Monday, December 30, 2013

The Lord, Our Fortress, or "Yo, listen up"

“'Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations,I will be exalted in the earth!' The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress."~Ps. 46:10-11.

   The Psalms have much to say about the hope of our assurance, in this life, and the one to come.  Ultimately, that assurance comes in the character of the One who Is.  In a brief few lines of Hebrew, a couplet, really, the Sons of Korah (or whoever's mouth God put the words of the 46th Psalm in), sum up both WHY we should not fear, either of salvation, or of our works and fate in this life, and the ultimate source of that 'why'.  If you will, Psalm 46 contains both the primary and secondary causes, the ontology both ultimate and causal, of why we "should not be anxious about our life" (Luke 12:22).  

   The beginning of the Psalm (as Fraulein Maria would have it, a very good place to start), says that "our Lord is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble".  Not only is the Lord our God present in time of trouble, he is VERY present.  The ESV text notes give as an alternate translation "well-proved", and who would know better than the sons of the Old Covenant our Lord as a help in trouble? Therefore the first claim of the Lord as our fortress is evidenciary.  The sons of Korah had not yet seen the Lord "make wars cease to the ends of the earth" (vs. 9), but in the water that poured from the rock, in the inheritance of the Land across the Jordan, in the countless wars that Israel had seen deliverance from, in the exodus out of Egyptian bondage, they knew that God had both the power and the will to deliver his people, that he was a present hope, a well-proved fortress.  However, the evidence from experience, as in all doctrinal matters, is only secondarily a proof: the primary, the ontological evidence, is in the Scriptural revelation of God's eternal character.
   "Be Still, and know".  This knowledge is not a matter of cosmological arguments, of good times and bad, of rescue from troubles (no matter how varied or serious).  It is not a matter of abbacuses and Texas Instruments lcd screens.  It is not a matter of simple assent to the existence of God as God.  The wicked know that (Romans 1).  The Demons know that (James 2).  The explanation for this "knowing" can only be the Holy Spirit in the hearts of His people.  In fact, the operative phrase here is not the "knowing" but the "stillness".  In our silence, in our trust, in our knowledge that This (whatever it is) is not It, we profess the non-ultimacy of ourselves and the ultimacy of the Father.  This can be informed by evidence and experience and study (and should be! and will be!) but that is not WHY.  The WHY is a cosmic shout from on high proclaiming "Yo, Listen up.  Be Still.  Know."  The peace that we receive passes all understanding (Phil. 4:7).  We are not to question our maker (Rom. 9:20).  When Job did, his response from the Father was not a response that soothed Job's "evidence" for why this was the greater good, nor was it an insight into the unsearchable wisdom of God.   Rather it was a lengthy exposition of God's majesty in the creative decree, topped by "shall a faultfinder contend with the almighty?  He who argues with God, let him answer it...will you even put be in the wrong?  Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?" (Job 40).
   Our knowledge is written on our hearts with the Law of God.  As created beings, God says "be still, and know that I am your creator".  Jesus echoes this in his admonition that we are worth more than many sparrows and all our hairs are numbered.  In God's role as our Creator and our Master, our being still is a simple and tacit acknowledgement that the Lord of all the Earth will do right (Gen. 18:25).  Every one of our sufferings, our response to them, and the ultimate triumph of God's people, gets glory for Himself.  Our Fortress will be exalted among the nations.  Our fortress will be exalted in the earth.  As one of the songs we sing as Coram says "God will have His glory, one way or another."
   Does the glory that God will get matter to you?  Is it important?  Is it a sufficient reason for you to bear up in suffering and in despair?  Do you know that you share as a child in the glory of the Father?  And when you are called on to lay that crown down at the feet of the Son, will that laying down be everything you've ever wanted?  The Israelite prophets made little of themselves for the glory of God.  Paul counted all things rubbish for the sake of Christ.  And the heroes of the Reformation stood in awe of God's providence, knowing that their suffering, their agonies in torture, their very forfeit lives were secondary to the exaltation of our God in the Earth.  
    Be exalted in God's exaltation, Church.  Be still, and know that the magnification of our creator, the providence of the only wise God, is our Fortress.  

