Let the Church do Church

I recently read somewhere, in a document that also declares Two-Kingdoms theology “outside orthodoxy” actually, that Kuyperian theology is what “most of us (in the Dutch Reformed tradition) grew up with and use to interpret scripture.” But as the punchline of a popular meme says, “Well yes, but actually no.”  Since I was as recipient of this document and am included in this “most of us,” I can speak with some confidence on this matter.

Yes, we might have called it Kuyperian, and it descended from it, but actually no, most of us grew up with a neo-Kuyperian transformationalism and a special Dutch Reformed brand of American Evangelicalism. Neo-Kuyperianism, in short, asserts that Christ’s lordship must be manifested in every aspect of life, in every institution, and in every discipline. The entire culture then must be transformed into the kingdom of God and Christians must work toward this complete transformation until the Lordship of Christ over everything is realized. So, we became culture warriors championing a theology of glory and overrealizing our collective eschatology, expecting our eschatological hope to be manifested in the here and now.

Most of us grew up hearing sermons encouraging this cultural warfare and had our battle plans prepared for us by the formally assembled church. We fought for the removal of offensive television shows and movies, signed petitions, joined boycotts and protests, distributed Christian business directories, displayed our stances on hot-button issues on church signs, and rallied around politicians who we hoped would put Christianity on top. To be clear, individual Christians are certainly free to participate in these kinds of activities, but this is not what the institutional church should be involved in as it gathers in God’s presence corporately on the Lord’s Day.

When these things are the primary messages and pursuits the world hears and sees from the church, we do more harm than good to the church’s witness. David VanDrunen recently said, “We should strive as far as we can to give no offense to our non-Christian neighbors except the Gospel itself.”  This is helpful advice because one thing we tend to do is conflate our Christianity with a particular sociopolitical party line, potentially creating an offense that is by-and-large unrelated to the Gospel.

Nothing was ever truly gained by the culture wars we fought, but we did often lose something. We often lost the Gospel itself -or at best relegated it to a supporting a role. This largely went unnoticed because the tendency is to just assume we all know the message of the Gospel and to move on, focusing more on living in a morally upstanding way. But some noticed. When some recognized that the Gospel had become secondary and Word and Sacraments no longer foremost, they sought out churches where the Gospel was still central. 

But I’m convinced that there are many who ended up in Gospel-centered churches simply because of conservatism. These people left their churches or denominations for one reason or another, perhaps the politics were starting to shift from right to left or the causes were not quite lining up with their cultural sensibilities anymore – but they didn’t leave for the most important reason: The Gospel was no longer being proclaimed. For these the culture fight is still primary, the Gospel secondary or “a given,” and religious and political conservatism paramount. Such a person could get quite agitated when a pastor resolves only to preach Christ, doesn’t tackle sociopolitical issues from the pulpit, will not counsel the congregation in the fight for Christian cultural dominance, chooses not to lead the charge of defiance against a politician or party, and refuses to endorse one political candidate over another. 

Consider this hypothetical situation: What if, in this past year filled with unmatched tensions, some people insisted that this was the most critical time in recent history for the church to stand up and lead the fight over certain social, cultural, and political causes? But what if some pastors, understanding the proper biblical role of the institutional church, knowing what the message of the church should be, and also recognizing that there might be some differences of opinion within the congregation on these matters, just continued to preach Christ, administer sacraments, shepherd the flock, and bring words of comfort and hope to weary sinners? I suppose things might come to a head and something would most likely have to give.

This thing that “most of us grew up with,” our special brand of Dutch-Reformed-American-Evangelical-Transformationalism will probably go on for a while and continue to appear relevant and successful – but I wonder what its fruit will be. Will it produce Gospel-driven Christians or right-winged soldiers? Will we see sinners brought to Christ through this war for the cultural supremacy? In my observation it’s just pushing people further away. In my opinion “what most of us grew up with” was often more harmful than helpful and its continuation will just continue to do harm.

