Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 128

Monday Morning Humor

Doctrinal Unity Is the Foundation for Denominational Unity

In their commentary (1954) of the Church Order of the Synod of Dort, Idzerd Van Dellen and Martin Monsma argue persuasively “that doctrinal unity forms the foundation for denominational unity.” They call the “confessional writings” the “very cornerstones” of the Dutch Reformed church and ably demonstrate that “The Reformed Churches have felt the need and import of doctrinal purity and unity from the very beginning of their existence” (221-222).

So what might doctrinal purity and unity look like the Reformed Church in America?

At the very least, unity in the RCA means fidelity to the Heidelberg Catechism. Ministers in the RCA must accept the Catechism, along with the other Standards, as “historic and faithful witnesses to the Word of God.” Ministers are further required by the call form to “explain the points of doctrine contained in the Heidelberg Catechism.” Likewise, the consistory must see to it that the “points of doctrine contained in the Heidelberg Catechism shall be explained by the minister at regular services of worship on the Lord’s Day, so that the exposition of them is completed within a period of four years.” Even without a strict subscription formula, there can be no denying that every minister in the RCA ought to believe the points of doctrine in the Heidelberg Catechism and every church in the RCA ought to frequently and consistently teach what is contained in the Catechism. Our unity is predicated upon such theological uniformity.

So every RCA pulpit and every RCA minister should teach the following (the parenthetical numbers refer to Questions and Answers from the Catechism):

We are born corrupt from conception on and have a natural tendency to hate God and our neighbors (5, 8).
God is terribly angry about the sin we are born with and the sins we personally commit (10).
God will punish these sins now and in eternity, with eternal punishment of body and soul (10, 11).
Christ died as a propitiatory sacrifice, bearing the weight of God’s anger to set us free and make us right with God (17-18).
No one can be saved apart from true faith, which is created through hearing the gospel and rests on the knowledge of Christ (20-21).
Christians believe that everything God reveals in his Word is true (22).
All things, whether good or bad, come to us from God’s fatherly hand (27).
Nothing can move or be moved apart from the will of God (28).
Salvation is found in no one else saved for Jesus (29).
Jesus was born of a literal virgin (35).
Christ sustained in body and soul the anger of God to set us free from eternal condemnation (37, 84).
Christ will come again to take all his chosen ones into the joy and glory of heaven and to condemn his enemies to everlasting punishment (52).
Infants as well as adults should be baptized as a mark of the covenant (74).
The Christian church is duty-bound to exclude unbelieving and ungodly people until they reform their lives (82).
The kingdom of heaven is opened to those who accept the gospel promise in true faith and the kingdom of heaven is closed to unbelievers and hypocrites who do not repent (84).
Those who, though called Christians, profess unchristian teachings or live unchristian lives, after repeated loving counsel, should be excluded from the Christian fellowship and prevented from taking the sacraments (85).
No ungodly, immoral, unchaste person will inherit the kingdom of God (87).
Those who do not know Christ cannot do anything that is truly good (91).
The devil is a real and personal being intent on harming God’s people (112, 123, 127).
God through Christ has become our Father (120).

Of course, this is not anything like a complete list of the important points of doctrine in the Catechism. It’s only a list of the least attended to in our day. We face many difficulties in the RCA, but the biggest and the deepest may be our lack of confessional integrity. It’s no secret that the doctrinal affirmations above are not believed, taught, and defended by all our ministers and by all our churches. Many liberal churches and pastors complain that the Synod has no authority to settle controversial matters of theology and practice. We are, they say, only required to uphold the BCO and the Confessions. But I find it hard to believe these same churches and pastors do believe everything in our Confessions, important points of doctrine like: a literal virgin birth, a personal devil, the reality of eternal condemnation, the complete trustworthiness of everything in God’s word, penal substitutionary atonement, and the need to hear the gospel and put explicit faith in Jesus Christ in order to be saved. Likewise, every pastor should teach total human inability, practice church discipline, administer infant baptism, and celebrate a strong and all-controlling providence. Our denominational unity, not to mention our long-term viability and vitality, depend on re-establishing these doctrinal standards. Agreeing on the right theology is not eveything, but without this foundation we don’t have much of anything.

