THE HISTORICAL CRITIQUE FROM PURITAN ECCLESIOLOGY
A continual strain throughout the Family-Integrated Church Movement (FICM) literature is that the modern American Church has abandoned the historical roots of Christianity and Protestantism in particular. The FICM argument is that the American church in its program-oriented pursuit of bigger churches has left what churches used to be and has instead modeled itself after the corporation. The FICM says that from the beginning the church has been a family of families. This was purportedly seen in the early church, and was the standard in the Puritan practice.
This part of the FICM argument regarding a family of families ecclesiology is not well-developed, but they do see themselves as a better historical representation of the early church and a better reflection of the puritan ecclesiology. In a very popular article entitled “My Four Favorite Family-Integrated Pastors” Scott Brown writes, “The critics of the family-integrated church movement often forget that what we advocate was practiced by some of our most treasured pastors and theologians of the past.” [1] The historicity of Brown’s claim is debatable and needs to be explored in order to see if his contention is true. I have already explored the Biblical record, and now I would like to investigate whether this argument is true. Has the church traditionally understood itself as a family of families as the FICM argues?
The FICM thinks they are on solid historical ground when they compare their movement to the Puritan practice of worship and ecclesiology. This is certainly the common feeling among the FICM, but it is not necessarily true. When Brown uses the term family-integrated worship, he means to say that the Puritans held to the same ecclesiology of the FICM. Perhaps they do not mean the same thing precisely, but nevertheless they espoused the same kind of ecclesiology with the same emphases. In the article Brown discusses two Puritans and two Puritanesque pastors: Richard Baxter, John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, and Jonathan Edwards.
Brown says:
Week after week, they found great joy in preaching the pure and pleasant Word of God to families, filling them up with great theology. Imagine what it would have been like to have heard the voice of Richard Baxter or Matthew Henry or Jonathan Edwards as a babe in arms, then as a teenager, and then as a young man starting out life with a new wife at your side.[2]
This is nothing less than a romantized version of what never really was, except in the possible case of Matthew Henry. John Bunyan spent 12 years in prison where he was allowed to meet with his people some of the time. Richard Baxter was only in his famed Kidderminster pulpit from 1647-61. Jonathan Edwards filled the historic pulpit at Northampton from 1727-1748, so it is possible that this romantic vision was reality for a few.
Brown’s espoused vision does not stand up to simple historic fact, but it is nevertheless passed off as the truth. The reason there is a need for this basic critique is that there is a common practice in the FICM to use the Puritans as a historical precedence when real examination denies what the FICM says about the Puritans. The Puritans did not see the church as a family of families. They did not hold to the same sort of worldview as the FICM does. They did not particularly homeschool their children. They did not see fathers as the primary means of evangelism. They did not hold an idolization of the nuclear family with the church working centrally through the family. There is a great deal of overlap between the FICM theology of families and the Puritan view of families. To deny this overlap would be intellectually dishonest, but to equate them is to blur the full picture of the Puritan ecclesiology and the place of families in their ecclesiology.
The Puritan’s Theological View of Families and the Church
The Puritans were the most thorough reformers of their day. Their God-centered, Bible-saturated vision of all things included the family. They had a keen theological doctrine of the family. Their families were not essentially a social unit, but rather theological groups. The family was to be marked as “Holiness to the LORD.” The Puritan Robert Cleaver wrote, “The government of a Familie tendeth unto two things specially. First, Christian holiness…they must seeke to have holiness found in their habitation whereby God may be glorified.”[3]
This idea stemmed from their view of covenant theology, and that was that just as in the Old Covenant families were in the covenant, so in the New Covenant families were in the covenant. This was the foundation on which the family was built in Puritan thought, and thus Baxter argued that, “all societies that have God for their founder or institutor, should, to their utmost capacities, be devoted to him that founded and instituted them.”[4] From this covenantal basis flowed all the aspects of family life. Man and woman were in covenant together. They were to reflect the covenant love between Christ and the Church. Parents and children were in covenant with each other. Out of this covenant parents were to admonish and teach their children. Thomas Cobbet wrote, “The greatest love and faithfulness which parents as covenanters can show to God, and to their children…is so to educate them, that…the conditions of the covenant may be attended by their children.”[5]
There clearly was an admirable drive for multi-generational faithfulness on covenantal grounds, but nevertheless the Puritans did not fall into line with the family of families ecclesiology. The paedobaptistic Puritans, although they were willing to say that families were in the New Covenant, did not say that the church was a family of families. The families were not the primary building blocks of the church. Nor was the church viewed primarily through the lens of the household as the FICM wishes to do; rather the church was a very spiritual, even personal, reality.
