). So prevalent was this phrase that one of my student colleagues, before Dr. Gaffin entered the classroom one day, drew a picture of a Catholic nun on the blackboard, with an arrow pointing to her and the caption, “The Eschatological Nun.” Dr. Gaffin, of course, laughed with the rest of the class.

3. One of my most vivid memories of my seminary days is an appointment that I made with Dr. Gaffin just a few days before my graduation. I am quite sure he has no memory of it, because it was part of his professorial routine. I wanted to talk with him, one-on-one, to see if I could “clean up” whatever remaining questions I had before I graduated and left the seminary. I had questions

New glasses, same gestures. Gaffin’s consistency in captivating generations of students was a hallmark at Westminster for six decades.

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Over the past decades since then, I have had the privilege of calling Dr. Gaffin a colleague, a mentor, and even a friend. All of the things he taught me as a student, he continues to teach me to this day. In his humility, he treats me like a peer, though, obvious to anyone watching, I am not. He continues to show me what it is like to be both a scholar and a child of our heavenly Father. I wish it was possible to say in words the impact his ministry has had on my life. I still want to be like him when I grow up.

The 1990s: Rob Edwards Rob Edwards is assistant professor of Pastoral Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary

Gaffin surveying progress on construction of Van Til Hall.

about ecclesiology, about Bavinck (as yet untranslated) and his influence on Van Til and on Gaffin, and about pastoral ministry. I remember looking down at my watch and realizing that the appointment had gone over two hours. Typical of Dr. Gaffin, however, he acted as if he had nothing better to do than to address my jumble of theological and practical questions.

When I began to preach routinely a few years after graduating from Westminster, it struck me again how powerfully useful Dr. Gaffin’s teaching was for the pulpit. Virtually every text of every sermon had something to do with the “already/not yet” of God’s kingdom.

It became even more obvious to me how practical the “eschatological nun” actually is.

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Although Dr. Gaffin will blush at the comparison, Jesus’s parable of the hidden treasure captures the experience of many on first discovering his writings: great joy and an eager search for the entire corpus despite the cost. Some of his works are better known and more widely available, such as Resurrection and Redemption, Perspectives on Pentecost, and By Faith, Not By Sight. However, others are hidden in periodicals, such as “The Holy Spirit” and “The Usefulness of the Cross”; or preached as sermons, such as “The Great Commission.” Others remain as course notes, such as I possess and have continued to peruse throughout years in ministry.

I was an MDiv student at Westminster Theological Seminary from 1996–1999. Dr. Gaffin taught both New Testament and Systematic Theology courses during those years. It was my great gain to have him for the course on Acts and Paul, as well as two others on the Doctrine of Scripture and the Doctrine of Christ. Just prior to my final year, Sinclair Ferguson (then Professor of Systematic Theology) left the seminary to return to pastoral ministry. In the Admissions Office, someone suggested his departure might harm recruiting. Dr. Ferguson replied, “They may come for Ferguson, but they stay for Gaffin.” And I have personally benefited from staying for Gaffin. The value of his works, in my estimation, has increased more and more over my years in ministry.

One heading in Dr. Gaffin’s outline for his Acts and Paul course continues to capture my attention: Paul as Pastor-Theologian. I was glad to see this preserved as a chapter in his forthcoming book, In the Fullness of Time.

Dr. Gaffin stressed the obvious, but pressed the implications, that Paul’s writings are occasional, written not

in moments of serene reflective study but to address the present needs of the many churches for which he was anxious (2 Cor. 11:28). Theological labors that are built on the foundation of such apostles must serve the church in the same manner.

And this service, as Dr. Gaffin has unceasingly taught, must be informed by the redemptive epoch within which we minister. The age brings haste. The revelation of Christ ushers in “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). We labor “at the end of the ages” (Heb. 9:26). We proclaim the gospel “in these last days” (Heb. 1:2). Our ministry should express Paul’s urgency: “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). The revelation of Christ and the completion of his work at his first coming does not bring redemptive history to its conclusion but rather to its climax. This recognition invigorated Paul’s ministry, as it should our own, as messengers enlivened and empowered by the Holy Spirit, sent to extend the labors of the ascended Lord throughout the world (John 16:7–14; Acts 1:8). We do not stand at a distance from redemptive history but minister within its climactic epoch in which, as Jesus says, “greater works than these” are accomplished (John 14:12).

Yet Dr. Gaffin has cautioned us: this grand vision provides no grounds for a triumphalist posture in the world. This is because in this present age we are being conformed to the image of our Lord, who suffered before entering his glory. Our lives simultaneously display what is passing—“our outer self is wasting away”—as well what is imperishable—“our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). We endure “momentary affliction” as we anticipate “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17).

The pattern of death and resurrection is the path for all who would minister in Christ’s name. As Dr. Gaffin has said, “The church does indeed carry the eschatological victory of Jesus into the world, but only as it takes up the cross after him.” Servants are not above their master. We too must bear the cross, which is incorporated within our witness to the world of God’s wisdom and power, conclusively demonstrated in Christ Jesus.

Dr. Gaffin instilled this biblical-theological framework in generations of students, focusing us on the appearings of Christ as the fixed reference points for faithful ministry. Christ’s first appearing inaugurates this new era of salvation in which we serve as those who “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God . . .

manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 1:8–10). Yet we must also anticipate his second appearing, “that Day,” which will bring this present age to a close and consummate the age to come in glory (2 Tim 4:8–9).

Beyond his years of teaching, Dr. Gaffin’s life has served as an example of these great truths he holds so dear. He has not sought recognition but has been satisfied to be among us as one who serves, a follower of Christ who loves his church and points others to him as its Savior. Dr. Gaffin knows the weaknesses of this passing age. He has experienced loss. But Dr. Gaffin also knows the power of Christ’s resurrection as he shares in his sufferings, with a sure and certain hope through which he has made many disciples. May our appreciation of Dr. Gaffin display the same in our own ministries.

The 2000s: Brian G. Mattson Brian Mattson is Senior Scholar of Public Theology for the Center for Cultural Leadership.

I knew what the word “eschatology” meant: the study of the events of “the end”—the Second Coming of Christ, judgment, and new creation. What I couldn’t understand

Dick and Jean Gaffin at the Sea of Galilee during a visit to the Holy Land in 1995. Photo courtesy of Bill and Barbara Edgar.

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One of Gaffin’s most reliable pedagogical tools was an overhead projector equipped with a transparent roll. Even during his last lectures on Acts and Paul in the 2010s, Gaffin continued to eschew Powerpoint presentations, and to great effect.

in my early Westminster days was the adjectival form: eschatological. How could something in the here-andnow, in the interim period between Christ’s comings, be described as having the consummate character of the end times? To my initial bewilderment, the word was on everyone’s lips on the Glenside campus from 2001–2004, and I soon discovered that Dr. Gaffin was to blame—or credit, if you prefer. Apparently, there was a special initiation rite required before properly using this strange language: you had to be “Gaffinized” (yes, students really used that term), which occurred, I came to understand, when a student took one of his classes.

I had entered Westminster having already studied a good bit of systematic theology (Berkhof, some Hodge, the whole of Reymond), but this nomenclature was new to me. I was vaguely suspicious of this “newfangled” way of speaking, but I kept an open mind and looked forward to my initiation. In due time, it arrived.

There was no light show, no fireworks, not even a PowerPoint presentation. Just an antique overhead projector displaying a transparency laden with Greek text, Dr. Gaffin with his red marker, underlining here and circling there, calling our attention to this prepositional phrase or that adverbial participle. There was no

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high oratory; he gave no emotional appeals, nor did he tell many stories or give many illustrations. He simply plodded his way around Paul’s writings, poking, prodding, lovingly taking some concept and almost turning it over in his hands, examining it from every angle. He would slowly build to some conclusion, and then he would say it three or four times in three or four different ways with extreme precision: “Or, if I might put it still another way…”

At some point in this exercise, often on the third or fourth attempt at a conclusion, a light bulb in the mind would flicker and then burst into dazzling comprehension. Oh! Wait: you’re saying—Paul is saying—that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead as the Second and Last Adam is the beginning of the end-time general resurrection?

You’re saying—Paul is saying—that Jesus’s resurrection is his justification (declared righteous), his sanctification (dead to sin, alive to God), his adoption (“Today I have begotten you”), and his glorification (Life-giving Spirit)?

You’re saying—Paul is saying—that our redemptive benefits via Spirit-worked union with the risen Christ are the end-time benefits? In the here-and-now? How can this be?

You’re saying—Paul is saying—that if anyone is in Christ, he or she is really, truly, the “new creation” to come?

I do not exaggerate when I say it was as though I’d never read the Bible. I guess I’d always intuitively grasped the (equally important) “not yet” of the Christian life, but I had somehow missed the fullness of that extraordinary, glorious Pauline gospel announcement: “But now.” Dr. Gaffin painstakingly and powerfully showed me the eschatological character of that transition. But now—in the middle of history!—God has accomplished and fulfilled his “end time” promises of resurrection and eternal life: Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnate, has died to sin forever, nailing our sins to the cross, and is risen to eternal, glorified fellowship with his Father!

