A key component of the church’s response to God’s mission in the world is evangelism, explicitly sharing with others the good news of God’s free and gracious salvation which he wrought for us in Christ at the cross, and inviting them to personal faith in Christ. In the context of a university city, Christian students have many opportunities for evangelism, both personally sharing their faith with friends with whom they live and work, and through talks and courses hosted by the Christian Union and the local churches. Inevitably, however, this means that students share their faith almost exclusively with people like them - other students - but as the angel announced to the shepherds, the coming of Christ to be our Saviour is “good news of a great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2.10). It is estimated that forty percent of the population have never been to church, twenty percent have attended church at some point in their life but were damaged or disillusioned and have no intention of returning, and a further forty percent have attended church and left at some point in the past but are open to return if contacted and invited: the challenge is to reach out to them with the good news of Christ.

In Luke 18, Jesus tells the Parable of the Great Banquet in which the master (representing God) wants his house to be filled with all kinds of people and so commands his servant to go out “to the streets and lanes of the city”, “to the highways and hedges”, to compel people to share in the feast. Several years ago in Oxford, one student, passionate about sharing the gospel with all kinds of people, particularly those who were unlikely to go to church, started an open-air outreach in one of the main shopping streets, a work with which I have since become involved. Like the Athens of Paul’s day, this is something of a forum where people “spend their time… telling or hearing something new” (Acts 18.20): each Saturday, while the street is bustling with shoppers, there are a number of stalls representing different political, charitable and religious causes. Fortnightly a group of us, comprised of students and local workers from a number of local churches in different denominations and traditions, set up a display board and give short talks and testimonies, offer literature, and engage with those who stop, listening to them, responding to their questions, and speaking to them of Christ. This kind of model, which continues to bear fruit, has a noteworthy heritage in the church in England, not just amongst evangelicals such as George Whitefield in the eighteenth century, but also with those in the catholic tradition like Charles Lowder, who ministered in the East London slums during the nineteenth century, preaching mission sermons on the streets, often in the face of considerable disruption.

This form of evangelism poses its challenges. In the seventh century, St Aldhelm addressed the problem of local people talking to one another at the Eucharist rather than listening to the preacher by standing on a bridge and singing ballads like a minstrel; he attracted a huge crowd and when he had their attention, he began to preach the gospel to them. Similarly, as one Anglican minister who stopped to encourage us remarked, we need to find what it is that will draw people. Trade justice and climate change are matters of contemporary relevance, both as potentially emerging sources of self-righteousness for which we may need to seek forgiveness, and perhaps more significantly as issues to which the breaking in of God’s new creation through Christ’s life, death and resurrection can speak powerfully and offer hope. Moreover, we must not isolate our evangelism from the broader mission of the church: that is where its potency lies, and we find that it is when the people we meet encounter us living the gospel in our communities that our preaching tends to bear fruit. To conclude with N. T. Wright’s observation in his book Surprised by Hope, if a church “is actively involved in seeking justice in the world, both globally and locally, and if it’s cheerfully celebrating God’s good creation, and its rescue from corruption, in art and music, and if, in addition, its own internal life gives every sign that new creation is indeed happening, generating a new type of community - then suddenly the announcement makes a lot of sense.”

At­trib­ut­ed to Thom­as à Kemp­is (1379-1471)
Trans­lat­ed from La­tin to Eng­lish by John M. Neale and the com­pil­ers of Hymns An­cient and Mo­dern.

(HT: Timothy van den Broek, whom I have apparently met when doing open-air preaching, but my usually elephantine memory for these things currently fails me.)

In the words of that great theologian Roy Wood, “I wish it could be Christmas every day.”

Douglas Wilson describes Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, due to be released on December 16th, as “a small effort to get Christians to believe their Christmas carols year-round”, which is to say, to take seriously declarations like “He comes to make His blessings flow, far as the curse is found.” His thesis is that,

“the gospel will continue to grow and flourish throughout the world, more and more individuals will be converted, the nations will stream to Christ, and the Great Commission will finally be successfully completed. The earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. When that happens, generation after generation will love and serve the Lord faithfully. And then the end will come.”

I have had the privilege of listening to Pastor Wilson arguing in favour of postmillennialism, here in England at The Blenheim Lectures earlier in the year, and also via the interweb, in his Ascension Day sermon. Here, he draws together the strands of what he describes as ‘historical optimism’ in a highly accessible introduction. In this book, eschatological terminology is relegated to an appendix for the interested reader who wants to read more, and technical vocabulary in general is kept to a minimum, and what little there is is explained in brief footnotes. This, then, is a primer on postmillennialism - and more - for everyone from the newest Christian upwards.

While the eschatological landscape amongst conservative evangelicals here in England, in my experience at least, tends to be amillennial rather than (dispensational) pre-millennial, in contrast to the United States, we nevertheless share the gloomy expectation that this world is going to go from bad to worse before resurrection morning: this world is a kind of Vietnam out of which we need to be airlifted. Wilson recognises that he’s up against a challenge and asks his readers to suspend their disbelief as they read this book, as they would with, for example, The Lord of the Rings, and temporarily enter into the story of the future of the world he is telling. He describes what he is doing, not so much as systematic theology, but ‘lyrical theology’: his aim is to show how lovely postmillennialism is. Does that mean, therefore, that there is no robust, Biblical basis for what Wilson is advocating? By no means. Throughout this book, Wilson expounds key Old Testament promises in light of the way Christ and the Apostles used them, and deals with common objections, to show that postmillennialism is strongly grounded in the Scriptures. As Wilson concludes, “How wonderful it would all be if all this could be true. The best part of the story is, it is.”