The remedy is the Church simply being the Church, relying on the ordinary means of grace, doing what it was commissioned to do by Christ himself; ministering through the God-appointed means of Word and Sacraments, making disciples, practicing church discipline, feeding His sheep, and shepherding His flock. These happen to be major points of emphasis in Two-Kingdoms theology.

Several years ago a pastor of mine said this in a sermon, “If we don’t build hospitals someone else will, if we don’t build schools someone else will, if we don’t do much for social or political change someone else will – but if we don’t preach the Gospel NO ONE WILL!”* I choke up a little thinking about this word, not only because I miss the preaching of this pastor and miss him dearly, but because it strikes at the heart of the matter: The Gospel alone brings salvation, the Gospel is what we constantly need, and the Church is the only institution commissioned with bringing this Gospel to the world while continually feeding its living members with it. The Church, entrusted with this task, should be a place where all kinds of people who might otherwise be divided can, as J. Gresham Machen wrote, “unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the cross.”  –Christianity and Liberalism. Eerdmans, 1987, p. 180.

*this is probably not the exact quote, to the best of my knowledge it is very close and I don’t think he’d mind if I got it slightly wrong.

God Can’t Forgive

As is clear from the (few) recent comments around here, it’s been many months since the last post (I have stopped posting about the Vos study because of lack of interest; and suspended following the Vos study because of other things going on, but I do plan to pick it up again eventually…). I had a thought based on a recent oldlife post by DGH, and the comment thread there is already too long for me to catch up to, so that seemed as good a reason as any to write it up separately, here. In discussing forgiveness, DGH quotes Mark Jones:

Vos Study #10

Vos Study #10 covers the first half of chapter 6: points 1-2 of 4 about The Period Between Noah and the Great Patriarchs. Point 2 on The Table of Nations is simply a paragraph that highlights the significance of Shem. Point 1 centers on Noah’s prophetic curse of Ham and blessings of Shem and Japheth, the progenitors of all humanity, in three redemptive-historical groups. One quote of Vos for each:

On Ham:

The Old Testament recognizes that among the Canaanites the same type of sin here cursed was the dominating trait of evil. The descriptions given in the Pentateuch leave no doubt as to this [cp. Lev. 18.22; Deut. 12.29-32]. Even among the ancients outside of Israel (Japhetites) the sensual depravity in sexual life of Phoenicians, and Carthaginians in particular, had become proverbial.

On Shem:

This is the first time in Scripture that God is called the God of some particular group of mankind. It is so extraordinary a thing as to inspire the patriarch to the utterance of a doxlogy; ‘Blessed by Jehovah, the God of Shem.’ Resolved into its explicit meaning it would read: ‘Blessed be Jehovah, because He is willing to be the God of Shem.’

On Japheth dwelling in the tents of Shem:

A real political conquest is intended. But ultimately such physical conquest will have for its result the coming of a religious blessing to Japhet. Occupying the tents of Shem he will find the God of Shem, the God of redemption and of revelation, there. The prophecy, both in its proximate political import and as to its ultimate spiritual consequences, was fulfilled through the subjugating of Shemitic territory by the Greeks and Romans. For this blessing became one of the most potent factors in the spread of the true religion over the earth. Delitsch strikingly remarks: ‘We are all Japhetites dwelling in the tents of Shem.’

Bucey and Tipton spend a fair bit of time discussing how the curse of Ham “presses the antithesis”, in a Van Tillian way. They also point out (in a Klinean way) that, this not being a period of intrusion, Ham was not to be immediately executed.

 

Vos Study #9

Vos Study #8 covered the first half of chapter 5, Development leading up to Noachian revelation, and Vos Study #9 finishes chapter 5 with (post-flood) Noachian revelation.

This episode is a Klineophile’s dream. They go well beyond Vos and spend a lot of time unpacking what Kline had to say, and there’s even a positive mention of “brother Van Drunen’s” use of Noachian revelation in his treatment of Common Grace.

First off, they spend a good bit of time on Kline’s treatment of the covenantal rainbow as just a bow, a weapon, retired from attacking the earth, and hung up to rest, pointing away from the earth, and even towards God who is willing to redeem men by taking their punishment onto themselves.