Jesus endured the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” and was raised to “dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

And we too, have died with him, have been raised with him, and are seated with him in the heavenly realms!

His justification, sanctification, sonship, and glory is our justification, sanctification, sonship, and glory.

Jesus does not take us back to the beginning, back to Eden. He takes us back to the future, not to the beginning of the first Adam’s journey, but to its telos or end.

He is the Second and Last Adam who through his death and resurrection achieved the promise of incorruptible, eternal life and fellowship with God. It is not happenstance that much later I discovered precisely these themes in the work of Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921)—so much for “newfangled”—an observation that eventually became the topic of my own Ph.D. thesis, “Restored to Our Destiny.” Bavinck scholars had never really noticed the subtle underlying covenantal (and Pauline) architecture of Bavinck’s signature motif that “grace restores and perfects nature,” but providentially, at just the right time, it caught my eye.

It caught my eye because by God’s grace Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. had given me the eyes to see. For that I am profoundly grateful.

The 2010s: N. Gray Sutanto Nathaniel Gray Sutanto is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Washington Other contributors to this issue would have noted the significant theological impact that Dr. Gaffin has had on us. Indeed, his Resurrection and Redemotion, Perspectives on Pentecost, and By Faith, Not by Sight, continue to

be works that I return to again and again. I could still hear him say it: Whatever happens to us, happened to Christ first—and whatever happened to Christ in the single act of resurrection, happens to us in two phases in conjunction with the already-and-not-yet character of redemptive history. His resurrection was his justification, sanctification, and adoption, and we, too, united in him, receive justification, sanctification, and adoption.

There is no benefitting from Christ if we remain apart from him.

I enrolled at Westminster in the years of 2013 and 2014. Dr. Gaffin was retired though still active on campus, and he would teach sections in particular classes— the doctrine of salvation, Christ, Church, or Acts and Paul, and in my case, a week of theological Dutch—but I never had the privilege of sitting through an entire semester of classes with him. Instead, my main relationship with Dr. Gaffin began as I was a member of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, and Dr. Gaffin—to my great surprise—was assigned as the elder who would be in touch with me. Humorously, my first meeting with Dr. Gaffin was at a McDonald’s on a random weekday. While deciding where to meet, he had sounded perplexed, and said, “Well, uh, there is a McDonald’s nearby. How about that?” We shared some Chicken McNuggets while talking about our backgrounds and the particular theological issues of the day. Time flies, and recently I had the joy of re-listening to some of his lectures again with my wife, Indita, and she now refers to herself as a “#Gaffan.”

More seriously, what I took away most from him was his godliness—indeed to this day as I reflected upon our time together, what stands out was how much I was struck by his consistent character. Particularly, I learned three lessons from him.

1. “Make Haste, Slowly!” This phrase continues to ring clearly in my mind. When I first mentioned it to Indita, she said “that’s a contradiction!”—and so it seemed to me the first time I had heard it. I was a first semester seminary student, enthralled by what I was learning, and anxious to get all of my ideas down on paper. He looked at me patiently as I blurted out all of the things I had hoped to accomplish and responded with this almost mysterious advice. But the more I reflect on it, the more it makes sense. Keep working daily, but be free from anxiety—run the race, but there is no need to rush. “The poor you will always have with you,” he continued to remind me, and this also applies to poor theology. We

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can rush and burn out, or work patiently knowing that good work requires time and endurance. Life is a marathon and not a sprint. Gaffin’s own publications testify to this—while few in quantity, they are polished, precise, and have a perennial ‘feel’ about them. Every line feels weighty and well-considered. Books come and go, and few stand out in memory, but all of Gaffin’s writings stand out in mine.

2. Secondly, it was from reflecting first on my time together with Dr. Gaffin that a theme, and perhaps a warning, started to come to my mind. Drawing from the Star Wars saga: As an academic or churchman gets older, you can either end up as a Jedi or a Palpatine. A Jedi does not take him or herself too seriously, delights in the successes of others, thinks of others before himself, and takes joy in the mentoring of younger students and scholars on the way. Palpatines have become embittered and curmudgeonly, still holding grudges over that one negative book review or social snub against him or her from years ago, using every young student as an opportunity to highlight their own work, and feeling threatened by another’s successes. I felt no Palpatine energy from Gaffin. As influential as he was, he never took himself too seriously. When he was discussing his conversation with N. T. Wright, instead of insisting on the many points he had said or would say, he had admitted that he was not quick on his feet, and that “If I were ever put on a debate with Greg Bahnsen, he would surely have ran circles around me.” He listened attentively and encouraged our work. There was a jovial sense of lightness around him, and despite all of the controversies he had been in during his tenure at Westminster, he never seemed battle-weary, spoke of his past interlocutors well, and always refused to draw tribal and party lines. Since then, I’ve met a few more Jedi-like figures, and Dr. Gaffin is always the first that comes to mind.

3. Thirdly, Dr. Gaffin has always reminded me, explicitly or implicitly, that theology is for the church.

It is easy to get caught up in the passing fads of the day, or to be enamoured by the prestige and promises of academia. While it is important to engage widely, this is a reminder for me that I should focus on those interests that would be beneficial for the church catholic. Writing and teaching should come out of a sense of conviction and not curiosity or vainglory. Dr. Gaffin exemplified that well. Take the subject matter of theology seriously, and never yourself.

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I continue to take these lessons to heart. They keep one grounded on reality, and Dr. Gaffin has led the way well in modeling them.

Global Influence: David Chen David Chen has served as a missionary in China since 2005 When God called me into ministry in China, he brought me to Westminster Theological Seminary for training and molding into the image of Christ. What attracted me to Westminster was the commitment to the Reformed tradition and her Confessions, and the legacy of noted servants of God such as Machen, Vos, and Van Til. However, during my fellowship with senior Chinese students on campus, I kept hearing the name “Dr. Gaffin,” and it was clear that not just his teachings, but his person had left the deepest impression on them. They speak of Dr. Gaffin’s influence on them as being “Gaffinized.” Little did I know that throughout my ministry life, I would be tremendously influenced, loved, supported, and able to serve side-by-side with Dr. Gaffin in ministry to China, and yes, I am honored to say that I’ve been “Gaffinized.”

Anyone that has learned under Dr. Gaffin will immediately be impressed by his in-depth exegetical style of teaching theology. I’ve likened listening to Dr. Gaffin’s class to a solemn and joyful symphony of God’s voice. Dr. Gaffin made sure we understood the solemness of the Word of God, as these are the words of our Creator and Sustainer. Through Dr. Gaffin’s in-depth exegesis throughout each lecture, the listener would realize he was listening to his High King, declaring the glory and truth of the Kingdom of heaven. However, one did not hear the Word of God from Dr. Gaffin in despair; but rather, the love, grace, and care of the gospel shined through it all. Dr. Gaffin made each and every word of God come alive and touch people’s hearts in a Christ-centered, gospel-driven way. His class was like the great hymn “Hallelujah.” It was awesomely solemn, deeply joyful, and the more you listened to it the more you wanted to sing along with the choir, to sing in joy and thanksgiving and spread the glory of our God to the ends of the earth.

Throughout my tutelage under Dr. Gaffin at Westminster, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that his family had ministered in China as a missionary family when

he was a child, and that Dr. Gaffin himself was born and had his early childhood in China. Dr. Gaffin would share with me his and his family’s love for the land and her people, and even after communism took over China, his family would go to Taiwan (known as “Free China” then) and continue to minister to the people there. With this sharing of the love of God for the Chinese people, God has brought us together to serve the Chinese church in amazing and powerful ways.

Ten years ago, I started an annual conference on Reformed Theology specifically to minister to Chinese church leaders in China, and by God’s grace the number grew to more than five hundred attendees per event.

God has also greatly blessed this conference with many faithful servants over the years, and Dr. Gaffin has been one of the most frequent in our cast of speakers. The persecuted church of China has held dearly to the Bible’s infallibility, inerrancy, and as the ultimate source of truth and life. Anyone that teaches in the churches in China should be expected to be asked by the locals to “show me from the Bible.” Dr. Gaffin’s style has left the deepest impression on the conference’s Chinese church leaders. Year after year, they were amazed by Dr. Gaffin’s exegesis, showing them how the Bible, as the Word of God, contains all the truths revealed in Christ and how to trust and obey the gospel and Christ alone. Every year when I promoted the conference to the church networks in China, the first question was always: “Will Dr. Gaffin be one of the speakers?” I’ve always asked them why they would specifically ask for him? The answer is universal: “we want to hear the Bible come alive.”

One year I had the privilege of inviting Dr. Gaffin to a Reformed seminary that I’ve started in China. He taught on the book of Acts. After every class, I had always fellowshipped with the students regarding the impressions left and what they had learned. The students reflected that they’d never realized how exegesis and theology can come alive in the way Dr. Gaffin had managed to demonstrate in class. For these students, hearing his lectures on the book of Acts is like experiencing the Spirit of wisdom and faith being poured on them. It gave them wisdom to understand the truth and encouragement to pursue exegesis and hermeneutics as a medium to receive the truth and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Finally, Dr. Gaffin’s person and character have left the greatest impression on the Chinese community at

Gaffin reflecting on his career at Westminster, during a recent three hour interview with K. Scott Oliphint and John Currie.