A robust celebration of the Reformed faith-rooted in Scripture, focused on the gospel, and centered on Christ is not the problem. It is our best answer.

Why We Don’t Need a Second-Blessing Theology (But We Do Need a Third- and Fouth- and Fifth-)

D.A. Carson:

In short, I see biblical support for the thesis that although all true believers have received the Holy Spirit and have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, nevertheless the Holy Spirit is not necessarily poured out on each individual Christian in precisely equivalent quantities (if I may use the language of quantity inherent in the metaphor of “filling”). How else can we explain the peculiar unction that characterizes the service of some relatively unprepossessing ministers?

Although I find no biblical support for a second-blessing theology, I do find support for a second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth-blessing theology.

Although I find no charisma biblically established as the criterion of a second enduement of the Spirit, I do find that there are degrees of unction, blessing, service, and holy joy, along with some more currently celebrated gifts, associated with those whose hearts have been specially touched by the sovereign God.

Although I think it extremely dangerous to pursue a second blessing attested by tongues, I think it no less dangerous not to pant after God at all, and to be satisfied with a merely creedal Christianity that is kosher but complacent, orthodox but ossified, sound but soundly asleep. (Showing the Spirit, 160).

Too Small a Thing

The following is an excerpt from a recent sermon I preached on Acts 1:6-11. This is something I hope to do each week on my blog.

The prose has been slightly edited for ease of reading, but I’ve tried to retain the sermonic, spoken feel as much as possible.

*****

“It is too light a thing,” Isaiah says, “that you should be my servant to take up the tribes of Jacob and to bring the preserved of Israel. I will make you as a light to the nations that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Isa. 49:6).

That was a promise about the Messiah and about the Messianic community. God says what you have in mind is too light a thing. He knew they were thinking, “God if you would just save us, if you would save Israel, if you would save people like me, if you save some friends of mine, some classmates, some people in my family, people who look like me, people vote like me–that’s what I want.” God says “That is all fine, but that is too small.” It is too small a thing that God would raise up the Christ just to save Israel. Oh no, no, no, he will be a light to the nations!

Listen, whatever plans and hopes and dreams you have for the gospel–and I hope you have some. I hope all of your hopes and plans and dreams are not concentrated on just your grades or your girlfriend or fantasy football. As important as those three things are (though it’s hard to be good at fantasy football and have a girlfriend). So I hope you have some plans and dreams for the gospel where you want something to happen in the world. It is possible those plans for the gospel are too self-centered or too impatient or too naïve, but it is not possible for them to be too big.

To the ends of the earth!

Do you want your family to believe in Christ? He can do that. Do you want your dorm? He can do that. Do you want this campus? He can do that. But anything less than the ends of the earth is too small a thing.

The disciples wanted the kingdom restored to Israel, but Jesus says “No, not just Israel. That is where it will start, and from there it will go everywhere.”

You can listen to the entire sermon and watch the whole thing here.

 

When Is It Okay to Ask a Woman If She’s Pregnant?

It’s a tricky question, but this chart provides a good rule of thumb.

HT: The Corner

Blogging for a Sustainable Future

I started doing this in January 2009. That’s close to four years of blogging and well over a thousand posts. I didn’t know what I was doing when I started. I never really thought I would be blogging four years later. I certainly never imagined my readership would increase like it has or that I would end up taking hours each week to keep the blog going.

To tell you the truth, I have a love-hate relationship with blogging. There are weeks when I hate the time commitment. I usually write a week’s worth of blog posts on Monday. It’s a serious investment. It’s not like I’m pining for more responsibilities or more due dates in my life. I also dislike the controversy that comes with blogging, whether it’s necessary controversy or a result of excessively critical comments and nasty trolls. And then there are the times I post something too quickly, too sloppily, or too harshly. That’s when I hate blogging the most, when I make a mistake or say something that proves inaccurate or unwise.

