Category: Theology

Whoa … suddenly the train went off the track with a post by David Bayly over at Bayly Blog. I have some issues to take up with David Bayly here.

DB

Those who seek to undermine rules delight in their exceptions. Exceptions are the camel’s nose. But the fact that cars are to stay in their lanes doesn’t mean we should never, ever leave our lanes (to dodge a dog, for instance), despite the fact that lane-agnostics will jump on such departures as evidence that lane systems never work.

BLM

Ok, what this sounds like if I am to put the metaphor into the concrete is that the fact that women are not to serve as civil magistrates doesn’t mean we should never, ever vote for women magistrates. If that is part of what this analogy is trying to suggest I don’t think it works.

First of all creation order is the universal principle that we are to be sustaining. Violations to the creation order taken by way of exception should be taken by way of clearly articulated scriptural principles. Does God give us clear parameters when it is proper to disobey the creation order? Clarity is important here. I don’t think clarity is achieved when we appeal to historical descriptions in Biblical texts (i.e.– Deborah). By that clarity I can make the case that casting lots by pulpit committees is a Biblical way to choose potential Pastors.

Second, if exceptions can be legitimately pursued in the civil realm without clear didactic teaching from Scripture then why can not exceptions be legitimately pursued without clear didactic teaching from Scripture in the Church or family realm? Maybe Mary would be a better leader in the home than Fred. Maybe Matilda would be a better pastor than all of her male Seminary classmates.

Now I agree that exceptions occur. But I don’t agree that we are the ones who get to determine, apart from prescriptive portions of Scripture, when to make those exceptions. Certainly we may leave our lane but only with Biblical authorization to do so. God can leave the lanes anytime He pleases as He owns the highway. Indeed, He left the lane by installing Deborah, but we should never violate God’s revealed Word in Scripture (creation order) in order to support what we think God might be doing according to His eternal counsels.

DB

It’s not routinely good for Deborah to rule. Her rule is doubly due to effects of the fall. But rule she did–and with blessing.

BLM

Yes, she did rule but the fact that God interrupted His order is no license for His people to interrupt His order by doing something that violates His revealed will as articulated so well by Tim Bayly in his appeal to creation order. If God wants, according to His eternal counsels, a female magistrate (Deborah) or pastor or head of the home (Lydia) let Him do it. All because God raised up Deborah doesn’t mean that we can now vote for female magistrates. There are a good number of dots that have to be connected before we can find some kind of parallel between God violating His creation order and God’s people violating God’s creation order.

DB

Beyond the issue of such clear exceptions to the biblical standard of male authority, there are areas where we might need to discuss whether a position entails the kind of authority Scripture reserves for men. Does every female university professor rule over men? Does every female crossing guard rule over male drivers?

BLM

I haven’t seen any clear exceptions except the exceptions that God makes for Himself.

These problems we are having with this issue finds themselves being reduced if we put this in a biblical setting. In the times of Moses or the times of Christ where were women normatively ruling over men in ways that were not exceptions as created and granted by God? Where we find those exceptions is where we should place our exceptions.

DB

The only kind of logic that has a ready answer for every conceivable situation is the logic: 1) of the Pharisee, or; 2) of the rebel.

BLM

I don’t have a “ready answer” for every conceivable situation but I believe that there is an reasonable answer that can be eventually found for every conceivable situation.

To the law and to the testimony.

Am I a Pharisee or a Rebel?

“The great impact (of the theater)is neither the persuasion of the intellect not a beguiling of the senses…. It is the enveloping movement of the whole drama on the soul of man. We surrender and are changed. Or at least we are when the magic works. Yet the ‘magic’ in the case of effectual calling is always the result of the wisdom of the playwright (Father), the content of the drama itself (Son), and — something that cannot be duplicated by any theater company of creatures — the charisma of the casting director (Spirit), who makes sure that the Word never returns empty, without having accomplished everything for which it was sent.”

Dr. Michael S. Horton
Covenant and Salvation — pg. 225

In the italicized portion Horton is quoting Clifford Geertz’s,
“Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, — pg. 27-28

When the US military took action in Iraq there were different ways of reporting it depending on where you were sitting. If you supported the US action you saw the Iraqi people in bondage to Saddam Hussein and so spoke about the action of the US military as one of liberating Iraq. No doubt there were others who spoke about that same action of the US military as one invading Iraq. The way the nomenclature is crafted reveals ones position on the action.

Something similar happens in discussions on regeneration. The Reformed will look at what God does in regeneration and they see a will in bondage and the action of God as liberating the will. Others see the Reformed doctrine of the Father speaking the Son as an illocutionary act with the Spirit accomplishing perlocutionary comprehension in the listener as an invasion.

How one sees regeneration, whether as invasion where God violently coerces the person or whether as liberation where God releases the person from brutally coercive and oppressive forces will depend on their worldview. Those who see regeneration as God’s violent act are those who see God’s regenerating work just as Muslims sympathetic to Saddam Hussein saw US military operations in Iraq. Those who see regeneration as God’s liberating work are those who see God’s work just as Frenchman saw the Allies arrival in 1944 in Paris.

