I read a quote that struck a chord from a surprising source, and I thought I’d share it:

Let no one suppose that I claim that just living can be taught; for in a word, I hold that there does not exist an art of the kind which can implant sobriety and justice in depraved natures.

A few pages later, the same author expounded on the same theme, with more words this time:

I consider that the kind of art which can implant honesty and justice in depraved natures has never existed and does not now exist, and that people who profess that power will grow weary and cease from their van pretensions before such an education is ever found.

Google can find the quote for you, if you can’t wait for my point to play out.  But if you actually know who said that, I’d be very impressed!  In addition to guesses, feel free to also leave your thoughts on the content of the quote.

Hint 1: The author of this quote is very far in the past.

Hint 2: The quote struck a surprising chord because I didn’t expect this author’s tradition to be concerned with typical Reformed buzzwords like “just” and “depraved”.  Wesley is not a bad guess, but strike farther afield…

[UPDATE]: The answer is Greek philosopher Isocrates, writing Against the Sophists.  This from The Great Tradition, a compendium of classical writing about education, edited by Richard M. Gambe, which I am reading for “Parent Academy,” an activity of my kids’ awesome school.

The very next sentence after the first quote is:

Nevertheless, I do think that the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form such qualities of character.

My point is, even though that one sentence seems to be orthodoxally reformed, if you take a second, closer look, it’s really not.  First off, he probably doesn’t think that everybody has a depraved nature.  Second off, he’s off on his categories.  What we are concerned about in the gospel is not “just living” or “implanting” sobriety and justice.  That’s catlick talk.  We are interested in “justified” and having justice imputed to us (around us), not implanted in us.

It just goes to show you, the gospel really is an alien concept.  Accept no substitutes.

Or so say the poli-tainers employed to stir things up and make a nice living. And so believe the masses and hoardes who lap it up, unawares of their own manipulation. But this clip reminds of how theocrats ape the Rushies and Beckies not only in their political opinions but also accuse two-kingdom theology of making the world safe for another Third Reich.

Pink Floyd’s famous song has always irked me. It’s not just because this was the cult favorite for those classmates of mine in the 80s who sort of scared me with their big hair, black tee shirts and faint wafting aroma of Mary Jane. But it was also because it was just such a dumb lyric. Yes, I get the irony. But, clearly, with all the double-negatives, you in point of fact do need education.

But maybe Gilmour was onto something without knowing it. As it has been suggested before around here, one of the interesting aspects of modernity is its exaltation of education. Instead of rightfully esteeming education and placing it in its proper and dignified place, the stakes of education can very often be over-realized (idolized?) as at least one way, along with politics and family values, to construct another modern end known as the Good Society. It can be to the point that the modern outlook is such that it might be said that human beings are actually made and shaped, not by the contours of the home, but in school. And one of the interesting ways this gets interpreted by culturally Reformed believers is to conceive of instruction and nurture in the faith to come by way of the day school, then the church, then the home. But if we’re being honest, what is unspoken is the skepticism that the home has any such duty; the notion is a relic of the past which deserves at best a nostalgic yet dismissive smile, the kind an adult has when he reminisces security blankets and teddy bears.

But at Yinkahdinay Wes Bredenhof points to the efforts of Dort that suggest something less modern and more Protestant:

On Friday November 30, 1618 in its morning session, the Synod of Dort issued its decree on the manner of catechesis. Dort followed Bremen’s division of catechetical duties. The work of parents, however, was put up front. According to Dort, it is the work of parent to instruct their children and the whole family with all diligence in the elements of Christian religion… It’s unfortunate that parental or domestic catechesis has been lost in so many places. It’s regrettable that many Reformed parents today expect the church to do virtually everything when it comes to the catechesis of covenant youth. The first responsibility lies with parents. Dort was right.

Not to ape all the retailers this year and start talking about Christmas way, way before its time. And not to lend any credence to forms of paganism that would that deal with us according to our sins, or repay us according to our iniquities.  But sometimes some pagan folktales do humanity a better service than other pagan folktales, as well as Christians stationed to teach other Christians who get bright ideas to turn a frown upside down.

Christmas is a holy day that the early church fathers invented because they were in competition with the Roman religion. One thing Christianity lacked was a big feast, and the Romans had one toward the end of December, Saturnalia, so the Christians established Christmas, sort of like one chain putting up a store right near its competitor.  It doesn’t have so much to do with Jesus as it does with business, and it’s been a big hit” the number of people celebrating Saturnalia and offering sacrifices to the gods has really diminished.

