Douglas J. Douma's Blog, page 22

Review of “John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian…”

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John Gerstner and the Renewal of Presbyterian and Reformed Evangelicalism in Modern America by Jeffrey S. McDonald, Pickwick Publications, 2017, 263 pages.

This, the first biography of the presbyterian theologian John Gerstner (1914–1996), is a valuable contribution to understanding a number of developments in the American Reformed and evangelical world in the 20th century.

Jeffrey S. McDonald’s book provides insights not only into the thought of John Gerstner, but of the history of various institutions Gerstner was involved in including the United Presbyterian Church of North America, (UPCNA), the Presbyterian Church in the United States of American (PCUSA), Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and the Ligonier Valley Study Center.

Gerstner is seen to be largely influenced by his professor at Westminster College, John Orr who was in turn a student of Princeton’s B. B. Warfield. It is from Orr that Gerstner learned the “classical apologetics” which he retained even while a student of Cornelius Van Til at Westminster Theological Seminary and continued to argue for throughout his career. Gerstner’s main interest though was the theology of the 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards. McDonald notes a number of times that Gerstner believed that Warfield’s Old Princeton was a theological descendant of Edwards. With McDonald and a number of scholars he cites, I must disagree with Gerstner’s theory on that point.

Gerstner is seen to be quite stubborn through failures. More kindly, as McDonald says, he had “resilience and a preserving spirit”. The biggest failure for Gerstner was not for any fault of his own – the merger of his beloved United Presbyterian Church with the liberal PCUSA in 1958. Gerstner, though conservative, stayed in the newly merged denominations for four more decades, until finally leaving for the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) in 1990. His “resiliency” is also seen in his staying on as a professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary despite its growing liberalism. Gerstner also persisted, though without the success he desired, on his work on Jonathan Edwards.

In his later decades Gerstner’s influence grows through his work at more conservative institutions like Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) and the Ligonier Valley Study Center. There, at Ligonier, Gerstner’s work with his former student R. C. Sproul has proven to be his most lasting legacy. With Sproul’s recent passing, this volume on his colleague John Gerstner is timely.

McDonald did considerable research as proven by the copious footnotes listing archival sources and personal interviews he conducted. His own theological position or bias was not obvious to this reviewer. Unfortunately for McDonald (and my neck), the copy of the book I received from the publisher attached the first 128 pages upside-down and backwards.

 

Sermon on Romans 2:17-29 – “A Matter of the Heart”

Preached on Feb. 4, 2018 at Dillingham Presbyterian Church

Introduction

Have you ever been to a Barnes & Noble or some other bookstore and found a very stately volume. A nice looking book. Its about the right size – maybe 150 pages. It has an old-fashioned feel to it. Maybe a nice navy blue color with some gold inlay. And if you’re like me – a lover of books – you might wonder what it says on the inside. You open it up, and … its all blank pages! It is not a book at all, but a journal of some sort. It is just paper! It is not a book. To be a book it matters that there is something on the inside. It might look like a book on the outside, but it is not a book.

In today’s passage Paul doesn’t address the question “What is a book?” but rather “What is a Jew?” That is, he asks, what is a true follower in the Lord? A true follower of the Lord, he contends, is not merely one who appears so on the outside; having been circumcised outwardly or having been baptized by water in the sight of the congregation. But it is a matter of the heart. A Jew, a true believer, needs to have something on the inside, not just a nice cover and blank pages. It is, Paul says, “a matter of the heart.”

What is a Jew?

So first we might want to know what a Jew was in the common usage. The Jews have other names as well. They are also called Israelites or Hebrews.

They were called Israelites because they were the people of Israel, descendants of the patriarch Jacob who also was called Israel. Israel itself means “to wrestle with God” which Jacob literally did when he wrestled with the angel of the Lord in Genesis chapter 32. There is even an ancient Egyptian stone on which the name “Israel” is engraved with other text, showing that this is what other nations referred to them as. And the nation itself was called Israel for a time, and there is a nation of Israel again today.

Another term, probably even older than “Israelites” is “Hebrews.” Seven generations before Jacob/Israel there was a man named Eber from whom the word Hebrew comes. (We’ll have to trust that in their language these words sound similar!) So the Israelites are the Hebrews, and the Hebrews are the Israelites. They are the same people.

Then, these same people are called Jews, a third name. Usage of the word Jew became prominent after the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered and taken away into captivity by the Assyrians. Then, only the Southern Kingdom, Judah, remained. So those people of God who remained in the promised land were Judites, Judeans, or Jews. That is, the name “Jew” was derived from their ancestor Judah, after whom the tribe and kingdom was also named. And Judah means “praise.” PRAISE. When Judah was born his mother said “This time I will PRAISE the Lord” (Gen. 29:25) and later Judah’s father said to him, “your brothers shall PRAISE you.” (Gen 49:8) This is likely why Paul ends the section we read today about the true Jew saying “His PRAISE is not from man but from God.”

