Coram Deo

Motion 312 - Defining Personhood in Canada

2012-09-24T10:47:00.002-04:00

Here is a sample letter that I am sending to my local MP Malcolm Allen of the NDP today in response to Motion 312. For those of you who do not know, this is a motion put forward in the Spring by Stephen Woodsworth of Kitchener which is seeking to update the legal definition of personhood in Canada. This motion has major implications on the abortion issue and could reoopen a national debate if it is passed later this week. There is currently a 400 year old legal definition of personhood in Canada that is being challenged in Parliament which holds that human life begins at birth rather than at conception. If you write a letter to your local MP (which I would urge you to do as soon as possible!), please focus your comments on the relevant issue - the definition of personhood. Tell your MP that it is impossible to contend medically that a fetus becomes a human being by travelling through the birth canal. Even a pro-choice advocate should concede this if he/she is being honest with the facts and not simply following the feminist agenda! The abortion debate is really a secondary concern here, so keep that in mind as you write. Please don't copy my letter word for word, but draft your own and make it as personal as possible. It doesn't need to be long or eloquent. Read Exodus 1 this morning, and follow the example of the Hebrew midwives, who did not sit around passively when they had an opportunity to save lives!

__________________________________

Dear Malcolm Allen,

I am a resident of Welland and the associate pastor at Rosedale Baptist Church on Lincoln Ave. First of all, I’d like to express my sincere appreciation for your service on behalf of Welland in the House of Commons. I love our country, as I know you do, and am thankful to be able to participate fully in our democratic system of government. You are in my personal prayers and we often pray for you here at Rosedale along with our other elected officials as the Bible instructs us to do (1 Timothy 2:1-4). May God give you His wisdom as you serve our country and may He sustain you in that role.

I am writing you today with respect to Motion 312 which was debated last week in the House of Commons. Supporting this motion gives us an opportunity to bring Canadian law into the twenty-first century. It is embarrassing that we still have a legal definition in Canada that maintains that human life begins at birth. As a father of two small children who has seen my children via ultrasound complete with fingers, toes, eyes and ears, and have felt them move inside their mother as they were developing, it is unthinkable that we could defend such an absurd and antiquated definition. Although I have earned a degree in Biology from the University of Guelph, I can assure you that it doesn’t take university training to know that an eight inch trip through the birth canal does not turn a fetus into a human being! To hold such a medical contention in the twenty-first century is nearly the equivalent of believing in a flat earth or a geo-centric universe. Do we really want to keep Canada in the dark ages with definitions of life and humanity that are patently false? Stephen Woodsworth has raised a valid point through this motion, and I think it needs to be taken seriously and acted upon by all members of the House. I would therefore urge you to vote in favour of Motion 312 and bring Canadian law up to date.

I understand that more is at stake here than a legal definition and that support of this motion could re-open the abortion debate here in Canada. If that is the case, so be it! Let’s pursue honesty and face the medical facts head on rather than doing what is politically expedient. The Bible is very clear that we have a moral obligation before God to defend the rights of the helpless and to speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. Part of “standing on guard” for Canada, is to defend the rights of all of her citizens (or in the case of the fetus – potential citizens!). I appreciate very much the NDP’s compassion for all Canadian citizens, and I am asking you to extend compassion and justice to unborn persons, full of potential to change the world for the better! I for one am willing to put my worldview on this issue into action. My wife and I are in the process of applying to adopt, and if Canada was to change its mind on abortion, I would gladly adopt orphans and encourage others to do the same. I believe that those like myself who advocate for a pro-life stance have a moral obligation to care for the orphan and also for their mothers! May God bless you Mr. Allen and empower you this week to do what is right – “to act justly and to love mercy” (Micah 6:8).

John C. Bellingham BSc., MDiv.

6 Promenade Richelieu

Welland, ON

L3B 6B2

John Owen on Natural and Moral Ability

2012-08-20T11:20:00.001-04:00

I'm now half way through John Owen's masterful (and massive!) treatise on the Holy Spirit and have been amazed by some of his insights which were later articulated and popularized by Jonathan Edwards in his treatise on the Freedom of the Will. The following passages taken from Book 3, Chapter 4 seems to me to be of immense importance for every Calvinist to understand if we are to preserve intact the two poles of God's Sovereignty and Man's Responsibility and avoid tripping and falling into the pit of hyper-Calvinism like some of our eighteenth-century Baptist forefathers:

"That Adam in the state of innocency, besides his natural life, whereby he was a living soul, had likewise a supernatural life with respect unto its end, whereby he lived unto God. This is called the “life of God,” Ephesians 4:18, which men now in the state of nature are alienated from; — the life which God requires, and which hath God for its object and end. And this life was in him supernatural: for although it was concreated in and with the rational soul, as a perfection due unto it, in the state wherein and with respect unto the end for which it was made, yet it did not naturally flow from the principles of the rational soul; nor were the principles, faculties, or abilities of it, inseparable from those of the soul itself, being only accidental perfections of them, inlaid in them by especial grace."

"In life spiritual the soul is unto the principle of it as the body is unto the soul in life natural; for in life natural the soul is the quickening principle, and the body is the principle quickened. When the soul departs, it leaves the body with all its own natural properties, but utterly deprived of them which it had by virtue of its union with the soul. So in life spiritual, the soul is not, in and by its essential properties, the quickening principle of it, but it is the principle that is quickened. And when the quickening principle of spiritual life departs, it leaves the soul with all its natural properties entire as to their essence, though morally corrupted; but of all the power and abilities which it had by virtue of its union with a quickening principle of spiritual life, it is deprived. And to deny such a quickening principle of spiritual life, superadded unto us by the grace of Christ, distinct and separate from the natural faculties of the soul, is, upon the matter, to renounce the whole gospel.

Here are a few reflections on the implications of Owen's theology:

1) The Donum Superadditum for Reformed Protestants

Notice that Owen makes a distinction in this passage between the "rational soul" and the "quickening principle" which was originally "concreated" with the soul of Adam and Eve. Although Owen affirms in good Protestant form that Adam was created in positive state of righteous (rather than a neutral state following Roman Catholics), the doctrine of the donum superadditum is certainly lurking in the background in these passages. At the Fall Adam lost this supernatural gift and in conversion it is once again "superadded" to us.

2) Natural Ability vs. Moral Ability

Both Owen and Edwards make this distinction which is very important in understanding the doctrine of Total Depravity. What exactly does it mean for the Apostle Paul to say that humankind is "dead in trespasses and sins"?? Does this imply (as in some crude Arminian caricatures of Calvinism) that humans have totally lost both their rational and moral abilities? Can unregenerate humanity, dead in sin, reason successfully east of Eden now that the donum superadditum has been lost??? Owen's answer to this question is very insightful- the natural ability of the rational soul is left intact even though the "quickening" principle has been lost. This does not mean that human reason has been untouched by Original Sin - such would be the heresy of Pelagius!! Owen affirms in these passages that the rational soul has been "morally corrupted" but it has not by any means been totally destroyed. Our rational faculties are still basically intact in terms of their natural abilities. What Owen is doing here (and what Edwards also does) is to make a distinction between Natural and Moral ability in formulating a doctrine of Total Depravity. Fallen men and women, according to both of these theologians, are naturally able to obey the commands of God because the rational soul is still functioning. Fallen humanity, however is morally unable to obey the commands of God because the "quickening" principle has been lost! Until that quickening principle is restored through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, humans will never use their natural, rational abilities to do what is pleasing to God. This distinction is brilliant because it preserves both the responsibility of humankind before God (we are naturally able and thus must answer to God for our rebellion!!) and the sovereignty of God in salvation (God must restore moral ability through regeneration according to His sovereign, electing, grace).

3) Christian Apologetics

The distinction between Natural and Moral ability seems to me to help focus the debate between Presuppositionalists like Van Til and Evidentialists like William Lane Craig. In reading Van Til firsthand over the past month, it seems to me that he does not clearly make this distinction and as a result embraces a rather unrealistic doctrine of Depravity that implies that non-believers are unable to reason coherently apart from Biblical presuppositions. In other words, Van Til seems to teach that fallen humanity is both naturally and morally unable. This seems to me to be a view of Total Depravity that is neither demanded by the Scripture nor evidenced in the real world, since many non-theists and deists have made significant contributions to the furthering of human knowledge without giving any credence whatsoever to the Bible or Christian theism. The distinction between Natural and Moral ability also helps me come to terms with the dialectic in Calvin's theology between his very robust doctrine of Depravity and his deep admiration of the contributions of the ancient Greek Philosophers who were clearly unregenerate. (Zwingli went so far in his bias toward renaissance humanism as to suggest that they were regenerated apart from the gospel!!).

John Owen on the Loveliness of Christ

2012-08-14T14:56:00.000-04:00

I came across this beautiful passage in my reading today of John Owen's Treatise Of Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (1657). This short excerpt is found in the second part of the treatise where he is talking about the believer's communion with Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity:

Christ is:

Lovely in his person, — in the glorious all-sufficiency of his Deity,

gracious purity and holiness of his humanity, authority and majesty, love

and power.

Lovely in his birth and incarnation; when he was rich, for our sakes

becoming poor, — taking part of flesh and blood, because we partook of

the same; being made of a woman, that for us he might be made under the

law, even for our sakes.

Lovely in the whole course of his life, and the more than angelical holiness

and obedience which, in the depth of poverty and persecution, he exercised

therein; — doing good, receiving evil; blessing, and being cursed, reviled,

reproached, all his days.

Lovely in his death; yea, therein most lovely to sinners; — never more

glorious and desirable than when he came broken, dead, from the cross.

Then had he carried all our sins into a land of forgetfulness; then had

remade peace and reconciliation for us; then had he procured life and

immortality for us.

Lovely in his whole employment, in his great undertaking, — in his life,

death, resurrection, ascension; being a mediator between God and us, to

recover the glory of God’s justice, and to save our souls, — to bring us to

an enjoyment of God, who were set at such an infinite distance from him

by sin.

Lovely in the glory and majesty wherewith he is crowned. Now he is set

down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; where, though he be terrible

to his enemies, yet he is full of mercy, love, and compassion, towards his

beloved ones.

Lovely in all those supplies of grace and consolations, in all the

dispensations of his Holy Spirit, whereof his saints are made partakers.

Lovely in all the tender care, power, and wisdom, which he exercises in the

protection, safe-guarding, and delivery of his church and people, in the

midst of all the oppositions and persecutions whereunto they are exposed.

Lovely in all his ordinances, and the whole of that spiritually glorious

worship which he has appointed to his people, whereby they draw nigh and

have communion with him and his Father.

Lovely and glorious in the vengeance he taketh, and will finally execute,

upon the stubborn enemies of himself and his people.

Lovely in the pardon he has purchased and does dispense, — in the

reconciliation he has established, — in the grace he communicates, — in

the consolations he does administer, — in the peace and joy he gives his

saints, — in his assured preservation of them unto glory.

What shall I say? there is no end of his excellencies and desirableness; —

“He is altogether lovely. This is our beloved, and this is our friend, O

daughters of Jerusalem.”

Is There a Future for Israel in God's Redemptive Plan??

2012-08-13T12:24:00.002-04:00

In my last post, I tackled a difficult prophecy in Daniel 9 which is the primary biblical source of Dispensationalist/ Futurist teaching regarding a future seven year Tribulation which will precede the parousia of Jesus Christ at the end of the age. I concluded in that post, that the seventieth week of Daniel is a reference to the entire present age from the time of Christ's baptism to the time of his second coming. Today, I'm going to continue my discussion of Christian eschatology by considering another very important, but equally controversial, passage in Paul's writing - Romans 11:25-32:

²⁵For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in;
²⁶and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written,

“ The Deliverer will come from Zion,
He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.”
²⁷“ This is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”

²⁸From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;

²⁹for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

³⁰For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience,

³¹so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy.

³²For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.

The primary difficulty in this passage which divides Evangelical interpreters is to discern the meaning of v. 26: "and so all Israel will be saved." In this post I'm going to briefly sketch out four possible Evangelical interpretations of this phrase.

Interpretation #1: "All Israel" = Israel as a National Entity

The view that God will one day restore the nation of Israel to her former glory, including the restoration of the land of Palestine, the rebuilding of the physical Temple in Jerusalem and the reinstitution of commemorative animal sacrifice during the Millennial Kingdom, is the interpretation that has been embraced by Dispensationists and the majority of messianic Jewish congregations. It has probably been the most popular eschatological position among North American Evangelicals since the Fundamentalist/Modernist controversy in the 1920s when Fundamentalists embraced en masse a very pessimistic premillenial eschatology in opposition to the Liberals who adpated postmillenial optimism to the social gospel. The rapid growth of Dispensational Premillenialism in the past century, in my opinion, was a knee jerk reaction to Liberal Protestantism. At the heart of the Dispensationalist system of theology is the distinction between Israel and the Church into two entities. Jesus' offer of the Kingdom to the Jewish nation was rejected by Jews living in first century Palestine (Plan A) and so He turned to the Gentiles by establishing the New Testament Church (Plan B). For Dispensationalists, the Church, which includes both Jews and Gentiles is a 'parenthesis' in God's redemptive plan. For the present 'dispensation', Jews are saved, added to the Church (which is a mixture of Jews and Gentiles), and will be taken up in the so called 'secret rapture', but once the Church is raptured God will resume Plan A with the Jewish nation here on earth. Dispensationalist interpreters see Paul's teaching about the salvation of 'all Israel' in Rom 11 as further evidence of a Jewish Millenium where God will fulfill all of his promises to ethnic Jews in a very physical, literalistic way. Dispensationalism commits the same error as the apostles did in Acts 1:6 when they interpreted the Kingdom of God almost exclusively with respect to the Jewish nation.

