Theological Theology

Love, marriage and the homosexual agenda

2011-12-09T07:40:00.000+11:00

As I write this, the Australian Labor Party has decided to amend its political platform to include a commitment to change the legal definition of marriage. Under intense pressure from the Greens, with whom they formed a coalition after the last election delivered a hung parliament, from their own left faction, and from a bold and confident gay lobby which has mounted a very sophisticated publicity campaign, the Labor Party has endorsed a right of same sex unions to style themselves ‘marriages’. In a largely successful attempt to claim the moral high ground (an astonishing thought in itself) this world-wide campaign has adopted the slogan ‘marriage equality’.

It should be abundantly clear that this is not about providing financial and legal security for homosexual relationships. In Australia a raft of other legislative measures over the past few years have provided for this already (though undoubtedly there remains continued room for improvement in these areas). Instead it is about insisting upon the legitimacy of homosexual unions and sidelining any suggestion that such unions are morally questionable. Experience elsewhere in the world suggests that the consequences of such a move are serious: precisely because it is about legitimacy and moral vindication, dissenting voices need to be silenced using whatever means available.

One such means of silencing dissent is by suggesting that it masks other more sinister commitments. It ought to be obvious that it is absurd to suggest all opposition on this question is motivated by fear, hatred or bigotry, but ‘homophobia’ and ‘homophobic’ are words deliberately coined to reinforce precisely this suggestion. Dissent is in this way psychologised: it is explained simply as an irrational and pathological hatred of those involved in what is truly an act of love. Such a tactic conveniently removes all need to engage the arguments of those who insist that justifications of homosexual behaviour misconstrue the nature of genuine love, undermine the joyful, life-affirming, other-centredness of sex, and destabilise societies whose basic building blocks are families in which gender differences are both intrinsic and a cause of delight. The strategy involves flatly denying that there is any explanation for opposition to this pattern of behaviour outside of the critics’ own prejudices and ignorance, for instance the design of the world as an expression of a benevolent God.

Another means has been to resort to legal measures such as anti-discrimination and anti-vilification legislation, making it illegal to deny freedom of expression, in any form they desire, to those engaged in homosexual activity. Just to argue that homosexual behaviour is offensive, morally questionable, perverse, or, in the Bible’s terms, sinful — no matter how reasonably, dispassionately or courteously this is done — is portrayed as an infringement of the human rights of those involved. Notorious cases in the US, the UK and even in Australia have seen conscientious objectors penalised and ridiculed. Christian hoteliers have been prosecuted for refusing to let a room to a homosexual couple, notwithstanding open publication of their moral scruples on their website and other advertising. Christian preachers have been fined for declaring homosexual behaviour is morally reprehensible, subject to the judgement of God and as such those involved need both to repent and be forgiven (something which could just as easily be said about greed, corruption, oppression, violence, and adultery). Ordinarily Christian men and women, just seeking to be faithful and obedient to Scripture, have been pursued through the courts and vilified in the press. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that in the future Christian ministers will be prosecuted for refusing to ‘marry’ homosexual persons, and Christian congregations sued for not making their facilities available for such ‘marriage ceremonies’.

One of the most effective means has been to change the vocabulary of the debate. This has happened repeatedly over the course of the last twenty or thirty years. The term ‘homosexual’ itself is hardly used any more. The use of ‘gay’ helped reinforce the impression of freedom, happiness and harmlessness that those in the homosexual lobby were aiming for. The shift to speaking about ‘homosexual orientation’ and then ‘same-sex attraction’ rather than ‘temptation’ portrayed such desires as entirely natural and in some measure beyond a person’s control. The more recent employment of the slogan ‘marriage equality’ casts this debate in terms of previous struggles for justice and liberation from oppression. We’ve recognised the need to affirm and legislate to give expression to racial equality and the equality of the sexes, now we need to affirm the equality of different sexual behaviours. It is a matter of human rights. Opposition should be unmasked as oppression. The most frightening thing about all this is that each of these changes of vocabulary have been championed by the popular press and serious, sustained critique in the public square has been minimal.

It has been a very sophisticated and very successful campaign. As it has progressed, Christians have emerged as the one group that needs to be marginalised, silenced and somehow brought into line. The willingness of liberal Christianity to adopt the homosexual agenda has seriously complicated the picture. So too, it must be said, has the decidedly unChristian use of violence against homosexual men and women in different parts of the world. Both these developments have played into the hands of those who wish to insist that principled opposition to homosexual practice, and so to any legitimisation of such practice by a change to the legal definition of marriage, is not authentically Christian but simply the preoccupation of small ultra-conservative and ill-informed groups within the various Christian denominations. The hysteria that arises in the press and in the blogosphere when the slightest hint of criticism of homosexual activity is voiced may well be a vital part of the campaign strategy, but it also indicates how far Christians are from winning the debate.