So this is who the Jews are outwardly. They are the sons of Eber, the sons of Israel/Jacob, and the sons of Judah. But Paul wants to focus on more than just what a Jew is outwardly, he wants to focus on what it means to be a Jew inwardly, what it means to be a follower of the Lord, chosen in Jesus Christ, not by birth among the Hebrew nation, but by a second birth of the Holy Spirit.

As we look to our passage today we’ll look at four particular points:

I. Hypocrisy dishonors God.

II. The Nations blaspheme God because of the hypocrisy of the Jews.

III. Being ethnically a Jew is of no benefit if you do not keep the law.

IV. To be a true Jew is a matter of the heart.

I. Hypocrisy dishonors God (v. 17-23)

First, let us look at the first point – Hypocrisy dishonors God.

To this point, let us again read the first 6 verses of our passage, from verse 17 to verse 23:

17 But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God 18 and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; 19 and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, 20 an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth– 21 you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.

When Paul here says that the Jews were said to “rely on the law” it does not mean that they were “taking delight in the Law of the Lord” as in the Psalms, but that they were erroneously thinking that merely having possession of the law as ethnic Jews somehow made them better than off than others and even brought them eternal salvation. It might be as if you think you are saved because you have a Bible in your house.

When the Jews are said here to be “boasting in God,” they were not boasting of the great things God had done, but were boasting of their own close relationship to God as if it was their own achievement.

But their actually achievements were only sins. And in sinning while thinking they were fine they were hypocrites. And this hypocrisy dishonors God.

They preached against stealing – but they stole.

They preach against adultery – but they committed adultery.

They preached against idols – but they robbed temples.

They had the law of God, but did not do the things contained in the law. By thinking themselves better than others and even pretending to teach others from the law they showed themselves to be hypocrites, speaking one way but living another.

Because the Jews had the law, they were responsible to live by the law. Knowing what is right and what is wrong, they were required to do live according to what was right.

What a great privilege it was too to have law. We sometimes think of laws as oppressive and bad. But law brings order to society and the Jews were proud of having good laws, the best laws in fact because the laws were from God. But if they thought that having these laws was sufficient for their salvation, such that they did not have to obey the laws, then they were mistaken. They were hypocrites in preaching those laws to others, but in breaking the laws themselves.

How then can such a person be a teacher of others? How can they pretend to lead other people when they cannot lead themselves?

Paul’s comment here about “robbing temples” is particularly interesting. We know that around the year 49 A.D. the Jews were banished from the city of Rome. In Act 18:2 we learn of this. Paul meets with two Jews, Aquila and Priscilla, who were among those banished from Rome by the emperor Claudius. And there is some speculation, based on writings the Jewish historian Josephus, that the banishment of the Jews from Rome was related to some four Jews having stolen funds from the temple. In the Roman world such was an attack upon their gods, and the most serious offense. A capital offense, treason punishable by death. Robbing temples would bring the Jews into disrepute.

Thus in all their sins they dishonored God. In their stealing they dishonored God. In their adultery they dishonored God. In their robbing temples they dishonored God. But even more, in their hypocrisy they dishonored God, for they boasted in the law while breaking it themselves.

You can clearly see then why being a Jew merely outwardly is of little importance. It is what is inside that counts. It is a matter of the heart.

Because of these sins of hypocrisy among those who are Jews only outwardly, the nations around them blasphemed God.

And this is our second point, from verse 24: The Nations blaspheme God because of the hypocrisy of the Jews. (REPEAT)

II: The Nations blaspheme God because of the hypocrisy of the Jews. (vs. 24)

Verse 24 reads:

“24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

Whenever a New Testament writer says “As it is written” we know that he is referring the Old Testament. So where does Paul get the line that says “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”?

Most commentators believe this is referring to a quote from Isaiah 52:5 which reads:

Now therefore what have I here,” declares the LORD, “seeing that my people are taken away for nothing? Their rulers wail,” declares the LORD, “and continually all the day my name is despised.

But John Calvin thinks that Paul is referring to Ezekiel 36:20 which reads:

“But when they came to the nations, wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his land.’”

Either way, it is because of the crimes/sins of the Jews, that their God is blasphemed among the Gentiles.

Application: To apply this our own situation, we should ask, Do you give Christianity a bad name because of your deeds? Do you cause people to blaspheme God? Do you cause people to say “Those Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.” It is very serious if you are the cause of these things. For there are people who are kept away from the church because, they say, the actions of those who claim to be Christians. Now, many will use the hypocrisy of believers as an excuse to not attend church, but for others they have been actually harmed by Christians who they can no longer trudy. And so today, through the sin and hypocrisy of Christians, God is dishonored and even blasphemed by the nations, by those who despise God because of the actions of Christians.

But you are a representative of your God and of your Faith. All Christians are representatives of the faith, and they should be a good example to other of what a Christian is. Your actions reflect not only upon yourself, but upon your church and upon your God.

So we see that not only does hypocrisy dishonor God, but it leads others away from Him.