The Puritans weren’t into Christmas, knowing how shaky it was theologically, and the holiday was brought to America by the Dutch. It was in New York that Christmas became American with the invention of Santa Claus. It was in 1820 that Clement Clark Moore, living down in Chelsea, which was uptown then, coming home in his sleigh with the Christmas turkey, got the idea to write a poem for his children, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which a friend of his copied down and sent to a newspaper in Troy, New York, which published it without attribution.  Mr. Moore was a professor of Hebrew and Greek at the seminary down on Ninth Avenue and Twentieth Street, and he had no wish to go down in history as the author of light verse, though of course he did.

His poem gave us a picture of Santa Clause that was new and American. The Dutch version was less jolly: Sinterklaas came on Christmas and put cinders in the stockings of bad children. Professor Moore took out the judicial element and made him a sort of jolly uncle who brings you whatever you want no matter what. And the cartoonist Thomas Nast drew the picture of him as a rotund fellow with rosy cheeks and a big grin.

The Norwegians had never seen him as jolly either.  They believed in the Christmas elf, the nisse, who was mischievous if not actually malicious and who came around on Christmas Eve.  You had to leave him a gift of rice pudding, because it was he who would decide whether you had good luck or not so good.  The nisse didn’t bring gifts; he got them. He tasted your rice pudding, and if it wasn’t creamy enough or if it was too creamy or if there weren’t enough almonds in it, he wrinkled up his face and the next week you had a terrible earache, and the week after that a tree fell on your garage, and then your dad went in for prostate surgery. You had to learn to make rice pudding the way the nisse liked it. Otherwise, your life would be rotten.  And if you made a great rice pudding, sometimes the nisse out of pure meanness would make your toilets back up and get the IRS to call you in for an audit, and you’d open the door to find Mike Wallace and a cameraman filming. The stock would go down. Your newsboy would sue you because he tripped over the hose. You’d get your water tested; it’s got lead in it. One thing after another. All because of the pudding.

Some of us feel that this is truer to life than the idea of a fat man coming down the chimney and giving you all of your heart’s desires. It’s no wonder Clement Moore didn’t want his name put on his poem—he was embarrassed by it. He was a theologian; he knew he had created a commercial legend that would help sell things and that would cause disappointment, envy, impatience. What made him do it? It was a nisse who wrote the poem, out of sheer meanness.

Garrison Keillor, Life among the Lutherans

Not only can those with a patriotism of affirmation and a patriotism of dissent take a few lessons here (especially the former as it has a tendency to question the fundamental patriotism of the latter), but would that those with a sunnier take on what it means to be the church in the world demonstrate the same sober restraint Richard Gamble suggests for telling the American history. Forgetting the biblical image of the church being a light to nations, some prefer to think of the church as the soul of the nation.  But substitute words like “church” for “republic,” “pastor” for “teacher” and “sheep” for “student” and one begins to get a feel for what it may mean to think in terms of being a smoldering wick casting a weak light instead of booming sun fueling the soul of America:

If we are going to tell a story that has integrity to it, then we have to look intently and honestly in the mirror the muse of history offers to us. That mirror will show us a republic and a nation, modesty and hubris, self-restraint and imperialism, aristocratic virtues and populist demagoguery…

Surely the good citizen does not make a god of his nation. Surely the good citizen does not confuse the voice of the people with the voice of God. Surely the good citizen fears the lust for dominion that he knows lurks in every human heart, beginning with his own…

And so with our American story. At first, we tell a story fit for children. But we ought not always and only to tell a story fit for children. Someday we have to grow up. Children need to stop being children. The selective story of the American past needs to give way gradually and prudently to the larger story of America, a story fit for grownups and a not a story destined to keep citizens of the republic in a condition of perpetual adolescence. This is one of the greatest challenges facing the college history teacher. After more than twenty years of teaching, I still struggle—I struggle now more than ever before—with how to tell the whole truth about America in a way that helps young people become adults while at the same time avoids the contagion of cynicism and disillusionment. My students will be the first to tell you that I do not always succeed. I have to tell the right story. But that is not enough. I have to tell it right.