Wilson’s vision is profoundly Christ-centred: Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension shape his optimism. In a similar vein to the Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, Wilson offers a corrective to the widespread view of Christ’s resurrection that it means we get to go to heaven when we die, but history remains largely unchanged, and which is yet another product of our individualism: Christ’s resurrection is at the heart of history and is the firstfruits of our resurrection and the new creation itself. It is not the case that we live in a two-storey universe, where we live out our earthly lives down below and then spend eternity upstairs. Yes, when we die, we do go to heaven to be with the Lord, but at the second coming, Christ will return to the earth and transform it. In support of this, Wilson provides a helpful exegesis of Philippians 3.20-21: just as Philippi is a colony of Rome and the point of a colony isn’t that the people living there eventually get to go to the capital city, but that the colony is itself meant to be a centre for the expansion of the influence of the capital, so too the church is a colony of heaven, and while we get to visit the capital city, heaven, what we are waiting for is Christ’s arrival from the capital city to the colony, to transform it. Wilson rightly insists that the new creation is a complete transformation, but it is a transformation of this world, just as Christ rose again with the same (but glorified) body with which he died, and just as we will, like a seed growing into wheat. The ground of the hope Wilson expounds is the cross of Christ. He reminds that Christ came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save the world. Moreover, the cross, like the resurrection, has public ramifications, particularly for the powers of this world, for the crucifixion was a public event. Wilson argues from 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that it topples the princes of this world and everything under their jurisdiction - the arts, sciences, politics and so on - so ‘preaching Christ and him crucified is as broad as the world’. Wilson wants us to have a full-orbed view of the atonement  - penal substitution, Christus Victor, Christ as example - which reflects Christ in all his offices, prophet, priest and king. Christ’s public death and resurrection have massive implications for justice: he is coming back to judge in righteousness, delivering those accused and victimised by the world as the falsely accused victim who has been raised from the dead. As the ascended Lord, Jesus Christ has been formally invested with all authority in heaven and on earth, before everyone must bow, human rulers and judges, all organisations and countries. Moreover, Christ’s kingship is what we are to proclaim. The Great Commission doesn’t give Jesus authority, it declares the authority he already has and summons people to repend and believe in him. Christ reigns until all his enemies are subdued and the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15.25-26). Only once all opposition has ended will death be destroyed, and then the end will come. Jesus is the example we are to follow, and Jesus teaches us that by going to the back of the line as he does, we get to go to the head of the line - the chief seats - and so we are not to be so holy as to refuse the promotion when it comes, nor are we to strive directly for those highest positions.

Wilson describes for us the shape that Christ’s kingdom takes - it starts small and gradually fills the whole earth (Matthew 13.31-32, Daniel 2.44-45. In answer to the objection that the Bible says the way of salvation is narrow, an objection I myself have heard on a number of occasions, Wilson points us to Luke 13.22-30 and its context, in which the narrow gate refers to the salvation of the Jews in the first century, followed by the streaming in of the Gentiles. Christ makes a similar point about the salvation of a small remnant of Jews and of a large number of Gentiles elsewhere - Matthew 21.43 and Matthew 8.11, for example. Moreover, it is the salvation of the ends of the earth that was on Christ’s mind as he died: he quotes Psalm 22, the Psalm which in the first half is a prayer to God in the face of derision and suffering for deliverance, and in the second is a cry of faith that he will be delivered, and as a result, the ends of the earth will turn to the Lord. Wilson also offers us a helpful reminder abut what is happening on the cross. In fathoming out the mechanics of the atonement, we often hear accounts of the cross which describe how the Trinity was somehow ruptured at the cross. This is problematic to say the least. As Wilson points out, Christ being forsaken by the Father ‘is not to say that the Trinity unraveled [sic], but rather that the unbroken fellowship between God and his incarnate Son was disrupted.’ Through the cross, Christ has conquered the world.

Pastor Wilson exhibits no exegetical trickery in establishing his position. I was at the Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Summer School three years ago, where Christopher Ash told us when we look at Old Testament passages, we interpret them in the light of the way the apostles understood them, and where a New Testament passages quotes or alludes to an Old Testament passage, we should take into account the Old Testament context. On this basis, Wilson reminds us that the Old Testament promises don’t merely await future fulfilment, but that they began to be fulfilled with the coming of Christ. On the basis of Psalm 2, we know that following Christ’s resurrection, the Father invited him to ask for them and he owns all the nations now, as the Great Commission testifies. Moreover, the implication of the concluding appeal of Psalm 2 is for the world’s political rulers to become Christians. The way the New Testament uses Psalm 110 proclaims Christ’s present princely rule. In addition, the radical peace and worldwide knowledge of the Lord as the nations stream to Christ in the gospel age is established by the way Paul applies Isaiah 11.9-10. Indeed, this is one example of what was particularly thrilling for me when reading through this book: the logic of Wilson’s unfolding argument mirrored time and again the discoveries I made myself in my own reading of Scripture. This was also the case with the gradual increase of Christ’s government and of peace in this world from the time when he was born (Isaiah 9). Wilson also deals with issues arising from New Testament apocalyptic, in the gospels and in Revelation, making a convincing case for preterism, i.e. that a straightforward literal reading of Matthew 24 describes the events of AD 70 and a right understanding of the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven - it is about the authority with which he is invested at his ascension and subsequently exercises. Language about the sun beng darkened, the moon not giving its light, stars falling from heaven, refers to God’s judgement on nations and cities, like Babylon and Edom (Isaiah 13.10, 34.4). The point in Matthew 24 and its parallels is that Jerusalem, too, will be judged for its sin. Wilson also makes a good case for an early dating of Revelation, following clearly events in the Roman Empire, with Nero as the beast, and Jerusalem the whore of Babylon.

