Justin Taylor's Blog, page 121

If This Quote Doesn’t Convince You to Read Augustine, Perhaps Nothing Will

But what do I love when I love my God? . . .

Not the sweet melody of harmony and song;

not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices;

not manna or honey;

not limbs such as the body delights to embrace.

It is not these that I love when I love my God.

And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace;

but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self,

when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space;

when it listens to sound that never dies away;

when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind;

when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating;

when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire.

This is what I love when I love my God.

—Augustine, Confessions (transl. Pine-Coffin), X, 6.

Free AudioBook of the Month: “When Helping Hurts”

Christian Audio’s free book for the month of February is When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert.

Here’s a description:

With more than 225,000 copies sold, When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation and ministry to those in need. Emphasizing the poverty of both heart and society, this book exposes the need that every person has and how it can be filled. The reader is brought to understand that poverty is much more than simply a lack of financial or material resources and that it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve the problem of poverty.

While this book exposes past and current development efforts that churches have engaged in which unintentionally undermine the people they’re trying to help, its central point is to provide proven strategies that challenge Christians to help the poor empower themselves. Focusing on both North American and Majority World contexts, When Helping Hurts catalyzes the idea that sustainable change for people living in poverty comes not from the outside-in, but from the inside-out.

What Can Evangelicals Learn from Fundamentalists?

A few of the responses from a pastors’ and theologians’ forum hosted by 9Marks several years ago:

Timothy George

What can we learn from the Fundamentalists? Well, to start with, how about the fundamentals? These sturdy Christians stood courageously for crucial doctrines of faith such as the total truthfulness of Holy Scripture, the Virgin Birth of Christ, his substitutionary atoning death on the cross, etc. when these teachings were under attack by unbelieving theologians. Thank God for them and for their courage!

Another lesson: how to work together across denominational lines for the historic orthodox faith. Fundamentalism is the mother of Evangelical ecumenism at its best.

Here is a third lesson: an unstinted commitment to the cause of world missions. The Fundamentalists gave the lie to the old canard, “Doctrine divides, missions unite.”

But there are negative lessons as well. The twin errors of Fundamentalism, to my mind, were reductionism and separatism. On the first, the Fundamentalists were not fundamental enough (where’s the Trinity?), and on the second, they became, over time, too contentious to contend for the faith once delivered, except in their own sectarian bubble.

Still, there is much to learn here about our Christian witness today.

Darryl G. Hart

The Virtue of Being Suspicious.

As contrary as it runs to popular perceptions, Fundamentalists were not fools. In fact, their powers of discernment make contemporary Evangelicals, who have supposedly advanced beyond Fundamentalists’ defense of simple verities, look downright gullible.

Fundamentalists knew they were in a battle, that the church is always being threatened with false teachers and members with “itching ears.” They took the New Testament seriously when its writers charged the early church to be on the lookout for those who would lead God’s flock astray.

Fundamentalists also knew that the greatest danger to the church invariably came from within her ranks. J. Gresham Machen was a great example of such skepticism. In 1926 he wrote,

Last week it was reported that the churches of America increased their membership by 690,000. Are you encouraged by these figures? I for my part am not encouraged a bit. I have indeed my own grounds for encouragement. . . . But these figures have no place among them. How many of these 690,000 names do you think are really written in the Lamb’s book of life? A small proportion, I fear. Church membership today often means nothing more, as has well been said, than a vague admiration for the moral character of Jesus; the Church in countless communities is little more than a Rotary Club. . . . It will be hard; it will seem impious to timid souls; many will be hurt. But in God’s name let us get rid of shams and have reality at last.

In a day when Protestants seem to be as easily impressed by smooth-talking television preachers, beautiful liturgies administered by women and gays, or smart popes, we could use Fundamentalist suspicion.

Mark Noll

Christian believers of all types might learn much, both positively and negatively, from the history of Fundamentalism. Negatively, the most important lesson is to avoid the frequent fundamentalist mistake of treating some other practice, belief, habit, or even concept of doctrine as more important than living by God’s free grace in Jesus Christ. But there are also other negative lessons to learn:

not to misread the Scriptures with a naively literalistic hermeneutic (e.g., creation science, premillennial dispensationalism);
not to be smarter than the Scriptures on behavioral rules (e.g., prohibition);
not to ignore tradition and the communion of saints in time (the past) and space (other believers);
not to neglect the sacraments; and
not to marry Christianity to the American flag.

