“What Can Miserable Christians Sing?” by Carl R. Trueman

“Having experienced – and generally appreciated – worship across the whole evangelical spectrum, from Charismatic to Reformed – I am myself less concerned here with the form of worship than I am with its content. Thus, I would like to make just one observation: the psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, have almost entirely dropped from view in the contemporary Western evangelical scene. I am not certain about why this should be, but I have an instinctive feel that it has more than a little to do with the fact that a high proportion of the psalter is taken up with lamentation, with feeling sad, unhappy, tormented, and broken.

In modern Western culture, these are simply not emotions which have much credibility: sure, people still feel these things, but to admit that they are a normal part of one’s everyday life is tantamount to admitting that one has failed in today’s health, wealth, and happiness society. And, of course, if one does admit to them, one must neither accept them nor take any personal responsibility for them: one must blame one’s parents, sue one’s employer, pop a pill, or check into a clinic in order to have such dysfunctional emotions soothed and one’s self-image restored.

Now, one would not expect the world to have much time for the weakness of the psalmists’ cries. It is very disturbing, however, when these cries of lamentation disappear from the language and worship of the church. Perhaps the Western church feels no need to lament – but then it is sadly deluded about how healthy it really is in terms of numbers, influence and spiritual maturity. Perhaps – and this is more likely – it has drunk so deeply at the well of modern Western materialism that it simply does not know what to do with such cries and regards them as little short of embarrassing. Yet the human condition is a poor one – and Christians who are aware of the deceitfulness of the human heart and are looking for a better country should know this.

A diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party – a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals. Has an unconscious belief that Christianity is – or at least should be – all about health, wealth, and happiness silently corrupted the content of our worship? Few Christians in areas where the church has been strongest over recent decades – China, Africa, Eastern Europe – would regard uninterrupted emotional highs as normal Christian experience.

Indeed, the biblical portraits of believers give no room to such a notion. Look at Abraham, Joseph, David, Jeremiah, and the detailed account of the psalmists’ experiences. Much agony, much lamentation, occasional despair – and joy, when it manifests itself – is very different from the frothy triumphalism that has infected so much of our modern Western Christianity. In the psalms, God has given the church a language which allows it to express even the deepest agonies of the human soul in the context of worship. Does our contemporary language of worship reflect the horizon of expectation regarding the believer’s experience which the psalter proposes as normative? If not, why not? Is it because the comfortable values of Western middle-class consumerism have silently infiltrated the church and made us consider such cries irrelevant, embarrassing, and signs of abject failure?

I did once suggest at a church meeting that the psalms should take a higher priority in evangelical worship than they generally do – and was told in no uncertain terms by one indignant person that such a view betrayed a heart that had no interest in evangelism. On the contrary, I believe it is the exclusion of the experiences and expectations of the psalmists from our worship – and thus from our horizons of expectation – which has in a large part crippled the evangelistic efforts of the church in the West and turned us all into spiritual pixies.

By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church. By so doing, it has implicitly endorsed the banal aspirations of consumerism, generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity, and confirmed its impeccable credentials as a club for the complacent. In the last year, I have asked three very different evangelical audiences what miserable Christians can sing in church. On each occasion my question has elicited uproarious laughter, as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical – and yet I posed the question in all seriousness. Is it any wonder that British evangelicalism, from the Reformed to the Charismatic, is almost entirely a comfortable, middle-class phenomenon?”

-Carl R. Trueman, from “What Can Miserable Christians Sing?” in The Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historical and Contemporary Evangelicalism (Christian Focus: 2004) pp. 158-160.

Southern Baptists and Calvinists: A Response to Elmer Towns (Part 3)

Question 3

Towns’ third question is: “Is five point Calvinism a new intolerance?”  I’ll be brief in addressing this question for two reasons.  1^st of all, I believe it carries no relevance.  I think this question is one that simply adds emotionalism to the subject.  In a day when the only thing people are intolerant of is “intolerance,” to ask “is five point Calvinism a new intolerance?” is just to bring heightened emotions to a subject that should be addressed biblically and prayerfully.  And if it is insisted that the issue of intolerance be addressed, well there is plenty of that to go around.  Practically, I have seen intolerance on both sides.  On the one hand, I have seen Calvinistic pastors who have been too hard, too rough, and too fast with a congregation concerning these doctrines and have ended up hurting instead of helping the sheep.  With the aim of having their sheep come to love and embrace the sovereignty of God and the doctrines of grace, they tend to forget that “the Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:24-25).  Yet on the other hand, I have seen congregations, when lovingly, gently, and patiently confronted with these biblical truths, not put up a biblical argument against the doctrines of grace, but instead say, “I see what you’re saying in the Bible, but we just don’t believe that around here.”  Instead of being teachable, willing to listen, and having a “Berean spirit” characterized by “examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11), they instead fire their pastor and unlovingly throw an entire family on hardship.  Yes, there has been intolerance and hurt on both sides, which is why I believe Towns’ question carries no relevance.

The 2^nd reason I’ll be brief in responding to this third question is, quite frankly, I don’t follow Towns’ argument or understand what he’s trying to say.  He asks the question of Calvinism being “a new intolerance” and then discusses how “the world has become tolerant of any and every religion and almost any and every lifestyle.”  Then he discusses the religious tolerance of early America where different religious groups and cults could freely exchange viewpoints in society, but then not bring them into the church.  He then closes this section with: “However the tolerance that the church showed to other views is not presently reciprocated.  Now anti-Christian views are gaining influence, and they have become intolerant to the Christian church, denying the freedom to teach in public what they have always believed.”  Though I agree with what Towns is saying here, this concerns the culture and the church.  What does this have to do with his initial question?  I must say, this section left me a bit dumbfounded.  But in answer to the question (in the sense I discussed above), I must say “no.”

Question 4

The fourth and final question Towns asks is, “Will five point Calvinism spread?”  Instead of providing data such as the number of Calvinistic students becoming pastors, the growing influence of expository preaching in establishing Reformed theology in churches, the influence of ministries such as Mark Dever’s 9 Marks, Founders Ministries, Albert Mohler’s blog, and other Reformed Southern Baptist media, which would all be indicators of whether or not one might predict the “spread” of Calvinism, Towns instead takes up a discussion of biblical interpretation (after he spends half of this section giving a rather detailed metaphorical illustration of how “Calvinism is like the dandelion”).

