Theology – Page 2

A Few Words On Covenant Theology

After listening to Jeff Johnson (advocate of Baptist covenant theology) and Michael Horton (advocate of one take of Presbyterian covenant theology that I don’t agree with) debate

I can understand how we are awash in anti-nomianism. Each emphasize in their own way how the New and better covenant does not have a necessary bilateral echo, each insisting that the covenant of grace is only Unilateral without a bilateral echo.

And yet every time I baptize a baby the formulary I read speaks to the bilateral nature of the covenant. These words follow the initial words that teach the unilateral nature of the covenant of grace;

“Third, the covenant of grace contains both promises and obligations. Having considered the promises, we now consider the obligations. Through baptism, God calls us and places us under obligation to live in new obedience to Him. This means that we must cling to this one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We must trust in Him and love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We must renounce the sinful way of life. We must put to death our old nature and show by our lives that we belong to God. If we through weakness should fall into sin, we must not despair of God’s mercy, nor use our weakness as an excuse to keep sinning. Baptism is a seal and totally reliable witness that we have an eternal covenant with God.”

It strikes me that both Michael Horton and Jeff Johnson must deny this aspect of the formulary because

1.) Horton denies the bilateral nature of the covenant because he insists that those requirements set forth in the Mosaic covenant were an aspect of the works nature of the Mosaic covenant. For Horton, the Mosaic covenant has a broad aspect that should be thought of as gracious but it also has an aspect that should be thought of as narrow and that narrow aspect (the law requirements… “Do this and live”) belongs to the covenant of works. In the new and better covenant that narrow aspect is no longer in operation since Christ has fulfilled the narrow aspect of the Mosaic covenant. For Horton (and R2K) because Christ fulfilled all the righteous requirements of the law, the bilateral aspect of the covenant of grace seems no longer to have any application. Four times in that formulary above you find the words “WE MUST.” This is emphasizing our obligation (that word is even used three times above) in the covenant of grace. I don’t see how Horton or R2K could use the formulary above given their insistence that in its narrow aspect the Mosaic covenant is a legal covenant that was completely fulfilled in Christ.

My insistence would be that the Mosaic covenant was a completely gracious covenant and that the law requirements were not so that Israel could assist in meriting grace, but rather the law requirements were given as the proper response of gratitude expected from a people completely saved by grace alone. The Mosaic law was never given with the intent that Israel could merit either righteousness with God or the ability to stay in the land. The law was given to a redeemed people (see the prologue to the 10 Words in Ex. 20) to answer the question, “How Shall We Then Live.” The law was given to Israel in what today we call “it’s third use.” However, because many in Israel desired to put God in their debt they turned God’s gracious law-Word into a means to put God in their debt. At that point the law’s intent was to reveal to them their sin in never being able to keep God’s law. Instead of being tutored by this first use of the law, many instead chose the route of hypocrisy and insisted that because they kept God’s law God was a debtor to them.

2.) While Horton introduces a covenant works element into the Mosaic covenant of grace, Johnson goes one better and insists that the Abrahamic covenant was also a mixed covenant characterized by works and grace and then notes the Mosaic was consistent with the Abrahamic covenant of being both a law and grace covenant. He insists, that with the New and Better covenant all of the OT covenants in terms of their bilateral realities are eclipsed and the New and Better covenant is completely unilateral with no obligations or “We Must” found in the formulary reading.

Because of this it strikes me the inevitable consequence of both Horton’s and Johnson’s covenant theology is an unfortunate antinomianism.

Biblical covenant theology is Unilateral with a bilateral echo. Christ has done all the saving. He has kept all the covenant of works conditions that was required by Adam and all the typology found in the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenant is fulfilled. Christ is the one who, in the Abrahamic covenant, takes on all the covenant curses while Abraham sleeps, and Christ is proleptically present in all those Mosaic covenant sacrifices and ceremonial laws communicating that they all spoke a better word. Christ brings in the new and better covenant which is first spoken in the proto-Evangelium of Gen. 3:15 and then found flowering into incremental full growth in the subsequent OT covenants (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic). The Lord Jesus Christ, introduced typologically in an ever burgeoning way in each and all of the subsequent OT covenants is the one old testament covenant of grace now in full flower. Once the new covenant is present in Christ then all the OT shadows fall away much like different stages of a rocket fall off during a moon shot, leaving only what was always the main point all throughout revelation.

However, the bilateral echo of our obedience as read in the formulary above was always part of the Unilateral covenant of grace. The idea that, by the outpouring of the Spirit, we as God’s people would increasingly become what we have been freely declared to be in Christ has always been part of the covenant of grace. God has saved a people, in Christ, and that people in both the covenant in the OT and in the new and better covenant have always been described as a people who are hungry to glorify God and who are zealous for good works and in order to be zealous for good works there must be a standard by which good works are measured and that standard has always been God’s gracious Law-Word.

