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How the American Evangelical Race Discussion Went Off the Rails—And How to Get It Back on Track

I found this article by Jonathan Leeman to be very helpful, particularly the section on the topic of evangelical churches and the race discussion.

Here is his big idea:

Pastors should strive to teach and disciple members on the topic of race and racism, yet we should do it in a way that makes the Bible primary . . . and in a way that puts power into the service of truth, not truth into the service of power.

There are two ways, he says, that we can do this:

The biblical way, I propose, is the way of race consciousness.

The postmodern way, I believe, is the way of race essentialism.

When it comes to the gospel and sin, race and racism, he lays out his basic convictions from biblical teaching:

I believe majority and minority [believers] alike are “one new man” in Christ, and our churches embassies of heaven (Eph. 2:11–22; Ps. 133:1).

Yet I also believe judgment begins with the household of God, which means we should keep our eyes continually open for places of necessary repentance (1 Pet. 4:17), sins intentional and unintentional (Leviticus 4), including racial sin, and that only fools refuse to listen (Prov. 12:15; 13:1). “Search me, O God, and know my heart . . . And see if there is any grievous way in me” (Ps. 139:23–24).

I believe Scripture pronounces woe against individual and structural sins (e.g., Isa. 10:2; Esther 3:7–14, Mark 7:1–13, Acts 6:1; etc.), and racial injustice can come in both forms.

Insofar as Paul names the ethnic and political categories of “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” as comprising different parts of “the body” (1 Cor. 12:13), and then, a few verses later, calls us to “suffer” with those parts of the body that suffer (1 Cor. 12:26), I believe he calls us to be conscious of ways that that suffering might show up across different ethnic and political boundaries.

And I believe as a matter of pastoral judgment, not biblical principle, that we should be especially watchful in our American churches. Several centuries of racism doesn’t quickly fix itself.

Finally, I believe, based on John’s vision of many tribes, tongues, and nations gathered around God’s throne in Revelation 7:9, that diversity is not a problem to be solved but a gift to be enjoyed.

He argues that pastors should pursue the race conversation inside their churches, being “race conscious.”

What would a biblically grounded race consciousness look like and do?

A race consciousness listens and learns.

It studies history and asks people from different ethnic backgrounds about their lived experience.

It certainly seeks out hurt, suffering, and injustice.

It requires us, quite simply, to be conscious of race or ethnicity (whichever term you prefer for now) as an existential factor in this world that shapes people’s lives. So it was articulated in the 2006 in article 17 of the Together for the Gospel affirmations and denials.

Race consciousness offers a hard-to-categorize blend of both color blindness and color consciousness in our friendships and pastoral analyses. Loving a minority friend means being conscious of his experience as a minority, but it doesn’t mean always and only seeing him as a minority. Our common humanity and union in Christ must also be color blind. “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

He then recommends three books that he thinks will serve us toward that end:

1. Start with Shai Linne’s The New Reformation: Finding Hope in the Fight for Ethic Unity (Moody, 2021). It offers a way of talking about race and racism by trying to build on biblical categories, not ideological ones. He talks about “ethnic hatred” from Jonah, “ethnic pride” by pointing to Goliath, “ethnic favoritism” as an implication of James 2:9, “ethnic oppression” by pointing to the Egyptians’ oppression of the Israelites, and so on.

2. Read Mark Vroegop’s Weep with Me: How Lament Opens a Door for Racial Reconciliation (Crossway, 2020).

3. And then for thinking about how to love and pastor church members coming from different perspectives on this topic, read Isaac Adam’s remarkable Talking about Race: Gospel Hope for Hard Conversations (Zondervan, 2022).

Leeman goes on to reflect on his personal experience of why and how the evangelical conversations about race started to change somewhere after 2014 with the rise of race essentialism:

Little by little I found that, in personal conversations, books, and online I was asked to adopt an interpretation and perspective that appealed less to immediately discernible facts and more to an overall pattern or narrative. And that interpretation was a racialized one. On one occasion, when facts pointed in the opposite direction, I was essentially told the facts didn’t matter because the narrative did.

Now, I’m personally persuaded by the histories which argue that the creation of race and the racialization of the world several centuries ago did in fact begin with white supremacy as a justification for racism and slavery. The trouble is, when you begin to look at the world through racialized lenses, how and when do you take the lenses off? In fact, the conversation began to insist that we should not try to de-racialize the world. You don’t ever get to take the lenses off. Instead, today’s orthodoxy counts “color-blindness” as just another form of white supremacy and forced assimilation. We’re forever stuck inside of racism’s original race-essentialism. I am my color. You are your color. And there’s no off ramp.

