He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.2]
The law says, “Do this,” and it is never done. Grace says, “believe in this,” and everything is already done.26
Actually one could call the work of Christ an acting work and our work an accomplished work pleasing to God by the grace of the acting work.27
The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it 28
Brother Martin Luther, Master of Sacred Theology, will preside and Brother Leonhard Beier, Master of Arts and Philosophy, will defend the following theses before the Augustinians of this renowned city of Heidelberg in the customary place. In the month of May, 1518.
Distrusting completely our own wisdom, according to that counsel of the Holy Spirit, “Do not rely on your own insight” [Prov. 3:5], we humbly present to the judgment of all those who wish to be here these theological theses, so that it may become clear whether they have been deduced well or poorly from St. Paul, the especially chosen vessel and instrument of Christ,
The Lord’s Supper is Not a Sacrament
by Vernard Eller
["Sacrament"] was introduced as the Latin successor to the Greek word mysterion (mystery), and obviously the two words carry much the same feel and flavor. A mystery is that which is strange, awesome, unfathomable, and ineffable. A sacrament is a ritual using cult objects as vehicles of the sacred – which is itself strange, awesome, unfathomable, and ineffable.
However, our contention is that neither of these terms was applied to the Lord’s Supper.
If one of Jesus’ most innovative usages was to address God as “Abba!” (dear Father) and invites His followers to do the same, it can hardly be that He instituted sacraments which present deity under the form of mystery. If the good news of the gospel, regarding the word of life, is that “we have heard it; we have seen it with our own eyes; we looked upon it, and felt it with our own hands” (1 John 1:1), it cannot be true that the New Testament sacraments elevate it back into the realm of altar and incense.
Now among the religions of the world, Judaism is notoriously anti-sacramental. Sacramentalism specializes in holy objects, holy things. These things, then, possess special power – strange, supernatural, unearthly power. They carry a mysterious patina, radiate numinousness, vibrate with an awesome aura of divinity.
Judaism had never been enthusiastic about this kind of business. It was content to let God be the one true “holy” – and He is a person, not a thing. Things are merely things, and only God is God. Holiness, divinity, and awesome glows, therefore, have to do with personal relationships, with human beings relating to God and to one another before God, rather than with things.
Yet this is the Judaism out of which Jesus and the early church were born. And the evidence is that the church was just as little, if not even less, sacramental than its progenitor. For example, the Christian church started out as a most rare phenomenon, a religious sect with no concept of a sacrosanct priesthood at all. Indeed, Christianity was ahead of Judaism in this regard; the Christians had practiced priestless and sacramentless worship for forty years before the Jews took it up. The sad sequel is that although the Jews have stood by this position, the Christians very shortly backslid from it.
But against this background, whatever they were that Jesus instituted in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, it is inconceivable that they should be called “sacraments”. If such had been Jesus’ intention (or the understanding of the early Christians) the N.T. necessarily would show marks of a struggle to convince unsacramental Jews that in accepting Jesus as the Christ they had to reject their earlier understanding and adopt a most obtrusive form of sacramentalism, namely the doctrine that ordinary bread and wine by means of the Spirit became vehicles of God’s spiritual presence.
The N.T. does evidence such a struggle in getting Jewish Christians to accept the un-Jewish idea of Gentiles being accepted into the faith. But of a similar struggle over the Lord’s Supper, there is not a trace – which would seem proof enough that the rite carried no sacramental overtones at all. (When, after N.T. times, the sacramental understanding did gain dominance in the church, it was because the constituency was so largely Greek rather than Jewish that sacramental modes of thought no longer posed any difficulty.)
“Sacraments” do not fit the historical context of original Christianity; neither do they fit the theological context. Sacraments constitute about as “religious” a technique as can be devised; and original Christianity was religion-less.
No, religion now denotes that thought and action which carries with it the implication that God’s grace and favor, His will and power, to some degree or other have come under the control of man and his institutions. Thus we are informed that what the church does with bread is not human work but God’s work.
Wherever there stands the implication that man can do something which directly and automatically guarantees that God will perform a desired action in response, there is “religion”. Thus, when a man makes a wax doll, pokes it full of pins, mutters incantations, and believes that God is thus put under obligation to punish his enemy, this is a “religious” act.
But likewise, when a PCA ordained man utters a formula over bread and wine and believes that God thereby promises a spiritual presence which ineluctably has an ameliorative effect on those who partake with faith, this is a “religious” act.
And there is something about Christianity – namely a respect for the freedom and sovereignty of God – that does not like religion.