Though Towns’ intention in discussing biblical interpretation was not in support of Calvinism, I believe here he gets to the heart of the matter-the Word of God.  This is why Calvinism is growing and this is why I believe it will continue to grow-because people are being exposed to reformed theology and going back to their Bibles to see if this theology is true.  When one gives an honest analysis-setting aside his Southern Baptist traditions and instead letting the Bible alone formulate his thinking, then one discovers what Spurgeon discovered so long ago: that “Calvinism is the gospel.”  Spurgeon, in a sermon titled “A Defense of Calvinism,” said:

I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called Calvinism.  It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else.  I do not believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not preach justification by faith, without works; nor unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of His elect and chosen people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall away after they are called, and suffers the children of God to be burned in the fires of damnation after having once believed in Jesus.[1]

Steven J. Lawson, Southern Baptist pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church and biblical expositor par excellence, has written:

Over the centuries, seasons of reformation and revival in the church have come when the sovereign grace of God has been openly proclaimed and clearly taught.  When a high view of God has been infused into the hearts and minds of God’s people, the church has sat on the elevated plateaus of transcendent truth.  This lofty ground is Calvinism-the high ground for the church.  The lofty truths of divine sovereignty provide the greatest and grandest view of God.  The doctrines of grace serve to elevate the entire life of the church….For without the theological teachings of Reformed truth concerning God’s sovereignty in man’s salvation, the church is weakened and made vulnerable, soon to begin an inevitable decline into baser beliefs, whether she realizes it or not.[2]

As Southern Baptists take the time to examine the theology of the Reformation in light of Scripture rather than Southern Baptist tradition over the last 80 years, I believe more and more people will come to the same conclusion that Lawson has reached above-that these doctrines that go by the label of “Calvinism” are “the high ground for the church.”

This is precisely why I believe articles like Towns’ that simply deal with pragmatic issues and other articles by Southern Baptist leaders that forecast gloom and doom if Calvinism takes over in the SBC miss the mark.  This is not about losing ground and territorial disputes within our Convention’s organizational structures.  Rather, this is about “handling accurately the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).  And if that is the aim of more and more Southern Baptists, then Calvinism can do nothing but rise, seeing that “Calvinism is the gospel.”

Conclusion

I was told long ago by a writer that if you ever ask a question in a book or article title or in a chapter or section heading, you’d better answer it.  Towns gives us four questions addressing the relationship of Southern Baptists to Calvinists, yet he gives us no answers.[3] I have attempted in my response to give answers to Towns’ questions.

I thoroughly agree with Elmer Towns when he writes, “Southern Baptists believe that every church has the Word of God, and it is that church’s responsibility to study the Word, apply the Word, and live by the principles of the Word of God.”  This is the heart of the issue.  Far too long during this “Reformed resurgence” have there been straw man arguments put forth against Reformed theology.  There has been too much time and ink spilled in order to give ad hominem arguments against Calvinists.  It is time to carry out the responsibility that Towns lists-”to study the Word.”  These discussions and deliberations must not be personality-based nor emotionally-charged, but instead adjudicated by the Word of God alone.  After all, we Southern Baptists are to be people of the Book, right?  Since we have won the battle for the Bible with the conservative resurgence (and praise God for that!), why not begin to ask anew, “What exactly does the Bible say?”

The SBC’s history has shown that she went from being conservative to liberal, and then back to conservative again.  How did this happen?  Southern Baptists in the churches asked the question, “What does the Bible say about the Bible?”  Could it be that the SBC, which has went from being Calvinistic to non-Calvinistic, will once again return to her roots by Southern Baptists in their churches asking the question, “What does the Bible say about the gospel and salvation?”  May we always be a people of the Book who submit our traditions to the Book and derive our doctrines from the Book.

Van L. Loomis, Jr.

Pastor-Teacher

Redeeming Grace Baptist Church

Mathews, VA

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[1] C. H. Spurgeon, “A Defense of Calvinism,” http://www.spurgeon.org/calvinis.htm, accessed 3/21/2009.  I would encourage every Southern Baptist to take time to read this passionate sermon by “the prince of preachers.”

[2] Steven J. Lawson, Foundations of Grace: 1400 bc – ad 100, vol. 1, A Long Line of Godly Men (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust, 2006), 22.  I commend the reading of this book to anyone who is interested in “see[ing] whether these things [are] so.”  In Foundations, Lawson traces these God-exalting truths throughout the entirety of the Word of God-from Genesis to Revelation.  It is an immensely valuable biblical theology of the doctrines of grace.

[3] Actually, the only answer he gives is to Question 3, which as I have stated above, goes off topic and really has no relevance to the question which was posed.

Southern Baptists and Calvinists: A Response to Elmer Towns (Part 2)

Question 1

Towns begins by asking, “Should any Southern Baptist fly under a particular flag?”  He acknowledges that “there are many different types of flags flown over Southern Baptist churches.”  But when discussing the “Calvinist flag,” he states, “The problem is that most five point Calvinists don’t just point to their flag; many become exclusionary of any other view that will not salute their flag and fight for their flag in ecclesiastical battles.”  This is not something to which we should be amazed.  Everyone with solid convictions does this; Towns even does this.  In fact, he has basically said that much in his article.  If I can use his own words, he too is “exclusionary of any other view that will not salute [his] flag,” his flag being obviously that of a non-Calvinist.

The issue is: This “flag” (as Towns calls it) is not just concerning worship style, small groups, or missions; no, this “flag” deals with the very doctrines of man’s sinfulness, the atonement, and salvation.  These are subjects that are worthy of exclusivity!  When I read my Bible, I derive a theology from it that clearly declares man is sinful and can do no good before a holy God.  Since man can do nothing to commend himself to God, He cannot, by his own will and decision, bring about his salvation (which if he could, would not only be good, but it would be the greatest good).  Also, Christ’s death on the cross two thousand years ago had purpose and truly did accomplish something.  He actually atoned for sins and purged them and washed them away in His blood as He took the place of those sinners upon the cross.  He did not merely make sinners “savable;” He actually and really atoned for sin upon that cross.  This matter of redemption is not something that is left up to the sinner to decide.  And when the Word of God says things like “all that the Father gives Me shall come to Me” (Jn. 6:37) and “this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (Jn. 6:39), I see clearly that God will have His people by His own power.  He will regenerate them.  He will grant them repentance and faith.  And then, as a result, they will choose Christ with their wills, repent of their sins, and believe upon Him.  Scripture also makes clear that the same Holy Spirit that regenerated me and gave me spiritual life, resulting in my eyes being opened to the gospel of Christ so that I desired to use my will to choose Christ and repent of my sins and believe upon Him, is the same Holy Spirit who now will not allow me to use my will to turn away from and abandon Christ, thus I am eternally secure and persevere in the faith.