The evidence for the Puritan view of the church as a spiritual reality is abundant, and necessary to review, if someone is to understand the Puritan ecclesiology properly. The FICM understands very well the reality that the Church is not an institutional structure, but rather a relational reality. The Church is not the professional clergy and rituals. It is not any hierarchy, but is primarily a reality created by a web of relationships. But the Puritans did not understand this relational reality to be one based on family life, but rather spiritual life and faith. William Gouge wrote that the church consists of those who “inwardly and effectively by the Spirit…believe in Christ.”[6] In a catechism Henry Jacob wrote in response to the question, “How was such a church to be constituted?”, Henry said, “By a free mutual consent of believers joining and covenanting to live as members of a holy society together.”[7]
William Ames wrote in The Marrow of Theology, “Such a congregation or particular church is a society of believers joined together in a special bond for the continual exercise of the communion of saints among themselves.”[8] Ames calls those who make up particular churches two things, “saints” and “believers”, neither of these things can be predicated to families. He does allow for children to be called members of the church, but immediately clarifies their position: “Yet children are not such perfect members of the church that they can exercise acts of communion or be admitted to all its privileges unless there is first a growth of faith.”[9] He also says:
The form or constituting cause of this church must be something found alike in all those who are called. This can only be a relationship, and the only relationship which has this power is that which comes from a primary and intimate affection toward Christ. In man this comes only by faith. Faith, therefore, is the form of the church.[10]
The Westminster Confession is in complete agreement with Ames’ theology. It says in summary: “The visible Church…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Chris, the house and family of God.” [11] The same tension noticed in Ames registers in the Larger Catechism. In question 61 it is asked, “Are all they saved who hear the gospel, and live in the church?” The answer says, “All that hear the gospel, and live in the visible church are not saved; but they only who are true members of the church invisible.”[12]
There is a recognized tension in most Puritan theology that although the children of believers are in the New Covenant, and as such they are somehow in the church, these children are not full or “perfect” members. This shows that the Puritan ecclesiology wavered between two poles. The first pole is the recognition that the Bible certainly teaches that the invisible church is certainly only made up of true believers. Faith is the “form”, as Ames calls it, of the Church. The other pole is their desire to somehow include the children in the membership of the same church, because covenant is the matrix for church membership. These are the two poles that determined how the paedobaptist Puritans did the local church, and how they did discipleship. There was a constant tension between knowing that only true believers were in the invisible church and true disciples, and that the children of believers were thought to have special privileges pertaining to the new covenant.
What is lacking in Puritan presbyterian ecclesiology is the recognition that the church is a family of families. The Puritans did not see the church as primarily constructed out of families, but out of believers whose children have an imperfect membership in the church. The children of believers are in the visible church by virtue of the faith of their parents, but they are not recognized to be in the true church until they personally experience conversion. In neither the Westminster Confession, nor the Larger or Smaller Catechism is the word family used in any of the descriptions or questions regarding the church. It seems clear from this general assessment that it is not possible that the authors merely assumed it and left it unsaid. The evidence, rather, points that they did not use the word because they did not think in those terms. As was said before, they saw the constituted local church primarily made of believers with their children as attached by the covenant, yet still not “perfect” members.