Furthermore, the orthodoxy began to stress the importance of systems, but it also indicts heart motivations and viewpoints, even as it claims not to. Furthermore, the emphasis on “systems” or “structures” isn’t merely about laws and practices and values that we have concretely identified, as when one talks about Jim Crow or redlining or even more subtle practices and traditions that can be drawn into the light and named. I don’t know anyone on the left or right who objects to indicting something demonstrable, individual or systemic. What’s harder is that the systemic indictment lingers even when nothing can be concretely identified. Instead, the indictment becomes a presupposition, a foregone conclusion, an All-Seeing Eye. The indictment engulfs us like a cloud—a kind of false consciousness labeled “whiteness” that envelops everything—a very way of being involving heart, mind, and soul, as in, “Of course, you’d say that. You’re speaking out of white privilege.” The proof of the indictment is sometimes concrete, but often not, appealing either way to the patterns of history: “350 years of history must mean guilt continues. That’s the pattern. Ongoing inequalities prove it.” And sometimes the indictment is right.

I’m not sure what the best label is to call this thing—CRT? Anti-racism? I tend to think identity politics is best, but I don’t want to get hung up on that. The bigger picture I watched on social media and that I experienced in my own relationships is that a conversation about race consciousness morphed into a conversation that increasingly felt like race essentialism. People moved from emphasizing history to a kind of historicism which reads all of history through an ideological lens; from celebrating diversity to demanding particular policies as a sign of repentance. In short, in the first decade and a half of the 21st century, many of us were having the civil rights conversation. Then something changed. The civil rights tradition was swallowed up by something I’d call more thoroughly postmodern.

Leeman expands on the “CRT” (Critical Race Theory) discussion and connects it to Phariseeism:

Speaking of CRT, defenders are quick to say it’s merely a legal theory. Indeed, that’s precisely what it is. It’s a theory that legalizes all of life in racial terms. Rules and traditions, work and play, health and sex, cities and nations and empires, your heart and mine, even older ways opposing racism—all this it judges through the law of racialization and oppression. Where the deconstruction project’s gender conversation critiques authority, the postmodern race conversation, in a way, does the opposite. It legalizes everything. It creates law. CRT is Moses on racialized hyperdrive. It is one of the premier Phariseeisms of today, offering a God’s-eye view on our society and culture that places them under permanent indictment. We’re guilty until proven innocent.

What’s difficult is, so long as racial sin exists, evidence will forever remain available to validate the theory. Real, ongoing, nameable sin supplies oxygen to the diffuse, non-named, universal indictment. . . . Satan loves to be first in line to show compassion to real hurt, but then leverage it to declare everyone guilty.

As the larger race conversation changed, the personal conversations grew more tense, harder. At least once I said, “My heart is with you and this cause, but my conscience cannot follow you there.” And the reaction would be sharp. “You should be listening, not talking.” Relationships strained and, in some cases, broke.

Compounding the strain, I watched Christian voices on the right—by my lights—insult, malign, slander, and misrepresent Christians on the left. These are real injustices and warrant their own conversations. Yet within a few years two sides hardened against one another. Trust had vanished. . . .

Leeman—good 9Marks man that he is—brings in the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18 on church discipline:

Jesus is not interested in mob justice, and so he emphasizes the role of due process: “that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” And of course Jesus’s emphasis on due process is consistent with the entirety of Scripture (e.g. Gen. 9:5-6; Exod. 18:19-23; Lev. 5:1; Num. 35:30; Deut. 19:15-20; Prov. 6:16-19; 18:17; Matt. 18:16; 1 Tim. 5:19).

To be sure, Matthew 18 has a local church process in mind. Yet I think the value Jesus places on due processes for correcting sin can be extended broadly: we should generally treat people as innocent until concrete evidence exists that requires us to do otherwise. Even the secular courts do.

That, in turn, raises the issue of “due process”:

A crucial change in the race conversation, best I can tell, is the demotion of due process, a phrase that, these days, incites sighs of exasperation and anger on Twitter. We have moved from “innocent until proven guilty” to a “guilty until proven innocent” based on the narrative. Yet abandoning due process isn’t just a technicality. It’s putting ourselves in the position of God. It assumes we possess sovereign Knowledge.

To be sure, I understand why people who have experienced abuse or injustice become impatient with due process. Part of life’s futility, says Solomon, is that, even in the places where we’re supposed to receive justice, we receive more wickedness (Eccl. 3:16). Yet we cannot throw out due process. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Somehow the Bible manages to concede that we’ll receive wickedness from the house of justice and to emphasize due process over and over and over.

