Theology – Page 2

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.

Ephesians 6:1 & Infant Baptism

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ²“Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: ³“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

1.) The phrase, “in the Lord” marks the identity of the children as being the Christian children of Christian parents which points to the inclusion of these children in the new and better covenant just as they were included in the old and worse covenant. If the children were not included in the new and better covenant Paul could not command the pagan children to obey their parents “in the Lord.”

2.) This reading then correlates to I Corinthians 7:14 where the same Apostle under the same inspiration of the Holy Spirit says that the children of even one believing parent are indeed “Holy.”

“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”

Children are set apart by their relation to the covenant. At the very least they are outwardly related to the covenant, though we extend them the judgment of charity by believing that they have the essence of the covenant (Christ) until such a time, (may it never be), when they forswear their covenant privileges and obligations.

3.) Since that is the way the Apostle speaks of the children (“obeying parents in the Lord,” and “not being unclean but holy,”) it is without dispute that infants should be baptized with the sign and seal of their inclusion. They cannot obey their parents “in the Lord” unless they are “in the Lord,” – which is what the sign and seal of Baptism proclaims, and they can only be considered “holy” by having the sign and seal of the covenant.

4.) The continuity between the old covenant and the new and better covenant which we are insisting should find infants baptized is seen also in the fact that the promise of the old and worse covenant (“that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”) remains in the new and better covenant. This is a lesser to greater argument. If the promise remains to Christian children as articulated in the Old Covenant “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth,” then how much more so should it be obvious that the promise is extended to only those who have been first given the sign and the seal of inclusion into the covenant of grace?

The New Testament makes no sense unless their is a covenantal unity that is presupposed between the old and new covenant.

The Suffering Of Modern Theology

“In my experience, the number of degrees one has in theology has no bearing on his knowledge of Christian politics. In fact, the more theology degrees the more committed he is to some form of modern liberalism.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

Wolfe’s experience is my experience as well. When I meet a Ph.D. in theology I pass on by without comment. I’m sure exceptions exist. I just don’t meet many of those exceptions.

However, the problem here is not so much the earning of theology degrees as it is the fact that precious few (including Wolfe) see politics as derivative of theology. What we are seeing in the West today is the lack of ability to see all knowledge as being organically integrated. For ages the maxim was well understood that “theology is the Queen of the sciences,” which was to say “show me a man’s theology and I will tell you, if he is consistent, his politics, educational theory, historiography, sociology, anthropology, etc. Today, theology has been sundered from the other humanity disciplines with the result that theology is still the queen of the sciences but it is a theology that insists that theology has nothing to do with the other subjects.

One must view theology as an artesian well out of which many founts may flow. Those founts may be in other locations but they all draw their water from the same artesian well. Instead theology as well as a myriad of other disciplines are all seen the same way the guy views the tupperware in his refrigerator when he considers what leftovers he will have for supper. In one tupperware container he finds politics, in another tupperware container he finds cultural anthropology, in a third tupperware container he finds theology, in a fourth tupperware container he some moldy psychology. Each container promises a distinct meal unrelated to the meal he could have if he warmed up the other container contents.

The way we treat theology now, as sundered from other disciplines, makes theology, which should be the most fertile of disciplines, to be sterile. In the current way we teach theology, theology becomes abstraction unrelated to the concrete affairs of life.

McAtee Contra the Baptist Fairchild On Baptism

This is from some Baptist Minister in Houston Texas serving at a Mega Church. Like most mega Churches the ministers are long on feel goods and short on doctrine. His name is Rev. L. David Fairchild.

Fairchild writes;

“The fatal flaw in paedobaptism is that it treats the New Covenant like the Old. A mixed bag. Some believe, some do not. But that is not how the Bible describes it. Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8 are clear. The New Covenant is made with those who know God. Who have been forgiven. Who have the Spirit. That is not a crowd you get into by birth. That is a regenerate people.

BLMc responds,

This would be true if it were not the case that the Old Covenant is like the New Covenant. The only difference is that the Old Covenant is the New Covenant not yet come to full flower. The Old Covenant is the not yet mature New Covenant.