But then there is the other side of blogging. Whenever I’ve thought about hanging up my blogging boots, every person I ask tries to persuade me that the effort is worthwhile. When I travel and meet new people they often tell me “I read your blog all the time” (and more often than not they mention Monday Morning Humor). It seems that my time is not spent in vain (though I’m proud enough to wish they mentioned my preaching instead of my blogging). I’m thankful that years of plodding along in the blogosphere gave me the platform to write a review of Love Wins and allows me to weigh on current events, books, or controversies. I’m thankful for Collin Hansen and Ben Peays and John Starke and all the folks at TGC for giving me a home. I’m thankful for Justin Taylor; without his links in the early days my blog would have never gotten off the ground. I’m thankful for everyone who reads, especially those who have taken the time to say so. Most of all, I’m thankful I can do something I (usually) love. I enjoy all the reading, thinking, and writing that goes into blogging. Hopefully it honors Christ and opens up the Word of God.

All of this is by way of preface. For several months I’ve been thinking, praying, and talking to others about how to make my blogging habits more sustainable. Unless you are a regular blogger, it’s hard to understand how much time and effort it takes to keep a blog going. I don’t say that to complain; it’s a privilege to write and be read. But I’ve realized over the past six months or more that if I want to continue blogging into the future, I need to change the way I do some things. I have five kids, a growing church, books I’d like to write, places I’m supposed to go to, and a number of outside organizations, committees, and projects I’m a part of. How does blogging fit in to all that? I struggle to keep up with my blog on most weeks, but especially when I’m traveling, when I’m working on a book, when I’m on study leave, or when I’m on vacation (and actually want to be on vacation!).

I’ve toyed around with a number of ideas, everything from making the blog a team endeavor to stopping altogether. Here’s what I’ve come up with instead. It’s not drastic, but these small changes should help me, and hopefully they will only make the blog better for you.

I will continue to do Monday Morning Humor (first things first!).
I will continue to (almost) always take Sunday off. In general I will take Saturday off as well.
I’d like to write 1-2 substantive pieces a week. Working on these will be my priority. With all the noise and tweets and blogs and commentary out there, I figure quality is more important than quantity. It seems better for me and more useful for the kingdom to write one truly important piece as opposed to filling up space with four immediately forgotten entries.
As a new feature, I’m going to try posting a sermon excerpt most weeks. With the help of some friends from my church, I’ll pick a brief short segment from my sermon, post the transcript, and link to the short clip (and the sermon itself). The goal is not to push my own stuff, but to use content I’ve already produced and put it on the blog in a digestible way.
With any days left during the week I may post a quotation I come across in my reading, jot down some thoughts that are dying to get out, or simply do nothing at all.
I’ll continue to use Jason Helopoulos and other members of our church staff to spot-blog on occasion. They do a terrific job.
Finally, one of the biggest burdens of blogging is the feeling that you never get a break. I preach over 40 Sunday a year. That’s a lot, but I can easily build in breaks. I can take four weeks off in the summer and not have to think about sermons for a month. But up to this point, I’ve not done that well with blogging. Instead, I’ve kept on blogging during overseas trips and study leaves, or I’ve worked ahead to keep the posts coming over holidays and vacation. For everyone not named Tim Challies, this feels like an unsustainable pattern. That doesn’t mean I’ll disappear from the blog 10 weeks a year. But it does mean there will be more times when I take a week or two off and tap my gifted friends to fill in. It may mean that the blog goes silent for a week every once in awhile. There are worse things in the world than having one less blog to check for a few days.

I hope these small but important changes don’t feel like I’m backing away from blogging. To me they feel like big steps toward making the enterprise more worthwhile, more enjoyable, and more long-term. I write too much as it is. Few people can keep up with multiple blog posts over 1000 words. Few people have read this whole post word for word. The world isn’t clamoring for more information. And, if truth be told, they aren’t clamoring for more of Kevin DeYoung. The biggest obstacles to making these necessary changes have, no doubt, come from myself. I need to trust my readers won’t curse my name if they show up on a Wednesday and find the same post from Tuesday. I need to be okay with staying silent more often. I need be fine with others entering the fray in my place.