But there is also much to learn positively, especially the shining Fundamentalist emphasis on Scripture as much more than any other human book. And there are also other positive lessons:

to insist on the importance of the substitutionary atonement;
to preach so as to be understood by all sorts of people;
to perceive that God is the creator of all things and that the supernatural is more real than the natural;
to understand the force of good hymns (e.g., “Rescue the Perishing,” “Great is Thy Faithfulness”);
to remember the reality of heaven and hell; and
to evangelize.

David Wells

We can learn three positive and three negative things from Fundamentalism.

On the positive side: first, Fundamentalists, despite derision from within academia and scorn from the mainline liberal denominations, preserved the Word of God and sought to live by it; second, though laughed at for being socially uncaring, they actually built an astonishing record of caring, missionary work overseas; third, even while huddling together against the storm on the outside, they also showed how important the church can be in people’s lives.

On the negative side: first, we see how crippling can be the sense of being a minority, in this case, a cognitive minority, for Fundamentalists developed a siege mentality that was unhealthy; second, we see the price that they paid for their anti-intellectualism which issued in a lot of bizarre biblical interpretation and a worldview that was stunted and not wholesome; third, we also see how the passion for truth went astray so often and resulted in rancor, divisions, and the cult of personalities.

 

What Does It Look Like to Open Your Own Bible for the First Time?

A one-minute video in China:

And here are the Kimyals of West Papua, Indonesia, receiving the New Testament in their our language for the first time:

Luke 12:48, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones Documentary on George Whitefield

25 Years in Manhattan: A Documentary on Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church

A Dutch documentary (with subtitles):

The 9 T4G Plenary Sessions Announced

There are just 9 weeks to go until T4G 2014 in Louisville (April 10-12, 2014).

Below are the 9 plenary talks. (You could consider meditating on one passage per week to make ready your heart and mind!)

Crossway is very happy to be sponsoring T4G, and there will be some exciting announcements on site.

If you register before February 28, 2014, you’ll save $80.

Here are the keynote speakers and what they will be talking about:

Plenaries

Ligon Duncan

“The Gospel by Numbers” (Numbers 5)

Albert Mohler

“The Open Door Is the Only Door: The Singularity of the Gospel in a Pluralistic Age” (Acts 4)

Mark Dever

“Making Known the Wisdom of God through the Church” (Eph. 3:8-11)

John MacArthur

“Mass Defection: The Great Physician Confronts the Pathology of Counterfeit Faith” (John 6)

David Platt

“Relenting Wrath: The Role of Desperate Prayer in the Mystery of Divine Providence” (Exodus 32)

John Piper

“Persuading, Pleading, and Predestination: Human Means in the Miracle of Conversion”

Kevin DeYoung

“Never Spoke a Man Like This Before: Inerrancy, Evangelism, and Christ’s Unbreakable Bible” (John 10:35)

Thabiti Anyabwile

“The Happiness of Heaven in the Repentance of Sinners” (Luke 15)

Matt Chandler

“Christ Is All” (2 Tim. 1:8-14)

In addition, there will be six panel sessions and ten breakout sessions:

Panels

“D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Pastor-Evangelist”

Elizabeth Catherwood and Iain Murray; moderated by Mark Dever [note the new "Reader" of MLJ sermons due out in time for the conference, as well as Murray's new, updated, and abridged biography]

“Homosexuality: Our Third Rail?”

Russell Moore and Sam Alberry, moderated by Albert Mohler [note Alberry's book, Is God Anti-Gay?]

“Preaching Sanctification”

 Kevin DeYoung, John Piper, David Platt, and Derek Thomas; moderated by Matt Chandler [note that DeYoung's The Hole in Our Holiness is now available in paperback]

“Denominations: Your Grandfather’s Oldsmobile?”