Interpretation #2: "All Israel" = Spiritual Israel (Church)

Much support can be garnered for this view, popular among Amillenialists and some Historic Premillenialists which sees Paul's reference to Israel in v. 26 as a reference to the New Testament Church. In other words, this view interprets Paul as saying that all of God's elect people, whether Jew or Gentile, will be saved and gathered into the Church before the conclusion of the present age - it is a reference to the "Israel of God" spoken of by Paul in the closing verses of Galatians.

The support for this view comes from the way Paul and the apostles speak about the Church throughout the New Testament. For example, Peter calls his Gentile audience a "spiritual house" and a "holy priesthood" in 1 Peter 2:4-5. The author to the Hebrews applies the promise of the New Covenant (cf. Jer 31) to the Gentile Church (Heb 8). Paul calls the Gentile believers in Gal 3:29 "Abraham's offspring" and "heirs according to the promise." Paul and the other NT authors also frequently apply OT texts given in their original context to national Israel to Gentile followers of Jesus (cf. 2 Cor 6:14-18). So, there is clear and irrefutable Biblical evidence to suggest that the Church is indeed Spiritual Israel. This is not an anti-semetic way to intepret the NT as is sometimes alleged by Dispensationalists, nor is it 'replacement theology' (a curse word frequently used to slander and malign the reputation of Reformed theologians) - it is good, sound Biblical theology. If Reformed theologians are guilty of 'spiritualizing' the OT references to Israel, then the same accusation must be leveled against Paul and the apostles. A fair assessment of the NT Scripture must acknowlege that Paul uses the term 'Israel' in different senses depending on the context. Sometimes, Paul is speaking about the Jewish nation (ethnic Jews), sometimes he is speaking about the believing remnant within ethnic Israel and sometimes he is 'spiritualizing' the term in order to speak about the New Testament Church (Gentiles and Jews together). In other words, Paul is not enslaved in his hermeneutics to the grammatical-historcial meaning of the text at all points - he is open to the sensus plenior (the fuller meaning) and so should we be today in our interpretation of Scripture!

In spite of my sympathy for this position, I cannot believe that Paul is speaking about Spiritual Israel here in Rom 11. The very fact that he is consistently using the term 'Israel' in the immediate context (chapters 9-10) to refer to his Jewish 'kinsmen according to the flesh', it is almost inconceivable to conclude that he suddenly switches the meaning of this term in 11:26 to refer to the Church without giving any clear indication to his audience. I am convinced that Paul is indeed referring to ethnic Jews in this particular passage.

Interpretation #3: "All Israel" = Believing Remnant within National/ Ethnic Israel

This interpretation has much contextual support to commend it, and I am extremely sympathetic to those Evangelical expositors who hold this position. I am actually torn between this position and the next one which I currently think is the better interpretation.

This view is a good exegetical option which takes into account an extremely important distinction made by Paul in Rom 9:6 - "For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel." Unfortunately this distinction between Israel as a nation and the elect members of the nation who were justified by faith alone in the Messiah to come, is all too frequently lost on Dispensationalist interpreters. God has always had an elect people which was not equivalent to the nation of Israel as a whole - the Israel within Israel! To fail to make such a distinction, and to teach that Jewish people were saved by following the Mosaic Law and sacrificing animals as a rote religious ritual of a former dispensation of law, is to totally misunderstand the role of Israel in God's Redemptive plan. God elected the Jewish nation for a purpose - to bring forth Messiah as a blessing to the families of the earth! The purpose of Israel's election as a nation has been fulfilled in the flow of Redemptive history when Jesus was born, lived a perfect life and died a substitutionary death in accordance with the OT Prophecies concerning Messiah (cf.Is 52-53). Many Israelites who sacrificed animals and took the sign of circumcision will be in hell for all of eternity right alongside the many professing Christians who go to church every week and have been baptized. Simply going through a religious exercise, be it Jewish, Christian or otherwise never saved anyone and never will: "For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." (Heb 10:3). So the Dispensationalist teaching about a restored Millennial Temple in which animal sacrifice will be restored is at best a serious misunderstanding of the flow of Redemptive History, and at worst a blasphemous heresy which denies and tramples upon the once for all character of Christ's redemptive work on the cross and mistakes the 'shadows' and 'types' of the Old Coveenant for the reality in the New Covenant.

Nevertheless, I'm not confident that this is what Paul is talking about here in Rom 11, although I may be easily persuaded. If Paul is talking here about all of the elect Jewish people coming to faith during the entire present age I see two problems. First of all, the word translated "until" in v. 25 seems to imply chronology. That is to say, I think the salvation of "all Israel" here is probably a reference to a future salvation of a large number of Jews, even though Paul himself uses his own conversion as evidence that God is not finished with the Jewish people yet in 11:1-2. Paul's conversion seems to me, to be a harbinger of a much larger revival among ethnic Jews which will occur at some point in the future - probably right before the return of the Lord. The second problem with this view has to do with the doxology at the end of chapter 11. To state that all of the elect Jews throughout redemptive history will come to faith before the end of the age, is to state a truism. Of course the elect Jews will come to faith!!! And so it is difficult to see why this would issue in such a glorious doxology from the Apostle at the end of the chapter. It seems to me that something more is going on here.....

Interpretation #4: "All Israel" = Large Number of Ethnic Jews who will be Converted and Added to the Church in the Future

The subtitle pretty much says it all, and this is the view which I currently think is the best understanding of Rom 11. The conclusion that Paul is speaking of ethnic Jews is difficult to avoid if we are allowing this text to speak for itself. For Paul to switch suddenly from a discussion of Ethnic Jews in the previous two chapters to a discussion of Spiritual Israel in 11:26, is not a natural way to understand the text. It also seems fairly difficult to avoid the conclusion that Paul is speaking here about something that will happen in the future. According to this text, the salvation of the Jews will not occur "until" (a key word!!) the "fullness of the Gentiles has come in." Without jumping through fancy exegetical hoops to make the text mean what it does not appear to say - I think it is fair to say that Paul is speaking of a future event that has not yet occurred but will occur shortly before the return of Christ - perhaps even simultaneously with his return!

And so, I agree with Dispensationalists insofar as Paul is talking about a future conversion of Ethnic Jews, but I disagree with them that this conversion has anything to do with national blessings or the fulfillement of Old Covenant land promises. I expect that many Jews will be converted when Christ returns and that this will be one of the signs that precede His second coming. I certainly don't think every single individual will be saved as some contend ('all' does not always mean every single individual in the NT!!)

On a side note, my views on the Seventieth Week of Daniel and on the future conversion of ethnic Jews alleviate two major problems with Historic Premillenialism (The eschatological position to which I currently subscribe). First of all, the denial of a seven year tribulation in the future allows me to affirm the possibility that Christ could return at any moment. For post-trib Historic Premillenialists like Doug Moo who take a futurist interpretation of Daniel 9, the return of Christ must be at least 7 years away! Secondly, the conversion of the Jews before the return of Christ gives an plausible explanation to the difficult problem of the origin of evil in the Millennium. I think that the Jewish people will be saved when they see Christ coming at his glorious return to earth. The Church is raptured at that point and the enemies of Christ are destroyed, but these converted Jews live on into the Millenium and some of their children and grandchildren eventually rebel against the Lord as we read in Rev 20. To be sure, there are other significant theological problems with a Premillenial view, but until I become convinced that Rev 20 does not follow Rev 19 chronologically, I must remain a Historic Premillenialist who is extremely sympathetic to Amillenialism!

Daniel's 70th Week and the 'Great Tribulation'

2012-08-10T00:54:00.000-04:00

Over the past month I've been giving some serious thought to the subject of end-time prophecy and the Kingdom of God and I want to write today about a very challenging passage of Scripture that for many Evangelicals, has become a linchpin in understanding the chronology of eschatological events. First, I'm going to outline the Dispensationalist or 'Futurist' interpretation of Daniel 9 which uses this text to teach a future seven year tribulation period which is unparalleled in all of human history. I'm then going to sketch out what I've come to believe is a better interpretation of this passage. I will attempt to show in this post that Dispensationalist/ extreme futurist expositors make an almost unthinkable error in formulating their teaching about the Great Tribulation - their interpretation of the seventieth week of Daniel 9 actually mistakes the Lord Jesus for the eschatological Anti-Christ!!

Daniel 9 and the 'Great Tribulation'

I suspect that the majority of Christians who've read Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series and are expecting a literal seven year 'Great Tribulation' would have considerable difficulty if they were asked to validate this doctrine from the Scripture itself. The reason for this is that a seven year 'great tribulation' is never plainly taught anywhere in the Bible!! At best it is an inference which comes from superimposing certain theological presuppositions upon the Scripture.

The Dispensationalist expositor begins with the presupposition that the Church and Israel are two completely different entities in God's redemptive plan. (a presupposition which I personally don't think can be substantiated when you examine how the NT authors apply OT Covenant passages to Gentile followers of Jesus!) Because of the Jewish context of Daniel 9, these expositors insist that this prophecy is dealing exclusively with ethnic Jews and the nation of Israel. Indeed, the concept of the 'great tribulation' is required in the traditional Dispensationalist system if we are to get the Church (Plan B) out of the way at the so-called 'secret' pre-tribulational rapture so that God can resume Plan A with ethnic Israel back here on earth.

Chapter 9 begins with Daniel reading from the book of Jeremiah during the Babylonian exile, openly confessing the sins of Israel before the Lord and pleading His covenant mercy on behalf of the disobedient nation. In response to his earnest prayers, the Angel Gabriel is sent by the Lord with the following words of comfort:

²⁴“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the most holy place.
²⁵So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress.
²⁶Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined.
²⁷And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

The first exegetical move that Dispensationalists make is to interpret the 'seventy weeks' (or 'seventy-sevens') in terms of literal years - in total this would equals 490 years. The passage is therefore interpreted in a strictly chronological fashion.
Secondly, they identify the decree mentioned in v. 25 with the decree that went out during the 20th year of King Artexerxes when Nehemiah was permitted to return from exile to rebuild the fallen walls of Jerusalem, an event that occurred in 445 BC. (Neh 2:1-8).
Next, they calculate the fulfillment of v. 26 as occurring 483 years after the issuing of the decree (69 weeks or (7+62) x 7 = 483). This is actually pretty amazing when you think about it because it brings us fairly close to the year of Jesus' death! And so, the first 69 weeks bring us chronologically to the prophetic fulfillment of v. 26 when the "Messiah will be cut off and have nothing" - an event which was historically fulfilled when Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross.
But here's where the Dispensationalist interpretation begins to get a bit far-fetched for my own comfort. They proceed without any exegetical warrant, to postulate an indefinite gap between week 69 and week 70 which has now stretched to 2000 years and counting!!! The clock apparently stopped after week 69, and the 70th week - a period of 7 years known as the 'great tribulation' - will not begin until the eschatological anti-Christ comes to make a covenant with "the many" (v. 27). Notice that in the Dispensational interpretation, the one who makes the covenant in v. 27 is identified with the "prince who is to come" in v. 26 rather than with the Messiah! This, I want to suggest is a serious misunderstanding of this text which breaks not only with their own so-called literal or 'grammatical-historical' hermeneutic (funny that Gabriel totally forgot to mention that itsy bitsy 2000 year gap!!), but also with the historic Protestant interpretation. The Dispensationalist view, although attractive on the surface and popular in many Evangelical circles, appears on closer examination to be a novel interpretation of this passage which confuses the Messiah with anti-Christ and breaks sharply with the history of interpretation.

Daniel 9 and the Year of Jubilee

For any unprejudiced interpreter of Scripture it should be somewhat clear that the Dispensationalist interpretation of this passage rests on rather shaky exegetical soil!!   I have suggested above that the need for a seven year 'great tribulation' is artificially created by the presuppositions of the theological system itself rather than by Scripture. Secondly, the Dispensationalist interpretation totally falls apart if the "decree" of v. 25 cannot be identified with the decree given by Artexerxes in Nehemiah 2:1-8. Thirdly, the Dispensationalist interpretation inserts a gap between week 69 and week 70 which is not even remotely suggested or demanded by the context itself! Fourthly, the Dispensationalist uses a dangerous hermeneutic, by interpreting the NT in light of the OT, rather than the other way around. As Christians who affirm the progressive revelation of Scripture, we ought always to interpret the OT in light of its fulfillment in Christ!! So here's what I personally think is a better interpretation of this passage which actually calls into question the idea of a future seven year tribulation:

First of all, the 'decree' of v. 25 is better understood in the overall context of this passage as a reference to the decree of Cyrus (538 BC) mentioned in Ezra 1:2-3 and. 2 Chron. 36:21-23 since it was this decree, and not the decree of Artaxerxes which signaled the end of Israel's 70 year Babylonian exile. Because Daniel was praying about the end of the Jewish exile when Gabriel visited him, it makes more sense that the 70 weeks would immediately follow the conclusion of the 70 year captivity - otherwise it is difficult to see how this prophecy is an answer to Daniel's prayer in any meaningful sense. Of course, this throws a monkey wrench into the precise calculations of the Dispensationalist scheme, but as we will see, I don't think it really matters because the text is not really concerned with precise dates and times, but is dealing with symbolic numbers that find their ultimate fulfillment in Christ. We're dealing here with a form of 'typology'.

I agree with the older Protestant interpreters that the seventy weeks are most likely an allusion to the Sabbatical laws and the Year of Jubilee from Lev 25:1-4, rather than to a strict chronology that we can use to calculate precise dates and times. The year of Jubilee occurred every forty-nine years (seven sevens), and so it is more than reasonable to assume that 490 years is a symbolic representation of 10 Jubilee periods! In other words, 490 is a symbol for the ushering in of the Messianic era of Sabbath rest which Daniel and the Jewish people anticipated for thousands of years!