Paul warns those sinners and hypocrites that being ethnically a Jew is of no benefit if they do not keep the law. This is our third point: being ethnically a Jew is of no benefit if you do not keep the law. Or we might say, being a church member is of no benefit if you do not follow the Lord.

III. Being ethnically a Jew is of no benefit if you do not keep the law.

Paul writes in verses 25 to 27:

25 For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. 26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? 27 Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law.

Here “the circumcision” refers to the Jews, and the “uncircumcision” refers to the Gentiles.

This idea of Jews being outwardly physically circumcised, but yet uncircumcised in the heart is not one Paul is inventing himself, but it finds precedent in the Old Testament, in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. There, in chapter 9, we read:

[Jer 9:25-26 ESV] 25 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised merely in the flesh– 26 Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.”

Paul’s teaching is that the ethnic Jew is no better than the Gentile if he breaks the law. And a Gentile, if he were able to obey the law, would be better than a Jew who does not. But, as we know, no one can fully obey the law. These Gentiles who might keep the law do not in fact exists, for no one keeps the law.

Interestingly, here Paul doesn’t say that circumcision is of no value. He says that it has value if you obey the law.

So we might ask, what is the value of circumcision? Like Baptism, circumcision saves no one. But also like Baptism, it is a symbol of the covenant. It is a symbol pointing to something greater than itself. So circumcision had value in pointing to the covenant with God which is of great value.

Like circumcision was a symbol of the Lord’s covenant in the Old Testament, Baptism is a symbol of the Lord’s covenant in the New Testament. And so today Baptism has great value in pointing to that covenant. Baptism itself does not save, but it points to a God who does.

Paul clearly connects Baptism and circumcision as symbols of the covenant in his letter to the Colossians. There he calls Baptism “the circumcision of Christ” and “a circumcision made without hands.” (See: Col. 2:11-12)

Baptism then, like circumcision, points to a spiritual promise. If we say merely that we are Baptized — that we have this outward form — but we neglect the meaning of Baptism, then we have, as John Calvin says “gloried in vain.” We have gloried in the symbol rather rather than what it symbolizes. What does baptism symbolize? According to the Presbyterian minister and counselor Jay Adams in his book “The Meaning and Mode of Baptism” baptism symbolizes “the descent of the Holy Spirit into the Christian’s life bringing cleansing from sin and union with Christ.” (Jay Adams, The Meaning and Mode of Baptism, p. viii)

Baptism then, like circumcision, saves no one. Rather, it symbolizes, it points to, it reflects the work of God which does save man. These things — circumcision and baptism — are outward things, but to be a true Jew, a true believer, it is a matter of the inward things; is a matter of the heart.

Before we move on from the outward to the inward, however, let us consider the nature of true humility; which is the opposite of this hypocrisy that dishonors God and leads the nations to blaspheme.

There is a paradoxical nature in true humility. It is the one thing that if you say you have it, you don’t. If you say you are humble, you are not. The natural man seeks glory for himself, but glory only comes from the lord. Any attempt to glorify one’s self proves to be disgraceful to you and to God. This praise — and remember the word Jew is related to the word praise — comes only from God.

And so these outward things, these things which man does are of no import to making us true Jews, to making us believers saved by Christ. For this, we must look inward, to a change in the heart.

IV. To be a true Jew is a matter of the heart. (vs. 28-29)

And so we read the final two verses of this passage, verses 28 and 29:

28 For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither [is that] circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: 29 But he [is] a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision [is that] of the heart, in the spirit, [and] not in the letter; whose praise [is] not of men, but of God.

To avoid hypocrisy we must do the things of the law, not merely preach them. But doing the things of the law is not enough either. For it is neither in knowing the law nor in doing the law that we have salvation. To be a true Jew, a real believer, it is a matter of the heart, that which is on the inside.

But, what, more exactly, is this that is to be on the inside?

That which is on the inside for the believer is the Holy Spirit, leading us to know the law and to do the law. REPEAT

The true believer has a circumcision of the heart – a covenant with God in his whole being – for “heart” in the scripture means the entirety of the man. The commentator John Murray explains that the meaning of this phrase “that of the heart” is clear from the Old Testament. It means “the renewal and purification of the heart.”

And thus the true believer has a renewal and purification of the heart only by the Holy Spirit in him.

This is a great blessing we have as Christians – the Holy Spirit lives within you. REPEAT

Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 6:19

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.”

This the doctrine of the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit.” God told his people, in fact, in the Old Testament that this would happen.

In Ezekiel 36:27:

“And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

And the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is confirmed in numerous places in the New Testament including Galatians 4:6 which reads:

And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”

So one is a Jew inwardly when one has the Holy Spirit indwelling in them and leading them to the renewal and purification of the heart which bears out in the good deeds the believer does.

The believer who is a believer only outwardly is not a believer at all. The book with a nice cover, but blank pages, is not a true book.

For it to be a true book it is a matter of what is inside. And to be a true believer it is a matter of what is inside; a matter of the heart.

