For the Gospel Forum

YOUNG, RESTLESS, REFORMED by Collin Hansen

2008-08-03T22:55:13-08:00

I am very excited about this new book documenting a resurgence of Reformed theology or Calvinism in America, and especially among young people. There is hope for the Christian world after all!

I don’t know where to start. I just got through the first chapter tonight, and I could hardly put it down.

The first chapter alone is worth the price of the book many times over. This chapter is called “Born Again Again”.

The author set out to Atlanta for a youth conference when he was standing in line at a hotel, when he heard some young people talking about theology--of all things! And guess what? Can you believe the first people this author talked to when researching his book was a group of Seventh Day Adventists from the Florida Hospital SDA church? Wow! Apparently there are some SDA pastors who really like what Reformed teachers such as CJ Mahaney and others are teaching.

This may whet your appetite for a really exciting journey to what the Lord is doing to bring a new revival of truly Biblical theology.

I will be very busy for the next three days, but I at least wanted to get this thread started.

More to come.

Solio Deo Gloria!

Stan

A Long Line of Godly Men

2008-07-28T08:39:20-08:00

A Long Line of Godly Men, authored by Steven J. Lawson is the first in a planned five-volume “Foundations of Grace” series to span 3,500 years of redemptive history, focusing on the men God has chosen to share and proclaim his grace.

I first encountered Lawson, the senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, in another book, Young, Restless, and Reformed, by Collin Hansen. The book recounts Lawson’s invitation to pastor the Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, providing a backdrop for his current work. Before signing on at Dauphin Way, Lawson asked the church leaders what they believed about predestination. “I could’ve said a word in Russian they could have more quickly understood...” As the book goes on to explain, Lawson’s time at Dauphin Way was tumultuous.

“Lawson had problems at Dauphin Way from the get-go. Within those first two years, one group left Dauphin Way to start its own church. [Lawson] attributed this first fissure to his expository preaching. The proclaimed Word exposed hearts, he said. It revealed that some church leaders didn’t believe what they claimed. Lawson told me about one sixty-five-year-old deacon who approached him privately and asked how he could be saved. According to Lawson, nearly one hundred adult church members professed faith for the first time during his eight-year tenure.” (pp. 80-81)

Apart from his expository preaching, Lawson received heavy criticism for refusing to remarry a church member whose fiancee belonged to the Church of Christ, which Lawson believes teaches a false gospel of baptismal regeneration. He also was criticized for attempting to employ church discipline in the case of two choir members who lived together. But the biggest complaint against Lawson was his refusal to back down from teaching and preaching about God’s sovereign grace. As is often the case whenever God’s grace is clearly proclaimed, Lawson’s opponents sought to label him as follower of a man—John Calvin—rather than a faithful Bible expositor and disciple of Jesus Christ. An anonymous letter was sent to every church member asking the question, “Are you a Baptist or are you a Calvinist?”. The letter was also sent to the local news media. With a groundswell of opposition in the congregation turning against him, Lawson finally left Dauphin Way to pastor a new congregation in the same city, Christ Fellowship Baptist Church.

A Long Line of Godly Men is an ambitious work exploring the theme of God’s sovereign grace within biblical redemptive history and extending to the present time. In the preface to the first volume, Lawson explains what he terms “the Continental Divide of theology”.

“Geography is not the only place we find a great divide. There is a high ground that runs through church history as well—a Continental Divide of theology. This great divide of doctrine seperates two distinctly different streams of thought that flow in opposite directions. To be specific, this determinative high ground is one’s theology of God, man, and salvation. This is the highest of all thought, and it divides all doctrine into two schools. Historically, these two ways of thinking about God and His saving grace have been called by various names. Some have identified them as Augustinianism and Pelagianism. Others have named them Calvinism and Arminianism. Still others have defined them as Reformed and Catholic, while others have used the terms predestination and free will. But by whatever name, these streams are determined by the Continental Divide of theology.” (p. 21)