The answer to Towns’ question “should any Southern Baptist fly under a particular flag?” is “yes,” provided Scripture demands it.  If your church “flag” is social work or fellowships or small groups, those do not have an exclusionary nature.  But when it comes to these truths that stand as the Mt. Everest of biblical doctrine, should we not champion these?  If we cannot be “exclusionary of any other view” when it comes to the heart of the gospel, then what else is worthy of us taking a firm stand?  Being “exclusionary” does not mean being bitter, mean, nasty, and using pejorative terms when discussing those who disagree with you, but neither does it mean that we should not press others to take up their Bibles and see what it actually says concerning these grand truths.

Question 2[1]

In Towns’ second question, he asks, “Is Calvinism a diversion against the Great Commission and baptism?”  According to Towns’ own research, the answer seems to be “no.”  Town cites a study by LifeWay’s Ed Stetzer which indicates that Calvinistic churches are “conducting personal evangelism at a slightly higher rate than their non-Calvinistic peers.”  Also, Towns writes that Stetzer points out “although Calvinistic churches baptize fewer people each year, they have a ‘baptism rate’ virtually identical to that of non-Calvinist big churches.”  Even by the numbers, Calvinism is not shown to be “a diversion against the Great Commission and baptism.”  Further, Mohler writes:

If Calvinism is an enemy to missions and evangelism, it is an enemy to the Gospel itself.  The Great Commission and the task of evangelism are assigned to every congregation and every believer.  The charge that Calvinism is opposed to evangelism simply will not stick-it is a false argument.  The Doctrines of Grace are nothing less than a statement of the Gospel itself.  Through the substitutionary work of Christ, God saves sinners.  The great promise is that whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.[2]

In my experience, I have never seen someone discouraged to witness by their theology.  I have never met any Calvinist-be it young, old, enthused, mellow, etc.-who was passionately longing to bring the gospel to the lost, but instead said, “I must discipline myself and hold back because God has His own elect and He’ll save them.”  Now I understand that Towns is not saying this, but I’ve heard so many other Southern Baptists make the claim that Calvinism kills evangelism.[3] The fact of the matter is that some Calvinist Southern Baptists do not evangelize.  Some non-Calvinist Southern Baptists do not evangelize.  Some Calvinist Southern Baptists do evangelize.  Some non-Calvinist Southern Baptists do evangelize.  With those Calvinists and non-Calvinists who do not evangelize, there are, no doubt, a myriad of reasons given why they do not.  However, I would submit that probably none of these reasons would be theological or biblical.  True Calvinists could never give biblical reasons for a lack of evangelism because we believe the means of salvation (i.e., the preaching of the gospel) are just as predestined as the people.  So, the answer to Towns’ second question is “no.”

Van L. Loomis, Jr.

Pastor-Teacher

Redeeming Grace Baptist Church

Mathews, VA

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[1] Towns asks another question in this section which veers away hard from the current subject under his heading “Question Two.”  He asks, “Are all Calvinistic churches committed to indoctrinating five point Calvinism?”  He answers, “Probably not.”  But then Towns goes through a bit of church history in order to assert that “in his early life John Calvin espoused extreme positions on predestination” and that “later in life Calvin seemed to mellow his view of predestination as he studied the Scriptures more thoroughly by writing commentaries on every book of the Bible.”  Since this is off topic from Town’s main question with which he is addressing, I will simply refer the reader to Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology from Calvin to Perkins (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1986), 22-27; François Wendel, Calvin: Origins and Development of His Religious Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1950), 263-84; and William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), 172-76; for refutations of Towns’ assertion.

[2] Ibid., Mohler (emphasis mine).

[3] If this were not such a repeated accusation from non-Calvinists, Towns would not have to utilize the space to even bring up the question.

Southern Baptists and Calvinists: A Response to Elmer Towns (Part 1)

In the March 2009 edition of The Baptist Banner, Elmer Towns, co-founder and dean of the School of Religion at Liberty University, addressed the issue of the labels “Southern Baptist” and “Calvinist.”  His article addresses the relationship Southern Baptists should have with Calvinists.  In seeking to articulate this relationship, Towns puts forth four questions which Southern Baptists should ask in seeking to define relationships with Calvinistic congregations.  In a series of posts, I will address each question and then give some concluding thoughts.

Before I begin my examination of Towns’ questions, I want to address the tone of the article itself.  I feel that articles of this sort “poison the well” when attempting to look into these biblical issues.  Towns’ brief article is fraught with pejorative terms and expressions that would give someone an apriori bias against the doctrines of grace (i.e., Calvinism).  Towns employs such expressions as “the intrusive influence of five point Calvinism” and “five point enthusiast.”  He asks, “Should or should not Southern Baptists attempt to purge themselves of five point Calvinists?”  He refers to Calvinistic influence as “the problem.”  After talking about Calvin’s burning of Servetus[1], Towns writes, “Be careful of some five pointers, with an intolerant DNA just like their forefathers.”  He also cautions, “But be careful of the five pointer who waves his flag in attack of other churches or other believers, or anyone who holds a different persuasion than theirs.”  In footnote 10, Towns, speaking of the five-point Calvinist, writes, “While the enthusiast irritates us with his absolute assurance that he is right,…”  Comparing what Towns terms “Generic Calvinists” to five-point Calvinists, he writes, “Generic Calvinists generally don’t fixate on the five points.”  Towns goes on to state, “It is all right to be a Calvinist, but it is not all right to be a flag waving five point extremist that attacks any and every position or church that disagrees with its own.”  And probably the most derogatory and depreciatory example is when Towns gives to us an illustration where Calvinism is more akin to a dandelion than a tulip.  He writes, “Calvinism is like the dandelion;…dandelions spread their weeds across the entire lawn, blown about by the winds of fads and self-examination.  And what more do we know about dandelions, they kill the surrounding grass and as they spread across a beautiful lawn, they can destroy an entire lawn.”  If our aim is to have a discussion with other believers concerning cardinal biblical issues, where is there room for uncomplimentary demonstrations such as these?  It fails to advance the argument for biblical, thinking Christians.  Rather, it adds emotions and passions that tend to bring more heat than light.