But do not be too quick to flatter yourself. It is a not a matter of heart as if you have made yourself good from the inside. This is the error of many of churches who credit the individual with coming to faith, rather than saying that it is from God. Truly it is not you who have come to faith, but it is the Holy Spirit dwelling in you that has given you faith.

That is why in the Gospel of John, when his disciples asked him “what must WE do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus does not answer that it is within their power, but says “the work OF GOD is that you believe in him whom he has sent.” It is a work OF GOD, not a work OF MAN. And this work of God — this faith — is through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? The work OF GOD is this: believe in the one whom He has sent.

The matter of heart is of the Lord, from the Lord, through the Lord, and continuing always with the Lord. Salvation is 100% from beginning to end of the Lord, and the faith that we have is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is within you and leads you to do things worthy of God’s praise. The spirit in you brings good deeds out of you. And so to God is the glory. Soli Deo Gloria! To God be the glory! Amen

I’m speaking in South Carolina!

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Review of “For Me to Live is Christ, The Life of Edward J. Young”

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For Me to Live is Christ, The Life of Edward J. Young by Davis A. Young, Willow Grove, PA: The Committee for the Historian of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2017, 349 pp., $10

Edward J. Young (1907-1968), for those unfamiliar with him, was a longtime professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. That he may be a lesser-known WTS professor speaks not to any lack of his own accomplishments, but to the relative prominence and impact of professors J. Gresham Machen, Cornelius Van Til, John Murray, and R. B. Kuiper who have each previously had biographies written of them.

The author of this volume is Davis A. Young, son of Edward J. Young, who is an accomplished professor in his own right. Davis, who holds a PhD from Brown University, taught for many years at Calvin College and has published at least eleven other books, largely on geology and the Bible. Davis had long desired to write a book on his father and it is good that he did so, for he was probably better positioned than anyone to write this volume. But while this book was generally well-written and filled in some details of OPC history, it is unlikely that it will find a large audience.

First some criticism. E. J. Young just doesn’t make for the most stimulating of biographical characters. The book is fairly lengthy, repetitious in places, and in the later chapters just alternates between comments on Young’s travelogue and explanations of his various publications. The almost entire lack of footnotes/endnotes will be disappointing to researchers. What only can be an error begins chapter 2 where E. J. “Dode” first comes into the picture. Davis first writes that “The State of California lost its birth record of E. J. Young in the 1906 Earthquake and fire.” But in the very next paragraph he notes “Edward Joseph Young was born on November 29, 1907.” Naturally, a birth certificate cannot have been lost the year before one is born.

On the positive side, there is much to be learned here about Young. The book chronicles how he came from a fairly upper-class family in California, had a mother who followed Christian Science, how he was influenced by his Princeton Seminary trained pastor, graduated from Stanford, preached in rural Nevada, and traveled the Middle East and Europe to improve his language skills. Young’s travel and work-ethic in learning languages would most benefit him later as an Old Testament professor. The book then tells us that Young went for one year to the PCUSA’s San Francisco Theological Seminary but concluded his seminary education at Westminster Theological Seminary. After more traveling and learning Young was hired on as a professor at WTS and did not earn his Ph.D. until later, taking doctorate courses at Dropsie College while teaching at WTS.

Throughout the book we see that Young worked hard on Old Testament commentaries with a particular focus on the books of Genesis, Isaiah, and Daniel. He took generally conservative positions, usual at odds with other scholars of his time who were almost invariably critics of the Scriptures. Young’s work was regularly praised and he became a much-desired speaker at churches and conferences. He also worked for years on what became the Trinity Hymnal and had great interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  For conservative Reformed Christians and Presbyterians today, however, it might be noted that Young was open to, if not favorable to, an Old-Earth view of creation.

One of the more moving accounts in this volume was of E. J.’s wife Lillian. She, we find out, had lost a fiancee to an automobile accident and then lost her first husband to a hunting accident. Young’s patience and persistence surely accounts for Lillian’s eventual willingness to try again with love. Young’s premature death at 61 years old left Lillian widowed again, for the final two decades of her life.

Young had an interesting relationship with the PCUSA. He not only went to one of their seminaries for a year, but also had some run-ins with some of their prominent pastors. He preached at the churches of Rev. Merrill T. MacPherson and Donald Grey Barnhouse but in both cases was pushed away for not being a dispensational premillennialist. Young’s sense of humor came out in a quip to WTS registrar Paul Wolley saying that while he had little hope of finding preaching assignments in his home San Francisco Presbytery he “had expected [prominent modernist] Dr. Fosdick to resign and to offer us his church.” Another comical episode features the PCUSA Board of Education asking Young for a seminary loan to be paid back as he did not continue to minister in their denomination but joined the OPC. In a series of letters, Young patiently tried to get them to say whether they believed that his work with WTS and the OPC was not an “evangelical ministry” as the loan requirement stipulated. Young’s own ordination in the PCUSA became basically a trial of his beloved Machen, the trial Machen himself never had the luxury of getting.