The Heidelberg catechism puts it this way:

Question 91: But what are good works?

Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

But if the law has been eclipsed the way Horton and Johnson want to suggest by insistence that obedience to God’s standard was only a “covenant works” aspect of either the Mosaic (Horton) or the Abrahamic and Davidic (per Johnson) then the bilateral aspect spoken of in the infant Baptism ceremony should be excised.

Again, the bilateral aspect of the covenant does not deny its unilateral reality. In light of our walking obedience we are not adding anything to Christ’s finished work for sinners. After all, as Christians we all know that the best of our works still need to be imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ in order to be found as a sweet aroma before the Father. No, our obedience, just as the obedience found in those who were the Israel of God in the Abrahamic and the Mosaic and the Davidic covenants is always graciously given and received only by grace. It was true for our OT fathers as it is for us today as New Covenant Christians that it was required to work out our salvation in fear and trembling knowing that it is God who works in them and us to will and to act on behalf of His good purpose.

The Future is Now … Eschatology, Soteriology, & Christology

Colossians 1:13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

In this passage we see a classic example of the future being injected into the present. We are placed in a Kingdom that while “yet to come” is, at the same time, present to us as we now live in that future to come Kingdom.

Previous to our entering the future we dwelt without division in “this present evil age” but now upon our union with Christ we have been delivered from the present evil age. The consequence of this is that we walk in two realities at the same time. On one had we are citizens presently in the future age to come, while on the other hand while not being citizens in this present evil age we still navigate as living among those who remain citizens of this present evil age. We live, at one and the same time, in two ages — both in this present evil age and also in the age to come.

I think Tolkien captured some of this when he wrote about his high elves who could walk in two worlds at the same time.

Note he also the Apostle’s triangulation of soteriology, eschatology, and Christology. Our redemption is anchored in Christ who is Himself the future Kingdom. This triangulation was underscored by Dr. Richard Gaffin in his “In The Fullness of Time,” when Gaffin wrote;

“The center of Paul’s theology is determined by the triangulation of his Christology, soteriology, and eschatology.”

I have a friend who often will say, “Christians suffer from not knowing who they are.” This passage teaches us that we are the redeemed ones (soteriology) belonging to Christ (Christology) now living in the age to come (eschatology). If we combine this idea with the reality that Christ is King it is not a far leap in the least to understand that our role is to live so as to expand the age to come, in which we dwell, so that it overtakes and vanquishes this present evil age.

Being in Christ is not a passive affair. Being in Christ and so in the age to come means following our great Liege Lord into battle so that all of the earth is redeemed and so experiences what it means to live in this “age to come” reality.

My Order are to fight

then if I win

or bravely fail

What matters it?

God only doth prevail

The Servant craveth naught

Except to serve with might

I was not told to win

or lose

My orders are to fight

Be Of Sin The Double Cure; Save From Wrath and Make Me Pure

Because of Christ’s finished work and out of our Union w/ Christ arises a two-fold benefit. One benefit is completely forensic, declarative, and judicial. This benefit is completely outside of us. It is the benefit of having Christ for us the Hope of glory. In this forensic benefit we have our sins gratuitously removed and we are imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ because of His sin bearing work in our stead and on our behalf. This we call justification/adoption.

The second benefit is renovative, transformative, and renewing. What God’s freely declares us to be, by His poured out Spirit He works in us to increasingly become. Incrementally and increasingly, though never perfectly we put off the old man of sin and put on Christ. This we refer to as regeneration/sanctification.

Both of these benefits imply the other. There is no salvation that is not constitutive of Justification (what Christ does for us outside of us) and Sanctification (What Christ does for us inside of us) but the relation between the two is important to think rightly about.

Justification leads to sanctification the way a rock thrown into a clear, glass like pond leads to ripples in the water. The ripples in the water are not the cause of the rock being cast into the water but those ripples are the necessary and inevitable consequence that the rock has indeed splashed. So sanctification is only a necessary aspect of justification the way that ripples are a necessary aspect of a rock being cast into the water.

Rome’s mistake here is that Rome wants to make the ripples in the water a contributing cause of the Rock being splashed. This is to place works in our justification and yield up a legalism.

The opposite error is to champion for a justification that minimizes sanctification. For example, Mike Horton has said that sanctification is just getting used to your justification. That is a minimalist approach that degrades both justification and sanctification. This is to absent works from our salvation and yields up a anti-nomianism.