Westminster, and on the church leaders attending the conferences and the students at my seminary. Every one of us can see his genuine love, first for God and our Lord Jesus Christ, the Scriptures, and her truth, and finally for God’s people within the Chinese community.

The truths that Dr. Gaffin taught were not cold but warm; the Word of God that Dr. Gaffin spoke to us was solemn but joyful, convicting but hopeful. The churches in China are always looking for someone Christ-like to mimic; as the Apostle Paul says, “mimic me as I mimic Christ.” Dr. Gaffin’s exegetical approach, theological clarity, and most importantly the love of Christ naturally flowing out of his life and character have left a great legacy for the Chinese church at large. God has used Dr. Gaffin to continue the Gaffin family’s legacy in China, by faithfully and lovingly serving the people of God in this land at different times and in different ways.

Through Dr. Gaffin, the church of China has received the whole counsel of God faithfully exegeted, preached, and exemplified.

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A N

EXEGETICA L

OF

ACTS

A ND

ST UDY PAU L I N E

O F

T HE

BO O K

T HE O LO GY

Christians often skip a crucial point when studying the apostle Paul: the foundations of his deeply nuanced theology. Christians need a biblical, theological, and exegetically grounded framework to thoroughly understand Paul’s theology.

In the Fullness of Time gives readers an accessible introduction to Acts and Paul. Building on a lifetime of study, Richard B. Gaffin Jr. teaches on topics including the redemptivehistorical significance of Pentecost; eschatology; and the fulfillment of redemptive history in the death and resurrection of Christ.

crossway.org

“Here is a symphony of exegesis, biblical theology, and systematic reflection of the finest kind, all expressed with a melody line of deep commitment to Christ.”

—S i n c l a i r B. F e r g u s o n

WORD & SPIRIT The Selected Shorter Writings of Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

Edited by David B. Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters

COMING IN 2022 FROM

THE FEAR OF GOD Mark A . Garcia

Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886): God’s Judgment Upon Gog (c. 1851–1852)

The World That Trades in Fear

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he summer 2017 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly was dedicated to fear. “Fear,” said editor Lewis Lapham, “is America’s top-selling consumer product.”1 Lapham’s remark is disconcerting, not only because we all have fears and are uneasy with reminders of our vulnerability to them, but also because he reminds us that one person’s fear is too often another person’s opportunity. Because the fearful are desperate not to be afraid, that desperation can be taken advantage of by others, and that, too, is something we fear. The truth is that fear pays, and as human beings we have proven unable to resist anything that pays. In Scripture, we learn that trading on our fears is in fact an ancient strategy of the enemy for loosening our ties to God in order to permanently enslave us. What, then, protects the child of God from the personal vulnerabilities of fear and from the exploitation of others? It may sound ironic, but the answer to fear is fear, the fear of God. Fearing God liberates us from the fear of anyone or anything other than God. In our day, fear is not only America’s top-selling product; it is apparently our diet as well. Through social media, news outlets, and opinion pieces, we feed on fear, and we metabolize our fears into a range of debilitating expressions. Sociologists, cultural commentators, educators, and ministers have noted for years how contemporary teens and adults seem unusually shackled by fear, by apathy concerning the future, by anxieties in relationships, and by a deep-running insecurity resulting in the inability to receive formative correction. It is as though we presently inhabit a reverse image of the moral and covenantal world at work in the book of Proverbs, in which the fear of the Lord is a key theme and the fear of man is persistently warned against. In the world of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is cultivated not in isolation but through communal instruction and corrective discipline; in ordered relations in home and society; and with sober acknowledgement of the dangers as well as promises attached to industry, domestic and civil relationships, and our relationship to Torah. The fear of the Lord is thus the “beginning of wisdom,” the wisdom that takes shape in the concrete ethical contexts of one’s situated life. The well-ordered and godly life begins with the fear of the Lord as its point of departure from secular living.

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The reverse world in which we live, the one paralyzed by various fears, is of course no less concerned with ethics. In fact, for decades we have witnessed an unmistakable turn to ethics. Admittedly at the risk of oversimplification, preceding generations were focused on the foundations of knowledge and the warrant for our beliefs in things, ideas, people, and God. But in our day, the ideologies, politics, and social programs of the world at large are driven by allegedly moral concerns and commitments. This shift bears all the marks of a replacement of concerns, rather than an addition. Now, ideologies are cast in moral terms and expected to function not as the yield of truth but as truth itself. Such ideologies are even treated as the measure of claims to truth, with or without grounding in realities beyond themselves. We are surrounded by insistent messaging—framed morally— about how the world is assumed to work and how things ought to be. We are afraid of failing to recognize the social obligations others appear to see easily, of failing to “get with the program,” of seeming cold and uncaring, of not buying in. The “ought” has become the “is.” Obligation to the new ideal, to be part of the solution rather than the problem, is the new reality of things.

“In our day, fear is not only America’s top-selling product; it is apparently our diet as well.”

As is ordinarily the case, this shift is not without its shrewd instincts. Error is always parasitic on the truth.

Counterfeits work because they resemble and depend on the genuine article. And there is truth in what the world around us insists we now appreciate. I think especially of Herman Bavinck’s powerful and persuasive argument that the bonds between human beings, in the ordered relations the Creator has established among us, are not merely physiological or historical or purely voluntary, but ethical in nature—that is, that the ethical bonds of human relations have ontological status.2 The church, too, is particularly and appropriately sensitive in our day

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to the moral dimensions of human life, including gender relations, marriage and family care, racial concerns, and the uses and abuses of church power, to list only a few.

But the fears that grip our neighbors and friends in the world are not of the sort which Proverbs promises will bear life. Instead, they bear precisely the opposite. They are the fears which shackle, which pull and push and demand, and which ultimately destroy. And, again, the answer to this fear is fear of another kind entirely, the fear of the Lord.

Fear of God and Devotion to God

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roclaiming the gospel in a world where many are shuttered away in dark corners of debilitating fear requires that we make much of the life-restoring and life-advancing fear of the Lord.

In his still highly regarded work Principles of Conduct, John Murray concluded his treatment of ethics with a rousing essay on “The Fear of God.” 3 In this last chapter of the book, Murray provides a wide-ranging and enduringly valuable survey of the biblical vocabulary for the fear of the Lord, including useful treatments of common misunderstandings. But especially valuable is the way Murray identifies the fear of the Lord as the irreducible and central pulse-beat of Christian faith and life. In fact, he seems especially determined to insist on it in the strongest terms available to his pen. The Scottish theologian of (usual) understatement leaves to the side his customary reserve and writes with sweeping confidence: “The fear of God is the soul of godliness” (229); it is “the mark of God’s people and the sum of piety” (229); and “the highest reaches of sanctification are realized only in the fear of God” (231). These are only a few examples of Murray’s reach for the loftiest language he can find.

Why use language this strongly? Well, the fear of the Lord “is God-consciousness,” Murray explains. This alone can account for the comprehensive ways in which the fear of God functions within Holy Scripture. For this reason, too, the fear of God requires the right doctrine of God, for the right doctrine of God entails our recognition that he alone must be feared. “The fear of God in us is the frame of heart and mind which reflects our apprehension of who and what God is, and who and what God is will tolerate nothing less than total commitment to him.”4

Fearing God in Pharaoh’s World

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hat, though, is this fear, this abiding God-consciousness? In a time when fears enslave, we must appreciate how the fear of God liberates. It liberates us particularly from the “economy” of sin which, at least since the days of Pharaoh’s Egypt, reduces the human being to a commodity, to production potential. In such an economy, your value is tied to the profit you can generate, the things you can produce, but you will never produce enough. In a world bent on acquisition, you can never acquire enough (see Gen. 47:13–26). Furthermore, in a sabbath-less, Pharaoh-like economy of constant labor and production, there are no neighbors, only competitors. Indeed, a neighbor is an impossibility in an economy in which all compete to prove their value through outpacing and outproducing others. Thus, where there is no sabbath rest because there must be constant labor, there can be no neighbors, only competitors. And where there are no neighbors, there can also be no hospitality, only potential or real enemies. Suspicion of all is a key survival strategy in a world of things and people to be afraid of.

The fear of God rather than Pharaoh, which took expression in heeding the call to sabbath rest, was therefore nothing less than God’s people subversively resisting the economy of death and vanity. Resting in the presence of the Lord also pointed to the better way of life and fulfillment to be found in the revolutionary reality of God’s worship. There, in sabbath-sacred assembly and joyful rest, Israel’s ties to “the way the world is” were repeatedly loosened, as their bonds to their God were strengthened. One leads to the other. Israel won’t fear Pharaoh or the threats of the Egyptian way of life so long as Israel fears God alone.5 As Murray recognized, we, like Israel of old, enjoy a paradigmatic exemplar of this truth in Abraham, our father in Christian belief, whose faith is often traced out by Genesis along the contours of fearing God and therefore no other. Importantly, when Abraham walked in faith-filled fear of the living God it not only protected him from the fear of man but also released him in generosity toward all. The fear of the Lord yields rightly ordered ethics, the ethics of generous love and service which bear witness to the loose ways we hold on to everything other than our God. After noting various ways Abraham’s life puts this truth on display, Murray points

out the cause of Abraham’s peculiar liberty and generosity with the king of Sodom: “Why could [Abram] have been magnanimous to the king of Sodom? It was because he feared the Lord, God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth, and might not allow the enrichment offered to prejudice the independence of his faith; he needed not to be graspingly acquisitive.” 6

“a neighbor is an impossibility in an economy in which all compete to prove their value through outpacing and outproducing others.”