Now we drop into the equation that those whose wills are in bondage and so are being brutally coerced are people who love their bondage, and insist that bondage is freedom. The effectiveness of their enslaved wills is seen in how they love their chains. Arminians then insist that these people who love their bondage and call slavery freedom should renounce, quite apart from God’s regenerative illocutionary Word and perlocutionary act, their spiritual captivity, and further Arminians agrees with those in captivity that God’s locutionary liberating speech act is an invasion. So on one hand Arminians agree that people in bondage need to be liberated but on the other hand they squeal when Reformed people insist that the Spirit of Christ is the sui generis liberator.

Next the question arises as to how it is that people in bondage are held responsible for the slavery that they can’t help but want. The answer to this question is that they are held responsible because they freely will out of their bonded will to call their bondage freedom all the while retaining the natural faculties to choose to the contrary even if they don’t retain the moral faculties to choose to the contrary. The fall and their shared identity in Adam hasn’t delimited any of their natural capacity or physical ability to choose God. This is why they are held culpable for their God hating leanings. We must understand that because the natural power remains intact in those who bear the image of God that they are rightly held responsible for using that natural power in defiance against their better knowledge.

However natural ability still has to reckon with moral inability. Though the natural and physical functions remain whole they are only as good as the moral dispositions that govern them. Those moral dispositions are given over to an agenda that seeks to dethrone God in favor of the self, all the while insisting that God has done them wrong by denying them full throated autonomy. In this state and condition man will use his natural faculties to attack God’s Godness at every turn and hence he is responsible. He can only recognize this bondage and be rescued from it by being liberated. Indeed, the first glimmerings of being liberated is recognizing the bondage for what it is. Before God can be seen to be anything but a repulsive and cruel enemy the human will must be set free, the heart of stone must be vivified to flesh, and the person must be brought out of their wastrel wanderings to the safety of covenant and the peace of home.

“If we enjoy union with Christ, not only we ourselves but even our works too are just in God’s sight. This doctrine of of the justification or works (which was developed in the Reformed Church) is of the greatest consequence for ethics. It makes clear that the man who belongs to Christ need not be the prey of continual remorse. On the contrary he can go about his daily work confidently and joyfully.”

Wilhelm Niesel
Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism

The Reformed faith deals with the problem of remaining sin in all that we do by teaching this truth that not only our persons but also our works are justified. When this teaching is combined with the ongoing necessity to be conformed to the image of Christ in our daily walk both the dangers of despair over one’s lack of conformity to Christ and the danger of an attitude that concludes that since sin is inevitable in our works why bother contending for righteousness are eclipsed.

There are other ways to deal with the reality of the sin that remains in all that we do after being declared right with God. The Keswick’s contend that sin can be so suppressed that one can have victory over sin and so not sin anymore. The holiness folk contend that sin can not only be suppressed but that it can be eradicated by a second work of grace called entire sanctification or perfect love. My examination of and my experience in these movements though has lead me to believe that what happens in such a move is a defining of sin downward so that people can convince themselves that they really are done with sin.

This is a case where different theology makes a radical difference in personality. The Keswick and Holiness view when seriously embraced by people leads to a incredible self-righteousness. Obviously, if someone has been delivered from sinning there is a incredible temptation to look down on other people who haven’t yet been delivered. Also people who embrace this view end up as people who take sin lightly. Just try convincing someone that they may have a sin problem who is convinced that they have reached a point where they no longer sin.

In the Reformed faith we both hate and yet at the same time recognize that we continue to sin and yet we are neither in despair about that nor are we casual about it since we believe both that all of our works are justified and that out of gratitude for all the Christ has done for us we must continue to seek to ever increasingly be conformed to the character of our Lord Jesus.

Hence being Reformed keeps us from being twisted in our personality by either living in constant despair about the always present sin in our obedience or by living in a wicked presumptuousness that since the lack in our obedience is always forgiven therefore we have no need to be concerned about the lack in our obedience, or by redefining sin as the Keswick and Holiness people do thus creating personalities inflated with self-righteousness.

Being Reformed — it makes for stable personalities and quality character.

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p.s. — An autobiographical word.

I grew up in the holiness movement and was taught entire sanctification. I earnestly sought it but never achieved it — praise God. It is one reason why I left the movement. I just couldn’t convince myself, that I had reached moral perfection. Many of my classmates did make sudden discoveries of their moral perfection in their senior year in college as they could not accept a call to the ministry unless they had been entirely sanctified.

From undergraduate school I went and did my seminary work at a Keswick school. In both my time in the Holiness movement and my time among the Keswicks you could cut with a knife the self-righteousness.

In classes both in undergraduate and in Seminary, in institutions separated by 800 miles, I heard Professors say at the front of classes that I took that “they hadn’t sinned in 30 years.”

