Category: Theology

In some Reformed quarters today it is all the rage to say that Worship must precede Theology. As such, in these Churches, all kinds of attention is paid to the Worship service itself and the Liturgy of the Worship service. Now, I certainly agree that we need to be careful regarding our worship but genuine care for our worship requires us to get our theology right, for their will be no Christ-honoring worship where our theology is skewed or confused. Suggesting that doxology precedes theology skews both our theology and our doxology.

A danger in this “Liturgi-centric” approach is that so much effort is expended upon ecclesiastical worship and in emphasizing the importance of worship that the impact of theology on every area of life does not receive the attention it deserves. If people really believe that getting worship right will lead to everything else being right then the outcome of this will be people who know both the solemnity and the hilarity of worship but know little of what theology should look like as we worship God outside the sanctuary in our daily living worship. This kind of liturgi-centirc emphasis can lead to the same old problem of communicating that the sum of Christianity is found in the Church.

Now, as I believe that the worship is at the heart of the Church, and that sound communities are only as good as the theology taught in their Worship centers, I do highly regard worship but there are other life systems in the body that must be attended to or we will have a strong heart and a weak limbic system, or failing auto-immune system, or a worthless nervous system. The means by which a body is kept in shape — from its worship to its ministry of mercy, to its body life — is theology that is Biblical, practical and alluring.

Below is a conversation I had on this subject with a fine Christian Brother. I disagree with him on this subject but I have a high esteem for him.

Dr. Blast

Get the worship right first…or pervert it all.

Bret responds,

Get the theology right and the worship will follow.

Dr. Blast

Not at all persuaded bro. Bret…have seen far too many ‘theological-link picking know-it-alls…who have precious little heart for worship. I would rather say…”get the worshiping heart right…and the theology will follow.”

Bret responds,

Not possible Doc. Literally impossible. You’re arguing for the consequence before the cause. No one will get worship right unless they are smitten with the beauty of the Holy. That is Theology.

What the know-it-alls need is better theology. A theology that does not lead to Christ centered worship is pagan. A theology that is theological-link picking is not Christian theology.

Dr. Blast

No, you are mistaken brother. known and seen too many pastors & children who could pass any theology/catechism exam…but had little real heart for true worship…your bassackwards…a heart for true & vibrant worship might eventually get the theology right, but churches are plagued w/heartless theologians who hate worship, people… & God.

Bret responds,

LOL … bassackwards.

You show me a man who has worship right and I’ll show you a man who has his theology right. You can not worship Biblically what you do not know. This whole movement lately to front-load worship over theology is fundamentally horrid. It is yet one more example of looking for experience and emotion to lead the way over thinking God’s thoughts after him. People who advance this paradigm, while well intentioned, are doing God and true religion a disservice.

Worship is the out-flowing of the minds intoxication with God. You can know more have Worship before Theology than you can have babies before Sex.

People who have their catechisms memorized or their systematic theology down cold who are not at the same time not smitten with the beauty of God do not know their catechisms or their theology. The remedy for such people is to return to their Bibles, catechisms, and theology for it will only be a return to the beauty contained in those where they will find their hearts strangely warmed.

“Theology” that is known in the way that a Medical student knows his cadaver is not Christian theology. The problem for such people is not cured by getting them jazzed up in a worship service or by introducing them to the solemnity of worship associated with smells and bells. The problem is cured by the Spirit given realization that they are the cadavers and God is the Medical student. Only by the Spirit given understanding that God is not a subject to be dissected but a Triune person who fills the earth with His splendor, majesty, and royalty can a person be cured of this theolog-itis. However, when a person is given that understanding they have passed into true theology and are not for the first time ready for worship.

You can not have right worship without right theology and if you have right theology that does not lead to right worship you do not have right theology.

Man is a bipartite being. The materialist’s mistake is to reject the incorporeal reality of man and view man only as a bio-chemical machine. Man has a brain, but no mind. Man has a heart, but no soul. Man secretes thought the way liver secretes bile. This is the error that Christians have fought for over two centuries now, but there is another error they must consider.

This other error also implicitly denies man’s bipartite being but this denial is the opposite error of the materialists. This error is the mistake of the Gnostic and it is comprised of the error of denying man’s corporeality. This error views man only as the sum of this abstract thinking as if man’s corporeal embodiment is unaffected by his bio-chemical reality.

If the error of the materialist is to deny man’s incorporeal reality and the effect it has man’s material being, thus seeing man as all enzymes, proteins, and the firing of synapses, the error of the gnostic is to deny man’s corporeal reality and the effect that his corporeal reality has upon man’s spiritual being, thus seeing man as all thought, contemplation, and ethereal spirituality.