This reviewer, as author of Gordon Clark’s biography The Presbyterian Philosopher, was particularly interested to find any additional details about the ongoings of the OPC in the 1940s. Unfortunately, this was mostly lacking. Davis did include some sections about the Clark – Van Til controversy, but there was no reason given as to why Young added his name to The Complaint with Van Til. The book does, however, go into more detail with the Willow Grove congregation where Young attended and where Clark-supporter Robert Strong pastored. During the controversy Young and other families transferred away from Willow Grove. This may have been as much regarding a disagreement between Young and Strong about the status of Arminianism as it was about the Clark – Van Til controversy.  Compared to the grilling Clark received at his licensure, ordination, and four-year controversy, the books notes, “There is no record that Young underwent a theological examination by the presbytery. Available records give the impression that key church leaders simply accepted his word regarding adherence to the Westminster Standards.” (p. 94)

The takeaway this reviewer got from the book is a desire to read E. J. Young’s OT commentaries. And if the book succeeds in getting others to read Young’s scholarly work then it will have served a good purpose.

For those interested in buying the book, the only place where it is currently available is at the OPC store: store.opc.org

“The Presbyterian Philosopher” reviewed in the English Churchman

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Review of “A Church You Can See”

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A Church You Can See. Building a Case for Church Membership by Dennis E. Bills, Reforming West Virginia Publications, 2017, 111 pp. $5.99

This is the best book I’ve read in a long time.

In reading this book and talking with the author, Dennis E. Bills, I found him to be simultaneously a humble West Virginian and a scholar of Reformed Theology. Bills, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America has four theological degrees and, along with his pastoral work, teaches at a local community college and also works as a law mediator. Yet, despite his achievements, he stays true to his roots as an “eighth-generation” West Virginian writing A Church You Can See at a level that is both clear and understandable to lay Christians and challenges them to investigate the Scriptural teachings on church membership.

This is one of the most important books for our time as so many people have rationalized not becoming a member of a church. Bills addresses the “Lone-wolf Christians” who may be convinced that “they are better than the people in the churches around them,” the “Satellite Christians” who “never seem to settle down,” the “parachurch Christians” who are satisfied in being involved in ministries without being involved in a church, and the Christians who believe that the Bible doesn’t teach that membership is necessary.

Bills makes his case from the Scriptures, showing the principles and practices of the early Christian church. He argues that in the Bible there are no “dismembered Christians” – no Christians who are not of the body of Christ, the Church. (p. 8) He challenges Christians outside of the church to “examine whether or not their ‘exceptional circumstances’ [for not joining] are simply justification for doing what they want instead of what God wants.” (p. 19) He points out that the author of Hebrews commands Christians to “not neglect to meet together” (p. 40) and that Paul commands us in Ephesians to use our diverse gifts for building up the church which is only possible within the context of the church. (p. 51) Further, he notes, Hebrews 13:17 commands that we are to submit to our elders, which is only possible if one has elders, i.e. is a member of a church.  (p. 52) And, he notes, the command to distinguish between those who are outside of the church and those who are inside the church (1 Cor. 5:9-13) can only be fulfilled if there is church membership. (p. 61) He also includes a chapter that has much practical advice about how to find and join a church.

In all of this Bills uses a “building a house” metaphor to frame (no pun intended) the arguments in a way understandable to the average man. In all of this Bills explains the Biblical concepts clearly and makes his case persuasively. And all of this he does in a concise manner, at just 111 pages (only 88 if you don’t count the appendices).

At $5.99 this book should be purchased in bulk and given out at churches.

“The Presbyterian Philosopher” reviewed in the Standard Bearer

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Review of The Emperor Has No Clothes

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr.s’ Doctrine of Justification by Stephen M. Cunha, The Trinity Foundation, 2008, 148 pp.

**I started reading this book just before finding out about the Trinity Foundation’s latest essay contest featuring the book. Well, I’m far older than the 17-23 year old age rules on the contest. But if you know a budding theologian in that age category alert them to this contest.**

“Dr. Gaffin’s public support for and endorsement of Mr. Norman Shepherd’s distinctive covenant theology is the elephant in the room within the OPC.” (p. 88) This comment by Stephen M. Cunha in The Emperor Has No Clothes: Dr. Richard B. Gaffin Jr.s’ Doctrine of Justification could also apply to Gaffin’s views on justification in general. The fact that Gaffin remains in good standing in the OPC while Shepherd was long ago pressured out and while other Reformed denominations have made definite stances against such views is more than an elephant in the room for the OPC, it is a great embarassment. Or at least it should be.

It was because of this “elephant in the room” that Cunha, once a lay member of the church congregation in which Gaffin attended, wrote this book. While Gaffin has been allowed by the leaders of his denomination to continue teaching his theology, it was Cunha as merely a lay member that had to call Gaffin out. Thus the title “The Emperor Has No Clothes” in reference to that well-known story.

