Category: Announcements

For almost 30 years now I’ve tried to read a book a week and a book a month. This is incredibly modest compared to Rushdoony’s habit of reading a book a day. Usually, I’ve been able to exceed my goals but I’ve not increased the goals in order to stay realistic. I’ve also attempted to scatter my reading hither and yon. I try to read novels (last summer I read my first Jane Austen novels), history, theology, economics, sociology, anthropology, ethics, educational theory, political science, philosophy of science, philosophy, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, Worldview, presuppositionalism, etc.. In all my reading there is one emphasis I try to consciously return to frequently and that is some reading that concentrates on the person and work of Christ. Sometimes I get frustrated over not being able to read fast enough. My book queue mocks me all the time. One reason that it is difficult for me to write is that it takes away from my time to read.

My book of the month is generally a really fat book that goes into depth on some particular subject. These books are generally 400-700 pages long. My book of the week is generally a book that is shorter (200-400 pages) and deals with something in a less in depth fashion. The two to these combined I call my ‘deep reading’ (background reading). I also do a great deal of what I style, ‘wide reading.’ This is reading that is done out of journals, magazines, periodicals, online websites, and newspapers. I’ve never tried to keep specific track of the amount of wide reading I do.

As I read I talk back to my books with underlining, notes in the margins and asterisks in order to mark something especially striking.

Anyway, I thought that I would try to keep a running record here of what I am reading through the year. My book of the Month for February I completed last Sunday. It was Carl F. H. Henry’s first Volume in his God, Revelation and Authority series. It spend a good deal of time tracing the history of a-priorism distinguishing Christian a-priorism (Augustine, Anselm) from non-Christian expressions. While I didn’t understand all the explanations I did understand that the problem with non-Christian expressions of a-priorism is that they don’t anchor the a-priori in Biblical Revelation and the mind of God. They end up anchoring into subjective categories that can’t hold up under close scrutiny.

My book of this past week I finished today and it was Gene Veith’s ‘Modern Fascism.’ I had read this one once before several years ago but the recent release of Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ took me back to it. I wanted to refresh my memory before I picked up Goldberg. Veith examines Fascism and especially concentrates on how it purposely attacks Transcendence. Veith’s theme seems to be that much that grows out of the Fascist attack on Transcendence accounts for how Fascism takes place. Veith thus labors to show that Fascism is a self conscious attack on Christianity.

My book of the month for March will be Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ and Henry’s second volume of ‘God, Revelation, & Authority.’ My book for the week next week is Neil Postman’s ‘The End Of Education.’

I also received the March issue of Chronicles so I will be filling up the corners with that as well for the next few weeks. I highly recommend Chronicles. They do a good job of cultural analysis and if you can re-interpret past the overtly Roman Catholic flavor that sometimes leaks through it is a fabulous magazine. I earnestly wish there was something of this quality that was being done by Reformed guys.

There are people in mainstream culture who are struggling with the permanence of death. This video reveals it.

“The politicization of the Gospel is a project of both liberals and conservatives in American Christianity. While Biblical Christianity has a responsibility to bear witness to a transcendent ethic and on that basis to criticize social evils, the danger comes when that transcendent focus is lost and the Church sells out to a secular ideology. Today the ‘crude salvationism’ and ‘other worldliness’ of traditional religion are giving way to elaborate efforts to use Christianity to sanction a political agenda. Liberation theology promotes a socialist utopia; fundamentalists who follow ‘reconstructionism’ promote a theocratic state. The German Christians would be able to agree with both of them.”

Gene Edward Veith Jr.
Modern Fascism — Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview

I’ve been over this kind of thing before but since the mistake that it represents is so prevalent in so much literature I will deal with it again here.

Veith in his book is warning about the possibility for Fascism to come to the fore once again in the West. Much of what he says in this regard is simply outstanding, though this quote leaves much to be desired. The problems with it are as follows,

1.) I agree that because of the Transcendent reference point that we find in the personal God of the Bible we must criticize social evil. However criticizing is not enough. It is not enough to say, that something is wrong without offering a Biblical alternative. A Transcendent reference point not only provides us the ability to critique social evil but it also provides the ability to promote social good. If on one hand we are allowed to criticize evil political agendas then on the other hand we must offer something that approximates a Christian political agenda.

