John Calvin that is.

 

Ken Myers is interviewed in ByFaith Magazine. When a guy is paraphrased as saying “…what the church needs today is not more specialists, whether in theology or philosophy or church growth, but more ‘well-informed generalists’ who are interested in understanding all of culture in order to live more faithfully in God’s world,” or when he says that “wisdom is also a part of our vocation,” you know he’s onto something. Well, I do anyway. And if that doesn’t do it for you, the man was happily employed by NPR for a spell.

The interview is pocked with the usual insight Myers is good for. But the last question is where my interest was particularly piqued. It probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am much less interested in making my own children memorize verses than getting them used to just listening to biblical text read at home and in church (their catechism is another matter). As they get older and sit in worship I encourage them to exercise the muscle of faith—their ears. “Listen to the words sung and prayed and said.” Much as I esteem quality preaching, it has never seemed to me that a sermon is so much designed to make students as it is to make believers and compel disciples. Ours seems a more organic project than a mechanical or academic one. I have a natural resistance to whatever it is that makes the modern creature, young or old, think he has to do something as ghastly as take notes during sermons.

So I think it is a stunning point Myers makes that the spoken and heard word is much more fundamental to our humanity. I think he’s right, but probably only because I agree with him.  As well, his points about the power of conversation, learning and living with it instead of learning to take control and have power over things and being intuitive scratches where this un-calculating INTJ  itches.

Rube Comes East!

Outhouse contributor RubeRad has finally decided to take a pilgrimage to the land of his fathers and America’s golden city of Dutch Reformed orthodoxy and piety. Yes, he’s coming to GRusalem (or “Little Geneva” or whatever other name you may have for Grand Rapids, MI). To mark this historic event, The Confessional Outhouse will have a dinner and beverage meet-up at a local tavern. This is open to all Outhouse contributors, commenters, fans, lurkers and contrarians that happen to be nearby. If you are reading this and will be in the Grand Rapids area on Thursday, July 16 2009, you are invited to come and enjoy food, spirits, and a lively discussion. How exciting. Please R.S.V.P. in the comment section so we can get a estimated head-count. Must be 21 (unless you bring a parent). Here are the details:

 

In contrast to diverse yet unified views (not least the currently dominant forms of Kuyperianism or neo-Calvinism) that society ought to be built from an ultimate perspective, David VanDrunen offers something from the older Reformed tradition:

The early Reformed tradition of social thought, therefore, provides resources for evaluating society from this penultimate perspective. Unlike the claim of the later Kuyperian Reformed tradition, civil society is not to be identified with the eschatological, spiritual kingdom of Christ. For Calvin, to associate this kingdom with the things of this world is an error of great proportions. This suggests that civil society is to be measured by a standard other than that of the eschatological kingdom. It serves different purposes—important, yet penultimate purposes, such as a measure of law and order and general cultural achievement and so ought not to be judged by the standards of the eschatological purposes of the spiritual kingdom. Therefore, we see the importance that Calvin granted to natural law for the civil kingdom. Natural law had its limits; it could not get one to heaven, but that was not the purpose of the civil kingdom, after all. Calvin could be satisfied with looking to natural law, applied with wisdom to particular social contexts, rather than identifying a biblical model for society, such as the Mosaic civil law. True, Calvin and the early Reformed tradition often drew normative lessons for contemporary society from the history of Old Testament Israel, and these early Reformed theologians may not always have been completely consistent. A fair reading of them, though, suggests that they saw in Old Testament Israel examples of the application of natural law at work. To put it in the words of a seventeenth-century Presbyterian confession, they viewed Old Testament Israel as normative insofar as they perceived the general equity of its law and practice.

 

That sounds familiar…

 

Liturgical Protestantism offers a way around this impasse. A different way of putting it is to say that liturgical Protestantism represents a way for Protestant believers to support the wall between church and state. By looking for religious significance not in this world but in the world to come, liturgical Protestantism lowers the stakes for public life while still affirming politics’ divinely ordained purpose. The public square loses some of its importance but retains its dignity. It is neither ultimately good nor inherently evil; politics becomes merely a divinely appointed means for restraining evil while the church as an institution goes about its holy calling.

Part 0

From A. W. Pink’s Exposition of the Gospel of John:

From what has been said, it will be evident that when God told Moses to make a serpent of brass, fix it upon a pole, and bid the bitten Israelites look on it and they should live, that He was preaching to them the Gospel of His grace. We would now point out seven things which these Israelites were not bidden to do.