That the New Covenant is like the Old Covenant in that both covenant are a mixed bad is seen in the fact that in the Old Covenant not all of Israel was of Israel as the Holy Spirit says in Romans 9. Some of Israel belonged to the outward administration of the covenant without having the essence of the covenant. In the same way the New Covenant is a mixed bag. We see this for example in Jesus warnings in Revelation to the seven churches that He would take their lampstands away if they were not faithful. We see this in the book of Hebrews with the warnings against falling away. We see this when John says of unregenerate people of the Church;

“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.” I John 2:19

Then there is the Wheat and Tares parable that many a theologian has seen being about the Church having in it both wheat and tares.

So Fairchild’s idea that the New Covenant is comprised only of regenerate people is just a Baptist assumption with no foundation. Now, it is true that the essence of the New Covenant, who is Jesus the Christ, is only occupied by the regenerate but there are many people who are in the administrative outskirts of the New Covenant who do not have the essence of the New Covenant who will say on that day …

22 Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. Matthew 7

So, clearly it is a Baptist interpretive mistake to say that only regenerate people are in the boundaries of the New Covenant. It has always been the case, both in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant that not all of Israel is of Israel.

In terms of Fairchild’s appeal to the language of Jeremiah and Hebrews Calvin easily dismisses Fairchild’s mis-interpretative ravings on this score;

“It may be asked, whether there was under the Law (Old Covenant) a sure and certain promise of salvation, whether the fathers had the gift of the Spirit, whether they enjoyed God’s paternal favor through the remission of sins? Yes, it is evident that they worshipped God with a sincere heart and a pure conscience, and that they walked in his commandments, and this could not have been the case except they had been inwardly taught by the Spirit; and it is also evident, that whenever they thought of their sins, they were raised up by the assurance of a gratuitous pardon. And yet the Apostle, by referring the prophecy of Jeremiah to the coming of Christ, seems to rob them of these blessings. To this I reply, that he does not expressly deny that God formerly wrote his Law on their hearts and pardoned their sins, but he makes a comparison between the less and the greater. As then the Father has put forth more fully the power of his Spirit under the kingdom of Christ, and has poured forth more abundantly his mercy on mankind, this exuberance renders insignificant the small portion of grace which he had been pleased to bestow on the fathers. We also see that the promises were then obscure and intricate, so that they shone only like the moon and stars in comparison with the clear light of the Gospel which shines brightly on us.”

Calvin’s Commentary
Hebrews 8

L. David Fairchild writes,

“So baptizing someone with no faith, no regeneration, and no profession, like an infant, just does not fit. It breaks the meaning of baptism from the inside out.”

BLMc responds,

In point of fact since regeneration & justification are all God’s work with man contributing nothing baptizing infants is a perfect picture of God doing all the doing in saving helpless man. What Fairchild has done here is what all Baptists do. Fairchild has turned man’s faith into a work that he has to exchange as a work to trade in for salvation. This is justification by faith as a work alone. It is not a particularly Christian doctrine but really does lead back to some kind of pelagian arrangement. Of course it is the Baptist who breaks the meaning of Baptism from the inside out and turns the grace of God into something that is only gracious upon man’s trading up faith for grace.

L. David Fairchild;

I know the argument. Circumcision was the sign of the Old, baptism is the sign of the New. But that logic only works if the covenant structure stays the same. And it doesn’t. The Old Covenant was temporary. Shadows and types. The New Covenant is the real thing. It is better. It doesn’t just get a new sign. It has new membership. Baptism isn’t a repackaged circumcision. It’s the sign of a new creation.

BLMc responds,

1.) This reveals the Baptist propensity to assume discontinuity between the covenants. The Reformed, on the other hand, are disposed to seeing continuity between Old and New Covenant unless explicitly told of discontinuity such as the end of the sacrificial system and the ceremonial law.