But man is a bipartite being and who God has made him to be in his corporeal reality impinges upon and colors the manifestation of the incorporeal, just as the incorporeal reality impinges upon and colors the manifestation of the corporeal.

If God has made the corporeal nature of men to be distinct, though all sharing the imago dei, then it should not be surprising to find that as distinct tribes, tongues, and nations are, by grace visited w/ redemption, that spiritual reality of redemption, as poured over the distinctions of corporeality that God has created — and made good — will find itself being colored and shaped by those God given corporeal distinctions — just as redemption will color and shape man’s corporeal realities.

It seems the only alternative to this is to suggest that God has made men all the same and that it is only sin that makes us to differ. Such a view would suggest that man’s corporeality is mute once He is visited by grace, thus suggesting that man’s corporeality is really inconsequential once he has been visited with regeneration. This view would seem to deny our bipartite being. Remember here, when we are renewed it is our sin nature that is put off — not our human-ness.

Further such a view that does not allow for diversity among those who share the Imago Dei would seem to suggest that the result of grace is an expected sameness in the renewed-humanity. Is it really the case that the new man in Christ is a new man completely stripped of his distinct human-ness , or as more likely is the case, is it that the new man is new precisely because all that comprised his human-ness is now bent in a God-ward direction?

“Historian Herbert Butterfield, in noting the different political spirit of Western man since the French Revolution and how he had once, long before 1789, responded to the intractable difficulties of human coexistence & social order, has remarked that men ‘make gods now, not out of wood and stone, which though a waste of time is a fairly innocent proceeding, but out of their abstract nouns, which are the most treacherous and explosive things in the world.'”

M. E. Bradford — American Man Of Letters / Classicist
Original Intentions; On The Making & Ratification of the united States Constitution –pg. 18

We are still the knuckle dragging idolaters that pagan man was. The only difference is that our idolatry is gnostic, which is seen in how we reify nouns turning them into gods. Pagan man had the good sense to eschew abstract gods for the safety of the concrete gods of wind, water, fire, and wood. The idolatry of the pagans was a mirror opposite of modernity as it embraced an animism that found its gods in all things material. The whole notion of evolutionary progress of religion is a myth, as measured by its own standard. We have not advanced from an earlier age where men worshiped false gods. We have merely abstracted our gods so that we no longer have the inconvenience of carrying them around with us or of building shrines in order to lodge them. Pagan man today is religiously one with his pagan forefathers. Their multitudinous gods were concrete. Our multitudinous gods are abstract. We simply are to close to our gods to see that they are just as fatuous and just as powerless as the gods that were made out of trees and iron.

It remains true today with our abstract gods what was true of the concrete gods made by the pagan idolaters of old.

Isaiah 44:9 All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.

10 Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
which can profit him nothing?

11 He and his kind will be put to shame;
craftsmen are nothing but men.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
they will be brought down to terror and infamy.

12 The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.

13 The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in the form of man,
of man in all his glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.

14 He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.

15 It is man’s fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.

16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”

17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me; you are my god.”

18 They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.

19 No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”

20 He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”

“Therefore, whereas salvation in Christ, was formerly considered primarily a means to separate man from sin and the world, to prepared him for heavenly blessedness and to cause him to enjoy undisturbed fellowship w/ God there, Ritschl posits the very opposite relationship: the purpose of salvation in Christ is precisely to enable a person, once he is freed from the oppressive feeling of sin and lives in awareness of being a child of God, to exercise his earthly vocation and fulfill his moral purpose in this world. The antithesis, therefore, is fairly sharp: on the one side a Christian life that considers the highest goal, now and hereafter, to be the contemplation of God and fellowship w/ him, and for that reason (always being more or less hostile to the riches of an earthly life) is in danger of falling into asceticism, pietism, and mysticism; but on the side of Ritschl, a Christian life that considers its highest goal to be the Kingdom of God, i.e., the moral obligation of mankind, and for that reason, (always being more or less averse to the withdrawal into solitude and quiet communion w/ God), is in danger of degenerating into a cold Pelagianism and an unfeeling moralism. Personally, I do not yet see any way of combining the two points of view, but I do know that there is much that is excellent in both, and that both contain undeniable truth.”

