Justin Taylor's Blog, page 145

We’re All Junior Highers Now: The Millennials and the Church

One thing I appreciate about Rachel Held Evans is that pieces like this provide good fodder for well-informed and winsome responses that I believe are more connected with how things really are. (If Rachel had used the word “I” instead of “we” throughout her piece, I think it would have been more helpful than presuming to speak as the spokesperson for an entire generation.)

Trevin Wax provides a response today, and Joe Thorn explains why Millennials are coming to church.

Anthony Bradley observes that the church Rachel pines for already exists and is in decline:

Why doesn’t Evans, and others who embrace her critique of “the church,” simply encourage Millennials, who do not believe Jesus “is found” in their churches, to join churches like the UMC [United Methodist Church]? If someone is passionate about Jesus and is truly looking for him, but doesn’t find him in one church, wouldn’t it stand to reason that a genuine search would lead that person to another church where it is believed Jesus actually is? It makes me wonder if the Evans critique is not about something else.

One of the many blind spots in Evans’ entire project is that young evangelicals are not leaving evangelical churches to join mainline churches like the UMC, they are leaving the church altogether in many cases. Evans’ list does not help us understand that phenomena much at all. In fact, even the UMC, with all Evans’ lauded attributes, is hemorrhaging. The bottom line is that most American Christian denominations are declining across the board, especially among their millennial attendees, and it would require a fair amount of hubris to attempt to explain the decline across America’s 350,000 congregations.

And Brett McCracken—author of the new book Gray Matters—has a thoughtful and humorous response in The Washington Post online. He suggests that Millennials spurn Rachel’s advice and do the opposite:

Millennials: why don’t we take our pastors, parents, and older Christian brothers and sisters out to coffee and listen to them? Perhaps instead of perpetuating our sense of entitlement and Twitter/blog/Instagram-fueled obsession with hearing ourselves speak, we could just shut up for a minute and listen to the wisdom of those who have gone before?

And for pastors, church leaders, and others so concerned with the survival of the church amidst the glut of “adapt or die!” hype, is asking Millennials what they want church to be and adjusting accordingly really your best bet? Are we really to believe that today’s #hashtagging, YOLO-oriented, selfie-obsessed generation of Millennials has more wisdom to offer about the church than those who have thought about and faithfully served the church decade after decade, amidst all its warts, challenges and ups and down?

Further:

Just like the Photoshop-savvy Millennials she is so desperate to retain, the church is ever more meticulously concerned with her image, monitoring what people are saying about her and taking cues from that.

Erik Thoennes, professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Biola University, is troubled by the church’s obsession with perception.

“We’ve got experts who tell us ‘this is how pagans think about us, Oh no!’ and we wring our hands and say ‘we’re so lame!’” said Thoennes. “This perception-driven way of doing things will make you go crazy. We’re junior highers. Junior highers live in this world of ‘how am I being perceived’ all the time. Oh to be free from that!”

Much of this is an outgrowth of the audience-is-sovereign mentality of the seeker-sensitive movement, which has loomed large in evangelicalism’s recent history. Another part of it is Christianity’s capitulation to a consumerist culture where the primary goal is to scratch where the market itches.

But at the end of the day, the Christian gospel is defined outside of and with little regard to whatever itch people think Christianity should scratch. Consumerism asserts that people want what they want and get what they want, for a price. It’s all about me. But to position the gospel within this consumerist, give-them-what-they-want framework is to open the door to all sorts of distortions, mutations, and “to each his own” cockamamy variations. If Christianity aims to sell a message that scratches a pluralism of itches, how in the world will a cohesive, orthodox, unified gospel survive?

I’d encourage you to read the whole thing.

Not unrelated is Dan Phillips’ post, drawing from the book of Titus and encouraging us to ask some questions about the diversity of age—or lack thereof—in our churches.

http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2013/08/...

Finally, every pastor and commentator should be aware of the arguments in books like Bradley Wright’s  Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites . . . and Other Lies You’ve Been Told. Kevin DeYoung summarizes his research on young folks leaving the church:

we’ve seen over the past decades that the lower percentages among youth increase as the twenty-year-olds become thirty-year-olds, the thirty-year-olds become forty-year-olds and so on. Simply put, young adults (especially during their college years) are the least likely to be involved in church, but over time more and more of them (especially the ones with children) come back. Or, as the case may be, they never really meant to leave; they just drifted away for a time. Now, there’s no reason to celebrate 18-22-year-olds dropping out of church for a year, but making things sound worse than they are doesn’t help either.