There’s a good discussion of what can go wrong when the common, universal covenant to preserve life until the final judgment, is conflated or flattened with redemptive covenants. On the one hand, you can get Theonomy, where elements of the redemptive covenant are imported into secular government. On the other hand, you get Catholicism, where the entire earth becomes sacramental (see Sacramentum Mundi), and salvation is somehow extended to all.

And near the end, there’s a great discussion of the concept of Intrusion. Bucey makes an interesting point; in the many examples where Israel does not fully destroy Canaanites as God has commanded, that is an unauthorized extension of common grace. (And God punishes them for that). Tipton points out that examples of intrusion are always tied to a holy place installed on earth (the ark, the temple, the land of Israel, etc.).

All in all, a great episode, I recommend you go give it a listen (you don’t need to have listened to all the previous ones). You just can’t go wrong with a podcast that includes the sentence “And that’s why were’ not Theonomists.”

Larger Catechism Class

Yesterday was the first class in a proposed 3-quarter (3x13wk) class on the Larger Catechism at EOPC, taught by (it’s all about) me. For anybody that’s interested, resources and recordings can be found online. Yesterday’s class on historical introduction was a lot of fun, but I expect it will settle down as we dive into the catechism itself starting next week.

Vos Study #8

In Vos Study #8, we have the first half of Ch 5, “The Development Leading Up to the Noachian Revelation”. This section of scripture is summarized in Vossian understatement as “revelation here bears on the whole a negative rather than positive character,” watching the Cainite line slide into ever-increasing depravity, and even take the Sethite line with them (Vos explains how the “Sons of God/daughters of men” passage is Sethite men taking Cainite wives). The podcasters go into great length about how the Cainites’ city-building is sinfully autonomous, with only one concession from Bucey that “not to say that all cities are inherently evil, since Zion is a city.” I was missing what I found in Vos of picking out a thread of common grace. Continuing on from the quote above,

It contents itself with bestowing a minimum of grace. A minimum could not be avoided either in the sphere of nature or of redemption, because in the former sphere, without at least some degree of divine interposition, collapse of the world-fabric would have resulted, and in the latter the continuity of the fulfillment of the promise would have been broken off. … Had God permitted Grace freely to flow out into the world and to gather great strength within a short period, then the true nature and consequences of sin would have been very imperfectly disclosed. …

The narrative proceeds in three stages. It first describes the rapid development of sin in the line of Cain. In connection with this it describes the working of common grace in the gift of invention for the advance of civilization in the sphere of nature. It shows further that these gifts of grace were abused by the Cainites and made subservient to the progress of evil in the world.

The podcast concludes with a discussion of the “120 years” passage, which does not mean that God will limit the age of individuals to 120 years (many in the genealogies live much longer than that, even after the flood, including Abraham); rather it is a deadline, 120 years is the limit of God’s patience (cf 2 Pet 3:9), after which judgment comes in the form of the flood, which will be discussed more next time, for the back half of the chapter.

Vos Study #7

In Vos Study #7, Dr. (congrats!) Bucey and Dr. Tipton cover all of the small chapter 4, The Content of the First Redemptive Special Revelation, which focuses on the results of the Fall.

First off is nakedness and shame, which is the result of “how Special Revelation attaches itself to General Revelation”. Previously GR showed God’s glory through creation, but now it reveals Adam & Eve’s sin and guilt. (See also Rom 1).

On to the curses. Most of the discussion on the podcast centered on “seed of woman vs seed of serpent”; noting how it is “obviously” collective at first, but then turns singular at “he will crush your head”. This was related to Gal 3:16 with the “seed” vs “seeds” stuff. (And that in turn related to the Christocentric vs Christotelic discussion which is currently occupying a lot of the blogosphere.) One especially nice point from Vos is how God shows his initiative with “I will put enmity…”. Says Vos,

The essence of the deliverance consists in a reversal of the attitude assumed by man towards the serpent and God respectively. Man in sinning had sided with the serpent and placed himself in opposition to God. Now the attitude towards the serpent becomes one of hostility; this must carry with it a corresponding change in man’s attitude towards God. God being the mover in the warfare against Satan, man, joining in this, becomes plainly an ally of God.