Does this mean we should just surrender? Does this mean that we should retreat into a personal, silent objection to the monumental social engineering that is taking place at present in Australia and in much of the Western world? On the grounds that the public relations battle has been lost and the changes seem inevitable, should we leave the issue alone and get on with other things — perhaps other things more at the heart of the Christian message? I don’t think so. Despite the extraordinary hermeneutical manoeuvres of those seeking to show the contrary, the teaching of Scripture is consistent and unequivocal: homosexual behaviour is one of those things on account of which ‘the wrath of God is coming’. It is contrary to God’s created intention for humanity and destructive of human society as well as those involved in it. The good God who made all things good, has made his mind known on this subject and to decide for this behaviour against the word of God is not only rebellion but foolishness.

Yet homosexual behaviour, just like other sinful behaviour, can be forgiven because of the salvation that has been secured by Jesus in his death and resurrection. The love and mercy of God towards all sinners has been demonstrated most clearly when the Christ died in our place and for our sin. Homosexual men and women are the objects of his love and mercy too. They need to hear the gospel too. They need to hear of their need to repent and put their trust in Jesus just as much as any of us. The Christian attitude towards those engaged in this sin should be the same as that towards those engaged in any sin (ourselves included). Out of compassion we need to reach out with a message of forgiveness and cleansing, provided by God at great cost and out of genuine, deep and entirely undeserved love.

In the end that is why we must speak up against the proposed changes to the legal definition of marriage. By attempting to endorse the legitimacy of this behaviour it makes the call to repentance and faith even more difficult. Not only is it nonsense (it cannot ultimately bestow the legitimacy it intends), not only is it disingenuous (perhaps the topic of another posting), it is dangerous. Opposition to this move is then itself an act of love.

An interesting link you might pursue if you wish to keep thinking about this subject is the opinion piece by Blaise Joseph from September this year. It can be found here.

The Sydney Family Album — 8

2011-11-16T23:00:00.000+11:00

It really is rather hard to overplay the contribution of Howard Mowll to the shape and character of the contemporary Anglican Diocese of Sydney. His election as Archbishop in April 1933 was a critical moment in the diocese’s history, a decision for its evangelical heritage rather than the more eclectic theology others were advocating at the time. His tenure of the office during World War II and the equally critical post-war years set directions, embedded principles and fostered a new generation of leaders who enabled Sydney Anglicanism to remain unambiguously Protestant and evangelical while engaging seriously with the challenges of a new era. Among so many other things gifts to the diocese, he was the driving force behind the invitation to Billy Graham to come to Sydney in 1959, though Mowll died six months before the Crusade began.

Howard West Kilvinton Mowll was born on 2 February 1890 at Chaldercot, near Dover. His attended Dover College and then King’s School Canterbury. From there he went up to King’s College, Cambridge in 1909. While there he served on the executive of the Cambridge Inter-collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) at the time of its great split from the Student Christian Movement (SCM) over the centrality of Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice in the Christian message. He served as the president of the CICCU in 1911–12. After university he undertook theological training at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, in 1913–14 and then, after having been refused a licence by the Bishop of Ely, he served on the staff of Wycliffe College, Toronto first as tutor and then as Professor of History. Having been ordained deacon under the Colonial Clergy Act before he left for Canada on 21 September 1913, and as priest by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Randall Davidson) on 7 June 1914, he served as an army chaplain on the Western Front in 1918–19. Returning to Wycliffe College after the war, it was while in Toronto that he was invited to become assistant bishop of West China. He was consecrated in Westminster Abbey on 24 June 1922.

Mowll developed a reputation as a clear and convinced evangelical and an astonishingly effective missionary bishop. He encouraged indigenous leadership, consecrating two Chinese assistant bishops after he became the diocesan bishop in 1926. It was also during his time in China that Howard Mowll met and married Dorothy Martin, on 23 October 1924. He travelled much during this period as well. One particular trip would set in train the future course of his life and ministry: in August 1931 he visited Australia, spending two weeks in Sydney.