Mark Dever, Kevin DeYoung, and John Yates; moderated by Ligon Duncan

“Stump the Panel”

 Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, Mark Dever, Thabiti Anyabwile, and Simon Gathercole; moderated by Mike McKinley

“Future Theological Threats“

Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, Kevin DeYoung, Simon Gathercole, and Peter Williams; moderated by Mark Dever

Breakout Sessions

Edward Copeland

“Evangelistic Ministry in Traditional African American Churches”

Leonce Crump

“Church Planting as a Means of Evangelism”

Juan Sanchez

“Building an Evangelistic Church”

Simon Gathercole and Peter Williams

“How Biblical Studies Are Helping Apologetics”

Dave Russell

“Mobilizing the Church to Evangelize on Campus”

Owen Strachan

“The Pastor as Public Theologian in an Increasingly Hostile Culture”

David Sinclair

“Distinctives of God-Centered Evangelism”

Mack Stiles

“Evangelism in the Post-Modern World” [note Stiles' new little book on evangelism that will be out in time for the conference]

Ligon Duncan and Albert Mohler

“The Importance of Inerrancy for Evangelism in Missions”

Mez McConnell and Mike McKinley

“Church Planting in Hard Places”

Ken Myers: “In Light of the Logos: Creation, Redemption, and the Christian Imagination”

Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio, delivered a series of lectures for the inaugural Art Week at Dallas Theological Seminary in October 2013 on creation, redemption, and the Christian imagination. You can see summaries and videos of the talks below.

“Creation and the Ordered Imagination”

One of the hallmarks of modern culture is the assumption that the natural world is bereft of order or meaning. All human meaning is thus the product of human creativity. The stuff of the material world—without form and void—is assigned significance ex nihilo, in accord with the sovereignty of human wills. By contrast, a Christian understanding of art and imagination begins with a confidence in the meaningful order of Creation, an order which survives the Fall and which is perceived by the collaboration of reason and imagination.

Message: “Incarnation and the Form of Human Meaning”

Among the earliest and most persistent Christian heresies was a denial that Christ was fully human. The mystery of the Incarnation—God taking human form—was even harder for many First Century pagans and Jews to accept than was the idea of forgiveness effected through a cross. The gnostic temptation has continued to plague the Church. In modern culture, it is evident in the common assumption that form and content can be neatly severed, and that abstract formulas of truth are superior to concrete expressions of reality. But what if the medium really is the message?

“Resurrection and the Promise of Glory”

Before Christ was raised from the dead, it would have been possible to believe that Creation was a lost cause, that sin had so undone God’s handiwork that death and horror were more powerful than life and its beauties. When the modern West abandoned its orientation in light of the Resurrection, it also became skeptical about the possibility of beauty. But the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ confirms God’s love for his Creation and the order he established within it. Our present delight in the reality of beauty within Creation anticipates our future delight in the new heavens and the new earth.

Q&A with Ken Myers

How to Read N. T. Wright: Tom Schreiner Looks Once More at His View of Justification

In the latest issue of Credo Magazine, Tom Schreiner has a 29-page review article of N. T. Wright’s massive two-volume tome on Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Fortress, 2014).

Schreiner offers a good framework by which we should approach Wright’s work:

It seems as if discussions on Wright easily become a matter of whether one is “for him” or “against him.”

But such an approach isn’t helpful and blunts the kind of discussion that is needed.

It is  fitting to be grateful (see above) for his contributions to scholarship and for his service to the church. He is clearly not an enemy of evangelicalism but a friend.

At the same time, we serve scholarship and truth in raising questions and concerns as well.

If demonizing Wright is irrational, we must also beware of an uncritical adulation where any disagreement with him is viewed as an attack.

Mature discussion takes place when we honestly dialogue about places where we agree and differ with kindness and grace.

Schreiner first summarizes the book, then looks at areas of agreement and appreciation, followed by areas of disagreement. He closes the review essay in this way:

Discussing disagreements has a negative  side effect, for we tend to focus on those and to forget where we agree. So too here, the concerns and disagreements may  cause us to neglect the many places where  there is agreement. So, let me say again how thankful I am for the scholarship and wisdom evident in Wright’s work. We all stand in his debt, for he has helped us to  see in a new way the coherence, historical rootedness, and practical ramifications of Pauline theology. Wright’s work on Paul will be profited from and read for years to come. May the conversation continue with charity, grace, and forthright dialogue.

In terms of disagreement, Schreiner says that the areas of justification “continues to be the place where Wright is most controversial—at least for confessional and evangelical Protestants.” His engagement with Wright here offers a helpful summation and interaction, so I am reproducing it below (with some subheadings of my own for convenience).

[Justification Is Forensic, Not Transformative]

Wright’s view is both helpful and confusing. He rightly emphasizes that justification is a forensic reality, that it has to do with the law court. Hence, he rejects the notion that justification is transformative and life changing. It is a declaration by the judge that one stands in the right. All this seems exactly right.