[This article is from In Place of Sacraments (Eerdmans, 1972), pp. 9-15].
I do not agree that, when we hear Christ preached, that we then hear Christ preaching. (p13) Or that we hear an official “minister” absolving our sins, that we then hear Christ forgiving our sins. Who is hearing?
WHO IS HEARING? Are the non-elect not hearing, because they don’t care about their sins? If so, then it comes back again to the faith of the hearers?
Are the non-elect hearing “you are forgiven”? Is it “pietism” to warn people that the New Testament is written only to Christians? It’s ironic to say that Christians doing politics must do so as if they were not Christians, but then not make such a distinction for those observing the cult.
The assumption, the pretense, the official lie, is that everybody observing the sacrament is an exile from the world and a Christian. Otherwise the sacramentalist would have to speak to the church as if were the world.
And then the sacramentalist would need to think more about water passing on salvation to pagans who are not children, and about the supper being converting for those halfway in. Even if there is no faith, is there no blessing?
To the extent sacramentalists use “the covenant” to argue for sacraments, all redemptive-historical political distinction between the old and new covenants collapses. t When we talk sacraments, we still want to talk sanctions and curses: God may break you off if you don’t observe the rituals.
DG Hart (Mother Kirk) doesn’t want us to talk about “dead” Christians as if some internal work of the Spirit needed to be done, but rather asks if people are “observant” at the sacraments. Maybe you agree with him. I am glad that not all paedobaptists agree with him on that.
If you are faking it at the sacrament, then God can kill you. That argument in itself does not prove that it is a sacrament or that God is the agent in water baptism and in the Supper. Those questions have to be answered biblically.
I don’t exclude any sense of individuality at conversion. Neither do I exclude use of confessions. But when Deformed people say “ordained minister” or “sacrament”, I do wonder if that is what God meant in the Bible.
I quote from p 143 (Stillman, Dual Citizens): “According to this view, under law means under the condemnation of God’s moral law, and under grace speaks of the deliverance from this condition. Some problems arise from this view.
First, Paul usually uses the word law to refer to the law of Moses in particular…When Paul spoke to those saints in the churches of Galatia who desired to be under the law, was he talking to people who longed to be under the condemnation of the law?…When Paul wrote that Jesus was born under the law, did he mean that Christ was born under the condemnation of the law?
Under law means under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic covenant. Furthermore, if under law and under grace are existential categories describing an individual’s condemnation or justification, then Paul’s argument is a non-sequitur. It is not justification but sanctification that frees us from the dominion of the sin.”
Of course, that reading of Romans 6 is very common to many Reformed people. Like John Murray, or Lloyd Jones, or Sinclair Ferguson, they tell us that “freed from sin” in Romans 6:7 cannot mean “justified from sin” because this chapter is about sanctification and not about justification. It seems obvious to me that this is simply begging the question, and without some attention to the chapter, I will be guilty of simply begging the question the other way.
Stillman first asks: When Paul was warning the Galatians, were the false teachers wanting to be under condemnation? My answer is that Paul’s answer is that the false teachers were under the condemnation. If you go their way, Christ will be of no profit to you.
The gospel does not tell people that they want to be damned. The gospel says that they will be damned if their trust in anything else but Christ’s death for the elect. That death alone, apart from works enabled by the Spirit, be those works of Torah or of new covenant, is the only gospel.
Stillman’s second rhetorical question: when Paul wrote that Jesus was born under the law, did he mean that Christ was born under the condemnation of the law? My answer is yes.
Gal 4:4: born of the law to redeem those under the law cannot mean only that Christ was born under the jurisdiction of Moses to get Jews free from that jurisdiction. According to Gal 3:13, Christ became a curse under the law to redeem a people from the curse of the law.
The sins of all the elect were imputed to Christ, and as surety for the elect, Christ was born under the condemnation of God and God’s law. To see this, we need to attend to the first part of Romans 6 before we rush to the second part and conclude that it has to be about a sanctification that makes it ok for God to justify the ungodly. Romans 6:10 says that “the death He died to sin”.
We need to focus on Christ’s death to sin. Does this mean that Christ was unregenerate and then positionally cleansed by the Holy Spirit? God forbid. Does it mean that Christ was carnal but then infused with the divine and became a partaker of the divine nature? Again, God forbid.
Does it mean that Christ by being in the environment of the world and of the old covenant needed a deliverance from “the flesh” and from the physical body? Once more, God forbid. One more does it mean, and then I move on, lest I try your patience. Does it mean that God had to suffer intensely and infinitely before he died, because only in that way would He be “dead to sin”. And again, no.