~JS    

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Calling a spade a digging implement, or "I heart haters"

   It takes zero effort to find, or even bring to mind, the opinions of the huddled masses on "love" and "hate" in Christianity.  The consistent drumbeat of modern culture taps out two rhythms on a regular basis: "God is Love", and "the attitudes of the Christian right involve hatred" (whether that be hatred of homosexuals, minorities, non-Christians...whoever.  In fact, the previous post regarding the great Duck scandal of '13, addressing the likelihood that Christians will hear "bigot" and "hater", received some response that consisted of...accusations of being a bigot and hater.  In the interest of broadening the understanding of folks regarding Scripture, a few words on the subject of love and hate.

   When folks on the left, religious or otherwise (and indeed, increasing numbers of various Christian churches) say "God is Love" and "God loves the world", which are both scriptural truths, they attach certain fundamental presuppositions to the definition of love.  Firstly, that God's love is deficient compared to human love, e.g., that God's justice would be violated were he to even possess the capacity to love some parts of his creation more, or differently, than others.  When scripture says that God loves the Church like we are to love our wives, that is a sign that God's love is not a bowl of jello pudding with no valleys or heights, but that God loves the church in a special way.  The English language suffers from a deficit of words for "love" and "world", as highlighted in CS Lewis' text on the four loves of Scripture, and the gospel of John's 13 different uses of the word "cosmos".  (When we are to love not the world or the things of it, no one thinks that cosmos means all people identically, and yet that context is stripped from John three in most pulpits).

   Linked to this idea of God's love, which reminds one of a toddler with peanut butter (it gets on everything, somehow) is the idea that God's love cannot be transformative, and in fact that it lacks the evaluative significance of even human affection.  How can the love of God transform if God loves the reprobate the same as the Church?  How can God's love be evaluative if God, unlike us, is obligated to love equally? In fact, the unfastidious love of this (hypothetical) God cannot be attached to human morality at all, much less affect it.  And it is this love which demarcates the shadow of the left's idea of "hate".

   The dictionary defines "hatred" as an intense dislike for something or someone.  It is true, regrettably for the theological left, that according to that venerable repository of English vernacular, God hates a lot of stuff.  Stuff we call sin.  Haughty eyes and lying tongues (Psalm 6:16), idolatrous worship, (Deut. 12:31), lovers of violence (Psalm 11:5), dishonest reverence (Is. 1:14) the works of the Nicolaitians (Rev. 2:6), etc.  Compounded with King David, a man after God's own heart, who reckoned as enemies in the Psalms, all who hate the Lord, it is clear that God's hatred for violation of his law is an eternal and just component of his character.  The Proverbs tell us that the very fear and reverence of the Lord is the hatred of evil. (8:13).  All of this is lost in the context of a weak and shallow God who pours out warm fuzzies on mankind without discrimination, who indeed has no moral law which is enforceable, who cannot speak with enough clarity to even reveal what he dislikes or prefers.

   If any on the church left have stuck with me to this point, their claim will be that people like me don't distinguish between the sinner and sin.  Leaving aside the fact that sometimes God and David don't either (Ps. 139:21), they point to the supremacy of Christ's commands to love thy neighbor and pray for our enemies.  While the same cavillers have little interest in a holistic, non-contradictory reading of Scripture, this circle can be squared by rejecting the church left's definition of love, which itself cannot distinguish between sin and sinner.  To love people is to want the best for them, to pray for them is to desire what God desires for his people: to come to a saving knowledge of the Truth (1 Timothy 2:4).  To "love them" is not to pour out the same undiscriminating acceptance of all behavior that people allege of God.  If it is difficult for Christians to react in a godly way to, for example, homosexuals, it is made more so by the obscene spectacle of "pride parades" in which man is so totally immersed, his self image so totally bound to his sin, that there is nothing left of his identity but hatred of God's law.  (Imagine a parade of people demanding that their love of murder be recognized as vital to their self esteem).  To love a homosexual is to hate their homosexuality, just as to love a heroin user is to hate their heroin use.  That this is a scandal and a stumbling block cannot be helped, I am commanded to proclaim it by a higher authority than GLAAD.