Here is Wright in his own words:

Is the church really losing the young?

On the negative side, the number of young people who do not affiliate with any religion has increased in recent decades, just as it has for the whole population. Furthermore, to the extent that religiousness has changed, it has trended slightly toward less religious.

On the positive side, the percentage of young people who attend church or who think that religion is important has remained mostly stable. Also, the percentage that affiliate with Catholicism, evangelical Christianity, and Black protestantism are at or near 1970 levels. What I don’t see in the data are evidence of a cataclysmic loss of young people. Have we lost the young? No.

Free Audiobook of the Month: John Stott’s “Basic Christianity”

Download it here. Thanks to Christian Audio for this wonderful gift.

You may want to consider if there are believers or unbelievers in your circle of influence who might beneit from this free audio book.

Top 10 Writing Mistakes

Daniel Reisel: “even the best writers make these mistakes, but you can’t afford to. The way manuscripts are thrown into the Rejection pile on the basis of early mistakes is a crime. Don’t be a victim.”

Here is his top-ten list of mistakes:

Repeats
Flat writing
Empty adverbs
Phony dialogue
No-good suffixes
The “to be” words
Lists
Show, don’t tell
Awkward phrasing
Commas

Read the whole thing to see examples and explanation.

HT: @PJ_Schreiner

Other posts you might enjoy:

Principles for Writing Clearly and Coherently
50 Strategies for Every Writer
C. S. Lewis’ Writing Style and Advice
Writing Advice from Hitchens
Fred Sanders: Ten Tips for Writing Better

Will God Still Save Those Who Deny or Distort Justification by Grace Alone through Faith Alone?

The great English theologian John Owen (1616-1683) wrote:

Men may be really saved by that grace which doctrinally they do deny;

and they may be justified by the imputation of that righteousness which in opinion they deny to be imputed.

—The Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone, in Owen’s Works 5:163-64.

In some ways Owen’s position is a dangerous one to hold—given the strong connection in Scripture between sound doctrine and assurance—but it’s nevertheless an important principle. Note that Owen doesn’t say that they necessarily are saved but that they may be saved.

I also agree with the qualifier John Piper adds: “The clearer the knowledge of the truth and the more deep the denial, the less assurance one can have that the God of truth will save him. Owen’s words are not meant to make us cavalier about the content of the gospel, but to hold out hope that men’s hearts are often better than their heads” (The Future of Justification, p. 25 n. 30).

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) offers a similar statement to Owen’s but goes into greater detail with various options regarding the denial—emphasizing how dangerous false teaching is but also hoping that such a person may be teachable when confronted with his error:

How far a wonderful and mysterious agency of God’s Spirit may so influence some men’s hearts, that their practice in this regard may be contrary to their own principles, so that they shall not trust in their own righteousness, though they profess that men are justified by their own righteousness—

or how far they may believe the doctrine of justification by men’s own righteousness in general, and yet not believe it in a particular application of it to themselves—

or how far that error which they may have been led into by education, or cunning sophistry of others, may yet be indeed contrary to the prevailing disposition of their hearts, and contrary to their practice—

or how far some may seem to maintain a doctrine contrary to this gospel-doctrine of justification, that really do not, but only express themselves differently from others;

or seem to oppose it through their misunderstanding of our expressions, or we of theirs, when indeed our real sentiments are the same in the main—

or may seem to differ more than they do, by using terms that are without a precisely fixed and determinate meaning—

or to be wide in their sentiments from this doctrine, for want of a distinct understanding of it;

whose hearts, at the same time, entirely agree with it, and if once it was clearly explained to their understandings, would immediately close with it, and embrace it:—

how far these things may be, I will not determine; but am fully persuaded that great allowances are to be made on these and such like accounts, in innumerable instances; though it is manifest, from what has been said, that the teaching and propagating [of] contrary doctrines and schemes, is of a pernicious and fatal tendency. (“Justification by Faith Alone,” in Yale’s Works of Jonathan Edwards 19:242.)

A One-Man C. S. Lewis Show

This one-man show by David Payne gives a good feel for C.S. Lewis as a man and as a thinker.

The setting is 1963 (the last year of Lewis’s life), with Lewis addressing in his home a group of writers from America. It’s an hour and a half in length:

What Is Sanctification?