Upon the death of Archbishop John Charles Wright in February 1933, conservative evangelicals in Sydney sought out the man they had met just two years before as a possible successor. His reputation as a bishop, as a pastor, and as an uncompromising evangelical churchman commended him after what a number saw as a period of uncertainty. However, a group of prominent liberal evangelicals, among them Dean Talbot and Archdeacon Davies, the Principal of Moore College, preferred a candidate with more ‘liberality in scholarship’. What is particularly interesting is that these two men were at the time President and a Vice President of the Anglican Church League! (After the election they would both resign and form a new organisation, the Anglican Fellowship). Both sets of men considered the diocese to be at a crossroads. They knew this election would shape its future identity.

In the end Mowll was elected with a five to one majority by the Sydney Synod and arrived by boat on 1 March 1934. Surprisingly, he did not come to Sydney brim full of confidence in his own ability. He had written to Bishop Knox in England when he was first sounded out about the possibility of becoming Sydney’s archbishop:

... Australia is not England, and England is home to me. I know nothing of Australian problems and I have never had a city parish where the conditions of a big city have had to be tackled. I am not big enough intellectually really to give the lead in civic and church life which occasion would often demand, nor have I wrestled enough in ecclesiastical controversy to be all that much tried Evangelicals might look for. The eagerness to understand the problems of each parish and each clergyman and the desire to be friendly and to help them would hardly compensate for this. (Loane, Archbishop Mowll, p. 125)

At his farewell in Westminster on 30 November 1933 he repeated the sentiment:

I beg for your prayers, for I feel so incompetent in face of that call which has come. (Loane, p. 129)

It is also reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, had told him that he ‘possessed neither the gifts nor the training which the see of Sydney required’ (Loane, p. 133).

This sense of inadequacy in the face of the challenge represented by the Diocese of Sydney might seem strange in the light of all that was accomplished during his time as Archbishop. Perhaps it explains in part the punishing schedule he embarked upon from the moment he arrived in Sydney. He set out to visit each Rural Deanery, personally interview every clergyman, and meet as many laypeople as he could. He instituted a lunch-time Bible Study in the Cathedral. He set about rejuvenating diocesan institutions and supporting church schools. In all of this he was aided by a prodigious memory for names and a genuine concern for individuals as well as structures and organisations.

Of particular importance is the way he took every opportunity to strengthen, promote and extend the work of Moore College. In 1935 upon the death of David John Davies, the College Principal (who incidentally continued the Oswestry connection, being born there in 1879), Mowll sought out Thomas Chatterton Hammond, Superintendent of the Irish Church Missions, then 58 years old, to provide clear and unambiguously theological leadership to the diocese as the new principal. Hammond was known as a fiercely intelligent teacher, writer and debater. Under Hammond the college moved into a new era of growth and influence and Hammond himself became one of the Archbishop’s most trusted advisors. As one account puts it, the College became ‘an important instrument in Archbishop Mowll’s evangelistic push into the post-war world’ (Judd & Cable, p. 234). Interestingly, Mowll would appoint the next two principals of Moore College as well: Marcus Loane upon T. C. Hammond’s retirement in 1953 and D. B. Knox, who took up office after the Archbishop’s death.

Mowll tirelessly supported and promoted the Home Mission Society, appointing Archdeacon R. B. Robinson as General Secretary in 1935 replacing the 75 year old Archdeacon William Charlton (Robinson was 47 at the time). In the wake of the Depression and with the dark clouds of war approaching, this agency of care and compassion would play a critical role. Yet Mowll was clear that the social welfare work of the Society was never to be severed from the evangelistic mission with which he hoped to energise the diocese: ’the Archbishop was emphatic that the fundamental duty of the Society was to provide living agents for the proclamation of the Gospel’ (Loane, p. 217).

Similarly, Mowll revived the local Church Missionary Society and maintained a vital interest in its work in Africa and Asia. His missionary heart led him to broader engagements with individual missionaries and with the Australian Board of Missions. He gave the 1947 Moorhouse Lectures in St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne under the title ‘Seeing all the World’, again promoting the importance of Australia, once the beneficiary of a British interest in world mission, adopting its own priority of reaching the world for Christ.

His time as Archbishop of Sydney certainly had its challenges. The protest of the Memorialists who pined for the broader outlook of Wright and Davies and Talbot was met with a firm response which did not please everyone. In 1935 the Australian diocesan bishops severed the link between the Diocese of Sydney and the primacy with a vote of 13 to 12 for the Archbishop of Perth, a blow he felt keenly. However, before long it became obvious that their argument that he was still too young and still too new to Australia was in fact a cover for an ‘active dislike for the Evangelical convictions of the Archbishop, and hostility to the Evangelical character of the Diocese’ (Loane, p. 136). Thirteen years later he would be elected Primate unopposed.