   If there are those who criticize my prior terminology of spiritual combat, of a God who hates evil, it is Scripture they beef with, not me.  Do I "hate" homosexuals?  No.  I am grieved for the lostness of those sunk in that lifestyle while remembering that I am no better without the alien righteousness of Christ.  But I do not repent of the black-and-white nature of Theonomy, nor of the "warfare" terminology.  All who fail to find Christ injure themselves and those who hate him love death (Proverbs 8:36).  Am I a "hater"?  Yes, I hate the death I was purchased out of too much to accept it passively for others, and I pray that God increases the hatred of that death in me daily.

~JS

Thursday, December 19, 2013

The world turned upside down, or "for the record, I don't watch Duck Dynasty".

   The time has come, the walrus said, to speak regarding queens.  As I'm sure you are all aware, this happened.  I cite the infamously "fair and balanced" huffpost for a reason, namely that Phil Robertson's comments, which amount to nothing more than quoting the First epistle to the Corinthians, saying that sin is irrational (it is), that God hates it (He does), that all sin is sin (it is) and that homosexuality is sin (which it emphatically is, both the acts and the desire for them), are now "vulgar Anti-Gay comments".  PLEASE NOTE the caps.  In the same way in which I capitalize God, the left now capitalizes "anti-gay".
   This comes on the heels of the decision on the part of our judicial system at the state level to "soften" our polygamy law.  As James White said on his most recent podcast, (which can be found at aomin.org), "this is not a slippery slope, it is a cliff".  Why on God's (whoops, redacted) why on green earth would we care who marries what, or who, now?  I mean, for crying out loud, one can't say "women have more to offer men" anymore...how backwards and old-fashioned.  Let alone "a woman's vagina is natural for sex".  Let me be absolutely clear here.  To everyone out there who believes a single word of the bible regarding sexuality.  To everyone who believes that God's decree included male and female,(Mt. 19:4) and that his first ordinance for man was marriage. (Gen. 2:24) To everyone who is simply squicked out by man-on-man anal sex, (because that was the "vulgar opinion" expressed by Mr. Robertson): this is a declaration of war.  Don't think your jobs are safe.  Don't think your family won't experience discrimination.  Don't think, for a second, that you won't hear "bigot", "hate-monger", "anti-gay", "extremist".  Mr. Robertson has, as have I.  And don't think for a second that all of it isn't worth it.
    Matthew 10.  A servant is not greater than his master.  Jesus was hated, scorned, accused, maligned, slandered, driven from town, threatened, scourged, spit on, and beaten until his flesh peeled from his bones.  Then, willingly, he carried the instrument he was to be nailed to until dead up a hill, to call, perfectly, a people to himself.  Sheep aren't greater than the Shepherd.  If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more the members of the household?  We were baptized into the death of our shepherd.  As his sheep, if we aren't hated, we aren't trying hard enough.
   Get ready, America.  Europe has seen jailed pastors, near-universal apostasy, evangelization deemed hate speech and churches rendered meek instruments of the state (examine the fate of Anglicanism).  It has seen prison sentences for reading the Bible, reporters fired for wearing cross-shaped jewelry, and transformation of a holy institution of marriage into a twisted mockery and a spitting on the creative decree.  And we're about to see it too.  The legal precedent is set, and the civil servants are carrying it out.  This is war.
   Guess what?  Jesus wins.  This war, and all wars.  The gospel reaches all the earth.  Every knee bows.  Every tongue confesses. That is what you should remember.  You should remember that Jesus came to bring a sword (Mt. 10:34), that he will acknowledge those who acknowledge him before men (10:33), that you are worth more than many sparrows 10:31).  And you should remember that Jesus' people are hated for his name's sake, that that is a mark of those who persevere to the end.  But most of all, you should remember: Every knee bows.  Every tongue confesses.  Yours.  Mine.  Phil Robertson's.  The owners of A and E.  Hollywood.  Straights and gays and fornicators and liars and married folks and single folks. Christians and apostates and Atheists.