2.) It must be agreed that the politicization of the Gospel is a project of both liberals and conservatives. The question we must ask is whether or not it is possible to have a politics from nowhere. Is it possible for a Politics to exist that is not beholden to some faith or belief system? The problem isn’t that people want to derive a politics from Chrisitianity. This is unavoidable and inevitable. The problem is when we politicize a Gospel that is not the Gospel and end up with a politicization of some other belief system that we wrongly say is expressive of the Gospel (Veith’s ‘selling out to secular ideology’). We will be forever in the position of criticizing social evils unless by God’s grace we get a politics that grows up out of the soil of Christianity.

3.) While we must continue to emphasize the ‘other worldliness’ of Christianity we must not emphasize it in such a way that it becomes disconnected from this world. It remains possible to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Certainly Jesus saves us from our sin (Veith’s ‘crude salvationism’) and makes us fit to live with Him in heaven but between then and now lies a tract of time that needs to be spent on doing His will here as it is done in heaven, and God’s will applies to every area of life, including politics. Let us remain other-worldly and let us bring that other-worldliness and incarnate it into this world.

4.) When Veith talks about ‘German Christians’ agreeing with the notion of a Theocratic State he isn’t being complimentary. But the problem with the German Christians wasn’t that they had a Theocratic State the problem is that the Theocratic State was beholden to the wrong God. Veith seems to think that having a Theocratic State is avoidable but this would be to introduce neutrality in to our thinking. Every State is Theocratic. The State we currently live in is Theocratic. It is never a question of being Theocratic or not being Theocratic. It is only a question of which Theocracy that a people are going to have. Currently we are governed by the God of the people. We call this Democracy but that is just a Theocratic system where Demos is God (The voice of the people is the voice of God). Veith, like many in the West, seems to think that a State can be set up that isn’t in service to some God somewhere. We fault the German Christians for setting up the Theocratic State that they set up. We fault them because the God of the Bible was pushed aside for a false God in that Theocratic State. Their mistake wasn’t a Theocratic State. Their mistake was idolatry.

What about end times? What are all those “millennialism” words about? Has the Christian Reformed Church officially wrestled with these?

In the Bultema case (1918 1920) the Christian Reformed Church officially decided that some tenets that are central to pre-millenialism are not acceptable in the Church. Generally speaking the Christian Reformed Church is amillennialist in its eschatology and especially in its interpretation of the book of Revelation, although its assemblies have never made a specific pronouncement to that effect.

Evaluate the rationale for the CRC’s coming into existence in 1857.

The CRC seceded from the RCA for four basic reasons.

Exclusive Psalmody

Masons and Lodges

English speaking worship

Government schools

In as much as the Government schools were already at that time being run by the Unitarians and since Education is a profoundly religious undertaking I believe that those who seceded were right to do so even if only for this reason. Though the problem with government schools at the time may have been as much cultural as it was theological, still if living these many years later recognize a intimate relationship between culture and theology we would have to conclude that their concerns were valid. Masonry is clearly a different religion and Scripture clearly teaches not to be unequally yoked and so on that score I find their reasoning acceptable. Since they were largely an immigrant Church I can’t fault them for wanting to worship in the language they were familiar. How many of us would attend Churches that worshiped in a second language with which we were barely familiar? And while not an exclusive psalmist myself I can’t fault people who are committed to singing from God’s songbook. The advantages of having Scripture ground into our memories along with verse and meter is itself enough to be sympathetic to anybody who wants to worship in such a fashion.

James Schaap wrote a book called “Family Album” about the CRC. In it, he does what many others have done – describe the CRC membership as having a number of “strands”. Tell about the three strands known as “doctrinalists”, “transformationalists”, and “pietists.”

The ‘doctrinalists’, as the name suggests, are concerned about adhering to the truths of Scriptures and the confessions. They are concerned with the question, ‘What do we believe.’ They would find the genuine stream in the CRC of vigorous Reformed thinking and insist that Reformed thinking is what makes us CRC.

