Saul: Another Adam

I noticed this in my daily reading last week in 1 Samuel 15

Saul is a king, ruling in God’s land (v. 1). He takes the forbidden fruit, what should have been devoted to destruction (v. 9) and when Samuel challenges him, he blames his wife, that is, the people (vv. 15, 21) – for the relationship between king and his people as that of a husband and his wife, see 2 Samuel 5.1 cf Genesis 2.23. As a result, he is rejected from being king (v. 26).

Saul, instead of being a new Adam and constituting a new humanity in Israel, he is just like the first Adam, who was supposed to have dominion over the world, who took from the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil, who blamed Eve when he was found out, and who was expelled from the garden. This leaves us longing for another, one who is king in God’s world and who is faithful, in whom a new humanity is truly established, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Richard Sibbes on Lydia’s Conversion

The effect of God’s grace in the life of an individual is to enable them to attend to God’s word, by which he brings about faith.

God opening the heart of any Christian, it is to carry the attention to the word. God by grace carries the heart to the word. ‘She attended to wat Paul spake.’ Where true grace is wrought, it carries not to speculation, or to practise this or that idle dream; but where the heart is open grace carries to attend to the word, especially to the good word, the gospel of Christ. As grace is wrought by the word, so it carries the soul to the word. – Works vi p. 525

Richard Sibbes on Baptism

The Anglican Puritan Richard Sibbes had a high view of what baptism achieves and the benefits it conveys, namely entry into the covenant and union with God and all the blessings thereof:

“Every infant that is baptised is the child of Christ.”

“Think of thy baptism when thou goest to God, especially when he seems angry. It is the seal of the covenant. Bring the promise: Lord, it is the seal of thy covenant; thou hast prevented me by thy grace; thou broughtest me into the covenant before I knew my right hand from my left.”

“I am in the covenant. Christ is mine; the Holy Ghost is mine; and God is mine.”

“By baptism I have union with the death of Christ; he died to take away sin, and my end must be his.”

Sibbes also writes of “the covenant made in baptism”.

That is not to say that simply having the sign is enough; it must be accompanied by faith:

“If we look no further, as profane spirits do not, than the water and the elements, we can have no comfort by these things; but we should consider God’s blessed institution and ordinance to strengthen our faith. And to our children when they come to years, baptism is an obligation to believe; because they have received the seal beforehand, and it is a means to believe.”

“Those that live to years to years of discretion, their baptism is an engagement and obligation to them to believe, because they have undertaken, by those that answered for them, to believe when they come to years; and, if, when they come to years, they answer not the covenant of grace and the answer of a good conscience, if they do not believe, and renounce Satan, all is frustrate. Their baptism doth them no good, if they make not good their covenant by believing and renouncing.”

Thinking upon our baptism will help us when we are tempted to sin:

“When we go to church to offer our service to God, think, by baptism we were consecrated and dedicated to God. Therefore it is sacrilege for persons baptized to yield to temptations to sin. We are dedicated to God in baptism…Shall I yield to that that in baptism I have sworn against?”

Looking back to the promises of God in baptism will also give us assurance when we are tempted to despair beause of our sin:

“If we be tempted to despair for sin, let us call to mind the promises of grace and forgiveness of sins, and the seal of forgiveness of sins, which is baptism. For as water in baptism washeth the body, so the blood of Christ washeth the soul. Let us make that use of our baptism, in temptations, not to despair for sin.”

For those who are illiterate, baptism is a means of instruction which will aid Christians in their walk with God. Now Sibbes was writing in an age when illiteracy was much more widespread than it is now (although one wonders sometimes) but his point might well apply to those with learning difficulties, for whom much of what goes on in evangelical Christianity, with its reading culture, is inaccessible:

“There are many that are not book-learned, that cannot read, at least they have no leisure to read. I would that they would read their book in their baptism; and if they would consider what it ministers to them upon all occasions, they would be far better Christians than they are.”

“Those that cannot read, if they have no other, let them look on these two books, the book of their baptism and the book of consciene. They would be sufficient to instruct them. Some people pretend ignorance. Consider what thou art baptised to the grounds of religion; consider there what thou hast renounced… Those that cannot read, and are not learned, let them make use of the learning of their baptism. There is a world of instruction and comfort, a treasury of it in baptism. I dare be bold to say, if any Christian, when he is tempted to sin, to despair or discouragement, if he consider what a solemn promise he hath made to God in baptism, it would be a means to strengthen his faith, and to arm him against all temptations.”

Richard Sibbes, Works vol. vi pp. 530-1 and vol. vii p. 487

Richard Sibbes on the Lord’s Supper

“In the Lord’s Supper, there is outward receiving of bread and wine, and inward making of a covenant with God.“

Works vii, p. 480

Law and Gospel?

Hear Dr J. I. Packer on the relationship between the Old and New Covenants, and the Mosaic law and the gospel. There is still a widespread view in evangelicalism that in the Old Testament, God’s people are saved by keeping the law and then in the New Testament, they are saved by faith in Christ. Rather, law and gospel are redemptive-historical categories, typifying and realising respectively the one covenant of grace.

