Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Letham & McAtee on the Differences Between Lutheran & Reformed

“Perhaps most striking is the difference in emphasis on justification between Luther and Lutheranism on the hand and Reformed theology on the other. For the former, justification is central to the whole of theology. It is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. It functions as a kind of critical methodological tool by which any aspect of theology, or theology as a whole is to be judged….However, there is hardly an instance in Reformed theology placing justification in the center. Not that Reformed theology opposed justification by faith alone, or salvation by pure grace. On the contrary, they saw salvation in its entirety as a display of the sovereign and free mercy of God. The explanation lay in the fact that, for Reformed theology, everything took place to advance the glory of God. Thus the chief purpose of theology and of the whole of life was not the rescue of humanity but the glory of God. The focus was theocentric rather than soteriological. Even in the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), where soteriological concerns are more prominent (one of its authors, Zacharias Ursinus [1533-1587] was formerly a Lutheran) the famous first question ‘What is your only comfort in life and death?’ is answered w/ reference to the action of the Trinity, beginning, ‘I am not my own but belong… to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.

Following from this was an attempt by Reformed theology to grasp the unity of creation and redemption. The whole of life was seen in the embrace of God’s revelatory purpose. With the covenant at its heart, the whole of life was to display God’s glory. Naturally, that included at its heart the restoration of sinners to fellowship w/ God. It also entailed, however the reconstitution of both civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Lutheranism, in contrast, showed less developed interest in the application of the gospel to political life and focused more narrowly on soteriology. Possibly this stemmed from Luther enjoying the patronage of his Elector, which freed him from having to safeguard the Reformation in a political sense in quite the same way as his Reformed counterparts. The net result was that while for Lutheranism justification by faith was the heart of theology, for the Reformed theologians it was subordinate to an overarching sense of the centrality of God and his covenant. Yet, for both, the underlying concern for the gratuitous nature of salvation, its objective reality extra nos, was the same.

Robert Letham
The Work of Christ — pg. 189-190

Another way to put the differences between Lutheranism and Reformed worldviews is that for Lutheranism salvation is for man and terminates on man, individually considered while for Reformed thought salvation is for God and serves the terminating end of a renewed cosmos dripping and saturated with God’s glory. For Lutheranism the teleology is man atoned for, whereas for Reformed thought the teleology includes but doesn’t end with man atoned for. For Reformed thought the teleology is the atonement as well as all the totality of corresponding and inevitable consequences that the atonement brings upon men who have been atoned for. Atonement for individual men is not the end product of Christ’s work. Atonement is the beginning and creating point of enlisting men into the cause of cosmic renewal for the glory of God. Men are not atoned for and saved for the sake of being atoned for and saved. Men are atoned for and saved to be put on a mission to take captive every thought and take dominion over every crevice of the cosmos to make all thoughts and all crevices obedient to King Christ. In Reformed thought, classical Lutheran thought is provincial and anthropocentric and is far to horizontally circumscribed and vertically nugatory.

Straight thinking Reformed folk don’t doubt that real live honest to goodness Lutherans or wanna-be Escondido Reformed Lutherans are part of God’s elect Church. We just think that their theology leaves them developmentally disabled — much like a child who has a rare disease that does not allow them to ever grow up.

Letham, says that the focus of Lutherans is soteriological while the focus of Reformed is theocentric. I think Letham is being diplomatic and kind there. In point of fact both theologies are focused on soteriology. The difference is that that Lutheranism focuses on a soteriology that has a anthropological terminal point whereas Reformed thought focuses on a soteriology that has a theological terminal point.

Clearly, in light of what Letham writes, the Reformed church is being invaded by Lutheran theology body snatchers. Clearly, there has been some cross breeding and pollination that is giving some flavors of the Reformed church a hybrid feel about it.

Let the Reformed church be the Reformed church!

Israel, The Messiah, & The Progress Of Redemption

We are continuing to look at this matter of the harmony of the Scriptures in terms of the Old and New Covenant. We remind ourselves that as we come to the New Testament we are coming to the final development of the covenant of grace that has been unfolding in the Old Testament administration by administration of the one covenant of Grace.