Another detractor from Towns’ article is the implied elitism he exhibits.  In discussing Question Four, Towns points out that “every spring the dandelions come up.  By that I am referring to young Calvinistic enthusiasts who suddenly feel they know systematic theology better than their professors.”  Towns speaks of how he is “gracious” with these and in essence, tries to set them straight.  It seems that in Towns’ estimation, it is something to be pitied that these Calvinists do not know any better.  I will be the first to admit that there are unbalanced Calvinists who think they have come to master every fine point of theology, but having a “some-day-you’ll-grow-out-of-this-juvenile-phase-like-I-did” mentality skirts the issue of deriving our doctrine from biblical interpretation.

The Beginning of the Southern Baptist Convention

Towns paints the picture in his article that Calvinism in the SBC is the “new kid on the block.”  Historically, this just isn’t the case.  R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of the flagship SBC Seminary, Southern Seminary, writes:

Even the opponents of Calvinism must admit, if historically informed, that Calvinism is the theological tradition into which the Baptist movement was born.  The same is true of the Southern Baptist Convention.  The most influential Baptist churches, leaders, confessions of faith, and theologians of the founding era were Calvinistic….It was not until well into the twentieth century that any knowledgeable person could claim that Southern Baptists were anything but Calvinists….John A. Broadus-the greatest Baptist preacher of his day-was so certain that Calvinism was revealed in the Bible that he challenged those who sneer at Calvinism to ’sneer at Mount Blanc’….Other Southern Baptist leaders were also well-identified Calvinists.  These included J. B. Gambrell and B. H. Carroll, the founder of Southwestern Seminary.”[2]

Mohler concludes, “Calvinism was the mainstream tradition in the Southern Baptist Convention until the turn of the century.  The rise of modern notions of individual liberty and the general spirit of the age have led to an accommodation of historic doctrines in some circles.”

In all actuality, the recent rise of Calvinism is a “reformation” that is seeking to return the SBC to her historic roots.  Just to be frank and put it in the language of the day: We were here first.  Sadly, this is a little known fact to most Southern Baptists.  Early Southern Baptists intended their churches and members to believe and understand sound doctrine-not just any doctrine, but a particular array of beliefs on which the SBC was formed.  There was from the beginning widespread doctrinal accord among them.  The consensus was built around the great salvation doctrines which were commonly referred to as the “doctrines of grace.”  James Boyce, founder and first president of Southern Seminary, portrayed these doctrines in 1874 as being part of the “prevailing principles” which had guided the denomination to that hour.  Forty-four years later in 1918, the 2^nd edition of The New Convention Normal Manual made the same affirmation by announcing “nearly all Baptists believe what are usually termed the ‘doctrines of grace.’”

What are these “doctrines of grace?”  Specifically, they are those truths of God’s Word which reveal His sovereign majesty in salvation.  Historically, these doctrines have also been referred to as “Calvinism,” not because John Calvin conceived of them, but because he very proficiently articulated them into a systematic construct.  However, as of late, it seems that “Calvinism” has been deemed a “bad word” in many parts of SBC life.  Many employ it pejoratively to refer to fatalism and falsely say that it is antithetic to evangelism.  However, in my analysis, nothing could be further from the truth.

As Towns asks “should or should not Southern Baptists attempt to purge themselves of five point Calvinists?” to do so would also require the wholesale jettisoning of the core doctrine that birthed the SBC.  Let me be very frank: If it were not for that group of Calvinists meeting together in 1845, there would be no SBC today.  I am a Southern Baptist and you are a Southern Baptist because (humanly-speaking) our godly forefathers possessed a cooperative missionary passion that sprung from the fountainhead of Calvinism.  These doctrines constituted the common understanding of the gospel among Southern Baptists during their first seventy-five years of existence.  They are clearly asserted and defended in the writings of former convention leaders such as James Petigru Boyce, John Leadly Dagg, John A. Broadus, W.B. Johnson, R.B.C. Howell, Basil Manly, Sr., Basil Manly, Jr., Patrick H. Mell, Richard Fuller, and Richard Furman (just to name a few).

Regardless of what it is termed (e.g., Calvinism, Reformed theology, the doctrines of grace, etc.), I believe that the annals of our heritage bear these truths out to be nothing less than historic Southern Baptist orthodoxy.  This is the theology which gave rise to the conception and early emergence of the great missionary and evangelistic establishment which we know as the SBC.  This is what our forefathers accounted to be the true teaching of Scripture.  These are the doctrines on which they erected their churches and which buttressed their ministries.

Van L. Loomis, Jr.

Pastor-Teacher

Redeeming Grace Baptist Church

Mathews, VA

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[1] It was in 1553 that Michael Servetus was executed for heresy.  One wonders how Calvin ever became the whipping boy for the Servetus execution.  Executions for heresy were a common, cultural event at the time.  Servetus was convicted of heresy in France and escaped from jail in Vienna.  He fled to Geneva.  The Genevan authorities caught Servetus and consulted with the authorities in Vienna, who demanded his immediate extradition.  However, the Genevan city council offered him a choice: he could stay in Geneva and face charges or return to Vienna.  He chose to stay in Geneva.  As the trial came to a close, the council determined it could only proceed with one of two actions: either banishment or execution.  They chose to execute the heretic (which, again, was a common, cultural thing to do) by burning him alive.  Calvin intervened to appeal for the more merciful form of execution, beheading.  The council refused.  It is strange that there is so much intense focus on this one execution while hundreds of other executions at that time period in other parts of the world are ignored.

[2] R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “The Reformation of Doctrine and the Renewal of the Church: A Response to Dr. William R. Estep, http://www.albertmohler.com/FidelitasRead.php?article=fidel021, accessed 03/21/2009.