Imagine living with a certain demographic in your church as if they were guilty of lust until proven innocent. You don’t wait until something concrete rises to the surface, requiring a Matthew 18 rescue-intervention. Instead, you say to this group, “Well, you’ve been guilty of lust for the last twenty years of your life. I assume you’re still guilty, at least until you prove to me otherwise.” This, to me, does not sound like a charitable, gospel-centered church I would want to join, but one given to Phariseeism. And I say this believing that lust and sexual sin are ongoing individual and systemic problems, probably still hiding in the hearts of many folk in the church. We must teach about lust in all its forms. Still, we live with one another charitably assuming the best and treating one another as innocent until proven guilty.

My sense is, the excesses and Phariseeism of race essentialism has hindered many pastors from teaching about race and racism, which brings us to the last part of my own story. Over the last few years, I admit I’ve taught on race considerably less, because I cannot go where the conversation has gone. I’ve dipped in a toe, but confusion resulted.

Still, we need to be able to talk about race and racism. . . . Ethnic partiality in all its forms remain, and it will until Christ comes again. And so pastors must teach and disciple.

Finally, Leeman offers four ways that we can be race conscious, teach against racism, and not propogate race essentialism:

First, we must build our language and categories around Scripture, as Shai Linne demonstrates in the book mentioned above. We can use other resources and stories . . . but only to assist us in understanding Scripture and applying Scripture.

Second, I’ve tried to carve out a pathway in this article for helping people talk about race without yielding to race essentialism by calling it race consciousness. I trust that can be improved on. Yet it involves both law and gospel. The law helps us to be aware of racial transgression and to repent when necessary. The gospel helps us to experience forgiveness and extend that same forgiveness so that we might be one new man. To put this another way, race consciousness combines color blindness and color consciousness.

Third, we should learn from history, but refrain from an implicit historicism of oppression.

That means, fourth, we treat one another as innocent until proven guilty, insisting on due process before handing out indictments. Folks used to call this giving each other the benefit of the doubt. Apart from due process, we will necessarily remain divided and tribalized. There is no way around that.

Whether or not you agree with every jot and tittle, I would say that Leeman has given us a lot of food for thought here, and an onramp for future discussions.

Tim Keller on the Church Crisis That He Never Had to Face as a Pastor—But You Do

Sophia Lee of World Magazine:

A lot of pastors are struggling, particularly after the various shifts during the pandemic. People are leaving churches over pandemic restrictions, the election, racial injustice, political differences, etc. Many pastors are leaving ministry. Have you ever dealt with something like this during your ministry, or is this something unique to our time today? How did you navigate tricky political/ideological waters?

Tim Keller:

I’d say that the culture is definitely more polarized than it ever has been, and I’ve never seen the kind of conflicts in churches in the past that we see today.

In virtually every church there is a smaller or larger body of Christians who have been radicalized to the Left or to the Right by extremely effective and completely immersive internet and social media loops, newsfeeds, and communities. People are bombarded 12 hours a day with pieces that present a particular political point of view, and the main way it seeks to persuade is not through argument but through outrage. People are being formed by this immersive form of public discourse—far more than they are being formed by the Church.

This is creating a crisis.

No, I haven’t faced anything like this in the past.

However, the way to navigate such waters is still to follow the book of Proverbs’ prescription for your words. They must be honest, few, extremely well-crafted, usually calm, always aimed to edify (even when critical) and they must be accompanied with lots of silent listening.

You can read her whole interview with Keller, part 1 and part 2.

There is a lot of wisdom and insight, like this:

Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently in ministry? 

Absolutely. I should have prayed more. No question.

The Reinvention (and Recovery) of the Quiet Time

As you think about your spiritual habits of grace for the new year, I would commend to you Jonathan Gibson’s new book, Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship. (You can get it at Crossway, WTS Books, Christian Book, Amazon, RHB, etc. Note also that WTS has an exclusive cowhide edition, and that there is also an Audible edition).

In short, Gibson has mined the best of the Christian tradition to take a gospel-centered worship service structure and apply the same sort of pattern to our personal time with the Lord.

Here’s a fuller description:

Every Christian knows the importance of a daily quiet time with the Lord. But anyone who’s been a believer long enough has likely experienced seasons that feel more mundane or routine, leading to aimlessly skimming a couple of Bible verses or praying the same prayer over and over.