The ‘transformationalists,’ following Abraham Kuyper are concerned with Kuyper’s emphasis of being salt and light to the World with the result that the World is transformed from fall by redemption. ‘Transformationalists’ are concerned about Worldview and cultural issues and believe that Christianity that doesn’t effect cultural, personal and institutional ‘transformation’ is a strange kind of Christianity.

The ‘pietists’ emphasizes the personal, relational, and intimate aspect of the Christian faith in terms of a walk with Jesus. The concern here is to avoid a religion that has the mind but leaves the heart unaffected.

It should go without saying that these three form a kind of three legged stool, that requires the presence of each in order for the stool to stand aright. For example, ‘transformationalists’ without ‘doctrinialists,’ would do incredible damage to the reputation of the Reformed faith by potentially transforming things in a wrong direction. Biblical ‘transformation’ can’t be successful apart from Biblical doctrine. Similarly it would seem that ‘doctrinalists’ can’t survive without the ‘pietist’ reality. Apart from a sincere love of Jesus and a desire to know him, it is difficult to see why anybody would spend their time burrowing into doctrine. Examples could be drawn from this triangle in every direction. Now we should say that the challenge for the Reformed faith is to find a harmony of interests among these different camps as opposed to seeing conflict in these different positions.

Which issue in CRC history do you think is most telling about the nature of the CRC?

I think the CRC claims to support the inspired, infallible, sufficient and authoritative Scripture throughout the life of the denomination has been paramount to its identity. Where the CRC has been at its best it has continued to stand under the authority of God’s Word. Where the CRC has been at its worst it has deviated from that authority. Starting with the Janssen affair where the encroachment of Modernism with its Higher Critical method was excised, continuing through every Synod that has affirmed directly or indirectly that Scripture is God-breathed the CRC has stood in the tradition of its Scriptural based confessions when it has affirmed that it serves and must examine all issues in submission to the King’s Word.

In the 1920s the CRC wrestled with “worldliness” and “common grace”. What was that about? What insights might help us today as we look back on that issue?

The consequence of this debate was the formation of the Protestant Reformed Church under the tutelage of Dr. Herman Hoekesma. The debate seems to have centered upon the kind of disposition that the Church would have towards the ‘World.’ The followers of Hoekesma insisted that common grace did not exist that while God did give good gifts to the reprobate it was not done out of love for the reprobate. They seemed to be reading God’s intent from the end consequent backwards. That is to say that seeing that at the end God intends to damn the reprobate they concluded that everything that happened along the way to that ultimate end must be read in light of that end. If God intended to damn the reprobate then any good gift that God gave the reprobate was given only to make their judgment all the heavier in their judgment, for they were after all always reprobate. The advocates of common grace seemed to read God’s intent as part of a story that is not yet finished. That is to say, they seemed to require that we read the story of men as it is unfolding. If in the unfolding story we see that good comes upon the reprobate then that must be read as a example of common grace.

Those who denied ‘common grace’ seemed to believe that the embrace of ‘common grace’ by the Church would lead towards a ‘worldliness’ that was inconsistent with what it meant to be the set apart people of God. Those who embraced ‘common grace’ seemed to believe that without a doctrine of ‘common grace,’ the consequence would be a church that was isolated in its mission and witness.

It seems that the debate has taught us that both concerns were right and both concerns were wrong. Surely those who feared about a compromised Church may have reason to believe that their worst fears have come to pass as the Church begins to trespass into realms and on issues its members of earlier generations could never have imagined. On the other hand those who feared that a denial of common grace would lead to an isolated Church might look upon Churches that have a strong teaching on the anti-thesis and see very little missional impact in the World.

One insight from this issue might be the necessity of well thought out engagement. One way the McAtee family has done this is by holding vociferously to the anti-thesis when it comes to the training of our children. We have done so out of our desire to see our children equipped so that as they engage the World it is the World that they are transforming and not them that are being transformed by the World. We have sought to be very doctrinalist in our training so that out of a well formed love for Jesus they desire to see every area of life transformed in the direction of Jesus.

Another insight might be is that doctrine of common grace can be held in such a way as to be destructive to the crown rights of King Jesus and the body of Christ. There is and should ever remain a distinction between the people of Christ and the people of anti-Christ.