Richard Baxter’s Theology of Family and Ecclesiology
One of the FICM’s most referenced Puritans is Richard Baxter. Because he is used so much to maintain the FICM’s ecclesiology and particular theology of the family, his theology needs to be explored to see how much he actually supports their ecclesiology and overall theology of family. Richard Baxter certainly said a lot about families and how they should be ordered. The modern church is dying to hear much of what he says about the importance of religion in the family. He certainly stressed the need for family masters to lead their families in worship. He spent a whole chapter in his Christian Directory in motivating “men to the holy governing of their families”[13] He gives 10 motives for this holy governing. Among these reasons he says, “A well-governed family is an excellent help to the saving of all the souls that are in it.”[14] Baxter says as well, “A holy and well-governed family doth tend to make a holy posterity, and so to propagate the fear of God from generation to generation.”[15] Another motive he gives is that, “A holy, well-governed family is the preparative to a holy and well-governed church.”[16]
Now this point needs to be examined in more detail to see that Baxter does not in fact believe that the church is a family of families. Rather, he views the family as separate from the church, and although there is an intimate relationship between the two they are not related as parts to the whole. Listen how he states his view of the respective holiness of the family and the church:
If masters of families did their parts, and sent such polished materials to the churches, as they ought to do, the work and life of the pastors of the church would be unspeakably more easy and delightful; it would do one good to preach to such an auditory, and to catechize them, and instruct them, and examine them and watch over them, who are prepared by a wise and holy education, and understand and love the doctrine which they hear. To lay such polished stones in the building is an easy and delightful work…how comely and beautiful would the churches be, which are composed of such persons!”[17] (emphasis mine)
The relationship of the church and the family is not a relationship of parts to the whole, but rather supplier and supplied. The families are the birthing and trying grounds for the members of the church who are persons and individual stones. Richard Baxter in this section does not have in mind that the church is made up of families, nor does he regard the church as working primarily through families. The church is a separate entity that is made up of individuals who come from families.
There are several other lines of thought in Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory pointing away from an ecclesiology of a family-integrated church. The first is that he gives several powerful motives for a pastor not to marry and have children. In the FICM the prerequisite found in 1 Timothy 3 saying that a man must rule his own household well is emphasized to the degree that the pastor, is if not formally, at least informally, thought to require a family to rule in the church. Voddie Baucham said that the point of this qualification is that the pastor must, “show [the church] how to do family”[18] This point, rather than being one qualification of many, becomes one of his defining skills, one of his necessary qualifications, comparable to teaching. Richard Baxter stresses the exact opposite. He gives twenty reasons why people should seek not to marry if at all possible.[19] He basically flushes out 1 Corinthians 7.26-28:
Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.
After giving twenty reasons for all Christians to not seek marriage, he gives four additional reasons that a minister should not seek marriage. He qualifies his reasons saying:
Not that it is simply unlawful for them…as they are in the kingdom of Rome…But so great a hindrance ordinarily is this troublesome state of life to the sacred ministration which they undertake, that a very clear call should be expected for their satisfaction.[20]
Baxter saw this qualification as only applying to ministers who were married, rather than pointing to a necessary perquisite to ruling. One wonders how the single Richard Baxter would have fit into the family-integrated churches of America? Which family would have adopted him into their household, so he could minister properly?
Richard Baxter’s Christian Directory makes additional points that distance him from the FICM model of ecclesiology as well. As was stated previously many of the FICM churches in their zeal for family-integration have resorted to father’s distributing the elements of the Lord’s Supper as “pastors” of their family, as Eric Wallace suggested. This is far from Richard Baxter’s idea of how the sacrament should be administered. In a question and answer format he explains how communion should be administered. He says, “Are all the members of the visible church to be admitted to this sacrament?” Answer: “It is presupposed, that none should be numbered with the adult members of the church, but those that have personally owned their baptismal covenant, by a credible profession of true Christianity.”[21]
Richard Baxter’s view of communion is precisely in line with the typical Puritan view of ecclesiology and practice. The minister should not allow anyone, but those who have a credible profession of faith, to be considered as a member of the church with full rights. Also it does not enter his mind to suggest that fathers, as fathers, are involved in the administration of the sacrament. He never suggests anyone other than an ordained pastor should be officiating and administering the sacrament. He writes, “Look upon the minister as the agent or officer of Christ, who is commissioned by him to seal and deliver to you the covenant and its benefits.”[22] As well as this: It is the duty of the pastors and governors of the church, to keep away notorious, scandalous offenders.”[23] Fathers are not considered officers of the church as elders or pastors over their flock. The minister is God’s commissioned officer, God’s shepherd to defend the flock.
