The Experience of Conversion

In Galatians 2, Paul speaks of false teachers who are spreading a gospel that is "contrary to the one we preached to you" as well as "contrary to the one you received." This repetition of the gospel as "preached" and "received" draws the distinction between the objective nature of the gospel message and the subjective appropriation of that message. While it is vital for us to understand that the gospel is the message of objective redemptive events, we lose much of the power of that objective work if we do not also dwell on the experiential side of the good news. Here are a couple of great quotes from Christian figures that speak of the joy and wonder they experienced as a result of the Holy Spirit applying Christ's work of redemption to their lives.

The first is from Abraham Kuyper, the prolific Dutch theologian and statesman:

What my soul went through in that moment, I have only later fully understood; but yet in that hour, nay, from that very moment, I learned to despise what formerly I admired, and to seek what formerly I spurned. But enough. You know the lasting character of the impression of such an experience; what the soul encounters in such a conflict belongs to that eternal something, which presents itself to the soul years afterward, strongly and sharply defined, as though it happened but yesterday.

John Wesley describes his conversion in these words:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation: And an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Let each one of us experience anew the wonderful feeling of our hearts being "strangely warmed" as we meditate on the glorious certain redemptive work of God in Christ. May we remember with awe the time that the message of the gospel was first made known to us and may we experience it afresh each day.

Martin on Memorial Day

For any who might doubt, yes, I can employ the writings of Martin Luther in the observance of any holiday or otherwise special occasion. For Luther, the question of whether military force could or should be employed by Christians was more than a mere theoretical issue. With the constant threat of violent force being brought against Reformational believers in Germany, this was an issue of the utmost practicality. While it would be foolish to read Luther's conclusions uncritically (I think I would have to take issue with a number of the specific statements in the following passage), his no-nonsense approach is quite refreshing. Here is a selection from Luther's treatise, That Soldiers, Too, Can be Saved:

When men write about war, then, and say that it is a great plague, that is all true; but they should also see how great the plague is that it prevents. If people were good, and glad to keep peace, war would be the greatest plague on earth; but what are you going to do with the fact that people will not keep peace, but rob, steal, kill, outrage women and children, and take away property and honor? The small lack of peace, called war, or the sword, must set a check upon this universal, world-wide lack of peace, before which no one could stand. Therefore God honors the sword so highly that He calls it His own ordinance, and will not have men say or imagine that they have invented it or instituted it. For the hand that wields this sword and slays with it is then no more mans hand, but Gods, and it is not man, but God, who hangs, tortures, beheads, slays and fights. All these are His works and His judgments. In a word, in thinking of the soldiers office, we must not have regard to the slaying, burning, smiting, seizing, etc. That is what the narrow, simple eyes of children do, when they see in the physician only a man who cuts off hands or saws off legs, but do not see that he does it to save the whole body. So, too, we must look at the office of the soldier, or the sword, with grown-up eyes, and see why it slays and acts so cruelly. Then it will prove itself to be an office that, in itself, is godly, as needful and useful to the world as eating and drinking or any other work.

On this Memorial Day, I would like to thank those brave soldiers, past and present, who have not hesitated to take up the sword as appointed by God at the proper time. Specifically, thanks to those from our own congregations at New Covenant Church, Major Paul Wynn and Second Lieutenant Steven Ottolini, who are currently serving the U.S. Army in Iraq. We are grateful to you for willingness to defend our freedoms, and we are praying that God will keep you in the power of his Holy Spirit.

Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?

I recently enjoyed James K.A. Smith's latest release from Baker Academic entitled Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? This is another one that goes under the "should-have-been-studying-for-finals-but-was-reading-my-own-stuff-instead" file (which, incidentally, always turnout to be the best ones). Smith's book serves as a primer on the thought of the major continental philosophers whose work laid the foundation of postmodern thought. While the theories of such French philosophers as Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault are generally considered to be antithetical to historic Christianity, Smith contends that this view is due in part to a shallow reading and "bumpersticker" understanding of some of the key phrases that these thinkers employ. He thinks a deeper understanding of postmodern thought can not only show that the thought of these men in not in conflict with Christianity, but that, in fact, postmodern theory can go along way in informing the Church on how to develop an "ancient-future faith."