   Jesus wins.

~JS

Monday, December 16, 2013

Mary did you k-YES. YES SHE DID, or "I thought you weren't Catholic anymore?, pt. 2"

   I was about to post on Mary in the Christmas narrative, and the woeful level of biblical literacy displayed by no one ever's favorite Christmas song, but Doug Wilson did it for me.  I don't really have much to add to his stirring commentary but the following:

   1) There is a reason for a biblically high view of Mary, and it is not because she is a demiurge or alter christus (Wilson did a great job highlighting the "omniscence problem").  Most young men of the Reformed stripe hold up the apostle Paul as a role model, and well they should.  The character of Mary in scripture is a a very solid parallel for young Christian women, who it must be said, suffer a numerical dearth of such role models.

   2) Mary's special character comes entirely from the Holy Spirit and is a free, unmerited gift, as is her role as Theotokos, but that does not make the character, or the role, less important, but rather, magnifies said Spirit, as the Magnificat attests to.

   3) The alternative perspective, that Mary was, (and it must be said, the titular song reflects it) some dumb farmgirl with no distinguishing marks who had no idea what was going on even after being told by an angel, shares both a detriment and an origin with the aforementioned ministers suppressing the season of Advent.  The detriment: that God's work in mankind lacks a full-orbed presentation and that sciptural benefits (in this case, role models, in the other, sacred time) are stripped to serve the "cause".  The origin: that "cause" which is resembling Romanism as little as possible.  Folks, Christ purchased our spiritual freedom and the heroes of the Reformation purchased our political freedom.  Put down the pitchforks and look for Christ in his seasons and saints, his Word and his ordinances.  Stop looking for Jesuits in the pulpit and inquisitions where there are inquiries.

   May the Jesus Christ who humbled himself to be born of the virgin make your holiday season merry and bright this year.  And maybe turn off Spirit 105.

~JS

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Sacred Time, Sacred Space, or "I thought you weren't Catholic anymore"