Now for the interesting part! I am in full agreement with Dispensationalists that the cutting off of Messiah in v. 26 is a reference to the crucifixion of Christ. The "prince that shall come" mentioned in v. 26 is most likely Titus, the Roman general that destroyed the Jewish temple in AD 70. It was at this time that the Jewish people underwent some of the terrible persecution that Jesus himself describes in the Olivet Discourse. In contrast to the Dispensationalist interpreters, I think that the one who confirms the covenant in v. 27 is the Messiah Himself! This is not a reference to some future covenant that anti-Christ will with Israel during the great tribulation - it is a reference to the New Covenant ratified in Christ's blood!! Messiah himself confirms the covenant with all of His elect people, both Jews and Gentiles who are children of Abraham by faith (Gal 3:29). The New Covenant which was brought to full fruition by the Lord Jesus rendered all of the Temple rituals blasphemous abominations to God - and that is which is what v. 27 is talking about! All of the Temple sacrifice which occurred between Jesus' death in AD 33 and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 was a form of blasphemous idolatry that was totally displeasing to God. It was worshipping the 'types' and 'shadows' rather than the reality which had come in the person and work of Christ. As the author to the Hebrews puts it, the coming of the New Covenant renders the Old Covenant obsolete and ready to pass away!

And so, I understand the 70th week of Daniel not as a future tribulation period that will last seven years, but rather as a symbolic representation of the age in which we are currently living. We have been living in the 'last days' for the past 2000 yrs!! The 70th week began when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, the first 'half' of the week ended when He died on the cross, and the end of the week will not occur until He comes back again to receive the Church to Himself!

Aristotle's Physics (Book V-VIII)

2012-06-29T09:09:00.003-04:00

Book V

The focus of Book V is on 'change', which, according to Aristotle can occur in one of three senses: 1) Accidentally; 2) Partially (something belonging to the object changes or moves); and 3) Directly (the thing itself moves or changes). Change is always "from something to something". 'Coming to be' (change from nothing to something) or 'perishing' (change from something to nothing) cannot be considered true instances of change according to Aristotle because that which "is not" cannot possibly be in motion. Motion is therefore always from "subject to subject" and never from subject to non-subject (or vis versa) and can be classified in three different ways: 1) Qualitative; 2) Quantitative; 3) Local. Qualitative motion is also called alteration from one contrary to the other. Quantitative motion involves increase or decrease between two contraries. Local motion is another way to say 'locomotion'.

Book VI
In this Book, Aristotle contends that everything that changes, such as magnitude, time and motion, is continuious and "divisible into divisibles that are infinitely divisible." Within time, however, there is one thing that is indivisible: the present. The 'present' is a boundary or limit between the past and the future and is therefore impossible to divide. A good chunk of this chapter is taken up with refutations of Zeno's famous paradoxes using the principles that have been developed in the Physics up to this point. Both Aristotle and Zeno agree (contra the Atomists) that space and time are continuous and divisible, but whereas Zeno's paradoxes presuppose the existance of 'actual' infinities, Aristotle avoids the trap with his inriguing concept of 'potential' infinities.

Book VII

Book VII has some fascinating theological undertones which are later developed at greater length in the Metaphysics. The maxim of this Book is: "Everything that is in motion must be moved by something." But this immediately leads us right into the vexing problem of infinite regress which necessarily leads to a number of philosophical absurdities. The conclusion: "there must be some first movent (mover)."

Book VIII

According to Aristotle, there are two possible candidates for the first cause of all motion and change. It could either be a self-moving mover (like an animal) or it could an unmoved mover. In order to avoid the problem of infinite regress and a first cause that is neither eternal nor continuous, he concludes that the first cause must be an eternal, unmoved mover. This book contains a discussion on the kind of motion that such a first cause would produce, which in Aristotle's view, must be rotational or circular locomotion since this is the only form of motion which is both eternal and continuous. In Aristotle's scheme, it would appear that the unmoved mover causes the circular motion of the heavenly spheres, and this motion, in turn, is the cause of all other kinds of motion and change.

Lordship Salvation

2012-06-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

The following is a very brief summary of the Lordship Salvation controversy that I prepared for our men's Bible study last week. We were studying 2 Cor 7 which deals extensively with the doctrine of repentance and were discussing the question of whether repentance (understood as a turning away from sin) is necessary for salvation:

The modern debate over the role of repentance in salvation began to heat up in the late 1980s between some of the theologians at Dallas Theological Seminary and John MacArthur through a very public exchange of pamphlets and published books. Although the terms “Lordship Salvation”, “Easy-Believism”, “Free Grace Theology” etc. are fairly recent in their origin, the ideas behind these terms are not new at all. A similar issue was hotly debated in the sixteenth-century between Martin Luther and his colleague Johannes Agricola, and again in seventeenth-century England among the Puritans during the so-called “Antinomian” controversy. Antinomianism (meaning ‘lawlessness’) is the opposite extreme of Legalism and teaches that Christians are not in any way bound by the moral law of God (ie. Ten Commandments). The seventeenth-century English “Antinomians” interpreted justification by faith alone (sola fide) to mean that good works were not necessarily required in order to have genuine saving faith. In other words, you could be saved by believing in Christ without truly repenting (turning away from sin)! But the controversy goes back even further than this. The Apostle Paul himself anticipated that his strong emphasis on grace alone through faith alone would be misunderstood by some. In Romans 6, Paul denounces in the strongest possible way, the ‘antinomian’ position that the Christian can continue in sin so that grace may abound. James also vigourously attacks the Antinomian heresy which was rearing its head as early as AD 40. Modern Day Muslims often interpret Paul’s emphasis on grace as a form of antinomianism and frequently attack Biblical Christianity on that basis.

The so-called “Free Grace” theology which has been advocated most strongly by Charles Ryrie and Zane Hodges of DTS,[1] seems to indicate that salvation occurs in two phases. Justification is primarily an intellectual conversion when a person ‘believes’ the gospel truths and is saved. Later on, this person may come to a deeper understanding of the importance of Lordship and may commit themselves to the process of sanctification and begin to grow in holiness. “Free Grace” advocates do not deny the importance of sanctification or repentance in the life of a believer, but they do not insist that it begins at the moment of justification. It is quite possible for a person to have an intellectual conversion – even to trust in Jesus, and to remain in a perpetual state of “carnality” where the ‘Christian’ lives like a non-believer (cf. 1 Cor. 3:1). Some understand repentance to be a "change of mind" about sin (metanoia) rather than an actual turning away from sin. Because of these convictions, these “Free Grace” theologians do not believe that assurance of faith should be based on the presence or absence of good works in the life of a believer. Assurance comes from assent to the truth of the gospel and is frequently associated with a prayer to receive Christ when that person moves from unbelief to belief. Any person who truly believes and has received Christ is eternally secure.

The so-called “Lordship” position which has been strongly advocated in recent years by John MacArthur[2] is basically identical with the emphasis of the Puritans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Like Calvin and the Puritans, MacArthur teaches that justification and the lordship of Christ go hand in hand. In other words you cannot divide Christ – you must receive Him as Saviour and Lord, or you cannot receive Him at all! Lordship theology emphasizes the critical importance of good works in the life of the true disciple and insists that every person who follows Christ must first count the cost by turning away from sin immediately! This is not to say that no sin remains in the life of the believer, or that a true believer cannot backslide, but rather that the Lordship commitment happens with justification, not afterward in a second stage. Like the Puritans, MacArthur believes that assurance of salvation can be gleaned from careful self-examination. If no evidence of regeneration is present in the life of a believer (ie. No changed affections, no love for the brethren, no good works, etc.), there are no grounds for assurance whether or not that person prayed to receive Christ. Assurance is the result of perseverance, and the evidences of grace which the Holy Spirit produces.

Free Grace advocates frequently accuse Lordship Theologians of teaching a form of legalistic works- righteousness that compromises the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Lordship advocates frequently accuse Free Grace Theologians of teaching a form of antinomianism which cheapens grace and is leading thousands of “professing Christians” to hell by giving them false assurance of faith.

[1] Ryrie, So Great Salvation

Hodges, Absolutely Free!

[2] MacArthur, Gospel According to Jesus; Gospel According to the Apostles

Aristotle's Physics (Books I-IV)

2012-06-23T00:26:00.004-04:00

What follows is a brief summary of Aristotle's Physics, which I'm writing primarily for the benefit of my own memory and comprehension, but at the same time, I hope that this will be a help to anyone else who is plodding through Greek Philosophy in an attempt to come to a deeper understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of Christian thought. Most of us who have gone through Seminary here in North America have done so without the benefit of a good old fashioned classical education, and as a result, the 'cart' of theology has been put before the 'horse' of philosophy. The deeper I go into Historical Theology in my effort to understand the polemics of the Reformation (in the case of my research, the polemics surrounding the Eucharist), the more convinced I become that we cannot fully understand the Reformers or the theology of the Reformation if we do not take the time to understand their fundamental philosophical presuppositions.   Over the past year I've read most of Plato's major dialogues and bits and pieces of the Neo-Platonists, and now I'm digging deeper into Aristotle and (soon!) Aquinas.

Book I

In Book I of the Physics, Aristotle deals primarily with the elements of a natural body. In dealing first of all, with the age old philosophical problem of "the one and the many," he flatly denies that 'substance' can properly be the predicate of anything else. Various pre-Socratic philosophers who postulated that all things can be reduced to one single 'substance' have thereby missed the mark (ie. Thales -->all is water). Instead, Aristotle argues that there must be at least two primary elements or first principles, since everything in nature that comes to be by a natural process either derives from, or tends toward, its contrary (ie. hot <---> cold). These two contrary principles, however, do not constitute the substance of anything, and so Aristotle adds a third element which is the substratum upon which the contraries operate. We are left therefore with three primary elements, or first principles, in nature: 1) form; 2) privation of form; 3) matter

Book II

The study of physics or 'nature' must deal with both form and matter according to Aristotle and not merely with matter.   A physicist who neglects form in his study of nature is not unlike a doctor who has a knowledge of "bile and phlegm"but is totally unconcerned with what actually constitutes health and sickness. The physicist is therefore obligated to deal with all three primary elements of nature.

What follows in this book is one of Aristotle's most important contributions to later scholastic theology, namely his famous four-fold causality. A discussion on causality is included here, because "we cannot know anything about nature until we grasp the 'why' of it." Here are the four causes as outlined by Aristotle: 1) Material Cause: "that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists"; 2) Formal Cause: "the form or the archetype"; 3) Efficient Cause: "the primary source of the change or coming to rest"; 4) Final cause: "that for the sake of which a thing is done."   Having outlined these four causes, he entertains the possibility of "chance" being a fifth cause. His conclusion on this point is that spontaneity (that which pertains to inanimate objects) and chance (that which pertains to moral creatures) are posterior to both intelligence and nature, meaning that "however true it may be that the heavens are due to spontaneity, it will still be true that intelligence and nature will be prior causes off this all and of many things in it besides."

Implicit in Aristotle's conception of causality (specifically his 'final' cause) is the idea of teleology so despised today by radical Darwinian naturalists. For Aristotle, nature has a purpose or telos, and everything that we find in nature tends toward its ultimate goal which is the full realization or actualization of its form. Another way to put it is that there is a movement in nature from potentiality to actuality.

Book III

This book begins with a discussion of motion, which Aristotle defines as "the fulfillment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially." He lays the foundation here for later generations of Christian Theists by postulating the possibility of something which can initiate movement which is itself unmoved - the so-called 'Unmoved Mover' which is arguably Aristotle's god... (or God??)

Since physics deals with spatial magnitudes and motion and time, each of which must be either finite or infinite, Aristotle includes here a lengthy discussion about "infinity". He points out the difficulty of grappling with the infinite: If we suppose that it exists we are led into many absurdities and contradictions (as we all learned in high school math!). On the other hand, if we deny its existence we are forced to deal with a different set of difficulties and absurdities. Aristotle's solution is that infinity exists potentially, but not actually.

Book IV

Book IV begins with a discussion on 'Place' since we "all suppose that things which exist are somewhere". This discussion, although somewhat tedious on the surface, has direct relevance to my MA thesis. During the sixteenth century, Reformers engaged in an incredibly heated argument about the location of Christ's glorified and ascended body. Was it in heaven as Zwingli, Vermigli and Calvin contended or was it omnipresent "in, with and under" the sacramental elements as Luther and his disciples argued through their doctrine of Ubiquity and 'consubstantiation'?? The Eucharistic debates of the 16th century between Reformed Protestants and Lutherans are really debates about Christology - but taken one step further, they are most fundamentally debates about the place of Christ's risen and ascended body.

According to Aristotle, "place is something distinct from bodies, and every sensible body is in place." A philosophical problem immediately arises, however: "if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum" - and therefore we find ourselves stuck in an infinite regress!   Aristotle's conclusion in this discussion is that "the innermost motionless boundary of what contains is place." He goes on in the course of the argument to deny the existence of a 'void' - defined as that a 'place' that exists separate from a body."

Book IV ends with an interesting discussion on Time. According to Aristotle, there is an intimate relationship between time and movement, such that "time is neither movement nor independent of movement." The relationship between time and motion has to do with 'succession', since both time and motion can be understood as examples of perpetual succession. Not only do we measure movement by time, but we measure time by movement because they are mutually defining.

Why You Should Read the Puritans!

2012-01-30T21:20:00.001-05:00

I came across this excellent preface in a book I am reading for my MA thesis that captures the main reasons why I invest so much of my free time in studying the history and theology of the English Puritans. As an Evangelical Baptist in the Reformed tradition, reading Puritan theology is a bit like having a chat with my grandfather or learning from the wisdom of one of the older members of my congregation. Generally speaking, my studies in Church History over the past ten years or so since I first began to read biographies of my heroes of faith, have helped me to grow in my walk with the Lord and understanding of the Christian faith in ways that I find difficult to express - so I'll let Ligon Duncan help me out and hope that you catch the bug too!:

"Perhaps never before as much as now, the evangelical church needs to learn from the Puritans. We live in a time of tremendous change and upheaval in Christendom. Things once taken for granted as true and right and good, are being questioned - in both theory and practice - and there are disturbing signs that the spiritual health of the Western church is in a serious state. In such a time as this we need 'light from old times' to guide us into the future. The Puritans offer us that kind of light and we have, apparently, forgotten their wisdom. What are some of the practical benefits of studying the Puritans?