In Be Thou My Vision, Jonathan Gibson has created a 31-day liturgical guide designed to provide structure to the daily worship of individuals and families. Each daily reading includes a call to worship, adoration, confession, assurance, creed and catechism, the Gloria Patri, a prayer of illumination, Bible reading, intercessory prayer, and the Lord’s Prayer.

Designed to be read in 15–20 minutes a day, this beautifully produced liturgy will give readers focus and purpose to their daily quiet time while teaching them historical prayers, creeds, and catechisms that point them to Christ.

You can read chapter 1 online for free, and learn more about it below.

“Jonny has gifted us with a project not only of theological and historical retrieval but also, more deeply, retrieval of our own hearts, often wayward and wandering, distracted and distressed. This simple but rich liturgy takes our hearts and leads them back to the Lord with pastoral care and theological integrity. A deeply edifying and useful guide.”

Dane C. Ortlund

“Jonny Gibson’s new liturgical guide to personal or family worship is a gem! Evangelicals need enrichment of the ‘daily quiet time,’ which has traditionally been little more than Bible study and intercessory prayer. While many have turned to a variety of traditions that are less than gospel- or word-centered, in Be Thou My Vision Jonny connects us to the Reformation’s historic forms of prayer and confession, catechesis, and the lectio continua reading of Scripture. It’s a feast, and while providing only thirty-one days of different prayers, I believe the book can be profitably used all year, and year after year. Get it and use it!”

Tim Keller

“We believers sometimes stumble our way through the steps of spiritual devotion, especially in private or family worship. This liturgy for daily worship lets us hold the well-tested handrails of faithful worshipers, carved out deeply and well to help us on. Creeds, prayers, catechisms, hymns, and, most of all, God’s breathed-out word lead us profitably and beautifully to worship the triune God in spirit and in truth. I look forward to using and sharing this book.”

Kathleen Nielson

“To use the rich traditions of biblical worship such as prayers, confessions of faith, catechisms, Scripture readings, praise, and more conveys a remarkable freshness in the context of personal worship. Gibson guides you through each of these elements in a thirty-one-day cycle, and provides a familiar one-year Bible-reading plan. With some adjustments it can also serve as a family worship resource. All in all, Be Thou My Vision is perhaps the best, and certainly the most thorough and meaty, daily devotional guide I’ve ever read.”

Donald S. Whitney

“What if you took thirty-one days and enveloped your Bible reading in a cocoon of riches? Make no mistake—this book is not a replacement for the living and active word of God. But how might it deepen and enliven your morning meditation to lead into it and out of it by drawing on centuries of wisdom? Both the sequence and the carefully crafted prayers and creeds will freshly inform your mind and stir your heart. This is not a book of shortcuts for those looking to abbreviate their time in God’s word. These daily liturgies invite us to give more for a season and hold out the promise of great reward. How might God renovate your soul in these thirty-one days?”

David Mathis

Why She Wants to Meet the Man Who Killed Her Father

On December 3, 2021, 37-year-old Jaime Jaramillo and an alleged girlfriend were confronted by Mr. Jaramillo’s wife in a grocery store parking lot in Mesquite, Texas. A domestic disturbance ensured, and the Mesquite Police Department was called. Mr. Jaramillo ended up shooting Police Officer Richard Houston in the chest before shooting himself in the head.

Officer Houston—a 46-year-old husband and father of three, who had been with the Mesquite Police Department for 21 years—died.

Mr. Jaramillo survived.

The Houstons’ oldest child, Shelby, age 18, eulogized her father at his memorial service, held at Lakepointe Church in Rockwall, Texas. You can watch a clip of her remarkable message above.

I remember having conversations with my dad about him losing friends and officers in the line of duty.

I have heard all the stories you can think of, but I’ve always had such a hard time with how the suspect is dealt with.

Not that I didn’t think there should be justice served, but my heart always ached for those who don’t know Jesus—their actions being a reflection of that.

I was always told that I would feel differently if it happened to me. But as it’s happened to my own father, I think I still feel the same.

There has been anger, sadness, grief, and confusion. And part of me wishes I could despise the man who did this to my father.

But I can’t get any part of my heart to hate him.

All that I can find is myself hoping and praying for this man to truly know Jesus.

I thought this might change if the man continued to live, but when I heard the news that he was in stable condition, part of me was relieved.

My prayer is that someday down the road, I get to spend some time with the man who shot my father—not to scream at him, not to yell at him, not to scold him—simply to tell him about Jesus.

 

Driscoll, Schaeffer, and Packer on the Size of Your Church and the Idolatry of Your Heart

Mark Driscoll, from a in 2006, eight years before he abandoned the church discipline process from his elders, resigned the church after ostensibly hearing from God, and eventually saw Mars Hill Church dissolve completely:

I’m a guy who is highly competitive.