The global Church is a big body and I’m just a little pinky finger. It will be okay if this little finger pounds out fewer blogs each year. Everything will be just fine, and the pinky may even do some better work.

Monday Morning Humor

No one can pretend to talk someone else like Bob Newhart.

What Is Religious Freedom?

Here’s a good definition, in six parts:

1. No single religious community enjoys primacy or a monopoly with respect to government endorsement, support, or privilege.

2. Religious actors [i.e. people acting according to religious tenets and beliefs] within a state (some or all) enjoy the freedom to carry out their most distinctive activities–worship and other rituals, education, and public expression, the building of places to worship, missionary work, artistic expression, cultural expression and distinctive dress, and the conduct of civil society activities, including running hospitals, orphanages, services for the poor, and care for elders.

3. Religious actors enjoy the autonomy to create their offices and appoint their leadership.

4. Religious actors lack any standing prerogatives over the appoint of state officials or the making of public policy.

5. Religious actors enjoy autonomy in raising, governing, and spending finances.

6. Religious actors enjoy a transnational structure that strengthens their power vis-a-vis the state.

These six points are taken from Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics. I’m only partway through the book, but it seems well-researched, persuasive, and increasingly relevant.

 

How Did We Get the Canons of Dort?

Jacobus Arminius lived from 1560-1609. He began his teaching career thoroughly Calvinistic. After studying for a time in Geneva (1582-87), Arminius moved to Amsterdam to pastor a prominent church there. As a pastor, he was called upon to defend Calvinistic teaching against Dirck zoon Koornheert. In preparing his defense of traditional Calvinist doctrine, Arminius became convinced of his opponent’s teaching.

In 1603, Arminius was appointed professor of theology at the University of Leiden, where he was strongly opposed by his colleague, Francis Gomarus. Both Arminius and Gomarus believed in predestination, but they differed over the meaning of the word. At the heart of the disagreement was whether predestination was based solely on the will of God (Calvinism) or based on foreseen knowledge of belief (what would later be called Arminianism). The two met for a public debate in 1608, but the issue was no closer to being settled. Both men thought of themselves as Reformed, as Calvinists, but they were not saying the same thing.

Following Arminius’ death in 1609, the movement continued under the leadership of Janus Uytenbogaert, a court preacher at the Hague. In 1610, the Arminian party issued a document called the Remonstrance, setting forth the “Five Articles of the Arminians.” Gomarus and others formed a Contra-Remonstrance party (Gomarists) to oppose the Arminians. Things continued to heat up when Arminius’ successor at the University of Leiden was named–a man by the name of Vorstius, who was practically a Socinian. When the Arminian Simon Episcopius was named Gomarus’ replacement at Leiden, it looked like the tide had turned in favor of the Remonstrants. The Remonstrance party was further supported by the statesman John van Oldenbarneveldt and the jurist/theologian Hugo Grotius.

Political Intrigue

The Netherlands had recently won its independence from Spain. Some were still leery of the Spanish, while others welcomed a closer relationship. In general, the merchant class, for economic and trading reasons, desired improved relations with Spain. The clergy, on the other hand, feared that more contact with Catholic Spain would taint the theology of their churches. The lower class sided with the clergy for theological reasons, for national reasons (anti-Spain), and for class reasons (anti-merchants). Thus, merchants saw Arminianism as favorable to their desire for improved relations with Spain, while the clergy and lower class sided with Gomarus.

The Remonstrance of 1610 was issued to Oldenbarneveldt, Advocate-General of Holland and Friesland. Oldenbarneveldt, who was working to secure a better relationship with Spain, wanted toleration for the Arminians. The Contra-Remonstrance from Gomarists was submitted to the States of Holland in 1611. Oldenbarneveldt and the States of Holland decided on toleration. But the Gomarists wanted an official theological pronouncement to settle the issue once and for all.