Here are two good answers.

First, the Westminster Shorter Catechism (question 35) answers that sanctification is:

 the work of God’s free grace [2 Thess. 2:13] whereby we

are renewed in the whole man after the image of God [Eph. 4:23-24], and
are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness [Rom. 6:4, 6; 8:1]

Anthony A. Hoekema (1913-1988), in Saved by Grace, defines it as follows:

That gracious operation of the Holy Spirit,

involving our responsible participation,

by which he

delivers us from the pollution of sin,
renews our entire nature according to the image of God, and
enables us to live lives that are pleasing to him.

And here is a helpful chart from Andy Naselli’s helpful Let Go and Let God? showing a bit of the diversity of the way the concept is understood in the NT:

Past

Present

Future

Initial sanctification (occurs simultaneously with justification and regeneration)
Progressive sanctification
Perfect, complete, or final sanctification (i.e., glorification)


“I am (or have been) sanctified.”
“I am being sanctified.”
“I will be sanctified.”


Sets a believer apart positionally from sin’s penalty and/or experientially from his “old man” in Adam (Rom. 6; Acts 20:32; 26:18; 1 Cor. 1:2; 6:11; Heb. 10:10, 14)
Sets a believer apart from sin’s power and practice (John 17:17; 2 Cor. 3:18; 7:1; Phil. 1:6)
Sets a believer apart from sin’s presence and possibility (Rom. 8:29-30; Phil. 3:21; 1 Thess. 3:12-13; Jude 24)

 

Can You Explain How and Why Christ Is One Person with Two Natures?

There are few teachers as clear and helpful as Fred Sanders.

Here is a lecture he gave for laypeople at the 2013 G. Campbell Morgan Theology Conference, sponsored by Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute:

One of his teaching tools, which combines historical and systematic theology in a chart, is the “Chalcedonian Box”:

Elsewhere he explains:

The metaphor of a box emphasizes the doctrinal boundaries that are recognized by Chalcedon.

On the top, it affirms Nicaea 325 (contra Arianism) by demanding that Christ is God, consubstantial with the Father.

On the bottom, it affirms Constantinople I (contra Apollinarianism) by demanding that Christ is human, consubstantial with us.

The soteriological axioms “God alone can save us” and “what is not assumed is not healed” mark these boundaries out.

As for how the divine and human elements come together, Chalcedon marks out the right and the left with its four mighty negatives: no confusion and no change on the one hand (contra Monophysitism Eutychianism ), but no division and no separation on the other hand (contra Nestorianism).

See also my post, “Thinking through Christology“

Does God Author, Cause, or Permit Sin?

These excerpts from John Frame’s The Doctrine of God (P&R, 2003)—a book I highly recommend—provide an accessible and thoughtful analysis of how to talk about God’s sovereignty over sin:

Part 1, Does God Author Sin?
Part 2, Does God Cause Sin?


Part 3, Does God Permit Sin?
Part 4, The Author-Story Model

How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian?

In the past, when I have tried to help people wrestle with the theological and existential problem of the assurance of salvation, the outline for Don Whitney’s book, How Can I Be Sure I’m a Christian? What the Bible Says about Assurance of Salvation (NavPress, 1994), has been very useful. Andy Naselli recently posted on this, and I thought it might be helpful if I reprinted it as well.

1. Assurance of Salvation—Is It Possible?

It is possible, indeed normal, for the Christian to experience assurance of salvation.

It is possible, indeed normal, for a non-Christian to have a false assurance of salvation.

2. Having Doubts about Your Salvation

It is possible, indeed normal, for Christians to have occasional doubts about their salvation.

Doubting assurance is not unbelief.

The causes of doubt are many:

Spiritual immaturity may contribute to doubts about assurance.
Sensitivity to sin may cause confusion about assurance.
Comparison with other Christians may cloud assurance.
Childhood conversion affects the assurance of some.

3. The Basis of Assurance

The assurance of salvation rests primarily on

the character of God 
the works of Jesus Christ
the truth of God’s promises

4. An Inner Confirmation

Assurance may be experienced partly through the inner confirmation of the Holy Spirit.

How does the Holy Spirit give Christians this assurance?

He opens our minds to understand the Bible in ways that give us assurance.
He guides our thinking about the biblical marks of salvation in our lives.
He brings Scripture and its truths to our minds in various ways that assure us.
He causes an inner sense of assurance without words.