Every year, I want the church to grow.

I want my knowledge to grow.

I want my influence to grow.

I want our staff to grow.

I want our church plants to grow.

I want everything—because I want to win.

I don’t want to just be where I’m at.

I don’t want anything to be where it’s at.

And so for me it is success and drivenness and it is productivity and it is victory that drives me constantly.

I—that’s my own little idol and it works well in a church because no one would ever yell at you for being a Christian who produces results.

So I found the perfect place to hide.

And I was thinking about it this week.

What if the church stopped growing?

What if we shrunk?

What if everything fell apart?

What if half the staff left?

Would I still worship Jesus or would I be a total despairing mess?

I don’t know.

By God’s grace, I won’t have to find out, but you never know.

Francis Schaeffer:

As there are no little people in God’s sight, so there are no little places. . . .  Nowhere more than in America are Christians caught in the twentieth-century syndrome of size. Size will show success. If I am consecrated, there will necessarily be large quantities of people, dollars, etc.

This is not so.

Not only does God not say that size and spiritual power go together, but He even reverses this (especially in the teaching of Jesus) and tells us to be deliberately careful not to choose a place too big for us. We all tend to emphasize big works and big places, but all such emphasis is of the flesh. To think in such terms is simply to hearken back to the old, unconverted, egoist, self-centered Me. This attitude, taken from the world, is more dangerous to the Christian than fleshly amusement or practice. It is the flesh.

—Francis Schaeffer, No Little People (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1974), 18.

J. I. Packer:

I have found that churches, pastors, seminaries, and parachurch agencies throughout North America are mostly playing the numbers game—that is, defining success in terms of numbers of heads counted or added to those that were there before.

Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, news reporters, and others all speak as if

(1) numerical increase is what matters most;

(2) numerical increase will surely come if our techniques and procedures are right;

(3) numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does;

(4) numerical increase must be everyone’s main goal.

He detects four “unhappy consequences” of these assumptions:

First, big and growing churches are viewed as far more significant than others.

Second, parachurch specialists who pull in large numbers are venerated, while hard-working pastors are treated as near-nonentities.

Third, lively laymen and clergy too are constantly being creamed off from the churches to run parachurch ministries, in which, just because they specialize on a relatively narrow front, quicker and more striking results can be expected.

Fourth, many ministers of not-so-bouncy temperament and not-so-flashy gifts return to secular employment in disillusionment and bitterness, concluding that the pastoral life of steady service is a game not worth playing.

Packer then offers his assessment:

In all of this I seem to see a great deal of unmortified pride, either massaged, indulged, and gratified, or wounded, nursed, and mollycoddled. Where quantifiable success is god, pride always grows strong and spreads through the soul as cancer sometimes gallops through the body.

Shrinking spiritual stature and growing moral weakness thence result, and in pastoral leaders, especially those who have become sure they are succeeding, the various forms of abuse and exploitation that follow can be horrific.

Orienting all Christian action to visible success as its goal, a move which to many moderns seems supremely sensible and businesslike, is thus more a weakness in the church than its strength; it is a seedbed both of unspiritual vainglory for the self-rated succeeders and of unspiritual despair for the self-rated failures, and a source of shallowness and superficiality all round.

The way of health and humility is for us to admit to ourselves that in the final analysis we do not and cannot know the measure of our success the way God sees it. Wisdom says: leave success ratings to God, and live your Christianity as a religion of faithfulness rather than an idolatry of achievement.

—J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah (Wheaton: Crossway, 1995), 207–209.

(Packer says that he would like to see Kent and Barbara Hughes’ book, Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome, “made required reading for every pastoral aspirant.”)

Did the Early Church Oppose Abortion?

If you’ve ever wanted to know what the early church thought about abortion and how it responded, the book to read is Michael J. Gorman’s Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World.

Abortion was rampant, especially in ancient Rome, and the early Christians, like the Jews, consistently opposed it.

For some ancient citations to this effect, I’ve reprinted some relevant sections from an essay in the back of the ESV Study Bible on “The Beginning of Life and Abortion,” which offers a concise overview on the extrabiblical Jewish and early Christian literature in contrast to Roman culture:

First-Century Judaism Condemned Abortion

For example, the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides 184–186 (c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 50) says that “a woman should not destroy the unborn in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and vultures as a prey.”

Included among those who do evil in the apocalyptic Sibylline Oracles were women who “aborted what they carried in the womb” (2.281–282).