While I found that I largely agreed with Cunha’s positions, the book is a mediocre-at-best production. Sometimes it was difficult to follow his arguments. Many of his quotes were of unnecessary length. The chapters (in fact there are only sections not even numbered as chapters) were of odd length. In addition to sections of 12, 12, and 7 pages, there was a massive center section of 50 pages, almost exactly one-half the length of the book itself, if the backmatter is removed from the page count. Ultimately, Cunha has some questions about what Gaffin actually believes. Couldn’t he have just asked Gaffin, who apparently attended the same church with him?

On the positive side I liked Cunha’s clear distinction between ground, instrument, and evidence as the three possible categories for the relationship between works and justification. He argues that the traditional Reformed position is that works are evidence of justification. Gaffin, by comparison, is very unclear, but has a tendency towards making works “co-instrumental” with faith.

Since Gaffin’s views are so similar to the view of Norman Shepherd and the Federal Vision it is reasonable to group them together. In so doing, it is apparent that the Trinity Foundation, particularly in the last years of its founder, John Robbins (who passed in 2008), focused its effort on opposing that group’s theology. I count no less that 5 books they published against the supporters of Federal Vision and similar errors.

2003: The Current Justification Controversy by O. Palmer Robertson

2003: A Companion to The Current Justification Controversy by John W. Robbins

2004: Not Reformed At All by John W. Robbins

2005: Christianity and Neo-Liberalism by Paul Elliot

2008: The Emperor Has No Clothes by Stephen M. Cunha

There have been books against Federal Vision and similar errors published by other sources as well. These books include:

Getting the Gospel Right by Cornelius Vennema, Banner of Truth (see my review)

and

Federal Vision, Heresy at the Root by David J. Engelsma, Reformed Free Publishing (see my review)

But the Trinity Foundation has certainly taken the lead on the topic. And the reason for such work is clear – Federal Vision is an error not respecting just any minor doctrine but with the doctrine of justification. And against this error no ink should be spared.

Some pamphlets written by Johannes G. Vos

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Johannes G. Vos (1903-1983), one of three sons of theologian Geerhardus Vos, was the founder of the journal Blue Banner Faith and Life and was for many years (1954-1973) a professor at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA.

I recently acquired eight short pamphlets, seven of which were written by Johannes G. Vos. Here are some notes on their contents:

Surrender to Evolution: Inevitable or Inexcusable?

This pamphlet is reprinted from Torch and Trumpet, February, 1996. Vos doesn’t directly answer his own question, but his positions are clear. Among other points, he notes that evolution is premised on naturalistic assumptions and over-extends the proper phenomenological realm of science. Theistic evolution, he contends, cannot make sense of the Hebrew distinction between “bara” (God’s creative acts) and “asah” (the general verb for “making”). It is interesting that back in 1966 he refers to the claim of some scientists that they will “soon” create life in the laboratory from non-living matter. It is now over fifty years later and this unsolved problem, one would think, should be a scandal for the evolutionist.

Christian Education for Christian Youth

“Because we are persons we need education.” Vos notes that “educate” comes from the Latin educo, which mean “to lead out.” And it is this “leading out” — bringing out a persons possibilities and enabling him to become a better, more effective person — that, Vos contends, is the goal of education. That is, we do not educate in order to get ahead of the Russians in the space race (which surely dates this article to the 1960s), or to be trained for a job and earn money. This “is reducing people to the sub-personal, sub-human level, and is turning people into mere machines to grind out work for the all powerful state.” Christian education, Vos contends, is not secular studies plus a few Bible courses, but has “faith in God” as its basic guiding principle. He writes that his own Geneva College is trying to become “a better, more radically, more consistently Christian college.”

The Offense of the Cross

This is the shortest of the pamphlets I received and it might more accurately be considered a gospel tract. Vos shows his orthodoxy in noting the “substitutionary atonement.” He contends that it is the “offense of the cross”—punishing the sinless Christ in order to save sinners—that distinguishes Christianity from all counterfeit religions.

God’s Will and God’s Word

This is the only of the pamphlets which was not written by Vos. Rather it was written by R. B. Kuiper and published by the Committee on Christian Education of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

Kuiper addresses the question “How am I to know the will of God concerning my life?” God’s will, Kuiper contends, is known only “by His Spirit through His Word.” In additional sections he argues against other methods of ascertaining God’s will—human tradition, the individual conscience, pious soothsaying, an abbreviated Bible, presumptuous mysticism, and providential guidance.

This is good material. I had concern that it would devolve into another of Kuiper’s writings that support the error of the “Well-meant offer of the Gospel” on the basis of multiple contradictory wills of God.

Ashamed . . . of the Tents of Shem?