Prince Maurice, the son and heir of William of Orange, eventually took the side of the Gomarists (perhaps for theological reasons, but perhaps in an attempt to garner more control of the Netherlands for himself). After Maurice had Olderbarneveldt and others imprisoned, the Estates-General called for an assembly to end the conflict.

The Synod

An international synod convened in Dordrecht from 1618-19. Of the approximately 100 members present, 27 were from Britain, Switzerland, and Germany, while the rest were Dutch. The Dutch contingent was comprised of roughly an equal number of ministers, professors, laymen, and members of the Estates-General. The Remonstrants were soundly defeated at Dort, leading to one of the greatest theological formulations of the Reformation. Unfortunately, Maurice, a product of his times (and not a very nice man it seems), condemned Barneveldt to death and had some Arminian pastors imprisoned. When Maurice died in 1625, measures loosened considerably, and in 1631 Arminians were officially tolerated in the Netherlands.

The Canons of Dort, in rejecting the five points of Arminianism, outlined five points of their own. The first concerning divine election and reprobation, the second on Christ’s death and human redemption through it, the third and fourth points on human corruption and how we convert to God, and finally the perseverance of the saints. Centuries later these five heads of doctrine would become the five points of Calvinism known at TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). The Canons do not pretend to explain everything about Reformed theology, or about the Bible for that matter. Dort simply sought to declare what was “in agreement with the Word of God and accepted till now in the Reformed churches” concerning “Divine Predestination.” With that goal in mind I think the Canons can be counted as a faithful witness and a God-glorifying success.

RCA LINK Conference

 

For those of you involved with the RCA, here is an upcoming conference worth considering:

For well over a decade, many of us have prayed about and discussed the many opportunities and challenges facing the RCA. There are significant concerns ahead—the issue of homosexuality, the authority of Scripture, and the clarity of our mission to name a few. There are also great opportunities—the explosion of church planting, scores of church revitalizations and the spread of the gospel. What we have realized as RCA pastors is that we must find ways for like-minded leaders to connect, to dialogue, to stand together and to strategize a way forward to a preferred future.

It is because of our great love for the RCA and the gospel that the idea for the LINK conference was born.

This October 3-4, we would like to invite you, your elders and staff to the very first LINK conference, The conference starts @ 7pm on 10/3 and ends @3pm on 10/4. The cost of the conference is $45 per person ($40 per person if three or more register together). It will be held at Faith Church in Dyer, Indiana.

We believe and hope that LINK will be used by God to awaken and equip the theological center of the RCA.

There are three things you can expect at the LINK conference:

1) LINK is about relationships. This is a chance to be with like-minded RCA friends who desire to see God’s best for our denomination. The RCA is full of evangelical and reformed leaders that our orthodox, missional and love Jesus. We want to gather under one roof and begin to dream of what God might do.

2) LINK is strategic. This isn’t just a conference. This is a chance to build strategic relationships that will be essential for the life and mission of the RCA as it moves forward.

3) LINK is a celebration. We have deep, reformed roots and we need to celebrate them. This year, Dr. Todd Billings, Rev. Kevin DeYoung and Rev. Bob Bouwer will be leading us using the Heidelberg Catechism. The Heidelberg is celebrating its 450th anniversary next year. It articulates the best of who we are. We want to take time and remember what we are for and why we love the RCA.

We pray that you will consider joining us this October. This is a critical time in the life of our denomination and it is time that we link together for the sake of the gospel and the future of the RCA.

For more information, including how to register for the conference, check out our website.

If you have any questions, please e-mail Minta: mnaughton_at_faithchurchonline.org

In Christ,

Bob Bouwer, Mike Pitsenberger, Charlie Contreras, Ron Citlau

P.S. We really want you to come. We have a few inexpensive housing options available. If that would be helpful please email Minta and we will get you that information.

These are good brothers and this should be a strategic conference. I hope to see you there.