The evidence from the Baxter’s Christian Directory conclusively speaks against the FICM’s ecclesiology, but what does Baxter’s other often-cited work The Reformed Pastor say concerning this matter? The Reformed Pastor is a reflection of Baxter’s well-known ministry at Kidderminster from 1647-1661. This tenacious book calls for the great work of pastoral oversight through catechizing the members of the parish. It should be noted that Baxter saw this as a ministry to all those under his care. The spiritual condition of Kidderminster at Baxter’s arrival was appalling, but he made it his practice to visit every family in the town, not just those who were members of the church. The motive seems rather to be evangelical rather than a motive to visit the families of the church.
Baxter viewed this exercise not so much as a reflection that families themselves were so important, but that to visit each house was the way to reach every individual in his parish. He writes:
Little do they know that the minister is in the church, as the schoolmaster in his school, to teach, and take an account of every one in particular (emphasis mine); and that all Christians, ordinarily, must be disciples or scholars in some such school. They think not that a minister is in the church, as a physician in a town, for all people to resort to, for personal advice for the curing of all their diseases…They consider not, that all souls in the congregation are bound, for their own safety, to have personal recourse to him, for the resolving of their doubts, and for help against their sins, and for direction in duty.[24]
His practice then does not reflect a general desire to be in families or see families particularly as so important in this matter of pastoral oversight. The individuals lived in families, and the best way to meet all the individuals in the parish was to meet them in their homes with their families. This is further proved in his instructions to the pastors on how they should carry out this work. He says, “When your people come to you, one family or more, begin with a brief preface, to mollify their minds…”[25] This suggests that he was not particularly concerned about how many families he met with in this business, but rather that he could get a larger group of them together at once for the saving of time. His instructions continue, “When you have spoken thus to them all, take them one by one, and deal with them as far as you can in private, out of the hearing of the rest.”[26] Baxter wanted to have plain dealing with people’s souls. His interest was the conversion of souls. He was not satisfied to have families learning the catechism and father’s teaching their children the catechism. He wanted to have heart to heart conversations with everyone where he could speak plainly to them and they could in turn open up to him their fears, sins, and weaknesses.
The evidence from Richard Baxter suggests that he was not a family-integrated pastor. He was rather ordinary in his Puritan ecclesiology. He did not see the family as a redemptive unit or the building block of the church. The family life and worship had great influence on the church, and no one could or would want to deny, but he did not elevate the family over the individual soul. The individual was the building block of the church. The individual was the stone that the family supplied to the church for its construction. He preached, not for family cohesion and multi-generational family faithfulness, but for the conversion of souls and the edification of the church. He spent himself in pastoral oversight not over families, but over individuals who naturally lived in families. He sought the welfare of families, because their good meant the good of the entire society and the blessing of the church in particular, but there was no idolatry of the family, nor was there a family integrated ecclesiology that tried to combine the two.
The Ecclesiology of John Owen
J.I. Packer in his book Quest for Godliness compared the Puritans to the redwoods of California. Packer saw John Owen as one who stood taller than all the rest without rival. Packer wrote, “His thought was not subtle nor complicated… His ideas, like Norman pillars, leave in the mind an impression of massive grandeur precisely by reason of the solid simplicity of their structure.”[27] In the English language only Jonathan Edwards comes close to comparing to John Owen. Was John Owen a family-integrated pastor?
The answer is no; he was not a family-integrated pastor, and he didn’t see the church as constituted of families. He saw churches as constituted of believers. In Owen’s work entitled A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God and Discipline of the Churches of the New Testament, he explains what he thought of ecclesiology. In question 19 Owen asks, “What is the instituted church of the gospel?” The answer runs this way, “A society of persons called out of the world, or their natural worldly state, by administration of the word and Spirit.”[28] What is most interesting about this answer is his explanation. He says he is not referring to the catholic church of elect believers, nor the “universality of professors of the gospel; but a particular church.”[29] He goes onto say, “For although it be required of them of whom a particular church is constituted that they be true believers, see that unless a man be born again he cannot enter into the kingdom of God…”[30] True believers make up particular churches not families. Individuals are the target of the church, and it is individuals that Christ seeks. Later, he spoke of how Christ builds his church. He wrote:
We have declared that the Lord Christ, by the dispensation of his word and Spirit, doth prepare and fit men to be subjects of his kingdom, members of his church. The work of sending forth the means of the conversion of the souls of men, of translating them from the power of darkness into light, he hath taken upon himself, and doth effectually accomplish it in ever generation. And by this means he builds his church.[31]
In the entire section he is referring to the local, independent, visible church. He says it is believers that constitute the church, and it is Christ that builds his church by translating them through the power of darkness. If the Presbyterian Puritans were not clear enough, Owen makes it crystal clear that it is only those whom have been translated from darkness to light that are the building blocks of the church. He wrote commenting on 1 Timothy 3.15, Hebrews 3.6 and Ephesians 2.21-22, 1 Peter 2.5, “Besides the church is a house, a temple…believers, singly considered, are stones, living stones.”[32] Owen did not see families as the stones of the church, but believers.