”The total life involvement of the covenant relationship provides the framework for considering the connection between the ‘great commission’ and the ‘cultural mandate.’ Entrance into God’s kingdom may occur only by repentance and faith, which requires the preaching of the Gospel. This ‘gospel,’ however, must not be conceived in the narrowest possible sense. It is the gospel of the ‘Kingdom.’ It involves discipling men to Jesus Christ. Integral to that discipling process is the awakening of an awareness of the obligations of man to the totality of God’s creation. Redeemed man, remade in God’s image, must fulfill – even surpass – the role originally determined for the first man. In such a manner, the mandate to preach the gospel and the mandate to form a culture glorifying to God merge with one another.”

O. Palmer Robertson
The Christ Of The Covenants — pg. 83

In starting we should note that, loosely speaking, the Cultural mandate is most closely associated with Jesus in his Kingly office, while the Great commission is most closely associated with Jesus in His office of High Priest. The Cultural mandate is tied to the imperatives of Scripture, while the great commission is most closely tied to the indicatives of Scripture. The Great commission is a proclamation of what the Lord Christ has done for men, as the great propitiation, while the cultural mandate is the declaration of what the Mediatorial King Jesus requires. While we note these distinctions we insist that our High Priest is King and our King is our High Priest. As our High Priest and King Jesus prays for us in the heavenlies and through His Spirit leads us, in obedience, to extend His already present Kingdom here on earth.

Something that seems to be happening within the Reformed Church is the dividing of the offices of our Liege Lord Christ. There seems to be one faction in Reformedom that so wants to insist on Jesus as High Priest that any mention of Jesus as ruling King is seen as something that doesn’t apply to us now since we are in the interregnum. These people are wrongly divorcing these two offices. At the same time there is another faction in Reformedom that is trying to confuse these two offices so that what God requires in salvation and what God gives in justification are so co-mingled that the doctrine of faith alone becomes a doctrine of faith and works alone.

There is a necessity therefore to try and understand the relationship of the believer to the offices of Jesus as King and Priest, and relationship between the Great Commission and the cultural mandate. First, we would note that even in the gospel Jesus as King commands all men everywhere to repent, while in his office as High Priest He gives what He commands to His elect.

As we consider Robertson quote above I would offer that the Cultural mandate provides the general context wherein the text of evangelism can make sense. Allow me to try and explain. Where Christians take seriously Jesus office as King in an unrestricted sense there a cultural context is created that makes it easier for the gospel to be heard by unbelievers. Think of context and text when reading a book. The context helps the reader to make sense of the text that he is immediately reading. The text itself would be nonsense if it were set in an entirely different context. In the same way when the ‘Gospel’ goes forward in a cultural context that is informed by the unrestricted Kingship of Jesus, there the text of ‘Jesus Christ as the great High Priest’ makes more sense. Where Jesus in His Kingly office is lived out there isn’t such a huge disconnect between the message of Jesus Christ crucified and the reality of a culture that is defying King Jesus at every turn. When we don’t engage in the cultural mandate we make it more difficult for people to hear the strains of the message of the great commission because we are helping to create a social order context that is in opposition to the gospel proclamation. Consequently when we disconnect the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate what we inevitably end up creating are Christians who view their salvation as unrelated to their cultural endeavors, or who see their cultural endeavors as unrelated to their salvation. The result would be to give us both an anti-nomian Church and an anti-nomian culture.

Likewise the reverse is true. Where the offices of Jesus are confused and collapsed together, with the office of King compromising the office of Priest, we will create a Church that is legalistic and a social order that is rigid. While the previous error wants a text divorced from its context, this error wants a text undistinguished from its context. The former error leads to bifurcationism where the Church as Sacred and the social order as common are isolated from one another, while this error leads to a social order that is undifferentiated as to what is Holy and what is Holy of Holy. Jesus must be proclaimed (prophetic office) in both of His offices (Priest and King) or else we eviscerate the definition of both of those offices.

When we find the proper tension between these offices we discover that people who have been saved and brought into the Kingdom, now seek to bring that salvation wherein they have been saved into every area of life, so that those spheres may experience salvation. In obedience to King Jesus those who have been saved by Jesus as their great High Priest now bring salvation to the gardens they tend, and the children they raise, and the books they write, and the Churches they attend, and the judicial decisions they hand down, and the art they paint, and on and on. So, as individuals are saved by Jesus in His Priestly office, they bring that salvation to their corporate life in obedience to Jesus in His Kingly office, which in turn, as we noted above, provides a general cultural context where it is easier for unsaved individuals to comprehend the Gospel.

Now the objection will be that what I am contending for is a kind of naturalistic program for the Church where I deny the supernaturalistic agency of God for men to be Redeemed and instead am relying on cultural infrastructure to convert lost men.

Of course I would say this is most certainly not true! I am not saying that if we follow three easy steps people will get saved. I am saying that God appoints means to ends. That salvation, while a spiritual reality, happens inside a physical and corporeal context and that it is gnostic to suggest that we can get to the spiritual reality without considering the physical context. Men will never be saved by the proper cultural infrastructure but it is certain that their natural individual resistance to the message of Christ crucified will be accentuated and emboldened by cultural infrastructure that is built in defiance of King Jesus.

God putting the offices of Jesus together they must not be cast asunder.