My preaching on this has been the necessity to build parallel but not isolated communities. As a witness to the World Christians should be building covenant communities that are definitive, distinct, and deliberate in their Christian faith and expression. At the same time we must not, in an Amish like fashion, completely isolate ourselves. We must take the distinctive Christian thinking and living that we are cultivating in our Christian covenant communities (which ideally should include more then just attending Church on Sunday) and seek to spread that virus into all the careers and fields in which as God’s people we are called. This will lead to conflict as the World doesn’t want to be infected with the virus of God centered thinking but this conflict may be indicative that we are making progress.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven, a former editor of The Banner, said upon his retirement that the greatest challenges to the CRC were materialism and fundamentalism. What do you think of his assessment? Are these still challenges? What other challenges might the CRC be facing?

Well, certainly anybody living in the incredible wealth of These United States, certainly must be aware of the dangers of materialism. It is fallen human nature to try to love both God and mammon. The fact that the Church has to often stumbled in that regard is seen in the late Francis Schaeffer’s lament about the Church’s desire for personal peace and affluence above all other considerations. Calvin taught us that the heart is an idol factory and materialism is certainly one of the idols of our age. Materialism has made all of fat, dumb, and happy and unwilling to do anything that might threaten any source that feeds our daily materialism fix. How many of us have thought when preparing for a sermon, “I better not say this or that because it might tick Joe Moneybags off and so dry up the revenue in the Church and thus jeopardize my job.” Materialism has made us obese and it is an open question whether or not we will die from the obesity with which we suffer.

As it pertains to fundamentalism, I’m not exactly sure what Mr. Kuyvenhoven is getting at, as often the perjorative of ‘fundamentalist’ is one of those epitaphs hurled at people in order to stop the conversation before going. Often liberals will hurl that label at the orthodox all because they are being challenged on some contentious point. In the end, the charge, in certain instances, may say more about the person making the charge then the person being charged.

Having given that caveat I would offer that I see very little fundamentalism in the CRC. Now, I readily admit this may be due to the fact that I don’t get out very often. Maybe they are out there and I don’t run in the right CRC circles in order to be exposed to them.

Let me say though with all earnestness that I am as opposed as possible to the kind of fundamentalism that allows for a man to tyrannize his wife because the Bible says he is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church. I’ve seen to much of that in my life to stomach it. I am opposed to the kind of fundamentalism that mistakes loyalty to Christ for loyalty to the state all because the bible says that we must subject to the governing authorities. I am opposed to the kind of fundamentalism that thinks certain behaviors quite apart from love of Christ, is automatically pleasing to God. I grew up in that kind of fundamentalism and all I saw it breed was hypocrisy.

For what little I know of the great big ocean that is the CRC I would say that the greatest danger to the CRC right now is forgetting the anti-thesis. From where I sit I think there is a danger that the denomination is going to be finally swallowed by the whale of modernity. From what little I know of the CRC it seems to me that the denomination is in danger of losing its Reformed identity for a mess of pottage called ‘being relevant.’ I think that can only be avoided by re-discovering the idea of the anti-thesis. I think this is the danger not only for the CRC but also for most Reformed denominations with which I am familiar.

What is pre-suppositionalism, and how might it relate to apologetics?

Presuppositionalism is the school of thought that God and His revealed Word is the necessary pre-condition of intelligibility. As such Presuppositionalism teaches that the God of the Bible must be informative context in which all texts (facts) must be understood (In thy light we see light.) In short, Presuppositionalism holds that all facts are facts because of who God is. If one gets God wrong as the one who conditions all facts then inevitably one will get the nature of reality wrong in a substantive way.

Presuppositionalism thus holds that we must reason from God and only to God once we begin with God. God and His revelation will never be consistently adhered to if we start our reasoning from an autonomous position and in apologetical encounters the Christian will always come up short in his conversation if he begins with the presuppositions of the non-Christian or if he starts on putatively neutral (common ground). This school of thought thus challenges believers to be epistemologically self-conscious about their starting point (the God of the Bible) their methodology (reasoning from submission to God in His revealed word) and their ending point (the Glory of God).

