Category: Theology

In the whole Federal Vision controversy part of the problem is the tendency for some people to make Faith and Faithfulness to be synonymous. The problem here lies that when one is speaking of justification then the result in that arrangement is that you instantly have combined works (our Faithfulness) with faith alone. In justification Faith looks away from self and rests in Christ alone trusting completely in HIS faithfulness for us. Now, the retort that many Federal Vision people respond with is to lodge the accusation that, ‘that makes faith to be inert and perhaps even dead,’ and they go on from there to mock the notion that there is a millisecond when faith does nothing but receive Christ only whereupon then only it begins to work.

Now having dealt with more than a few of these gentleman I could see that their problem was, as I noted above, a desire for the faith that justifies to be a working faith. They wanted Faith to work even in justification, or else to them it was inert faith, or dead faith, or pretend faith.

So, I asked myself, ‘How can I satisfy their problem while at the same time leaving faith in justification to be completely instrumental and non-contributory in receiving Christ(?). “How can I talk about the work of faith in justification (so showing that it is living and vital even here) and yet not yield one inch that Faith is alone in resting in Christ?”

The answer I came up with was to tell them that, “Faith in justification does its proper work by resting in Christ alone,’ or, ‘Faith in justification works by turning from works to rest in Christ alone.’ Now naturally the Federal Vision guys didn’t like that because they knew it was undermining their attempt to combine faithfulness with faith thus making faith a kind of work.

That part is the old news.

The new news is now I am hearing that my answer is not Reformed and I might as well be Federal Vision. You see things have gotten so uptight here that unless you pronounce all the syllables in just the right order on the issue of ‘Justification by faith alone’ you must be held to be suspect of not being truly Reformed.

Below is from one of the Kiddie Corps cadets of the Westminster West justification police telling me that,

You can’t call “resting in Christ” an example of “working” and claim to be Reformed without causing some major confusion.

1.) I do claim to be Reformed.

2.) I do claim that the proper work of faith in justification is to rest in Christ alone and His work for us.

3.) I find nothing confusing in that statement. This is no more confusing then to say that the proper work of my body in sleeping is not to work at all.

What the problem here is that the atmosphere has become so supercharged with suspicion that unless you speak exactly the way that justification Nazis want you to speak then you are suspect even in the cases where YOU MEAN EXACTLY THE SAME THING THAT THEY MEAN.

Look, there is nobody — and I mean nobody, who is more opposed to Federal Vision on justification then I am. To suggest that I can’t claim to be Reformed without causing major confusion all because I employ a formulaic technique to potentially bridge a widening divide is just nonsense.

These Westminster West kids are starting to drive me nuts.

I’ve been doing some reading on Fascism. I keep coming across the subject. Jonah Goldberg has just released a volume on the subject and I have read several reviews on his book. (Most of them were not very complimentary.) Jonah’s premise is that Liberals (read Democrats) are Fascists. He apparently challenges the notion that Fascism is a right wing phenomena and insists quite to the contrary that we are living with a left wing version of it today. Quite to the contrary Keith Olberman of MSNBC fame, and a renown liberal recently gave a torrid 10 minute commentary on how George Bush and Republicans are Fascists. I grew up with television and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ‘news commentary’ more hot than what Olberman flamed (you can watch it here if you care to).

http://www.covenantnews.com/blog/archives/038648.html

Now, I am a little familiar with this subject but it has been years since I have looked at it. I will give you the premise now and periodically keep you updated on how my theory is fitting up against my renewed study. Before giving my premise I think that we must recognize that the word ‘Fascist’ has become somewhat like the word ‘racist,’ in as much as it is often thrown around by people as just a way of closing down the conversation. Consequently, perhaps what will happen as we probe this is to get to a closer definition of what Fascism is. Anyway… my premise is that both Jonah Goldberg and Keith Olberman are correct. Jonah is correct is saying that Liberals are Fascists and Olberman is correct saying that Republicans are Fascists.

What people seem to be missing today is that the real battle going on today in American is not between what has been dubbed ‘the left’ and ‘the right.’ Rather the battle that is going on today is somewhat akin to the battles that waged in Berlin in the 1920’s between the Communists and the National Socialists. The battle then, and the battle now is a war between national socialist expressions of the Left (current neo-con Republicans) and international socialist expressons of the left (current liberal Democrats), and BOTH are incarnating themselves in Fascist like manifestations. Conservatives or the ‘Right’ don’t have a dog in this fight. Our dog died a long time ago. If the reader wants another metaphor in terms of how two guys in black hats can be at each others throats think about the war between Stalin and Trotksy.