We must not be misled by the fact that he [the writer to the Hebrews] speaks of two “covenants”, the first and the second, the old and the new: this is simply a reflection of Old Testament usage, in which the word “covenant” acquired an institutional significance and became “the formula designating the entire structure and content of the religion of Israel”. The two “covenants” are two successive systems, the first typifying the second, for the realisation of the selfsame covenant privilege – present fellowship between God’s people and himself. So far from throwing doubt on the unity and continuity of the covenant promise, the contrast thus presupposes and confirms it.

Packer continues in a footnote:

Limitations of space preclude any treatment of the passages in which Paul opposes the Mosaic law to the gospel, describing it as a covenant of works which brings bondage and death (cf. Gal iv.21 ff., 2 Cor. iii, etc.). It must suffice to say that these passages are arguments ad hominem, in which he accepts pro tempore the evaluation of the Law as a self-sufficient covenant of life which Judaism by its rejection of Christ had given it, and devotes himself simply to proving that those who treat it as such will find that it leads to death, for they will in fact break it and thus incur its curse. The ease with which he slips into this line of thought reflects his years of controversy in Jewish synagogues. We have already see that in his own view the Law was not given to be a covenant of life at all.

‘Baptism: A Sacrament of the Covenant of Grace’, Churchman 1955 volume 9 issue 2, pp. 79-80.

Isaiah 6 and the remnant

“And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump. – Isaiah 6.13

Isaiah is commissioned to preach a message which will harden the hearts of the people of Judah, who will be judged. (Isaiah 6.8-12). Nevertheless, there will be a faithful remnant, the “holy seed”. Jesus takes these words and applies them to his own ministry (Mark 4.10-12 and parallels), as does Paul (Acts 28.23-31). Now in applying these verses to ourselves, we have to be careful to pay attention to the context. One objection to postmillennialism I have encounted is the emphasis the Scriptures place on a remnant being saved, i.e. a small number, rather than the vast majority of the world. In these cases here, the audience of the preaching which hardens is the Jews. The consequence is judgment, in Isaiah’s day that would at the hands of the Babylonians in 596/587 BC, and in Jesus’ and Paul’s day, that would be at the hands of the Romans in AD 70. Nevertheless, a remnant is saved. In the text from Isaiah, the remnant is the faithful people of God, from which the Messiah would come. In the New Testament appropriations of that text, the remnant consists of the Messiah, who emerges from the remnant promised in Isaiah, and those Jews who are joined to him. But this has no bearing on the final proportion of the saved. Through Christ and his people, salvation then goes out to the whole world, as the gospel goes out and people respond in faith. And that is consistent with the hope of a vastly saved world. Now it remains to be said that we can apply texts like Isaiah 6, Mark 4 and Acts 28 typologically: like those situations, our preaching can have the effect of hardening people, for God is sovereign in salvation and it belongs to him alone to open ears and eyes and grant repentance. The judgments of Israel in 596/587 BC and AD 70 are anticipations of the future judgment of those whose ears and eyes in God’s sovereignty are not opened by the preaching of the gospel.

Ruth: Some Thoughts

We had a good sermon at church this Sabbath on Ruth 1. I think it’s a tough book to expound. We looked at the three main characters in chapter 1 in turn. Elimelech compromised, going to Moab, allowing his sons to marry outside the faith, and it ended in disaster (v. 5). Naomi suffered affliction, yet she expressed faith in the LORD, albeit confused faith: God’s hand does not go out against his people, which is clearly shown to us in the Lord Jesus. It’s all right to be honest about our feelings before God. Ruth showed kindness, reflecting the kindness of the God she has taken to be her God. Would that our congregation be characterised by the kind of kindness shown here. Being known for being welcoming and ’sound’ is not enough.

My Bible reading plan (the BCP lectionary) took me through Ruth at the beginning of this week, so I offer some thoughts.

First, we see the sorrows of covenant people. God’s people aren’t spared the problems of the culture around them (‘in the days when the judges ruled’), nor are they spared want (‘there was a famine in the land’) or bereavement (‘the woman was left without her two sons and her husband’). It may feel as though God’s hand is against us.