In terms of apologetics the mission of the presuppositional apologist is often to confront the unbeliever with the Christ hating nature of his or her own presuppositions that automatically rule out of bounds any conclusions that they might come to which are contrary to their autonomous starting points. The Presuppositional apologetic thus focuses on the reality that the conflict in apologetic and evangelistic encounters often lies not in the clear evidence that all men have access to but rather the conflict lies in the reality that the non Christian, being in rebellion to God, reasons by his own self-attesting word whereas the Christian, in principle, reasons in submission to God’s self-attesting Word. This reality accounts for why it is that non-Christians, who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, will not read any evidence for God in a way that speaks of God.

In terms of methodology Presuppositional apologetics is committed to epistemological confrontation done by exposing the contradictions that every non-Christian has in their Worldview living rooms. Since Presuppositionalism teaches that all non-Christian paradigms have surreptitiously imported Capital from a Biblical Worldview the Presuppositionalist sets about exposing the contradictions in non-Christian worldviews starting, for the sake of argument, from the non-Christians own confessed presuppositions. The Presuppositionalist knows that nobody will ever be reasoned into the Kingdom but he knows that regeneration normatively happens in the context of the Word proclaimed.

What is theodicy?

Theodicy is the work done to explain how a God who omni-benevolent and who is Omnipotent can be both at the same time in light of the reality of evil.

The Reformed expression of the Christian faith has always emphasized the “sovereignty of God.” If God has everything taken care of, why ought we pray? Why ought we engage in missions and evangelism?

The easy answer to both questions is because God commands it (Matthew 6, Matthew 28). It should be enough for those who are God’s Knights to do what the King says simply because the King commands it. When it comes to these matters it really is a case of ‘Ours is not to question why…Ours is but to do and die.”

Still, people usually want more than this so we probe the issue.

First, as it touches prayer, God in His sovereignty has not only decreed the ends of His work but He has also decreed the means to those ends. In God’s economy prayers is one end which God also uses as a means to bring about other ends. Second, at least some of the Reformers held that prayer was a means of Grace, which is to say that in prayer God uniquely gives Himself in ways that He does not give Himself except in Word and sacrament. The implication of this would be thus, that in prayer God gives us sanctification as we pray in faith. Third, in prayer it is often (if not always) the case that prayer changes us more than it changes God. In an active prayer life we are drawn into the presence of God where God teaches us the way of submission in those matters that we are bringing before him.

Touching Evangelism we would once again note that God predestines ends with means. God has predestined that thousands upon thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand, a number that no man can count, will occupy the New Jerusalem. He could, should He desire, save them apart from human involvement, but Scripture clearly teaches that God uses human instruments to accomplish divine ends. He takes crooked sticks and draws straight lines and He does so by taking people like us and using us to take the glad tiding of Jesus Christ to the Church and to the culture. Second, we ought to be involved in evangelism and missions because God uses these as sanctifying shapers in the lives of those He sends out.

The truth of Divine sovereignty should never eclipse the truth of our obligation to be obedient to the King. God is sovereign but we are still accountable to be obedient in those things which He has revealed even if obedience seems destined, from our perspective, to end in defeat.

What concerns and/or sensitivities must Christians be aware of when sharing their faith in missionary or evangelistic settings?

First and foremost Christians must be sensitive to God and His revealed Word. We can never compromise that sensitivity by appealing to a pretended sensitivity to those in our culture. This is important to articulate because often in the name of being culturally sensitive we can show our insensitivity to God’s claims on us and to God’s revealed Word.

Yet, with this clearly before us, it is perspicuous that we must be sensitive to understand why the people we are commanding to come to Christ have the Worldview that they have. Why is it that they have embraced this plausibility structure and not another. What wounds are they trying to cover so nobody will notice. We must be sensitive to why it is that sin is manifesting itself the way it is in a particular person life. It is not enough to say ‘sin is the problem’ we have to go further then that and be sensitive enough to ask, ‘why this particular arrangement of sin and not another’?

In terms of concerns related to Evangelism and Mission I would say that the main concern would be to locate the Idol. Since God is an inescapable category those who will not bow the knee to Christ have bowed their knee to some Idol. Once we identify the Idol we can begin the work of toppling it.