Explaining a key difference between the geographic and doctrinal divides, he writes, “This [doctrinal] divide differs from the geographical Continental Divide in one key respect. Whereas streams flowing west and east of the Rocky Mountains descend gradually to the plains and lowlands where they meet the oceans, the terrain on the two sides of the doctrinal divide is quite different. On one side we find solid highlands of truth. On the other side there are precipitous slopes of half-truths and full error.” (pp. 21-22)

Concluding the preface, Lawson writes, “Let us now embark upon this God-exalting, Christ-honoring pursuit. Ultimately, our view of God is at stake. It will affect everything. May we elevate Him in our hearts to the highest place, which belongs exclusively to Him.” (p. 23)

In the next several posts, I will share some quotes and thoughts from the book, posting them as I read each chapter.

The Lord’s Day

2008-03-19T14:45:35-08:00

I purchased an interesting book yesterday entitled, The Lord’s Day - A Theological Guide to the Christian Day of Worship, written by Paul K. Jewett who was a Professor of Systematic Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary when the book was published in 1971. From what I can gather in the early reading of this book, Jewett writes from a Reformed Theology perspective. He received his training at Wheaton College, Westminster Seminary (Philadelphia) and Harvard University (Ph.D.).

The summary on the back cover is as follows:

In this study the author acquaints the reader with the principal matters which bear upon the subject of the Christian day of worship. Following the order of redemptive history, he begins the discussion with a brief account of the Jewish Sabbath and proceeds to a consideration of the Lord’s Day, making Jesus’ view of the Sabbath a bridge between the two.

The Sabbath was originally given the Israelites by divine revelation through Moses. Perceiving that the Sabbath rest was fulfilled in Christ, early Jewish Christians were indifferent to the continued observance of the seventh day, being fortified in this attitude by Jesus’ own use of the Sabbath. Since this insight was illuminated by the event of the resurrection, early Christian indifference to the seventh day coincides with the observance of the first day in commemoration of the initial fellowship of the disciples with the risen Lord on the evening of Easter.

This investigation leads to a Lord’s Day theology of fulfillment in hope. The study concludes with four principles suggested as minimal guides to the keeping of the Lord’s Day.

What interested me about this book was a section on Seventh-day Adventism. While much of the criticism in former Adventist circles centers on the Sabbath, I was intrigued at the approach a Reformed theologian would take, knowing that he may be more in line with Sunday Sabbatarianism as outlined in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I will reproduce key portions of what Jewett concluded about Adventists below. His conclusions are largely not shared by members of the former Adventist community and indeed, there have been critics within our circles who have claimed that Reformed theology “sets people up” for Adventism and Saturday Sabbatarianism because of its high regard for God’s moral law. The conclusions from Jewett show that nothing could be further from the truth. It does not follow that a high regard for God’s moral law and the Decalogue ends with someone “falling” for Adventism, rather, it ends with the disagreement being over what the Sabbath law pointed to and in Whom this law found its fulfillment. We don’t need to tiptoe around the Decalogue or even abandon all talk of the law as being valuable for the Christian life as many former Adventists have done. We only need to follow the example of Professor Jewett in seeing the battle lines drawn at the person and work of Jesus Christ rather than in a particular commandment.

Here is what Jewett says in his section about Seventh-day Adventists:

Whereas the Reformers were indifferent to the observance of any particular day, there are those in the Christian church who regard the seventh-day Sabbath as perpetually obligatory. This is both the simplest and—as is often the case—the least plausible option, when submitted to the rigors of critical analysis. The seventh-day worshipper puts his finger on the fourth commandment and declares that everyone who worships on the first day is an apostate, though an ignorant and well-meaning one in most cases. To counter this Adventist accusation of apostasy with that of legalism, as is too often done, is to exorcise the Devil by Beelzebub. We cannot say that those who worship on the seventh day are legalists, having no part in the Christian church. A man may or may not be a legalist, whatever day he sets apart for divine worship.