Owen was still fairly conventional in his ecclesiology. He still regarded children as members of the church in the same way as other Puritans viewed them. They had a quasi-formal membership in the church, although they were not to be thought of full members. He did have some very interesting ideas in light of the FICM discussion about children and the care the church should take of them. He writes:
Though neither the church nor its privileges be continued and preserved, as of old, by carnal generation, yet, because of the nature of the dispensation of God’s covenant, wherein he hath promised to be a God unto believers and their seed, the advantage of the means of a gracious education in such families, and of conversion and edification in the ministry of the church, ordinarily the continuation of the church is to depend on the addition of members out of the families already incorporated in it.[33]
This is an excellent balancing statement. He sees both the church as being and not being made of families. From one perspective it is made of families, because of his view of covenant theology, but on the other hand, the church is added to out of families. The families supply the people that make up the church.
The question must then be asked, “What should be done with the child-member?” They are in the church, but not quite in the church. Should the church care for these members?
Owen’s answer is insightful. He says the church’s duty is to do several things for the children. Among several of the church’s duties is the duty to provide catechetical instruction according to their capacities. The church was to teach the children directly through a catechism. In case it is supposed that he meant that the church was to do this through their parents he says that children are often neglected and left in a ruined state precisely because of “the want of a teacher or catechist in every church, who should attend only unto the instruction of this sort of persons.”[34]
John Owen then apparently saw that each local church had a duty towards the children who were in their midst to teach them according to their capacity. The church did not only work through families, but had people who taught children specifically in a way that they could understand. It sounds striking when compared to Voddie Baucham’s comment, “It’s not the church’s job to disciple my children. At best it is the church’s job to equip me and assist me as I do what God commanded me to do in discipling my children.”[35] John Owen would not agree with that assessment, nor the ecclesiology that lies behind it.
The Early Particular Baptists
The FICM is strongest among the Reformed Baptists. There are many Family-Integrated Churches who hold to the 1689 London Confession. The modern day Reformed Baptists on the whole do not embrace this ecclesiology, while still holding very much to the importance of family-togetherness in worship and the place of family worship in the home. It is necessary to examine early Baptist ecclesiology to see if this FICM ecclesiology corresponds to the early particular Baptists.
Dr. James Renihan laid much of the groundwork for this examination in his doctoral dissertation entitled, The Practical Ecclesiology of the English Particular Baptists, 1675-1705. A careful reading of the evidence shows that the signers of the London Confession were not family-integrated theologians, but rather very much of the typical puritanical stripe without the quasi-formal membership of children as covenant and church members.
The 1689 Confession states in 26.6: “The members of these churches are saints by calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and waling) their obedience unto that call of Christ…”[36] Throughout the chapter on the Church there is not the word family, but rather the London Confession always speaks of “members.” The emphasis is that individuals saved by grace and professing faith make up the church, and they alone.