“More than our popular churches and institutions and movements, God wants us ourselves. He wants our hearts, our loyalty, our love for himself alone. He wants to find in us the same sense of intimate belonging to him that is appropriate to sexual union on the human level. More than showing the world how “relevant” the church can be, God wants us to show him how much we treasure him above all else. He wants to find in us the same sense of identification with him that is appropriate to human marriage. And we show him our love through doctrinal faithfulness to his Word, by following him heroically wherever he goes (we would rather die than turn aside, even one step, from following him to following the world), by resisting the world’s radical pluralism demanding unlimited tolerance levels for its ideas and values, by restricting our ministries only to those methods which are warranted by his Word and consistent with prayerful dependence upon the power of the Spirit, by nurturing our `vague half-believers in our casual creeds’  into earnest, informed, gladly devoted lovers of Christ alone, and in many other important ways. But above all, we show him our love by savoring the hope of eternal union with him in the new Jerusalem above as our only true fulfillment.”   

(God’s Unfaithful Wife, A biblical theology of spiritual adultery, Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., pg. 176)

Whoa! I step away from the interwebs for just a week (to prepare for this), and something happens!  In trying to catch up, an observation occurred to me that I didn’t see in Clark’s or Hart’s re-responses, so I wanted to post it before somebody else does.  (I also wanted to claim this post-title before anyone else — I can’t fathom how Clark failed to capitalize on the term “hit-job”; but I have to admit Hart has won the catchy-title-contest hands-down!)

Like many, I am shocked that Frame would jump to Osteen’s defense:

when Osteen presents a message that almost entirely lacks a focus on justification, Horton replies with an emphasis entirely lacking in sanctification.

In this quote, and the rest of his remarks about Horton v. Osteen, Frame reminds me of the father of the bride from Holy Grail: “Let’s not bicker and argue about who killed who…” Osteen is weak on Justification, Horton is weak on Sactification (Frame claims), but if Horton were just not so devoted to bickering and arguing, maybe Horton and Osteen could team up; Horton would bring his Justification, and Osteen would bring his Sanctification, and wouldn’t everything be rosy!

Setting aside the unwarranted accusation that Horton cares nothing for sanctification, Horton’s point (which Frame seems to miss or discredit) is that Osteen’s attempt to bring Sanctification, without a foundation of Justification is precisely works-righteousness!  So if Osteen is lacking justification, he’s also lacking sanctification.  There’s nothing excusable or half-right about that, and Horton is right to lock and load Gal 1:6-9 and set sights on Osteen.

My opinion of Frame has fallen another notch.

One of the chief means for the church to affect culture, according to transformationalists, is for the pulpit to address the leaders of state; to teach them God’s law for statecraft, as well as rebuke them for disobedience to God’s law for statecraft. John the Baptist is often cited as an example of this, as he rebuked Herod. The problem with this thinking is that it fails to understand the discontinuity between the old and new covenants.  

One only needs to compare how John the Baptist spoke with Herod with how Paul spoke with political leaders in the Book of Acts. Paul has no rebuke for Agrippa, for example, only respect (Acts 26), though Agrippa was as immoral and corrupt as Herod. But Herod was a king in the theocracy of Israel, the nation that was set apart by God in the old covenant to belong to him. Thus Herod, an old covenant ruler in Israel, was rebuked by John, who was called to speak judgment against the covenant nation. Agrippa was a leader in the common grace state in the new covenant, and thus not treated the same.

Transformationalists fail to understand the prophetic idiom of the Old Testament.  In the Old Testament, nations and kings of nations were representative. In other words, as Israel typified the elect, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, etc. were nations singled out by God for special purposes and types.  And of course in the Old Testament, kings represented the nation they ruled. So when the prophet Isaiah speaks of the glories of the new covenant with the words; Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn (Isaiah 60:3,4) we are to understand that in prophetic idiom, nations and kings represent people in general from those nations, not political leaders of nations and nations as a whole.

This is confirmed in the New Testament, first in the Great Commission (Matt 28:19), where we are commanded to baptize “nations.” Here clearly “nations” refers to people from all nations who believe the gospel we preach, not to political entities as a whole. And when we are given a picture of the eternal state, the fulfillment of that Isaiah passage, nations are then walking before God and kings are  bringing God glory (Rev 21:24) . This does not mean there will be a United States or Brazil in heaven, and that their political leaders will necessarily be there, but nations and kings again refers to the elect from every nation. It is actually the dispensationalists who fail to recognize this use of prophetic idiom concerning nations, causing them to wrongly interpret Matt. 25:32 as referring to God judging political nations depending on how they treated Israel (some might remember M. Kline’s critique of theonomy; that it borrows from a dispensational hermeneutic).  