In the past 15 years or so we have had, in the Reformed world, a donnybrook of a fight between the legalist error as embraced by Federal Vision theology and the anti-nomian error as embraced by Radical Two Kingdom theology. These two warring parties were each insisting that they alone were the keepers of the Holy Grail of Reformed orthodoxy when in point of fact those who were truly orthodox was wishing a pox upon both their houses. Neither one of these ugly extremes were correct and yet it seemed that everyone was taking up for one side or the other. The warfare between the two parties has subdued somewhat but it still is seething under the surface.

There is another error that enters in here and that is called “neo-nomianism.” Neo-nomianism reduces the demands of God’s requirement and then tells Christians that they can merit favor with God by the ability to achieve these now reduced and achievable requirements. Oddly enough, neo-nomianism is both legalistic (it teaches that God’s reduced law can be met) and antinomian (it teaches that God’s law requirements are lessened) at the same time.

The impact of the Gospel works outside of us and inside of us. We are never forensically declared righteous where we are not also transformed by the Spirit who was given us as a guarantee of that which is to come. Similarly, there is no interior renewal without a complete leaning upon Jesus Christ alone and His works imputed to us so that we might be pleasing to God.

A Few Words On Worship

The pull towards the glamorous and the exciting suggests that modern Christians continue to believe that the action is where the frenzy is. Worshipers still want the titillating, filled as it is with emotion. This accounts for why the local church service in the last 40 or so years has aped the tent revival feel with emotionally arresting music, vapid self-help sermons, and “spirit led” eccentricities. The reports one will get from such a “service” is how powerfully the spirit moved or how one could feel God’s presence.

I wonder though if God more often find us in the seemingly most barren of worship settings where a small group of people are gathered to sing simple psalms, in response to God’s greeting? Is the worship service characterized by Word and Sacrament more to be desired than the “worship” service that has all the glitz and glory that can be collected by drama teams, praise bands, and liturgical dance?

Rarely, does someone talk about how awe-inspiring it was to attend a Sunday worship service where God greets His people, where God’s people are privileged to hear God’s law, where confession of sin is made and where God speaks gospel absolution through His minister to comfort His contrite people. Rarely, do we hear people talk about the glory found in the Word faithfully broken from the pulpit, or about the presence of God in an infant baptism or in the fact that God condescended to lift us into the heavenlies so as to feed us eternal life in the Eucharist.

Christ meets us in the humblest of circumstances. He meets us in water. He meets us in bread and wine. He meets us in the Word preached. These are where Christ promises to feed us unto life eternal. It’s not as if those realities can’t be present in the context of large gathering… they certainly can be. However, more often than not all the marketing, sociology, polling and crowd psychology that goes into attracting large numbers means that the theology of the cross has been emptied out before the theology of glory show begins.

Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing automatically superior about small churches. They can fail just as spectacularly as large churches. The difference however is often in the mindset found in larger churches in the need to put on a show. Larger churches that have to pack them in, in order to keep the lights on are more prone to give a theology of glory in order to keep the wheels turning.

When it comes to worship maybe the simple and comparatively weak elements of a vertical liturgy, combined with Word and Sacrament are more to be desired than creating a mood via music and the most recent sociological technique known to really pack them in. It seems like we expect so much from our worship teams and yet we receive so little.

Years ago I read a letter by J. R. R. Tolkien to his son Christopher. The gist of it was counsel from a father to his son to look for God in places of worship that would be defined by our standards as weak and beggarly. It is often in the unexpected places that the Lord Christ condescends by His Spirit to revive the hearts of the weary by the means of water and bread and wine and the Word preached. This is the theology of the Cross. This is God using the foolishing things of the world to confound the wise and the things that are not to confound the things that are.

God is not interested in our emotions except as those emotions are the residue of minds that have clenched down hard on the Word preached. The Lord Christ is not primarily interested in what we get from worship. The Lord Christ is primarily interested in His people giving Him glory, honor and praise in worship. Worship is not about us. Worship is about the triune God, the sovereign over the whole universe. Yet, though Worship is primarily about our giving of praise, God condescends and comes near to us and bless us with Word and Sacrament and feeds us unto life eternal. Only in such a manner is our faith increased with the result that we become a blessing to God and to others.

Our Christianity in the West is a thousand miles wide but a quarter inch deep and this is in large part because there is no substance to us. As C. S. Lewis put it, “We are men without chests.” We are a shallow people and we are shallow, in part, because we have pursued in our worship a theology of glory over being satisfied with a theology of the cross. We are a shallow people in part because in our current worship arrangements we do not feast on the Word, preferring instead to pursue sugar highs found in vacuous music and simpleton horizontal sermons. A people will never rise higher than the god they serve and the god we serve in the West right now is a very small god as seen in and by the worship that we are attracted to and that we offer up. Our theology communicates a small god and our doxology reflects that.