First, the Puritan movement bequeathed to us a tradition of pastoral theology unsurpassed in the history of Christianity in the English-speaking world. We need to hear them because a significant proportion of the church of our day has decided that its ministry should be carried out pragmatically rather than theologically. 'What works' is more important to some today than 'What is Biblical'. The Puritans were not tempted by such modern folly and in their history, lives and writings they offer to us a pattern of minsitry that was both theologically informed and pastorally effective. If we truly want to minister Biblically and effectively in the twenty-first century, then was are wise to sit at the feet of the Puritans.

Second, Puritan theology (simply defined as Biblical, evangelical, and Reformed theology) has served for more than three centuries as the basic doctrinal framework for evangelicalism. It has been influential throughout the Protestant world in the English speaking churches and especially in the Baptist, Congregational, Independent, Anglican and Presbyterian traditions. However, in the turmoil of post-modernity, the old doctrinal distinctives of evangelicalism are breaking down. We hear of Protestants returning to Rome or converting to Eastern Orthodoxy. We shudder when acclaimed evangelical scholars suggest that we need to rethink and redefine the doctrine of 'justification by faith alone'. We are numbered by the widespread lack of knowledge of Protestant first principles in the various evangelical churches. In this light, knowledge and appreciation of the times and teachings of the Puritans can serve to inoculate us against the false teachings and faddish Christianity of our own age. And perhaps the glory and biblical fidelity of their teaching can reclaim a hold on our hearts, saving us from slavery to the spirit of the times or from an irrational reactionary search for spirituality in mysticism or ritualism.

Third, the modern church seems allergic to theology and doctrine. And yet truth is essential for healthy Christian experience and service. The Apostle Paul himself argued throughout his letters that the saving knowledge of God is essential to Christian living. This entails knowing God personally and learning about Him through His word. Because of this, all Christians are called to be theologians - the question is whether we are going to be good ones or bad ones! - and that is where the study of the Puritans comes in. The mastering of the theology of the Puritans will provide the Christian with a wholesome and comprehensive grasp of biblical truth. That truth, in turn, is crucial for Christian living becasue what we believe affects how we live. Bad theology leads to bad practice. As Stephen Charnock said so long ago: 'It is impossible to honour God as we ought, unless we know His as He is.' The study of the Puritan's work will give us a surer knowledge of God as He has revealed Himself in the Scripture. For these reasons, and more, we need to become reacquainted with the lives and times and teachings of the Puritans."

To this, all I can add is a hearty 'Amen'! If you'd like to join me in rediscovering our heritage as Evangelicals through our Puritan grandparents here is a good place to start:

1) Joel Beeke, Meet the Puritans: Click Here

2) John Brown, The English Puritans: Click Here

3) Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints: Click Here

3) Banner of Truth Reprints/ Abridgments - go to http://www.amazon.ca/ and type in 'Puritan Paperbacks'

Karl Barth on the Miracle and Mystery of Christmas

2011-12-16T09:25:00.001-05:00

Here's an excellent short essay by Karl Barth on the significance of the incarnation of our Lord which we celebrate at Christmas. This article is part of a longer book called Dogmatics in Outline which is a brief exposition of the Apostle's Creed. If you've never read Barth before, this is a great introduction since this essay is less than 10 pages long and captures his high Christology and tremendous capability as a theologian and historian. Love him or hate him - I will always have a soft spot for Barth!

Click Here: The Miracle and Mystery of Christmas

St. Augustine's Confessions - Mystical Vision at Ostia (Book IX)

2011-12-05T00:37:00.001-05:00

Book IX of the Confessions reveals a side of Augustine that makes many Reformed Protestants like myself feel somewhat uncomfortable. If anything, this book will help correct any misconceptions that we might have that Augustine is simply a carbon copy of John Calvin living at the turn of the fifth-century. We must not forget that Augustine was a Roman Catholic Bishop and theologian, and in many ways both Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are indebted to St. Augustine's theological legacy in different ways. Protestants tend to gravitate toward his soteriology which emphasized human depravity and our desperate need for divine grace. Roman Catholics, by contrast tend to gravitate toward Augustine's ecclesiology and piety. There are three aspects to this particular chapter that will raise some Protestant eyebrows (although certain brands of Charismatics might be pleasantly surprised). First, Augustine reveals his very definite impulse toward monasticism (he was in fact the founder of a monastic order). Second, he reveals his Neo-Platonic mysticism which remained an integral part of his experience as a Christian. Third, Augustine reveals his approval of the cult of the martyrs (veneration of relics) which became a major aspect of medieval Roman Catholic piety.

Following his conversion in Milan narrated in Book VIII, Augustine quit his job as a professor of Rhetoric and retired with a group of friends to a country estate in Cassiciacum, where they remained from July 386 AD to his baptism the following Easter. During this time, Augustine wrote a number of philosophical works which were based on dialogues he had with his friends. Here we see the beginning of Augustine's attraction to the monastic life which was only interrupted by his call to become a Presbyter (much to his own dismay!)

We glean some additional insight in this chapter into Augustine's personal life as he shares about Adeodatus, "my natural son begotten in sin." (IX.vi) Adeodatus, who was born to Augustine out of wedlock by his concubine of fifteen years, was apparently an extremely intelligent boy: "He was about fifteen years old, and his intelligence surpassed that of many serious and well-educated men...His intelligence left me awestruck." (IX.vi) The apple didn't fall far from the tree! Unfortunately Adeodatus did not survive adolescence, but died as a baptized believer. The narration about Adeodatus here is very interesting - Augustine speaks of him almost as though he were a peer rather than his son. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they were baptized together by Bishop Ambrose in Milan.

Shortly after his baptism, Augustine recounts a story in which Ambrose receives a divine vision telling him where two martyrs were buried. The bodies were located, and transported to Ambrose's basillica where a number of miracles occurred when people came in contact with the bier in which the bones were being stored. According to Augustine's testimony, a blind man was healed and several demon possesed people were exorcised. Augustine's strong belief in the power of relics becomes even more apparent in the last book of the City of God, where he tells a number of miracles which supposedly occurred in Hippo at the shrine of St. Stephen.

Much of the rest of this Book is taken up with events leading up to the death of Augustine's mother Monica which includes a powerful tribute in which Augustine praises his mother's virtue as the Christian wife of a non-believer who won both her pagan husband and her wayward son to Christ through persistent prayer and witness. Shortly before her death, Augustine and Monica shared a mystical experience at Ostia which is recounted in detail in this book using language that is distictly influenced by the Enneads of Plotinus: "Our minds were lifted up by an ardent affection towards eternal being itself. Step by step we climbed beyond all corporeal objects and the heaven itself, where sun, moon, and stars shed light on the earth. We ascended even further by internal reflection and dialogue and wonder at your works, and we entered into our own minds. We moved up beyond them so as to attain to the region of inexhaustible abundance where you feed Israel eternally with truth for food." (IX.x) What Augustine is describing here is direct, unmediated communication with God. Neo-Platonists held that such extatic union with ultimate Being could be attained by certain enlightened philosophers who were able to transcend the physical bodies and the constraints of the material world which was held to be evil. Augustine himself claimed to have had one such experience as a Neo-Platonist prior to his conversion to Chrsitianity, which he describes in Book VII. Prior to his conversion, Augustine held that his mystical experience with absolute Being left him morally unchanged in spite of its power. He compared this earlier mystical experience to Moses looking to the promised land from a distance without actually getting to enter in: "It is one thing from a wooded summit to catch a glimpse of the homeland of peace and not to find the way to it, but vainly to attempt the journey along an impracticable route surrounded by the ambushes and assaults of fugitive deserters with their chief." (VII.xxi) By contrast, the mystical experience he shared with his mother at Ostia was powerful enough to free Monica from the remaining constraints she had to the corporeal world. No longer was she concerned about where she would be buried or with whom. Soon after this experience, Monica died and Augustine mourned her death.

Puritan Pastoral Theology 101 (Part 2)

2011-12-03T01:09:00.000-05:00

Perhaps little has done more to hinder the credibility of Christianity in the West over the past few decades than the scandalous behavior of church leaders, pastors and priests who have betrayed the public trust and brought shame upon the Lord Jesus Christ. Although the massive Roman Catholic sex scandal and subsequent cover-up by church officials has captured most of the media attention in recent years, many examples of sexual sin and financial indescretion have come to light in Evangelical circles to our own shame. Public scandal and media attention, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. I remember reading an article in Leadership Journal several years ago that gave truly shocking statistics on how many active pastors are addicted to pornography or have crossed a sexual or emotional boundary of some kind in their ministry with one of their parishoners. Pastors are clearly not exempt from sexual sin and financial scandal, but the consequences of sin in the life of the pastor can be absolutely devestating on a number of levels.

It is to this very important subject, that Richard Baxter devotes his attention in the next section of the Reformed Pastor: "Take heed to yourselves, for you have a depraved nature, and sinful inclinations, as well as others. If innocent Adam had need of heed, and lost himself and us for want of it, how much more need have such as we! Sin dwelleth in us, when we have preached ever so much against it; and one degree prepareth the heart for another, and one sin inclineth the mind to more." (73) Baxter warns us that Satan takes particular pleasure in attacking the officers in God's army so that he might scatter the entire battalion: "Take heed to yourselves, because the tempter will more ply you with his temptations than other men...He beareth the greatest malice to those that are engaged to do him the greatest mischief. As he hateth Christ more than any of us, because he is the General of the field, teh Captain of our salvation, and doth more than all the world besides against his kingdom; so doth he hate the leaders that are under him, more than the common soldiers: he knows what a rout he may make among them, if the leaders fall before their eyes...Take heed, therefore, brethren, for the enemy hath a special eye upon you." (74)

Sin that causes leaders to fall into disgraceful scandals is particuarly dangerous for pastors for a number of reasons which Baxter highlights. First, the pastor is a role model for the flock and is under close observation for better or for worse: "The eclipses of the sun by day are seldom without witnesses. As you take yourselves for the lights of the churches, you may expect that men's eyes will be upon you. If other men may sin without observation, so cannot you. And you should thankfully consider how great a mercy this is, that you have so many eyes to watch over you, and so many ready to tell you of your faults; and thus have greater helps than others, at least for restraining you from sin." (75-76)

Second, a pastor who knows God's Word does not sin in ignorance and thus heaps judgment upon his own head: "You are more likely than others to sin against knowledge becasue you have more than they; at least you sin against more light light, or means of knowledge." (76)

Third, hypocrisy in a pastor brings public disgrace on Christ in a greater measure than sin among the laity: "O what a heinous thing is it in us, to study how to disgrace sin to the utmost, and make it as odious in the eyes of our people as we can, and when we have done, to live in it, and secretly cherish that which we publically disgrace! What vile hypocrisy is it to make it our daily work to cry it down, and yet to keep to it; to call it publically all naught, and privately to make it our bed-fellow and companion; to bind heavy burdens on others and not to touch them ourselves with a finger!" (76-77)

Fourth, public disgrace among Christian pastors brings disgrace on all Christians generally and attacks the credibility of the Church's witness for Christ in the world: "Would it not wound you to the heart to hear the name and truth of God reproached for your sakes; to see men point to you, and say, 'There goes a covetous priest, a secret tippler, a scandalous man; these are they that preach for strictness, while they themselves can live as loose as others; they condemn us by their sermons, and condemn themselves by their lives; nothwithstanding all their talk, they are as bad as we.' O brethren, could your hearts endure to hear men cast the dung of your iniquities in the face of the holy God, and in the face of the gospel, and of all that desire to fear the Lord? Would it not bread your hearts to think tthat all the godly Christians about you should suffer reproach for your misdoings?" (79)

Baxter points out the wickedness and deception that lurks within the human heart - even in the heart of many pastors who preach every sunday but are not truly born again by the Spirit of God: "I know indeed, that a wicked man may be more willing of the reformation of others than of his own, and hence may show a kind of earnestness in dissuading them from their evil ways; becasue he can preach against sin at an easier rate than he can forsake it, and another man's reformation may consist with his own enjoyment of his lusts." (83)

These are very heavy words to read, but words that all of us in public, gospel ministry must take very seriously. To whom much is given much will be required!

Will There Be Free Will in Heaven??