This pamphlet was written to help Christians to better love singing the Psalms. Vos was an ordained minister in the Reformed Presbyterian Church North America – a historically psalm-singing denomination. Yet this pamphlet does not go so far as to advocate exclusive psalmody. Vos connects the prophecy that the Japhethites will dwell in the tents of Shem with the fact that non-Jewish peoples have come to worship the Biblical God. He writes, “Our religious heritage has come to us from the children of Israel, the children of Shem.” He argues that we shouldn’t abandon this heritage and we shouldn’t abandon singing the psalms. He critiques the reasons some do not like to sing the Psalms, and concludes that the Psalms must be sung and loved as they are an integral part of the Christian Faith.

Scriptural Revelation and the Evolutionary World View

The article in this pamphlet, it is noted, was a “Lecture Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Reformed Fellowship” in Grand Rapids Michigan. 1966 is either the year of the lecture or the year of the publication.

Here Vos again takes up evolution. He believes that it is incompatible with Christianity. He notes that it is a popular zeal not for truth but for eliminating God that led to Darwin (who he says was an atheist) selling far more books than his contemporary Mendel (who was a Christian). Evolution is opposed to teleology and is based solely on irrational chance. Vos writes, “To say that something is caused by chance is to say that it has no cause.” Evolution leads to immorality.

Perhaps my favorite quote of Vos is as follows:

“Here in America our public education system, from kindergarten to university, is deliberately being made more and more secular. At the same time our sages and experts stand aghast at the boldness and increase of evil.”

Vos’s whole article here is quite good. He focuses on moral and Biblical arguments against evolution. They are solid arguments, but I would also like to see philosophical, scientific, and biological arguments to add to the case for those who unfortunately have no concern for the Bible or for objective morality.

Interestingly, Vos notes “I once accepted Ussher’s chronology, but later gave it up.” He says that “Ussher’s scheme rests upon unwarranted assumptions.” He speaks favorably of Warfield, Bavinck, and Augustine and seems to think that the world, though perhaps not billions of years old, is certainly older than Ussher’s figure.

What is Christian Education? 

Vos calls Christian Education that which has the “unifying principle” as “the historic Christian view of God, man and the universe in the mutual relations.” He addresses the question “Why is Christian Education Needed?” in saying that it is to fulfill the commandment to “love the Lord thy God … with all thy mind” and to “give expression” to the “radical difference which exists between … the regenerate and unregenerate.” Christian education, Vos contends, is not an add-on to secular education, but an education which is Christian in its “essence or inner character all along the line” and based on the authority of God’s revelation in the Bible.

God, Man, and Religion

Vos writes “In academic circles there is a good deal of emphasis on objectivity.”  Oh the relatively good old days of modernism, before the current plague of post-modernism in the acadamies! Fifty years later and relativism reigns over objectivity. Vos, while certainly not a post-modernist writes, “really objectivity is impossible.” He contends,

“All thinking, all writing, all discussion, is carried on from some point of view, whether this is recognized or not. All thinking is based on assumptions. The question is not whether we shall have basic assumptions, but what our assumptions are and whether we are consciously critical of them or not.”

I must think that Vos must have been quite familiar with presuppositionalism. Living in Pennsylvania he wasn’t far geographically from Westminster Theological Seminary and their Professor Cornelius Van Til. Later, in the 1970s, Vos would have some positive interactions with Gordon Clark.

Vos argues that there are basically two views in religion: God is ultimate or man is ultimate. That is, there is “Biblical Theism” and “Consistent humanism.”

Reflecting the time of the writing, Vos writes, “The present headquarters of consistent humanism is the Kremlin of Moscow, and the outreaching arms of this poisonous, idolatrous man-worship are found in the subtle instruments of Communist propaganda throughout the world.

All middle-of-the-road philosophies devolve into humanism. Though Vos doesn’t use the term “Arminianism,” he contends, “The middle-of-the-road view regards God as limited by man’s free will.”

Consistent theism, Vos concludes, “regards the accomplishment of salvation as a work of God” and this is for the purpose of manifesting God’s love and His righteousness for God’s glory.

 

Review of “Theological Roots of Pentecostalism”

Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, Donald W. Dayton, Baker Academic, 1987, pp. 198.

Pentecostalism is a strange world to the Reformed Christian. Yet because of its considerable influence in the world (the good, the bad, and the televangelist ugly), it is important to study and understand the movement. Perhaps there is no better place to start such a study than with Donald W. Dayton’s Theological Roots of Pentecostalism.

The copious endnotes following each chapter of Theological Roots of Pentecostalism indicate the impressive extent to which Dayton researched the topic before writing his rather condensed treatise. Dayton rightfully and humbly admits the difficulty of the questions at hand. His nuanced conclusions further evidence that he knows the literature well and has no need for any dogmatic appeal to a simplistic understanding of pentecostalism’s roots. It might also help objectivity that Dayton himself is a Baptist, not a Pentecostal.