What does it mean that Christ died to sin? It means that the law of God demanded death for the sins of the elect imputed to Christ. As long as those sins were imputed to Christ, He was under sin, he was under law, He was under death.
Now death has no more power over Him? Why? Because the sins are no longer imputed to Him, but have been paid for and satisfied. And this is about the gospel, because the gospel is not about just about God justifying, but also about God being just and justifier.
Whatever you say about the Christian being dead to sin, this also needs to be said about Christ. If all it means is “not under Moses”, is that your gospel?
If the gospel is merely redemptive history, then all we know is that we have moved forward on the clock. Nobody is under Moses anymore. So what? How is that good news on your death bed?
One evidence that we do not have “freewill” is that our deaths are not “voluntary” but forced up on us from the outside. We do not so much participate in or with our dying as become spectators to events. Judged before we were born, our only hope is the power of God to give us life that we do not now have.
Romans 8:26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
1 Corinthians 1:25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling
If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness.
On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
2 Corinthians 12:10For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.
Read Chesterton for yourselves. From What’s Wrong with the World:
THE CALVINISM OF TO-DAY
When I wrote a little volume on my friend Mr. Bernard Shaw, it is needless to say that he reviewed it. I naturally felt tempted to answer and to criticise the book from the same disinterested and impartial standpoint from which Mr. Shaw had criticised the subject of it. I was not withheld by any feeling that the joke was getting a little obvious; for an obvious joke is only a successful joke; it is only the unsuccessful clowns who comfort themselves with being subtle. The real reason why I did not answer Mr. Shaw’s amusing attack was this: that one simple phrase in it surrendered to me all that I have ever wanted, or could want from him to all eternity.
I told Mr. Shaw (in substance) that he was a charming and clever fellow, but a common Calvinist. He admitted that this was true, and there (so far as I am concerned) is an end of the matter. He said that, of course, Calvin was quite right in holding that “if once a man is born it is too late to damn or save him.” That is the fundamental and subterranean secret; that is the last lie in hell.
The difference between Puritanism and Catholicism is not about whether some priestly word or gesture is significant and sacred. It is about whether any word or gesture is significant and sacred. To the Catholic every other daily act is dramatic dedication to the service of good or of evil. To the Calvinist no act can have that sort of solemnity, because the person doing it has been dedicated from eternity, and is merely filling up his time until the crack of doom.
The difference is something subtler than plum-puddings or private theatricals; the difference is that to a Christian of my kind this short earthly life is intensely thrilling and precious; to a Calvinist like Mr. Shaw it is confessedly automatic and uninteresting. To me these threescore years and ten are the battle. To the Fabian Calvinist (by his own confession) they are only a long procession of the victors in laurels and the vanquished in chains.
To me earthly life is the drama; to him it is the epilogue. Shavians think about the embryo; Spiritualists about the ghost; Christians about the man. It is as well to have these things clear.
Now all our sociology and eugenics and the rest of it are not so much materialist as confusedly Calvinist, they are chiefly occupied in educating the child before he exists. The whole movement is full of a singular depression about what one can do with the populace, combined with a strange disembodied gayety about what may be done with posterity.
These essential Calvinists have, indeed, abolished some of the more liberal and universal parts of Calvinism, such as the belief in an intellectual design or an everlasting happiness. But though Mr. Shaw and his friends admit it is a superstition that a man is judged after death, they stick to their central doctrine, that he is judged before he is born.
In consequence of this atmosphere of Calvinism in the cultured world of to-day, it is apparently necessary to begin all arguments on education with some mention of obstetrics and the unknown world of the prenatal. All I shall have to say, however, on heredity will be very brief, because I shall confine myself to what is known about it, and that is very nearly nothing.
Too Much Not Yet, Not Enough Gospel
A review of Dual Citizens, by Jason Stellman, forward Michael Horton, 2009, Reformation Trust ( the RC Sproul business)
PCA pastor (Exile Presbyterian, Seattle) Stellman has shifted places on the evangelical bus. He used to be a Calvary Chapel “minister” but now he has moved up to the Upper Crust “Ancient Sacramental” seats. Stellman gives no indication that his gospel has changed, and assumes that he has been a Christian all long, but now he wants to persuade us of some “Reformed” propositions so that we can be less “Gnostic” and individualistic.