The curses towards Eve and Adam (note curses are given in order of sin; serpent, Eve, Adam) are treated much less. But it is interesting that Vos finds the gospel even in the curses; obviously the protoevangelion in the serpent’s curse, but in cursing Eve with painful childbirth, God is promising childbirth; and in cursing Adam with hard labor, he is promising sun, and rain, and bread.

One off-handed comment got my goat; discussing the collective seeds of the woman and serpent, Bucey jokes “Those are the first two kingdoms, ha ha”; but Tipton follows up enthusiastically with, “Yes, if you want to properly consider the two kingdoms…”. It seemed like me to be a backhanded swipe at 2K, even though obviously, it’s not proper 2K if one of the Kingdoms is the Kingdom of Satan. But I’ll give them a pass, as the rest of the episode had lots of good things to say about Kline, both in Kingdom Prologue and Images of the Spirit.

 

Dr. Strange Love; or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Animus Impotentis

Sometimes you have to write a blog post just for the sake of a good title. Episode 337 of Christ the Center featured Dr. Alan Strange, discussing “Animus Impotentis”. Dr. Strange is rather a cut-up, and makes this discussion of a dry-sounding topic almost as entertaining as rodeo-skydiving a nuclear warhead!

A few highlights I recall:

Dr. Strange relates how 6×24 YECs like to insist that the confessional language “in the space of six days” means “in the space of six ordinary, twenty-four hour days” (or equivalently, the animus imponentis of the language means “ordinary 24-hour”). The only reason, they say, “24-hour” is not in the confession is because that phrase is modern, and it would be anachronistic for us to expect them to speak that way. However, in researching the minutes of the Assembly, Dr. Strange found a case where there was a debate over whether the 7th day of Creation is eternal and continuing, or “24 hours”. Maybe the phrase was even “24-hour day”, I don’t recall. I think how it went was, there was a motion to assert that the 7th day was a 24-hour day, and the motion was debated, voted on, and rejected. The point being, “24-hour”-ness was in their vocabulary.

Another interesting creation-related tidbit, from the OPC Creation Report (for which Dr. Strange was a committee member). (See lines 2859ff in the report.) In 1954, there was a Dr. Edwin Monsma who wrote a tract If Not Evolution, What Then, which he requested that the OPC Committee on Christian Education publish. “The way that he sets forth his view is quite irenic. … He summarizes his position on the length of creation days this way: ‘Without categorially dismissing all other views, it does seem that this one [6×24] is most easily harmonized with Scriptures and with the whole of special revelation.” And yet, the response of the committee was: “[the committee] has reluctantly concluded that it would not be desirable for the Committee on Christian Education to publish it because of the dogmatic position taken on the controversial issue of the length of creation days.” The Report’s conclusion : “Certainly it seems to indicate that almost twenty years after the formation of the OPC, the denomination remained unwilling to publish anything under its auspices that set forth the length of the creation days as being of ordinary duration.” (See also Robert Strimple’s historical reflections on the OPC and views of creation.)

Finally, to show that animus imponentis is not only about creation, Dr. Strange discussed its relation to other topics as well. One that stuck out for me was an assertion that, Limited Atonement is not nailed down by our confessions, but the common understanding that it is a non-negotiable doctrine is a matter of animus imponentis. Apparently Hodge wrote something that tried to prove that L is indeed in the confessions but Strange considers Hodge to have used somewhat weak, overreaching arguments, and Fesko has written something more recently that does a better job.

Anyways, it was a good discussion, and you should go listen to the whole thing!

 

 

 

Vos Study #6

This time, for Vos Study #6, they cover the back half of chapter 3, The Content of Pre-Redemptive Special Revelation. The first half of the chapter was about the principles of life (Tree of) and probation (ToKoGaE). The two remaining principles are

3. the principle of temptation and sin symbolized in the serpent;
4. the principle of death reflected in the dissolution of the body.