As Pastor Wilson concludes his book, he issues a rallying call to the church. In light of the cultural mandate of the opening chapters of Genesis, and its reiteration after the Fall and its restoration in Christ, we are not to shirk our responsibility to exercise dominion in this world or abuse it to lord it over this world, but to exercise godly dominion in Christ. To this end, we need to divest ourselves of the ghetto mentality which believes that the secular state is unconquerable and that we must escape from our responsibilities and be saved from this world, but also of the mentality that wants Christ to be a player at the table of ’secular democracy’. Wilson invites a high view of the church indeed: the new humanity God is creating in Christ, the future of the human race, in which the image of God is being restored. She is a mother, the mother of cities, cities which are planted where the word and sacraments are ministered. He therefore summons us to faith in God’s promises in Scripture (for faith is required for a right understanding of Scripture) for ourselves.

Concerns I have heard raised about postmillennialism is that it is a theology of glory, or that it encourages the view that humanity can gradually make progress towards a better world under its own steam, or that it fails to give due attention to this world corrupted by sin, or even that it is universalism. Those charges simply will not stick to the position Pastor Wilson is advocating. He is gospel-centred throughout. The ground for the glorious vision he describes is the cross of Christ, and it is brought about through the preaching of the word. It is clear Wilson thinks that the kingdom will advance through opposition: “The victory of this kingdom is still watered by the blood of the martyrs, figuratively and literally: the way of the cross is still the only way to enduring glory.” indeed he encourages us to reflect whether the relative lack of opposition we are facing at the moment is a result of compromise:

   “If God grants a genuine reformation, it will be one like that which was granted in the sixteenth century, and the most obvious common feature it will share with that earlier reformation will be that it challenges the rulers of this age. No greaster indictment of the contemporary church than this can be found: the secular state is operating on all cylinders, and yet for the most part, the Christian pulpit remains a safe place to be.
   “More pastors ought to wonder about this. Shouldn’t ministers and churches be more concerned than they are about the lack of opposition they are facing? And shouldn’t they be willing to consider if it isn’t the result of diluting the message. It is possible to talk about the final judgment and the lordship of Jesus Christ in such a way that makes it clear that He is only lord over those areas that secularists are frankly happy to let Him have - the afterlife for example. Who cares if Jesus is Lord in ways that never make any difference at all?”

And Wilson is no universalist:

“This must not be taken to mean that every last human being who ever lived will finally be saved. Our Lord’s teaching on the terrible nature of everlasting fire excludes that option. So the fact that Christ will save the world does not mean that He will save every last individual who ever lived in it… Every Bible believer must reject the universalism that denies the awful reality of the final judgment for unbelievers.”

This book, then, is a robust, Scripturally-rooted exposition of the Christian hope that takes into account God’s promises in the Bible and the very public ramifications of Christ’s public death and resurrection. This is a hope which gives great confidence for the future of this world before the Lord Jesus returns, and after, and which will be realised, unlike the kingdoms of this world by humble faith, walking the way of Christ, trusting his promises and preaching his gospel. This is challenging reading, which should cause evangelicals to reconsider assumptions with which we have grown up in the light of Scripture, but with this book, Pastor Wilson lights a lamp which dispels much of our current eschatological gloom and galvanises the church to work in the power of the Spirit to see Christ’s present reign over all things acknowledged in this world, throughout this world. He succeeds in describing with clarity and vigour a vision which is altogether lovely.

I was reflecting on penal substitution this afternoon and reading that excellent book Pierced for our Transgressions (which, contrary to its critics, and as I have articulated elsewhere, is a firm and robust yet gracious treatment of the heart of the gospel, sensitive to Scripture and tradition, pastorally helpful, and magnifying the love, justice, and truthfulness of the Triune God who saves us), when, in a different book entirely, I came across the following familiar poem from George Herbert, in which he writes of how he, a guilty and unworthy sinner, is shown tender grace and invited to feast with his Lord, because his Lord has faced what he deserved:

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked any thing.

“A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”;
Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not,” says Love, “who bore the blame?”
“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down,” says Love, “and taste My meat.”
So I did sit and eat.

How will we hear without a preacher? And how will they turn red and embarrassed without a satirist?