John MacArthur, R.C.Sproul – about Christian music

Worldliness without Electricity

Just over a year ago I was involved in training a group of poor and persecuted pastors somewhere in the Far East.  My assignment was to go through the historical books of the Old Testament.  Part of my teaching led us through the life of Samson.  I have preached several times on the life of Samson here in America.  My focus has been on Samson conformity to the culture rather than his resistance to it.  How the children of Israel has been surrounded by Philistine culture for forty years and had stop asking for deliverance.  They had imbibed it, accepted it, were participating in it.  Now, I thought to myself these messages will not be very relevant to these poorer men living in a country where they are persecuted.  Surely they will not wrestle with the love of the world like Americans do in their prosperity.  They probably don’t have televisions, don’t go to movies, don’t listen to rock, they go to dances, they don’t dress immodestly, etc.   But the response of these men to the warnings about worldliness was intense.  You must preach this to the churches here!  And so I did.  The response again was somewhat electrifying.  People who heard began to get on their cell phones and re-preach the message to those who had missed it.   How could this be?  And then it hit me (I’m fairly slow).  When John wrote not to love the world or the things in the world, he was writing to a people who lived in rather primitive conditions.   They had no MP3 players.  They had never seen a movie, never watched anything on television, they did not read salacious magazines.  When James warned that friendship with the world was enmity against God, he did not have Britney, Paris, or Lindsay in mind.  Their warnings were given to people without electricity.  I realized then that my understanding of what it means to love the world must be able to be preached in the midst of Somalia or Ethiopia.  The issues of pride and lust and coveting and having our hearts and minds set upon the things of this world are as relevant to an Amish farmer as they are to the Hollywood starlet.  In his book, The Distinguishing Traits of Christian Character, Pastor Gardiner Spring writes of the people of this world, “Their thoughts and their affections are chained down to the things of time and sense.  And in these they seem to be irrecoverably immersed. They seldom think but they think of the world; they seldom converse but they converse of the world.  The world is the cause of their perplexity and the source of their enjoyment.”   You see, it is possible to live on a commune separate from “the world” and yet be immersed in it.  If our hopes and joys are surrounded with those things that death can take away, that thieves can steal, that moth and rust can eat, then are we not conformed to this world?  The farmer who lives for his show cow, the woman whose pride is in her well ordered home, the native on the plain who boasts in his hunting is just as much a worldling as the seductively dressed teen drinking in pop culture.  The issue of worldliness is not in the things themselves, but in the heart that finds its ultimate joys and hopes in them.

James Savastio

Reformed Baptist Church of Louisville

“The Sin of Infant Baptism”, written by a sinning Baptist

Mark Dever writes about the sin of infant baptism. Read it here

Should we Rock the flock? In defense of Hymns part 1

I know a secret about the Pastor. Only a few other people know. Lurking in his downstairs closet is a collection of Stryper records. That’s right, Stryper, the Christian 80’s hair-metal band. In his defense, the Pastor doesn’t even own a turntable anymore (his old one is in our front room), and if he did, he probably wouldn’t be caught dead air-guitaring around the living room to Shout At The Devil these days. But there they are, a testament to a time when bee-striped spandex body-suits seemed totally and unironically awesome.

My wife and I took them out to snicker in high school. While this may seem mean-spirited, if you can’t snicker at a group of grown men in bee-striped spandex body-suits, what can you snicker at? Obviously, their Godly Crue (Van Heaven?) shtick has not worn well. And yet, there was a time when Stryper was the future of Christian music: exciting, relevant, and appealing to young people. They were contemporary.

Over the last several decades, “contemporary” has been the buzzword of evangelical liturgy. It is offered as an upbeat foil to the stogy, dirge-like hymns that marked Protestant worship for the preceding centuries. Contemporary worship borrows existing tropes in popular secular music, and refurbishes them for sacred purposes. The idea is, one imagines, that if people like it on the radio, they’ll like it in church, and the church’s duty is to give the people what they like. In practice, this means a very narrowly defined set of signifiers preferred by the broadest base of consumers (or the broadest base with the deepest pockets) gets churchified, and that becomes “contemporary.”

One of the problems with “contemporary” is that it was always a moving target, and now there are a lot more targets. I often wonder when I hear a service is contemporary, which contemporary they mean. Carrie Underwood? Animal Collective? Lil’ Wayne? The notion of contemporary Christian music as a descriptor is nonsensical, because there is no monolithic “Contemporary Music” at all. Instead, there are a million contemporary musics. We are no longer in an era when musical tastes are dictated by a handful of record labels and radio stations. The primary method of music consumption for my generation is the computer. This has both democratized and fragmented musical tastes. I have as much access to Sri Lankan rappers, Seattle madrigal singers, and an Icelandic guy who makes music with rocks as I do to the winner of last season’s American Idol.

Never mind the fact that notions of “current” have become de-moored from chronology. I teach at an art school where my kids have a keen grasp of what is going on in music, and I am more likely to see the Beatles (40 years past), Tupac (15 years past), or David Bowie (30 years past) on a t-shirt than whoever is currently in the top 40. Not a few kids would be sporting a Miles Davis shirt if they knew where to find one. So which of these should I expect to hear at my local “contemporary” service? Saying that your worship music sounds contemporary is like saying your communion wine tastes contemporary because it has been replaced with Mountain Dew. As tastes fragment and become less homogenized, the claim that Contemporary worship is somehow more democratic because it appeals to a broader base is becoming more tenuous with each download.

What’s more, Contemporary Christian music is rarely contemporary in the most meaningful sense. It rarely introduces actual musical or aesthetic innovations, but rather co-opts them second hand, and usually a solid half-decade after the actual innovators. This explains why much of what is called “Christian Contemporary” is lousy with the sort of post-grunge mule-braying that wasn’t even cool when it was introduced in secular music at the end of the 90’s; or more recently, the bloated prefab majesty Coldplay lifted from U2 in the middle part of this decade. In its quest to be current, Contemporary Christian music fails at its own game. It always lags behind the ever changing tastes of secular music with a “can-we-play-too?” There is a new Stryper every decade.