Why is this important to the spirituality and message of the church? Well, the church does not distinguish the political nations or political power brokers of this world as having any special significance before God.  Our message is the same to all people; all are sinners that need to repent and believe in Christ. And when we explain how that sinfulness is expressed, we do what the Apostles do; we express those sins common to all mankind (Gal. 5:19&20 and I Tim. 1:8-10). To single out certain individuals based upon their positions of power is to accept the world’s definition of power and importance.

In the New Testament, the apostles never single out political leaders outside the old theocracy for any special rebuke or instruction. We are only told to submit to the government and honor the emperor (I Pet 2:13-17). To go beyond this and speak specifically to political rulers of the laws they should enforce is to go beyond Scripture and meddle in affairs we have no right to meddle in.  We have no more right in our preaching to call out certain leaders than we do calling out certain neighbors of ours.  There are some sinful ways Steinbrenner runs the Yankees, some sinful ways my local grocery store manager treats her employees, and some sinful ways my neighbor five doors down raised his kids, but it is not proper to single them out by name in my sermons, as well as the mayor of my city for how he makes laws.

So the transformationalist desire to single out politicians and political rulers for their perceived sinful statecraft fails to do justice to the new covenant age, where rulers and political nations have no more value or importance in God’s eyes than your local grocery store clerk or next door neighbor, and thus reveals a potential double-mindedness which still harbors a desire to have a say specifically among the power brokers that this world considers important. A political ruler who murders is as guilty before God as a neighbor who murders by hating in his heart. All murderers, immoral, rebellious, thankless,  liars, etc… who do not repent and believe are all to be told they must believe or be judged. Our message does not go beyond that to those we think have more power or influence as the world deems power and influence. All unbelievers are in the same condition; For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all (Rom. 11:32).

 

The common refrain that is heard from the transformationalists is that cult affects culture, or put in another way, “as the church goes, so goes the world.”  This standard belief is often so widely assumed that it is rarely questioned.

But let’s put the theory to the test, using a smaller scale; let’s say in a typical small American neighborhood of about thirty homes. Let’s assume two of the families in that neighborhood are Christian families, not nominal Christians, but genuine Christians. How does the presence of those two families affect the unbelieving households in that neighborhood? Does the divorce rate decrease among the  unbelievers in that neighborhood compared to neighborhoods with no believers in it? Does the crime rate decrease? Do those unbelieving parents in that neighborhood raise their children differently because of the presence of two Christian families?

The same test could be applied to work. Because you are a believer and you wait tables at Chili’s, does the manager cheat less on his taxes (assuming he does) because of your presence? Do the other workers because less greedy for money because you are also an employee? We could go on with examples, but all of you who live in neighborhoods and work at jobs know that the answer to these questions. The answer is almost always in the negative, and it is not because the Christians in these examples are disobedient to God, but that simply is the way life is in this fallen world, and we are never told to expect differently. So if the transformationalist assumption of cult affecting culture doesn’t really work on a local, micro level, why are they so convinced it must work on a national, macro level?

 

Suckled on the modernist work ethic, some Presbyterian parents may love it when kids talk about rebelling against low expectations and “returning to biblical and historical levels of character and competence” (where’d I put my WWJD bracelet?).

But I daresay Garrison Keillor’s Upper Midwestern upbringing amongst the Lutherans (“where even the Catholics were Lutheran”), which resonates with mine under the tutelage of the Lapsed Episcopalian, has a far superior grasp on the folly of great expectations of youth and their dazzled parents:

In Lake Wobegon, you learned about being All Right. Life is complicated, so think small. You can’t live life in raging torrents; you have to take it one day at a time. And if you need drama, read Dickens…The urge to be top dog is a bad urge. Inevitable tragedy. A sensible person seeks to be at peace, to read books, know the neighbors, take walks, enjoy his portion, live to be eighty, and wind up fat and happy, although a little wistful when the first coronary walks up and slugs him in the chest. Nobody is meant to be a star. Charisma is pure fiction, and so is brilliance. It’s the dummies who sit on the dais, and it’s the smart people who sit in the dark near the exits. That is the Lake Wobegon view of life (where the women are strong, the men are good-looking and the children are above average).