Why then should we who are not Reformed concern ourselves with what Stellman says about the two kingdoms? Can’t we disagree about eschatology and ecclesiology and still have the gospel? In this review, I want to highlight two statements which should alert us all to the need to check if we have a common gospel. Although I disagree with the way Stillman profanes grace (common grace) and defends the legitimacy of a second kingdom in which Christians can also “legitimately” kill to protect their “national identity”, for now I want to focus on two issues which intrude on the gospel itself.
The first issue (not first in the book, in chapter 12 of the book) is the question of redemptive history. When I report that Stillman wanted to persuade people he already considers Christians but not yet “Reformed”, the question becomes : what kind of reformed? Do you mean tulip without the cultural mandate? Do you mean the people who follow John Murray who are mono-covenantal, and who deny a covenant of works and say that all covenants are both gracious and conditional?
The answer to the question in Stillman’s case is that he follows Meredith Kline. Kline of course followed Vos and Ridderbos, but some in the John Murray (Gaffin, Shepherd) folks also talk a lot about redemptive history. But Stillman, following Kline, sounds almost dispensational, when he interprets Romans 6:14. And I want to write about this, because Romans 6 is, I think, very important in talking about gospel.
For those curious to know, I am an amill person who thinks Christ is also a lawgiver and not simply an exegete of Moses. But my concern here is not to say when Jesus will return (I agree with both Kline and Gaffin in being amill) or even to defend new covenant law ( I am a pacifist not an antinomian.). My concern is the indicative in Romans 6:14—“for sin shall not have the dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.” I read that as saying that sin shall not reign over a justified person, because that person is justified. Stillman says that my reading is a non-answer.
I want to keep focused here, so I cannot discuss the biblical definition of sanctification and traditional and confessional definitions. (For more on that, see AW Pink on Sanctification, or David Petersen, Possessed by God, or On Being a Theologian of the Cross, by Gerhard Forde) I am not even making a suggestion about being able to tell a lot about a person’s gospel from looking at their doctrine of the Christian life. Rather, I am saying that what Stillman writes about Romans 6:14 is not what John Calvin or Robert Haldane or the confessions thought about it.
I quote from p 143: “According to this view, under law means under the condemnation of God’s moral law, and under grace speaks of the deliverance from this condition. Some problems arise from this view. First, Paul usually uses the word law to refer to the law of Moses in particular…When Paul spoke to those saints in the churches of Galatia who desired to be under the law, was he talking to people who longed to be under the condemnation of the law?…When Paul wrote that Jesus was born under the law, did he mean that Christ was born under the condemnation of the law? Under law means under the jurisdiction of the Mosaic covenant. Furthermore, if under law and under grace are existential categories describing an individual’s condemnation or justification, then Paul’s argument is a non-sequitur. It is not justification but sanctification that frees us from the dominion of the sin.”
It is that last sentence which is the most objectionable (to me) in Stillman’s book. Of course, that reading of Romans 6 is very common to many Reformed people. Like John Murray, or Lloyd Jones, or Sinclair Ferguson, they tell us that “freed from sin” in Romans 6:7 cannot mean “justified from sin” because this chapter is about sanctification and not about justification. It seems obvious to me that this is simply begging the question, and without some attention to the chapter, I will be guilty of simply begging the question the other way.
In the book Dual Citizens, Stillman does not write about 6:7 or about anything else in Romans 6 (not even about water baptism, which he elsewhere credits with bringing infants into salvation). Instead he spends the rest of the chapter in chapter 7 of Romans arguing against the traditional (Reformed!) view of Romans 7, and for a more redemptive-historical (dare I say, dispensational ) reading. I have neither time or interest in entering that discussion. Instead I want to attend to two of his rhetorical questions about Romans 6:14.
You can read them in context above, but the first asks: When Paul was warning the Galatians, were the false teachers wanting to be under condemnation? My answer is that Paul’s answer is that the false teachers were under the condemnation. If you go their way, Christ will be of no profit to you. The gospel does not tell people that they want to be damned. The gospel says that they will be damned if their trust in anything else but Christ’s death for the elect. That death alone, apart from works enabled by the Spirit, be those works of Torah or of new covenant, is the only gospel.
Stillman’s second rhetorical question: when Paul wrote that Jesus was born under the law, did he mean that Christ was born under the condemnation of the law? My answer is yes. Gal 4:4: born of the law to redeem those under the law cannot mean only that Christ was born under the jurisdiction of Moses to get Jews free from that jurisdiction. According to Gal 3:13, Christ became a curse under the law to redeem a people from the curse of the law.
