Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 199

Lessons from Lausanne

Mike Milton is a PCA minister and the Chancellor-elect for Reformed Theological Seminary. Over at his blog he's giving updates from the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa. The stories and reflections are worth reading.

There is one particularly moving story about a young Korean woman's testimony that left the delegates in tears. The upshot:

Then, her voice began to crack just a bit. A lump appeared in my throat. She paused and continued, "Please pray for my people. Please pray for North Korea that they will hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ…" and her words finally gave way to sobs. The audience intuitively stood and applauded. We applauded not only for this courageous girl, but for the work of God in her and through her. She had been through unimaginable horror. Yet she is giving her life to return to identify with her people.

Pray for the hard places and the hidden people in this world. And pray for Lausanne as it meets through the rest of this week.

Is Wheaton College the Top School in America? A Leading Catholic Journal Thinks So

The formula is so convoluted I couldn't begin to explain it to you or tell you if is any good, but the results are still fascinating.

To my surprise, the latest issue of First Things, which is more than a little changed since its founder Richard John Neuhaus passed away, includes a survey of America's colleges and universities. Everyone loves a good ranking.

I wish I could link to the article, but you have to be a subscriber to get access. I wish I could summarize their snapshots of Calvin, Hope, Wheaton, Grove City, Union, Biola, and Taylor, but there are too many summaries to give. But have no fear, I can always pass on the rankings (and encourage you to check out the November issue at the library or buy your own copy).

First Things collected data on 2063 colleges and universities. Through polling data, government-collected information, other published guides and reports, and input from the experts, First Things "measured" the academic, social, and religious dimensions of American institutions of higher education. Putting it altogether, here's some of what they came up with:



Top Schools in America

1. Wheaton College

2. Thomas Aquinas College (CA)

3. Princeton University

4. United States Air Force Academy

5. Brigham Young University

6. Yeshiva University

7. University of Virginia

8. Duke University

9. University of Chicago

10. Franciscan University of Steubenville

Other Notables: Hillsdale College (11), Calvin College (13), Baylor University (17), Grove City College (20), Taylor University (21).

Least Unfriendly to Faith Among Top Secular Schools

1. Princeton University

2. Duke University

3. University of Virginia

4. University of Chicago

5. Stanford University

Best Seriously Protestant Schools

1. Wheaton College

2. Calvin College

3. Taylor University

4. Gordon College

5. George Fox University

6. Westmont College

7. Seattle Pacific University

8. Houghton College

9. Grove City College

10. Whitworth College

Others Mentioned: Union University (TN), Covenant College, Messiah College, Northwestern College (MN)

Schools on the Rise, Filled with Excitement

1. Belmont Abbey College

2. Wake Forest University

3. Houston Baptist University

4. The King's College

5. Concordia University Wisconsin

There are other rankings I didn't include, like "Most Catholic Catholic Schools," but I'll leave you with this humdinger of a category:

Schools in Decline, Filled with Gloom

1. Valparaiso University

2. Gonzaga University

3. Darmouth College

4. Azusa Pacific University

5. College of Notre Dame of Maryland

Phew, at least Michigan State stayed off that list.

Republocrat: A Review

As far as I can tell, Carl Trueman is incapable of being dull. I haven't had the privilege of sitting down for a tête à tête, so it could be that in real life he's as interesting as a Lawrence Welk rerun. But I somehow doubt it. We've exchanged emails over the past months and invariably he throws in some piece of pith that makes me want to say, alternately, "Yes, Amen!" or, "I can't believe you just said that!" Trueman is a professional provocateur, which I mean as a compliment. He loves to provoke, but never with sophomoric shock, always with wit, intelligence, and a writing style that seems to say "I'm British, and we invented this language." I love reading Carl's stuff because he not only writes so well and so memorably—who else is as adroit with ferrets, prostate clinics, and some business about bogs I didn't quite understand—but because he loves to poke his friends as much as his enemies. Carl delights to skewer. I hereby dub him the King of Kebabs.

All of Trueman's erstwhile poking and provocation are on display in his devastating, humorous, much-needed, over the top, occasionally unconvincing new book Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative (P&R Publishing, 110 pp). First off, props (as the kids used to say) to Zach Franzen for the wonderful cover illustration. It's hard to take your eyes of such a playfully-serious, hoity-toity, blueish-red donkeyphant. Good work P&R.