Secondly, in the story of Ruth, we see the shape of God’s salvation in miniature. In Ruth 1.6, we read, “The LORD had visited his people.” The language of visitation is the same language used of the Exodus, and of Christ. ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel. He has visited and redeemed his people,’ sings Zechariah in Luke 1, speaking of the deliverance of God’s people from the shadow of death by the forgiveness of their sins. There is a barley harvest (1.22): God delivers his people from famine and death. “He has filled the hungry with good things,” sings Mary, also in Luke 1, after she has received the promise of being the mother of the Christ, and Ruth certainly experiences that, e.g. Ruth 2.14. Ruth is the Gentile woman (her ancestry is repeatedly mentioned) who takes refuge in YHWH, who takes him to be her God, and his people to be her people (echoing the covenant refrain, ‘I will be your God and you shall be my people) and consequently, there is fellowship at the table of God’s people; she may eat bread and drink wine  with Boaz and his men. Similarly, the mystery in Paul’s letters is the inclusion of Gentiles in the promise of the gospel. (Ephesians 3.6). This is why Peter’s behaviour at Antioch is so scandalous (he was eating with Gentiles and then  separates from them) and leads Paul to rebuke him (Galatians 2.12). Jew and Gentile in Christ are welcome at the Lord’s Table, where they may eat bread and drink wine together and of course, they will feast in the New Creation together (Revelation 19). Naomi is concerned that her daughters-in-law find rest, protection, certainty and security for the future, which Ruth ultimately finds in being married to Boaz, (Ruth 3.1), and of course, Jesus, the descendant of Boaz, invites the weary to come to him and find rest (Matthew 11.28), the lifting of their burden of sin so that they may enjoy the security of life in the new creation, the Sabbath rest that yet remains for the people of God. God’s actions in the individual lives of these people are for the sake of Christ. We see that Obed, who is born to Ruth is David’s ancestor (Ruth 4.22), and thus God’s saving work in the life of Ruth is vital for Christ’s coming into the world. Living on the other side of Christ’s first coming, it is those who are in Christ who experience God’s salvation, for the sake of his work in the world.

Finally, we see some implications. Ruth is a model of faith, taking God to be our God and his people to be our God, which shows itself in commitment to God’s people. This story prepares us for the harsh realities of life often faced by God’s people, but it also offers hope for those whose faith is the same as that of Ruth, of ultimate salvation, of life in a world where we will neither hunger nor thirst anymore (Revelation 7.16). God’s work in the book of Ruth entails inclusion of the outsider, for all who take refuge in the Triune God are welcome at the table of his people. We must reflect the kind of welcome, the level of kindness, the liberal generosity, demonstrated for us here. Finally, Ruth offers us the chance to marvel afresh at God’s strange sovereignty in work in the way that he has to fulfil his purposes for the salvation of the world.

More un-Reformed heresy from the Federal Vision

From Blog and Mablog:

Now the covenant is actually made with all worthy receivers—and worth is defined in terms of faith, not in terms of any kind of self-righteous works. Stated short-hand the covenant is efficaciously made, for blessing, with the elect.

But it does not follow from this that the covenant is invisible, just like the entire body of the elect is invisible. No, the covenant, the terms of it, and the signs and seals of it, are all visible—they are all right here. The word we preach, the gospel we preach, is declared in real time. The water that we baptize with is real water. The wine and bread we consecrate is earthly bread, baked in an oven, and the wine is earthly wine, fashioned by human artifice from the juice of grapes. These are not similitudes for the covenant of grace; they are rather manifestations of the covenant of grace.

Those who have true faith respond to these signs and seals, and are therefore brought to the reality behind them. They are not the ones who bypass the means, on their own going straight to the reality behind them. There are no shortcuts here.

You must travel the road that God has built for you. You will only do so if you believe in Him, trusting Him to keep His promises. But trusting Him to keep the promises He made through Word, Water, and Wine is not the same thing as claiming that He has made no promises in and through such things at all. You must walk, by faith alone, in the way He established. As you do, you will see more and more clearly.

The covenant of grace is made with all the elect, and the extent of that body does not yet appear. There is a good bit of history yet to go, and the ranks of our numbers have a good deal of filling up to do. But those ranks will fill up here, in this world, by the means that God has established. It makes sense to say that the number of the decretally elect belongs to the secret things. But it is unbelief to say that the covenant of grace is secret. Do not say in your heart, who will go up to heaven to get it for us, or who will cross the sea for it. No, the word, the gospel, the covenant, is in your mouth and in your heart. Here, today, and forever.

Sounds good to me.

Jonah 1

I’ve started having Hebrew tutorials with a brother from church, and this week we looked at Jonah 1. There are a couple of things to notice. There’s a chiasm in Jonah 1.3 which is actually translated very well by the ESV:

A Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD
B He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on board,
A’ to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD

In contrast with vv. 1 and 2, where the LORD speaks to Jonah and commands him to go to Nineveh, this little chiasm emphasises the rebelliousness of Jonah’s actions, going to Tarshish, going from the presence of the LORD.

The second thing worth noting is that there is a downward progression throughout the chapter. The ESV picks it up pretty well.

In verse 2 we read, ‘He went down to Joppa.’ Having found a ship, we are told that he ‘went on board’, literally, ‘He went down into it.’ Jonah goes down into the inner part of the ship, where he lays down and is fast asleep (literally, ‘he lay down fast asleep’) (v. 5). Later on, we find Jonah going down even further, into the sea and then into the great fish.

In Jonah, we see the pattern of death, later followed by resurrection when he is vomited up. The belly of the great fish is the belly of Sheol for him. The sinner who dies because he rebels against the Lord and refuses to carry out his commission to preach to the unbelieving nation is raised up from the grave. And this of course foreshadows the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died, not for his own sin (for he had none) but for ours, and who was then raised up from the dead. “Just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” – Matthew 12.40.