Note that last remark: “he needed not to be graspingly acquisitive.” That is to say, Abraham did not believe he needed to participate in the economy of Pharaoh’s Egypt, in which the human person is fundamentally a producer and acquirer, grasping for what others have in order to secure value and meaning for oneself. He didn’t need to participate in such a world because he feared his God instead, from whom he learned that the human person is fundamentally a worshiper, called to set apart Christ as Lord in the heart, and none other (1 Pet. 3:15). And so Abraham was free to give generously to others, without fear of loss or manipulation. Having his God, Abraham could lose nothing of enduring value, and thus held everything other than his God loosely. Truly, there is nothing more dangerous to the enemy than a Christian with nothing to lose, one who fears God.

Double-sided Fear of God

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his dynamic of the fear of the Lord, which includes both a subversive witness to the world and an alternative to it, is rooted in the double-sidedness of how the Scriptures speak of this fear.

We are more familiar, I suspect, with the fear of the Lord as a personal, existential thing. We are afraid of the Lord’s awful and holy judgment. This is appropriate,

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however much our therapeutic culture may wish it to be otherwise. As Murray notes, “it is the essence of impiety not to be afraid of God when there is reason to be afraid.” 7 Or we fear him, personally, in the form of obeying him and rejecting evil (Job 1:8; 2 Cor. 7:1). In the earliest explicit mention of the fear of God, Abraham knows the unbelieving world does not fear God and therefore has no basis for the proper protection of life (Gen. 20:11). Fearing God alone—practically acknowledging that all our labor and service are ultimately to and for him—also releases us for the legitimate and appropriate respect and honor we give to those who are over us in this life and charged with our welfare (Col. 3:22). These are some of the ways the fear of God is indeed a largely subjective and individual reality, and this side of it tends to dominate our ways of thinking and speaking of it.

“The fear of God, which releases the Christian heart to magnanimity, is put on display in the ready giving, service, and practical love of the assembly through offerings, alms, diaconal labor, and the bearing of mutual burdens.”

However, biblically there is another side: the fear of God is also an objective thing. As Bruce Waltke explains, the “fear of the LORD” sometimes refers to “the objective revelation of God that can be taught and memorized.” 8 This is the sense in which the fear of the Lord appears to be a synonym for the law, statutes, ordinances, and commands of the Lord. It is what people in general know to be true as an expression of being made in God’s image and knowing him personally. In this respect,

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the objective fear of the Lord is at times something all people know and are expected to honor and to observe subjectively, and at other times a way of referring to the objective content of the special revelation of God given to his servants, especially Moses and Solomon.

In both respects, though, whether as objective or as subjective, as rational and cognitive or as emotional and existential, the ultimate ground for the fear of God is the God who is to be feared. That his promises and warnings never fail, that his providential link between obedience and reward or disobedience and punishment is stable, that his sanction or command through his word and church bear life and death to his gathered people—these are facts rooted in his utterly dependable and infinitely good character. God himself, on whom we may and must depend, grounds the fear of him, and this takes the form of devotion in us.

Worship as the Assembly of God-Fearers

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e must pause to notice, then, how fully the fear of God involves the reality of devotion.

The fear of God is, in fact, a reflex and dynamic of deep devotion. To fear God is to be devoted wholly to the Lord and to no other. It is also to act upon that devotion by refusing the threats of all other would-be lords in favor of the service and worship of the one who alone is God. Perhaps it is for these very reasons that the fear of God, in its proper sense, is best explained by and most fully displayed in public worship. It would be a sad indictment of how far we have strayed from the dynamics of biblical life and hope if we did not think immediately of the sacred assembly and the liberating nature of the Lord’s day—rather than therapeutic tools or tweaking our work/life balance—as a solution to the cultural problems of paralyzing fear. In this life, the liturgical assembly is the sphere in which the fear of the Lord is most fully understood, displayed, and deployed. It is there, rather than in acts of individual, personal piety, that the wide-ranging, comprehensive biblical scope of the fear of the Lord can be appreciated. It is there, too, that like Israel of old we are collectively pulled away and loosened, again and again, week by liberating week, from the grasping tentacles of our good and necessary labors in our communities and workplaces—the inherent good

work which, in the siren song of the world, always wants more from us, more of us … us.

In sacred assembly, the fear of God that unhesitatingly heeds his summons rather than the world’s persuasive messaging is captured by the call to worship.

The fear of God, which involves our trembling before the holiness of the divine Majesty, finds expression and cultivation in our hearts as we confess our sins together.

The fear of God, which provokes adoration of the divine Name, takes the form of corporate praise and thanksgiving.

The fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, is made visible in our hearing and receiving the preached word as no ordinary word but the word of the living God by which all other claims to truth and to meaning must be measured. The fear of God, which shapes us into a people willing to suffer in hope of glory and identify with the Crucified One, is communicated at the font and eucharistic table. The fear of God, which releases the Christian heart to magnanimity, is put on display in the ready giving, service, and practical love of the assembly through offerings, alms, diaconal labor, and the bearing of mutual burdens. The sacred assembly, in the various parts and elements of faithful worship, is the organic and organized churchly witness to the God who alone must be (and who is!) feared by those who know Him. Here, then, in her regular sacred assembly, we may say the church proves who she is: the people who fear the Lord and therefore fear no other. Fearing no other power, not even death itself, she is liberated to honor all who should be honored, to love as she has been loved, but to worship the Lord alone. As the Swiss Reformed liturgical theologian Jean-Jacques von Allmen repeatedly insisted in his works on the church at worship, the church both learns and becomes what it truly is when it gathers to worship.9 We would do well to remember this as we pray for ways to bring the gospel of hope to a fearful world, and as we seek remedies for the anxieties in our own hearts and homes. There, in sacred assembly, the church offers the world both a stern warning regarding the deathly ends of service to any god but the Lord, and of the claims Christ alone has upon his people. But there, too, she holds out the hopeful promise of the gospel. This hopeful promise includes seeing the liturgical assembly as the subversive resistance—and alternative— to Pharaoh’s Egyptian economy of competition and acquisition, of suspicion and envy, of fear and death. There

she points to the word by which the one living and true God has identified himself: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2).

1 Lapham, Lewis, "Petrified Forest," Lapham's Quarterly, Volume X, Issue 3 (2017): https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/fear/petrified -forest 2 F or an excellent study, see Nathaniel Gray Sutanto, “Egocentricity, Organism, and Metaphysics: Sin and Renewal in Bavinck’s Ethics,” Studies in Christian Ethics 34.2 (2021): 223–240.

3 John Murray, Principles of Conduct: Aspects of Biblical Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 229–242. I cannot recommend this brief but tightly argued chapter enthusiastically enough, not only for Murray’s characteristic exegetical skill and gentle firmness, but also for the ways he succinctly captures certain dimensions of the fear of God that resonate powerfully in our day. It may seem an unusual way for Murray to bring his careful book-length discussion of creation, law, and life to a culmination. But reading his explanation of the fear of God makes his strategy clear, perhaps even necessary.

4 Murray, Principles of Conduct, 242.

5 D espite problems in his critical approach to the Scriptures, Walter Brueggemann’s exposition of these features of Israel’s Sabbath identity over against the economy embodied by Pharaoh’s Egypt is compelling and valuable: Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2014).

6 Murray, Principles of Conduct, 240.

7 Murray, Principles of Conduct, 233; emphasis Murray’s.

8 B ruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 100–101.

9 F or a recent study, see Ronald Andrew Rienstra, Church at Church: Jean-Jacques von Allmen’s Liturgical Ecclesiology (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019).

Dr. Mark A. Garcia (PhD, Edinburgh University) joined Westminster Theological Seminary as associate professor of systematic theology on July 1. 2021.

Mark is also the founding President and Fellow in Scripture and Theology at Greystone Theological Institute.

Mark’s academic interests range across disciplines. In 2008 he published Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin’s Theology (Paternoster) and has published numerous articles and essays on a variety of theological topics.

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HONOR THE EMPEROR 1 Peter and Christian Political Life Nat ha n D. Sha n non

Karl Karger (1848–1913): Huldigung der Sänger Österreichs an das Kaiserpaar am 27. April 1879 (1880)

I. If It Please the King

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ithin the final years of his life, as his death at the hands of a tyrant drew near, the apostle Peter wrote to churches scattered around Asia minor, instructing them to live as those for whom Christ had died and been raised, as those sanctified by his blood, as those confident in the Lord’s return to judge the quick and the dead. The apostle addresses marriage (1 Pet. 3), economics (2:18–25) and political life (2:13–17), in light of the applied accomplishment of Christ. As to political life, he enjoins Christians to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” and to “honor the emperor” (2:13, 17).