In this rather succinct paragraph curiously the Confession does not give a formal definition of the local church, but different ecclesiastical writings of the time supplied this need. Hercules Collins was a pastor at London’s oldest Baptist church for 26 years (1676-1702) and one of the particular Baptists most esteemed theologians. He followed John Owen’s definition of the local church: “A society of Persons called out of the World, or their natural world state, by the Administration of Word and Spirit, into the obedience of Faith or the Knowledge of the Worship of God in Christ.”[37]
Benjamin Keach wrote about the local church:
A Church of Christ, according to the Gospel-Institution, is a Congregation of Godly Christians, who as a Stated Assembly do by mutual agreement and consent give themselves up to the Lord, and one to another, according to the will of God; and do ordinarily meet together in one place, for the Publick Service and worship of God; among whom the Word of God and Sacraments are duly administered, according to Christ’s Institution.[38]
Further evidence suggests that household voting in business meetings were not the norm among the early Baptist churches. They were very strict in their application of 1 Timothy 2.12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” Their strict obedience to 1 Timothy 2.12 though did not mean that they did not allow women to participate in the life of the church. The Abdingdon Association, a group of particular Baptists churches began in 1652, determined that a woman might speak in three cases: “to apply for membership in a church by giving her profession of faith, to be a witness or participant in discipline cases, and to express repentance if she had been disciplined.”[39] This clearly shows that there was at least some recognition that women could have some independent role in the church besides through her family.
Perhaps this view developed more as the Baptists churches grew up. In 1694 there was a debate regarding “sisters respecting their Silance and Speaking in the Church”[40] in the Maze Pond, London church. This church was one of the strictest churches regarding women speaking in worship. They did not allow singing in the church in an effort to protect the women from breaking the 1 Timothy 2.12 injunction. They, nevertheless, said that women “were permitted to vote by raising their hands, and speak concerns with regard to a matter for vote upon approval by the church body.”[41]
The early Baptists made it crystal clear that the local church should primarily be understood as a gathering of baptized believers. There is no doubt they understood the importance of families for they were consciously inline with the other Puritans, but nevertheless, they saw no reason to suggest or define the church as a family phenomenon. The emphasis was on God’s work in an individual’s life that resulted in a profession of faith. It was not assumed that a person was a Christian and therefore a church member until they had a credible profession of faith. The member’s credible profession gave to them the right to fully participate in the church’s life including participating in business meetings without going through their husbands. The headship of men did not squelch’s the woman’s voice in the congregation of the faithful, but rather governed how it could be used.
Jason Webb
Jason is a graduate of the Reformed Theological Seminary and a member of Grace Fellowship Church
[1] Scott Brown. My Four Favorite Family-Integrated Pastors. Uniting Church and Family. http://www.visionforumministries.org/issues/cross_examination/my_top_four_favorite_familyint.aspx (accessed 16 August 2008).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Robert Cleaver, A Godlie Forme of Householde Government: For the Ordering of Priveate Famlies, According to the Direction of Gods Word. (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1622) 17.
[4] Richard Baxter, The Christian Directory, p. 411.
[5] Thomas Cobbett, A Fruitfull and Usefull Discourse, 218, as quoted in Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Family.( New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 91.
[6] William Gouge as quoted in Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints, 115.
[7] Ryken, 117.
[8] William Ames, The Marrow of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997), 179.
[9] Ibid., 180.
[10] Ibid., 176.
[11] Westminster Confession 25.2.
[12] Larger Catechism, question 61.
[13] Baxter, Christian Directory, 424.
[14] Ibid., 425.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., 425-426.
[18] Voddie Boucham, “The Two Skills a Pastor Must Have” In Faith in Practice Conference, October 2005. http://www.uu.edu/audio/Detail.cfm?ID=228; Internet; accessed 7 October 2008.
[19] Not every one of these reasons are good. They are not, especially his comments regarding the “imbecility of the female sex.” That is the only one that does not bear consideration.
[20] Baxter, Christian Directory, 400.
[21] Ibid., 495.
[22] Ibid., 494.
[23] Ibid., 498.
[24] Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1999), 181.
[25] Ibid., 238.
[26] Ibid., 239.
[27] J.I. Packer, Quest for Godliness. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 193.
[28] John Owen, A Brief Instruction in the Worship of God. Works of John Owen (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1965. 15: 445-530), 479.
[29] Ibid., 480.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid., 487.
[32] Ibid. 489.
[33] John Owen, The Nature of the Gospel Church, Works of John Owen. (Carlisle, Pa: Banner of Truth, 1965. 16:23.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Voddie Baucham, “The Nature of the Family,” in Faith in Practice Conference, October 2005. http://www.uu.edu/audio/Detail.cfm?ID=227; Internet; 7 October 2008.
[36] London Baptist Confession 26.6
[37] Herecles Collins, Some Reasons for Seperation as quoted in James Renihan’s Particular Ecclesiology 86.