Gideon and the Gospel

I’m reading through Judges at the moment, and the other day I came across the familiar story of Gideon. I was struck afresh by this story, particularly the striking ways in which it typifies the gospel.

In Judges 6.1-10, we learn that the people did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, so he gave them into the hand of Midian, an oppressive enemy, and the people are left in fear and want, for the Midianites and their friends devoured the produce of the land. Their particular crime we learn, when they cry out and he sends a prophet, was to fear the gods of the Amorites. Then the LORD comes to Gideon, whom he sends to deliver Israel from the hand of Midian, Gideon who is the least of his father’s house in the weakest clan (vv. 11-18). The LORD confirms his calling upon Gideon with a sign (vv. 19-24), and his mission from the LORD is to pull down the altars to Baal and Asherah and to construct an altar to the LORD. The LORD, through his servant, overthrows the false gods (vv. 25-27). When this is discovered, the people want to put him to death (vv. 28-32). The Midianites and their allies gather together against Israel, but Gideon is clothed with the Spirit and calls an army together (vv. 33-35). The LORD confirms to Gideon that he will save Israel with another sign, the sign of the fleece. “Putting out a fleece” often tends to be used in evangelical circles in the context of discerning God’s will. “If you want me to do X, then let Y happen”. But we’re not told whether or not to imitate this. If anything, putting out a fleece is a sign of Gideon’s lack of faith, having already received God’s word of promise and seen him perform a sign. But he’s not explicitly condemned. The point is that the LORD is confirming his servant with another sign (vv. 36-40). Gideon then leads out his army, but the LORD says there are too many and reduces the number to 300 “lest Israel boast saying, ‘My own hand has saved me’”. The LORD gives Midian in to the hands of Gideon and his men.

The situation Israel (whose calling was to be a new humanity, once again rightly related to God in his world) is in at the beginning of the chapter is the same as the situation of humanity after the Fall. The land is under a curse (Genesis 3.17-19) and because all humanity, not just Israel, ‘exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator’, God has handed us over to judgment, our dishonourable passions and impurity and all manner of unrighteousness, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife and deceit (Romans 1.18ff). Our world, like the Israel of Judges 6, is a world of fear and oppression and want, under the judgment of God. Yet Christ, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth is God’s appointed servant for the salvation of Israel and the world. He is attested to by God with many signs and wonders. He casts out demons, overthrowing the devil’s power. His actions cause people to want to kill him (e.g. Luke 4.28-29). By his death and resurrection, he saves us, dealing with the underlying problem that no one else could, bearing the punishment for sin, so that we can be forgiven and all who are opposed to God and his people are defeated, as they are robbed of all grounds of accusation and means of oppression: ‘”Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ – 1 Corinthians 15.54-57. Christ’s ministry is the fulfilment of the pattern seen with Gideon: ‘God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ – 1 Corinthians 1.28-29.

The Federal Vision, or “Damnable Heresy”

A very helpful introduction to the essentials of the Federal Vision can be found in the latest edition of Credenda Agenda HERE.

The Federal Vision exponents have been having a fairly hard time of things in the US, so I gather: ministers are being tried by their denominations, weblogs are flowing with vitriol and accusations of popery, and everything these people have said or written is under scrutiny. While fending off attack with their swords in one hand, quite how they find time to use their trowels to build Jerusalem and do the task for which they’ve been set apart is beyond me, but they manage it.

I want to suggest, however, that we should be taking seriously what they have to say, and though what they say might sound a little unfamilar to twenty-first century evangelical ears, actually for Reformed Christians, particularly the Anglicans among us, there is little that is especially controversial. In particular, they are calling us back to a robust view of the church, sacraments, and salvation which the early Reformers have taught and from which we have drifted.

In the main, they are committed to their confessional standards like the Westminster Confession of Faith. They aim to be Trinitarian in their understanding of what the Bible teaches. They are postmillennial, believing that prior to our Lord’s second coming, the ‘earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the water cover the sea’, as the nations stream to him who is the Saviour of the world. You know what I think about postmillennialism (see HERE). Moreover, Christ’s status as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords means that the Christian faith is a public faith and the duty of the church is to call all nations to submit themselves to Him in everything. There is no neutrality in politics.

They are committed to the Reformation principle of sola scriptura; the Bible alone is our infallible and ultimate rule for faith and practice, and Scripture has to guide us in interpreting Scripture. In view of that, while they see value in using language in the specialised, technical sense employed in the confessions, they rightly want to return to the language and concepts of Scripture, and this I think is where a lot of the current problems have arisen: they’re talking about the same thing in different ways, or using the same language to talk about different things.