As always, an interesting discussion. As is Vos’ habit, he first dispenses of erroneous views before proceeding to a correct view. The first erroneous view that the serpent is completely allegorical and ahistorical “is contrary to the plain intent of the narrative; in Gen 3:1, the serpent is compared with the other beasts God had made; if teh others were real, then so was the serpent. In vs. 14 the punishment is expressed in terms requiring a real serpent.” The other erroneous view goes to the other extreme; that there was merely a serpent, but Vos rejects that because “The Bible always upholds against all pantheizing confusion the distinction between man who speaks, and animals who do not speak; Balaam’s ass forming the only exception on record. It therefore becomes necessary to adopt the old, traditional view according to which there were present both a real serpent, and a demonic power, who made use of the former to carry out his plan.”

Vos talks about how Satan approached Eve rather than Adam, not because Eve was weaker, but because she was not the direct recipient of God’s prohibiting Word. That put me in mind of the importance of disseminating the Word (either by Adam in his role as prophet, or our pastors today), and the importance of accepting that Word (again, by us as well as Eve).

Another point was that Adam was with Eve throughout this whole scene, and watched her fall without intervening. This made me think of (spoiler alert!) the penultimate episode of Fargo, where Lester knows Billy Bob Thornton is after him, so he cowardly sends his wife inside, wearing his distinctive bright orange down coat with hood. So also Adam knew there was danger, but let his wife taste anyways. After his beefeater took the first bite and nothing apparently happened, then Adam also ate. Speaking of which, Vos’ understanding of “In the day that you eat you shall surely die” is in the sense of “As surely as you eat, so shall you die.”

The final “principle” is death. Vos has sharp words for some scientists who claim that death was always part of the evolutionary history of man: “At present many writers take exception to this [that death is the penalty of sin], largely on scientific grounds. With these as such we have here nothing to do. But, as is frequently the case, strenuous attempts are made to give such a turn to the Biblical phrases as to render them compatible with what science is believed to require, and not only this, some proceed to the assertion that the Scriptural statements compel acceptance of the findings of science. Attempts of this kind make for poor and forced exegesis. Scripture has a right to be exegeted independently from within; and only after its natural meaning has been thus ascertained, can we properly raise the question of agreement of disagreement between Scripture and science.” So Vos died in 1949; I wonder how much input he had into his student Kline’s Framework Theory?

Vos closes the chapter with a discussion of various senses of mortal/immortal, which correspond to the fourfold estate of man. Man’s soul is and always was immortal. Pre-fall Adam’s body was mortal in the sense it could be crushed by a rock (externally), but not in the sense that it had death at all internally (like a disease). Fallen man is mortal in a stronger sense; “whereas before he was liable to die only under certain circumstances, he now inevitably had to die.” Total immortality belongs to “the regenerate, here already in principle, and, of course, in their heavenly state”.

Vos Study #5

Vos Study #5 is out, covering half of chapter 3, The Content of Pre-Redemptive Special Revelation. Chapter 2 on The Mapping Out of the Field of Revelation gave an outline of the forthcoming chapters; this is the first installment. Chapter 3 begins by listing “Four Principles”:

1. the principle of life in its highest potency sacramentally symbolized by the tree of life;
2. the principle of probation symbolized in the same manner by the tree of knowledge of good and evil;
3. the principle of temptation and sin symbolized in the serpent;
4. the principle of death reflected in the dissolution of the body.

This episode only discusses the first two; the latter two will be next time. (I thought it was interesting that these four principles are arranged chiastically (and I thought it would be impressive if I used the word ‘chiastically’) with outer and inner pairs of principles being mirror-images of each other.

For the first principle, Vos begins by asserting that Eden is not man’s home, but rather “The Garden of God,” a place of worship, a temple, which concept was later picked up and exhaustively expanded up on by Greg Beale. Most of the rest of this discussion brings in other passages that illustrate the sacramental nature of the Tree of Life (Rev 2:7, Ps 65:9, etc).