This would have triggered readers in Peter’s day, as it might in ours. Does Christ really mean for his

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followers to give honor to a leader who doesn’t honor him?

Peter, like Paul in Romans 13:1–7, is concerned with the notion of citizenship, primarily in light of the unwieldly fallout of messianic heroism that led some Christians to believe, as Peter himself and the other disciples had once believed (Acts 1:6), that the work of the messiah spelled the end of political subjugation. Paul and Peter write not to temper the urgency of eschatological expectation but to distinguish it from political life, as if to say, “our citizenship is in heaven but in the meantime we are still citizens here.”

This was by no means a concern isolated to the early church. The anti-apartheid Kairos Document, published in South Africa in 1985, argues likewise that in Romans 13 Paul “is simply establishing the fact that there will

be some kind of secular authority and that Christians as such are not exonerated from subjection to secular laws and authorities.”1 The document sought to redress misunderstanding and misuse—indeed, abuse—of the subjugation enjoined in Romans 13. Paul “does not say anything at all about what they should do when the State becomes unjust and oppressive. That is another question.”

Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are, primarily, restatements of Christian political belonging against the backdrop of a heavenly-mindedness unhinged.

Political activism, and even resistance to government, for which these passages do indeed leave room, must presuppose sincere cooperative investment. Peter, no less than the whole of Scripture, encourages diligent, humble, and lawful participation in political life and public service, serving others because we ourselves have been

graciously served, above all loving others, and seeking the glory of God. At the same time, governance is portrayed as first a divine design and provision but in practical terms a “human institution.” Tension will naturally arise, therefore, between the servants of the Creator and an earthly system that favors the destruction rather than the preservation of image-bearing life. But no handy criteria for discerning these moments appear in the Bible, nor is it clear when changing a system requires resisting it, or even what “resisting” would entail.

Those questions notwithstanding, a few principles are indeed clearly discernable in 1 Peter 2. First, the Christian in his political and public conduct ought to seek above all a clear conscience before the Lord—the Christian seeks a unity and organicism of godly living. Second, in public discourse the Christian should appeal always

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to the knowledge of God that all men have by virtue of being made in God’s image.

II. Put Your Sword into its Sheath

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he reader of 1 Peter is struck perhaps above all with the apostle’s eschatological conviction.

Scarcely an imperative appears in the whole of the letter to which there is not appended, in short order, a pointed reminder of the eschatological significance of the resurrection and of the eschatological orientation of Christian hope, conviction, and diurnal coming and going. Peter is sure that he who began a good work will bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ, and he is sure of better things for the church, things that belong to salvation (Phil 1:8; Heb 6:9). Peter returns again and again, with fervor and rapturous joy, to eschatological declaratives as he calls the church to holiness domestic, professional, and political. Martyn Lloyd Jones has said that a preacher should preach with his whole body.2 One dare not imagine Peter, as he drafted this letter to those “elect exiles,” seated and subdued.

Nor does Peter preach fantasy. The Lord has proven himself faithful time and again. As an aid to the faith and hope of his readers, therefore, Peter recalls that great deliverance of Israel from slavery by the outstretched arm of the Lord, and he draws the New Testament church into this covenant history by declaring them “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession,” not because they walked through the Red Sea, but because the Lord “called them out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2:9).

As John Murray has written, “we often think of the Levitical sacrifices,” even of the whole of Mosaic religion, “as providing the pattern for the sacrifice of Christ.” 3 True enough, Murray says, but the perspective of the author of Hebrews is something else, that “the Levitical sacrifices were patterned after the heavenly exemplar.” 4 Old covenant types and ordinances are not merely anticipatory but basically and immediately expository, as it were, of the then present heavenly advocacy of the mediator. Moses preached Christ (John 5:45–47). Peter in this same epistle reminds the church that through the prophets, who preach the law of Moses, the Lord Jesus himself calls, as he has always been calling, his people to himself (1:10–12). The Exodus therefore was not the startling intervention of a god who might still be there; the

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Exodus published in mighty but fleeting historical terms the basic principles of the coming cosmic renewal of all things yet to be accomplished in Christ in the fullness of time. Christ is greater than Moses. So Peter proclaims Mosaic history to the exiles of the dispersion in order to draw attention to where God has planted “within the organism of the present world the centre of the world of redemption,” the seed of the new order signaled by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.5 The reality underwriting Christian political life is therefore the humiliation of Christ unto death on the cross, unto a death that could not contain him, because he, Jesus Christ, was the treasured possession and the beloved Son who at last loved the Father as the Father loved him.

But the humiliation of Christ was not an extreme gesture of self-abandonment or self-renunciation. The death of Christ was not the quiet disappearance of an outstandingly understated man, but divine victory over death and Satan through the weakness of the Son incarnate. And it is, because it is Christ’s victory, the church’s victory as well (Rom 16:20). In the background, as it were, of the work of Christ, is a cosmic confrontation between the kingdoms of darkness and of light. And leveraging divine justice for the deliverance of the church, the Son vanquished the accuser of his people by coaxing him into the open field of judicial reckoning.6 Jesus knew that his preaching would lead to death because he preached the love, grace, and justice of God in the courts of Satanic hatred. Jesus provoked in perfect innocence, he agitated by tender grace, he spoke the truth in love, and never a bruised reed broke as he brought forth judgment unto truth (Isa 42:3).

Christian political life is pictured in 1 Peter as filling up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ, as joining the Son in rounding out his victory against slander, accusation, and the accuser himself. And victory will be secured through the church as it was in the humiliation of the Son on the cross, where he opened not his mouth, where for the joy that was set before him he endured, and despised the shame. Peter bids us mind the end—not the next election or the next legislative showdown, but the day of visitation—when the honor will be for us who believe, when he will turn our shame into praise (1 Pet. 2:12, 7; Zeph. 3:19). Victory for the church is not a kingdom on earth but the kingdom of heaven, and our great adversary is not the unjust master or the tyrant but

that great dragon, the deceiver of the world (Rev. 12:9).

Christian political life, in other words, is eschatological.

As our Lord’s death drew near, who defended him?

Who stood up to the unjust ruler, spoke out against a failing system, and demanded vindication now? “Get behind me Satan” was our Lord’s response when the ancient serpent attempted to derail Christ’s ministry and mediation through Petrine political hope and misguided loyalty (Matt. 16:23). Persecution and injustice unto death were essential to the accomplishment of redemption. It was not courage but cowardice and panic that severed Malchus’s ear, as Peter’s betrayal later proved. Jesus subverted the wiles of the evil one by laying down his life, even interceding in his last moments for those who persecuted him, and he endured injustice that he might remain faithful unto death (Luke 23:43; Rev. 2:10). And we, likewise, must take up our cross daily.

therefore on the administration of the Lord’s own revealed distinction between good and evil. And if the magistrate is tasked with “fulfilling God’s preceptive will,” we conclude with Murray that “it would be sinful for him to refrain from so doing.” 7 The magistrate thus wields a heavenly commission that hangs on his faithfulness to the law of God. Divine commission accompanies God’s own law—not any person, administration, party, office, or title. Political godliness is not a subjective possession; there is no imputation of civic integrity; our political heroes err. So, one must be diligent to do the law and not merely hear it (James 1:22).

“The citizen of heaven ought always to acknowledge that

III. That You May Be Sons of Your Father

distinction between the political

eter encourages the church to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human authority,” “to every institution ordained for people,” “every ordinance of man,” or “human authority,” as various translations have it (2:13). Commentators quibble over the best English wording, but the language here denotes all the spheres or structures—the perfect term again eludes us— to which Peter devotes attention in this epistle, including marriage and family, economy, and political order and authority. To each of these structures of culture and human experience—including a head of state of one kind or another—the Christian is to be voluntarily subject.

Adoption as a son of God underwrites no dismissive hubris. Quite the contrary, the Christian is to be mindful of the Lord’s hand, and of the call to glorify him, in and through all such institutions.

Regarding political life specifically, Peter says that governors are “sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good,” as Paul has written with categorical clarity that “there is no authority except from God” (1 Pet. 2:14, Rom. 13:1). Being “subject . . . to human authority” is, therefore, obedience to God. As John Murray points out, the decretive will of God is not the focus here. “Sent by him,” as Peter says, is not the same as “foreordained by him.” The divine appointment in view, says Murray, has to do with governance according to the preceptive will of God, and focuses

and the redemptive realms and

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the implication of a certain logic of Christian political life.”

Nor, on the other hand, may we assume that divine approval will always accompany divine appointment, any more than the Lord’s tilting a boiling pot away from the north suggests that Nebuchadnezzar was a godly man (Jer. 1:13), or that Babylonian rule was legitimate. Even so, “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer. 29:7) hardly leaves room for revolution. “Christians should not refuse,” Martin Luther says, “under the pretext of religion, to obey men, especially evil ones.” 8 John Murray puts even the American founding in its theological place when he says that Romans 13 “excludes from the outset every notion to the effect that authority in the state rests upon agreement on the part of the governed or upon the consent of the governed. Authority to govern and the subjection demanded of the governed reside wholly in the fact of divine institution.” 9 If we are willingly subject to human authorities when all is politically well and good, what reward do we have? (Matt. 5:46) It is particularly when the exercise of power runs afoul of the law of God that political

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obedience bears subversive witness to the absolute justice of God in hopes of mercy.