This criticism would be more relevant if “contemporary” were used as a descriptor, but increasingly, it is simply applied as a genre tag. Listeners don’t flock to Contemporary Christian Music because they want something truly contemporary, rather, they want a particular genre of music targeted to their demographic in the same way hip-hop is targeted to appeal to inner-city youth. CCM has its own (borrowed) vocabulary that listeners expect and enjoy.  This vocabulary is culled from the most innocuous elements of popular music of the last generation. Heartfelt guys with guitars, using essentially romantic language, and repeating the same stuff a bunch of times as the music steadily increases in volume. Finish off with a quiet, double-heartfelt voice-crack ending, and it is sure to rock minivans in subdivisions all across the country.

As purely a genre, poking fun at Christian Contemporary makes about as much sense as poking fun at Thomas Kinkade (you know, the Painter of Light), or light beer. It might be valid, but nobody likes a snob. But we are not talking about music as entertainment, rather, we are talking about music for the utilitarian purpose of accomplishing the task of worship. Because of this, it is our duty to critically engage in this music in the same way we ought to guard the theology of our sermons.

The conversation concerning the “Worship Wars” has been handled with a shucksey shuffle on the side of traditionalists for the last decade or two. Traditionalists have been too afraid of being labeled curmudgeons to advance a robust advocacy of the hymns. Much of this is the result of a godly deference to our Contemporary-minded brothers and sisters (and, of course, they are our brothers and sisters), but, part of this is because we have lost the vocabulary and disregarded the gravity of meaningful musical criticism, especially in worship where it is most relevant. The conversation has broken down to the vague, insubstantial language of personal preference and a whatever-floats-your-boat shrug.

It is tautology to simply acknowledge a plurality opinions and tastes and assume the discussion ends there. This doesn’t pass in secular music, where there is still a robust critical conversation, why should it pass in our liturgy, the most important application of music in the Universe? The problem isn’t that the importance of music has been inflated; rather, the importance of entertainment has been inflated to the detriment of music. We’ve been told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder so often, that we’ve forgotten beauty is in the eye of The Beholder.

Justin Longacre is 26 years old and is a member of Providence Reformed Baptist in Toledo Ohio, where he has taught a series on competing philosophies. He teaches high school English and American literature at Toledo School for the Arts, and has his own rock band. Sort of.

Keach on the contradictions of Calvinist Paedobaptism

From Benjamin Keach, Gold Refin\’d, or, Baptism in its Primitive Purity (London: 1689), 169.

Is it not strange men should say, all children of believers are in covenant, and that there is no falling from a state of grace; but that the New Covenant is so well ordered in all things, and sure, that it will secure all that are indeed in it, unto eternal life; and yet many of these children, who they say, are in this covenant, perish in their sins, dying unregenerate?

James M. Renihan, Dean

The Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies

www.reformedbaptistinstitute.org

Why doesn’t John MacArthur add much application to his sermons?

Listen here: John MacArthur on Sermon Application

Read it here

Not a Serious Lot

Lot just didn’t take Abraham all that seriously. Sure, he went with him when he migrated from Ur, what else would he do? After all, Uncle Abram was his de facto father since Lot’s father Haran had died. Lot heard about this God who had spoken to Abram and promised him a seed and land. He knew Abram was committed to worship this God at His altars of sacrifice. He had even witnessed God’s deliverance of Abram from Egypt when Abram lied about Sarai, his wife. Certainly Pharaoh took Abram seriously when he discovered that Sarai, his new addition to his harem, was Abram’s wife and the Lord struck his house with great plagues.  As significant as all that was, the thing that impressed Lot was the wealth that Abram amassed, wealth that spilled over into Lot’s possession.

When the opportunity came to strike out on his own, Lot didn’t take Abram’s God and His promises as seriously as he took the prospect of increased wealth. So he separated from Abram and moved into the notoriously wicked city of Sodom. Hey, why take their reputation of sin all that seriously? Why let a little sin get in the way of making more money?  Even after Lot experienced the serious trauma of being captured by the four invading kings and surprisingly being rescued by Abraham, he still didn’t take the sin of Sodom seriously. He returned to Sodom and worked his way into the city’s politics, earning himself a seat at the city gate. He knew about the population’s violent sensuality and took it seriously enough to compel the two curious visitors to stay at his home to protect them, intending to whisk them out first thing in the morning. But that night, things really got serious.

The violent homosexual crowd demanded to have their way with the two visitors, and when Lot addressed them as brothers, they didn’t take him seriously. In fact, they let him know that during his entire time in Sodom, in spite of all his politicking, they had never taken him seriously. But they were serious now. They rushed at Lot in a surge of anger. After the two visitors, now seen to be angels, rescued Lot, Lot finally got serious. He believed their warnings and went off to urge his sons-in-law to flee the city before the outpouring of divine destruction. Lot preached a good sermon to those men. He believed the angel’s message and delivered the warning with earnest appeal. But he appeared to his sons-in-law to be jesting (Gen 19:14). They just couldn’t take Lot seriously.

The angels had to physically remove Lot from the city and even then Lot resisted the angel’s directives.  As the sun rose on the morn of the day of destruction, the angels told Lot to flee to the mountains.  Lot negotiated a compromise with the angels to flee to Zoar.  Lot’s negotiation reveals his approach to life. Lot lived according to the motto seen in verse 20: is it not small? In his mind, Zoar was just a small town.  Is the Lord so serious about destroying the valley that He couldn’t spare this small town?  Is it not just a small compromise? Lot tolerates small compromises.  Can’t the Lord?  Would the Lord take a little compromise all that seriously?  Astonishingly, the angels gave Lot permission to go to Zoar.  On the way, Lot’s wife looked back to Sodom and was overcome by God’s judgment.  Lot eventually left Zoar.  His story of compromise ends with a sad and sordid scene in a dark cave of debauchery.

Evidently, little in Lot’s character or conduct compelled others to give him or his professed religion serious regard. His Sodomite neighbors, his wife, his daughters, and his sons-in-law just couldn’t take Lot seriously. Their common assessment was he appeared to be jesting.  If it were not for Peter informing us that righteous Lot (was) oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (2 Pt 2:7), we would not take Lot’s religion all that seriously either.

I’ve encountered some in our Sodom-like generation who want me to be like ludicrous Lot. “Now don’t get too serious there preacher.”  Ahh, I think I’ve got a sense of humor.  I even use humor judiciously to release pent up tension while preaching.  But I hope no one would respond to my preaching like Lot’s sons-in-law and conclude that I am just jesting.  Now, I don’t intend to be dour or morbid, but can I really be too serious? Can I be too serious about being a voice that forms the watershed at which men divide and flow either on into heaven or hell? Can I be too serious while Babylon seduces and the Beast ravages the people of God?  Can I be too serious while serving Christ’s sheep on a spiritual battlefield?  Can I be too serious about giving an account for the souls of men?  Will Jesus say to me on that Day when He is casting men out of His presence into eternal darkness, that I was just too serious about all this salvation from the wrath to come stuff?