At the obvious level, the problem with the seventh-day position is that it constitutes a truancy from the mainstream of Christian teaching and practice, for which there is no evidence or justification in the sources. The Seventh-Day Baptists and Adventists are telling other Christians that they are wrong in doing what Christians have always done. They are saying that the Christians worshipped on the seventh day and not on the first day; but, as we have seen, there is no convincing evidence that this is so.

At a deeper theological level, theirs is an error at the opposite extreme from that of the Reformers. The Sabbatarian position fails to do justice to the movement of redemptive history. It resolves the question of the day of worship as though the Sabbath rest were wholly a future hope, and does not see the implications of the fulfillment of that hope in Christ, who is our promised rest. It frames a theology of the day of worship as though nothing had happened in redemptive history since God spoke by Moses; it is as though Christ had never come.

Adventists, the primary spokesmen for this position, still cling to the shadow of things to come and do not reckon with the fact that “the body is Christ’s” (Col. 2:17). The thesis that the church should worship on the seventh day, therefore, cannot contribute in an essential way to our effort to frame a theology of the Christian day of worship. We shall simply offer a brief account of the history of seventh-day worship, that the reader may not be wholly uninformed of the heritage of his brethren who revere the seventh-day Sabbath, together with some animadversions on the Adventist approach to Sripture and Christian tradition.

[What follows is a brief history of the early seventh-day Sabbatarians and how their position was embraced by the early Adventists.]

In evaluating this position, we need not conjure up the specter of legalism. As we have said, one can no more infer one is under the law because he worships on the seventh day than that one is under grace because he worships on the first day. The problem is rather the uncritical nature of the arguments for seventh-day worship. Take, for example, the thesis that Daniel 7:25 refers to changing the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, or Ellen White’s interpretation of the book of Revelation: “...in the last days the sabbath test will be made plain. When this time comes anyone who does not keep the Sabbath will receive the mark of the beast and will be kept from heaven.” (The Great Controversy, p. 449). How can one interact critically with such arguments? One can only accept them without question or leave them, much as he would leave arguments for a flat earth.

...

Not only are Adventist writers seemingly oblivious to scientific information about the age of the earth and the antiquity of man, but the manner in which they handle the testimony of history leads in like manner to a cul-de-sac. Every piece of evidence that Christians have worshipped on Sunday is either explained away or cited as evidence of apostasy. Thus it appears a priori certain that the voice of tradition can only support the Seventh-day Adventist position. Did the Reformers teach the observance of the first day of the week? Yes, of course, say the Adventists. And what a tragedy that they should have “stopped short in their work of reformation! One more tradition of the medieval church should have been rejected—the false sabbath” (cited from Richard B. Lewis, The Protestant Dilemma). “The Reformers failed to forsake this heresy along with transubstantiation, purgatory, Mariolatry, and other errors of Rome” (cited from Lewis). And it really matters not how primary the evidence for Sunday worship may be, in contrast to that for transubstantiation, purgatory, and Mariolatry. The great antiquity of such evidence simply proves to the Adventists that the apostasy of worshipping on the first day is much more ancient than the heresy of transubstantiation, purgatory or Mariolatry.

[What follows is an account from Lewis where he claims “Sunday has always been the day of heathen worship. It has always been dedicated to the sun god..."]

Thus to stigmatize the observance of Sunday by Christians as having its origin in pagan sun worship is perhaps “the most unkindest cut of all,” for it rests upon palpable historical inaccuracies. It is a well-known fact that from a hoary antiquity men have worshipped the sun, but at the commencement of the Christian era there was no particular association of this cult with the first day of the Jewish week. The day was not called “Sunday” when Christians began to worship on it; and the oft-repeated statements that the first Christians worshipped on “Sunday” really means that they worshipped on the day which subsequently came to be called Sunday, when the days of the week were named for the planets. This usage, the so-called Planet Week, is a post-Christian one.

To be sure, when the Planet Week was established, the day on which Christians worshipped was also devoted by pagans to the worship of the sun, particularly in the cult of Mithras, since the god Mithras was originally a Persian light god. Christians were then sometimes supposed themselves to be sun-worshippers by their pagan neighbors, because they worshiped on Sunday. (The apologist Tertullian is the first to mention this case of mistaken identity. -see footnote) But there is no reason why those who are themselves Christians should make the same mistake.