Vos spends more time discussing principle 2, for “There is more mystery and hence far greater difference of opinion concerning this tree than the tree of life.” Vos first sets up the worst option, “mythical interpretation. … The idea is a thoroughly pagan one, that of the jealousy of the gods lest man should obtain something felt by them to be a private divine privilege.” Vos mocks and dismisses this approach in short order, noting how silly it would be for God to plant the very tree that causes him to worry that man might eat of it.

The second option is more plausible. “This view attaches itself to the linguistic observation that Hebrew ‘to know’ can signify ‘to choose’. The name would then really mean ‘the tree of the choice of good and evil’. Vos’ principal objection to this is that it doesn’t make sense to talk of ‘choice’ (an act) rather than ‘knowledge’ (a state) before the probation, when the in the consequence, “nakedness stands not for an act but for a condition.” A quick note about this view though; “Others give a peculiar sinister sense to the word ‘knowing’, making it to mean ‘the independent autonomous choice over against God’s direction of what was good and what was evil for man.” That statement seems to me to be Vos warning against an (anachronistic) over-van-Tillian approach to the question.

Finally, Vos introduces the correct interpretation: “the tree is called the tree of ‘knowledge of good and evil’, because it is the God-appointed instrument to lead man through probation to that state of religious and moral maturity wherewith his highest blessedness is connected.”

Vos stresses the arbitrary nature of the command. If God were to have issued a command that had an inherent moral component, then Adam might have (been expected to) figure out what to do ‘by instinct’. But Vos contends, “The pure delight in obedience adds to the ethical value of a choice. In the present case it was made the sole determinant factor, and in order to do this an arbitrary prohibition was issued, such as from the very fact of its arbitrariness excluded every force of instinct from shaping the outcome.” So the probation test is purely a test of obedience, with the only ‘reason’ (Vos speaks of the ‘unreasoned will of God’, and the ‘unexplained, unmotivated demand of God’) being: because God said so.

Next time, the rest of ch 3, and the remaining two principles of pre-redemptive special revelation (temptation and death).

 

 

Luther vs Calvin(?) on Images

First off, here’s Luther (described by Heiko Olbermann, quoted by RSC):

With regard to Luther’s judgment on images, we are not in the dark. In his report to his confidant Nikolaus Hausmann on the situation he found in Wittenberg, he was unambiguous: “Damno imagines.” The elimination of images, however, should be brought about by means of a consensus grounded in the faith. As far as the intended action goes, Luther’s posture was in 1522 appears no different from the position Erasmus had counseled six years earlier—images should be tolerated until they can be removed sine tumultu. On March 17, having just arrived from the Wartburg, he summarized his strategy on images this way: “They would fall of themselves if people were taught and knew that before God symbols are nothing.

And now here’s Calvin, quoted (paraphrased?) by R. C. Sproul, against Bob Godfrey, HT Jesse Light:

53:24 — Calvin’s view was to wean the people away from the idolatrous use of images and icons in Rome. But it was not an absolute principial objection; he thought it was a temporary, prudential need to change the worship culture of the church from the idolatry that was rampant in Rome, and the Roman use of images, Bob, you know that, and that’s why I’m saying, if we’re going to be Calvinistic, if you’re going to follow Calvin on this point, Calvin theoretically allowed for the use of images — prudentially — after a moratorium to liberate a generation of people from that stuff.

So Luther’s Reformation was temporarily for images, with an end goal of eliminating them, but Calvin’s Reformation was temporarily against images, until they could be allowed in appropriate uses?

Personally, although I think Sproul’s words well describe the actual situation of the early Reformed churches wrt idolatrous Rome, I have never seen any writings that would back up this actually being Calvin’s documented position. If there are any, I wish I knew about them three years ago, they would have come in really handy!

Visiting St. Andrew’s ‘Chapel’

Last November, we were in Orlando for a wedding, and we decided to worship at St. Andrew’s PCA, home of R. C. Sproul. It was an interesting experience all around, and I’ve been meaning to blog about it ever since.