World War II also brought its own challenges, but opportunities as well (e.g. setting up the Church of England National Emergency Fund, CENEF). Postwar growth led to new churches, building projects, and an increasingly mobilised lay membership.

The legacy in each of these areas would prove to be long-lasting but, as already mentioned, it was his tireless work in inviting and preparing for the visit of Billy Graham in the last years of his life which would bear more abundant fruit than even he could have imagined. The list of Christian leaders who were converted in that first Billy Graham Crusade in Sydney is astonishing, including Mowll’s successor five times removed, Peter Jensen. Though he didn’t live to see the Crusade — he died on 24 October 1958) — it cemented the evangelical direction Mowll had reestablished in the diocese.

Those who opposed Mowll’s theological convictions liked to paint him as intolerant and captive to the interests of a narrow party within the Sydney Diocese. Those who rejoiced in the rejuvenation of the diocese brought about by God through Mowll and those around him thought very differently. They praised his personal manner, his unfeigned interest in all those he met. The judgement of the Australian Church Record from 13 April 1933 was echoed by many through the years: ‘He’s gigantic; he’s magnetic; he’s courageous; and he’s humble’ — Mowll was six feet four inches in height.

Howard West Kilvinton Mowll was a giant of a man in more ways than one. At personal cost and with seemingly endless energy he gave himself to furthering the cause of Christ in England, Canada, China and Australia. A very great deal of the inheritance contemporary Sydney Anglicanism enjoys was established (or recovered) by this humble servant of God.

Sources for this post include the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Mowll by K. J. Cable, Stephen Judd and Kenneth Cable’s ‘Sydney Anglicans’ (Sydney: Anglican Information Office, 1987), and M. L. Loane’s biography simply entitled ‘Archbishop Mowll’ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1960).

Personal Postscript: In 1983, in a secondhand book sale at Moore College, I purchased a copy of the Book of Common Prayer which contains inside the cover a plate which reads H. W. K. Mowll, Chaldercot, 1910. The ribbon was still in the page for the Ordering of Priests.

The Story of how God became King

2011-11-08T10:25:00.000+11:00

Just under two weeks ago now, Tom Wright gave his inaugural lecture as Professor of New Testament at St Andrews University in Scotland. It was entitled 'Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity'. As you would expect it is full of rich insights and much food for thought. There is a very great deal of encouragement to be found here for those who love the Gospels and serve the Lord presented to us in them. You can find a full text of the lecture here.

Tom's proposal is that each of the Gospels, 'in their rather different ways, tell the story of Jesus of Nazareth as the story of how God became king' (p. 2). Not only are the Gospels properly understood as biographies, recognisably of the same genre as Graeco-Roman bioi, and not only do they genuinely reflect the life of the early church, but they also:

'tell the story of Jesus as the continuation and climax of the ancient story of Israel' (p. 3) — 'the proper and fitting, if highly surprising and subversive, fulfilment' (p. 4) of a story line that can be traced back right through the entire Old Testament. '[Jesus of Nazareth] is the point at which the millennia-long narrative has reached its goal' (p. 4).
'tell this story as the story of Israel's God' (p. 5). This is the return of Israel's God, prepared for by the appointed messenger and now at last come. Witness 'the terrifying scene in [Luke] chapter 19 where Jesus, arriving in Jerusalem, tells the story about the king who comes back at last, and then announces Jerusalem's imminent destruction because "you did not know the moment when God was visiting you"' (p. 5).
tell this story 'so as thereby to tell the story of how Israel's God becomes king of the whole world' (p. 6).

Here is something independent of and yet not unlike the attempts of Livy and Virgil to situate Augustus as the climax of a centuries-long narrative.

This characterisation of the Gospels will be familiar to anyone who has read Tom Wright on the Gospels before. However, there are tantalising new connections made along the way. Not all of them are utterly convincing but the result is an immensely stimulating summary of his approach to the Gospels.

Tom's lecture went on to give an account of Western intellectual history which attempts to make sense of the antipathy of much biblical scholarship to the kind of theological construal of the Gospels he had just given. From the tendency since the Renaissance to think in terms of fracture in the narrative of Western culture, to the Enlightenment as 'characterized especially by the major revival of Epicureanism' (p. 9) to the loss of imagination by the persistent privileging of left brain activities of analysing, calculating and organising over right brain activities such as imagination, story-telling and intuitive thinking (with strong debts to the work of Iain McGilchrist) — here is a fascinating, if not uniformly convincing, explanation for the barrenness of so much engagement with the Gospel texts.