In the words of an anonymous writer on social media;

“Luther diagnosed this long ago. The reason we flock to the spectacular and ignore the ordinary is because we are drawn to a theology of glory—we seek God in what dazzles, impresses, and moves our emotions. But God does not promise to be found in the showy things of our own making. He hides Himself under weakness. This is the theology of the cross. Baptism looks like nothing—just water. Preaching sounds like just words. The Supper appears as simple bread and wine. And the church? Small, unimpressive, overlooked. But these are the appointed places where the living Christ gives Himself to sinners. These are the means by which the Holy Spirit delivers salvation. These are the true high places of worship. The tragedy is that what God calls precious, we often find boring. What heaven calls glorious, we treat as mundane. God is not hiding in stadium lights and fog machines. He is found where He has promised to be—among the humble means of grace, in the midst of His visible Church. Do not despise the weak-looking things. That’s where Christ is.”

The One & The Many and Our Cultural Moment

For Christianity the cosmos was orderly because the Christian God is a God of order. In God’s creation the parts and the whole served one another in a diversity in unity and unity in diversity symphony — neither the particular nor the universal having dominion over the other. The universals recognized the need for the particulars and the particulars understood the need of the universals.

However, with the rebellion against God in favor of a time plus chance plus circumstance cosmos there is no longer an inherent given coherence to reality. With the abandonment of the eternal One and Many, the temporal one and many loses its way and where there previously been harmony between the temporal one and many there is now a conflict of interest between the temporal one and many.

What this looks like in the social order is a contest between tyranny and anarchy. Having thrown off God in favor of chaos, tyranny seeks to impose itself as a universal before which all particulars must bow. The tyrannical triumph of the temporal one over the temporal many means all things are defined in terms of the temporal one. Diversity is eclipsed in favor of unity. Social order and culture becomes a machine in which undistinguishable men and women and men from women works as universal cogs to support the Universal tyrannical one.

This social order and cultural unitarianism does not allow for mediating cultural institutions. All must serve and exist as derivative of the Tyrannical One (often the State). Everything is for state and nothing is outside the state. Individuality is lost in favor the Mao suit, the Phrygian cap… the comrade and the citoyen. Men become chameleons who all fade into the background provided by the tyrannical state.

On the other hand the triumph of the many is likewise a tyranny but it is a tyranny of the particular (many) over the one. In a anarchistic tyranny the unity (temporal One) is found in hyper-disunity (temporal Many). Each man does what is right in his own eyes. There is no harmony of interest because there is no Universal wherein one can find a harmony. Ironically enough, this leads right back to a beleaguered sameness that is found in the tyranny of the One, although instead of a unitarian motif found in dull sameness one gets the unitarian motif found in the dull sameness one finds in a garbage truck or scow. Precisely because there is no harmony the harmony is found in the lack of harmony, just as garbage in a garbage truck by having no relation to the sundry garbage there is a unity that is found in the negation of unity.

In cultures and social orders who have raised its fist to God the consequence is that often one will find both the anarchistic and the tyrannical temporal one and many operating in the social order and/or culture. In these kind of instances the tyrannical and the anarchistic serve as limiting concepts for one another in their ongoing attempt to have the pre-eminence with the result that there is a fluctuating dialectic that exists between the temporal godless one and the temporal godless many.

We see this phenomenon in our own social order culture. We see the temporal chaotic anarchistic many in the pursuit of much of the citizenry to be completely independent of any unifying social norms or mores. In that anarchistic pursuit away from social conventions people look increasingly the same with their slovenly dress, their tatted up appearance, and their guttural music. They have found a anarchistic unity of meaning in the embrace that there is no meaning.

At the same time we have the State here constantly seeking to provide a temporal tyrannical unitarian/uniformitarian meaning. From the continued increase of the surveillance state to the desire to have operate as a top down control mechanism (think pursuit of social credit arrangements, 15 minute cities, electric cars that can be remotely turned off, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) the Temporal One is seeking a tyrannical arrangement wherein all the anarchy is controlled so as to serve the tyrannical state.

The church likewise is caught in this push me – pull you with its embrace of alienism. By its refusal to understand the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many much of the Church today is embracing a unitarian/uniformitarian understanding of race/ethnicity so that the temporal many is swallowed up by the temporal one. The refusal to understand that there can be races in the context of the human race — races that are to be recognized and honored as unique — the Church in the West is currently joining in with the rebellion of the larger culture by denying the impact of the understanding of the temporal one and many in light of the eternal one and many. The Church is in lockstep with the culture insisting that diversity in unity and unity in diversity can not be allowed to exist.