1. They were not told to manufacture some ointment as the means of healing their wounds. Doubtless, that would have seemed much more reasonable to them. But it would have destroyed the type. The religious doctors of the day are busy inventing spiritual lotions, but they effect no cures. Those who seek spiritual relief by such means are like the poor woman mentioned in the Gospel: she “suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5:26).

Although Pink signed his Foreword with a date of 1923, this reads as if he were talking about today (much like Machen’s monumental Christianity and Liberalism).  What a great reminder:  if you’re hearing something called “the Gospel,” and it sounds reasonable, guess what – it’s not the Gospel!  But the foolishness of “Just look at the Cross!” — that’s the Gospel.

But, like the two disciples fighting over who would be his go-to guy in the new kingdom, the traditions of men have always vied to undermine the gospel, I suppose, either by outright takeover or, more stealthily, by linking it up with their interests. Where some define justification by “faith, plus…” others undercut the Great Commission by “Jesus, and…”

It seems Sanctitity of Life Sunday and thinly veiled affirmations of violence and insurrection are getting some competition:

Another left-leaning religious coalition will begin airing scripture-citing radio ads in key congressional districts this weekend, calling for legislation to make health insurance more affordable. The coalition — which includes Faith in Public Life, Sojourners and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good — also is distributing an eight-page guide, full of Biblical quotes and health-care statistics, to encourage pastors to raise the issue in sermons.

 

I read the news today, oh boy.

I must admit, in my more ungodly moments I have coveted a greater intellect, and I truly believe that an otherwise increased acumen would have been a marvelous idea in the drawing boards of my creation. If potters may reserve absolute rights in their designing then clay has a way of feeling rather desperate from time to time. I’m tempted to say that is especially true these days in contrast to sunnier ones. But not only would that imply a sort of chicken-little take on things in general, it would also fly in the face of the fact that even in brighter times my ungodliness covets what is not my own.

Nevertheless, the world keeps coldly spinning with little regard to how I may or may not apprehend it. I look for wisdom wherever I may find it.

After reading This Post, much of the long and meandering comment thread that followed, a few follow-up posts, and taking-in all I could stand of the related videos, I was reminded again of This Outstanding Article and its final paragraph:

One of the reasons I haven’t been pulling my weight around here lately is that for the last quarter I’ve been teaching a Sunday School class.  Which means that I’ve had more time (made more time!) for reading.  Reading, of course, is just another name for “collecting quotes for blogging,” and now that my class is done, I will embark on a series of short posts based on some fantastic quotes.

First, let me back up, with a trick question: Who knows what verse this is: “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”?

Machen was indeed concerned about the dangers that “cultural modernism” posed to traditional faith. But he was even more worried about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. For Machen, the moves by Protestants to “modernize” the faith—and not the efforts of “cultural modernists” to move beyond Christianity—comprised the greatest danger to Christianity. For by refashioning Christianity mainline Protestants hoped to maintain the churches’ role as cultural guardian. But in the process, Machen believed, they had confused influence with faithfulness. In fact, he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly.

Machen’s cultural concerns, thus, made him in the 1920s a reluctant ally of secular intellectuals but in the 1930s would cost him the support of the fundamentalists. Like Machen, though for different reasons, cultural modernists also bristled under mainstream Protestantism’s moral code, rejected its cheery estimate of human nature and the universe, and opposed its bid to Christianize American society. The subtext of Machen’s theological critique of Protestant modernism—that the churches had no business meddling in society—was good news to the secularists who thought that America’s Protestant ethos impeded intellectual and cultural life. Fundamentalists, in contrast, were virtually deaf to Machen’s ideas about the relationship between Christianity and culture. To most conservatives throughout the 1920s, Machen was a champion of orthodoxy who had reestablished the theological foundations for Christian civilization in America. By the 1930s, however, his understanding of the church’s limited role in public life began to alienate fundamentalists. When Machen’s efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church were finally thwarted and he withdrew in 1936 to form a new denomination, his new church attracted few fundamentalists. They stayed away at least in part because they, unlike Machen, shared with modernizing Protestants the belief that Christian values constituted the bedrock of American society.

D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America

 

In other words, while natural religion is important to make the world go ‘round, Christianity serves another, more counter-intuitive purpose, namely the reconciliation of sinners to God. Arguably, this really was the supreme contribution Machen made: true religion has no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world; it is irrelevant to the traditions of men no matter how he conceives of them and no matter how important they may be to this present life; it does not make bad people (or their cultures) good or good people (or their cultures) better; while it certainly has one resident within it, Christianity is certainly not a way of life.