Our problem today as Christians is that we have a hard time realizing that where the conflict is raging hottest in our current ideology wars is that we don’t have a champion in the cause but we think that one of the few options that is offered up must be better than the other. Stalin is not our guy but neither is Trotsky. Goldberg is not our guy but neither is Olbermann. The Democrats are not our guys but neither are the Republicans. The most that we can hope for is that these guys will bury each other and clear the field for a real option.

As we consider Fascism we must first realize that it is a Worldview one component of which is the disappearance of the Transcendent or perhaps better put the relocation of the Transcendent. Ernst Nolte defined Fascism as ‘the practical and violent resistance to transcendence.’ Fascism decries the idea of a moral order or being who stands in judgment over any attempt to re-construct society and as such they relocate that Transcendent to concrete, corporeal, and immanent notions of blood and soil so that the situated community, speaking with a mass voice, as embodied in the State, becomes the Transcendent in their Worldview.

Such a view does not negate all thinking about the importance of blood and soil when it comes to National identity but it does negate talk about blood and soil when the Transcendent is identified as equivalent of the nation and its people. Obviously then when we think of Fascism we have strong emphasis on Nationalism.

This violent opposition to the Transcendent that ends with a virulent Nationalism also brings expression to another aspect of Fascism and that is the loss of the individual. Fascism comes from the fascis, meaning “bundle.” It was used in ancient Rome to symbolize that he who carried the ‘bundle’ acted for the people, with the reflexive meaning being that the people were acting in the ruler. Fascism in its 20th century incarnation has meant societies and cultures that were monolithic in their thinking, and behavior. In Fascists cultures there isn’t much room for individuality as mass consciousness becomes the order for the day.

Given these two beginning descriptors it is not difficult to see lineaments of Fascism in our culture. These United States have lost their belief in the Transcendent and with the constant assault by the Federal State on the mediating institutions of Church, Family and local governments increasingly the only backdrop that is erected for the individual to define himself or her self against is provided by the State and the mass media, which shares in the same anti-Transcendent conviction, that the State holds. The result of this is the exchange of the individual as individual for the individual as mass man.

Now, the only battle that is left is which flavor of Fascism will Americans embrace. Will we embrace the Fascism of Fox network and Rupert Murdoch or will we embrace the Fascism of the mainline media. This is where the warfare is hot and heavy between neo-cons and liberals. Both tend towards Fascism. Neither can see their own Fascistic tendencies. Both insist that they are the preservers of freedom and the American way against the evil intentions of their enemies.

As Christians we have to keep going back to the Word of God in order to use it as the standard by which we judge the two current alternatives that basically give us a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea. For Christians the poles are not ‘left’ and ‘right,’ but rather ‘adheres to God’s Word’ and ‘doesn’t adhere to God’s Word.’

More on Fascism as I return to my earlier reads and explore a few new ones.

“Moral evil is social and structural as well as personal; it comprises a vast historical and cultural matrix that includes traditions, old patterns of relationship and behavior, atmospheres of expectation, and social habits.”

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Not The Way Its Supposed To Be, pg. 191

This observation teaches that a unredeemed people who build a culture will institutionalize their particular rebellion against God into their cultural infrastructure with the result that not only are the individuals in the culture in revolt against God but also that the cultural superstructure is serving to reinforce that rebellion in the lives of the individuals. The consequence of this is that if there is a redeemed community living as aliens in and among an unredeemed culture that redeemed community will first have to work hard at recognizing that their home culture can indeed be fairly characterized as unredeemed and secondly they will have to become epistemologically self conscious as to how their unredeemed culture, in which they are saturated, and consequently which they are inclined to find altogether normal, is pushing them in a direction that is contrary to Christ.

All of this is only to recognize that all of us tend to reflect the culture in which we are part. I heartily confirm that regeneration and redemption ought to have a significant bearing on that but it is manifestly self-evident that it often doesn’t. In our contemporary setting part of the reason for this, I think, is that there is not enough work being done by Christians in examining how our cultural mold in which we dwell is shaping us in a non-Christian direction. I also think however that there is also not enough willingness on the part of rank and file Christians to take seriously the work that is done in teaching how the Church needs to be counter-cultural, given the reality that we are currently living in a post-Christian culture.