As for the book itself, Trueman's basic these is "that religious conservatism does not demand unconditional political conservatism" (xvii). He's worried "that the evangelical church in America is in danger of alienating a significant section of its people, particularly younger people, through too tight a connection between conservative party politics and Christian fidelity" (xx). This "beware of selling out to the Religious Right" alarm is not new, but perhaps conservative evangelicals will heed the message better coming from one of their own. Trueman is right to point out that American Politics is too often cast as a Manichaean struggle between good and evil where the good guys are on the side of the angels and the bad guys are as nuanced as Gargamel from the Smurfs. When Trueman argues that "on certain issues there is no obviously 'Christian' position" (18), I heartily concur. And I couldn't agree more with his frequent insistence that Christians dig deeper into political issues, not believe everything they hear on Fox News or MSNBC, and learn to think for themselves (xxvi, 99).

The Left's Lunacy

As you might expect from one who relishes the thought that he "disappoint so many different groups of people in such a comprehensive manner" (xix-xx), Trueman doesn't waste all his bullets on the Right. Though himself a liberal (of the old school variety he is quick to add), Trueman has little patience for evangelicals who parade their Democratic sympathies in a "Aren't I naughty?" kind of way (15). He also laments that the Left's notion of oppression has been psychologized to the point where oppression now refers to "somebody, somewhere, telling them they have to take responsibility for their own irresponsibility or that certain self-indulgent behavior is unacceptable" (19). The new Left, says Trueman, has lost all sense of proportion and "has become, by and large, the movement of righteous rhetorical pronouncements on total trivia" (18).

The Right's Ruse

Trueman's denouncing of the Left is sincere. He's not pretending to be annoyed so he can move on to his real foe. He's genuinely critical. But make no mistake: most of his criticism is for the Right, and much of it is needed.

In Chapter 2 Trueman argues that the America is more secularized than we realize. We may speak in religious categories, but the absurdity of The Patriot's Bible or the stereotypes reinforced by LaHaye/Jenkins fiction marks a capitulation to secular values. More importantly, American Christians have too often confused "the policies of nations and the destiny of the church" (35). Trueman has no qualms with patriotism, but, he wisely cautions: "If I have to sign up to believe in the manifest destiny of the English-speaking people, or of a particular political project, in order to be a member of Christ's church, or even simply to feel that I belong, then it is arguable that, whoever's church it is, it is no longer the property of Christ but of some more earthly power" (36).

In Chapter 3 Trueman takes on Fox News. His frustrations are many: Christians are duped into thinking the channel is unbiased; alternative view points are rarely considered; the popular talking heads (e.g., O'Reilly and Beck) are sloppy, illogical grand-standing ninnies with a penchant for nonsense; and Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who owns Fox News, is a bad dude. I don't doubt all of this is true some (much?) of the time, but I'll come back to this chapter in a moment.

In Chapter 4 Trueman laments our uncritical allegiance to capitalism, citing a familiar litany of offenses: it promotes greed, confuses economic prosperity with godliness, and has produced an ugly consumerism. And in Chapter 5 he outlines "the rise of aesthetics and the decline of discourse" across the political spectrum (83), by which Trueman means (in my own words) style has replaced substance, story has replaced serious thinking, and looks have replaced logic.

Evaluation

There is a lot to like with this book. It is well-written and sure to stir up conversation. On the whole, I think Trueman's criticism of both the Right and the Left have merit. Christians do need to think more. We need to refrain from drawing ecclesiastical lines with political pencils. We need a little less us-versus-them rhetoric. We need to allow that good people work on the other side of the aisle. We need to recognize that not every issue has a quick and easy "Christian" solution. And even political conservatives need to take Fox News with a generous grain of salt.

Still, some parts of the book were less convincing than others.

1) As Peter Lillback points out in his entertaining foreword, at times Trueman's case relies on straw men and overstatement. The Patriot's Bible and LaHaye/Jenkins are pretty easy pickins and not representative of any serious political conservatism. Neither are Beck and O'Reilly for that matter. Of course, they're popular on the Right and more influential with the rank and file than, say, First Things, so it's appropriate Trueman would mention them frequently, but I question if this approach will win many converts. Conservatives into Hayek and Novak won't find the Fox News takedown compelling, and, on the other, pulling one excerpt from Beck and one from O'Reilly is not going to convince the diehards that their favorite pundit is off his rocker.