Not everyone seems convinced that Machen was onto something though. Contra Machen, the suggestion here is that Christianity creates culture and that good culture is dependent upon an unadulterated Christianity.

If this isn’t an example of “alienated fundamentalism” I’m hard-pressed to know what is.

“I oppose abortion. But an amazing number of people thought that I would outlaw abortion. They didn’t understand that not only did I have no desire to do that, but I had no power to do it. If you overrule Roe v. Wade, abortion does not become illegal. State legislatures take on the subject. The abortion issue has produced divisions and bitterness in our politics that countries don’t have where abortion is decided by legislatures. And both sides go home, after a compromise, and attempt to try again next year. And as a result, it’s not nearly the explosive issue as it is here where the court has grabbed it and taken it away from the voters.”

Judge Robert Bork in Newsweek, Jun 20, 2009 (from the magazine issue dated Jun 29, 2009).

Despite its being a rather politically incorrect thing to say in conservative Christian environs (ok, maybe because of it?), I was with Lee Irons during this last election when he spoke of the “overwrought rhetoric” and “irrelevance of abortion.” And now the man whose first act was to eat everybody’s first-born is contemplating his first Supreme Court pick. The inevitable question about certain legislation came up, and this was Bork’s angle.

Despite its regular incantation, it is doubtful that the typical American pro-lifer really understands what “the reversal of Roe” means. Maybe he does. But one gets the sense that most think a “reversal of Roe” means that it would push back as hard as Roe shoved (or harder). In other words, abortion would be outlawed in every nook and cranny. But as Bork helpfully points out, it doesn’t. It means the states would be handed their rights back to decide for themselves.

 

“Tradition. The prayer breakfast got started in mid-1930s Seattle, where traveling preacher Abraham Vereide held morning meetings for politicians and businessmen to pray about—and try to combat—poverty and the spread of communism. He decided on breakfast due to the Christian tradition of morning prayers and, it’s said, as a nod to John 21—wherein Jesus appears to his disciples in the early morning by the Sea of Tiberias and helps them catch fish. Breakfast was also practical, since 7 or 7:30 a.m. meetings didn’t interfere with the workday or with family obligations in the evening.”

That seems to go well with the notion that true religion is useful. After all, like my mother always said, breakfast is brain food.  She was a school-teacher. She was supposed to say that.

But does confessional Protestantism really think that true religion is good for everything from wiping out poverty to Pinko’s? It seems to me that things like National Prayer Breakfasts are good for wiping out Protestant ecclesiology specifically and doing serious damage to true religion generally.

This book came out a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t seen a whole lot of buzz about it on the blogs so: buzz buzz buzz buzz.

Heralds of the King: Christ-Centered Sermons in the Tradition of Edmund P. Clowney
Edited by Dennis E. Johnson

Buy from Here
Preview Here

Here’s the Chapter list

PBS agrees to ban new religious TV shows.

Until now, PBS stations have been required to present programming that is noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian. But the definition of “nonsectarian” programming was always loosely interpreted, and the rule had never been strictly enforced.

HT: WHI

To wake you up on a Monday morning, here’s some good-natured fun at our expense from an Arminian (who takes equal-opportunity potshots at his own camp).  It’s interesting to see what “we” look like to the outside, although if the stereotype includes obsessions with Mars Hill (the “good” one) and John Piper, it would seem that he’s aiming more at Young, Restless, and Reformed than at us (i.e. Calvinists, but not necessarily the Historically, Confessionally Reformed).

He missed a few targets for some easy points.  For instance, we like not just the ESV translation, but we loves us some ESV, Study, Bible.  (I know I got mine, and this year, I switched the Daily Confession scripture proofs from BibleGateway.com into ESVStudyBible.org)  Also memorizing the Shorter Catechism (but only Q&A 1, and maybe 33).  Also paedobaptism — and even more, arguing about paedobaptism, and TULIP, and everything else that goes with the “Cage-Stage”.

I was a little disconcerted, however, about this one:

Second Generation Calvinists are highly esteemed because there are so few of them. Most children of Calvinists become either non-Calvinists (the Schaeffer route) or hyper-Calvinists (the Sproul route).

Is this an actual phenomenon, or even a prevalent stereotype?  I know about Frankie, I don’t know about Sproul Jr. (or would that be III?), but I had never heard of any kind of widespread phenomenon like this.  It seems to me that if catechesis does what we believe it does, the Reformed would have a very low attrition rate.