2011-11-30T19:17:00.002-05:00

I just finished the last five pages of the City of God (Hurray!!!) and came across Augustine's answer to a philosophical question that has always puzzled and intrigued me. If there will be no sin in heaven, and no possibility of sinning and rebelling against God as Lucifer and the demons did, and as the first humans did in Eden, how could there possibly be free will in the New Jerusalem? Here's how Augustine navigates this issue:

"Also [in the City of God] they will then no longer be able to take delight in sin. This does not mean, however, that they will have no free will. On the contrary, it will be all the more free, because set free from delight in sinning to take a constant delight in not sinning. For when man was created righteous, the first freedom of will that he was given consisted in an ability not to sin [posse non peccare] but also in an ability to sin [posse peccare]. But this last freedom of will will be greater, in that it will consist in not being able to sin [non posse peccare]. This, however, will not be a natural possibility, but a gift from God. For it is one thing to be God, and another to be a partaker of God: God is by nature unable too sin; but he who partakes of God's nature receives the impossibility of sinning only as a gift from God. Moreover, in the divine gift of free will there was to be observed a gradation such that man should first receive a free will by which he was able not to sin, and finally a free will by which he was not able to sin: the former being given to man in a state of probation, and the latter to him in a state of reward. But because human nature sinned when it had the power to sin, it is redeemed by a more abundant gift of grace so that it may be led to that state of freedom in which it cannot sin." (XXII. 30)

Augustine's answer here about human freedom in the Eschaton solves another tricky issue related to Adam's Fall in the Garden. If God has foreordained the future such that Adam's decent into sin is an integral part of His eternal decree, how is God not the author of sin?? In a real sense this is the big, uncomfortable question that makes most Calvinists squirm when pressed to give an answer. Augustine's answer here is that Adam in the Garden had the ability not to sin [posse non peccare] which entails full freedom of the will, but for some reason unknown to us, God in his sovereignty chose to withhold his grace from Adam. (a passive, rather than an active response on God's part) According to Augustine's logic, the restored order in the Eschaton will be even better than the Garden of Eden, because at that time God will extend grace to all of the elect so that they will not be able to sin [non posse peccare]. Augustine therefore shifts the issue from any blasphemous notion we may have of a defect in the human will placed there by God, to the giving/ withholding of a divine "gift" of grace which guarantees that the will chooses what is Good. Since God is under no obligation to give grace to even a single person (grace by definition is 'unmerited favour'), withholding this gift from Adam even prior to the first sin does not implicate God in that first terrible act of rebellion. Adam used his own free will to rebel against God, and God, acting in accordance with His eternal decree, did not prevent Adam from sinning even though He could have done so. Quite an ingenious solution to a very difficult theological problem!

Puritan Pastoral Theology 101 (Part I)

2011-11-29T00:49:00.002-05:00

As I prepare to make a transition this April from Student Ministry in a parachurch setting to Pastoral Ministry in a local church setting, I picked up a copy of Richard Baxter's classic work on Pastoral Theology entitled The Reformed Pastor which I've had good intentions to read since I first got hooked on the English Puritans in Seminary.

Richard Baxter was one of the foremost Puritan pastors of the seventeenth-century who was a friend and associate of Thomas Manton - the subject of my MA research at McGill. Both Manton and Baxter belonged to the non-separatist Presbyterian party within the Church of England and were forcibly ejected from their pastorates as a result of the 1662 Act of Uniformity for their refusal to conform to the Book of Common Prayer shortly after the Stuart monarchy was restored under Charles II. As a pastor, Baxter was second to none and wrote The Reformed Pastor to train and equip young men preparing for the ministry. By 'Reformed', Baxter is not referring to the Calvinistic Doctrines of Grace, but to the need for pastors to be renewed or 'reformed' in their pastoral practice. As I work through this book in the coming weeks, I will share some of Baxter's pastoral wisdom. Citations are from the Banner of Truth paperback edition.

The Pastor's Duty to Oversee His Own Spiritual Health

Before a pastor can properly tend God's flock, he must take care of his own spiritual wellbeing: "We have the same sins to mortify, and the same graces to be quickedned and strengthened, as our people have: we have greater works to do that they have, and greater difficulties to overcome, and therefore we have need to be warned and awakened, if not to be instructed, as well as they." (51)

The first duty of the reformed pastor, therefore, is to "see that the work of saving grace be thoroughly wrought in your own souls." (53) Baxter warns that God does not save clergy because of their vocation or gifts and urges pastors not to be complacent in making their own calling and election sure before they climb into the pulpit to urge others to renounce sin and to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord: "God never saved any man for being a preacher, nor because he was an able preacher; but because he was a justified, sanctified man, and consequently faithful in his Master's work.... It is a fearful thing to be an unsanctified professor, but much more to be an unsanctified preacher. Doth it not make you tremble when you open the Bible, lest you shouls there read the sentence of your own condemnation? When you pen your sermons, little do you think that you are drawing up indictments against your own souls! When you are arguing against sin, that you are aggravating your own! When you proclaim to your hearers the unsearchable riches of Christ and his grace, that you are publishing your own iniquity in rejecting them, and your unhappiness in being destitute of them! What can you do in persuading men to Christ, in drawing them from the world, in urging them to a life of faith and holiness, but conscience, if it were awake, would tell you, that you speak all this to your own confusion? If you speak of hell, you speak of your own inhereitance: if you describe the joys of heaven, you describe your own misery, seeing you have no right to 'the inheritance of the saints in light.' What can you say, for the most part, but that it will be against your own souls? O miserable life! that a man should study and preach against himself, and spend his days in a course of self-condemning! A graceless, inexperienced preacher is one of the most unhappy creatures upon earth: and yet he is ordinarily very insensible of his unhappiness; for he hath so many counters that seem like the gold of saving grace, and so many splendid sotnes that resemble Christian jewels, that he is seldom troubled with the thoughs of his poverty." (54)

Not only must a pastor ensure that a saving work has been wrought in his own heart before proclaiming the gospel to others, he must also make sure that his faith remains fresh and vibrant, and that his heart remains warm with the gospel of grace: "Content not yourselves with being in a state of grace, but be also careful that your graces are kept in vigorous and lively exercise, and that you preach to yourselves teh sermons which you study, before you preach them to others...I confess I must speak it by lamentable experience, that I publishe to my flock the distempers of my own soul. When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused; and so I can oft observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching, they have grown cold too." (61) The only way to keep the fire stoked, says Baxter, is for the pastor to make his prayer life the first priority in his ministry: "Above all, be much in secret prayer and mediation. Thence you must fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifices: remember, you cannot decline and neglect your duty, to your own hurt alone; many will be losers by it as well as you. For your people's sakes, therefore, look to your hearts." (62)

The reformed pastor must always lead the flock by example: "Order your families well, if you would have them do so by theirs. Be not proud and lordly, if you would have them to be lowly. There are no virtues wherein your example will do more, at least to abate men's prejudice, than humility and meekness and self-denial." (65)

The godly pastor must excel in works of charity and benevolence and demonstrate frugality and generosity in the way he lives and stewards his financial resources: "Go to the poor, and see what they want, and show your compassion at once to their soul and body. Buy them a catechism, and other small books that are likely to do them good, and make them promise to read tehm with care and attention. Stretch your purse to teh utmost, and do all the good you can. Think not of being rich; seek not great things for yourselves or your posterity." (66)

Pastors must strive daily to root out or to 'mortify' (a good Puritan word!) sin and avoid ministering in a state of hypocrisy: "If sin be evil, why do you live in it? if it be not, why do you dissuade men from it? If it be dangerous, how dare you venture on it? if it be not, why do you tell men so? If God's threatenings be true, why do you not fear them? if they be false, why do you needlessly trouble men with them, and put them into such frights without a cause?" (68)

Finally, pastors must take steps to prepare themselves with the necessary skills for the work of the ministry which normally includes the pursuit of formal theological education as God provides the time, resources and opportunity. If formal theological education is not a viable option, the pastor should, like Charles Spurgeon, pursue his own course of independent study by immersing himself in theology and the study of the biblical languages. The Puritans placed an extemely high value on the education of their clergy as evidenced by the fact that most of the Ivy League schools in New England were founded by Congregationalist and Presbyterian Puritans for the training of the next generation of ministers (ie. Harvard, Yale, Princeton etc.). This Puritan concern for theological education persists in the Reformed tradition today as all Presbyterian pastors are required to complete an MDiv before they can complete the process of ordination. Here is what Baxter has to say about the importance of education: "O brethren! do you not shrink and tremble under the sense of all this work? Will a common measure of holy skill and ability, of prudence and other qualifications, serve for such such a task as this? I know necessity may cause the Church to tolerate the weak; but woe to us if we tolerate and indulge our own weakness! Do not reason and conscience tell you, that if you dare venture on so high a work as this, you should spare no pains to be qualified for the performance of it? It is not now and then an idle snatch or taste of studies that will serve to make an able and sound divine [puritan word for pastor/theologian] I know that laziness hath learned to allege the vanity of all our studies, and how entirely the Spirit must qualify us for, and assist us in our work; as if God commanded us the use of means, and then warranted us to neglet them...O, therefore, brethren, lose no time! Study, and pray and confer, and practise; for in these four ways your abilities must be increased." (71)

St. Augustine's Confessions - Birthpangs of Conversion (Book VIII)

2011-11-27T09:33:00.001-05:00

Aside from the theft of pears at the beginning of the Confessions, Book VIII is the most familiar to many people because it contains the famous narrative of Augustine's conversion in the Milan Garden. As we have seen, Augustine's spiritual journey is best understood in terms of a number of small conversions which lead up to this chapter which is the climax of the Confessions as a whole. In Book VII, he experienced a dramatic conversion of the mind through the books of the Platonists, and now in Book VIII he experiences a conversion of the heart and will through the epistles of Paul.

Augustine makes it clear throughout this book that his hesitancy to embrace Christ is no longer a problem related to his intellect but to the unregenerate will: "All doubt had been taken from me that there is indestructible substance from which comes all substance. My desire was not to be more certain of you but to be more stable in you." (VIII.i.1) He was in the same condition as the Rich Young Ruler in the gospels, "attracted to the way, the Saviour himself, but still reluctant to go along its narrow paths." (VIII.i.1) Augustine describes his own inner turmoil as his mind fights against his will in terms reminiscent of Paul's struggle between flesh and Spirit in Romans 7: "The new will, which was beginning to be within me a will to serve you freely and to enjoy you, God, the only source of pleasure, was not yet strong enough to conquer my older will which had the strength of old habit. So my two wills, one old, the other new, one carnal, the other spiritual, were in conflict with one another, and their discord robbed my soul of all concentration." (VIII.V.10)

Augustine's intense inner conflict leads him into a philosophical excursus on the nature of the will since he understood the problem of conversion to be first and foremost, a problem of the human will: "The one necessary condition, which meant not only going but at once arriving there, was to have the will to go - provided only that the will was strong and unqualified, not the turning and twisting first this way, then that, of a will half-wounded, struggling with one part rising up and the other part falling down." (VIII.vii.19) It is a "monstrous situation", he contends, that the human will can control the motions of the body, but is unable to command the mind: "What causes this monstrous fact? and why is it so? The mind commands the body and is instantly obeyed. The mind commands itself and meets resistance. The mind commands the hand to move, and it is so easy that one hardly distinguishes the order from its execution. Yet mind is mind, and hand is body. The mind orders he mind to will. The recipient of the order is itself, yet it does not perform it." (VII.ix.21) Augustine concludes that his own will was divided into two: "In my own case,, as I deliberated about serving my Lord God which I had long been disposed to do, the self which willed to serve was identical with the self which was unwilling. It was I. I was neither wholly willing nor wholly unwilling. So I was in conflict with myself and was dissociated from myself." (VIII.x.22)

The internal division of mind and will that Augustine had been experiencing since Platonist philosophers had enabled him to conceive of God in terms of spiritual substance, rather than as physical matter diffused throughout the universe came to a climax in a Garden in Milan with his friend Alypius by his side: "This debate in my heart was a struggle of myself against myself. Alypius stood quest still at my side, and waited in silence for the outcome of my unprecedented state of agitation." (VIII.xi.27) In a garden scene highly reminiscent of the Garden of Eden (probably intentionally so), Augustine threw himself down under a "certain figtree" and wept uncontrollably. In this intense state of emotion the final and climactic conversion occurred: "As I was saying this and weeping in the bitter agony of my heart, suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house changing as if it might be a boy or a girl (i do not know which), saying and repeating over and over again 'Pick up and read, pick up and read.'...I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find...So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting. There I had put down the book of the apostle [Paul] when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eyes lit: 'Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts' (Rom 13:13-14). I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled." (VIII.xi.29)

There are several significant theological points that could be made from this book and probably shaped the way that Augustine chose to tell his conversion narrative:

1) Original sin has corrupted the human will and rendered it completely unable to choose Christ apart from God's grace. Before God extends His grace to the lost sinner, he is like a corpse - completely unable to do anything about his lost situation (cf. Eph 2:1-10). Conversion is a miracle of resurrection no less than the resurrection of Christ.

2) Intellectual arguments and proofs cannot save you. Conversion is much more than simply becoming convinced of certain facts or truths concerning the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Faith has an intellectual component, but a purely intellectual faith is not the kind of faith that saves. Faith involves the heart, mind and the will - it is not purely intellectual, nor is it purely experiential.

3) Faith is a gift of God's grace that must be received. Although we often like to think of faith as a human capacity and a mere function of the will, the situation is more complex than that. In our fallen condition, we cannnot simply choose to follow Christ until we are made regenerate by the Holy Spirit. Regeneration always precedes faith although the two are intimately connected. To place faith before regeneration, is to commit the error of Pelagius (one of Augustine's primary theological opponents in his latter years) and to deny the devastating consequences of original sin on the human will.

4) "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." (Rom 10:17) It is interesting how Augustine brings this truth to the forefront in his own conversion narrative. God often chooses to grant the gift of faith through careful meditation on His Word. In His sovereign plan He ordains both the ends and the means through which those ends are accomplished. Scripture and the preaching of the Word are the means which God has ordained to bring His elect to repentance and faith.

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Saved by Faith but Judged According to Works??? (Matt 25:31-46)

2011-11-25T08:49:00.000-05:00

Matthew 25:31-46 provides us with a vivid description of the final judgment and can be a perplexing passage for many of us who hold strongly to sola fide since it seems to imply (in contrast with Paul) that salvation is ultimately by works rather than by faith alone in Christ:

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (vv. 41-46)

Is there a contradiction in the Bible here? Does Paul teach sola gratia, while Jesus teaches works-righteousness? A number of solutions have been offered:

Solution 1: All Good People go to Heaven

This is the Liberal Protestant answer to this question which really isn't much of a solution at all. Those who deny the authority of God's Word, have no difficulty accepting that it contains irreconcilable contradictions because they do not believe that Scripture is Verbally Inspired (cf. 2 Tim 3:16). For many Liberals, the essence of Christianity can be boiled down to being a nice person, following the golden rule and trying to improve society through social reform - in a nutshell it is humanism dressed up in a clerical collar. If they retain a theology of eternal punishment then the criteria for judgment becomes how closely you followed the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount. If they don't retain a theology of eternal punishment, it doesn't really matter in the end since hell is an invention of the early church that has been placed in the mouth of Jesus and therefore doesn't really exist.