As we pursue this subject we should likewise reverse this scenario and suggest that among a people who are largely redeemed their will arise a largely redeemed culture that will, by the impact of the common grace, have the effect of putting socio-cultural brakes on their wickedness of the unredeemed that live in their midst to the point that the unredeemed will often accept for normal what is defined as normal due to the cultural infrastructure that is in place in a redeemed culture. This is to say that a unredeemed person living in a largely redeemed culture will likely not express their depravity as thoroughly as they would were that same unredeemed person living in a culture completely devoted to hating Christ.

Now some might object that this is an environmental understanding of the effects of sin. Nothing could be further from the truth since a totalistic environmental understanding of sin would suggest that there would be no way to break out of the cultural mold into which people are born. Quite to the contrary, because of the power of the Gospel, both individuals and whole people groups, quite contrary to their established cultures do turn from the aimless conduct received by tradition from their fathers and embrace Christ. What I am arguing here is not for a predestinarian cultural behaviorism, rather what I am seeking to recognize is that as God has made us to be social beings, social dynamics and the way those are constructed make a difference in the way that we think about and respond to everything. I argue this point with the hopes that we might understand that the Gospel has to impact not only individuals but also the macro cultural constructs that individuals build. In order for the Gospel to be successful it is not only the case that individuals must be saved but it is also the case that those individuals have to be saved with the kind of salvation that challenges the reality shaping institutions that comprise their culture since the reality shaping institutions are still molding saved individuals in a anti-Christ direction.

I think there can be little argument that the Church has done, at least by its own estimations, a bang up job of getting people saved in the last 100 years. From Finney to Moody to Sunday to Rodeheaver to Graham to McGavern to Hybels to Warren to Osteen there has been a whole lot of ‘saving’ going on. But despite hand over fist converts we live in what many people are characterizing as a post-Christian West. Now, in light of this, either what I am arguing above is true or salvation really means nothing.

There is something else that is connected with all this that I find interesting and it has to do with the noetic effects of sin. We often speak of the noetic effects of sin being more pronounced upon the unbeliever over against the believer. But let’s imagine a scenario where two people are living in the same largely unredeemed culture. Shelia is a product of her culture and epistemologically self conscious of her hatred for Christ. The Bible holds no threat for her since she rejects any authority it proclaims to have. Christina on the other hand is a Christian who likewise is largely a product of her culture and who claims to accept the authority of the Bible. Both have decided to have an abortion. Shelia, having an interest in ancient literature, reads the Scripture and says to herself, ‘this teaches that murder is wrong,’ but since this book has no authority I am going to get my abortion. There are no noetic effects of sin on her interpretation (though certainly there are noetic effects on her volition). Christina reads the Scripture and precisely because she holds it to be authoritative insists that it does not prohibit abortion. Clearly in this scenario the neotic effects of sin lie more heavily on the Christian then the non-Christian. Those Christians who accept the authority of Scripture may be more inclined, because of the noetic effects of sin — noetic effects that may be accounted for, in part, because of how they are being informed by the unredeemed culture they live in– to abuse the Scriptures then those who have no dog in the fight since they read Scripture without thinking it has any authority over them anyway.

“… The image was equated with the soul’s natural attributes, while the … likeness, was equated with man’s moral conformity to God; the former were retained after the fall, the latter lost. This disjunction of image and likeness, and their segregation in each case from innate knowledge of God, became characteristic of scholastic and Roman Catholic doctrine. The Roman Catholic view is that man was created morally neutral, and that original righteousness was a superadded divine gift. While the fall eliminates this divine bonus, it produces no radical distortion of man’s original nature. Since the fall leaves the natural attributes unimpaired, man’s grasp of theological realities by the natural reason is not seriously affected by sin. The compartmentalization of man through the sundered image and likeness moderates the impairment of human nature by sin, and allows to the natural reason a positive significance in theology which finally inverts the Augustinian epistemic priority for divine revelation.”

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry
God, Revelation & Authority Vol. I pg. 332

Alright, this explains why Roman Catholics (RC) can appeal to Natural law without blushing. Now, clearly they don’t have a leg to stand on from Scripture since there is no distinction to be made between likeness and image and since Scripture teaches the complete vitiation of man’s intellect in the fall. Secondly, no Reformed Theologian worth his salt would ever say that, ‘while the fall eliminates this divine bonus (original righteousness), it produces no radical distortion of man’s original nature.’ Now, since that is true, how do Reformed Theologians consistently get from a ruinous fall to the teaching of Natural law which depends on Thomistic Roman Catholic categories?