As we walked in from the parking lot, it was clear that the ‘Chapel’ would be better named a ‘Cathedral’, with traditional European architecture (east-west orientation, bell tower, giant vaulted ceiling supported by flying buttresses, cross-shaped floor plan, etc.), sharing a lovely green plot of a few acres with a pond and Ligionier Ministries. I was planning, if the opportunity should arise, a greeting to Dr. Sproul from Escondido OPC, Westminster Seminary, and the Cambridge School (which has received a lot of mentorship from the Geneva School which came out of Sproul’s church). As it happened, the day we visited was the same day a minister was ordained or received or installed or something in one of the other churches that are somehow in a cluster (sub-presbytery?) with St Andrews, and a deacon or greeter explained that Dr. Sproul was not out talking with guests as usual, because of duties related to that church business. Also, there was a note in the bulletin that, under doctor’s orders, Dr. Sproul is not allowed to shake hands. I guess he’s really pretty old by now, and that seems a good precaution to safeguard his health.

So the most striking element of the cathedral is the art. The St. Andrew’s website describes everything (and there is a handout available with the same information). Immediately upon entering the foyer, there is a Torah scroll in a glass case (from a scriptorium in Yemen that has been active since biblical times). All around the foyer are mounted 6 large (and I mean huge, like at least 6’x8′) paintings of scenes from the life and work of Christ. Unfortunately, I can’t find any pictures of them online, but they are by Richard Serrin, “one of the greatest religious painters of the twentieth century.” I’m no art critic, but I was not particularly impressed. I have no problem with images of Christ (outside the sanctuary), and these were certainly not Kincade-cheesy, but I didn’t get an impression of awe-inspiring mastery from them.

Inside the sanctuary, there are a number of remarkable stained-glass windows. It would have helped if I had found and read the handout first, because I was distracted and confused for the whole service about why, directly behind the pulpit, there were giant stained-glass windows of a lion, a man, and a bull (see picture below). Turns out, in that alcove there are actually 5 windows, symbolically representing the four gospel writers, and presenting Paul as a man, each holding a Book of their contributions to the New Testament. Apart from being just plain distracting, I don’t see how they can be reconciled with historical, confessional Reformed views on images in churches. (To hear Sproul on images, try here at 18:20, or here at 45:00) The large stained glass windows to the sides seem more appropriate, being mostly mosaicked color, surrounding Christological symbols of a throne, and a crown&scepter.

Enough about the facility (except to note that, oddly, there were two uniformed, armed Sanford policemen guarding(?) the foyer), let me pass on to the service, or as much as I can remember after 5 months. The prelude consisted essentially of an oboe concerto, with a tiny chamber orchestra up there (lovely, but a bit secular for my taste). The organ and hymns were wonderful. There was I believe a responsive psalm reading and a confession of the Apostle’s or Nicene creed.

The most memorable aspect of the sermon was that R.C. mounted the podium and announced that in his studies he had accidentally skipped right over the passage that had just been read, and prepared for the next pericope. After relating a hilarious mashup of two gospel parables, he dove right into the assigned passage, al fresco as it were. The sermon was as good as I would have expected from Sproul. Unfortunately, the St. Andrews website doesn’t seem to present a complete index of recorded sermons by date, so I can’t look up exactly what the sermon was, and refresh my memory beyond that.

Vos Study #4

Time for Vos study #4!

The assigned reading is the entire small chapter #2, The Mapping Out of the Field of Revelation, which considers the fourfold division of General (Natural) vs Special (Supernatural), and pre-fall vs post-fall, Revelation.

One thing I noticed was that Vos has a category for pre-fall Special Revelation, but it is explicitly not Redemptive. This discussion of probation is interesting when balanced with FV insistence that the COW was gracious (in these quotes, emphasis is always mine):

The provision of this new, higher prospect for man was an act of condescension and high favour. God was in no wise bound on the principle of justice to extend it to man, and we mean this denial not merely in the general sense in which we affirm that God owes nothing to man, but in the very specific sense that there was nothing in the nature of man nor of his creation, which by manner of implication could entitle man to such a favour from God.