When I’m told that I’m just too serious, I think about Lot. How many times he must’ve made little is it not small compromises to avoid some Sodomite indicting him of being too serious, when in fact, he wasn’t serious enough.  Lot compromised and didn’t take Sodom’s sin or his own compulsion to compromise seriously.  But it was serious. Likewise, Sodom compromised and put up with Lot’s politicking and his idiosyncratic discomfort at their sensual immorality, but didn’t take Lot’s preaching seriously.  But it was serious.  Life lived on the threshold of divine judgment is serious.  Yet when Lot urged his sons-in-law to flee God’s impending wrath, they thought he was joking.

“It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke.” (Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or Vol 1, Princeton, 1971. p.30)

Perhaps Lot-like compromising clowns are not the best suited to communicate this sober and serious message of God’s gospel?  Seems to me, it’s time to get serious.

Alan Dunn, Pastor

Grace Covenant Baptist Church

Flemington, NJ

Tiptoeing through TULIP

Layoff allegations reveal Calvinism tensions at Baptist seminary. Read it here

The Coming Evangelical Collapse

Michael Spencer, who has more than once had some pretty harsh things to say about yours truly and this ministry, nonetheless speaks much truth in this article in the Christian Science Monitor. Colin Smith pointed this out to me two days ago, and Phil Johnson commented on it on his blog today. I agree with many of his predictions, and with a large portion of his identification of the problems with much of evangelicalism. But what is missing in Spencer’s commentary is rather glaring: the wrath of God upon Western Society as a whole. The reason more and more people are godless and religionless and in love with secular humanism is not merely due to a “failure” of evangelicalism. Let’s face it: America follows Europe’s lead, and as God has blessed the USA greatly with material blessings, we have become more and more hardenend in our thanklessness. We focus upon ourselves, our needs, and revel in our sins. Yes, of course the church has failed to clearly preach the gospel, clearly call for repentance, choosing a man-friendly version of “preaching” that allows you to avoid the scandal of the gospel. But a healthy, thriving church is a blessing on any nation, and the fact is, a nation in love with itself and at war with God does not deserve the blessing of a sound church. The two are intertwined. I truly believe that what we are seeing today with the perversion of marriage, the exaltation of deviancy, etc., is not what will bring the wrath of God, it is the wrath of God.
I have been saying for years now that the day is coming when we will have to count the cost to speak the truth in Western society. Spencer seems to agree:

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

We are seeing this already in Europe with great clarity, and we can see it in the words of the new leadership in the United States as well. The rhetoric of the left in the last election made it very clear, and the fact that there are people this very day seeking to destroy the reputations and businesses of anyone who contributed to Proposition 8 in California is clear testimony to the diseased nature of Western society.
Another of Spencer’s comments needs to be repeated:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

I cannot glibly dismiss this strong statement by saying, “Well, not in MY home, not in MY church!” I have done all I could to avoid this very problem in my own life, but the fact is that my generation has utterly failed the next in passing on any meaningful connection to the past, any meaningful passion for the faith. Oh, sure, there are exceptions. I think of some of the young folks I know through our ministry’s chat channel, like Lane and Sue and Stark and slam and Floggy and Mika and SirBrass and Machaira and Yogi—but the exceptions sadly prove the rule. Sure, as my daughter Summer would tell me, her own generation is intent upon ignoring even our feeble efforts, being far too busy pursuing after the things of this world. But the reality is, the speed at which the degeneration of our society is proceeding will only accelerate over the next two decades, barring an outpouring of God’s Spirit bringing repentance and revival to our land.

James White
Alpha and Omega Ministries

The New Calvinism

“The New Calvinism” ranked third in a Time Magazine listing of 10 ideals changing the world right now. click here to read

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Reposting My Video Response to Sean Penn After YouTube Censorship

James White

Communal Individuality

My journey into individuality began as the snow gently fell one evening in the winter of 1973. I stood in a cone of light beneath a sidewalk lamp outside my college library, eagerly opening the book I had just checked out. My philosophy professor’s description of Soren Kierkegaard’s quest for authentic individuality resonated profoundly in me. Kierkegaard was a social misfit in his Christianized culture. I was not assimilating into the fundamentalist subculture of my college. The disconnect was complex. I had honest theological and ethical questions that, when asked, elicited a threatened, terse, dismissive response. I was also inhaling the noxious gas of the ’60’s zeitgeist which flattered my youthful pride and incited my romance with rebellion. The darkness of the evening served to highlight the page illuminated beneath the lamppost, as floating flakes of snow drifted about in my peripheral vision. I opened the book to the author’s dedication page. Kierkegaard’s first words electrified me, confirming and inviting: “to that individual.” And so began my journey into existential subjectivity guided by “the melancholic Dane” that culminated five years later with a master’s thesis on Kierkegaard.

My journey into community began in my seminary’s cafeteria on a spring day in 1980. I was working on a paper for one of my New Testament classes in which I was surveying Paul’s salutations. His repeated phrase to the church struck me as significant. I looked up from my paper and gazed out the window at the gothic campus buildings. An unsettling question formed in my mind: “Paul did not write ‘to the seminary,’ did he?” My eye turned away from the widow to catch a glimpse of one of my favorite professors walking down the hallway. At the time I thought I might like to be a professor. That question asked to be asked again: “Did Paul write to ‘professor’ Timothy?” I looked back down at the words in my Bible: to the church. And so began my journey into community that took me to a little country church in a backwater town of western New Jersey in the fall of 1982. (Please do not interpret me as saying there is no place for seminaries and professors. I’m merely recounting my subjective experience of forming both my individual and community identities. Once an existentialist, always an existentialist.)