5. Signs of Eternal Life

Assurance may be experienced partly through the presence of the attitudes and actions the Bible says will accompany salvation [1 John].

Do you share the intimacies of the Christian life with other believers?
Do you have a deep awareness of your sin against the word and love of God?
Do you live in conscious obedience to the word of God?
Do you despise the world and its ways?
Do you long for the return of Jesus Christ and to be made like him?
Do you habitually do what is right more and sin less?
Do you love other Christians sacrificially and want to be with them?
Do you discern the presence of the Holy Spirit within you?
Do you enjoy listening to the doctrines the apostles of Jesus taught?
Do you believe what the Bible teaches about Jesus Christ?

6. A Spiritual Mind-set

Only those who are spiritually minded are Christians.

You are spiritual minded when you think about the things of God:

spontaneously and without external causes
more than anything else
with more delight and enjoyment than anything else.

You are not spiritually minded if “God is not in all [your] thoughts.”

7. Things That Erode Our Assurance

A true Christian may lose a sense of assurance of salvation because . . .

he or she refuses to deal with known sin
of spiritual laziness
of satanic attacks
of trials or harsh circumstances
of illness or temperament
God seems to withdraw a sense of his presence and blessing.

8. Common Problems with Uncertainty

Those converted as children may experience special difficulties with assurance.

Those who remember little else besides following Christ sometimes have doubts that those with adult or dramatic conversions do not.

Concrete childhood thinking differs from more abstract adult thinking.

An awareness of the Lordship of Christ must expand to cover all the ever-expanding circle of life that comes with maturity.

Stay-at-home mothers of young children may experience special difficulties with assurance.

True assurance won’t lead to spiritual carelessness.

Those worried about the unforgivable sin have not committed it.

9. False Assurance of Salvation

Sources of a false assurance of salvation

A public commitment or outward response to the gospel
Baptism
Involvement with church
A strong Christian family heritage
An abundance of good deeds
An extraordinary experience
A dramatic personal or lifestyle change
Material blessing and financial security
A false understanding of God
A false understanding of sin and hell

Characteristics of the falsely assured

They are either unconcerned or angry when warned about false assurance.
They are either legalistic or loose with spiritual disciplines and duties.
They are either very weak in or very confident of their Bible knowledge.
They have either a vicarious Christianity or an overly independent spirit.
They may be constantly resisting the truth or never able to come to the truth.

10. What to Do If You’re Still Not Sure

Don’t take for granted that you understand the gospel.

Think deeply about the gospel.

Repent of all known sin.

Submit everything to the Lordship of Christ.

Meditate much on 1 John.

Don’t doubt the promises of God.

Believe as best you can and pray for greater faith.

Practice the spiritual disciplines.

If you really love God, take assurance because non-Christians don’t love God passionately.

If you hate your sin, take assurance because non-Christians don’t hate sin deeply.

If you’ve never been baptized, present yourself as a candidate in obedience to Christ.

Don’t neglect the Lord’s Supper.

Don’t compare earthly fathers to your Heavenly Father.

Seek godly counsel if the doubts persist.

Pray for assurance.

Wait patiently upon God to give you a fuller experience of assurance.

Ten Tenets of Covenantal Apologetics

From Scott Oliphint’s Covenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith (pp. 47-56):

The faith that we are defending must begin with, and necessarily include, the triune God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who, as God, condescends to create and to redeem.
God’s covenantal revelation is authoritative by virtue of what is, and any covenantal, Christian apologetic will necessarily stand on and utilize that authority in order to defend Christianity.
It is the truth of God’s revelation, together with the work of the Holy Spirit, that brings about a covenantal change from one who is in Adam to one who is in Christ.
Man (male and female) as image of God is in covenant with the triune God for eternity.
All people know the true God, and that knowledge entails covenantal obligations.
Those who are and remain in Adam suppress the truth that they know. Those who are in Christ see truth for what it is.
There is an absolute, covenantal antithesis between Christian theism and any other, opposing position. Thus, Christianity is true and anything opposing it is false.
Suppression of the truth, like the depravity of sin, is total but not absolute. Thus every unbelieving position will necessarily have within it ideas, concepts, notions, and the like that it has taken and wrenched from their true, Christian context.
The true, covenantal knowledge of God in man, together with God’s universal mercy, allows for persuasion in apologetics.
Every fact and experience is what it is by virtue of the covenantal, all-controlling plan and purpose of God.