2.) To deny that there is sameness between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant suggests that

a.) God isn’t immutable but changes between Old Covenant and New Covenant. This is a serious theological problem. If there is as much change between Old Covenant and New Covenant such as Baptists like Fairchild is positing then we really have a different God in the OT then we have in the NT. This is a problem.

b.) the Old Testament believers were not saved by grace alone just as the New Testament believers are saved. This Baptist thinking posits that the OT saints if saved were saved by a different kind of salvation then the salvation by which the saints are saved by with the coming of the magnificent Jesus Christ.

c.) The reason there is a new sign for the new and better covenant is because the Lord Christ fulfills all the blood shedding required in the old covenant and so the water of Baptism is given as a sign of forgiveness. However, Baptism signifies just what circumcision signified in the Old Covenant. This explains why it is St. Paul seems to mix his circumcision and baptism metaphors in Colossians 2;

¹¹In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body ^[h]of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, ¹²buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

The New Covenant has come with Christ and so circumcision is no longer the sign of the covenant as was the case when the Messiah was only anticipated. The reality is that the Old Covenant promised is now realized with the coming of Christ and so the covenant sign that was both anticipatory and yet at the same time proleptic is set aside for the sign (Baptism) that the reality has come. However, inasmuch as the old covenant was a unfolding and growing reality serving as a proleptic harbinger of the new covenant the new covenant remains related to what the old covenant anticipated.

Fairchild writes,

The pattern in the New Testament is painfully obvious. Hear the gospel. Believe. Repent. Then be baptized. That’s it. Over and over. There isn’t one clear example of an infant being baptized. Not one command to do it. Every baptism you can point to involves someone responding to Christ in faith.

BLM responds,

1.) The problem here is what St. Peter himself says in that Pentecost sermon;

“³⁸Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the ^[k]remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. ³⁹For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’”

Now, there is no way in Hades that a 1st century Jew would’ve heard these words and thought … “I can’t bring my children to be baptized.” It is just ridiculous to contend otherwise.

2.) We know from the NT record that the Jews howled and howled about the Gentiles coming in to the covenant and yet we are to believe that the Jews did not raise a peep about their children being excluded from the “new and better covenant.”

3.) There is an abundance of household baptisms in the NT. This gives us conclusive evidence that children should be given the sign of the covenant because household baptisms as practiced in the NT scream at us that if children had been present they would have been baptized since that was the very nature of NT Household baptisms.

4.) There also isn’t one clear command or example of women taking the Eucharist. Does that therefore mean that women today shouldn’t receive the Eucharist?

Baptist logic is so jejune.

Fairchild writes,

When you baptize someone who hasn’t believed, you confuse everything. You blur the line between the visible and invisible church. You give false assurance. You end up with churches full of people who think they’re Christian because water touched their forehead decades ago. That is not the gospel.

BLMc responds,

1.) Whenever Fairchild baptizes anybody he does not know they believe. I bet more Baptists have been baptized who never believed than Reformed Babies have been baptized who never believed.

2.) Who says that a baby can’t believe? John is recorded as leaping his mother’s womb for joy thus signifying his recognition of Jesus. The Psalmist (22) writes even;

9 Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
¹⁰From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

3.) How can Fairchild even talk about a distinction between the visible and invisible church when he has said that he holds that all in the church are regenerate. The whole distinction between visible and invisible church rests upon the reality that not all members who say they are regenerate are indeed regenerate.

4.) The whole idea that paedo-baptist churches give false assurance is just Baptist bloviating. As paedo-baptist churches routinely preach to their people the 1st use of the law there is no false assurance going on.

5.) If Baptists want to talk about false assurance being given they should worry about the false assurance that comes with telling their membership that they are all regenerate.

Fairchild writes,

If you baptize someone who cannot believe, then you either have to say baptism doesn’t mean what Scripture says it does, or that it does something magical without faith. That’s precisely how you slide into baptismal regeneration, whether you admit it or not.

BLMC responds

1.) Scripture does not teach that infants can’t believe. See above.

2.) No paedo-Baptist teaches the Roman Catholic/Lutheran doctrine of Baptismal regeneration. Fairchild writing this just demonstrates the man’s ignorance on the subject once again.