The Liberal Protestant view interprets "the least of these brothers of mine" (v. 40) as a reference to all people generally.

Solution 2: There Are Multiple Eschatological Judgments

This solution is offered by Dispensationalists who claim that there is not one final judgment, but three. Matthew 25:31-46, they argue, is a judgment for the nations to determine which ones will enter into the thousand year Millennial Kingdom. This appears to solve the problem nicely, since Matthew 25 applies to believers living in another dispensation and does not apply to believers today who are saved by faith alone - (sigh of relief!) According to this view, "the least of these brothers of mine" is a reference to Jewish believers living during the time of the Great Tribulation. The criteria for entering the Millennium in this view, is how the Gentile nations treated the Jewish people during the Tribulation.

Dispensationalists hold that a second eschatological judgment is described in 2 Corinthians 5:10 and is a judgment for reward for Christians. This "Bema Seat Judgment", they say will occur in heaven during the Great Tribulation after the church has been raptured and before the final appearing of Christ (parousia) at the end of the Tribulation.

The third and final judgment is described in Rev 20:11-15 when non-believers will be resurrected and judged and the sheep (God's elect) will be separated from the goats (those who rejected Christ).

Although the Dispensational view seems to offer a plausible explanation to this passage which guards sola fide, it requires that you first accept the presuppositions of the theological system, which in my own view cannot be easily substantiated from Scripture itself. (A subject for another day)

Solution 3: One Final Judgment- Justified by Faith and Judged according to the Evidence

A third view, which I personally think is the best one makes matters very simple when it comes to eschatology. All passages in the New Testament and in the Old Testament prophetic books that refer to judgment are speaking of the same event, which is called the "Great White Throne Judgment" in Rev 20. There will be one eschatological judgment at the end of the age, at which time believers and non-believers will stand before Christ to give an account of their lives. This judgment will consist of an evaluation of both the object of one's faith (whether it was Jesus Christ alone or something else), and the righteous works that have been done during our pilgrimage on earth. The works performed by God's elect will, at this time, be graciously rewarded by the Lord as Paul teaches us in 1 Cor 5.

The answer to the dilemma concerning faith and works as they relate to the final judgment is resolved if one interprets these judgment passages in the light of the entirety of Scripture. The NT teaches two very important truths related to this issue which must both be equally affirmed. Emphasizing Proposition 1 to the exclusion of Proposition 2 leads to the heresy of Antinomianism. Emphasizing Proposition 2 to the exclusion of Proposition 1 leads to the opposite heresy of Legalism:

1) Salvation is a gift of God that cannot be earned. (Eph 2:8-9) We are justified by faith alone in Christ. (Rom 5:1).
2) True and saving faith perseveres to the end. (1 John 2:19) Genuine faith is always accompanied by good works, just as a good tree produces good fruit. (Eph 2:10, James 2:24; Matt 7:17-20) In other words, good works are an indispensible part of the Christian life.

So .... will we be judged on the basis of faith or of works?? The answer to this question is that the good works that the Spirit produces in our lives as believers is the ultimate evidence of saving faith. Works are not the ground of our salvation, but they are the evidence by which we can know whether or not we are truly saved. To put it another way - we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, but we will be judged on the basis of works which validate the genuineness of our faith in Christ. With this in mind, passages like Matthew 25 which stress the importance of good works should not distress us or cause us to drive a wedge between Jesus and Paul - they should cause us to examine ourselves to see whether we are truly in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). They should cause us to strive to make our calling and election sure. (2 Peter 1:10). They should serve as warnings that cause us to be ready for the return of our Lord and so that we will not be among the crowd of false professors on that final day (Matt 7:21-23), or that we would be ashamed at His appearing (1 John 2:28).

The Olivet Discourse (Matt 24) - Futurism and Preterism

2011-11-23T08:30:00.002-05:00

My journey through Matthew has brought me today to the Olivet Discourse, one of the primary eschatological passages in the New Testament that has been the subject of intense intra-mural debate among Christians. I am going to briefly sketch three different categories of interpretation:

Extreme Futurism:

The first theological system that I learned growing up in the fundamentalist movement was the Classical Dispensationalism of C.I. Schofield (rooted in the 19th century theology of the Plymouth Brethren leader J.N. Darby) which differentiates Matthew 24 from its synoptic parallel in Luke, viewing the former as the fulfillment of Daniel's seventieth week (cf. Daniel 9:24-27) and the latter as a reference to the historic destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D. This 'seventieth week' which will be seven years long is often called the 'Great Tribulation' which will follow a 'secret rapture' of the predominately Gentile Church. Dispensationalists differ on the exact timing of this rapture - some beliving that it will occur at the beginning of the tribulation period, and others holding that it will occur at the half-way mark. They effectively split the return of Christ into two phases: Christ's return for the Church which is imminent (understood as 'any moment') and will not be preceded by any signs, and the second coming of Jesus (parousia) which will occur at the end of the Great Tribulation when he will return to earth to reign in a literally reconstructed temple in Jerusalem. Because Matthew 24 is full of signs that point to the Lord's second coming, Dispensationalists reason according to their theological system, that it cannot possibly be a text about the rapture of the Church. All eschatological texts in the NT are divided into 'rapture texts' and 'parousia texts' depending on whether or not there are signs which precede the event. For Classical Dispensationalists, Matt 24 is strictly a 'parousia' text (including vv.36-44 which is sometimes understood (wrongly they say) as a reference to the 'secret rapture' of the Church.
The Classical Dispensationalist interpretation of Matt 24 is that the Olivet Discourse pertains exclusively to the final generation of Jewish believers who are alive during the Great Tribulation. It may be an interesting passage for Christians to read, but it is not really that important for the current dispensation. It is a view that sees no historic fulfillment in Matthew 24 in spite of the fact that the entire discourse was occasioned by the disciples question regarding the destructon of the temple (v.2). According to Dispensationalists, Jesus simply ignores this first question posed by the disciples and focuses exclusively on their second question about the close of the age and events of the future (v.3).

Preterism:

Preterism is the view that Revelation and Matthew must be understood in light of the historic events of A.D. 70 when the temple was destroyed by the Roman general Titus. Preterism is broken into two views, viz. Full Preterism which views Matthew 24 and Revelation as being completely fulfilled in the first century, and Partial Preterism which views much of Matthew 24 and Revelation as already fulfilled, and some which is yet to be fulfilled in the Eschaton. The distinction between Full and Partial Preterism is a very important one. Full Preterism is not an orthodox position because it denies the future, bodily return of the Lord Jesus. Partial Preterism, on the other hand is a very live option for Evangelicals and has been promoted by R.C. Sproul, R.V.G. Tasker and others.
Partial Preterists break Matthew 24 into two sections. Verses 1-28 deal exclusively with the historical destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The mysterious 'Abomination of Desolation' (v. 15) is a reference to the desecration of the Temple by Titus (who actually offered a pagan sacrifice in the temple court), and not a reference to the eschatological Antichrist of the Great Tribulation. Partial Preterists interpret vv. 29-44 as the future bodily return of Christ at the end of the age, while Full Preterists erroneously contend that these verses were fulfilled historically in the first century.

I came across a passage in the City of God recently that seems to indicate that St. Augustine can also be categorized as a Partial Preterist: "I pass over many other passages which seem to refer to the last judgment but which, on more careful condideration, are found to be ambiguous, or to refer more pertinently to something else. They may refer, for example, to the 'coming' of the Saviour which is going on throughout this present age in His Church: that is, in His members. In this sense, He comes part by part and little by little, since the whole Church is His body. Again the reference may be to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. For when Christ speaks of that destruction He often does so as if He were speakign of the end of the world and of the last and great day of judment." (XX.5)

Moderate Futurism:

While I see the Partial Preterist position as a possibility and a better option that the Dispensationalist view, I do not think it is the best way to understand Matthew 24. In my own understanding, Matthew 24 refers to two different events in one single prophecy, and must be interpreted as a prophecy having multiple layers of fulfillment that are not easy to separate in a simplistic way. We ought to interpret Matthew 24 just as we interpret Old Testament prophecy - there are usually multiple levels of fulfillment, both historical and eschatological.
There is little doubt in my mind that Jesus is talking in Matthew 24 about events that were fulfilled in A.D. 70 and also that the language is heightened in such a way that he is also describing events that will happen just prior to his return (which I understand to be a single event that will occur at the end of the Tribulation). The Abomination of Desolation mentioned by Daniel in the OT and used again here by our Lord, is an event that has numerous historical fulfillments. It was fulfilled in the Maccabean period when Antiochus Ephiphanes sacrificed a pig in the temple (surely the backdrop of Jesus words). It was fulfilled again in A.D. 70 when Titus offered sacrifice in the temple courts. It will be fulfilled again in the future by the Antichrist - although not in a literal temple since the Church itself is the temple of God! Although we do not understand what exactly will happen, Jesus indicates in a parenthetical statement in v. 15 that Christians alive during that future time of firey persecution and martyrdom will understand what this passage means when the event actually occurs.

Missionaries of Hell - Matt 23:15

2011-11-22T09:25:00.003-05:00

In my Scripture reading this morning I came across an interesting passage that doesn't usually figure largely into our theology of missions: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves." (Matt 23:15)

These are extremely strong words from the Lord about "missions" that demonstrate that not all missionary activity is pleasing to Him. In fact, in the preceding verse, Jesus accuses these same missionaries of "shut[ing] the kingdom of heaven in people's faces"!!

What kind of missionary activity is Jesus describing here?? Here are a few reflections:

1) Missionaries who preach works righteousness. The Pharisees were proclaiming a false message of works- righteousness that misunderstood the role of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants in God's redemptive plan. Like many religious people today, the Pharisees wrongly believed that people are made right with God by obeying laws and traditions, rather than by faith alone in Israel's Messiah! Paul clearly tells us that the role of the law is to convict of sin, not to demonstrate our own righteousness: "Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin." (Rom 3:19-20) Any presentation of the gospel that makes salvation depend on obedience to laws or traditions is missionary activity that God rejects as damnable.

2) Missionaries who herald a heretical/ false gospel. There are no shortage of false teachers today who have an intense missionary zeal that is combined with a lethal dose of heresy. Jesus warns us about these missionaries of hell: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves." (Matt 7:15) The apostle Paul warns us about those who herald a false gospel in the strongest possible language which he repeats twice for emphasis: "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be anathama" (Gal 1:9).

3) Missionaries who promote themselves or their organization rather than Christ. One very subtle, but lethal temptation for many missionaries (Evangelicals included) is to use the gospel as an instrument of self-promotion and power politics rather than as a spiritual weapon that we use to demolish the strongholds that keep people enslaved to sin and false religious systems. The ultimate aim of the gospel is the glory of God and the promotion of Christ crucified and resurrected, not the promotion of a person or an organization: "For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake." (2 Cor 4:5) Mission endeavors that are motivated by pride and self-promotion are offensive to God as are missionaries who feel the need to 'compete' with other denominations or organizations that are also centred on the gospel once for all delivered to the saints.

4) Missionaries who use pragmatic gimmicks that cheapen the gospel. This is another very serious danger for Christians (often well meaning) who promote the gospel as though it were some kind of cheap trinket on a late night infomercial instead of the "power of God for salvation for all who believe". There are many false 'gospels' today being promoted in this cast: The gospel of self-esteem, the prosperity gospel, the gospel that is so fixated on meeting 'felt needs' that it fails to deal adequately with the root issue of sin and our need for redemption. If we feel that the gospel is a commodity that needs to be marketed, propped up and supplimented with gimmicks in order to reach a new postmodern generation, we must take Paul's words to heart: "But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's Word." (2 Cor 4:2) "We are not like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ." (2 Cor 2:17) Creativity and innovation are good and are to be commended generally speaking, but let us never forget that the power of the gospel does not depend on our elaborate strategies and methods, but in the Spirit of God alone, who is able to regenerate the sinner and to "deliver us from the dominion of darkness and transfer us to the kingdom of His beloved Son." (Col 1:13)

Infant Salvation, Original Sin and the Age of Accountability

2011-11-19T22:29:00.001-05:00

One particularly difficult theological issue that I have wrestled with on and off for several years is the question of what happens to infants and young children who die without making a personal profession of faith in Christ. As I was reading through Book XXI of Augustine's City of God last night, I was forced to think about this issue once again. Growing up, my parents always reassured me that there was an "age of accountability" before which God would never hold a child responsible for sin. For many years I simply took this view for granted and propped it up with a few scant proof texts from the Old Testament (most notably 2 Sam 12:13-23). In recent years, I've come to question this position for a number of important theological reasons which I will outline briefly:

Theological Concerns about Infant Salvation:

First, I've become convinced that the so-called "age of accountability" finds little more Scriptural grounding than the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. It simply cannot be firmly substantiated from Scripture itself however well intentioned it might be from a pastoral point of view. With emotionally sensitive issues like the passing away of a child, the temptation is very strong for us to construct speculative, and perhaps even unbiblical doctrines in order to give a certain measure of pastoral comfort to grieving parents.

Second, the doctrine of infant salvation as commonly formulated by Evangelicals appears to me to be a form of 'inclusivism' which holds that salvation is possible apart from faith. In answering the infamous question about what happens to the unevangelized pagan, the majority of conservative Evangelicals deny that God will save him apart from faith in Christ. Those of us who accept this view (called 'exclusivism') believe that Natural Revelation is enough to condemn and to take away excuse, but not enough to save (cf. Rom 1). A minority of Evangelicals hold a form of soft 'inclusivism' that says that God in His mercy will save people in this situation apart from personal faith in Christ.