While I'm wary of much of the current literature that seems want an uncritical acceptance of all things postmodern for the sake of being "relevant," I found Smith's discussion of the subject to be very thoughtful and well reasoned. Smith's expertise is in the area of Continental philosophy, which allows him to discuss the themes of postmodernism is far more thorough manner than most. His task is not to in some way to make the Church more postmodern but rather to find the ways in which postmodernism can help the Church be the fulfill her task. As Smith states it:

On the level of practice, a more persistent postmodernism will engender not quite a postmodern church but rather a postmodern catalyst for the church to be the church.

This does not happen simply through a postmodern makeover which appeals to the sensibilities of a particular generation. Rather, postmodernism, according to Smith, reaffirms and restates some of the things that Christianity (and especially Reformed Christianity of a presuppositional persuasion) has always said. For instance, the emphasis postmodernity places on context and its role in creating meaning can find a parallel in presuppositional apologetics, which takes very seriously the role of presuppositions brought into any discussion of Christianity. While Smith shows great skill in drawing these sort of parallels, he is far from uncritical of postmodern thought in general. His ability to discern the good and the bad in postmodernism separates him form the pack on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer, the Anti-Conservative?

One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative...If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.

These are the words of Francis Schaeffer. It seems that they are timely words for the Church today. We so often convey that the only message that we have as Christians is the need to adhere to a particular moral agenda. In taking a look at the Church's interaction with the culture at large, it seems that we often have little to offer those who reject any sort of moral standard (or simply the standard that they don't like) than an alternative set of morals. We hear a lot about how God's way is the right way and how marriage, the family, and society in general would be so much better off if only people would start doing things God's way. I believe this is true. I also believe that this is at best a peripheral declaration for the community of Christ.

One of the most devastating courses of actions that we can take as believers is to communicate to others that the solution to their problems is to simply adhere to "traditional moral standards." As the Church, we have been given a message that is revolutionary in the most fundamental sense. The reality of the perfect obedience, death, and resurrection of Christ on our behalf, as well as the promise of redemption for the entire created order radically redefines existence as we know it. No longer is a comfortable suburban lifestyle, or the achievement of a traditional morally upstanding society, hearkening back to a by-gone era, the best we have to hope for. We now are called to live as those who no longer trust that living the proper way or adhering to certain standards will gain us anything. It has been revealed to us that what we think of a moral lifestyle, even one that adheres to "traditional moral values," is actually corrupt to the core because of sin, despite any outward appearances. In place of a hope in our own goodness, we have been revealed the One who was good in our place and died on our behalf.

With a message such as this, why would we want to communicate anything less? While it is easy to fall into the tendency to chide those whose actions we know are sinful (I do it all the time), we cannot simply offer another set of actions as the solution. I believe that, as Schaeffer says, this is especially relevant to the way that we communicate the Christian faith to youths (and yes, I realize that I am included in that category). The tendency of young people to reject traditional standards in favor of what is seen as more radical or cutting-edge is not a bad one! Even when this tendency takes the form of an acceptance of a radical left-wing political agenda, or some other youthful "idealism" we must realize that this it comes from an inborn desire for something greater than traditional conservatism or right-living can bring us. The revolutionary desire is only natural in someone who is surrounded by a world of sin and has seen the righteousness of God in Christ. Let our message not be one of conservatism, but rather one of a radical revelation of Christ!

W.H. Auden on Luther

Its not as if I needed another distraction for the last two weeks of the semester, but I've found one nevertheless. This one comes in the form of the Collected Poems of W.H. Auden. His poem Funeral Blues could possibly be the most moving poem of all time, as well as my favorite. Not only was Auden a great poet, but he was also a great man of faith who struggled immensely with the issue of his own sin, including his homosexuality. As such a figure, his poems dealing with Martin Luther, the ultimate source for issues regarding guilt and sin, are particularly profound.

This first poem is simply entitled Luther:

With conscience cocked to listen for the thunder,
He saw the Devil busy in the wind,
Over the chiming steeples and then under
The doors of nuns and doctors who sinned.