Note the subversive edge to Peter’s characterization of imperial authority as a “human institution,” surely not lost on readers of the first century, who knew firsthand what Emperor worship entailed. If imperial authority is a human institution, it is a fallible institution on the docket for the Lord’s conclusive assessment, just as we all are. And yet, until then, to neglect the apostle’s instructions to be subject to human authority, even the Roman emperor who sets himself up as an object of worship, is to transgress the preceptive will of God—it is, likewise, to sin.

So the church must beware the flaming arrows of her accuser, one of which is the lure of political vindication and power. Christians will constantly face, as Christ himself did, temptations to trade eschatological glory and the heavenly kingdom for earthly imitations—precisely the thought pattern of Babel and the impulse of idolatry. “The essence of ungodliness,” Murray reminds us, “is that we presume to take the place of God, to take everything into our own hands. It is faith to commit ourselves to God, to cast all our care upon him and to vest all our interests in him.” 10 “The way of faith,” by contrast, is to prioritize the heavenly, to store up treasures in the age to come, to seek things that are above, “to recognize that God is judge and to leave the execution of vengeance and retribution to him.”11 “Never may we in our private personal relations execute the vengeance which wrongdoing merits.”12 By thus deferring to God and looking to him alone in the end to restore the honor of the righteous, the church remains faithful to the God of history. Charging into politics and succumbing to political provocation, joining the acerbity and rancor of public discourse, is to walk in the counsel of the wicked, to conspire together in the immanentizing of the eschaton and the eclipse of the heavenly in Christian public witness. “See to it,” says Martin Luther—himself no stranger to persecution—“that he who hurts you does not cause you to become like him, namely, a wicked person, nor let his wickedness defeat your goodness.”13 Likewise, John Murray: “we are not to be vanquished ethically by the evil heaped upon us.”14 “Paul and Peter,” writes Douglas Harink, “issue a call to a messianic, apocalyptic, cruciform engagement in history, against history, for the sake of history.”15 “This is,” he says, “the revolution that looks like it is not one.”16 The

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Christian should hold the moral line, staying true, yes, to political conviction, but supremely to humility and witness unto eschatological joy.

Peter calls Christians to be mindful of the humiliation of Christ, of the Son’s setting aside divine privilege and assuming human weakness and divine curse, when for the sake of mercy “justice was denied him” (Acts 8:33). Peter sees this as the primary strategy for the church’s engagement with a hostile world, to whom the church must both represent and proclaim the grace of God in Christ, but against whose recalcitrance finally and conclusively the saints will one day bear witness (1 Cor. 6:2).

IV. So the King and Haman Came to the Feast

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eter of course knew well enough that a gentle word will not always turn away wrath, nor was he reluctant when the chips were down to slight the demands of man for the honor of God. “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). On what grounds does Peter defy a human political institution?

Peter’s injunction to humble submission has at times been taken as a call to subjugation unqualified and without exception, even where abuse of power is unseemly and the suffering of the vulnerable severe. The Kairos Document mounted a critique of just such an exaggeration and misdeployment of biblical authority, and other critics, too, have been right to highlight such liabilities—biblical shelter for the tyrant and a blind eye to suffering—and innumerable actual abuses as well. Peter’s political obedience can easily be taken out of context and taken too far.

When considering the council appearances in Acts 4 and 5, it should be noted first of all that Peter’s is a special case, not directly applicable to our own situation. Peter received instructions directly from the risen Lord, along with special Pentecostal endowment, to do precisely that which he is now by Jewish injunction forbidden from doing. Peter and John wielded apostolic recourse. In addition, they on some level had in common with the council the final rationale for local legislation, the law of God, or at least a theistically orientated political order. Peter is not challenging the system itself but, if anything, attempting to reform it.

The point is that the apostles are not here involved in

civil disobedience, but in an unrepeatable episode in the history of redemption where special revelation was publicly relevant.

Although we do not share Peter’s apostolic moment today, the broader scope of Christian civil conduct is still discernable. In both his case and ours, submission, characterized by lawful participation, is the mode of political conduct until and unless compliance with the authority of man grants victory to the kingdom of darkness and the cause of sin, when the peace of Christian conscience before the king of kings is lost.

Even then, Peter’s non-compliance was no political revolution but an appeal to settled legal principia. His appeal was to the legal principles governing his situation.

He and John ruffled feathers not by threatening revolt or revolution but by suggesting that the men currently holding office had run afoul of their own mandate. Peter thus appealed subversively, though in his case overtly, to the law of God. Karl Barth, rarely a help in times of trouble, says in his breakthrough Römerbrief that “the most radical revolution can do no more than set what exists against what exists,” and even a so-called “‘spiritual’ or ‘peaceful’ revolution—can be no more than a revolt.”17 Political pushback amounts only to “justification and confirmation of what already exists.”18 He may have had in mind something like Luther’s claim that “this life and the life to come are mutually exclusive.”19 Political means are suited to political ends. The citizen of heaven ought always to acknowledge that distinction between the political and the redemptive realms and the implication of a certain logic of Christian political life. Christians ought to participate sincerely in the political realm, but their treasure should be stored elsewhere. We participate in the visible world while prioritizing the world to come. And if we lose track of that distinction, the world will soon remind us. The law, writes Paul, is indeed written on their hearts, as twisted consciences confirm (Rom. 2:15). But through repetition and mutual encouragement men become ignorant—culpably ignorant—of the severity of divine justice, indeed of the very personal nature of transgression. God is man’s context, but suppression of the knowledge of God, meanwhile, is a corporate and thus cultural undertaking (Rom. 1:32).

The God who fills heaven and earth will one day judge “the secrets of men by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 2:16),

and on that day, writes Herman Bavinck, “when . . .

Christ comes to destroy the works of the devil, then also the ‘deep things of Satan’ become manifest.”20 So political witness until that day, even or especially where justice fails, serves to call men to attention.

“the whole of Scripture encourages diligent, humble, and lawful participation in political life and public service, serving others because we ourselves have been graciously served, above all loving others, and seeking the glory of God.” Against Israel stood the witness of Moses, Joshua’s rock at Shechem, and Peter’s raucous preaching; and the unbeliever always has a conscience, a witness to the law and holiness of God that never lets him rest (Josh. 24:27; John 5:46; Rom. 1:32). To these suppressed but inextinguishable revelations of God, Christian political participation makes appeal—despite the lost but also for their sakes—by means of piety and prioritization of the kingdom of God. “The motivation to be subject to human authorities,” and when conscience cannot rest even to pray for systemic reform, “is that thereby one may show his subjection to God.”21 So, there may come a time when to honor the emperor, we must honor the king of kings despite him. On that day, may a gentle word turn away wrath, but if not, the Lord will go before us. He will not suffer your foot to be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber (Ps. 121:3).

This fortified humility of Christian political life expresses the fact that the humiliation of Christ was not the annihilation of his person. Jesus was a martyr because he was a warrior, so 1 Peter does not exalt victimhood as virtue, nor will the Lord abandon the

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vulnerable to the whims of the tyrant. The confluence of humility and discernment, therefore, commends a steady hope, gentle as a dove, that political order and power serve to distinguish and divide good and evil in public life, but also an agility and responsiveness, wise as a serpent, to government gone wrong, when the good for which politics was given is eclipsed by an unleashed evil of man.

V. Conclusion: Only a Night’s Lodging

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his is an essay about the political life of the Christian, but it should be remembered that comfort and prosperity are excessive kindnesses of God to which followers of Jesus have no rightful claim in this world. Privileges, therefore, such as those of life in the United States in the past half century or so have not been given so that we might eat our way to an early grave or bask in dull complacency. Rather, with our liberty of religion, we are free to mourn with those who mourn and remember the brother in prison as though in prison with him, and remember him constantly (Rom. 12:15; Heb. 13:3; 2 Tim. 1:3). A political environment that is hospitable to the Christian, in other words, is a rare provision indeed. So when we are reminded that it is only ever momentary, let us not be dismayed. A servant is not greater than his master, and they nailed our master to a tree. Make no mistake: this is not our home.

So Peter would have us remember as we ponder these things precisely what Martin Luther preached to his congregation five centuries ago, that this life is but a night’s lodging, and no suffering can compare to the glory prepared for those who love Lord Jesus.22 So let us hold fast to the hope of the resurrection, encourage one another to wisdom and the fear of the Lord, and be ready to give a reason with gentleness and love, thanking the Lord for every day of mercy while we pray nonetheless, come Lord Jesus.

1 G ary S. D. Leonard, ed., Kairos: The Moment of Truth: The Kairos Documents (University of KwaZulu-Natal: Ujamaa Center for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research, 2010), 10.