   At risk of seeming pedantic, this post is in response to a rather mundane question, which is usually phrased as "what's with the suit".  To expand on that, despite my swim over the Tiber, people frequently question my clinging to High Church approaches to worship, ecclesiology, and the sacraments.  They have a right to do so; especially since I have made no bones in the past about my belief that the alternative betrays an inconsistent hermeneutic of the Christian life, if you will.  You can call that worldview what you like: traditionalist, hide-bound, "old man James syndrome", etc., but I write to ensure that the one thing it cannot be called is closet sacerdotalism.  At the core, many of the things I think, say and do are bound up in my belief in the existence both of sacred time and sacred space.  The commitment to these in Catholicism was a large part of the draw for me, but I believe that they are scriptural, which is to say Christian concepts that transcend denominational or religious differences, and so I will defend them as such here.
   This is certainly an appropriate season of the year to discuss sacred time, and it is as a general rule the more widely accepted of the concepts in American Christianity, not least because of the Christmas season.  We are all aware of the well-meaning if paranoid ministers of the gospel in our midst who suppress all acknowledgement of the incarnation in late December due to its alleged papist/pagan origins.  While this mindset may not be bedfellows with the brand of Protestantism which brandishes a KJV in one hand and a microscope for checking under rocks for Jesuits in the other, it at least can wave at that brand from its apartment across the hall.  By and large, however, the majority of American churchmen, even the Reformed variety, have seen fit to accept and acknowledge Christmas, as has my local congregation.
   This means that to one degree or another, the majority of American Christians already accept, in the Christmas season, a form of sacred time, that is to say a time of the year with special significance to Christians, in which certain parts of the Christian walk, in this case the importance of the Incarnation to the Gospel are commemorated.  While Christ is "incarnate" in our hearts constantly, and praise for the Incarnation should spring readily to the lips of the Christian at all times, this does not mean that Christians who celebrate Christmas should tear down that season as an "idol" to be thrown in the great leveling fire that low churchmen often seem to treat the new covenant as.  Christmas derives no magic power from it's celebration, and it has no intrinsic capacity to commemorate the Incarnation and the virtues of love, peace and giving any more than other time, indeed unless you celebrate Advent in Spring it is not even historically relevant to the event being commemorated.  Nothing receives "intrinsic" characteristics apart from the decreed will of God anyway.  In celebrating Christmas, the church says "we set apart this time to do something.  As time-bound creatures we accomplish the purposes of God by sanctifying this time to Him for a purpose."
   Sacred time is itself part of the character of God in creation.  God, being totally unbound by time, and its Creator, marks off the boundaries of time and reserves a seventh of it to himself.  God of course, neither needs rest nor is limited by His creation, all of which is His by right.  So why the Sabbath?  To reveal a behavior to be reflected by we, His time-bound creatures, in reserving a part of that time in a special way.  God does not need us to make the Incarnation peace-giving, or his Sabbath holy: he commands us to do so to conform imperfect and temporal creatures to his image.
   In the same way, it is obvious that an omnipresent creator who "fills the Earth with His glory" (Is. 6:3), has nothing He cannot see, and nowhere His hand is not.  But the great egalitarian leveler of Low Church ecclesiology and worship, in saying the new covenant has abolished places and spaces, and yes, acts that are holier or more worshipful than others, has, in my opinion, laid the axe at the root of covenant continuity, and in the extremes, subordinated the idea that Scripture can reveal proper worship to God, to a false conception of the nearness of God.
   It is true that the Holy Spirit resides in the hearts of God's elect, that Christ mediates for them day and night before the Throne of Glory, that the veil was torn, that Jesus is the author of a new and better covenant.  All the Reformed truisms are true, because, strangely enough, they are biblical.  But it is also true that God was triune in the old covenant like he is triune now, that he is holy now like he was holy then, that his ways are not ours and weren't then either.  The God who slew a man for touching the ark, the God whose Levitical priesthood tied ropes around their waste in case they were slain in the temple, is the God of Romans one, and even the God of Romans eight.  Therefore to treat church services, covenant ordinances, corporate worship, and even the places where such are held with anything other than scripturally inspired reverence and awe is to play with fire.
   To deny this doesn't just fly in the face of Reformed history, as Calvin on the regulative principle of worship will attest, it rests on the fundamental conviction that Christ's constant presence with his people, or even in the world generally, trumps God's ability and desire to manifest his presence in greater or lesser degree in time and space.  While we have already noted examples to the contrary in the old covenant (did God's presence in the burning bush, or the holy of holies, mean he was not on His throne?  Absurd), and in the Incarnation itself, (surely God was present in a unique way at the Last Supper), but the teachings of Christ are relevant too.  "When two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with you"....so Christ isn't with one of us?  "Surely I am with you even until the end of the age" ...so the Father wasn't with Israel or the apostles before then?  "My Children, yet a little while, I am with you" ...Jesus is leaving?  Perhaps most notably, the reasons Paul gives for the qualifiers for church office he passes to Timothy are because ministers and deacons, who "desire a noble task", must know how to "behave in the household of God, which is the church, a pillar and buttress of the truth".
   Time, space, tasks.  No time, no spaces, no tasks, are uncreated.  All owe their allegiance to their maker.  And none are worthy apart from God of his presence.  But while God sanctifies the time, the household, the task and the one doing it with his presence, when we have received the gift of holy time, space and offices, how can we do anything else but seek scriptural ways to set them aside for God's purposes, to "remember them and keep them holy"?