What apparatus could stave off disaster
Or cut the brambles of man's error down?
Flesh was a silent dog that bites its master,
World a still pond in which its children drown.

The fuse of Judgement spluttered in his head:
"Lord, smoke these honeyed insects from their hives.
All Works, Great Men, Societies are bad.
The Just shall live by Faith..." he cried in dread.

And men and women of the world were glad,
Who'd never cared or trembled in their lives.

This second verse in taken from a collection of similar short rhymes entitled Academic Graffiti (its not flattering but its funny):

Luther & Zwingli
Should be treated singly:
L hated the Peasants,
Z the Real Presence.

Structure, Direction, and Drunkenness

Yes, I am a bit stuck on Albert Wolters at the moment. I am, out of necessity, reading and studying in other areas, but my spare thoughts keep drifting towards Wolters' distinction of structure and direction. In particular, I have been thinking of the way that this distinction could be applied to issues such as the natural desire of human beings to become drunk, high, or otherwise intoxicated. Is this desire, at the root, a product of the fall? It certainly doesn't seem so. It seems, at least to me, that there is an undeniable aspect of creational structure involved in these sorts of desires. Without a doubt, as it is directed towards alcohol or drugs, this structural desire is radically perverted and misguided by the corruptive influence of sin. However, it seems that as with anything else that is part of the creation order, we must not reject this desire foundationally, but rather seek to redeemtively redirect it.

I can think of no better direction for this desire to be drunk, that is to be completely caught up in an exhilarating emotional and physical experience, than the exercise of the gifts of the Spirits. The discipline of being filled with the Spirit and it manifestations in tongues, prophecy, and any other way through which the Spirit should choose to reveal Himself, provide us with just such an exhilaration. Instead of providing us with carnal pleasures, this sort of drunkenness serves to point us to the person of Christ and the rapturous and uncontrollable joy that a revelation of His work on our behalf produces. It is this very redirection of drunkenness that Paul appears to be addressing in Eph. 5:18 when he encourages us to "not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit."

It is unfortunate that so many Christians, including the majority of our Reformed brothers and sisters, who display such a deep understanding of this structure/direction distinction, would seek to discredit such manifestations of the Holy Ghost. It appears to me that in doing so, they are failing to see the structural goodness of intoxication and the redirection from "debauchery" towards being "filled with the Spirit." It seems that such a redirection is necessary if we are to truly be semper reformanda. How's that for an attempt at working out the implications of Charismatic Neocalvinism?

Cheers!

Wolters on Mosaic Law

I'd like to bring out one more of the important aspects of Albert Wolters' book Creation Regained. Wolters deals with the subject of the Mosaic law and how we are to apply it today. This portion of the book comes after a long explanation of the eternal nature of God's law in the creation order. I have provided this selection from the book hoping that it will be of interest to those who have discussed the subjects of the law as well as tithing here as well as on other blogs recently.

One final point should be made about the revelation of God's law in Scripture and in creation. We noted earlier that the Mosaic law was the divinely accredited implementation of creational law for ancient Israel. This means that the law of Moses is fixed between two reference points: creational law and ancient Israel, the universal and enduring principles of creation and the historical situation of a particular people (Israel) in a particular place (Palestine) at a particular time (the centuries between Moses and Christ). Because of this double reference, the coming of Christ also involves a "fulfillment" of the law in a double sense. On the one hand, the law is fulfilled in that the shadow is replaced by the substance, and Jewish law is no longer binding for the people of God. On the other hand, the law is fulfilled in that Christ reaffirms its deepest meaning (see Matt. 5:17). In other words, insofar as the Mosaic law is addressed to a particular phase of history of God's people it has lost its validity, but insofar as it points to the enduring normativity of God's creation order it retains its validity. For example, the legislation concerning the year of Jubilee, applying as it does to an agrarian society in the ancient Near East, is no longer binding for the New Testament people of God, but in its reflection of a general principle of stewardship as a creational norm it should continue to function as a guide for the new Israel. The provision for a bill of divorce is no longer in effect, but it sill stands as God's own reminder to us of a basic principle of justice: there must be legal guarantees to minimize the effects of the hardness of the human heart. The same could be said concerning the laws for tithing, protection of the poor and sojourners, and so on.