Similarly, the apocryphal book 1 Enoch (2nd or 1st century B.C.) declares that an evil angel taught humans how to “smash the embryo in the womb” (69.12).

Finally, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus wrote that “the law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus” (Against Apion 2.202).

Roman Culture Sanctioned Abortion

Cicero (106–43 B.C.) records that according to the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, “deformed infants shall be killed” (De Legibus 3.8).

Plutarch (c. a.d. 46–120) spoke of those who he said “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan” (Moralia 2.171D).

Early Christian Literature Condemned Abortion

Against the bleak backdrop of Roman culture, the Hebrew “sanctity of human life” ethic provided the moral framework for early Christian condemnation of abortion and infanticide.

For instance, the Didache 2.2 (c. A.D. 85–110) commands, “thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.”

Another noncanonical early Christian text, the Letter of Barnabas 19.5 (c. A.D. 130), said: “You shall not abort a child nor, again, commit infanticide.”

There are numerous other examples of Christian condemnation of both infanticide and abortion. In fact, some biblical scholars have argued that the silence of the NT on abortion per se is due to the fact that it was simply assumed to be beyond the pale of early Christian practice. Nevertheless, Luke (a physician) points to fetal personhood when he observes that the unborn John the Baptist “leaped for joy” in his mother’s womb when Elizabeth came into the presence of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus at the time (Luke 1:44).

Early Christian Rescued and Adopted Abandoned Children

For instance, Callistus (d. c. A.D. 223) provided refuge to abandoned children by placing them in Christian homes, and Benignus of Dijon (3rd century) offered nourishment and protection to abandoned children, including some with disabilities caused by unsuccessful abortions.

Augustine Actually (and Clearly) Affirmed Sola Scriptura

Historical theologian and Protestant pastor Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary; author of books including Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future and Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation) has a unique YouTube channel, called Truth Unites, that every reader of this post should subscribe to. It’s a fascinating mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. (Of course it should go without saying that I don’t necessarily endorse every view that might be articulated on someone’s else site.)

Here’s the thesis of his latest video:

Augustine affirmed sola Scriptura.

In fact, he could not have been clearer in affirming it.

I will embed the video below for him to make his case, followed by notes on his presentation:

Three Clarifications

Ortlund provides three clarifications or framing remarks:

The goal of this video is not prove that sola Scriptura is right. The goal is simply historical accuracy. What Augustine believed is interesting and relevant, but it’s not decisive for sola Scriptura. Someone who rejects sola Scriptura could simply say that Augustine was wrong.I do not believe that I am taking these quotes out of context. If you have a concern about that, read these quotes in context for yourself.We need to define sola Scriptura, because obviously we have to know what we are talking about in order to know be able to recognize it in Augustine or anywhere else.Definition

Ortlund offers the following definition of sola Scriptura:

Scripture is the only infallible rule for faith and practice.

Tradition has a place. Creeds and councils can be binding and authoritative. But all that is subsequent to Scripture is reformable in light of Scripture.

Caricatures

Ortlund points out at least four alternative caricatures are ruled out by this definition. Sola Scripture does not mean that:

the Bible is the exclusive source of all theological knowledge;the Bible is the infallible rule for every subject (whether chemistry, geometry, etc.);the Bible is the only authority for each individual Christian, regardless of their historical circumstances;it can be amalgamated with other Protestant doctrines concerning Scripture (such as perspicuity, sufficiency, etc.).

The bottom line?

We must avoid defining sola Scriptura by its street-level practice, and instead define it by its official articulations. The fact that something is visible at the street level does not mean it isn’t a caricature.

(He recommends a few theologians to read on this: Francis Turretin, William Whitaker, Martin Chemnitz, Richard Hooker.)

Quote #1 from Augustine

But who can fail to be aware that the sacred canon of Scripture, both of the Old and New Testament, is confined within its own limits, and that it stands so absolutely in a superior position to all later letters of the bishops, that about it we can hold no manner of doubt or disputation whether what is confessedly contained in it is right and true; but that all the letters of bishops which have been written, or are being written, since the closing of the canon, are liable to be refuted if there be anything contained in them which strays from the truth, either by the discourse of some one who happens to be wiser in the matter than themselves, or by the weightier authority and more learned experience of other bishops, by the authority of Councils; and further, that the Councils themselves, which are held in the several districts and provinces, must yield, beyond all possibility of doubt, to the authority of plenary Councils which are formed for the whole Christian world; and that even of the plenary Councils, the earlier are often corrected by those which follow them, when, by some actual experiment, things are brought to light which were before concealed, and that is known which previously lay hid, and this without any whirlwind of sacrilegious pride, without any puffing of the neck through arrogance, without any strife of envious hatred, simply with holy humility, catholic peace, and Christian charity? (On Baptism 2.3.4)