What would Tom like to see in its place? He is explicit as he draws his lecture to a close:

The good news is that the Gospels themselves resist the destructive, atomising, Epicurean left-brain analysis. They go on telling the story of How God Became King, and demanding that serious readers learn to imagine a world in which that might be the case, a world reshaped around their account of Jesus. (p. 13)

This imagination, like all good right-brain activity, must then be firmly and thoroughly worked through the left brain, disciplined by the rigorous historical and textual analysis for which the discipline of biblical studies has rightly become famous. But, by itself, the left brain will produce, and has often produced, a discipline full of facts but without meaning, high on analysis and low on reconstruction, good at categories and weak on the kingdom. (p. 16)

This lecture is certainly worth reading and pondering at length. Of course, there are points at which many would want to disagree with Tom — both in terms of his larger argument and in terms of the details he marshalls along the way (e.g. I really don't think he has understood the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms — but then Luther has been a whipping boy of Tom's for some time now). And, of course, one might still want to argue with elements of his larger theological project (not least his account of the doctrine of justification). Yet there is most certainly much nourishing food for thought in this lecture and I'm glad to draw it to the attention of those who might not otherwise have seen it.

Readers might notice that I have made one change in the text of Tom's lecture, which is to capitalise Gospels in accordance with a growing convention of distinguishing (without in any sense separating or placing in opposition) the four Gospels and the central message of the New Testament, the gospel concerning God's Son.

The Sydney Family Album — 7

2011-11-02T05:46:00.000+11:00

Nathaniel Jones, Principal of Moore College from 1897 until 1911, must be included in any reckoning of those who shaped contemporary Sydney Anglicanism. He influenced a generation of Sydney clergy during his fourteen years as principal of the college. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Katoomba Christian Convention. It would be Jones’ men who would promote Howard Mowll for Archbishop in 1933.

Jones was born in 1863 in the town of Oswestry in Shropshire, England. Though baptized as a child, he was rebaptized sometime around 1877 as a response to a genuine conversion to faith. He went on to study theology at Oxford (gaining a first class honours degree) and then to serve in the parish church in Wortley. His ordination to the priesthood would occur in Australia, however, where he had travelled on the advice of his doctors. For the next twenty-three years he would battle with a condition which would eventually reveal itself to be throat cancer.

Arriving in Melbourne in 1888, Jones served in a number of Melbourne parishes before becoming Principal of Perry Hall in Bendigo in 1894. Three years later he travelled to Sydney to take over the reins at Moore College following the death of Bernard Schleicher.

Nathaniel Jones brought to Moore College a passion for serious theological education. He immediately set about raising the academic standard at the College, preparing students for the Oxford and Cambridge Preliminary Examination for Holy Orders. He was concerned to give his students the theological resources necessary to meet the challenges of liberal theology, which was already being exported to Australia from England and from America. His students would be able to face these challenges with confidence based on a deep grounding in the Scriptures and a clear evangelical Anglican theology of the type being taught at this time at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford by Jones’ lifelong friend W. H. Griffith Thomas (who had also been born in Oswestry).

Almost every testimony about Jones emphasises the quality of his personal life as a man of God. His transparent walk with the Lord left its mark on people. The plaque erected by his students after his death described him as ‘a gifted teacher, an inspiring preacher, and a quiet holy man of God’. He brought to his task powerful convictions about the importance of personal holiness. Marcus Loane described him as ‘one who had turned the true Keswick teaching into daily life and habit’. However, he saw no tension between such personal piety and intellectual rigour. His preaching displayed the clarity which comes from deeply understanding his subject matter as well as the conviction and earnestness which rose from a personal walk with the Saviour who had redeemed him at such great cost.

Jones’ legacy was a determined evangelicalism, determined equally to live out the faith in quiet godliness and to resist the liberalism (a.k.a. modernism) that would seek a foothold in the diocese over the next two decades. It would be an evangelicalism which expected theological convictions to transform behaviour, to energise personal and organised group activity for the sake of the lost and preservation of the evangelical ethos of the diocese, and to be expressed with clarity and passion in biblical preaching. Leading clergymen of the next generation, men like H. S. Begbie, D. J. Knox, S. E. Langford Smith and R. B. Robinson — all Jones’ men — would keep this legacy alive and in turn make their own mark on the life of the diocese. And then their sons and daughters ... But that’s another story.