Herman Bavinck
De Theologie van Albrecht Ritschl (Theologicische Studien VI 1888 — pg.397)
Nature & Grace in Herman Bavinck — Jan Veenhof

The Pietist dualistically separates nature from grace and lays all the emphasis on the human being as Christian and so calls the person to give up his humanity (nature) in favor of the pursuit of his Christianity (grace). This can express itself in the Anabaptist who considers the world of nature evil and who thus seeks to completely withdraw from the world or it can find Roman Catholic expression where nature only finds its meaning where it is brought under the canopy of grace. In such an expression nature only has value where it is superintended by the hierarchy of grace as found in the Church. A third way this dualism can express itself is in the R2Kt Kantian system where nature and grace remain cordoned off from one another. In such a dualistic system grace neither calls the faithful away from the world as with the Anabaptist dualism expression nor does it seek to bring nature under the canopy of grace as in the Roman Catholic dualism. Instead what it does is it allows nature to operate independently of and uninfluenced by grace in a common realm that is neither of the devil (anabaptism) or under the mediation of supervening grace (Roman Catholicism). In the R2Kt dualism there is no attempt to solve the dualism that one finds attempted both by anabaptists (nature is all evil) or Rome (nature is controlled by grace).

Bavinck points out however that there is another side of the coin that traditional liberalism falls into. Liberalism of the Ritschl variety tended to deny a supernatural realm of grace and as such the realm of grace was collapsed into the realm of nature, with the result that the nature/grace realm was the realm that must be rescued by deliberate activism. Since there is no unique supernatural grace realm to give a clear word as to what this activism must look like the result of Liberal activism was always autonomous and anthropocentric, and inevitably resulted in a kingdom building effort that, though pursued in the name of Christ, invariably led to Hegelian statist control structures where the representative of the State became God walking on the earth.

As a theologian Bavinck was not satisfied w/ these dualisms, nor was he satisfied with the how Ritschl and other liberals collapsed grace into nature. Bavinck’s contribution to Reformed theology was the attempt to find a way where grace could influence nature without collapsing grace into nature. Bavinck was not satisfied w/ either a nature-grace schematic where nature and grace were divorced from one another but neither was he satisfied w/ a nature-grace understanding where the distinctions between nature and grace were obliterated.

Veenhof in his book suggests that Bavinck limned a third way where grace could be seen to influence nature without either nature swallowing grace or grace swallowing nature. Such a solution is thus a threat to all dualisms and pietisms on one side as well as all autonomously inspired Kingdom projects on the other that lose grace in the putative pursuit of the Kingdom of God on earth which is in reality the Utopian search for the Kingdom of man.

Bavinck’s solution ends up making him the foe of just about all other contenders.

“First of all, Bret… just because one has a disagreement as to your “covenant theology” doesn’t make them less “covered by the blood” of Jesus. According to your theology, it doesn’t matter what they believe as to “who” Jesus is, because if they are the chosen “covenant” people they have a free passage into heaven anyway… looks to me like being a “Calvinist” is just a bonus… Oh wait, Calvinists are the only ones who get into heaven, right?

I’m not arguing that you actually have to read the Bible to find out how you are to be a follower of Christ… But what you fail to realize is that Jesus taught Old Testament Scripture, and without a firm foundation in that, you are paddling with one oar in the water just going around in circles.

And yes, Jesus calls us first… but we have to be willing to pick up the phone. When you look at the story of the prodigal son, the son had to come back on his own. The father didn’t go out looking for him, but waited for him to come back. That son had to make that decision to come back. Had he not have come back, he would have remained outside his father’s house…. See More

I have given countless Scripture stating that “if a righteous man turns from his righteousness, that none of his righteousness will be remembered” Ez. 18:24 and when you sin willfully you “trample grace underfoot” and “if you sin willfully, no sacrifice for sin is left” Hebrews 10:26-31… “‘… who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes YHVH, and that person must be cut off from his people. (31) Because he has despised the Lord’s word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.'” Numbers 15:30-31.

And yes, when it comes to the “idol Jesus” you refer to, He is the object of my worship as my Savior, so ya, you can call Him my idol. You on the other hand idolize your intellectualism and worship your own “ME” god, the god of your own design instead of YaHuVaH of Scripture.

You can sit perched on your little mustard tree and gaze at the centuries old olive tree that I am grafted into.

“Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off” Romans 11.”

Renee Stevens

Bret responds to these objections from Renee,

Renee,

You clearly have no idea of what you are talking about. No idea at all. Not even close.

1.) First, as to covenant theology, well, if people don’t embrace covenant theology then they are likely going to embrace a Jesus of their own making since the Bible is structured tectonically as covenant. Strip Jesus from the covenant context of the Scriptures and by default you must put Him in a context that is alien to who the Scriptures say He is.

Now, clearly, non-covenantal Christians can be saved but it will certainly be the case that their Christianity will be a blight to one degree or another upon the Christian faith while they are alive.

2.) Reformed Christians believe that the elect are chosen to believe in the Christ of the Bible. I challenge you to find a Reformed Theologian who ever taught that people can go to heaven living and dying while never knowing Jesus. Yours is a loopy accusation to try and discredit that Biblical theology which your desperately trying to stave off.