I am not denying that Christ kept the Mosaic law. I am not even denying that Christ was under the Mosaic law to keep that law vicariously for the elect. (I would deny NT Wright’s idea that Christ was born with a Jewish sense of exile and failure to obey for life.) What I am affirming is that the sins of all the elect were imputed to Christ, and that as surety for the elect, Christ was born under the condemnation of God and God’s law. To see this, we need to attend to the first part of Romans 6 before we rush to the second part and conclude that it has to be about a sanctification that makes it ok for God to justify the ungodly. Romans 6:10 says that “the death He died to sin”.
Before we jump to the redemptive historical complexity of union and identification with the death (when? 2000 year ago? At imputation? Before or after faith?), we need to focus on Christ’s death to sin. Does this mean that Christ was unregenerate and then positionally cleansed by the Holy Spirit? God forbid. Does it mean that Christ was carnal but then infused with the divine and became a partaker of the divine nature? Again, God forbid. Does it mean that Christ by being in the environment of the world and of the old covenant needed a deliverance from “the flesh” and from the physical body? Once more, God forbid. One more does it mean, and then I move on, lest I try your patience. Does it mean that God had to suffer intensely and infinitely before he died, because only in that way would He be “dead to sin”. And again, no (examine your mystical soundbites at the door, along with “on the altar of his deity”)
What does it mean that Christ died to sin? It means that the law of God demanded death for the sins of the elect imputed to Christ. As long as those sins were imputed to Christ, He was under sin, he was under law, He was under death. Now death has no more power over Him? Why? Because the sins are no longer imputed to Him, but have been paid for and satisfied. And this is about the gospel, because the gospel is not about just about God justifying, but also about God being just and justifier.
Liberals say that it’s not forgiveness if God had to pay for it. Arminians say it’s not justice for God to condemn a person without giving Jesus to die for that person, and that Jesus has done that,so now God can justly condemn those who won’t accept it.
A lot is written about imputation these days. A lot of it‘s Arminian or Lutheran talk of an exchange made by the sinner’s faith. A lot less is written about the imputation of Adam’s sin. (Blocher, for example, in his original sin book, concludes that Adam’s sin only moved the redemptive historical clock forward (bringing in death) so that individual sins could then be imputed.) But even less is written about the imputation of sins to Christ. I think at least part of the reason for the silence is that “ministers” don’t want to talk about either whose sins are imputed or when they are imputed. (See for instance, the new book by southern baptist Vickers)
This is not the time to think through the timing. (Even when we agree with Owen’s use of impetration, where sins which have been imputed to Christ are still imputed to the elect until their justification, we still have the question if imputation logically immediately precedes or follows faith.) If we say that the sins of believers are imputed to Christ, we not only avoid the good news of election but also (by lack of antithesis) contribute to the evangelical consensus that the efficacy of Christ’s death depends on believing. But he gospel tells how believing is the effect of the cross, and the gospel also tells us what is the object of the believing (contra the Arminian idol and lie).
But back to Romans 6. Stillman’s reading is not the way most Reformed people in the past read Romans 6:14. Maybe now it’s the new majority way. But everybody needs to deal with the question: whatever you say about the Christian being dead to sin, this also needs to be said about Christ. If all it means is not under Moses, is that your gospel? Is it the gospel that Christ was born under the Mosaic law but isn’t anymore? Isn’t that something like an universalism which takes us all toward the “not yet done”? Nobody is under Moses anymore —how is that a good news for an individual on his death bed?
I have now come to the second main concern I have with Stillman’s Dual Citizens. He is so concerned to praise his ancient sacramental view of church that he throws around some careless accusations against “Gnostics” and “pietists”. Instead of now collecting the details, I want to rush to his solution on p79 and 80. I quote, “While adults coming out of pagan backgrounds may indeed experience a seismic shift in loyalties, this is the exception rather than the rule. The Christian faith, normally speaking, is passed on from parents to children by means of infant baptism.”
Now we got you, I hear the reader. You are a sectarian who turns everything into a discussion about being a Baptist. I plead not guilty. There are many different ways to defend infant baptism, and many of them contradict each other. Most of the reformed ways of defending infant baptism depend in some way on not focusing the redemptive-historical character of covenants. Despite his Klinean (some would say dispensational) model, Stillman also relies on “the covenant” talk, expecially when he claims that worship is the same in the new as the old (re-enactment of the covenant).