Postscript: One of the treasures buried deep in the Moore College library is a photograph of Nathaniel Jones with his students. Photographs in those days were carefully staged with everyone striking the most serious poses. But this photograph was most probably taken inadvertently, in-between the settled seriousness of the official shots with everyone in their academic gowns. It shows students falling about in laughter and the broadest grin on the face of the principal. For all his serious attention to learning and godliness, Nathaniel Jones knew his students, laughed with his students and loved them. And they loved him in return.

Why God became Man

2011-10-31T12:00:00.000+11:00

The title of this post is the translation of one of the most famous books in the history of Christian theology: Cur Deus Homo by Anselm of Canterbury. In it he expounded the biblical doctrines of Christ’s incarnation and atonement, demonstrating their fundamental connection. The one who died was God the Son become fully human. God the Son became fully human in order to die. The necessity of the incarnation arises from both God’s character of holy love and determined purpose to have human beings for himself even in the face of the monumental attack upon God and his character that is human sin.

Anselm’s account has certain well-ventilated weaknesses. The impact of his own medieval and feudal world is very apparent in the way he seeks to explain the mechanism by which this all works and the result is not entirely convincing. Nevertheless, this affirmation of a critical connection between the Son’s incarnation and atoning death is pretty much standard fare in Christian theology. The New Testament has a number of explicit statements about the reason for Christ’s coming that insist upon it. In more technical language we might speak about the way Christology (the doctrine of Christ’s person) and soteriology (the doctrine of Christ’s saving work) are inseparable. Yet they are more than inseparable: one makes little sense without the other. The Christ came to save; the only Saviour available to humankind is the Christ of Israel.

So take for example these statements:

‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’ (Mtt. 9:13)
‘Let us go to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out’ (Mk 1:38)
‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mk 10:45)
‘I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!’ (Lk 12:49)
'The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost’ (Lk 19:10)
‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (Jn 1:14)
‘No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.’ (Jn 1:18)
‘For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure’ (Jn 3:34)
‘... For the works the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.’ (Jn 5:36)
‘For judgement I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind’ (Jn 9:39)
‘... but I came that they may have life and have it abundantly’ (Jn 10:10)
‘And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (Jn 17:3)
‘So then, the Law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith’ (Gal. 3:24)
‘The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners ...’ (1 Tim. 1:15)
‘... not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel ...’ (2 Tim. 1:9–10)
‘For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.’ (Heb. 2:10)
‘Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.’ (Heb. 2:14–15)
‘Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people’ (Heb. 2:17)
‘He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.’ (1 Pet. 1:20)
‘So Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.’ (Heb. 9:28)
‘And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world’ (1 Jn 4:14)

However, in more recent times some have proposed that the Son would have become one of us even without the Fall into sin and the subsequent reality of human guilt, corruption and bondage, each of these most eloquently expressed in the ever-present reality of death. Of course, hardly anyone would deny the incarnation is connected with the salvation of men and women in some sense. However, they would insist that this is but part of a larger purpose. The incarnation is an important corollary of the doctrine of creation and of Christian eschatology, not just the doctrine of salvation.

This perspective can and has been unfolded in slightly different forms. For some, the perfection of creation, which has been on view from the beginning, can only be achieved by the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. After all, all things were made through him and for him (Col. 1:15) and this is supremely demonstrated in the incarnation. Here is the ultimate affirmation of the creation which God has had in mind from the beginning. Precisely because it was created as a fit vehicle for the incarnation, God described all things in the beginning as 'very good' (Gen. 1:31).

Others have emphasised that salvation is a means to an end and not an end in itself. That end is fellowship, and intimate bond between God and his human creatures which consummates the original decision to breathe into this creature ‘the breath of life’ (Gen. 2:7). The incarnation has that end in mind: it is eschatologically oriented. God became man in order to bind himself to us and our human nature forever. This was always God’s intention, prior to and apart from the human fall into sin.

This idea, that the Son would have been incarnate anyway, is sometimes called 'supralapsarian Christology' or 'supralapsarian incarnationism'. While this line of the argument might sound fresh and innovative, it has a long pedigree that is not well known. A fascinating recent book by Edwin Chr. van Driel entitled Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) has brought that pedigree to light once more.