–Garrison Keillor, Life Among the Lutherans, Chapter 1 (It Could Be Worse)

 

Mike Horton explains why “semper reformanda” has much more in common with modernity than Protestantism:

Nevertheless, Reformed churches belong to a particular Christian tradition with its own definitions of its faith and practice. We believe that our confessions and catechisms faithfully represent the system of doctrine found in Holy Scripture. We believe that to be Reformed is not only to be biblical; to be biblical is to be Reformed. As important as it is to keep “Reformed” in the phrase, an even more dangerous omission is often found among more liberal Protestants who also leave out the “according to the Word of God” clause. And usually it is “always reforming,” instead of “always being reformed.” In this view, the church is the active party, determining its own doctrine, worship, and discipline in the light of ever-changing cultural contexts. Progressivism becomes an end in itself and the church becomes a mirror of the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsHH_HYSkH8

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwL1DThtxYg&feature=related

An outward Church is the necessary form of the new creation in Christ Jesus, in its very nature; and must continue to be so, not only through all time, but through all eternity likewise. Outward social worship, which implies, of course, forms for the purpose, is to be regarded as something essential to piety itself.  A religion without externals, must ever be fantastic and false.  The simple utterance of religious feeling, by which the spirit takes outward form, is indeed, not for something beyond itself, but for the perfection of the feeding itself. Forms, in this sense, not as sundered from inward life, of course, but as embracing it, enter as a constituent element into the very life of Christianity.  As a real, human, historical constitution in the world, the outward and inward in the Church can never be divorced, without peril to all that is most precious in the Christian faith.  We have no right to set the inward in opposition to the outward, the spiritual in opposition to the corporeal, in religion.  The incarnation of the Son of God, as it is the principle, forms also the true measure and test, of all sound Christianity, in this view.  To be real, the human, as such, and of course the divine also in human form, must ever externalize its inward life.  All thought, all feeling, every spiritual state, must take body, (in the way of word, or outward form of some sort,) in order to come at all to any true perfection in itself. This is the proper, deep sense of all liturgical services in religion.  The necessity here affirmed in universal.  The more intensely spiritual any state may be, the more irresistibly urgent will ever be found its tendency to clothe itself, and make itself complete, in a suitable external form. Away with imagination, then, that externals in Christianity (including the conception of the visible Church itself,) are something accidental only to its true constitution, a cunningly framed device merely for advancing some interest foreign from themselves. To think of the Church, and of Christian worship, as means simply to something else, is to dishonour religion itself in the most serious manner.

 

-John Williamson Nevin, Preface, The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.

 

It wasn’t by design, but the Outhouse happened to get launched on my birthday two years ago.

Speaking of Libras, Mark Driscoll and I were born on precisely the same date (October 11, 1970). I should be enjoying memories of toting orange-iced cupcakes to school.  But I’ve noticed the good pastor seems to revel in fairly racy sex talk some might deem unbecoming a man of the cloth. All things to all men, some might say, but it may be closer to nothing new under the sun. For better or worse, it does seem to me that Driscoll’s pastoral care could benefit more from considering how self-restraint beats self-expression instead of indulging crass questions with even baser answers (I’d link here what I am referring to, but, well, you know, ew).  So in light of a shared birthday on Sunday, yet not-so-shared perspectives on either appropriate public speech or dispositions on how to better engage a fleshy culture, I thought I’d re-post this, originally titled “Of Vice and Men.”

 

It is always interesting to me how our in our more conservative religious circles we yet see how the culture of the therapeutic has been so fully embraced while simultaneously criticized.

It is not long after discussion about something like pornography ensues that one hears an almost constant barrage about “addiction,” couched in a lot of religio-speak. Men talk in whiny-pitched tones about their “problem” and pastors talk in a duped tenor and rehearsed empathy about all the “devastation that comes from pornography.” Men speak heroically about what sort of baby-sitter software with which they have laced their computers, revealing that they have chosen to simply meet their juvenile impulses by further treating themselves like little boys. Awash in group versions of self-help, ministry-teams talk about “accountability partners” and we are all supposed to be thoroughly impressed.

True, it’s that time of year, but, no, not that kind of TPism. This is the kind that helps begin explain what the difference is between the evangelically Reformed and the confessionally Reformed.