Ortlund makes two observations about this quote:

Augustine draws a clear distinction between Scripture and all subsequent writings with respect to their authority and truthfulness.Augustine maintains that councils, even plenary (ecumenical) councils, can err and be corrected by later ones.Quote #2 from Augustine

As regards our writings, which are not a rule of faith or practice, but only a help to edification, we may suppose that they contain some things falling short of the truth in obscure and recondite matters, and that these mistakes may or may not be corrected in subsequent treatises. For we are of those of whom the apostle says: “And if you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you” (Philippians 3:15). Such writings are read with the right of judgment, and without any obligation to believe. In order to leave room for such profitable discussions of difficult questions, there is a distinct boundary line separating all productions subsequent to apostolic times from the authoritative canonical books of the Old and New Testaments. (Reply to Faustus 11.5)

Ortlund observes:

Augustine continues to observe the church’s role in the preservation of Scripture, but to distinguish Scripture from everything subsequent to the apostolic times in terms of infallible vs. fallible.

Quote #3 from Augustine

I have learned to yield this respect and honor only to the canonical books of Scripture: of these alone do I most firmly believe that the authors were completely free from error. . . . As to all other writings, in reading them, however great the superiority of the authors to myself in sanctity and learning, I do not accept their teaching as true on the mere ground of the opinion being held by them; but only because they have succeeded in convincing my judgment of its truth either by means of these canonical writings themselves, or by arguments addressed to my reason. (Letter to Jerome [no. 82])

Ortlund notes:

Augustine maintains that he believes Jerome held the same view.

But What about Other Quotes from Augustine?

In some passages, Augustine even goes further, coming close to the Reformed idea of the sufficiency of Scripture:

Among the things that are plainly laid down in Scripture are to be found all matters that concern faith and the manner of life. (On Christian Doctrine 2.9)

Some people try to evade the force of these statements by pointing to other things Augustine said, and he certainly did have a high view of the church. For example, he wrote:

for my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.

Ortlund argues that this statement is not at odds with elevation of Scripture over councils and bishops. It comes from his Against the Fundamental Epistle of Manichaeus, where he is arguing with a Manichee, who sought to enforce a gospel of his own. That is in no way at odds with saying the Scripture is of unique authority.

Calvin comments:

Augustine, therefore, does not here say that the faith of the godly is founded on the authority of the Church; nor does he mean that the certainty of the gospel depends upon it; he merely says that unbelievers would have no certainty of the gospel, so as thereby to win Christ, were they not influenced by the consent of the Church.

Is Augustine Unique among the Fathers in His Understanding of Scripture?

John Chrysostom, in his 33rd homily on Acts, poses a scenario along these lines:

What about when a pagan wishes to become a Christian, but he sees all these rival groups in the church, and doesn’t know which one to pick?

He answers:

What then shall we say to the heathen? There comes a heathen and says, ‘I wish to become a Christian, but I know not whom to join: there is much fighting and faction among you, much confusion: which doctrine am I to choose?’ How shall we answer him? ‘Each of you’ (says he) ‘asserts, “I speak the truth.”’

No doubt: this is in our favor. For if we told you to be persuaded by arguments, you might well be perplexed: but if we bid you believe the Scriptures, and these are simple and true, the decision is easy for you. If any agree with the Scriptures, he is the Christian; if any fight against them, he is far from this rule.

Three observations from Ortlund:

John erects the Scriptures as the ultimate test by which to measure these competing claims.John distinguishes the Scriptures from arguments because they are “simple and true,” whereas arguments simply cause confusion.John nowhere appeals to an infallible magisterium.

In fact, John anticipates the challenge of interpretative pluralism next:

“But which am I to believe, knowing as I do nothing at all of the Scriptures? The others also allege the same thing for themselves. What then if the other come, and say that the Scripture has this, and you that it has something different, and you interpret the Scriptures diversely, dragging their sense (each his own way)?” And you then, I ask, have you no understanding, no judgment?

John assumes that you have the ability to convince this person of the truth by the Scripture. At one point he even questions their sincerity if they cannot!

If he should say what you say about the Christians — ‘There is such a multitude of men, and they have different doctrines; this a heathen, that a Jew, the other a Christian: no need to accept any doctrine whatever, for they are at variance one with another; but I am a learner, and do not wish to be a judge’ — but if you have yielded (so far as) to pronounce against one doctrine, this pretext no longer has place for you. For just as you were able to reject the spurious, so here also, having come, you shall be able to prove what is profitable. . . . Let us not make pretexts and excuses, and all will be easy.