Van Driel is willing to admit that this view is a minority position in Western theology, though he points out that it has experienced something of a resurgence in nineteenth and twentieth century theology. Here is a summary of some of the key advocates in the history of this doctrine as he presents it:

Rupert of Deutz (1075–1129): in his De voluntate Dei (1115) he apparently set up the basic form of the question ‘whether the Son of God [...] would have become human or not even if sin had not intervened’ (van Driel, pp. 171–172)

Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253): in his De Cessatione Legalium (1231) he argued that it is a greater good for creation to be a unity than to be deprived of unity; yet creation is unable to function as its own unifier and no creature has unity with the Creator, which is necessary for creation’s unity to be complete; however the hypostatic union of the divine and human natures enables the desired unity. (van Driel, p. 135)

Duns Scotus (1266–1308): in his Ordinatio he insisted that Christ’s election has priority over ours and since election is supralapsarian, so too is the incarnation. (van Driel, p. 173)

Andreas Osiander (1496–1552): in fact wrote an entire theological treatise entitled An filius Dei fuerit incarnandus, si peccatum non introivisset in mundum (That the Son of God would have become incarnate, if sin had not entered the world, 1550). (van Driel, p. 173)

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834): in his Der Christliche Glaube (1830 edn) he argued that because ‘absolute dependence of humans on God implies a non-reciprocal relationship between God and creation, the incarnation cannot be conceived as the divine response to human sin. And since everything falls within the scope of divine causality, including sin’, sin should not be construed as opposition to the divine initiative but as part of it. (van Driel, p. 31).

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901): in his Christus Consummator (1906) he argued that since we are created to carry the image of God, the fitness and necessity of the incarnation exists from the moment when man was made. (van Driel, p. 133)

Isaak Dorner (1809–1884): in his System der Christliche Glaubenslehre (1879) he advanced three arguments for the position, the most cogent of which is that the goal of creation is ‘a rich life of love’ (God is a ‘lover of love’ amor amoris). ‘The incarnate One is not an end in itself but a means by which the kingdom of love is ushered in—just as human beings are not ends in themselves but are created as instruments by which the kingdom is realized.’ (van Driel, p. 60)

Karl Barth (1886–1968): in volume 2 part 2 of his Church Dogmatics (1942) Barth’s treatment of the subject arises out of his understanding of election in Christ — 'the primal decision in Jesus Christ’: ‘God determined within himself ... that the goal and meaning of all his dealing with the as yet non-existent universe should be the fact that in his Son he would be gracious toward man, uniting himself with him’ (CD II/2, 101) (van Driel, p. 64)

Karl Rahner (1904–1984): in his ‘On the theology of the Incarnation’ (1966), and elsewhere, he argued for what others called a necessitarian account of the incarnation: the incarnation is the supreme case of the total actualization of human reality; the incarnation is the necessary fulfilment of God’s intention in creating human beings. (Rahner is mentioned but his ideas are not outlined by van Driel p. 175)

So this idea is not a new one. Though ‘a minority report in Western theology’, it has received some rather high powered support (one could apparently add Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, Alexander Comrie and, unfortunately, Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinus, so van Driel pp. 172–3). It has also encountered strong opposition, not least from Bonaventure, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and Turretin.

Edwin van Driel’s own proposal builds on Barth’s in particular and ‘turns on two arguments’:

first, an argument to the effect that the incarnation is the richest gift God can give creation, and second, an argument that God’s commitment to creation is so strong that God will give it the richest gift God can give. (p. 143)

As he unfolds these arguments he insists he is not being speculative, asking what would have happened if we had not sinned. Instead, his focus is on ‘the incarnation as it happened’:

... my point is that the incarnation as it happened gives us so much, is so rich in gifts of divine friendship and intimacy, that it cannot be explained as only a divine countermeasure against sin. (p. 164)

van Driel develops his arguments in a threefold way:

‘The eschaton is not the restoration of the proton. In the eschaton there is an abundance, a richness in intimacy with God and in human transformation that the proton did not know. In Christ we gain more than we lost in Adam ... The richness of the eschaton ... is not contingent upon sin. And since Christ is the embodiment of the abundance of eschatological life, neither is the incarnation contingent upon sin.’ (pp. 150–151)
‘... if the eschatological goal of humanity is to enjoy God in the beatific vision, this vision should not be understood purely in terms of intellectual cognition but should also imply sensory perception. However, this can only take place if God makes Godself present in bodily form.’ (p. 156)
God’s ultimate goal is to be a friend of his creatures and friendship involves making oneself available to another. ‘This friendship is not based on the divine desire to reconcile estranged humanity; it is the other way around—the divine desire to reconcile estranged humanity is based on, and therefore logically follows, divine friendship. Therefore, if the incarnation is the fullest expression of this divine friendship, the incarnation also logically does not follow human estrangement and divine reconciliation, but precedes it ...’ (p. 162)

van Driel’s book is full of stimulating insights. He certainly makes the case for a long and distinguished pedigree for these ideas. There is a coherent logic which drives his own presentation. Furthermore, his concern for the widest possible relevance of the incarnation is everywhere apparent.