2 Martyn Lloyd Jones, Preaching and Preachers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972), 82.

3 J ohn Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 15.

4 Ibid.

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5 Geerhardus Vos, “The Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Discipline,” Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos, ed. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1980), 18.

6 O n holy war in 1 Peter see Annang Asumang, “‘Resist Him’ (1 Pet. 5:9): Holiness and Non-Retaliatory Responses to Unjust Suffering as ‘Holy War’ in 1 Peter,” Conspectus 11 (2011): 7–46.

7 M urray, The Epistle to the Romans: The English Text with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 149.

8 M artin Luther, Lectures on Romans, Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 15, trans. and ed. Wilhelm Pauck (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 358.

9 Murray, Romans, 148.

10 Murray, Romans, 141–42.

11 Murray, Romans, 141–42.

12 Murray, Romans, 142.

13 Luther, Lectures on Romans, 356.

14 Murray, Romans, 144 15 D ouglas Harink, 1 & 2 Peter Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009), 79.

16 Harink, 1 & 2 Peter, 76.

17 K arl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 482.

18 Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 482.

19 M artin Luther, Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols.; ed.

Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muehlenberg and Fortress, and St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86), 30:11.

Quoted in Kenneth J. Woo “Suffering as a Mark of the Church in Martin Luther’s Exegesis of 1 Peter,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 77 (2013): 311.

20 H erman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 146.

21 D onald G. Miller, On This Rock: A Commentary on First Peter (Allison Park: Pickwick, 1993), 208.

22 L uther, Lectures on Romans, LW (AE), 30:35. Quoted in Woo, “Suffering as a Mark of the Church,” 311.

Nate Shannon (PhD, Free University of Amseterdam) is Director of Admissions and adjunct professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Nate taught theology at Torch Trinity Graduate University in South Korea for nearly five years.

Nate is also an ordained Teaching Elder in the PCA.

“The church lives in the world and it lives within the domain of political entities. If it is to be faithful to its commission it must make its voice heard and felt in reference to public questions.”

–John Murray

Framework exists to equip pastors and church leaders by deploying a biblically faithful theological framework to engage the challenging moral, civic, and cultural issues the church faces in society.

OUR CONVICTIONS

Scripture is true and sufficient Good theology should be public theology There is an urgent need in the church Our role is to equip not politicize We must prepare for what's next F R A M E W O R K .W T S . E D U

JERUSALEM AND ATHENS, PT. 1 Proclaiming the Gospel on the College Campus Note: The second part of Jerusalem & Athens will appear in a future issue of Westminster Magazine.

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?

What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from “the porch of Solomon,” who had himself taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart.”

—Tertullian

Introduction

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n May 28, 1998, Buck Showalter, the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, an expansion baseball team in its inaugural season, did something that had never been done before: with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning and the bases loaded, Showalter ordered his pitcher to intentionally walk Barry Bonds. The Diamondbacks were ahead of the San Francisco Giants 8-6, and the intentional walk made the game 8-7. The next hitter lined out to right field, and the Diamondbacks won the game. After the game, Buck Showalter said, “I wasn’t going to let that guy beat us. I knew I had to take the bat out of his hands.”

In the post-modern era, philosophical and ethical discussions on university grounds were often characterized by the assumption of moral relativism, which denies the existence of an absolute and objective ethical standard determining right and wrong. Although as Christians we would disagree with such a premise, we would, nevertheless, seek to make the most of our opportunity to explain God’s law and the gospel. In other words, post-modernity would allow any idea and ideology to take its turn in the batting order; and, as Christians, we would look forward to grabbing a bat and stepping up to the plate when our spot in the order is up. The problem, however, is that as we walk up to the plate, it is not the moral relativism of post-modernism that we are facing, but the strident fundamentalism of our secular age. On this playing field, Christianity may walk up to the plate, but it may not carry a bat.

Should the church, therefore, suspend its mission to

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make disciples, at least with respect to reaching college students for Christ? If we can’t swing a bat, should we instead wave a white flag? By no means! Far from capitulation, Scripture calls us to “preach the word”; to “be ready in season and out of season,” to “reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2).

So, as we seek to minister to college students faithfully, it is important that we understand the peculiar challenges to the gospel that modern day society presents; but we should also be confident that the Holy Spirit will work through Scripture to renew minds and transform hearts, just like He always has. The campus minister may not be allowed to carry a bat; but the Good Shepherd has not relinquished His rod nor His staff.

The Resemblance

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uring Paul’s second missionary journey, he found his way to Athens, where he encountered a culture characterized by both pagan religion and erudition. In Acts 17:16, Luke writes that the city was “full of idols,” and in Acts 17:18–21, he writes that many Athenians were interested in discussing philosophy, being especially intrigued by new ideas. This description of Athens, and especially the ethos of the Areopagus (Mars Hill), begins to resemble what one might encounter on the college campus today: a place where students (and professors) devote themselves to manifold idols of the heart and mind, even as they revel in the consideration and investigation of new philosophies and ideas. Paul, ever the clever evangelist, plucks the very strings that resonate in the hearts of the Athenians by pointing to an altar dedicated to “the unknown god,” seizing upon their curiosity to tell them that “the unknown god” has now revealed himself in Christ. Paul teaches that God is the creator of all things, including all peoples from one man, and even quotes from the Greek poets to support his assertions. In Acts 17:30–31, we read Paul’s concluding remarks on Mars Hill: The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because

he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

If the idolatry and curiosity found on the first-century Areopagus in Athens resembles what one might find on a college campus in 21st century America, so should the content of Paul’s message resonate with the teaching of campus ministers today. Paul teaches God’s sovereignty in creation and providence, warns his audience about the coming of the Day of Judgment, and culminates his sermon by calling his audience to repentance and by proclaiming the resurrection of Christ.

If Acts 17’s description of Paul’s ministry on Mars Hill helps paint a picture of what campus ministry might look like today, it must be said that such a painting is at best incomplete. Paul’s audience reacts in one of three ways: the first group mocks Paul because he teaches the resurrection of the dead; the second group is intrigued

by Paul’s teaching and desires to hear him teach more; and the third group is persuaded by Paul and believes.

And it is precisely at this point that the resemblance between ministry on the Areopagus and ministry on the college campus is interrupted. For, you see, the campus minister today will indeed encounter all three types of reactions described in Acts 17:32–34. But there is a fourth reaction missing on Mars Hill that the campus minister will most certainly encounter today: ostracism.

American universities are no longer bastions of free speech, where every idea can be considered, investigated, and debated. On the contrary, many opinions are not deemed worthy of discussion, and those who hold them are not welcome, risking immediate and permanent expulsion at the mere mention of them. This phenomenon is colloquially known as “cancel culture,” a form of grassroots censorship of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is strict and unforgiving; and it includes the gospel in its list of forsaken and forbidden ideas.

One might ask why college students are so willing to restrict free speech. Why did Paul enjoy more liberty in Athens than a campus minister enjoys today on a college campus? In part, the answer is explained by the fact that while Athens was a pagan city where many deities were revered and worshipped, where diverse worldviews were held, and where moral relativism was presupposed, on the college campus one worldview is favored, and one ethic

“As we seek to minister to college students faithfully, it is important that we understand the peculiar challenges to the gospel that modern day society presents.”

is enforced. And the reason for this is that universities in America are deeply religious and, for lack of a better term, zealously monotheistic! The religion that dominates American universities is that of Fundamentalist Progressivism, whose strict adherents are best described as rabid and intolerant. To deviate from her dogma is to invoke the wrath of the inquisitors of “cancel culture.”

Now, to be fair, not every university is equally devoted to the “faith.” Some are willing to overlook certain offenses, allowing Christian ministries to enjoy certain liberties. But, by and large, most universities subscribe to the same creed, and the campus minister must be aware of what he says and where he is standing. In vain would he seek an altar dedicated “to the unknown god,” for the college campus knows the god it serves. In this regard, when the campus minister sets foot on campus, it is not the Mars Hill of Athens he has climbed, but the Temple Mount of Jerusalem. Thus, it is not Acts 17 that provides the most accurate context for modern day college ministry but Acts 21.

Having been stirred by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem, Paul arrives in the Holy City in Acts 21. After visiting James, the Lord’s brother and leader of the Jerusalem church urges Paul to go to the Temple to demonstrate his faithfulness to the God of Israel. Campus ministers today share this same call from the church: to go to the campus to demonstrate and proclaim faithfulness to the one true God. But it is not Paul’s call in Acts 21 that I want to underscore; rather, it is the crowd’s attitude on the Temple

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Mount that is particularly instructive. When people recognize who Paul is, they accuse him of proliferating a teaching that is contrary to their religious convictions and damaging to the people. In Acts 21:30, Luke writes that people then “seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut.” In other words, since Paul’s teaching contradicted the religious convictions held on Temple Mount, Paul was canceled. It is at this point of censorship that Acts 21 and the 21st century college ministry are most similar. And the impetus for the censorship now, as then, is religious in nature.

The Religion

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efore suggesting which road might lead to fruitful ministry to college students, it is worth spending some time understanding the religion that the campus minister is up against. I call it Fundamentalist Progressivism because the term encapsulates both the religious zeal and the socio-political ambitions of its adherents. And, lest you question whether it is proper to refer to this philosophy of life as a “religion,” allow me to demonstrate that it is dressed in all the characteristic trappings.