2) For all that Trueman does to warn against conspiracy theories, he manages to dump in a couple of his own (just playing by their rules he would probably argue). For example, he suggests that Bush's "Vietnam record" has "a whiff of elite string-pulling about it" (90). More egregiously, Trueman slides off the rails a bit with his suggestion that Rupert Murdoch and Fox schedule The Simpsons at 6:00pm each evening on the east coast in an effort to undermine the traditional family meal time (54). First of all, I have to imagine the decisions about when to schedule syndicated programs rests with local affiliates and has nothing to do with Rupert Murdoch. And besides, syndicated programs almost always run during the dinner hours because those are the non-primetime hours to choose from. The chapter on Fox News was one of the most important, but also one of the most exaggerated. True, conservatives give too much allegiance to Fox News. A stern warning is in order and I'm grateful for it. But to suggest conservatives unthinkingly embrace everything on Fox stations (55) and to insinuate that bad Mr. Murdoch makes almost everything on Fox News equally bad is a bridge too far.

3) Trueman's secularization thesis does not ring true for me, at least not entirely. I agree that America's religious fervor is, at times, no better than Europe's religious vacuum. But I'm not convinced by all of Trueman's connections. He seems to think the Right's radical individualism is at least partly to blame for (1) positive thinking preachers, (2) the lack of church discipline, and (3) the rise of celebrity "confessional superstars." I would argue the first is much older than the ascendancy of today's Right, the second is owing to a number of factors but scarcely less problematic in Leftish churches (in fact, I'm quite sure the American churches that practice discipline are, on the whole, on the friendliest terms with the Right), and the third—which dates back to Billy Sunday, D.L. Moody, George Whitefield, and the church at Corinth—is on the rise (assuming it is) because of the new media more than anything else.

4) I'm sure Trueman has more he could say on these issues (quite sure of that!), but political conservatives will find his analysis on certain topics a tad superficial. His critique of capitalism (which he admits is the best economic system we know of) is largely a critique of consumerism (73). The two are not identical and the greed evident in the latter runs rampant in any system. He doesn't give careful consideration to the notion of liberty that is so important to conservatives when advocating for private enterprise rather than government-run endeavors (like nationalized health care which Trueman supports). And one could argue he is too cynical in assessing why politicians on the Right oppose abortion and how much good pro-life politicians have done for the pro-life cause.

Conclusion

But in the end, this is an important, and relentlessly interesting, little book. Trueman wants Christians to be more realistic about what politics can accomplish and how political ends are accomplished. He wants Christians to stop throwing around words like socialist, fascist, and Marxist willy-nilly. He wants Christians to show no tolerance for those who draw Hitler mustaches on Bush or turn Obama into Heath Ledger's Joker. He wants Christians to avoid making partisan politics the determination for who's in and who's out in our churches. And above all, he wants Christians to think more critically and independently about politics. To all this I say "Yes and Amen." even if along the way I may let out an occasional "I can't believe you just said that."

Monday Morning Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret Scripture, the rules and guidelines we follow in an attempt to understand the Bible correctly.

One of the most important rules is to pay attention the literary genre of the book or passage you are studying. Is the text poetry, narrative, law, letter, or a collection of aphorisms. Knowing the sort of work we are reading helps us set expectations and allows us to assess what we read according to its own rules. As Robert Plummer reminds us, "Misunderstanding the genre of a work can result in skewed interpretations."

For example, what if we read Where's Waldo as an artsy piece of German angst-ridden existentialism (or whatever you would call this)?

The texts itself give us clues as to what sort of work we are reading. That's why it can be funny when genres get crisscrossed. We are set up to expect one thing when we know what we're reading or watching is really something else.

We intuitively make genre assumptions all the time when we read Harry Potter, turn on the evening news, or watch The Colbert Report. And yet, when we come to the Bible we can read it flat. To interpret the Bible correctly and obey it fully, we must read Scripture carefully and think about what sort of text we are reading in the first place.

Tender Love and a Chastened Approach

I'm reading an advance copy of Tim Keller's new book Generous Justice. It is quite good. I'll write more about it later. Keller makes a compelling case that Christians who know God's grace will share God's concern for justice.