But my aim is not to pit one paedobaptist against another (though that’s fun enough, see the little book from Evangelical Press by Watson). For one thing, that would not get to the crux of the question, which has to do with ordained “ministers” doing something and saying that God is doing and man is not. Rather, I think most paedobaptists have what Stillman would call a pietist model of crisis conversion, and do not believe in covenant succession.
This is why “ancient sacramental” folk spend so much time quoting Calvin and Nevin to their own people. And I will grant them that the Constantinian tradition is on their side: if they wanted to, the Godfrey-Horton-Doug Wilson types can find plenty to support them also in Hodge and even in Zwingli. But it’s going to take more than accusing me of being a Gnostic and quoting the confessions about the office of the “minister” to convince me. Stillman makes his case in chapter 7 (“reformed piety”).
I do not agree that “God never deals with us as individuals” (p9) I do not agree that, when we hear Christ preached, we then hear Christ preaching. (p13) Or that we hear an official “minister” absolving our sins, that we hear Christ forgiving our sins. Who is hearing?
WHO IS HEARING? Are the non-elect not hearing, because they don’t care about their sins? If so, then it comes back again to the faith of the hearers? Or, instead, are the non-elect hearing “you are forgiven” by the “minister” as telling them that their sins are forgiven? Is it “pietism” to warn people that the New Testament is written only to Christians? It’s ironic that Stillman says this for Sabbath (no death penalty for this for non-Christians!) but he can’t make such a distinction for those observing the cult. He must acts as if everybody observing the sacrament is an exile from the world and a Christian. Otherwise he would have to speak to the church as if were the world, and then he would have to think more about water passing on salvation to pagans who are not children, and about the supper being converting for those halfway in. Even if there is no faith, is there no blessing? (see p 14)
To the extent Stillman uses “the covenant” to argue for sacraments, all his distinction between the old and new covenants collapses. When he talks Sabbath, he doesn’t want the death penalty to apply, but when he talks sacraments, he still wants to talk sanctions and curses. (p77) Like his mentor Kline, he warns that God may break you off if you don’t observe the rituals. Following DG Hart (Mother Kirk), Stillman doesn’t want us to talk about “dead” Christians (p80) as if some internal work of the Spirit needed to be done, but rather ask if people are “observant” at the sacraments. Maybe you agree with him. My point now is not all paedobaptists agree with him on that.
If you are faking it at the sacrament, then God can kill you. That argument in itself does not prove that it is a sacrament or that God is the agent in water baptism and in the Supper. Those questions have to be answered biblically. By that, I don’t exclude any sense of individuality at conversion. Neither do I exclude use of confessions. But when Stillman says minister or sacrament, I do wonder if that is what God meant in the Bible.
Oh by the way, I think it’s ok to not work all the time. I like chapter 11 against the puritans., even though I wish he could have found somebody besides the Romanist, Calvinist-hating, Chesterton to make his case. But he does quote a book I like: How to be Idle by the British writer, Tom Hodgkinson. But as I suggested before, we don’t need to talk about “common grace” to make this point. Read Protestant Reformed leader Englesma’s plea against profaning grace in his answer to Mouw .
I do want to recommend some better books than this on the topic of living in exile in the world. I will only list one Mennonite book: For the Nations, by John Howard Yoder (Eerdmans), expecially the chapter on diaspora, “See How they Go with Their Faces”. And one book by a Quaker, A Biblical Theology of Exile, by Daniel Smith-Christopher( Fortress). And by the premill evangelical Robert H Gundry, Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian (Eerdmans). On the land, read Reformed amill The Israel of God, by Palmer Robertson (P and R). On weakness, read the Lutheran (and expert on Ellul) Marva Dawn, Powers, Weakness, and the Tabernacling of God. For Romans 6, read Robert Haldane. If you want something very short on Romans 6, read Steele and Thomas, Outline on Romans , p46.
I think any of these books will be more helpful than the stuff Horton likes from the Yale School (I will write Hauerwas here, even though he wouldn’t like to be placed there anymore than I like being called Gnostic for not being ancient sacramental) But Stillman is more liberal than Hauerwas, and federal visionists (Leithart) use Hauerwas to defend something a lot more Constantinian than what Stillman would approve. They all agree on sacrament holding the church together . But I am not sure they would be agreed on what to say about the Exodus 32 ordeal/ intrusion. After the golden calf, Moses asked: who is on the Lord’s side? Go forth, and kill your brother… Today you have ordained yourselves for service. “ Even though they want to follow the OT (the covenant) model for worship, they are not agreed about what is legitimate for the people of God when they operate in a second kingdom.