“Evangelists are another staple of religion that can be found in Fundamentalist Progressivism.

Activists execute this role with adequate zeal and conviction.”

Religions have prophets, and Fundamentalist Progressivism is no exception. The prophets of this novel religion come in two varieties. First, we have the “Major Prophets.” This group is made up of university presidents, provosts, and college deans. These are the visionary leaders who set the course and culture for the university, using their powers of persuasion to recruit faculty, staff, and the necessary funds to make sure their vision is implemented. They are foretellers, in that they predict progress along the path they set. In other words, these

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prophets proudly and persistently proclaim prosperity and progress for all peoples if their plans are put into practice. They also enjoy great prestige, not only in the university itself, but also in all social spheres.

The second type of prophets I would describe as “Minor Prophets.” These are comparatively minor with respect to prestige, but not with respect to influence.

Within the university, they consist of student leaders and editors of campus newspapers; more broadly, this group includes social media influencers, mainstream media personalities, musicians, artists, and celebrities. If the Major Prophets are foretellers who predict the course to progress, the Minor Prophets are forth-tellers who promote and propagate that very plan. By their words and actions, they help shape the culture and help people shape up.

Let me briefly share an example of the influence that the prophets of Fundamentalist Progressivism hold over the college campus. Rice University was established in Houston, Texas at the end of the 19th century thanks to the generosity of philanthropist William Marsh Rice. A Massachusetts native, and from very humble beginnings, Mr. Rice made his formidable fortune primarily through real estate deals and through investments in the railroad in Texas. At the end of his life, having no children of his own, Rice desired to demonstrate his gratitude to Texas by establishing a university in Texas that would rival the academic excellence of the Ivy League but would be affordable to Texans. With this vision in mind, William Marsh Rice left half his fortune for the establishment of The William Marsh Rice Institute (later to be renamed, Rice University) in Houston, Texas, opening its doors in 1912. Thanks to the generous endowment of her founder, Rice University offered a free college education to Texans until the 1970s! Although it is no longer free to all Texans, its massive endowment allows the university to offer free tuition, as well as room and board, to students from lower income families (whether from Texas or not), and very competitive financial aid packets to all her students.

None of this would be possible without the foresight and generosity of the university’s founder.

And yet, since Mr. Rice’s family owned slaves at some point, a growing number of students, minor prophets of Fundamentalist Progressivism, are diligently working to ensure that William Marsh Rice—or at least the statue that holds his ashes at the heart of the school’s Academic Quadrangle—is now persona non grata. Ironically, these minor prophets are receiving world-class instruction at an

Montgomery Library at sunset.

institution of higher learning that would not exist were it not for William Marsh Rice’s philanthropic spirit! But, irrespective of the apparent incongruity of it all, their forth-telling movement has grown from a handful of students at the beginning of the 2020 school year, to a loud and significant alliance of students and alumni that have forced the hand of the university leadership, which has announced the formation of a task force dedicated to investigate the issue, including the charges brought about by these “prophets,” as well as their corresponding demands.

Religions also have Priests, and within Fundamentalist Progressivism, college professors and scientists make up its priesthood. Professors and scientists enjoy the trust of regular people and also of those in authority.

These priests can advise presidents on public policy and generals on military strategy. One might say that these experts hold the keys to the kingdom, as it were. Professors have the authority to assign grades—and, therefore, the power to confer degrees, or to deny them. Scientists, through their access to knowledge or revelation of the highest order, are able to offer their minds and creativity in the service of repairing the damage done by the human species to the environment, and to help elevate the hopes and aspirations of humanity toward a more prosperous way of life. Together, professors and scientists are the sanctioned mediators between students and the American Dream, between common, ordinary, lay folks, and knowledge that promises to one day remove all disease and pain, and to wipe away every tear.

A recent example of the power of the priesthood is the relative ease with which universities have been able to implement invasive protocols during the COVID-19

pandemic, including the requirement of weekly COVID19 testing and mask-wearing indoors and outdoors, even when students are by themselves. Whether or not one agrees with these policies is not the point. The point is that students, by and large, did not present any significant resistance to measures that under normal circumstances could have been labeled as draconian. And how were these sweeping changes to health protocols accomplished? It was through the mediatorial powers of Fundamentalist Progressivism’s priestly class.

We’ve seen that Fundamentalist Progressivism has prophets and priests. Now we’ll see that it has the third religious office, that of a ruler or king. From a religious perspective, the king is the officer that most resembles Deity. He is the protector of his people, as well as the purveyor of goods and benefits. In other words, the king is responsible for his people’s welfare, for their safety, for their health, and for their nurture. In Fundamentalist Progressivism, this role, or office, is occupied by the Federal Government. It is the Federal Government that oversees the security of its citizens, especially against foreign threats. It is the Federal Government that implements economic policies that create the conditions for citizens to be gainfully employed. It is the Federal Government that administers a welfare program to ensure people don’t go hungry. It is the Federal Government that institutes health policies—and even provides healthcare—promoting the wellbeing of its population. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that adherents to Fundamentalist Progressivism consider the Federal Government their chief benefactor and provider, their healer and their rock.

An eye-opening example of how college students have been inculcated with the idea that the Federal Government represents their hope for the good life, as it were, took place in November of 2016. With Hillary Clinton widely expected to beat Donald Trump for the Presidency of the United States by a landslide, there was an election viewing party in the student center at Rice University. In the early stages of the evening, when polls in the eastern part of the country were beginning to close, the mood in the student center was lively and celebratory. But, as the night progressed, and results began to be announced, the mood took a drastic shift toward doom and gloom. It became increasingly clear that not Hillary Clinton, but Donald Trump would become the President of the United States! College students, that is to say, young adults—grown men and women—became

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increasingly anxious, agitated, and angry. Eventually, they became depressed and dejected, even to the point of tears. It goes without saying that in a democracy the candidate you support sometimes wins, and sometimes the candidate you support loses. But, in a few years elections will be held again, and voters will have an opportunity to hold their elected officials accountable.

Presumably, elected officials will do their best to execute their responsibilities with a view to improving the conditions of their constituency. If they don’t do a good job, they can be voted out of office next time. Depression, dejection, and destitution hardly seem like appropriate reactions to an unfavorable election result; unless, of course, you’ve placed all your hope in a candidate and on the government they will help lead. The tears of those college students in November of 2016 were the result of the hope that Fundamentalist Progressivism places on the government as their ruler and king, and, therefore, as the purveyor of every good gift and every perfect gift.

“…when the campus minister sets foot on campus, it is not the Mars Hill of Athens he has climbed, but the Temple Mount of Jerusalem.”

Evangelists are another staple of religion that can be found in Fundamentalist Progressivism. Activists execute this role with adequate zeal and conviction. What they lack in depth of understanding, they make up with the breadth of their reach. Their motto ought to be “Have megaphone; will travel,” for there appears to be no location so remote, and no cause so irrelevant or insignificant, as to dissuade them from joining a march in protest. Through their catchy chants and clever slogans, and by their unwavering commitment to the mission, being willing to risk personal loss with reckless abandon, activists change minds, transform hearts, and gain converts to the cause.

This evangelism was observed in action in the summer of 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement.

Fundamentalist Progressivism evangelists promoted their cause by enacting what came to be known as a “social

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media blackout,” whereby users on various platforms changed their profile pictures to a black square. Initially, this served as a demonstration of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. This appeared to serve evangelism well, for the campaign drew attention widely, and many dutifully followed suit blackening out their own profile pages. However, this wasn’t enough. Evangelists weren’t content with mere solidarity and support.

Evangelists were seeking converts. They wanted to make disciples. Within a day or two, a message was appended to the blackout campaign. “Silence is violence,” they said, and began shaming people, not only for not posting a black profile picture, but also for only posting a black profile picture. I remember reading the posts of several Christian students whom I knew, angrily demanding that their friends give money to Black Lives Matter. “If you really care about equity and justice, don’t just post a black profile picture,” they said, “put your money where your mouth is and see where your heart is also.”

Like an organized religion, Fundamentalist Progressivism also claims its own saints. These are the intersectional superstars that enjoy great acclaim in the broader culture. The existence of segments of the population or people groups who are systematically oppressed or disenfranchised is generally accepted as an indisputable fact. Individuals who belong to any one of these people groups are conferred a victimhood status that elevates the value and importance of their life experience, earning them the admiration of society. The victimhood status gives these “saints” a greater voice, together with a right to speak and be heard on any number of issues.

Furthermore, the greater the number of oppressed or disenfranchised groups they belong to—that is to say, the more “victimhood boxes” they can check—the higher their status rises on the intersectionality scale, with the corresponding promotion on the ladder to sainthood.

Juan Carlos Martinez (MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary) is a member of the Board of Trustees at Westminster, and Associate Pastor of Christ Evangelical Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Houston, TX. Previously, he served as the Reformed University Fellowship Campus Minister at his alma mater, Rice University, and spent nine years working in the semi-conductor industry as a design engineer.

For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.

1 Peter 2:19