This continued fulfillment and extension of the Promises that are constitutive of the covenant of grace that we find in the Old Testament is called by theologians “the progress of redemption,” or “salvation history.” This history recorded in Scriptures is real history but it is also a unique history inasmuch as that history is uniquely concerned with what redemption is, looks like, and means.

the Old Covenant is so concerned with Israel and the life of the Nation of Israel because the tribes of Israel is where God gives us this unique salvation history. This is so true that we can say that Israel’s unique experience as God’s chosen people to be the container which God would incrementally and increasingly fill with the meaning of redemption is unmatched by the history of any other people. This unique experience of Israel whereby they receive the law, the covenant(s), and the promise(s) is important to the flowering of redemption that comes in and through Jesus Christ in the New Testament the way that exposition, conflict, and rising action in a story or novel, are important to climax, falling action, and resolution of that novel. This is important to say because so many in the Church in our country today want to believe that they can understand the story of redemption’s climax (New Testament) w/o understanding its exposition, conflict, and rising action in the Old Testament. And as we have said before by peeling off the climax of salvation history from its exposition, conflict, and rising action in the Old Covenant the consequences is that the climax is reinterpreted (usually in a humanistic direction) in order for it to remain consistent with the previous story line that is now retold with a completely different narrative line then Gods. The result is then that we have a different story and so a different salvation history then the story that God tells in Scripture.

All of this explains why we must understand what happens in all of Scripture as being God’s salvation history, thus being one story.

Now, in this story, Israel’s experience is unique as is clearly set before us in the passage read this morning (Deuteronomy 4:32-40). No other people as a people were called and raised up by God to be the players in the progress of redemption. No other people were known by Yahweh and were to know Yahweh the way the people of Israel were known and did know. They are unique. This does not mean that God was absent in the histories of other people but his presence in the histories of other peoples is not a presence that is unfolding His story of salvation. Only in Israel did God work within the terms of the covenant of grace as that was initiated and sustained by His covenantal relationship with them.

The passage in Deuteronomy 4:32f communicates that the history of Israel as being absolutely sui generis in all of space and time.

32 “For ask now concerning the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether any great thing like this has happened, or anything like it has been heard. 33 Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? 34 Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? 35 To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD Himself is God; there is none other besides Him. 36 Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire. 37 And because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power, 38 driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day. 39 Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other. 40 You shall therefore keep His statutes and His commandments which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time.”

In this passage some of the peculiar elements of God’s relation to Israel that comprise integral parts of Salvation history are heard. Here we find the ideas of election, redemption, covenant, and inheritance to name but a few. We even find in the emboldened passage above that the uniqueness of Israel’s national experience points to the uniqueness of Yahweh Himself as God.

As such it is easy to see why Christians would contend that the revelation of God and His method of redemption are bound up with the history of tiny Israel. God told the history of salvation in the unfolding of the history of Israel. This is something that is not true for any other nation.

However, this peculiarity of election for Israel that provides the meaning of redemption — and which causes so much resentment among other peoples and gods — was not a peculiarity that was to insular. Their unique calling and function in the world was to facilitate God’s promises to the nations. Israel’s role was to be Priest to the nations — doing what a Priest does by representing the nations before God.

6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.”

Israel was to be the means by which the saving knowledge of God would be brought to the nations. Israel was to be the nation leaven that leavened the whole world. In order to fulfill that assignment Israel’s national life was to be Holy (separated) unto God, exemplified by their taking seriously God’s Law.

For I have known him (Abraham), in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”

And because of this reality the Deuteronomy text in vs. 39-40 can give us the moral necessity that is built upon the theological reality that God is God alone.

So in this salvation history Israel’s one of a kind position was one that spoke of missionary duty as much as it spoke of privilege. If Israel failed in its missionary duty and moral high calling then it’s special status became festooned with heavier judgments then the other nations. (To whom much is given, much is required.)

The book of Amos reveals this truism.

Amos recounts the blessings and privileges of Israel as God’s salvation history people but this recounting of blessings and privileges is used by God through Amos to indict them for their societal injustice and cultural corruption. A people who had the privilege that Israel had, by walking crosswise to those privilege would be inflicted w/ even greater penalty (Amos 2:6-16, 3:2).

2 “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

So God calls upon Amos to bring covenant lawsuit against Israel and the verdict is that Israel would be severely chastised and the land left deserted. And in the face of possible protest that God would never do such a thing to His special people God says through Amos,

7 “ Are you not like the people of Ethiopia to Me,
O children of Israel?” says the LORD.

“ Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
The Philistines from Caphtor,
And the Syrians from Kir?

Now keep in mind that God is not saying here that Israel’s history is not unique. The point seems more to be that if Israel will violate the covenant then Israel’s uniqueness is forfeited and they become not substantially different then the other nations. The point here is not that the other nations are like Israel in terms of God’s salvation history but that Israel has become like the other nations as seen by their covenantal degradation. The point here is not that God has worked in the other nations redemptively the way He worked w/ Israel but rather that Israel has become altogether corrupt like the other nations.