To hold that hundreds of thousands of people who have never been evangelized will go to hell, while teaching that all infants go to heaven seems to somewhat inconsistent as I've reflected on it. This double standard was driven home to me several years ago at McGill when a student from China asked me in the cafeteria how I could possibly believe that all of his relatives were in hell when they had never even heard the name of Jesus before. Shortly after this incident, another international student, whose mother had committed suicide before hearing the gospel asked me the same very difficult question. It is often easy for us to speak theoretically about who is or is not in hell, until we are confronted with a real pastoral situation where we are expected to give real answers to very personal and emotionally loaded questions. Does a just and good God condemn unevangelized people to an eternity in hell? The Bible seems to indicate that He does even though this seems incredibly hard for us to accept or understand at an emotional level. Does a just and good God condemn infants and young children to hell? This is a question that has troubled me for several years - especially now that I am a father with two young children of my own.

Thirdly, popular Evangelical views on infant salvation and the age of accountability frequently rest on a Pelagian foundation that denies (or at least significantly weakens) the doctrine of Original Sin. Western Christians from the time of Augustine have agreed that the dire consequences of Adam's sin are somehow transmitted to every human being, as the apostle Paul so clearly teaches in Romans 5. Significant disagreement persists, however, on some of the specifics with regard to the nature of original sin and the mechanics of its transmission from one generation to the next. Several important distinctions must therefore be made in sorting out this critical issue as it relates to the salvation of infants:

1) Transmission of Guilt vs. Transmission of Pollution
Some Christians hold that the guilt of Adam's sin has been transmitted to his posterity, while others hold that only the polluted nature has been transmitted. Those who take the former view, believe that all human beings (infants included) are held responsible for Adam's sin and merit an eternity separated from God. Those who take the latter view believe that infants receive a sin nature that guarantees that they will commit actual sins at some point in the future, but are not held personally responsible for the original sin of Adam.

2) Participation vs. Imputation
The means of transmission has been an issue of contention and speculation since the 4th century. Augustine held the position that all of humanity was 'seminally' present in Adam's loins and therefore actually participated in the crime. In other words, we were all physically present in the garden with Adam and committed the crime with him. For obvious reasons, this view is no longer widely held. The more prominent view among contemporary Reformed Evangelicals is that Adam functioned as the "Federal Head" or representative for all of humanity. As our federal head, the guilt of original sin was imputed to all of us by God so that we are implicated in Adam's sin.

3) Immediate Imputation vs. Mediate Imputation
Some have held that the guilt of original sin is imputed immediately to the child from the moment of conception, while others hold that the guilt of original sin is imputed mediately to the child as soon as (s)he commits the first conscious act of sin. With respect to the issue of infant salvation, mediate imputation appears to offer a certain degree of comfort since is makes it possible to believe that all infants who are miscarried or who die in infancy are innocent in God's eyes and therefore not liable to condemnation. Unfortunately, mediate imputation does not offer comfort to parents of children over the age of 1 or 2.

4) Baptismal Regeneration
Many, Christians historically have held a doctrine of Baptismal regeneration which teaches that the guilt of original sin is washed away through the sacrament of water baptism. Baptized children who died in infancy and are expunged of original sin would go directly to heaven, while unbaptized children would either go to hell, or to limbo where the punishment is minimal. Others have speculated that unbaptized children will be given an opportunity to hear the gospel after death. 'Postmortem evangelism' has been an attractive option in recent years for a number of Evangelicals (particularly of the Arminian persuasion) who wish to offer some kind of pastoral comfort to grieving parents. The surface comfort of this position loses much of its force, however, when the grieving parent comes to realize that there are no guarantees that their child will not reject the gospel in the next life and still spend eternity separated from Christ.

Personal Reflections and Conclusions:

My own theological convictions as a Reformed Baptist makes the issue of infant salvation quite challenging to resolve on pastoral level. I am a federal theologian who accepts immediate imputation and denies Baptismal Regeneration. I see absolutely no compelling evidence for postmortem evangelism in Scripture and even if I did, I do not believe that it is a comforting doctrine. Furthermore, I find most of the common proof-texts such as the example of David's son fairly inconclusive. As mentioned above, they are about as convincing for me as the Roman Catholic contention that Matt 12:32 is a canonical reference to Purgatory. Does this mean that all children who do not live long enough to make a profession of faith are automatically condemned to a Christless eternity? I will conclude this post with some personal reflections and tentative conclusions on this subject:

1) It is critical to maintain a robust doctrine of original sin regardless of where you fall on this issue. Children and infants, like all of us are totally depraved, guilty and liable for judgment from the moment of conception. We are not "born innocent" as Sarah McLachlan would have us believe. God cannot merely overlook or forgive sin in a child because that would be a travesty of justice and a violation of His own essential character. To say that God can forgive a person (adult or child) apart from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is closer to an Islamic worldview than it is to Biblical Christianity. If God can forgive anyone He wants, the substitutionary atonement of Jesus becomes superfluous.

2) I reject any form of baptismal regeneration as a form of works righteousness that denies sola fide and compromises the heart of the gospel. References in the NT that appear to teach baptismal regeneration are better understood as instances of 'metonymy' since Christian conversion is a cluster of events with terms that are often used interchangeably by the NT authors even though they must be distinguished theologically.

3) I accept that God can regenerate a person apart from faith if He chooses to do so. The one clear example of this that I see in Scripture is John the Baptist who appears to have been regenerate from his mother's womb. Although God does not normally work this way with adults since "faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God", it is at least theoretically possible for Him to regenerate any person that he chooses at any time He chooses on the basis of the substitutionary atonement of Christ. Technically, this is a form of Evangelical inclusivism which places me on a slippery slope. If I concede that God could regenerate an infant through Christ apart from personal faith, theological consistency demands that I also concede that He could ini theory regenerate an adult apart from faith should He chose to do so. The danger of this view is that it opens the door to universalism and more radical forms of inclusivism. The strong monergistic emphasis that lies at the heart of Reformed theology (ie. the view that salvation is all of God's initiative and none of our own) has historically caused a number of Reformed theologians to slide toward a form of universalism or radical inclusivism (ie. Ulrich Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, Karl Barth, etc.).

4) In conclusion, I tend to agree with Spurgeon, Warfield and many other Reformed theologians that all young children and infants are among God's elect and are regenerated by the Holy Spirit apart from water baptism or an explicit profession of faith in Christ. Historically, many Conservative Presbyterians have held a modified version of this teaching by restricting election to the children of believers on the basis of covenant theology and the exegetically disputed 1 Cor 7:14. Although this view will be comforting to believing parents who have lost a child, it makes no guarantees whatsoever to the children of non-believers.
I will readily admit that there are no crystal clear verses in Scripture that demonstrate that all children are among the elect, but there are a number of verses that do seem to hint at it in a very vague way. Spurgeon once preached a very helpful sermon on this topic entitled "Infant Salvation" where he outlines most of the pertinent passages: http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0411.htm Ultimately, our responsibility as parents is to consistently preach the gospel to our children from a young age, to pray earnestly for their salvation and to call them to repentance and faith when they are intellectually capable of making an informed response. Beyond this, they are in the hands of our loving and sovereign God who will act justly.

5) Although I wish that Scripture was more clear on this particular issue, I feel that my case is strong enough to give parents who have lost a child some theological basis for assurance that their child is present with the Lord. Ultimately, I would want to point them to character of God and give them assurance that He is good, just and worthy of our trust.

6) Everything said above with respect to Infant Salvation also could be applied to individuals born with various mental or developmental incapacities that would prevent them from understanding the gospel message.

St. Augustine's Confessions - A Neoplatonic Quest (Book VII)

2011-11-18T15:29:00.003-05:00

After a few months away from blogging, I finally have some extra time to devote to finishing up my thoughts on the Confessions. This past year, I've been digging deeply into Augustine's theology and am currently finishing up a grad seminar on his 1200 page magnum opus, the City of God. Reading Augustine first-hand over the past year has been extremely rewarding and edifying on a number of levels. It's enabled me to see Calvin, the Reformers and the Evangelical tradition in a whole new light - we are far more indebted to Augustine than we think. It's also forced me to go further back and read Plato and Aristotle which in turn has given me more insight into the philosophical underpinnings of the NT and the historical backdrop of the Patristic era. Like Augustine, many of the Church Fathers were disciples of Plato before they were disciples of Christ (and many of them remained steadfast admirers of Plato and Socrates post-conversion!) In certain ways, the Christian worldview which captured Rome by the 4th century, provided fresh answers to very ancient and vexing philosophical problems. For most Patristic theologians, Platonism and Christianity seemed to be two very complimentary systems of thought. So respected was Plato well into the Reformation era that Ulrich Zwingli, the father of the Reformed tradition and forerunner to Calvin, contended in a letter to King Francis that Plato and Socrates (both pagans) were in heaven alongside the Saints!! (A statement that only served to increase Luther's dislike of his Swiss counterpart).

Book VII of the Confessions reveals the fact that Augustine's conversion to Christianity in the Milan Garden (Book VIII) may best be understood as several mini-conversions, the first of which was a 'philosophical' conversion. This initial conversion was from Gnostic Manichaeism with its dualistic ontology to Greek Platonism with its sharp distinction between body and soul. Manichaeism, with its emphasis on the material world had blinded Augustine to the existence of immaterial spiritual substance, and so he laments the fact that he was for a time "unable to think of any substance possible other than that which the eyes normally perceive." (VII.i.1) Because of this, Augustine, the Manichean gnostic, could only conceive of God in strictly materialist terms: "Although you were not in the shape of the human body, I nevertheless felt forced to imagine something physical occupying space diffused either in the world or even through infinite space outside the world...I thought that anything from which space was abstracted was non-existence, indeed absolutely nothing." (VII.i.1)

Augustine's gnostic worldview which reduced everything to the level of physical matter, created a major philosophical dilemma when it came to explaining the origin and existence of evil: "Certainly the greatest and supreme Good made lesser goods; yet the Creator and all that he created are good. What then is the origin of evil? Is it that the matter from which he made things was somehow evil?... Was he powerless to turn and transform all matter so that no evil remained, even though God is omnipotent?" (VII.v.7) For Augustine, the undeniable presence of evil in the world called into question either the omnipotence of God on the one hand, or the aseity of God on the other (ie. that He was assisted in creation by matter which He himself did not create). Neither alternative was particularly attractive to the young philosopher who was seeking for truth.

In his attempt to discover an answer to the problem of evil, Augustine for a brief time entertained astrology as a possible solution. In the end, however, he concluded that the astrology of the pagans, with its fatalistic determinism did not solve the problem of evil either since it could not adequately explain the very different fate of twins who were born under the same sign: "You my helper, delivered me in this way from those chains. I was seeking the origin of evil and here was no solution." (VII.vii.11) For Augustine, astrologers were little more than opportunistic charlatans who preyed on sheer ignorance. (He would probably be amazed that people are still reading horoscopes in the 21st century!!!)

The problem, Augustine finally concluded, was that "I was fixing my attention on things contained in space". He goes on to add that "the very images of physical objects formed an obstacle to my return." (VII.vii.11) Augustine was only able to reach this conclusion with the help of the Platonist philosophers (Plotinus and Porphyry), whose books had been translated from Greek into Latin. These books Augustine viewed as an integral part of his return to Christ: "By the Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself. With you as my guide I entered into my innermost citadel, and was given power to do so because you had become my helper." (VII.x.16) In spite of the progress he made through secular philosophy, Augustine found himself still very far away from God in what he described as "the region of dissimilarity." (VII.x.16) Although the Platonists expressed many truths that were fully congruent with Christianity, they omitted the key elements of Christian faith, specifically the incarnation and atoning work of Christ on the cross: "Again I read [in the Platonists] that the Word, God, is 'born not of the flesh, nor of blood, nor of tthe will of man nor of the will of the flesh but of God'. But that 'the word was made flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:13-14), I did not read there." (VII ix.14)

Although the Platonists didn't offer solutions to Augustine's deepest spiritual need, they did offer him a new ontology with which to view and interpret the world. First, he was enabled to see that God is immaterial - a Spirit without a physical body of any kind. With this breakthrough, Augustine concluded that God made everything, and that everything He made was indeed very good. Evil is not a principle which exists apart from God, neither was it created by God. Evil, Augustine eventually concluded, is the privation of good and the corruption of a good nature created by a good God: "Accordingly, whatever things exist are good, and the evil into whose origins I was inquiring is not a substance, for if it were a substance, it would be good." (VII.xii.18) "For you evil does not exist at all, and not only for you, but for your created universe, because there is nothing outside it which could break in and destroy the order which you have imposed upon it." (VII.xiii.19) The notion of evil as privation, has been an enduring aspect of the Augustinian legacy and enables Christian theologians to the present day to give a rational account of evil without implicating God as its author. The ultimate origin of evil, Augustine would eventually conclude, is in the human will, which chooses lesser goods instead of the greatest Good.