Footnote: W. Rordorf suggests that the Christian observance of Sunday may have influenced the Mithraitic practice. That is to say, the evidence points in the opposite direction of the Adventist claim.

Source: A Theology of the Lord’s Day, pp. 106-114

In summary, there are good historical and theological reasons to disagree with the Adventist claim that Saturday observance is an apostolic Christian practice. To minimize the law in an effort to prevent people from joining Adventism is to make a greater error than the Adventist who places undue weight on a single command. There is no need to be afraid of God’s law. As the Psalmist declares, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:7-9). And if we think this quote from the Psalms is merely an Old Testament sentiment, let us pay attention to the apostle Paul, who said, “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” (Romans 7:22) and “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31).

Greg

The Five Worst Christian Books

2008-03-10T14:26:07-08:00

Here is an interesting link to Michael Newnham’s blog:

http://phoenixpreacher.com/cms/?p=2645

Newnham is a former Calvary Chapel preacher who has converted from the strongly Arminian theology of the Calvary Chapel movement, and now is a Reformed pastor.

It is amazing that Dave Hunt could write a book branding Calvinism as a false gospel, and then admit to James White that he had not read any of the Reformer’s works. There are some people who are so prone to want to destroy what they perceive as Calvinism, that they will stoop to any lengths to do so.

Stan

“THE FUTURE OF JUSTIFICATION” A Response to N.T. Wright

2008-01-19T14:47:37-08:00

I’m very glad that Greg included a section on this forum for book reviews. Here is a book which is available as a PDF on John Piper’s site, http://www.desiringgod.org/. I’m in the middle of reading it and have been blessed a lot by what Piper wrote in this book.

The book is in my view very good for different points which I’ll plan to write in my following posts. Back to the issue and start with the beginning. Good insights are present even in the “Acknowledgments” section of the book.

For example, John’s father is mentioned as a the one to whom the book is dedicated, he died in 2007 and was a faithful preacher of the gospel, and one of his favorite sermons was entitled “Grace for the Guilty”. It has at the end

“God clothes you with his righteousness when you believe, giving you a garment that makes you fit for heaven.FOJ, page 9”

I put “fit” in bold to emphasize what important was for me to understand that sanctification does not make me “fit” for heaven, but justification makes me, the garment of God’s righteousness which is sufficient and perfect, and I am “fit” for heaven from the first time I believed. In the adventist church I was raised, following the wesleyan tradition, justification was only our title for heaven, and sanctification was our fitness. Since sanctification is never perfect, always incomplete, being fit for heaven is an unfulfilled dream. But I was taught constantly to work, to “get ready” for heaven, to completed my preparation for the second coming, which robed me of any security regarding my salvation, either present or perfect. I also read good adventists books which emphasized Christ’s righteousness as sufficient for our salvation, and that we will not raise above the level of justification, being always sinners saved by grace.

Piper continues:

For my father, the gospel of Christ included the news that there is a righteousness—a perfect obedience of Jesus Christ—that is offered freely to all through faith alone. And when faith is given, that righteousness is imputed to the believer once and for all. Together with the sin-forgiving blood of Jesus, this is our hope. From the moment we believed until the last day of eternity God is 100 percent for us on this basis alone—the sin-bearing punishment of Christ, and the righteousness-providing obedience of Christ. FOJ, page 9

Amen! Amen!

The book is critique of the position taken by N.T. Wright, which espouses what is called “New Perspective of Paul”. His views will be clarified afterwards, what is important is Piper’s methodology. He wrote the book, sent it to Wright, and Wright replied with a 11,000-word response which clarified misunderstanding. Accordingly Piper modified the content of the book and now it is twice in size, and we have here a very accurate description of Wright’s views. As will be seen, there are many similarities between his views and the adventists view regarding the gospel, but also certain differences. I’ll try to focus on similarities for the sake of being relevant to both formers and current adventists, without neglecting the other important points.