3.) Reformed Christians aren’t the only ones to get to heaven but those non-Reformed Christians who get to heaven will get their because the Reformed Jesus has saved them by the Reformed Gospel that was preached and that they embraced just enough of to be saved.

4.) The whole of Reformed theology is posited upon the Old Testament. I have no earthly idea why you would suggest otherwise.

5.) In the story of the prodigal, you’re forgetting that the prodigal was a son. The Son returned to what was always his. The prodigal son is a Parable Renee w/ only ONE overarching point. That overarching point is the willingness of God to receive repentant sinners. You are trying to turn it into a allegory. It is not an allegory Renee. There is a difference between allegory and parable. Look it up.

(See, it is these kind of mistakes on your part that end up putting your well intentioned but misguided interpretive efforts into the ditch.)

6.) When Jesus calls (internal call) His people, His people always pick up the phone. (and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed Acts 13:48). When Jesus issues the external call to those who aren’t His people they never pick up the phone because dead people can’t hear the phone ringing (John 10:26 “But you do not believe, because you are not of my sheep, as I said to you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”)

7.) Ezekial 18:24 — CONTEXT, CONTEXT, CONTEXT, Renee.

The book of Ezekiel as a whole speak of God’s sovereignty in salvation. Go to the chapters just before…go to Chapter 16 and see that sure destruction was upon Israel, and the Lord came by and said, “Live!” Then to 33 where your passage is repeated…then on to 34 where the Lord says that He will seek out His sheep. Then to 36 and 37 where God says I will give them a new heart not for their sakes…and 37 with the dry bones.

There is no good in proof-texting Renee, as you are doing for I suspect your simply going to do this to other passages to bend them to say what you want them too say.

Secondly, you seem to be assuming that the “he shall die” reference refers to eternal death when in point of fact the idea of dying may only refer to temporal death.

8.) Hebrews 10:26-31

First, it should be noted that Calvinists have taught that people can fall from the covenant of Grace. Noting this is important since the context of Hebrews 10:29 finds just a comparison being made between the old and renewed covenant. Here we find a lesser to greater argument. If one died without mercy for rejecting Moses’ law how much more grievous will be the penalty of one who tramples the Son of God underfoot. However, we need to hear the language of Hebrews here. In this context the hypothetical person being referred to was ‘sanctified’ (that is ‘set apart’) by the blood of the covenant. Now we must ask; ‘How is it that this person was sanctified (set apart)? The answer is by being put into the covenant. This is the same covenant that throughout the Scripture is characterized as having wheat and tares in it. Now in as much as Christ died for the Church, everyone in the Church (wheat and tares alike) can be said to have had a ‘sacrifice for sins,’ and so it is true that should the wheat, being externally but really related to the one covenant of Grace, sin willfully after receiving the knowledge of the Truth (and lots of people have a non-saving knowledge of the truth – cmp. James 2:19) there is no sacrifice for sins.

Now the reason may be asked why we read this text this way.

1.) We cannot read this passage the way that Renee desires and remain faithful to the book of Hebrews where elsewhere the perseverance of the saints is upheld by the teaching that, “Therefore Jesus is also able to save forever those who come to God through Him.” Also after Hebrews 10 we are taught that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. Now, if our faith doesn’t finish, then how can it be rightly said that Jesus is the finisher of our faith?

2.) We believe that the explanation above does honor to the covenant language of Scripture. Just as all of Israel was not of Israel, so all of the Church is not of the Church and yet, if a unregenerate person is a part of the Church then when speaking in corporate categories it is proper to say that Christ died for the Church and that includes all who are in the Church who are not of the Church. Just as on the Day of Atonement where the Sacrifice of the lamb was for all of Israel didn’t negate that ‘not all of Israel was of Israel’ so the Sacrifice of Jesus for the Church doesn’t negate that not all of the Church is of the Church. Just as there were those in the Old covenant who had a sacrifice preformed for them as being part of the covenantal whole that did not apply to them individually so there are some in the Church who had a sacrifice preformed for them as part of the covenantal whole at Calvary that does not apply to them individually. But of course we do not know who those are and so if some in our congregations were to sin willfully after they had received a knowledge of the truth we would have to warn them that there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment.”

Numbers 15 works much the same way. You must simply wrap your head around the idea that the covenant has people who are only externally related to the covenant but who can genuinely said to be part of the covenant.

As for the last few paragraphs in your missive Renee … well, that is just you playing the role of the fish on the hook, thrashing about trying to avoid being reeled in. But the hook is set Renee and you are being reeled in.