[38] Benjamin Keach, The Glory of a True Church and its Discipline display’d as quoted in Renihan’s, Particular Ecclesiology, 87.
[39] Renihan, Particular Ecclesiology, 264.
[40] Ibid., 265.
[41] Ibid.
Many years ago, an article was put into my hands, at just the right time, in just the right place in my life, which has impacted me for many years. Most Christians can testify of a time they heard an old truth as if they heard it for the first time. These are truths that become part of us and stay with us through good times and the seemingly difficult ones.
Perhaps those words are shocking to you to read. They are somewhat shocking for me to write, but it’s true. I am dying.
I am occasionally asked about a statement in 2LCF 2:1, which teaches us that God is ‘without body, parts or passions.’ This is a statement about the simplicity and immutability of God, important, even essential doctrines in classic theism. While most agree that God has no ‘body’ despite the frequent use of ‘body’ terminology in Scripture, and that He cannot be dissected into ‘parts,’ many stumble at the use of ‘passions’ since Scripture also employs the language of apparent ‘feelings’ or to use a modern term not in use in the 17th century, ‘emotions.’
Many people measure the quality of their church and pastor on the basis of whether or not he makes them feel “good” about themselves. “If I leave feeling affirmed and encouraged about myself, the ministry is great. But if I leave feeling convicted of my sin and the need to implement important changes to my life, the ministry is lousy. I mean, with all the stress I have to endure throughout the week, why would I want to go to a church where my emotional egg-shell gets cracked?”
For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself? (Lk 9:24,25) We tend to think that self-denial is something like letting another person go ahead of us in traffic or turning off our favorite TV show to help tidy up the house or tend to the kids. It is not that such sacrificial conduct isn’t commendable as bona fide Kingdom behavior, but Jesus’ description of self-denial is much more penetrating and all-encompassing than occasional deferential courtesies.
Happy anniversary to me! As I write this, it is July 1, 2009, twenty years since my wife and I made our vows before God and men to be husband and wife. Twenty years give you a fair amount of time to get to know your spouse. I am thankful that after twenty years of observing my wife, witnessing her struggles, hearing her confess her sins, and watching her bear with me, that we are not only committed to one anther, we actually love and enjoy one another.
There is a new ministry in town that is really taking off. I had heard that the pastor held to many truths which I myself hold dear. They had a Saturday service so I decided to go and check it out for myself. I found that fundamentally the church was no different from mine. The pastor even sort of looked like me and preached a sermon very similar to the kinds of messages I preach. The big difference was that there were many more people, maybe four or five times the size of the congregation which I pastor.
If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself. If there is a challenge that biblical discipleship poses to Americans, it is self-denial.
Soon there will be confirmation hearings on a new Justice for the United States Supreme Court. Politics and partisanship will most likely take center stage in the hearings. But more important than the person eventually seated will be the Constitution of the United States which they are sworn to uphold.
Christians sing! We have good reason to sing, the God of all the living has come to us in the Person of His Son. More, God by His Spirit indwells all His children empowering them for life and service.
Authentic, biblical Christianity has always been an exclusive religion. This became apparent during the Roman Empire. When the Emperor Alexander Severus heard about Christianity, he placed an image of Christ beside the other gods in his private chapel, just to be safe. The Romans were happy to welcome Jesus into their pantheon. What the Romans couldn’t understand was why Christians refused to reciprocate. If the emperor was willing to worship Christ, why weren’t Christians willing to worship the emperor? Yet the early Christians insisted that in order to worship Christ at all, they had to worship Christ alone. They were even willing to stand up for this conviction by playing “Christians and lions” at the Colosseum.
He makes the barren woman abide in the house As a joyful mother of children. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 113:9)
“My way or the highway!” This was the attitude of Achilles, the champion Greek warrior, in the Battle for Troy. General Agamemnon had slighted the superstar’s feelings, so he sulked in his tent, refusing to participate in the battle, resulting in the death of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend.
Ecclesiastes 12:12 — …Of making of books there is no end, and, much study is weariness to the flesh.
The Pattern of Sound Doctrine: Systematic Theology at the Westminster Seminaries: Essays in Honor of Robert B. Strimple, David VanDrunen, ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2004).