They are Reformed: God is sovereign over all things, and before the foundation of the world chose those who would be saved, the number of whom cannot be increased or decreased, for whom Christ died on the cross, and to whom the Holy Spirit brings life and in whom enables perseverence. They also acknowledge that non-elect covenant members who are not decretally elect enjoy the common operations of the Spirit, in varying degrees, but not in the same way that those who are elect do. This seems to me to be consistent with, for example, Hebrews 6.4-8. However, they do believe it is simultaneously right to use the same language covenantally, i.e. to describe those who are in the covenant. J. C. Ryle said the same thing about the Anglican liturgy in the Prayer Book when he writes:

The principle of the Prayer Book is to suppose that all members of the Church to be in reality what they are in profession, to be true believers in Christ, to be sanctified by the Holy Ghost. The Prayer Book takes the highest standard of what a Christian ought to be, and is all through worded accordingly. The minister addresses those who assemble together for public worship as believers. The people who use the words the Liturgy puts into their mouths are supposed to be believers. But those who drew up the Prayer Book never meant to assert that all who were members of the Church of England were actually and really true Christians! On the contrary, they tell us expressly in the Articles, that “in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good” … It is quite certain that St. Paul wrote his Epistles in the New Testament to the Churches upon this principle. He constantly addresses their members as “saints” and “elect,” and as having grace, and faith, and hope, and love, though it is evident that some of them had no grace at all! Holiness, p. 363f.

They regard baptism into the triune name as the means of entry into the visible church, which is the family of God, the fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham, and in which through Christ God has established the regeneration (i.e. (re)new(ed) creation) of all things. Membership in the Christian church in history does not guarantee final salvation. They affirm the value of the distinction between visible and invisible church, the visible church still being the true church, although there may be other ways of distinguishing (for example, the historical church, generally corresponding to the visible church, and the eschatological church, the full number of God’s elect as seen at the resurrection).

They believe in the doctrine of sola fide, although it is insufficient to simply affirm the doctrine. Justification is God’s forensic declaration that we are counted as righteous with our sins for given, for the sake of Christ alone. Faith is the gift of God, and is living, active and pesonally loyal. Faith is never alone. Those who have been justified by faith will be saved to the uttermost and spend eternity with Christ in glory. Those within the Federal Vision school hold that Adam in the Garden was to render obedience out of a heart of faith and life was offered by grace through faith alone, and not merit. I think there’s a lot to be said for this, actually.

Baptism achieves something, formally uniting a person to Christ and his covenant people, obligating its recipients to lifelong covenant loyalty, repenting of sins and trusting in Christ alone. In that baptism grafts one into the church, it engrafts one into the regeneration, the new creation. However, baptism does not guarantee a share in the eschatological church. Consistent with a belief in infant baptism, all baptised people, including children, are welcome at the Lord’s Table. I have considered this briefly under point two HERE. For two helpful Anglican treatments of this subject see HERE and HERE. At the Lord’s Table, Christ is really present with his people (but not locally present in the elements). There is a universal regard for liturgy in the Federal Vision, although debate about how ‘high’ it should be.

There is also debate intra muros regarding the imputation of Christ’s active righteousness, but they insist that we are united to Christ and so His perfect sinless life, obeying as the second Adam where the first Adam did not, obeying through temptation after his baptism as the first Israel did not, His suffering the cross and his glorious resurrection, which declared his acceptance by God, are credited to us and we partake of the benefits of all he achieved for us. The terms ‘law’ and gospel’ have a redemptive-historical thrust, referring to the time of the old covenant and the new covenant respectively. Those who come to faith in Christ do experience the law as an adversary and the gospel as deliverance from that adversary so evangelistic application of those categories is appropriate. However, law and gospel can be heard by the faithful as good news. Apostasy is a reality for many baptised Christians who are covenantally joined to Christ, although the decretally elect cannot apostasize. Again, this would appear to follow from Hebrews 6 (and also Revelation 22.18-19).

There also appears to be a general belief in our final justification or judgement by our works, but not meritoriously, for these works are the gifts of God’s grace, produced by his Spirit in those who have faith in the Son of God, which is, after all, God’s new covenant promise to his people, writing his laws on our hearts and causing us to walk in his ways. Judgement on the basis of what we have done in this life, is after all, what the New Testament says -see for example Revelation 20.12. The place our good works have is taught in (among other passages) John 15.1-8: the Father looks at the branches (the disciples) of the vine (Christ) for fruit and if they don’t bear fruit, they are cut off and thrown away into the fire. The disciples bear fruit because they abide in Christ, and apart from him they can do nothing. By bearing much fruit, the disciples prove to be Christ’s disciples.

Finally, these people have a great sense of humour. Well, I appreciate it anyway. Read this, from the latest edition of Credenda Agenda:

A statement of faith is available upon request, though we are in essential agreement with the confessional statements of classical Protestantism. Especially all the bits about baptism. Okay. Nevermind. You finally caught us. You badgered us and badgered us and we’re sick of it. You can take the light out of our eyes. We actually think that baptism fully regenerates anything. Sainthood inevitably follows for all, including animals and appliances. And everyone gets three miracles (call them wishes if you like). Just say the magic words and flick the dripping fingers. Whatever is moistened has been permanently purified and will go to Heaven when it dies or is eaten or stops working. You know . . . this is a bad idea. They won’t know we’re joking. Oh, what the hell. We’re not joking. We mean every word.The statement describes our doctrinal editorial policy; it does not define our boundaries of fellowship.