This sentence gets to the heart of the book:

If God's character includes a zeal for justice that leads him to have the tenderest love and closest involvement with the socially weak, then what should God's people be like? (8)

In a slightly different vein, I thought this was a good line too, which Keller includes (approvingly it seems) in a footnote:

In the end, [Dan] Strange, [D.A.] Carson, and [James] Hunter all recommend a chastened approach that engages culture but without the triumphalism of transformationism. All of them also insist that the priority of the institutional church must be to preach the Word, rather than to "change culture." (223)

You Say It Best…

When we were dating my (now) wife made me a mix tape (yes, it was a mix tape, and yes we did exchange them). For some reason, she included the song You Say it Best When You Say Nothing At All. I've always wondered what she was trying to tell me. After all, I'm the guy who years later was told by an elderly member in my congregation, "Oh, you're so young and yet when I hear you preach you can just keep talking and talking."

One more anecdote before this post goes somewhere. My wife and I have really enjoyed watching Foyle's War, a police drama set in Hastings, England during World War II. Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle is a man of unflinching integrity and uncanny detective ability. He is also a man of few words. He never says more than he has to. He doesn't waste words. Of course, it helps that Michael Kitchen is just pretending to be Foyle and has a script to follow, but still, I wish I measured my words and made them all count like Foyle.

To that end, I recommend this superb article from CCEF's Ed Welch. He writes:

Christians have said and written plenty of words. We hear long sermons about one word in Scripture. The rite of passage for a preacher is to linger in the book of Romans for at least a year. The longer the better. Every week I walk through a seminary library that is running out of shelf space. When I set out to write a book I inevitably write too much and have to delete thousands of words.

Scripture is crammed with meaning. We have been given access to the mysteries of the universe, and we have a lot to say. And this is one of the problems in biblical counseling. Biblical counselors talk too much. Students of biblical counseling can err in a number of ways. This is in the top five.

Welch does not doubt the power of words. Nor is he suggesting we refrain from conversation. But in some situations, if I may add my own summary, you say it best when you say almost nothing at all.

Here is a basic rule of thumb. The more people are hurting – the more intense their emotions whatever the emotion might be (fear, shame, anger, despair) – the less they will be able to hear. I might think that I am offering words of life, and the words might actually be good and true words, but by the time I get to the seventh word, most people are hearing "blah, blah, blah." Yes, there are some outstanding teachers of Scripture who can bring truth to hurting and stuck people in such a way that hearers are on the edge of their seats for . . . minutes at a time. Rapt. But none of us should assume that we are one of those people. This is why I have to say, at least once a week, "ugh, I'm sorry, I have been talking too much. Now I am going to try to just be quiet and listen." Or, even better, to limit the word count – "I'm talking too much; your turn." Six words.

Welch gives great examples of short sentences that say a lot. Some are responses:

Your story doesn't include Jesus.
You've declared war on your wife.
You've decided that God doesn't love you."

Some are honest assessments, like "What you said hurt me."

Other succinct statements are meant to encourage:

I am so sorry.
Your wife died two years ago. You're on my heart.
I love you.

And other simple phrases can be surprisingly meaningful, like "You're right," or, "Join us for lunch."

Words are precious. Don't surround them with useless scaffolding when they can stand all by themselves. Choose your words well and use them wisely. And be prepared on occasion to use them sparingly.

HT: Challies

Claiming to Be Wise, He Became a Fool

Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory. Acts 12:23a

Herod Agrippa was not a nice guy–he killed James the brother of John and imprisoned Peter–but no one could deny he was important.  He was the grandson of the impressive (and murderous) Herod the Great.  He was a friend of Emperors and one of the great princes of the East, ruling over the land of Judea.  So when Herod, decked in royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a stirring ovation, it seemed only fitting that the crowds would shout, "The voice of a god, and not of a man!"

Ah, such a discerning crowd. Such a grateful people. Such a good day to be king. Herod just soaked it all in.

God let it all hang out, and he struck down Herod dead right on the spot.

What made Herod's crime so serious as to merit such swift retribution? He committed no crime against humanity (not in this moment at least). He decreed no unjust law. He did nothing outwardly heinous. No, Herod's crime lay in what he failed to do. He did not give God the glory.