What Amos says in 3:1-2 reveals the unchanging uniqueness of Israel,

1 Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying:
2 “ You only have I known of all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”

Note here that it is precisely because of God’s unique relationship w/ Israel that they will be punished because of their iniquities.

All this to say that the uniqueness of Israel, as the telling of salvation history is clearly part of the teachings of the OT. God is indeed sovereign over all the nations as Amos clearly teaches but He is intimately sovereign over the affairs of Israel. However, keep in mind that this intimate sovereignty of God over Israel was always w/ the purpose of calling the nations. Israel unique position existed only to be a vessel to accomplish God’s intent to call all the nations to Himself.

Now … in light of all of this when we consider Jesus in the New Testament he is presented to us as the Messiah — Jesus the Christ. And this Messiah was individually what Israel was to have been corporately. As Israel was to be for the calling of the nations, so Jesus, the Messiah is for the gathering of the Nation. Where Israel failed in its calling the Messiah succeeds. The Messiah was the success of all that Israel had been a failure at in God’s setting them apart. The Messiah is God’s self-revelation for the work of the redeeming of the nations. Because Christ is all that God called Israel to be, like Israel Christ is absolutely unique and it is still the case that should the nations desire to come to God they must, like the nations in the OT were to come through Israel to God, come through the one that has been uniquely set apart to be the revelation and redemption of God. This explains why the synoptic Gospels are so given to a kind of recapitualation story of Israel when they tell the story of Jesus Christ.

As God’s true Israel, Christ is the successful High Priest to the nations that Israel never was. This explains the Christian faith’s insistence, to this day, that Jesus is the only way to the Father.

So, in this OT history God concentrates the uniqueness of Israel’s salvation history into one man and from this Messiah God opens the way to the universal offer of salvation to the nations. Israel’s salvation history was unique because God has a universal design for them. Jesus embodies the unique salvation history of Israel and achieves God’s universal goal that through His faithful Son all the nations of the earth would be blessed. He is, indeed, the savior of the world.

And so, because we have all this history of redemption and because we find its climax in Christ we command all men everywhere to repent so as to taste and see that the Lord is Good.

Obama Disavows Obvious Truth

While addressing Republicans in Baltimore MD. President Obama said, “I Am Not An Ideologue.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/01/29/obama_to_gop_i_am_not_an_ideologue.html

Shortly afterward, President Obama went on to say to the assembled Republicans that, “I am not a Black man.”

I’m not making this up … well at least not the first part.

But both statements are equally believable and each statement leaves one equally incredulous.

A Tip of the Hat to Political Correctness In The Republican Response to the State of the Union

“A child’s educational opportunity should be determined by her intellect and work ethic, not by her ZIP Code.”

Governor Bob McDonnell
Governor — Virginia

Now people are going to think I’m being picky here and hyper-critical but until the last 10 years or so anybody speaking or writing that above statement would have used the male pronoun “his” where the female pronoun “her” is used. Why the change? The answer is that we have bought into political correctness so that when we right papers or speak in public we think it necessary to occasionally sprinkle our speaking and writing with female pronouns where male pronouns had once been universally used. Up until we were crushed with PC everybody understood that the male generic pronoun was used to be inclusive of all mankind. However, some where along the way someone decided that the use of such pronouns was not sensitive to the female persuasion and as such, in an effort to show sensitivity to someones hyperactive feelings, our culture has gone to deleting the male pronouns in favor of the female pronouns. This happens everywhere from academic papers, to political speeches to bible translations. The habit is ubiquitous and what is a hoot is that the people who do it actually believe that they are revealing themselves to be a sensitive, kinder, more caring people.

Now, at the end of the day the pronoun itself is a very small thing. What is a very big thing though is all the feminism, multiculturalism, and political correctness that lays behind these small pronouns. What is a very big deal is the linguistic Marxism that tells us what speech we can use in order to be considered culturally attuned and what speech we can’t use lest we be considered social troglodytes. If the PC police can have their way with a culture on personal pronouns how much more will they have their way with culture on issues that are genuinely weighty?

Finally, all of this reveals to me again how compromised the Republican party is. If Gov. McDonnell spoke this way unconsciously then it shows he has unknowingly surrendered to some PC assumptions. If Gov. McDonnell spoke this way consciously then it shows he is willing to consciously compromise with the feminist, Marxist (but I repeat myself) zeitgeist.

Most people find it hard to believe how basic these seemingly small matters are to civilization, but it is my conviction that giving into this PC speak is indicative of a underlying bedrock Marxist layering that is operating as the intellectual background out of which a person communicates.

But then most people think I see far more then what is really present. You be the judge.