If you want your thinking to be challenged in these areas, and perhaps be shaped more Biblically, have a look at Doug Wilson’s weblog (link on the right). He’s the pastor of a church in Moscow, Idaho, he posts frequently, and there are all sorts of links you can follow.

Vintage Packer on Interpreting Imprecatory Psalms

I originally wrote this post last night, but it was gobbled up by the interweb. In a section entitled ‘Biblical Interpretation’ in the chapter ‘God’s Word Written’ of his book God Has Spoken, Dr. Packer considers the Reformation principle of ‘the analogy of faith’, which means (1) interpreting what is obscure in light of what is clear and what is secondary in light of what is primary, (2) following the internal links of Scripture, interpreting promise in terms of fulfilment and type in terms of antitype, and (3) not so expounding ‘one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another’. He applies this with superb lucidity to the imprecatory Psalms.

It would not be right to dismiss the imprecatory Psalms in the way that many do, as vindictive outbursts contrary to the mind of God, expressing the vengeful spirit which the New Testament condemns. The Homilies themselves warn us against this mistake. The truth is that what Psalms 35, 58, 109 and 137:7-9 are voicing is a zeal and passion for God’s glory, and for the triumph of his cause and righteousness, which far exceeds ours, in the same way that Psalms 17:1-5, 26:1-5 and 131 express a humility and simplicity of spirit that is far above our own. Just as, had we written the words of these latter Psalms, they would have argued priggishness and conceit, and the words of triumph-songs like Judges 5, Isaiah 47 and Revelation 19:1-3, had they been our words, would have savoured of gloating, so too the words of the cursing Psalms, had we spoken them, would have revealed and all-too-human ill-will. But this only means that our hearts are less pure than the hearts of the psalmists. David, writes the homilist, ’spake them [the imprecations] not of a private hatred, and in a stomach against their persons; but wished spiritually the destruction of such corrupt errors and vices, which reigned in all devilish persons set against God … he hated the wicked … with a perfect hate (Ps. 139:21f.), not with a malicious hate to the hurt of the soul. Which perfection of spirit, because it cannot be perfomred in us, so corrupted in affections as we be, we ought not to use in our private causes the like form in words, for that we cannot fulfil the like words in sense…’ (‘An Information for them which take Offence at certain places of the Holy Scripture’: The Homilies, pp. 382f.). Thus the truth is that here, no less than at other points, the psalmist is expressing true devotion at its highest pitch, and the fancied disharmony between his words and New Testament ideals does not exist. In fact, the same spirit is voiced in the New Testament also: see Rev. 6:10. Therefore the attitude of those who decline to use these verses from God’s hymn-book in public worship seems doubtfully wise. Is it not good for us to be shown, even if we can hardly at present grasp, what true zeal for God’s honour is like?

Dr. Packer continues in an helpful endnote:

A. Kuyper observes that the standpoint of the inspired poets who wrote these Psalms was that of ultimate spiritual reality, where distinctions are absolute and ‘everything that sides with God lives and has our love, and everything that chooses eternally against God bears the mark of death and rouses our hatred’. This is the standpoint that we shall all occupy in heaven, though we cannot consistently attain to it here. Seeing things from this standpoint, says Kuyper, ‘the rule, “Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?” becomes the only applicable standard, and whatever departs from this rule, falls short of love for God… [the imprecations] are solemnly true and holy when you take your stand in the absolute palingenesis [i.e., the order of new creation, eschatologically viewed], where God’s honour is the keynote of the harmony of the human heart’ (Principles of Sacred Theology [Grand Rapids, 1954], p. 524). It will help us progressively to appropriate these Psalms and enter into their outlook if we learn to use them as prayers against Satan and his hosts, and against our own besetting sins. Cf. C. S. Lewis: Reflections on the Psalms (London, 1961 ed.), pp. 113f.

This is vital to grasp if the contemporary church is to once again learn to say and sing the Psalms in order that its thoughts and feelings and longings be shaped by them.

God’s Word Heard

In this, the final chapter of God Has Spoken, Dr. Packer reminds us that hearing God’s word (which doesn’t just involve being in earshot of it, but taking it to heart and living it out) depends on our openness to the Holy Spirit’s work. He writes:

It is the promised privilege of all Christians, we are told, to be ‘taught by God’ (Jn. 6:45, citing Is. 54.13), and it is the Spirit of God who teaches them. The Spirit who taught all things to the apostles (Jn. 14:26, 16:13f.; I Cor. 2:10, 13) is the ‘anointing’ that teaches all Christ’s people (I Jn. 2:27). He teaches us not by fresh disclosures of hitherto unknown truth, like those whereby the apostles were taught, but by enabling us, who, being fallen, are by nature wholly insensitive and unresponsive to God and the things of God, to acknowledge the reality, recognize the divinity, and bow to the authority, of divine facts and truths set before us, and to see how they bear on our lives. Historically, theologians have called this work illumination, or enlightenment, or the inner witness of the Spirit. It was to this work that our Lord referred when he said that the Spirit’s task was to convict (Jn. 16:8). By it, the Spirit authenticates the prophetic and apostolic word to our consciences as being, in truth, what it claims to be, God’s message, just as He authenticates Jesus Christ to us as being, in truth, what He claimed to be, God’s Son and our Saviour. The Spirit brings us to acknowledge the divinity claimed by, and for, Christ on the one hand, and the Scriptures on the other, as being, in truth, self-evidencing; thus He leads us to bow to the conjoint authority of both. He further enables us to grasp what both are saying to us, and works in our minds and hearts to apply the divine instruction effectively, and make us respond. It was through the Spirit’s work that the Thessalonians, having ‘received the word of God, which you heard from us [Paul]… accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God’. It was also in virtue of the Spirit’s action that Paul could speak of his message as a word which ‘is at work in you who believe’ (I Thess. 2:13). But are we open to this working of the Spirit?