No one may mistake us for gods, but someone may hail you as a great quarterback, a fabulous cook, a drop-dead beauty, a powerful preacher, a gifted writer, a tremendous student, a successful entrepreneur, or a really kind person. Now what to do? In most cases rebuking the encourager is a sign of pride more than humility. Just say thank you. But then you ought to quickly say, think, or feel, "to God be the glory."

We may be self-aware enough not to seek out showers of fame and praise, but it sure is easy to bathe in it when it comes. We all have Herod in our hearts. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. We love the fame of our name more than the Lord's.

So remember what Herod forgot: the world does not exist to make our dreams come true.  Our friends do exist to make us feel special.  The church does not exist to make us feel comfortable.  And God does not exist to make much of us.  His glory he will not give to another. "Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory" (Psalm 115:1).

Inerrancy and the Reformers

A few weeks ago I posted something about Calvin and inerrancy. I argued that though he didn't use the word (it wasn't around), Calvin did believe what the word inerrancy defends. I posted the same piece on a blog site hosted by my denomination (Reformed Church in America).

Not surprisingly, a number of people (on the other site especially) pushed back, arguing that Calvin and the Reformed confessions do not teach inerrancy. You can go to the site and read the comments for yourself if you like. Since I broke my own rule and started engaging the comments I thought I'd at least turn that work into a blog post. I've pasted my responses below. To conserve space I'm not including the whole thread, but I've summarized the question or objection before each section. I think you'll be able to figure out the nature of the questions and comments I'm responding to.

*******

(If Calvin didn't believe in a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration, why does he use the metaphor of dictation?)

The distinction is important. Conservatives are often charged with holding to a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration. And yet I've never know any well-respected evangelical who teaches this. Instead, evangelicals believe in a concursive theory of inspiration. This means that the words are still God's words, but God used human personalities and skills in writing those words. This is why Paul reads different than Peter or why Luke investigated his history or why the Greek of Hebrews is much more difficult than John's. The authors were not passive scribes merely taking dictation. And yet, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, their words are nothing less than God's words. The authority of the text is as if the authors took down divine dictation, while the style of the texts still reflects the men who wrote them.

*******

(Isn't it true that the Three Forms of Unity–Heidelberg, Belgic, Dort–don't affirm inerrancy but have a more dynamic view of Scripture?)

There are a lot of points deserving of response, but let me just address one.

I struggle to see how our confessions "clearly do not take the position of inerrancy." I also fail to see how their approach to Scripture is more "dynamic." Belgic Confession Article 3 explains that God committed his "revealed Word to writing" and that "we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures." Does this not equate the Word with Holy Scripture? Calvin and the confessions believed the Bible is the Word of God, and to say that the Bible "contains" the Word of God or "expresses" the Word or "becomes" the Word to us, owes more to Barth than to Belgic. Perhaps we must conclude that Calvin and the Belgic Confession were wrong and Barth was right, but that does not change what our confessions teach.

Likewise, Article 5 says about the canonical books that "we believe without a doubt all things contained in them." And Article 7 forbids us from adding to or subtracting from the Word of God, which in the next paragraph is equated with "divine writings." In the paragraph prior we are warned against teaching "other than what the Holy Scriptures have already taught us." Writings, Scriptures, Word of God are used interchangeably.

And finally, Article 7 calls us to "reject with all our hearts everything that does not agree with this infallible rule." It's always seemed straightforward to me that Articles 3-7 teach that the Scripture is the Word of God, and that we must never disagree with anything Scripture affirms for Scripture does not err.

*******

(Haven't you misread Calvin in thinking he would be comfortable with inerrancy?)

I suppose it goes without saying, but I don't think I've misread Calvin. If we are to embrace without finding fault everything in Scripture, doesn't that suggest we can never say "Well, that's a mistake" to the Bible? And if we are to give to Scripture the same reverence we give to God, doesn't that imply that we should never suggest the Scriptures make mistakes? I've always liked what I. John Hesselink said about Calvin's doctrine of Scripture: "It would be difficult to find a higher view of Scripture than this unless one believed that the authors of Scripture were totally passive and simply wrote down what God dictated to them" (Calvin's First Catechism: A Commentary, 56).