The goal of writing this book is superb in my view

I would be happy if it was said of this book what John Erskine said in 1792 of Solomon Stoddard’s book, The Safety of Appearing at the Day of Judgment, in the Righteousness of Christ: “The general tendency of this book is to show that our claim to the pardon of sin and acceptance with God is not founded on any thing wrought in us, or acted by us, but only on the righteousness of Christ. FOJ, page 11”

To be continued…

Review: God Of The Possible; by Dr Gregory Boyd

2008-01-23T09:32:18-08:00

This book, written by Gregory A. Boyd, is an biblical introduction to the view that the future is partly open aswell as partly determined. There are four chapters aswell as an appendix and each chapter considers one aspect of this view. The first one considers such biblical examples which are used to support the classical view of divine foreknowledge. Examples are Isaiah48:3-5

I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of my mouth, ...

Ezekiel 26: 7-21

For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring upon Tyrus Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon,…

And yes, God did foreknow these events. But the question is asked, does the fact that God foreknows some things mean that He foreknows all things? The evidence in chapter two suggests that this is not the case. Boyd writes, ”For example, I am at the present time deliberating about whether or not I should travel to San Diego next month. In deliberating about this matter, I asume that it is up to me to decide,when, where, and how I will travel. How could I honestly deliberate about this decision if I didn’t believe this? But notice, I also assume that much of the future is already settled and not up to me to decide. To deliberate about whether I should travel to San Diego or not, I have to assume that (among many other things) San Diego will exist next month, that the laws of physics will operate as they do today, and that I will be basically the same person then as I am now. I cannot deliberate about issues that are up to me to decide without presupposing the settledness of many other issues that are not up to me to decide.

This example illustrates that we cannot consider choices without presupposing that the future is partly open and partly settled-- the very position that the open view advocates. If we believe that all of the futre was open, we could not decide between options. If we believed that none of the futre was open, we could not decide between options. Hence, the fact that we obviously do decide between option s suggests that at some level we all assume that the future is partly open and partly closed.”

In the second chapter, Boyd presents such biblical examples which support the future being partly open. Among the examples are Genesis 6:6 and 1 Sam 13:13 where God regrets making mankind and Saul king respectively. Boyd asks, ”We must wonder how the Lord could truly experience regret for making Saul king if he was absolutely certain that Saul would act the way he did.”

Another example is found in Isaiah 5 where the Lord expresses suprise in an analogy of a wineyard he planted. The Lord asks ”4 What more could have been done to My vineyard That I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, Did it bring forth wild grapes? ”

The appendix chapter contains many other examples, aswell as the rest of chapter two.

The third chapter explores the practical differences made by espousing the open view rather than the classical one. Boyd argues that it is more rationally coherent, increases the clarity of Gods Word aswell as positively affect our core view of who God. Boyd also argues that it places the urgency back in prayer. This because if the future is exhaustively settled, one may wonder what difference prayer does make. But if God can yet change his mind in answere to prayer, as he indeed is recorded as doing on many occations in the bible (several of the conversations between God and Moses come to mind), then prayer does make a difference. Boyd also argues that the open view brings some resolution to the problem of evil.

The fourth and last chapter gives answers to 18 common questions regarding the open view. Here, questions such as ”Why do you think God can’t foreknow future free actions?”, ” Isn’t Gods wisdom diminished by claiming he can’t foreknow everything about the future?” and ”How can you claim that the future is partly open and partly settled? It seems like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too”.

In conclusion, I found this book easy to read and well written. All may not agree with the conclusions made but that should not be a reason to avoid reading it if the questions it works with are interesting to you. And as Boyd points out in the foreword, this theology is peripherical and should not be allowed to come in the way of our unity in Christ.

Gregory A. Boyd
ISBN 0-8010-6290-X
Baker Book House
http://www.amazon.com/God-Possible-Biblical-Introduction-Open/dp/080106290X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201109288&sr=8-1