[Justification, Covenant Faithfulness, and Covenant Membership]

On the other hand, he also defines justification in terms of God’s covenant faithfulness and our covenant membership. It seems, then, that justification doesn’t, according to Wright, primarily mean that we are right with God. It fundamentally means that we are members of the church, that we are covenant members.

I believe Wright here makes a category mistake. He rightly sees that righteousness relates both to creation and covenant. Righteousness and the covenant aren’t separated one from the other. But it doesn’t follow from this that righteousness means covenant faithfulness or covenant membership.

Instead, as Stephen Westerholm shows in his recent book, Justification Reconsidered: Rethinking a Pauline Theme (Eerdmans), justification means that one is in the right, that one is declared to be in the right. This is not to say that righteousness has nothing to do with the covenant. Better to say that God’s saving righteousness fulfills his covenant promises instead of saying that righteousness means covenant membership or covenant faithfulness. Indeed, it seems as if the emphasis on covenant membership sits awkwardly with the notion that righteousness is declarative, for justification means that we stand in the right before God.

[Justification and Salvation, Sin and Wrath]

The matter of justification deserves further comment. Wright often criticizes those who identify justification with salvation, pointing out that the words justify and salvation mean different things. He is certainly right on this score, but he neglects an important point as well. Wright, as noted above, puts justification in the ecclesiological category. It doesn’t communicate, says Wright, that one has become a Christian; it tells us whether one is a covenant member, a member of the church of Jesus Christ. I continue to be unpersuaded. Yes, justification and salvation don’t mean the same thing, but they have the same referent. Salvation means that one is spared from the eschatological wrath to come, while justification means that one is declared to be right on the final day.

Wright himself says that this eschatological verdict has been declared in advance, the end time announcement has been declared in advance with reference to those who believe in Jesus Christ. When he talks like this, it seems that he is thinking mainly of soteriology, i.e., our relationship to God (hence the confusion mentioned above). Both salvation and justification, then, are soteriological realities. Justification most naturally refers to one who is declared to be in the right before God, and that fits better with soteriology rather than ecclesiology.

Wright often says that those who hold onto the so-called old perspective distort Paul, since they speak of putting one’s faith in Christ and then going to heaven. Wright says this is fundamentally flawed since the promise is not an ethereal heavenly existence but the new creation. We can grant this point as a good corrective, though most old perspective scholars I know already agree that our future destiny is a new creation. In other words, Wright’s proposal about the new creation isn’t as new and as radical as he thinks it is. Still, he rightly says that our future life will be in a transformed world, a new creation.

If our destiny is the new creation, the soteriological dimension of justification still remains, for only those who are justified will enter the new creation. Those who face God’s eschatological wrath will experience the final judgment instead of participating in the new creation. Wright doesn’t deny the wrath of God and the judgment to come, but in an exceedingly long book on Paul it doesn’t receive enough attention or comment. In other words, he waxes eloquently on the unity of the church (a horizontal reality), but by comparison his reflections on God’s wrath and the final judgment are relatively abbreviated. The brevity of his comments have consequences, for he doesn’t give the same weight to escaping God’s wrath and the final judgment that Paul does. Getting the story right doesn’t mean just including every bit of the story; it also means that each element in Paul’s theology is given proper weight.

I am not making any accusations here about Wright’s orthodoxy or evangelical credentials. It is a matter of emphasis instead of denial. Still, it seems that he emphasizes the horizontal much more than he stresses the vertical. Both themes are certainly present. Nevertheless, Wright doesn’t give us an in-depth and profound discussion on the nature of sin in Paul. He repeatedly says that the problem is sin. Yes and yes. But he doesn’t linger over what sin is or unpack its significance. He doesn’t focus on its refusal to honor and glorify God. Obviously, he believes these things, but the emphasis and the passion seem to be elsewhere. But if the fundamental and most horrendous issue in life is sin, i.e., rebellion against God, a proud and stubborn refusal to honor God as God, then one of the most important issues is whether one can be saved from God’s wrath; whether one will be saved (delivered) or justified (declared to be in the right) on the last day.

[Justification and Assurance]

Wright writes movingly on the assurance justification gives to believers, for those who are justified can be sure of final salvation. He helpfully reiterates that justification is forensic and not a process. It is a verdict, a declaration from God that gives believers’ confidence as they face the final day. I wondered again how such a statement fit with covenant membership or covenant faithfulness as the definition provided for justification, for the emphasis on assurance seems to put justification in the realm of soteriology, where there is confidence about individual final salvation.