Packer entitles the last section of this chapter, ‘Finding the Word of the Lord’, pointing to the beginning of a solution he raised at the outset, that in spite of all the Biblical study and knowledge of the day in which he was writing, and we might well say ours too, our churches suffer from a ‘famine of hearing the words of the Lord’. He calls for all Christians to be engaged in Bible study, affirming that the Spirit teaches not just the scholar but the layperson from his Word. But that in turn requires expository preaching when the church gathers together, and indeed, it is that preaching which is the primary means by which Christians grow:

What does make Bible study harder for laypeople nowadays than it used to be is the widespread breakdown of the great evangelical tradition of large-scale expository preaching Sunday by Sunday from our pulpits. The New Testament pattern is that public preaching of God’s Word provides, so to speak, the main meals, and constitutes the chief means of grace, and one’s own personal meditations on biblical truth should come in as ancillary to this, having the nature of a series of supplementary snacks – necessary, indeed, in their place, but never intended to stand alone as a complete diet. There is something deeply unnatural and unsatisfactory in a situation where the people of God have to rely entirely on personal Bible study for their spiritual nourishment, due to a lack of effective expository preaching in public worship.

A Gem from Packer

I confess that there was some air-punching when I read this, in a section of his book God Has Spoken, where he deals with the inspiration of Scripture, which is both fully divine (the Author is God himself) and fully human (God does not bypass the abilities of his chosen and prepared messengers):

There was, on the one hand, lyric inspiration, in which the inspiring action of God was infused with the concentrating, intensifying, and shaping mental processes of what, in the secular sense, we would call the inspiration of the poet. This produced the Psalms, the lyrical drama of Job (which as it stands is a highly wrought theological poem, whatever basis it may be thought to have in historical fact), the Song of Solomon (a parable of the love of God and His people, in the form of an exotic, erotic, ecstatic love-duet), and the many great prayers that we find scattered throughout the historical books.

Covenant Renewal and Conquering the Land

There’s an interesting progression in Joshua 5-6. The new generation are circumcised. Now that the old generation, who grumbled after coming out of Egypt, have died off, the reproach of God’s people has been taken away and this generation is given the sign and seal of the covenant. The people then eat the covenant meal, the Passover, a remembrance of God’s saving work, and immediately after eat the firstfruits of their inheritance in Canaan. It’s a guarantee, a pledge, that God is keeping his promises and the rest of the inheritance will follow. Following this, the commander of the Lord’s army meets with Joshua (who like Moses at the burning bush has to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground, indicating to me the identity of this commander as God himself in the person of the preincarnate Son), and the Lord’s people trust the Lord’s promises (cf Hebrews 11.30) and march around Jericho, blowing their trumpets, and on the seventh day they shout and the walls fall flat and the city is devoted to destruction and its treasures set apart for the Lord, apart from Rahab and her household who seek refuge in the house with the scarlet cord and are saved alive.

I wonder if there are any lessons here for the church’s mission. I suggest something along these lines. We as Christians are baptised (the New Covenant sign and seal) into a people to whom God has promised an inheritance in the new creation. However, our mission flows from covenant renewal with God. We eat the covenant meal, the Lord’s Supper, which is the memorial of our redemption by Christ on the cross, and is also the firstfruits of the banquet in which we will share in the age to come. It’s possible that Hebrews 6.4-5, tasting the heavenly gift, the goodness of the powers of the age to come, might be related in part to this experience of the church. It’s the pledge of our future inheritance. Out of that, along with God’s word of course, we go out in faith, having the assurance of things hoped for but not yet seen, and in obedience to the Lord’s often strange ways (strange to the eye of human reason, anyway) preach the word of God, which is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and the pagan nations of the world die as they are baptised into Christ’s death and become living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord, and the riches of the world become his. This new creation we thus see breaking into this world now in the church, an inheritance in which Christians share, to the consummation of which at the end of time we look forward. Of course, at the end of time, those who persist in idolatry will be judged, but God promises escape to believers <i>and their households</i>, and it is those who accept this promise and take refuge in Christ and his death on the cross who will be ’saved alive’.

I suggest that what we do on the Lord’s Day ought to be seen to have much greater significance for the mission of the church on the other days of the week, and that this narrative highlights the importance of corporate worship being characterised by the whole baptised company gathering together around the Lord’s table and his word.

