Category: Theology

“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.

Recently I came across someone referring to irresistible grace and regeneration as the ‘holy rape of the soul.’

First, as to origins of this phrase. It seems that somehow Jonathan Edwards is blamed for this phraseology. However, Edwards never uses the phrase in his works. Allegedly, a well known contemporary popularizer of Reformed Theology has quoted Edwards as having said that and that may be where the confusion stems from. The phrase seems to have been coined by the legendary Puritan Scholar Perry Miller (who as I recall was not a Christian).

Wherever the quote came from and whoever came up with it we ought to take the phrase out to the cow pasture, put a bullet through it and bury it. To equate God’s gracious act of regeneration with a violent sadistic criminal act teeters on blasphemy.

Here it is the case that in Adam we were genuinely raped. And then in our own sinful acts we were sodomized and raped over and over again so that we were the sex slaves of the sadistic devil. Gang banged by his demons. Given over to every imaginable perversity. Then, in God’s wondrous Grace the virginity of our soul is returned to us and we call that ‘RAPE’? It’s like saying that rescue from a gulag is abduction or that adoption out of the Manson family is kidnapping.

Secondly, rape happens when somebody takes something forcefully that isn’t theirs to take. What happens in regeneration doesn’t fit that description. From eternity past the Elect belonged to God. At the Cross Christ paid for the sins of His adulterous people that the Father had given Him. When, in effectual calling we are wooed to Christ, He is not forcefully taking something from us that isn’t His to take.

Thirdly, we are not captivated by Christ in irresistible grace in the way that a damsel in distress is captivated by some blackguard or brigand. Regeneration is all God’s work, but He draws us to himself in such a way that we want to come.

Fourth, I can’t imagine for the life of me, how somebody who has been traumatized by rape would hear that phrase.

To refer to effectual calling as ‘the holy rape of the soul’ is like talking about a good tasting excrement sandwich, or how wonderful the torture sessions were.

Let’s lose that metaphor.

“While people often claim moreover to learn by ‘experience,’ it is rather from an intellectual analysis of experience that they learn, if at all, in such cases.”

Carl F. H. Henry
God, Revelation & Authority — Vol.1 pg. 264

Clearly what Dr. Henry is suggesting is that we do not learn by experience but rather we learn by how we interpret our experience. This can be the only explanation for two or more people going through the same experience and ‘learning’ different things from that experience. This is only to say that our presuppositions about the nature of God and of His reality inform us as to interpreting our experiences. A Christian and non-Christian going through the same difficult experience will come out of that difficult experience with substantially different conclusions. The Christian will interpret the experience through the eyes of confidence in God’s character and be able to say with that ‘God intended it for good,’ while the non-Christian will often use the experience as proof that God is absent.

Dr. Henry’s observation is why I am forever encouraging people to interpret life through God’s promises and to resist interpreting God through the difficult circumstances and vicissitudes of life. If God be for us who can be against us? If God is for us then whatever adversity he sends us in this vale of tears will he not turn it to our good?

This kind of certainty should make a HUGE difference in the way that we interpret our experiences.

Another point that Dr. Henry seems to be making is that people don’t learn by experience but rather they learn by thinking. This is a key concept in an age that is experience oriented. Experience does not shape us but rather how we think about experience. Similarly, neither do we learn or think by emotion. Emotion is the consequence of thinking and interpreting something we experience in a certain way. This is why I’ve never been able to understand the idea that people ‘think with their emotions.’ Nobody has ever thought with their emotions since emotions are the consequence of some kind of previous thinking. If I am experiencing the emotion of sadness it is because I am thinking a certain way about some kind of experience. The same holds true for every other kind of emotion. It is not possible for emotion to be the ground of our thinking since emotions are but visible manifestation of the kind of thing we are thinking. Even in an age of image where we speak of our emotions being manipulated, what is really the case is that our thinking is being manipulated.

All of this is why, then, the Scripture teaches not ‘as a man experiences so he is’, or ‘as a man’s emotions are he is’, but rather ‘as a man thinketh in His heart, so he is.’