In his forthcoming book, Pastor Douglas Wilson acts as both preacher and satirist with regard to contemporary evangelical corporate worship. He makes the case that we need to repent of the triviality, irreverence and worldliness which characterises modern evangelicalism. While the excesses of the commercialism which characterises the American evangelical culture into which Wilson is writing has not yet reached British shores to quite the same degree (at least in Anglican evangelical circles), nevertheless we too have stumbled in our corporate worship and church life, and we need to hear this message. He rightly points out that “all cultures have a cultus at the center [sic]“, that “the center [sic] of every culture is its worship”, and he appeals to Henry Van Til, who said that all cultures are the externalisation of religion. Faulty worship is what has gone wrong with the modern evangelical church, the kind of worship that is driven by an admittedly well-meaning desire to present the gospel to unbelievers in a way that is “relevant”, and he blows right out of the water the myth that the contrast between traditional and modern forms of worship is because one emphasises external forms and liturgy while the other does not: all inward faith has a physical expression, but the so-called liturgical forms stand out because those external forms are so different from the culture around them. What Wilson is not doing is merely advocating a return to traditional forms: it begins in the heart, but it musn’t end there. The love of God that is required for God-centred worship is an incarnational love; to use Wilson’s phrase, it “begins in the heart, and ends at the fingertips”.

Wilson diagnoses the underlying problem as individualism. People refuse to humbly submit to lawful authority and one another, and so as soon as disagreement arises, even over trivial things, war arises and splits occur. He suggests that the right alternative is humility and mutual submission - to God and his authoritative and infallible word, to God and his authoritative and fallible church, to God and the other fallible authorities he has placed in our lives - for example, families and civil government. What we want is reformation without schism, not simply setting up a different banner under which to gather people. Evangelicals (American and British) have a tendency to think they have an elect-o-scope, the ability to see the invisible church, and so they divide from those who, on their terms, can’t possibly be Christians. Evangelicals who flee from this Scylla, however, have the tendency to collide with the Charybdis of dispensing with doctrinal standards to welcome anyone and avoid any hostility. The way Wilson suggests is the Biblical, covenantal way: we need to take covenant status seriously. Those who are baptised and profess faith in Christ yet who deny even key doctrines of the faith are unfaithful Christians, but they are unfaithful Christians and that has to determine the way they are treated. We don’t simply split off from them and so retreat in the name of purity. Nor, however, do we simply pass over disagreements as if they don’t matter. It is because these people bear the name of Christ that we stay and we fight, for their sakes and for others, and we do so, again in Pastor Wilson’s words, with “a large heart and a narrow sword”. This explains the subtitle for this book: “Recovering the High Church Puritan”. The majority of the early Elizabethan Puritans, Wilson rightly reminds us (and I might include the early Stuart Puritans such as Richard Sibbes in here as well), while wanting to further purify the church according to Scripture following the Elizabethan Settlement (hence they were abusively called “Puritans” by those who opposed them), nevertheless did not desire to separate from the church or behave like a schismatics, separatists, independents or individualists but had a high view of the covenant and their corporate identity, and they recognised their need for accountability and so for one another (hence they can be described as “high church” Puritans). The way of the high church Puritan is the way he commends.

With this framework in mind, it is Pastor Wilson’s belief that the right worship of the church will impact in the world outside and this leads him to give a helpful, liberating corrective on the subject of evangelism. While he acknowledges that direct evangelism is necessary for local churches in each genearation (as per the Great Commission), he challenges the practical approach taken by the contemporary evangelical church: it seems to be the case that in American colleges as well as in British universities, young people are taught that integral to their walk with Christ is the need for personal, daily, direct evangelism, with the result that as these people grow up and there is less time and fewer opportunities, guilt arises and the evangelistic zeal of the whole church is wounded. While Scripture makes it clear that Christians should be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in them (1 Peter 3.15), the work of an evangelist is a demanding task, the office of which is a gift from the risen and ascended Christ. This approach to evangelism flows from the nature of the church as a body in Paul’s letters. Some have the ability to be good personal evangelists. Others don’t, and actually their function is to support the evangelistic work of the church as a body - working faithfully, attending church faithfully, giving to the work of the church. In this, they are no less evangelical (and actually, this kind of lifestyle tends to provoke questions anyway). Moreover, Wilson argues that biblical corporate worship is the weapon God is pleased to use week by week to knock down the unbelief in our communities. The form that biblical corporate worship takes is covenant renewal worship.

The individualism of contemporary evangelicalism manifests itself, among other ways, in our approach to Scripture. We tend to think it is a message for me about my personal life, and while personal faithfulness is a requisite response to Scripture, the Bible is nevertheless the collection of the church’s covenant documents which demands corporate faithfulness, and that is particularly the case when it comes to corporate worship. Wilson makes the case from Scripture, especially the Psalms, that worship belongs primarily in the public congregation, and not in private spiritual exercises. It is something that we are to do together. He demonstrates that Christians when they assemble together on the Lord’s Day spiritually ascend into heaven (cf Revelation 8.4 and Paul’s description of the church at Ephesus in Ephesians 2.5-6). Given the corporate nature of the book, this is particularly clear in the letter to the Hebrews, which urges meeting together (Hebrews 10.25) because that means ascending into heaven with the boldness that comes through Christ’s shed blood (Hebrews 10.19, 22). The gathered church comes to the heavenly Jerusalem, the assembly of innumerable angels, the universal church, and the presence of God himself (Hebrews 12.22-24). It is the realisation that this is what happens in worship services which will inspire in us reverence and awe (Hebrews 12.28 ) and thus a desire to approach God in the way he wants. While Wilson acknowledges that under the new covenant, animal sacrifices are done away with because of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice of himself on the cross, such sacrifical patterns undergird new covenant worship - the sacrificial language is still there. The pattern Wilson takes is the order of the Old Testament sacrifices - the guilt offering to make the worshipper fit to enter the presence of God, the ascension offering, in which the smoke symbolically ascends to God when it is burnt on the altar, and the peace offering, which the worshipper eats the presence of the Lord, a demonstration of God’s acceptance of the worshipper and his willingness to share in the covenant meal. In worship under the new covenant, this corresponds to confession of sin (exhortation, prayer of confession, assurance of pardon and congregational singing of thanks), offering ourselves to God (through the reading of Scripture, prayers of petition and thanks, sermon, a hymn or a psalm, and the bringing forward of the offering), and the Lord’s Supper. All this is preceded by a call to worship, and a commissioning (including a blessing). Wilson wants us to see the glory of all this and so be stirred up out of the laziness into which we have fallen.