Stellman makes an interesting note about being guilty (as a member of the “legitimate” second kingdom) for the guilt of all the innocent killed in Iraq.(p71) But he still interprets God’s protection from the death penalty (on earth) as being about God by “common grace” giving the state to protect us. (p56) I guess he thinks it’s ok to kill for the state (or the economy), just so long as we don’t make the mistake of thinking this is redemptive. As a pacifist, of course, I don’t find much to get excited about in this distinction. It’s like talking about talking about the glories of the new covenant, as a chaplain in the military!
It seems to me that Stillman wants to eat his cake, but still have it. Or to eat the egg, but still have the chicken which would be born from that egg! He is ok with war, just so long as it’s legitimate but not holy. He wants to avoid covenantal discontinuity, and still have ancient worship: “we are the product of our ancestry in some sense.” (P122) Children get salvation passed to them by water. But, on the other hand, in talking about texts like Romans 6:14, Stillman wants to talk about the future having “already” arrived so that the gospel is not merely the forgiveness of sins by Christ’s death to the law, but the gospel becomes amillennial eschatology. As he quotes Vos, “eschatology precedes soteriology”.
Interesting! First, I read that as saying: there is a covenant of works before there is sin. And that would fit the Meredith Kline model. But Stillman narrates the drama this way: the desire for eternal life is before the desire to be saved from God’s wrath for our sins. Adam on probation still needed (and wanted) eternal life. And I have no big problem with saying it that way. My problem is when eschatology not only precedes soteriology but becomes the soteriology. My problem is when we read Romans 6:14 to only say that nobody is now under the Mosaic law. Of course I agree that nobody is now under the Mosaic law. But 1. I don’t think Romans 6:14 is teaching that. And more important, even if it did teach that. 2. I don’t think that is gospel.
Billy: “Pastor, does God love everybody?”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy (smile, pats him on the head).
Billy: “How come it says in Romans 9 that he hated Esau?”
Pastor: “Been reading your Bible, huh, Billy? (still smiles). Well, the Bible also says that God hates, but that only is talking about God’s secret decree, and as far as we are concerned, he loves everybody.”
Billy: “Pastor?”.
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “If God tells us about his secret decree, is it still a secret?”
Pastor: “Er, well, I guess…not, Billy, but I meant that we should realize that there is a way the Bible talks about God’s love for everybody, and that’s what we should think about, not the one or two places where it says God hates.”
Billy: “Oh. How is it that God loves everybody?”
Pastor: “Well, he gives everybody rain and sunshine, and he blesses the people of the earth with a conscience so they know right from wrong, and he has given them many gifts which they use to make the world a better and safer place to live.”
Billy: “Then he sends most of them to hell?”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “Pastor?”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “Is it love for God to give people good things for a few years to make them feel comfortable and worthwhile, and then send them to hell?”
Pastor: “Well, I… yes, it…is, I think, because it would have been worse if, I mean it would be, um, well, it is, I guess, because he did not send them directly to hell, but he allowed them to experience his goodness and his provision for his creatures…”
Billy: “Is it love to let someone experience something good they will remember forever and always hate God for, because that good thing they loved more than forgiveness?”
Pastor: “Could we change the subject, Billy? I am not sure my answers are satisfying you.”
Billy: “O.K., Pastor. Did Jesus die for everybody?”
Pastor: “Why, sure, Billy.”
Billy: “Pastor”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “If Jesus died for everybody, why isn’t everybody going to heaven?”
Pastor: “Well Billy, its because not everybody will accept him.”
Billy: “But Pastor, I thought Jesus saved us. You are telling me that we save Jesus.”
Pastor: (Laughing nervously) Of course not, Billy! I believe that Jesus saves us completely! However would you get the idea that I believed we save Jesus?
Billy: “Well, Pastor, you told me that Jesus died for everybody, and that only those who accept him will be saved. So, this means Jesus’ death and resurrection, what Jesus does, cannot save us of itself, but something more is needed, and that something more is what we do by accepting him. For those who do not accept Jesus, they will perish. That means that Jesus’ dying for them cannot help them. In fact, it means that Jesus’ work for them was a miserable failure. On the other hand, those who accept him make his work real by their acceptance—and they save his work from being a failure. Without us, Jesus, and his work of salvation—would be doomed! If Jesus cannot save us without the permission we give of our own free will, then we are the real saviors, and Jesus is the one we save! Wow! What would he ever do without us?!