Likewise, I agree with Bavinck when he writes, "Calvin regards Scripture in the full and literal sense as the Word of God. While he does not recognize the Letter to the Hebrews as Pauline, he does consider it canonical, and he assumes the presence of error in Matthew 22:9 and 23:25 but not in the autographa. The Reformed confessions almost all have an article on Scripture and clearly express its divine authority; and all the Reformed theologians without exception take the same position."

Later after noting the human side of Scripture, Bavinck says, "Also in that way there was not the least tendency to detract from the divinity and infallibility of Scripture. The writers were not authors but scribes, amanuenses, notaries, the hands and pens of God." How can the scribes, notaries, hands and pens of God err?

A little further down Bavinck, commenting on the Reformers view of inspiration, remarks, "Inspiration extended to all chronological, historical, and geographical matters, indeed to the words, even the vowels and the diacritical marks" (Reformed Dogmatics Volume 1, 415). It sure sounds like Bavinck believed the Reformers (e.g., Calvin) believed the Bible was inerrant.

*******

(Isn't it the case the inerrancy is a modern invention and the reformers and their confessions did not affirm it?)

Zacharias Ursinus, principal author of the Heidelberg Catechism, commenting on Q/A 21, describes "the man who truly believes," the man with "justifying faith," saying:

He believes that every thing which the Scriptures contain is true, and from God. (Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, 111 [pagination my not be the same]).

In a nutshell, this is what I mean by inerrancy. There is nothing false in Scripture, no errors in fact or doctrine, no mistakes in history or theology. Everything in the Scriptures is true, because it is all from God. This is what our confessions teach, the Reformers taught, and how the overwhelming majority of Christians throughout history have understood the Scriptures. It's also how Jesus and the apostles approached the Old Testament.

Ryan Kelly: Missional One More Time

I hope these posts on mission and missional are producing more light than heat. My aim is not to beat the proverbial equine representative, but to keep the ole conversation going. This is a critical, volatile, confusing issue.

You may know Ryan Kelly as the third person in the TGC round table discussion (Greg Gilbert and I being the other two). Ryan is the pastor at Desert Springs Church and an all around cool guy (and smart too!). He's been thinking a lot of mission and missional, so I asked if I could post his thoughts on my blog. It's long, but worth the read.

*******

Kevin kindly invited me to write some follow-up thoughts to a recent TGC video we did with Greg Gilbert on the mission of the church. Since my contribution to the video consisted of little more than anecdotes of Puritan cultural-engagement, and because I don't really have a blog of my own, I was glad to have the opportunity to say a few more things here.

Some Background

I don't exactly remember how long ago it was, but at some point I began filing away in my head, and later on paper, what I could gather that people meant by the term missional. Whether from a book, an article, a blog post, or a personal conversation, the variations seemed to me to be many and fairly significant. Missional could mean or seem to imply:

Cultural engagement, preferably of the hipster-flavor
Social justice, cultural transformation, and love of neighbor
Entrepreneurial and aggressive church expansion
Anything but the church-growth, attractional, programtic model of evangelism
A serious and constant awareness of our "sent-ness"
Simple gospel proclamation—what our dads used to call witnessing or evangelism, but perhaps a slightly more thoughtful and/or natural version of it
Thoughtful gospel proclamation + any of the above

You might think that this is already headed in the direction of a critique of anything missional, but it's not. I think I can put a check-mark next to just about each one of the above bullet points. I think I'd vote for them (at least if I can qualify a couple of them—but I won't chase that rabbit trail now). I pastor a young church, of which many are self-consciously and thoughtfully "culturally-engaging." We care about practical, human needs. Alongside our gospel-efforts, we give a good bit of time and money to micro-finance, medical-care, and improved water in South America. We do both word and deed ministries on Native American reservations. The word missional is used occasionally in our church, and I'm friends with many pastors that happily use the term far more than I do.

That said, I want to be unashamedly clear that I believe in the centrality of gospel proclamation. This is what I see as the capital-M "Mission" of the church in Scripture. I don't see mercy ministries being one wing of the plane and the mercy message being the other. I'm not sure what picture I'd draw on the whiteboard as an alternative, but that one doesn't cut it for me. I also think there are good reasons to ask what this friend or that author means when they say that they are missional and that we should be missional. And I think there are some good reasons to painstakingly and collectively think through the theory and wording of how our deeds relate to our proclamation.