An emphasis on individualism is characteristic of our western society. It has its roots in Greek philosophy, and in our generation, it has commandeered our cultural values. David Wells in Losing our Virtue (Eerdmans, 1998. p120) surveys the effects of rampant American individualism. Our entertainment, education, economics, domestic patterns and religion are all geared toward the idolatry of self. Most telling, perhaps, is the relatively recent explosion of psychology. Wells writes, “the near obsession with the individualized self has spawned an industry whose watchwords are self-image, self-ideal, the true self, the false self, the inner self, and self-actualization.”  We esteem the self and relinquish all relationships in order to “go off and find our selves.” Then, convinced of ourselves and self-confident, we might, if we deem it to our advantage, concede to the need for community. But we enter community often for self-serving reasons.

The dynamics of the Bible are precisely the inverse. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it (1 Cor 12:27). The community is defined first and that corporate identity then gives significance to the individual’s identity, function and purpose. In Scripture, we see the Lord forming a people for Himself. We, as a community of redeemed sinners, are to be a sanctified society, a prototype of the eschatological culture that will be manifest in the resurrection at the restoration of all things. We, as a city set on a hill, are to emit the light of righteousness and gospel grace.  Corporately, we are to attract others to leave the tyranny of Satan and his demonically deceived cultures and, by faith, to follow Jesus our Lord and King. However, following Jesus in individual discipleship is accomplished in the community of disciples. John 13:34,35 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another. I cannot follow Jesus unless I am learning to love His disciples. Jesus is building a community of love and if that is the kind of community Jesus is building, then I must be the kind of individual who can have membership in that community. My individuality must be shaped in the matrix of relationships which are shaped by the gospel. My individual salvation is bound up with the salvation of the people of God. My personal ethics are dictated by the corporate good. Phil 3:3,4 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

In the body of Christ, the individual is not lost, although he is called to lose his life for Christ’s sake in order that he may find it. But note, it is his life, his individuality, that he finds. He finds himself in Christ through self-denial, burying himself into sacrificial service to all men, but especially to those who are of the household of the faith. (Gal 6:10)  The community is not shaped by communism that abolishes individuality and private ownership. No, it is a community shaped by the gospel, that kingdom and His righteousness which we are to seek first. Only in the community of King Jesus, will we find that beautiful balance that gives due validity to both the individual and the community. Christopher Wright (Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, IVP, 2004. p.366) notes the covenantal nature of our relationship with God and His people. “The essence of the covenant relationship is corporate: ‘I will be your God; you will be My people.’ Here ‘you’ and ‘your’ are plural. But the primary demand of the covenant is addressed to the individual, with a singular ‘you’: ‘You shall have no other gods before Me.’”  If the Lord Jesus Christ is my God, then I will know Him as my God only as I take my place among the people to whom He says, “I will be your God, and you will be My people.”

Kierkegaard’s dedication “to that individual” and Paul’s salutation “to the church” both speak to me. I am an individual in the community of the church. Paul says, Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it (1 Cor 12:27). That is the proper balance: first, understand your community identity (Christ’s body), and then in that context, discover your individual identity (individually members of it). My experience was precisely the opposite. I first delved into existential subjectivity to the point of imbalanced indulgence and now, in a process of repentance, I am learning to embrace my place within the body of Christ. As a recovering existentialist, I am in a lifelong pursuit of “communal individuality.”

Alan Dunn, Pastor

Grace Covenant Baptist Church

Flemington, NJ

The Problem with Words

Human life is all about communication. God made us to be social creatures, interacting with others over a wide spectrum of occasions. From the womb onward, we express ourselves. Parents nurture their children; friends encourage friends; people reach out to one another. But most importantly, the Lord speaks to us. Our theologians teach us that God’s communication is by way of analogy. The difference between Creator and creature is so great that our Sovereign must stoop to make himself known to us.
Human communication is complicated by the confusion of tongues. Each language is different in structure and vocabulary, so that in many cases, there are few one-to-one correspondences between words and phrases from one language to another. Bible translators have struggled with this reality for centuries. It is imperative to take inspired words and render them into another language; yet it may be that the receiving language cannot adequately express the thought of the original.

Beyond this, at times our translators have worked with an agenda in mind. Rather than render the Greek word ekklesia properly as assembly, or perhaps congregation, they gave us the word ‘church’ thus obscuring the intention of the original. In another case, they failed to even attempt to translate baptizo, and simply transliterated it into English. To translate the term would have created difficulties for a widespread practice!

Theology has struggled with the problem of words. In some cases, human language has simply been inadequate to express the transcendent wonder of its object. It is fascinating to read the history of trinitarianism, noting how devout and careful theologians struggled to find terms adequate for such a sublime doctrine. Similarly, theologians wrestle with the dynamic character of language. Over time, almost all words change in sense. Common usage may take a term, such as ‘prevent’ and alter it completely. At the beginning of the 17th century, this term was understood in the positive sense ‘go before’-it is used this way in the Authorized Version in 1 Thess. 4. But we no longer employ the word with this sense today. Words evolve.

And so does language. From century to century, the usage of words ebbs and floes. A word that is common in an earlier period may completely drop out of use; while new terms are being minted constantly. Each year news reports tell us which new terms have been added to the standard dictionaries. In our own generation we see this. If in 1965 you heard two people speaking about email, cell phones, iPods, and eBay, you would have no idea of what they spoke! Yet today, these are the commonest of terms in our vocabulary.

These realities are a problem for our theological thinking and formulation. As heirs of a long and wonderful tradition of Christian thinkers, men who dedicated their lives to understanding and applying the truth of Scripture, we need to be aware of these realities. Our words may not have been their words; the freight we place on terms may not have been present in their thinking; words in common use today may not even have been introduced into the language when they penned their treatises. If we fail to remember this, we will run into all kinds of difficulties in understanding what they wrote and advocated. John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards and others thought and wrote as men of their own times-and when we read them, we must remember this. Historical theology is not a simple discipline-in fact it is a complex discipline requiring careful research and contemplation. It is not right to sit in judgment on the past until we first understand the past-why did our theologians express themselves as they did? What was the state of language when they wrestled with these issues? Matters may be very complex, and we must not rush to judgment.

I am thankful, however, for one word which never fails to communicate-the Word made flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ. He is faithful in all things, and never fails us. Our greatest study must be knowing Him. He is the sum of all theology-God’s final revelation of Himself to man. While there may be many problems inherent in our words, there is no problem with this Word.

James M. Renihan, Dean

The Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies

http://www.reformedbaptistinstitute.org