Pastor: “Er… uh…that’s not what I mean. I mean if, it is, I said…no, I believe Jesus is the one who does the saving, Billy, its just that… God has made it so that we… are free to acc… meaning, we are, are…Billy, the Bible is mysterious. It seems to mean certain things, but it doesn’t really, like it says…you are using logic, Billy. The Bible is not logical, and the truths are not something we can fit into our own minds.”
Billy: “Pastor.”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy (now showing a slight frown).
Billy: “When you say the Bible is not logical, does that mean the Bible does not make sense? ‘Cause you made sense when you said the Bible wasn’t logical. I think it was because you used logic that you made sense.”
Pastor: (Now glowering at Billy) No, Billy, I didn’t mean the Bible does not make sense. It does make sense, but just not our kind of sense”.
Billy: “Pastor.”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “Why would God give a Bible to us that did not make our kind of sense?”
Pastor: “Well, Billy, its not that… I think its…it makes sense, just does not give us the answers we like to hear, and says things that seem contradictory but really are not, to keep us from asking smart- aleck questions.”
Billy: “So, God doesn’t make our kind of sense to keep us humble?”
Pastor: “That’s right, Billy. God wants to keep us humble, so he does not let us think we can be absolutely certain about the things some proud people are certain about.”
Billy: “Pastor.”
Pastor: “Yes, Billy.”
Billy: “Are you certain about what you just said to me?”
Pastor: “(Showing obvious irritation) What do you think, Billy?”
Billy: “I think you just called yourself a proud person, but I don’t know why, ’cause you are so smart and know so much about God, and how much he needs us.”
Pastor: “Billy, why don’t you go out and play, like the other children?”
Billy: “Why should I go out and play, when I can stay in here with you and learn how to save God?”
Pastor: “You need to be careful, Billy. I never said we save God. You are the one who said that, young man. I simply believe our choices are significant, and God does not treat us like robots or lifeless stones. He created us to have true human responsibility.”
Billy: “Pastor”
Pastor: (Now looking quite angry at young Billy) “This will have to be the last question, young man! I have important things to do and you should be outside playing.”
Billy: “When God put Abraham to sleep, was he telling him what he thought of his human responsibility?”
Pastor: (Seething with rage) I have a bad headache, Billy, and I can’t answer any more of your questions, but I can tell you this. Whoever has been teaching you has been telling you things a boy your age should not even be thinking about. It sounds like you have been learning some kind of hyper-Calvinism. You better be careful, young man!
Billy: “I don’t know about hyper- Calintisim, but I have been reading these things in the Bible. Thanks for straightening me out. I will try to cut these bad parts out. Can I borrow some scissors?
Pastor: (Rising from his chair) Get out of here, you, you, you…!
Billy: “That’s O.K., pastor. I’ll ask Joey. He was using some good scissors when we were cutting out our ‘friends with Jesus’ pictures for Sunday School. Good- by.”
© 1997 Copyright, by John Pedersen
Ever get the feeling that when you seek to talk with some folk about the necessity of a Gospel-confession that distinguishes good from evil and condemns self, giving God all the glory, that they believe you to be….
wound too tight, a few degrees off true north, a bit stuck on the groove, not playing with a full deck, trying to compensate for unresolved psychological trauma, unbalanced and tipping over, harsh and un-pastoral, showing the effects of stress, in need of counseling, drinking too much coffee, ready to short out and start smoking, weird, crude, mean, seeing stuff that isn’t there, missing the point, full of pride and self-righteousness, dangerous, prone to fixation, overly precise, not living in the real world, requiring a global perspective on Christianity, out of touch, intolerant, paranoid, grasping at straws, suffering from the loneliness and rejection, in need of serious prayer, just not getting it, riding a hobby horse, speaking a strange language, singing in the shower, unloved at home, trying something that doesn’t work, dooming yourself to implode in parochial obscurity, jousting at windmills, downright irritating, bitter, ignorant of the real needs of people, cutting off your nose to spite your face, in need of a good cold shower and a slap in the face, immature, suffering from overexposure to the sun, not preaching the whole counsel of God, uncompassionate, stupid, beneath contempt, needing to relax, old hat, whistling in the dark, a bigot, and living in a dream world ?
“No wonder if such persons look upon imputed righteousness as the shadow of a dream, who esteem those things which evidence its necessity to be but fond imaginations. And small hope is there to bring such men to value the righteousness of Christ, as imputed to them, who are so unacquainted with their own unrighteousness inherent in them. Until men know themselves better, they will care very little to know Christ at all.” – John Owen
Me, too.
Regards,
John Pedersen
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