Let's be honest, many of us come to the discussion of the mission of the church with some partisanship. There are unofficial camps within Reformed evangelicalism on some of these issues. On the one hand, there are those known for being missional who think that others aren't totally engaging the world with the gospel and the full range of its implications. On the other hand, there are those who prioritize gospel proclamation, and have concerns that some of what flies under the banner of missional has or could drift from the priority of proclamation, or even the gospel itself. Many have some sympathies with each of these perspectives, and I'm one of them. I think there's a lot to learn here, and simultaneously some things to be cautious about. And I think the discussion is important and healthy, and it should continue.

So with that preface out of the way, I'd like to make three suggestions for the ongoing discussion of the vocabulary and content of the church's mission.

Three Suggestions

1) Insisting on a definition of missional or asking for specifics of one's view of the mission is not curmudgeon fundamentalism—it's still needed. There are plenty of books that have the words mission or missional in the title which describe that mission primarily in terms of deeds, justice, culture, community, etc. (e.g., McNeal). Some missional authors are so post-modernly squishy that when they try to define the word missional they get lost debating the definition of "definition" (Roxburgh and Boren). And there are many ministries and seminaries that still use the term missional to describe what most of us TGC-type think of as emergent.

On the other hand, Driscoll, Keller, Stetzer, et al, use the term missional in a way that prioritizes or centralizes gospel proclamation among the many other good things Christians are called to do. I'm enormously thankful for such men—for their minds, their labors, and for God's blessing through them. Nevertheless, what this demonstrates is that we have good reason to ask what this or that person means by being missional, even if we are willing to use the term for ourselves and our churches. It's not necessarily a critique of everything missional to ask for a definition. In fact, it's rather bubble-ish to think that no one uses the term poorly any more.

There are a few take-aways here. 1) Those skeptical of the term missional should give the benefit of doubt about another's definition until there's reason to be concerned. The term itself has no necessary bearing on gospel fidelity. 2) Conversely, those who identify themselves with the term missional should be gracious and eager to clarify when another asks him what that word means. I've seen too many young pastors get bent out of shape simply for being asked what missional means to them. That's silly. 3) We should all strive to avoid repetitive empty vocabulary, and instead make pains to be clear about what we think the church should be doing. Again, this is a good discussion if we navigate it openly and graciously.

2) Especially we younger evangelicals have to give a more sober and careful hearing to our fathers in ministry when they warn us with historical examples of when the church's deeds eclipsed, or became, her gospel. I'll go out on a limb here: missional thinking could lead to a confused gospel,…but no more than any good and right idea can have an ugly, backwards step-child. We all know that there have been many historical gospel-perversions, and none of them were born overnight. Theological liberalism, for instance, didn't start out as an overt plan to turn to "another gospel." There was a slow and sometimes sneaky trajectory. But, in short, the story is as simple as this: good things eventually became gospel things.

Now, I think that an older generation should also be prepared to admit that some pockets of evangelicalism and much of fundamentalism in previous generations wrongly reacted to the social gospel and liberation theology by being rather neglectful of Matthew 5 ("salt and light"), Luke 10 (the good Samaritan), James 1:27 (care for the helpless), and others. Especially with fundamentalism, no doubt there was a wrong-headed retreat from culture, politics, and the arts.

But as we Reformed evangelicals today try to seek the proper place and language for all these potentially good, cultural, humane things, we should perhaps more humbly consider, even study, the stories of how these deed, mercy, justice, culture issues overtook and became gospel proclamation in an earlier day. To quote Stetzer, "It would be, in my opinion, the height of historical naïveté to have the same conversations about the same issues and not consider the results of the last two times such conversations were had (the missio dei movement and Social Gospel both having struggled with similar issues as we do today)."

Read Machen's Christianity and Liberalism every five years. Read the work of George Marsden, especially Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism, which chronicles the missteps of both fundamentalism and left-wing evangelicalism in the last century. Surely we don't think our generation or our camp is so sharp, so vigilant that we are above repeating such mistakes. So perhaps we young, mission-impassioned, ambitious types need to do a little less eye-rolling and a little more prayerful listening when others—especially those more historically astute and/or experienced—seem more cautious and suggest more careful nuance about the relationship between deeds and gospel.