The philosophy of the Neo-Platonists ultimately enabled Augustine to move beyond his shortsighted gnostic view of God. Finally, he was able to see God in immaterial terms but he was still not yet a Christian: "I was certain that you are infinite without being infinitely diffused through finite space... Of these conceptions I was certain: but to enjoy you I was too weak." (VII.xx.26) Augustine was later to express his thankfulness to God for exposing him to Platonist philosophy at this point in his spiritual journey, which he viewed as an essential step in his conversion: "I believe that you wanted me to encounter [the Platonists] before I came to study your scriptures...For if I had first been formed in mind by your holy books, and if you had made me know your sweetness by familiarity with them, and then I had thereafter met those volumes [of the Platonists], perhaps they would have snatched me away from the solid foundation of piety." (VII.xx.26) Augustine's initial conversion from gnosticism to Neo-Platonism propelled him forward in his quest for truth and gave him a new motivation to pick up and read the Scripture which he had long despised: "With avid intensity I seized the sacred writings of your Spirit and especially the apostle Paul...I began reading and found that all the truth I had read in the Platonists was stated here together with the commendation of your grace."(VII. xxi.27)

Augustine's experience as outlined above raises the issue of Natural Theology and General Revelation. Although Scripture is absolutely indispensable for our salvation because we cannot experience a relationship with God apart from knowledge about the perfect life, atoning death and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus, we should not deny that God has revealed many aspects of truth outside of the Bible. Indeed there are many incredible truths about God that we can learn from secular philosophy and from the natural sciences. Another way to say this that I think Augustine would readily have affirmed in his own day is that 'all truth is God's truth.' Although we dare not construct a full-blown Natural Theology that postulates salvation outside of personal faith in Christ, we ought not to automatically discount the many wonderful insights that we can get into God's good creation through modern science and philosophy. True - the Fall has distorted our ability to reason accurately and to perceive truth in creation - but it has not completely destroyed it! This was the position of both Augustine and the Reformers, and most importantly, was the position of Paul himself in Romans who held that General Revelation in both nature and the human conscience will render humanity without excuse before the Creator on the day of judgment.

St. Augustine on the Origin of the Human Soul

2011-04-17T18:15:00.001-04:00

Did St. Augustine believe in the pre-existence theory of the soul held by Origen, Plotinus, Plato and the Pythagoreans when he wrote the Confessions as a newly ordained Roman Catholic Bishop (A.D. 397-400)?? Here's my answer to this thorny question: click here

Augustine's Confessions - Secular Ambitions and Conflicts (Book VI)

2011-02-25T07:38:00.000-05:00

Book VI traces the internal turmoil of Augustine during his relatively brief period of skepticism in Milan. By the conclusion of Book V, Augustine has eliminated Manichaeism as a viable intellectual option and has begun to 'doubt everything'. Book VI expands upon themes introduced in the previous book and is interspersed with biographical sketches regarding Monica, Ambrose, Alypius and Nebridius. The extensive biographical material in this book serves to illuminate Augustine's own spiritual and intellectual quest through comparison and contrast. Monica, Ambrose and Alypius, in particular, function as literary foils for Augustine.

Book VI opens with the arrival of Monica in Milan where she finds her son in a slightly more promising spiritual condition than when he had left Rome. Augustine testifies that "I had not yet attained the truth, but I was rescued from falsehood." (VI.i.1) In this first biographical sketch, Augustine focuses on his Mother's willingness to part with African tradition (rooted in the 'physical' realm) in order to embrace a higher spiritual ideal: "Instead of a basket full of the fruits of the earth, she learned to bring a heart full of purer vows to the memorials of the martyrs." (VI.ii.2) The ease with which Monica turns from the realm of the 'physical', which is lower on the scale of good, (cf. II.v.10) is in stark contrast with Augustine who is still mired in his pursuit of physical pleasure. In contrast to Augustine, "her quest was for devotion, not pleasure." (VI.ii.2)

The second biographical sketch centres on Bishop Ambrose. The serene Ambrose, who sits reading in silence for long periods of time contrasts sharply with Faustus and the "loquacious" Manichees. The serenity and stability of Ambrose also contrasts with Augustine, whose mind at this juncture was "intent on inquiry and restless for debate." (VI.iii.3) This section builds upon the important discussion regarding figurative hermeneutics in Book V. The essence of Ambrose's hermeneutic is summarized in VI.iv.6 with a Pauline citation: "'The letter kills, the spirit gives life' (2 Cor. 3:6)." Through the influence of Ambrose, Augustine experiences a 'paradigm shift' of sorts which demonstrates, to his own shame, that his former conception of the Catholic Church was little more than a straw man. As a result, Augustine the skeptic hesitantly decides to give preference to the Catholic faith. (VI.v.7)

The discussion on figurative hermeneutics opens up a larger discussion on authority. Here, we can discern progress in Augustine's thinking. In VI.iv.6 it is evident that Augustine is looking for a belief system which could be held with mathematical certainty. By VI.v.7-8, however, he seems to have moved away from a strict form of evidentialism to a certain kind of presuppositionalism as evidenced by his view of Scriptural authority. Augustine's doctrine of Scripture appears to foreshadow that of Calvin, who argued in his Institutes that the Bible has a self-attesting quality which does not require rational proof.[1]

Beginning in VI.vi.9-10 the focus of the book shifts onto Augustine's vain quest for "honours, money [and] marriage." The utter vanity of his secular ambition is unmasked through an encounter with a drunken beggar in the streets of Milan. Even though the beggar didn't possess true joy, the well educated Augustine realizes to his dismay that "he was far happier" in his drunken stupor. Furthermore, the beggar attained happiness honestly "by wishing good luck" while Augustine pursued happiness "by telling lies".

Augustine's disillusionment is shared by his roommates and pupils Alypius and Nebridius. Much of the second half of this Book is taken up by a detailed biographical sketch of Alypius, who is presented to us in rather idealistic terms. Chadwick postulates that this information was included largely to satisfy the request of Paulinus of Nola for a biography of this young man who went on to become the Bishop of Thagaste. Like Monica, Alypius is portrayed as a person who is not enslaved to the physical realm. He thus serves as another literary foil for Augustine who is still hopelessly mired in lust. Embedded within this biography of Alypius is an internal monologue which reveals, through its distinctive style, Augustine's volatile state of mind as he wavers between the quest for truth and the quest for secular success. (VI.xi.18-19)

Particularly notable in the concluding paragraphs of Book VI is a discussion on marriage in which Augustine laments the painful loss of his mistress. The quest for secular success made possible through a dowry has once again impeded his quest for happiness and left Augustine in a state of despair and frigid numbness. The only factors which keep him from spiraling into unrestrained hedonism are his fear of death and divine punishment and the influence of his friends, who "he loved…for their own sake". (VI.xvi.26)

[1] "Let this point therefore stand: that those whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught truly rest upon Scripture, and that Scripture indeed is self-authenticated; hence, it is not right to subject it to proof and reasoning." (Institutes, I.vii.5)

Augustine's Confessions - Carthage, Rome and Milan (Book V)

2011-02-20T16:47:00.002-05:00

Book V follows Augustine on two parallel journeys. The first is his geographical relocation from Carthage to Milan while the second is his ongoing spiritual journey from gnosticism to skepticism. The story picks up with a 29 year old Augustine, now well established as a professor of Rhetoric, who had begun to read the books of certain philosophers who used reason and mathematics to explain various natural phenomenon such as solar eclipses. As he compared this 'scientific' approach with the fanciful mythology of gnostic Manicheans, doubts began to rise up in his mind and heart: "I particularly noted the rational, mathematical order of things, the order of seasons, the visible evidence of the stars. I compared these with the sayings of Mani who wrote much on these matters very copiously and foolishly I did not notice any rational account of solstices and equinoxes or eclipses of luminaries nor anything resembling what I had learnt in the books of secular wisdom. Yet I was ordered to believe Mani. But he was not in agreement with the rational explanations which I had verified by calculation and had observed with my own eyes." In light of these intellectual barriers, Augustine eagerly awaited the arrival of Faustus, the most learned and prestigious interpreter of Mani, an encounter which proved to be a grave disappointment: "When I put forward some problems which troubled me I quickly discovered him to be ignorant of the liberal arts other than grammar and literature; and his knowledge was of a conventional kind...After he had clearly showed his lack of training in liberal arts in which I had supposed him to be highly qualified, I began to lose all hope that he would be able to analyse and resolve the difficulties which disturbed me." The disappointment plunged Augustine into a brief period of skepticism although he continued to associate with the Manichees: "I had decided to be content to remain with them if I should find nothing better; but my attitude was increasingly remiss and negligent."

After giving his mother Monica the slip, and going alone to Rome in search of higher quality students, Augustine fell sick and nearly died. Recovering from his illness and having discovered that the students in Rome were dishonest swindlers, Augustine traveled to the Italian city of Milan where he first encountered the Catholic bishop Ambrose. Because Ambrose was famous for his fine oratorical skills, Augustine the rhetorician began to attend his homilies, hoping to pick up a pointer or two that he could pass on to his students: "I was not interested in learning what he was talking about. My ears were only for his rhetorical technique; this empty concern was all that remained with me after I had lost any hope that a way to you might lie open for man. Nevertheless together with the words which I was enjoying, the subject matter, in which I was unconcerned, came to make an entry into my mind. I could not separate them." Interestingly (especially for us Conservative Protestants who admire Augustine) is the fact that it was Ambrose's allegorical (or non-literal) interpretation of Scripture that really caught Augustine's attention: "Above all , I heard first one, then another, then many difficult passages in the Old Testament scriptures figuratively interpreted, where I , by taking them literally, had found them to kill (2 Cor 3:6)." The discovery of allegory was a Copernican revolution of sorts which opened Augustine up to reconsidering the Christian faith. Over and above the preaching of Ambrose, it was his genuine kindness which first attracted Augustine: "I began to like him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth, for I had absolutely no confidence in your Church, but as a human being who was kind to me." It was at this point in his spiritual journey that Augustine decided to leave the Manichean sect and embrace skepticism while continuing to sit under Christian teaching: "I decided I must leave the Manichees, thinking at that period of my skepticism that I should not remain a member of a sect to which I was now preferring certain philosophers... I therefore decided for the time being to be a catechumen in the Catholic Church, which the precedent of my parents recommended to me, until some clear light should come by which I could direct my course."

St. Augustine vs. Creation Science??

There is a passage in this chapter which is informative for our current intramural debates on Creationism (young earth/ day age theory/ theistic evolution). This passage comes in the wake of Augustine's realization that Mani didn't have a clue what he was talking about when it came to the natural order of creation: "Mani could be ignorant of religion even if he knew natural science perfectly. But his impudence in daring to teach a matter which he did not understand shows that he could known nothing whatever of piety." Augustine appears to extend this criticism to certain Christian interpreters of Scripture: "When I hear of this or that brother Christian, who is ignorant of these matters [speaking of scientific explanations] and thinks one thing the case when another is correct, with patience I contemplate the man expressing his opinion. I do not see it is any obstacle to him if perhaps he is ignorant of the position and nature of a physical creature, provided that he does not believe something unworthy of you, Lord, the Creator of all things. But it becomes an obstacle if he thinks his view of nature belongs to the very form of orthodox doctrine, and dares obstinately to affirm something he does not understand." I'm not sure I personally agree with everything Augustine is saying here (I lean heavily toward the young earth position while acknowledging that there are difficulties with every position!), but I resonate with Augustine's call for humility on this issue which frequently divides Evangelical Christians who are otherwise likeminded. If Kent Hovind ever gets out of jail and they invent a time machine, I'd love to see a friendly debate with St. Augustine :)

Jonah- God's Missionary Heart

2011-02-19T08:33:00.000-05:00

I recently had the opportunity to preach from the book of Jonah. The podcast is available at the following website: http://www.rosedalebaptistwelland.com/podcast/ . Scroll down to Feb. 13, 2011 and you will find it. There is also a second sermon posted there that I preached back in November.

Augustine's Confessions - Manichee and Astrologer (Book IV)

2011-02-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

This book covers a nine year period (age 19-28), when Augustine was mired in gnostic heresy. He describes this period as one of "being seduced and seducing, being deceived and deceiving." It was during this spiritually dark stage of life that he took a concubine from Carthage, who became his partner for fifteen years and bore him a son. Even though Roman law and social convention prevented a formal marriage, Augustine still viewed the relationship as far less than ideal. Augustine the gnostic was also mired in pagan superstition and would frequently consult astrologers in spite of his being warned by a wise old medical doctor named Vindicanus that astrology was really pseudo-science and a waste of time and money.

Much of this book is taken up with a discussion on grief and disordered emotions, stemming from the death of Augustine's close friend Nebridius. Under Augustine's influence, Nebridius had left the Catholic fold and converted to gnosticism. Sometime later, he fell deathly ill and was baptized by his Christian family while in an unconscious state. When he regained consciousness, Augustine began to joke around with him about the sacrament of baptism, but Nebridius rebuked him harshly and died several days later. There are strong overtones of baptismal regeneration as Augustine reflects back on this incident. The sudden death of Nebridius pushed Augustine over the edge of despair: "Everything on which I set my gaze was death. My hometown became a to me." The grief was toxic and unnatural, and Augustine testifies that "I had become to myself a vast problem" and "my life was to me a horror." After several pages of painful analysis, he relates his intense grief to the sin of idolatry: "The reason why that grief had penetrated me so easily and deeply was that I had poured out my soul on to the sand by loving a person sure to die as if he would never die." Nebridius had become a substitute for God for Augustine.

Augustine the gnostic was firmly indoctrinated in the Manichee worldview which was fundamentally materialist. This 'materialism' became a tremendous barrier to further spiritual progress because he was utterly unable to conceive of God as a spiritual Being: "I thought that you , Lord God and Truth, were like a luminous body of immense size and myself a bit of that body. What extraordinary perversity!" Along these same lines he wrote, "My mind moved within the confines of corporeal forms." This materialist worldview also led Augustine to embrace a dualistic view of good and evil, where evil had "not only substance but life." The spiritual blindness caused by gnostic presuppositions is a theme which carries on for several chapters until Augustine finally discovers the writings of the Neo Platonists and comes to the conclusion that evil is actually the "privation" of good.

Looking back on this stage of his spiritual journey, Augustine can only describe his time with the Manichees by means of Plato's famous "cave" illustration: "I had my back to the light and my face toward the things which are illuminated. So my face, by which I was enabled to see the things lit up, was not itself illuminated."