John argues that the heathen maneuvers the conversation into that level of skepticism, that person is basically making excuses. He assumes that the truth can be discerned among competing options by the Scriptures functioning as paramount.

Conclusion

“None of this is a defeater for non-Protestant views of Scripture and tradition. Augustine (and John) are not infallible. But they certainly show the reasonableness of sola Scriptura. My hope is that these patristic testimonies will at least encourage people not to dismiss the idea so quickly, or to caricature it.”

A Gospel Moment on YouTube: Matt Chandler’s “Jesus Wants the Rose!”

At the Desiring God 2009 Conference for Pastors, on February 3, Matt Chandler gave a powerful illustration (above) about purity and the gospel of grace and forgiveness from his days as a college freshman.

You can read the rest of his message here and see how he came to view embrace the church, despite her flaws and failures.

A New Movie on the Conversion of C. S. Lewis

On November 3, 2021, for one night only, cinemas nationwide will carry the new movie, “The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C. S. Lewis.”

You can look for the availability of the film and tickets in your area here.

An elder C.S. Lewis looks back on his remarkable journey from hard-boiled atheist to the most renowned Christian writer of the past century.

The Most Reluctant Convert features award-winning actor Max McLean as the older Lewis and Nicholas Ralph—breakout star of PBS Masterpiece’s All Creatures Great and Small—as young Lewis. Beautifully filmed in and around Oxford, this engaging biopic follows the creator of The Chronicles of Narnia from the tragic death of his mother when he was just nine years old, through his strained relationship with his father, to the nightmare of the trenches of World War I to Oxford University, where friends like J.R.R. Tolkien challenge his unbelief.

Written for the screen and directed by two-time Emmy and BAFTA winner Norman Stone (BBC’s Shadowlands), The Most Reluctant Convert brings to life the spiritual evolution of one the 20th century’s sharpest minds and keenest wits.

To read about this time period in Lewis’s life, see the first two volumes of Harry Lee Poe’s trilogy:

Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898–1918) (Crossway, 2019) The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918–1945) (Crossway, 2021).

A Gospel Moment on YouTube: D. A. Carson on the Two Jews Talking the Day Before the First Passover

D. A. Carson, “How Long, O Lord? Steadying Our Soul in the Midst of the Storm,” Bethlehem 2016 Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders (Minneapolis), January 26, 2016:

Picture two Jews, by the name of Smith and Brown. Remarkably Jewish names.

The day before the first Passover they’re having a little discussion in the land of Goshen, and Smith says to Brown, “Boy, are you a little nervous about what’s going to happen tonight?”

Brown says, “Well, God told us what to do through his servant Moses. You don’t have to be nervous. Haven’t you slaughtered the lamb and dobbed the two door posts with blood—put blood on the lintel? Haven’t you done that? You’re all ready and packed to go? You’re going to eat your whole Passover meal with your family?”

“Of course I’ve done that. I’m not stupid. But, it’s still pretty scary when you think of all the things that have happened around here recently. You know, flies and river turning to blood. It’s pretty awful. And now there’s a threat of the first-born being killed, you know. It’s all right for you. You’ve got three sons. I’ve only got one. And I love my Charlie, and the Angel of Death is passing through tonight. I know what God says; I put the blood there. But it’s pretty scary, I’ll be glad when this night is over.”

And the other one responds, “Bring it on. I trust the promises of God.”

That night, the angel of death swept through the land. Which one lost his son?

And the answer of course is: neither.

Because death doesn’t pass over them on the ground of the intensity, or the clarity, of the faith exercised. But on the ground of the blood of the lamb. That’s what silences the accuser.

The blood silences the accuser of the brothers as he accuses us before God. He silences our consciences when he accuses us directly. How many times do we writhe in agony asking if God can ever love us enough, if God can ever care for us enough after we have done such stupid, sinful, rebellious things after being Christians for 40 years?

What are you going to say, “Oh, God, I tried hard, you know. I did my best. It was a bad moment”?

No, no, no.

I have no other argument! I need no other plea! It is enough that Jesus died, and that he died for me!

We overcome him by the blood of the lamb. There is the ground of all human assurance before God. There is the ground of our faith. Not guaranteeing intensity of faith—so fickle are we.

It’s not the intensity of our faith but the object of our faith that saves. They overcome him on the ground of the blood of the lamb.