~JS

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Ecumaniacs, or "what are you doing in my tent?"

   When Doug Wilson posted a book review of the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, I confess a certain element of anticipatory hand rubbing.  My thoughts, had they been collated, would have amounted to "hoo boy, another one bites the dust", and perhaps long hours of archived James White podcasts have conditioned me to expect the divisive, "stand over there, away from me" approach from any Reformed perspective.  Wilson's positive review left me stymied, but I think it signals an alternative perspective to dialogue within the Christian camp, one which I haven't yet made my mind up on yet.

   There are some in the "big tent" of Christianity who look to engage in what our postmodern college professors trained us to call "othering" at every turn.  "Oh, you aren't a (Calvinist, Arminian, Credo-baptist, ESV reader, RC Sproul fan, 1689 London Confession adherent, supralapsarian)?  Well IIIII'M sure glad that IIII have all the answers".  It's a process I am prone to, and, were I to be honest, is more prevalent in the "New Reformed" of the 21st century than elsewhere.  The extremes of this viewpoint can replace smugness with outright contempt.  Taken too far, this mindset shifts from "I'm sure glad I have all the answers" to "I'm sure glad I don't have to share heaven with THOSE people". Seven things are detestable to the Lord our God, and one of them is sowing division among brothers (Proverbs 6:19).  While it can be fun to wave the flag in support of one's position, it's vital that we ascribe to Christian unity the value that Scripture does.

  Nor does it let us off the hook to paraphrase the Apostles in asking "and who IS my brother", because (unsurprisingly) Scripture tells us that, too.  Paul, in Romans 8, saying that the elect are conformed to Christ, identifies Jesus as the first among many brothers, but in doing so he echoes Christ himself in Matt. 12:47-50. What unites brothers is their unity in Christ.  We share his image in his resurrection, in baptism, his death, and in the Gospel, his message.  All who cling to the cross for salvation are our brothers in Christ, and profession of that faith should supersede issues of doctrine, as Paul admonished the Corinthians.  And this returns me to Wilson and Warren.

  As a glass-half full type, Wilson is prone to see the good in the works of his fellow Christians, whereas as a "what is this glass doing here, I ordered a hamburger" type, I often see only disagreement.  When Wilson reads Warren, he says "look how deft the prose and apt the use of various translations!".  I say "yeah, he needs those to aid his evangellyfish obscuring of the gospel".  And here is where I and the Reformed, need to watch themselves.  It is all too easy to transfer "gospel" to my opinion, "brothers" to people who agree with us, and "true religion" to "let me see your Reformation Study Bible".  The Kingdom of God has all sorts of weirdos in it, because the bride of the Lamb still has the veil on.  It's still one Kingdom and one bride, and God is doing work with, and in, all of it.  Cling to the Reformed faith, sure, but acknowledge that God is drawing straight lines with crooked sticks.  Crooked sticks like Rick Warren, and you, and me.

   I do want to close this, the inaugural post of this new blog project, with a note of caution.  Like most issues, dialogue between religious folks has more than one extreme, and both ends are pointy.  The other poky bit, in this case, comes from none other than The Most Humble Man in the World (tm), who doesn't always praise false religions, but when he does...I pause to raise the image of, as 16th century Ottoman galleys circle Italy, a Roman bishop standing and shouting "hey you know what would help us with this Islam thing?  Dialoguing with them about shared values to confirm them solidly in their identity!"  The point here is not the continuing slide of the Vatican into utter postmodernism, although this is a striking example (note esp. the outright pelagianism in 254!), but to caution the Federal Vision, Doug, and others who point out, correctly, that we share a Triune God and a baptism into the death of that God, with Catholics.  Catholics, at least now, profess to be our brothers, and brothers some of them may be!  But the Judaizers of Galatia said they were too.  The tent of Christianity is big: but it's big in such a way that it can only be filled by Christ.  Unity is important, and so are our brothers, but that brotherhood flows only from the death of that First among us...and the well cannot be traded for the water.

~JS