Another way of saying this is that God did the implementing for his people in the Old Testament, while in the New he in large measure gives us the freedom in Christ to do our own implementing. That is the point of Paul's letter to the Galatians. But in both cases he holds us to the blueprint of the law of creation. In the Old Testament the explanations he gave included detailed instructions for the implementation of the blueprint; that was by way of apprenticeship. In Christ we are journeyman builders - still bound to the architect's explicit directions, but with considerable freedom of implementation as new situations arise.

Just a thought: could this freedom to "do our own implementing" of the specific laws in light of the eternal law of the creation order be considered natural law? Again, just a thought. If you care to comment, please don't feel the need to restrict your response to this question. There are plenty of worthwhile thoughts in this whole passage.

Creation Regained

There are far too many thin paperbacks of immense value that distract me from the more pressing matters of end of the semester assingments and papers. One such book is the second edition of Albert Wolters classic on Reformational worldview, Creation Regained. This edition was released a year ago to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its publication and includes a new postscript by Wolters and Michael W. Goheen.

The book starts out with a discussion of what the idea of a worldview consists of. The term comes from the Dutch Reformed tradition and implies a "life perspective" or "confessional vision" (personally, my favorite term). More specifically, it is "the comprehensive framework of one's basic beliefs about things." This is distinct from philosophy in that it deals with the way in which we approach every discipline and activity, including things like philosophy. A worldview is not a matter of specialized study, but rather something which everyone has and operates under whether they are aware of it or not.

After the basic discussion of worldview, Wolters goes on to explain the three categories of creation, fall, and redemption. Creation has to do with far more than simply the creation of the earth as given in the Genesis account. It deals with the structures that God put in place to govern that which he created. The creation order exists and is maintained by the Word of God which implies normative structures for all aspects of the creation. Next is a discussion of the implications of the fall for the created order. Once sin has entered the world, every aspect of the good creation is perverted or misdirected in some way. Sin is a distortion of the original goodness of creation, not something that is added to it. Redemption is the restorative power of Christ to bring back the original goodness of the created order and to redeem it from the corruptive influence of sin. Redemption does not add something more to the created order, but rather is the process through which it is restored to its original intent.

Wolters ends by explaining the need to discern what he calls "structure" and "direction" in creation. Identifying the structure of a particular realm or discipline in creation requires us to discern the original intent for that sphere. We must look at politics, journalism, fashion, and every other kind of cultural activity in a way that identifies the normative structure that is given to them by the Word. Identifying the direction of these spheres will require us to see where they have deviated from their original intent through the corruption of sin. This sort of approach keeps us from seeing any particular aspect of the created order (which is all "good" according to God) as inherently evil or bad. It is not politics that is bad, but rather the abuse of political power that comes with sin. It is not the arts that are bad, but rather the misdirection of artistic ability. This understanding of "structure" and "direction" helps us to identify the goodness of the varying aspects of society while allowing us to see where they have deviated from their original goodness. Discerning this allows us to seek to redeem these fields instead of rejecting them.

The new postscript addresses some concerns that the authors have seen in particular appropriations of the idea of a biblical worldview. Their concern is that some have taken it "as though it were meant to be a full-fledged exposition of the biblical perspective on life and the world, whereas in fact it concentrated on what might be called the 'structural girders' of such a perspective." They emphasis the importance of a biblical worldview being placed in the greater context of a narrative understanding of the biblical story and our place and mission within that story. This requires that we gain a greater understanding of what it means to live in the "already-not yet" and that we see the Church's role as providing a "preview of the Kingdom." While this sort of thinking necessitates the Church's interaction with culture, it also acknowledges an unavoidable tension between the two which will only be relieved in the final coming of Christ.

This is a wonderful book, and one that deserves to be widely read in a Christian culture that is so inherently Gnostic in much of its thinking. Wolters affirms the goodness of the created order and opens up the reader to the possibilities of Christian interaction with cultural in light of Christ's work of redemption. He also provides a wonderful way of looking at the place of Scripture in developing a framework for thinking and acting in all parts of life without forcing the Word to speak where it is silent.