Wilson then focuses on specific elements of the worship service. He impresses upon us the significance of the preaching of the word. The word cuts us like a sword (Hebrews 4.12-13) cuts sacrifical animals to be offered to God. The sword-like nature of the Scripture, and its living and active character must shape how the preacher handles it - with conviction, not merely making suggestions. Wilson roots our Scriptural focus, our focus on the word, in our focus on Christ, the Word, whence human words derive their power to communicate truth, goodness and beauty to us. “The pulpit should be one of the liveliest places on earth, because in it, words are imitating the Word,” Wilson says, words through metaphor revealing God to us as the Son reveals the Father. For this reason, handling of Scripture must never be truncated or wooden: our preaching needs to be liberated from mere tight historico-grammatical exegesis (which goes beyond the responsible hermenutic advocated by the Reformers against out-of-control allegory in a decidedly rationalistic direction) and needs to be guided by the way Scripture teaches us how to handle Scripture. We need to be sensitive to the sensus plenior of Scripture, a hermeneutic which precedes the Greek Fathers, and is found in the words of Christ and Paul. We need to be faithful to Scripturally-controlled typology in all its Biblical fullness. Covenant renewal worship also features weekly communion and Wilson argues this not so much from proof-texts, but by leaving us content with nothing less when he demonstrates what is happening in the Lord’s Supper - being knit together by the Spirit, and, in line with the historic Protestant view, partaking of the body and blood of Christ when we come by faith, and so being transformed into a new humanity. The Lord’s Supper is a corporate act - we have communion with one another - and so the way we celebrate it must reflect this: rather than withdrawing into private introspection, we should be sitting up, looking around. Faith shows itself in doing what God says, meeting him where he says he will be found - at his table. Wilson also calls for reformation in the music of the church: both the music and the content has become progressively more simplistic (although there are some encouragements from the American Sovereign Grace Music and the Australian EMU). Wilson reminds us for the need for a robust faith and an evident zeal, and for Christ’s word to dwell in us richly, which is to overflow in our singing (Colossians 3.16). The reflection of a rich faith in Christ will be rich lyrics, rich melodies, rich harmonisation, rich, joyful and robust singing. As with every other aspect of our life, public worship should be fervent in Spirit, serving the Lord (Romans 12.11), Wilson notes. Wilson himself admits that he found contemporary music refreshing and more accessible when he first encountered it in contrast to the dirge-like traditional music which seems to have characterised his early church experience. But he challenges us to consider why more traditional forms can be inaccessible - has it become mere professionalism or a lifeless traditionalism? These things, not the music itself, are the real problem. He doesn’t want us to be satisfied with anything less than robust, intelligible content and glorious words and rich music. Moreover, good content, zeal and Biblical consistency are best served by a return to the Psalms. We need to be prepared for hard work in recovering a music heritage that we have thrown away, but that shouldn’t stop us. He finishes by noting that the psalmist had enemies which he dealt with the music: the Psalter is a battle hymnal which is vital to recover if we are serious about conquering the world with the gospel through biblical worship.

Wilson concludes his book with two chapters on the wider implications of the biblical vision he is proposing. The first is that of the Sabbath and feasting. Not only ought we not to be disregarding the Sabbath day, but we must not overreact and misuse it in a restrictive way. It is a positive ordinance, providing for us rest and pleasure. We mustn’t keep it gnostically, denying ourselves the physical enjoyment of preparing a meal or going for a walk. Rather, the Sabbath is a feast (Leviticus 23.1-3) and the way the church organises its services and programmes shouldn’t push that out. It, with the public worship of the church, should be something to which God’s people look forward the whole week. Finally, we are reminded that Scripture encourages us to see things far more through the lens of covenant than the lens of election (for we do not know the elect, but we do know those who are in the covenant) and this has important implications for our children. Thinking that we can know if our child is one of the elect harms our children: in the name of high conversion standards, the faith of a young child is doubted and they then grow up in doubt. In the New Covenant, God promises himself to us and to our children (Ezekiel 37.24-26, Isaiah 59.21, Acts 2.39). God promises himself in mercy. We must look to God’s word of promise for our children in faith and conceive, bear, discipline, feed, comfort and teach them in faith. This attitude will have implications, not only for the home, but in the church, as we bring our children to the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