Establishment

I’ve read a number of times that the current Prime Minister has said that he will stop being involved in decisions about the appointment of bishops in the Church of England. I can’t cite any sources off-hand. This is simply what I’ve read in a few places.

However, weakening the involvement of the monarch and his or her representatives in this process does open the Church of England to avoidable vulnerability. We mustn’t forget that the links between church and state were forged in a context where the human authorities were professing Christians. In this context, upon which we are arguably seeing the sun set, the monarch as a member of the church occupies the position of senior layperson, and the position of the monarch as such in the government of the church ought to safeguard it against clericalism and error. The clergy are not solely the ones with authority in the church, and if error creeps in, and spreads, the monarch can prevent the appointment of heretics. However, the monarch has limited authority in the church: the monarch is not given the right to preach the word and minister the sacraments. He or she is still subject to them, and the church can continue to exercise its prophetic ministry of proclaiming the word and its implications for all the spheres of life in our current generation.

Such a place for the Christian monarch in the church seems to me entirely justifiable from Scripture: the New Testament presents a view of church government that does not consist exclusively of the pastor-teachers, but others of good standing in the church as well. Moreover, as Isaiah prophesied, ‘Kings shall see and arise; princes and they shall prostrate themselves… Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers’ (Isaiah 49.7, 23).

The current set-up in the Church of England seems to me to be ideal. Senior elders within the church have a place in the running of this country, entitled as some are to seats in the House of Lords, placed to safeguard Christian morality and belief in this country (although whether they do this or not is, of course, another matter; we should be praying for our bishops that this is what they would do). Senior laypeople who are responsible for running the country are involved in the government of the church, although they have a rightly limited authority. Given the well-publicised desire of the heir to the throne to become ‘defender of faiths’ or something to that effect and the lack, or at least inconsistency, of Christian faith amongst our politicians may mean that the lessening involvement of the Prime Minister in appointing bishops perhaps be healthy for the future, but I would invite you to join me in praying that our Christian heritage would not be ultimately squandered in this country and that the gospel would once again go out to and convert our rulers.

I leave you with an extract from the Rev’d Dr Timothy Bradshaw’s excellent book on Evangelical Anglican ecclesiology (some extracts of which on the word and the sacraments I hope to post in due course) on this matter. In addition to the point I made above, he highlights the point that the involvement of the state in the church is not a problem in the present day, owing to its current nominal nature, as well as the fact that God is sovereign over the whole of life, and state authorities have their position by his appointment. He also points out that disestablishment has not shown itself necessarily to benefit the church.

The question must be raised whether the current system whereby the monarch is the formal head of the Church of England may be too unrelated to the actual state of national life to be sustainable. The prospect of a future monarch with strange religious ideas may not be out of the question at all, and this could render the situation untenable. Although the state involvement is formal and instrumental to the decisions of church boards, nevertheless it may seem a symbolical control over the Church of Christ, a control which Barth at Barmen in 1934 exposed as potentially disastrous and which the Oxford movement criticized heavily.

Given the increasing formality of the link with the state, it is possible, for the present, to fend off such criticism, on the grounds that God is the God of society as well as of the church. The link with the state does not mean any real degree of state control or ‘erastianism’. The monarch, a lay person, is only formally the supreme governor, and this has a distinct benefit for the structure of the church. This benefit parallels the constitutional benefit of the monarchy in relation to the politically elected prime minister of the day, the holder of actual executive power in the nation. Formally all power, and all judicial authority, in British constitutional law, is vested in the Crown. This is a vital negative function, denying that place to the holder of political power, as compared for example with the President of the United States. Likewise for the Church of England. Formally the monarch, a member of the church, is governor, meaning that this ultimate position is denied to the line of clergy. A powerless monarch occupies the place from which institutional authority comes, an arrangement acting against any tendency to prelacy in the church. In the appointment of bishops the monarch, through her agent the prime minister, can only agree to names submitted by church committees, ruling out state control.

From the angle of society, the state values the moral and spiritual involvement of the church. Why, then, should the church refuse her involvement, provided her freedom is safeguarded. Some relationship between state and church has to be worked out: certainly in this the New Testament once more offers no fixed blueprint. Paul tells the church that the governing authorities with their law-keeping function serve God’s purposes (Romans 13.1 ff). Disestablishment of Irish and Welsh Anglican churches has not led to strengthening of churches and has lessened the cultural identification of people towards the church. It would be a highly negative gesture towards society as a whole, amounting to a pulling out of social responsibilities in order to adopt a more strident and judgemental attitude towards it. It would declare the state wholly secular, and the state could only respond by removing bishops from the House of Lords, for example, apart from a few who happened to be made peers. Any changes should take the nature of reform and not root and branch disestablishment. It is a consierable paradox that in an age when voices are raised for involvement of the church in society, some of these call simultaneously for her to pull out of key structures and points of legislative influence. One thing is plain, that establishment does not prevent the church from insistent criticism of government policy. – The Olive Branch, pp. 275-276