[Final Justification and Works]

Wright’s statement about individual assurance raises another question. He insists rightly that justification isn’t a process. One doesn’t become more justified as time passes, and those who are justified are assured of final salvation. On the other hand, Wright also says that final justification is based on works.

If final justification is based on works, then how can believers have assurance that they will be justified on the final day? Wright never answers or attempts to answer that question. I would suggest along with many others that it is better to conceive of works as the fruit or evidence of justification. Wrights knows the distinction posited here but finds it to be unhelpful. Still, the language of basis should be rejected, for it suggests that works are the foundation of our right-standing with God, but how can that be the case if justification is by grace? And how can we truly have assurance if justification is based in part on our works? Paul grounds justification on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus was declared to be in the right at his resurrection, so too all those who united with Christ by faith also stand in the right because they belong to the one who has been vindicated by God.

[Justification and Imputation]

Assurance and final justification are linked to imputation. In one sense Wright seems to

believe in imputation, for he says believers are in the right with God because they have died and risen with Christ (Rom. 6).

[Romans 5:12-19]

In any case, the issue shouldn’t be limited to whether it is legitimate to speak of active and passive righteousness. What is at stake is whether Christ is our righteousness, whether our righteousness finally lies outside of ourselves and is found in Jesus Christ. It seems that Romans 5:12-19 teaches that Christ’s righteousness is ours, for believers are united with Christ (and all that he is for us) instead of being united with Adam.

[2 Corinthians 5:21]

Another clear text on imputation is 2 Corinthians 5:21. The one who never sinned took our sin upon himself, so that we receive God’s righteousness as we are united with Jesus Christ.

Wright’s objections (stated above) to this reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21 aren’t compelling for three reasons.

1) We enjoy God’s righteousness because of what Christ has done, his sinless life and sacrificial death. He died as a substitute for us, and hence his death is our death. Because we

are united with Christ, God’s righteousness (right standing with God) is granted to us. This is a righteousness that is ours only through the work of Jesus Christ.

2) Wright thinks the verb “become” (genōmetha) can’t be equative, that the verb carries the notion of “becoming.” But the verb “become” (ginomai) is very flexible in Paul, and it can easily be taken as equative (cf. Rom. 11:6; 12:6; 1 Cor. 3:18; 4:16). But even if the verb means “become,” it doesn’t rule out imputation, for believers become something they weren’t before (“righteous!”) by virtue of union with Christ. They receive right standing with God as a gift.

3) The first person plural pronoun doesn’t indicate Paul is only thinking of his apostolic ministry. Paul’s use of pronouns is also flexible and shouldn’t be straitjacketed. Yes, the first person plural in the previous verse refers to Paul, but Paul shifts between the first person plural as a reference to himself and the first person plural as a reference to all Christians in this very paragraph, for when Paul says “God reconciled us” in 2 Corinthians 5:18, he isn’t limiting that action to himself but includes all believers. So too, in 2 Corinthians 5:21 the “we” most naturally refers to all believers.

[E. P. Sanders's Vision of Judaism]

Since we are talking about new perspective matters, one other issue should be raised. Wright still writes as if E. P. Sanders’s vision of Judaism (his covenantal nomism) is completely convincing.

But there is now plenty of evidence out there about  the diversity of Judaism. Some Jews were legalistic.  That is plain from Luke 18:9-14 alone. Legalism  isn’t a Jewish problem but a human problem.

I believe this is a more convincing reading of texts like Romans 4 than the one Wright posits. Yes, exclusivism and nationalism and boundary markers were a problem. The new perspective has helped us see that so clearly. We are grateful for a clear reminder on this matter.

But new perspectivists like Wright don’t seem open to any modification of Sanders’s construal of Judaism. They insist that there is no polemic against legalism in Paul. It seems that some new perspectivists aren’t as open as some old perspective adherents.

We see a both-and problem in Paul: both exclusivism and legalism. The new perspective has helped us see an emphasis that was too often neglected. But Wright insists that it is only one way; there is only one problem (nationalistic exclusivism), and he continues to advocate this line, even though there are good historical and exegetical reasons to see also a polemic against legalism in Paul’s letters. Here is another place where Wright focuses on the horizontal (boundary markers) and fails to  see the vertical (one’s relationship to God).

The Preciousness of the Doctrines of Grace in the Worst and the Best of Times

A testimony:

See also Piper’s new short book, Five Points: Towards a Deeper Experience of God’s Grace.