My minor quibble with this book is that Pastor Wilson from time to time tries to make the verses he quotes say too much, or they don’t make the point that he is making - if there is application from them, then it’s not obvious to me and I’d like to see some more of the working. Accuse me of exegetical pedantry if you will, but I think this is important, and has the potential to weaken the otherwise very good arguments that he makes. In one case, Wilson makes the point that God in his kindness permits us to assemble in his courts every seventh day, and appeals to Leviticus 23.3. While it may be true that we assemble in heaven every seventh day, that verse makes no mention of assembling in God’s courts. The other verses Wilson quotes in regard to assembling in God’s courts are much more explicitly about the temple, which Leviticus 23.3 clearly isn’t. All it says is that God in his kindness commands us to keep every Sabbath day as a feast. Wilson goes on to identify the Lord’s day with the Sabbath rest that remains for the people of God in Hebrews 4.9. While I certainly affirm the keeping of the Sabbath, the Sabbath rest which remains for the people of God in Hebrews 4.9 is the parallel to the rest which the Israelites failed to enter, namely the Promised Land, a rest into which we are to strive to enter, which I take to be the new creation. Finally in this regard, Wilson says that Paul urged feasting on the Lord’s Day and appeals to 1 Corinthians 5.8. However, Paul isn’t making the point about literal feasting there. In the previous verse, he is using the typology of the Passover lamb. Christ is the Passover lamb who has been sacrificed. Christians are therefore to keep the antitype of the feast of unleavened bread, which is to live lives characterised not by malice and evil but sincerity and truth. The surrounding context of the verse makes it clear that Paul is criticising the immoral, boastful lifestyle of the Corinthians which is inconsistent with their Christian calling and of which they must repent, like removing yeast from dough.

In conclusion then, Wilson is not merely offering a criticism of the external forms of public worship and advocating a return to traditional liturgies. He goes to the heart of contemporary evangelicalism, makes his diagnosis and prescribes a change of thinking about the church. Whilst standing for Scriptural truth, we must nevertheless take the church seriously and the covenant seriously. Wilson then offers a manifesto for change in our view of evangelism, Scripture, what happens when we gather together, our forms of worship, our music, the Lord’s Supper, the Sabbath and our children. Each chapter on its own could be (and probably has been) the basis of a book. While Wilson is writing into an American Evangelical context, British evangelicals have our own problems and would do well to listen to what Pastor Wilson is saying. We, too, have bought to some extent into the idol of individualism and we fail to take the church seriously. We use simplified liturgies, have communion infrequently, and neglect our musical heritage in the name of evangelism. We don’t really even think about the Sabbath, feasting and the status of our children. And particularly with regard to Anglican conservative evangelicalism, our desire for reformation and purity seems to be increasingly at the cost of our commitment to the wider Anglican church. This book, then, is a welcome call back to the way of High Church Puritanism, where true gospel potency lies. And as Pastor Wilson remarks in his closing chapter, “To be understood, almost all of this has to be tasted, not discussed.”

A Primer on Worship and Reformation: Recovering the High Church Puritan by Douglas Wilson is due to be released on November 11, 2008 and is published by Canon Press, from whom this book can be pre-ordered at www.canonpress.com.

“They…worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever!” - Romans 1.25

Those who know me will be aware of my scepticism about climate change. In many ways, concern about climate change is the new Pharisaism: “I thank you that I am not like other men, wasteful and drivers of gas-guzzlers. I recycle, I offset my carbon footprint, and I carry my shopping in a reusable Fairtrade cotton bag.” However, I couldn’t quite believe what I was reading this morning, when I came across an article in the Telegraph in which two doctors are reported to have written in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), saying that family size is something to be brought into the realm of environmental ethics, advocating a reduction in the number of children a couple have, suggesting that they stop at two, and comparing this action to avoiding patio heaters and high carbon cars, indicating that this is a way to prevent a future increase in carbon emissions and preserve a habitable planet to be bequeathed to our descendants. Doctors are to be evangelists for this vision through the information they give on the population and the environment, through their own example, and through the provision of appropriate contraception to everyone.

I find this repugnant for a number of reasons. First, what does this say about the value of family, and children in particular? This comparison degrades them by viewing them merely as items of social paraphernalia, merely objects which we acquire for our own personal use and indulgence, and which must therefore be restricted in the wider interests of society. Contrast this with the Biblical view of children - a great blessing from God:

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

Psalm 127.3-5

Secondly, this is an erroneous view of how this world is to be preserved and restored, and a false doctrine of humanity. Rather than being essentially a problem to the environment which must be restricted for its future good, mankind is given the charge from God to ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’ (the first commandment is not to be paraphrased, “Have sex,” as some have suggested, but rather, “Have children”) and so ’subdue it’ and ‘have dominion over’ it (Genesis 1.28). This dominion is meant to show itself in working and keeping the land (Genesis 2.15) - development rather than destruction. Though frustrated by the fall, this is being fulfilled through Christ (Hebrews 2.5-9 cf Psalm 8), the second Adam to whom everything is put in subjection at his ascension; in him again we are to be fruitful and multiply and so fill the earth and see it brought under the good and perfect rule of Christ.

Thirdly, the view of children, and of humanity in general that this opinion expresses, in contrast to the view in Scripture, idolises the climate and elevates it to the status of a thing to be served.

Fourthly, this removes the begetting of children as a normal, fundamental reason for marriage. Again, being fruitful and multiplying is the first charge that God gives to the people he creates (Genesis 1.28). The Prayer Book is right when it has, in its list of the ’causes for which Matrimony was ordained’:

“First, It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.”