Henry notes the ‘compartmentalization’ of RC thinking and when he notes that we can’t help but immediately think of a similar ‘compartmentalization’ that advocates of Natural law thinking are likewise involved in. On one hand, redemptively speaking man needs God’s regenerating grace in order to understand aright special revelation, while on the other hand, in the other compartment, man doesn’t need God’s regenerating grace in order to understand and embrace God’s Natural revelation in the creation realm.

Can Reformed people consistently compartmentalize the Creation realm from the Redemptive realm in order to save Natural law theory? Does their inconsistency on this matter reveal an unwarranted captivity to categories alien to Reformed ideas regarding the extent of depravity?

“If professing Christians are unfaithful to the authority of their Lord in their capacity as citizens of the State, they cannot expect to be blessed by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in their capacity as members of the Church. The kingdom of Christ is one, and cannot be divided in life or death. If the Church languishes, the State cannot be in health; and if the State rebels against its Lord and King, the Church cannot enjoy His favor. If the Holy Ghost is withdrawn from the Church, he is not present in the State; and if He, the ‘Lord, the Giver of life,’ be absent, then all order is impossible, and the elements of society lapse backward to primeval night and chaos.”

A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology

First, to all those Radical Two Kingdomists (RtKt) who want to introduce a dualistic wall between Church and State, this quote of Hodge is not your friend. According to RtKt the State does not have Jesus as its Lord because the State is supposed to insure that the culture is pluralistic. A pluralistic culture requires a pluralities of Lords. Hodge’s quote doesn’t support that ‘thinking.’ According to RtKt it is not possible for the State to be Christian since neither families, or schools, or cultures, or anything but individuals can be ‘Christian.’ Hodge’s quote doesn’t support that ‘thinking.’ According to RtKt Church and State are divided and only the Church can be presently spoken as being Christ’s Kingdom. Hodge’s quote doesn’t support that ‘thinking.’

Second, note that Hodge draws a direct correlation between the health of the Church and the health of the State. As goes the Church so goes the State (and we would add… ‘so goes all other aspects of the Culture). The Church is to a culture what a Well is to a water supply. If the Well is touched with disease the whole water system and everything it nourishes languishes. The Church in the West has long been diseased and so the West is dying in every cultural nook and cranny. Make clean the water supply and all else will grow.

Third, note in the italicized part that Hodge runs this in reverse as well. Not only is it the case that if the core is diseased then all that the core feeds will suffer as well, but it is also the case that if all the extremities rot the core will go bad as well. It is not only the case that a diseased Church leads to a diseased State but it is also the case that a diseased State leads to a diseased Church. Death can happen from the inside and work its way out or death can come from the outside and works its way in.

This brings us to why I believe that RtKt is as dangerous to the Church as is the Federal Vision. It is my conviction that following Federal Vision with its toying of the Gospel is and will lead to rot from the inside out. Similarly, it is my conviction that following Westminster West RtKt theolog with its toying with Christ’s Lordship is and will lead to rot from the outside in. Regardless of which direction the rot moves the end result is that, “He, the ‘Lord, the Giver of life,’ is absent,” resulting further then in “all order being impossible, with the elements of society lapsing backward to primeval night and chaos.”

Fourth, no culture can exist without both some kind of Church and State acting harmoniously together. Where there is no harmony between Church and State then parallel institutions will be constructed by the dominant of the two institution to do an end around the institution that is causing grief. In our case the end run around the Christian Church was for the State to build government schools to function as the defacto State Church that would catechize future generations into the religion of the State. Many years later of course the Christian Church augments for the Humanist Church and fills in where the Humanist Church leaves any gaps.

Fifth, note that Hodge in the first sentence clearly articulates that being citizens is a ‘religious activity.’ Citizens must be faithful to their Lord in the putative common realm because the putatively common realm actually is Christ’s realm. Abraham Kuyper was correct when he said, “There is no area of life that the Lord Jesus Christ does not lay his hand on and say, ‘Mine!’.” All activity is religious activity and to insist, as the RtKt insists that Christ does not speak a revelatory and informing Word to all those areas that belong to Him is a recipe for all areas of society to “lapse backward to primeval night and chaos.”

God grant the Church more men with this kind of insight of A. A. Hodge.