3) Partly influenced by the need to protect the gospel (see #2 above), but mostly based on the Bible itself, it seems to me that there is warrant for prioritizing gospel proclamation over other important commands Jesus gives his followers. I know this is difficult for some who see any prioritizing of one thing to inevitably make the others optional, to inevitably treat important things with mere lip service. Well, I can't remember which logical fallacy that falls into, but I know it's one of them. Yes, perhaps some of us are too quick to say "of course Christians should care for the poor, love their neighbor, be good citizens, but…," and then we go on for several minutes about witnessing and never mention the other things again. I can appreciate that that may sound imbalanced. But, speaking only for myself, I truly don't want any one of Jesus' commands to be treated lightly; I will not choose between the gospel message and the gospel's implications. Kevin, in my opinion, did an excellent job of making that clear in a post last week. Of course, the real dilemma for most of us is not whether gospel or deeds are optional, but what the relationship is and how we communicate it.

Jonathan Leeman recently made a good case for the gospel having "central" rather than "first" or "primary" place amidst other good Christian tasks. That might seem like needless wrangling to some, but I think that's the kind of thinking and formulating we need to keep attempting. We also need more discussion about the relevant Bible texts themselves. I have already stated upfront that my understanding of the capitol-M "Mission" of the church has gospel proclamation at its core. Other things are expected (commanded!) to come alongside that proclamation, but it seems to me that there are several biblical indications that some form of gospel-centrality is needed. Quick examples:

While Jesus healed and fed, the gospel accounts culminate with the disciples' commission to proclaim and make disciples. This doesn't mean that this is all they are to do, but "famous last words" do seem particularly noteworthy, especially when they are quadruply given.
The book of Acts not only begins with another such commission (1:8), but continues with dozens of preaching/conversion stories to makeup a rather overwhelmingly consistent theme.
Paul insists that the facts of the gospel weekend—Christ's death, burial, and resurrection—are of "first importance" (1 Cor. 15:3). Those who want to have social and cultural issues right alongside the gospel have to provide a satisfying explanation of what Paul meant here if he didn't see any priority. I, personally, haven't heard one yet.
The word "gospel" implies that there's a message—a message which must be proclaimed. As : "…the very nature of announcing or proclaiming (good) news—whether ευαγγελιζω or kηρύσσω—is that words are the primary medium. What we might call the logocentrism of Scripture is massively reinforced by the nature of the gospel itself: it is news, good news, to be proclaimed."
There are some very good NT scholars who have written on the mission of the church and have rather consistently put the emphasis of the church's mission on its proclamation (e.g., Kostenberger, O'Brien, Plummer). As I've already noted, this seems to be a growing consensus among some of the most prominent missional leaders as well.
Most agree that good deeds are, in part, validation of the gospel message to unbelievers. But by nature this sets up some kind of priority: the validation of a thing cannot be greater than or completely on par with the thing itself.

I'll close with an illustration. I can't help but think of the relationship between word and deeds and their place in the world as something like marriage. My unmarried and romantically inexperienced neighbor might watch my wife and I sharing affection, laughter, touch, food, children—really just life—over several evenings. And he might conclude from that that marriage is beautiful and desirable. But he may not necessarily know anything about the process of courtship culminating in thoughtful, theological wedding vows. Watching my marriage over several evenings has validated or even beautified marriage in his eyes, but that does not necessarily help him understand how we got there and what undergirds it all. The gospel undergirds everything we do as Christians. We can and should demonstrate that to unbelievers in hundreds of ways. But they have to be told how we got there. We have to tell them the gospel or they will not be saved.

What is This World Coming To?

What a monstrosity! The fiendish scalawags at thekitchn.com even dare to boast: "Look! Savoury Broccoli Cupcakes." For shame.

Gummy Bears in cotton candy ice cream is a good idea. Peanuts in M&Ms is a good idea. A gush of juice in a fruit snack is a good idea. Custard in a doughnut is a good idea. Cheese in a pizza crust is a good idea. Pretty much cheese in anything is a good idea, even tater tots. But broccoli in dessert is straight out of Screwtape's kitchen.

Pelagians and positive thinkers beware, the doctrine of original sin is now beyond cavil.

HT: Joe Carter (via JT)