Dayton notes that while there are historic parallels to Pentecostalism within Anglo-Catholicism, Puritanism, and German Pietism, it is primarily from Methodism and the Holiness movements associated with Methodism that Pentecostalism arose. Though Pentecostalism, with its characteristic glossolalia (speaking in tongues), may have only come into its own at the turn of the 20th century with Charles F. Parham in Topeka Kansas the Asuza Street revival in Los Angeles, most of its other characteristic features had already emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Pentecostalism itself, Dayton contends, is by no means uniform. There are those who believe in “three works of grace,” others who hold to “two works of grace,” and then there is the “Oneness” movement. Additionally there are those who hold to a “four-fold pattern” and those who hold to a “five-fold pattern” of the Gospel. And there are even those who believe in a “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and those who add also a separate “baptism of fire.”

Yet there are similarities across Pentecostalism. Dayton notes that the hermeneutic of Pentecostalism tends to be more “Lukan” (looking toward Luke’s Gospel and Luke’s Acts of the Apostles) than Pauline or Johannine, as some might argue the focus of historic Protestantism has been. It is, he contends, a “subjectivizing hermeneutic” which takes descriptive Biblical accounts and makes them normative in the life of the Christian. For example, Dayton writes, “The exodus from Egypt, the wilderness wanderings, and the crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land all become stages in the normative pattern of spiritual pilgrimage from conversion into the ‘second blessing.'” (p. 23-24) (Likewise, this subjectivizing lends Pentecostalists to believe they must experience a baptism of the holy spirit just as the apostle’s did at Pentecost.)

Having tried but failed to trace a history of their views through the centuries of the Christian church, many Pentecostals, Dayton relays, attempted to save the logic of their view by arguing that they were of the “Latter Rain.” That is, they looked to the book of Joel and other places that mentioned an “early” and “latter” rain to explain that the early church and their latter movement were the only fully authentic Christian periods. Thus Pentecostalism has similarities to other forms of restorationism.

It is not so much Methodism’s founder John Wesley himself that Dayton credits with incipient Pentecostalism, but rather Wesley’s colleague John Fletcher. While Wesley resisted, it was Fletcher who connected the “perfection” a Christian is to experience with the idea of a “baptism of the Holy Spirit.” This, mind you, is in the 18th century, over a hundred years before Pentecostalism became a fully distinct movement.

From Methodism, Holiness movements emerged in the 19th century. These include the “revival of 1857-1858” led by Phoebe Palmer, and “Oberlin Perfectionism” which came out of leaders at Oberlin College including Asa Mahan. Dayton notes that a “further radicalization” with “demonstrations of the spirit” was present with B. H. Irwin and R. C. Horner, “the two most prominent advocates of the ‘third blessing'” in the 19th century (before Parham and Asuza). From the evangelism of Oberlin’s Finney emerged Dwight L. Moody who “had a sure instinct for avoiding controversy” and R. A. Torrey who was “just the opposite” and “who reveals a startling narrowing focus on the ‘Baptism of the Holy Spirit.'”  In addition to all these precursors to Pentecostalism, Dayton includes the Keswick Holiness Movement in England (which started in the 1870s), and the teaching of A. B. Simpson and A. J. Gordon still in the 19th century. Thus Dayton contends that yet in the 19th century there was a “pervasiveness of Pentecostal themes.”  He writes, “It is thus no accident that Pentecostalism emerged when it did. All that was needed was the spark that would ignite the volatile tinder.” (p. 108)

Dayton writes also on the the “Divine healing movement” and its relation to Pentecostalism. He notes that the “roots of this teaching are complex and difficult to trace.” And that “we find the evidence ambiguous.” Still he notes the influence of Pietism as “one of the most important forces in the rise of the doctrine of divine healing” and goes on to mention a number of 19th century Christian leaders involved in various kinds of healing.  Dayton notes, “by the turn of the century (the 20th century) most of the currents that had adopted the doctrine of Pentecostal baptism in the spirit had also begun to teach a variation on the theme of divine healing.”

Dayton’s final chapter, “The Rise of Premillennialism,” rounds out his analysis of the roots of four basic Pentecostal themes (aligning with the “Foursquare gospel”) he had previously identified: 1. Salvation by Christ, 2. Baptism of the Holy Spirit, 3. Divine healing, and 4. the return of Christ. In this chapter Dayton notes that this fourth theme “presents a challenge” to his own “general thesis” that “the lineage of Pentecostalism is to be traced primarily through the nineteenth-century Holiness traditions and more indirectly back to the themes of Methodism and perhaps even to Pietism and Puritanism.” (p. 143) The challenge is that premillennial dispensationalism emerged not with any of these traditions, but with John Nelson Darby and the British Plymouth Brethren. Dayton argues that the Methodist/Holiness tradition did not emphasize eschatology. This might account in part for the readiness to accept Darby’s views which were heavily promoted in the era in which Pentecostalism came into form.

My summary here of the book is quite insufficient. This is a book that really must be read.

But I might make one observation beyond the book and into some present-day discussions I’ve been involved in: Pentecostalism’s roots in Arminian Methodism make it a very strange bedfellow for those few Calvinistic Christians who embrace some of its distinctive continuationist features like glossolalia and the expectation of miraculous healings.