Those are strong words, but I think still completely in sync with MGK’s assessment that there was “not a gram of grace” in the COW.

In the podcast, Bucey and Tipton take their w-w shots at Natural Theology, which is probably not unexpected from avowed Van Tillians, but I think they push Vos farther than he himself would go. Here’s what Vos actually wrote :

Redemption in a supernatural way restores to fallen man also the normalcy and efficiency of his cognition of God in the sphere of nature. How true this is may be seen from the fact that the best system of Theism, i.e. Natural Theology, has not been produced from the sphere of heathenism, however splendidly endowed in the cultivation of philosophy, but from Christian sources. When we produce a system of natural knowledge of God, and in doing so profess to rely exclusively on the resources of reason, this is, of course, formally correct, but it remains an open question whether we should have been able to produce such a thing with the degree of excellence we succeeded in imparting to it, had not our minds in the natural exercise of their faculties stood under the correcting influence of redemptive grace.

The most important function of Special Revelation, however, under the regime of sin, does not lie in the correction and renewal of the faculty of perception of natural verities; it consists in the introduction of an altogether new world of truth, that relating to the redemption of man. … Nature cannot unlock the door of redemption.

Contrariwise, Bucey&Tipton made the question sound entirely closed. And immediately in the next paragraph is a tough pill for the w-w crowd to swallow, mitigating the importance of Special Revelation for natural understanding.

Another great quote:

Many new things belong to [post-fall, redemptive Special Revelation], but they can all be subsumed under the categories of justice and grace as the two poles around which henceforth the redeeming self-disclosure of God revolves. All the new processes and experiences which the redeemed man undergoes can be brought back to the one of the other of these two.

You gotta love some good strong Law&Gospel.

The bulk of the rest of the chapter deals with the Hebrew berith as covenant (I don’t recall MGK including Vos in his discussion of various definitions of ‘covenant’), and the choice facing the translators of the Septuagint and the writers of the New Testament to use either diatheke or syntheke. Ultimately, it seems syntheke was rejected because of its undue stress on the equality (syn-?) of both parties, and diatheke used even though it usually implied the death of the Testator (see Heb 9:16ff). There is apparently a less common usage of diatheke for “a disposition that some one made for himself” without regard to death, that was what the biblical writers were getting at.

However, this whole discussion raised in my mind the question of why God would ordain that the language that the NT would be written in would not offer a more suitable word to correspond with berith?

Finding Christ in Adam’s Rib

I recently visited another church (for a family baptism), and after the sermon on Gen 2:18-25 (the account of the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib)I was left wondering how Christ could be preached directly from this passage. (As it happened, the gospel was included via Eph 5 on Christ and the church as head and bride, but it didn’t really seem organically connected.)

So I’m wondering, how legitimate is it to see death and resurrection in Adam’s sleep, and (bloody?) sacrifice “for” his bride?

Or on the other hand, can Christ be seen at all in Eve, who is of Adam’s own nature and substance, uniquely suited to be his “helper” (a la HC16)? (It was noted in the sermon that the Hebrew word for “helper” is most often used of God as redeemer, quite often in the Psalms.) If not an actual type of Christ, perhaps a lesser-to-greater argument can get us from the necessity of “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh” for Eve’s this-worldly helper-ness, to the necessessity of Christ’s being “very man” for his redemptive helper-ness?

What do you think? (Or to what can you link?)

Reading Scripture Together: Kindle edition

A few weeks ago I posted about Reading Scripture Together: A Comparative Qur’an and Bible Study Guide, by my aunt, Barbara Hampton. While it is still available in its original paperback form, it is now also available in an extra crispy Kindle edition!

The Kindle edition is priced at $4.99, but we set it up with Amazon’s “MatchBook” feature, so anybody who buys the paperback should be able to get the Kindle edition also for just 99 cents. (I don’t know how that works with anybody that might have bought the paperback already; if anybody has problems with MatchBook, drop a comment below and I will contact you offline and make sure it gets taken care of.)