(This is not to say that those who can’t have children shouldn’t marry.)

Fifthly, this puts doctors in the position of being servants of a particular political agenda, rather than being trained professionals with expertise and personal qualities to promote the health of individuals and societies, and at a time when it is increasingly difficult for a doctor to practise according to his own ethics (particularly if they are Christian) for fear of being accused of imposing one’s own beliefs on others, this imposes a still further burden upon one to impose the worldview of the prevailing culture upon patients.

I suppose this does mean, at least, that while the rest of the world are bowing before their environment god and dutifully failing to multiply, Christians can be merrily having lots of children and so gradually taking over the world.

(And I am not talking about the mid-week Bible study.)

Last night, a friend and I were discussing Tom Wright’s new book, Surprised by Hope (actually, it was published last year, so he must have a couple more out by now). Admittedly this book has some not insignificant weaknesses - the harmony of the resurrection accounts, prayer for the dead, hell, particular applications to third-world debt and climate change. In the main, however, this is an excellent book, presenting a thoroughly God-centred gospel - it is ‘the good news that God (the world’s creator) is at last becoming king, and that Jesus, whom this God raised from the dead, is the world’s true Lord’, an announcement ‘that God is God, Jesus is Lord, that the powers of death have been defeated, that God’s new world has begun’. This is not to say that the gospel doesn’t have personal implications and wonderful implications at that: ‘once the gospel announcement is made, in whatever way, it means instantly that all people everywhere are gladly invited to come in, to join the party, to discover forgiveness for the past, an astonishing destiny in God’s future, and a vocation in the present.’ Actually following Jesus (and not merely ticking a box and praying prayer) and allowing one’s life to be reshaped by him is important. Holiness, both personal and global, matters. The Christian’s future hope is not heaven (although we do go to heaven when we die) but resurrection and life in the perfected new creation. The ground of all this is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. So Easter must be a cause for real celebration, both in our liturgy and in our life, for our own sakes and for the sake of the world. Here, Wright’s conviction, joy, passion and humour verily bursts forth:

I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week, which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday… and then, after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.

All right, the Sundays after Easter are still within the Easter season. We still have Easter readings and hymns for several weeks. But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of Alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection is we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up. That always comes as a surprise.

And while we’re about it, we might write some more good Easter hymns, and take care to choose the many good ones already written that celebrate what Easter really is, rather than treating it simply as our ticket to a blissful life hereafter. Interestingly, most of the good Easter hymns turn out to be from the early church, and most of the bad ones from the nineteenth century. But we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival… Take Easter away, and you won’t have a New Testament; you won’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you will still be in your sins. We shouldn’t allow the secular world, with its schedules and habits and para-religious events, its cute Easter bunnies, to blow us off course. This is our greatest day. We should put the flags out.

In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast, again; well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be negative.

Surprised by Hope, pp. 268-269

Wright’s chastisement of the contemporary church in this area does not, of course, only apply to the grand celebration of Easter. It also applies to our weekly remembrance of Christ’s resurrection - the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath. We Evangelicals aren’t very good at feasting. Yet each Lord’s Day should be a scale model of Easter, picturing that great celebration. Another thing we Evangelicals aren’t very good at is tithing, and these two things are linked. We’ve got it into our heads that tithing is an Old Testament concept. Nowhere in the New Testament are we told that we have to give 10%, so we don’t have to give 10%. We just have to give generously, which may mean giving more, or (conveniently) less. Yet this command has not been abrogated; the law, rightly seen through the lens of Christ’s life, death, resurrection and ascension, is the revelation of God’s will for his people today. The contrast between Old and New Covenants is not the law and no law, but the law on tablets of stone (which is powerless) and the law written on our hearts by the Spirit. To say any more would require another post. Moreover, Christian giving is not just about supporting Christian ministry. Yes, the Israelites had to tithe to supply the priests and Levites. But there was at least one other tithe:

You shall tithe all the yield of your seed that comes from the field year by year. And before the LORD your God, in the place that he will choose, to make his name dwell there, you shall eat the tithe of your grain, your wine, and of your oil, and the firstborn of your herd and flock, that you may learn to fear the LORD your God always. And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the LORD your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the LORD your God chooses, to set his name there, then you shall turn it into money for whatever you desire - oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household.

Deuteronomy 12.22-26

This tithe was instituted so that households could eat and drink before the Lord and rejoice, and so learn to fear him always. To my knowledge, I think two families at church practise something along these lines currently (and only one of them is from Abroad), setting aside a ‘party tithe’ and having a weekly Sabbath dinner. May many more of us catch this vision. Our households are to rejoice before the Lord, to feast, to eat and drink, in celebration of his goodness and provision and liberality, in weekly remembrance of Christ’s victory over sin and death ushering in the hope of resurrection and new creation, and, as the passage above indicates, and as Wright suggests regarding Easter, this will lead to the significant transformation of ourselves and others.

We were reminded, in a new topical sermon series at church on the Lord’s Day, that guidance is a promise, not a problem. We were referred to Psalms 23 and 119, although one might equally look in Proverbs 2.

In Proverbs 2, we have an extraordinary promise from God:

If you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God.
For the LORD gives wisdom;
from his mouth come knowledge and understanding;
he is a shield to those who walk in integrity,
guarding the paths of justice
and watching over the way of his saints.
Then you will understand righteousness and justice
and equity and every good path;
for wisdom will come into your heart,
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul;
discretion will watch over you,
understanding will guard you,
delivering you from the way of evil,
from men of perverted speech,
who forsake the paths of uprightness
to walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness of evil,
men whose paths are crooked,
and who are devious in their ways.

So you will be delivered from the forbidden woman,
from the adulteress with her smooth words,
who forsakes the companion of her youth
and forgets the covenant of her God;
for her house sinks down to death,
and her paths to the departed,
none who go to her come back,
nor do they regain the paths of life.

So you will walk in the way of the ood
and keep to the paths of the righteous
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it.

The Triune God gives wisdom to his people when they ask him for it. But Biblical wisdom, as we are so often reminded, is not so much concerned with what job I should do or where I should live or what vegetables I should buy, but is first and foremost about rightly relating to God, fearing him and knowing him, and then walking in his ways. God promises to his people who ask for wisdom that he will protect them like a shield, he will guard them and watch over their ways so that they walk in the way of justice and righteousness. Such wisdom, knowledge and understanding will be theirs, and so they will be protected from dark and evil works and deeds. The wisdom that the covenant God gives to his people protects them from sexual immorality and what leads to death, and instead do what is right, and receive their inheritance of salvation from the Lord, in the language of the Proverb, ‘dwelling in the land’ and in the light of the coming of Christ, life in him and the hope of resurrection and eternity in the New Creation.

So as St. James tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting.” I take it that means we must ask God, trusting his promise to give wisdom to those who cry out to him for it, and prizing wisdom, the knowledge of how to live righteously and justly, above all else, not wanting to go both God’s way, and the way of darkness.

The Prayer Book lectionary has moved me on to Proverbs, and a couple of things have struck me. These thoughts are not especially profound or original.

In chapter 1.20-33, we have Wisdom personified crying aloud in the streets, rebuking the simple ones, scoffers and fools (i.e. those who do not fear the Lord, see the contrast in 1.7), and calling them to turn, or, if you like, repent. Wisdom promises to pour out her spirit to the one who does, and make known her words. Those who don’t listen, will experience calamity, terror, distress and anguish and at that point it will be too late; they will face the consequences of their choice of action and be destroyed. In contrast, the one who listens to wisdom (and by implication acts on what he or she hears) will be at ease and will face no disaster.

Although Wisdom here is personified as a woman, it is quite clear we have in these verses the gospel in shadow form. When we come to the New Testament, everything comes into focus and we see the Word incarnate, Christ the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1.30, Colossians 2.3), who walked the streets and marketplaces of Palestine calling sinners to repent and listen to him. Christ pours out the Holy Spirit on those who do and he makes known his word to them (Acts 2.17). The Holy Spirit is, of course, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding (Isaiah 11.1-2). Those who reject Christ will face the consequences of their actions and experience God’s judgement, whereas those who listen to him and respond to him find security and know that no ultimate disaster will befall them, because Christ has been raised from the dead, as will those who belong to him. I wonder if this passages goes some way to explain why St. Matthew and St. Luke report Jesus using that curious phrase, when after describing the unbelieving response to the Son of Man, he says that ‘wisdom is justified by her deeds’ or ‘children’ (Matthew 11.19, Luke 7.35). The Son of Man is the Wisdom of God who is rejected by men, but is ultimately vindicated by what he does and achieves: his perfect life, atoning death and glorious resurrection, ransoming sinners for God.

While I admit that I’m in a minority who hold this view, I don’t think it’s exegetically sustainable at all to read this passage as teaching about Christ’s return, for a number of reasons:

1. The context is Jesus talking about the destruction of the temple (v. 2), which the disciples then ask him about (v. 3).
2. We can’t just assume ‘the close of the age’ (v. 3) means ‘the end of the world’. Given that Christ is talking about the destruction of the temple, it is quite natural to read it as talking about the close of the Old Covenant era with the destruction of its apparatus.
3. Jesus is addressing those disciples immediately gathered before him. They are the ones who are not to be led astray, be alarmed and who will be delivered up to death and hated (vv. 4-9).
4. vv. 15-21 are clearly talking about AD70 and the destruction of the temple, and not solely as an illustration of the persecution that will characterise the period leading up to Jesus return - this is the climactic event in Jesus’ discourse.
5. The apocalyptic language of v. 29 doesn’t have to be speaking about the end of the world. In fact, it echoes language used of the destruction of Babylon in Isaiah 13.10, and appears to be making the point that is made at length in the book of Revelation: that Babylon is Jerusalem and is being destroyed.
6. The coming of the Son of Man (v. 30) is in its biblical context most emphatically not about his coming to earth to judge but about his coming to heaven in vindication over and against his enemies, and to receive authority over the whole earth (Daniel 7.13-14, 21-22).
7. Fig trees (v. 32) are symbolic of Israel (see e.g. 1 Kings 4.25)
8. All the things mentioned in Matthew 24.1-33 - including the coming of the Son of Man - will take place in the lifetime of those disciples to whom Jesus was speaking (v. 34).

Now, that doesn’t mean Matthew 24 doesn’t have application to the church today. We can still learn from the exhortations not to be led astray by false prophets and false Christs, not to fear at natural disaster, to stand fast in persecution, to remember God’s grace in restraining persecution for the sake of his elect, to recognize Christ’s authority over all things &c.