For all of this, though, I do not yet find the idea persuasive, especially in light of the purpose statements in the New Testament itself, a number of which I have outlined earlier. Of course salvation needs to be understood in the fullest sense — it is not just about the forgiveness of my sins but also about the restoration of all things, the reordering of the entire creation. Of course this salvation also reveals God’s purposes and establishes God’s rule. But neither of these elements (revelation or rule) can be isolated from the person and work of Jesus Christ as the Saviour. Salvation is not just one element alongside these others either. At the centre of the New Testament’s explanation of the purpose of the incarnation lies this great truth: the eternal Son, in all respects equal to the Father, ‘made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil. 2:7–8)

The search to anchor the incarnation in God’s original purpose and so avoid any suggestion that this is ‘Plan B’ is entirely right and proper. So too the concern to avoid any suggestion that human sin is integral to God’s purposes. Such a suggestion would make plausible an argument that God should be regarded as the author of sin. Perhaps most importantly, van Driel and others helpfully force us to think more deeply about how all things were created through him and for him (Col. 1:15).

However, a theology disciplined by the Scriptures, determined to give centre place to God’s revelation of himself and his purposes rather than perfectly reasonable human inferences, needs to know when to be silent as well as when to speak. We certainly need not conform to van Driel’s caricature of what he calls ‘infralapsarian logic’ — ‘that the believers’s relationship to [Christ] is purely functional’ (p. 165) — though we can and must insist that the glory of the Son and the enjoyment of every spiritual blessing in Christ is God’s great eternal purpose. (Perhaps some of the impetus for the supralapsarian view comes from a reluctance to distinguish between the work of the Son qua Son and the work of the incarnate Son, the Christ of Israel and Saviour of the world [Jn 4:42].) What we do need to do is avoid inappropriate speculation.

I find more to agree with in John Calvin (1509–1564), who spoke in the strongest terms of Christ’s mediatorship as a real necessity which is not contingent upon sin (we can only ever come to God through Christ), yet resisted any suggestion that the incarnation could be considered apart from its relation to human sin (Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners). As is well known, he stood opposed to any theological speculation, especially that which took the student further and away from the teaching of Scripture.

As he said in the Institutes (1559):

He who ponders on these matters with the diligent attention they require will readily have done with the vague speculations that captivate the frivolous and the seekers after novelty. One such speculation is that Christ would still have become man even if no means of redeeming mankind had been needed. Of course I admit that in the original order of creation and the unfallen state of nature Christ was set over angels and men as their Head. Paul for this reason calls him ‘the first born of all creation’ [Col. 1:15] But since all Scripture proclaims that to become our Redeemer he was clothed with flesh, it is too presumptuous to imagine another reason or another end. We well know why Christ was promised from the beginning: to restore the fallen world and to succor lost men. (Institutes, II.xii.4)

Calvin does not so much deny the supralapsarian approach as insist it is unnecessarily speculative.

Enticing as it sounds, as world-affirming as it sounds, to suggest the incarnation has a more important focus than the salvation of men and women is unconvincing, the enthusiasm of modern theologians notwithstanding. And it raises other questions, not least among them why such a focus on salvation is considered insufficient. Does it also expose a problem with the larger theological systems which seem to make such a conclusion inevitable?

Debating the nature of systematic theology

2011-10-28T17:34:00.001+11:00

Once again a prolonged absence can only be explained by my preoccupation with other responsibilities. I apologise to those who were expecting me to keep up a constant flow of new material. I wish I had been able to meet those expectations. However, I've now given the blog a fresh look (thanks to the new 'Dynamic View' feature of Blogger.com) and my hope is now to return to posting at least once a week. I realise that I have a number of series to complete but there are always new things to add as well.

One of the big questions which keeps bubbling to the surface in the circles in which I move, is the nature of a biblical systematic theology. How prominent should the Bible be in our theologising? How do we keep systematic theology from becoming little more than historical theology? What exactly do we mean by systematic theology? Of course however we answer those questions there must be room for the variety that stems from our different personalities and backgrounds. But since most of my friends are concerned to be clearly and unambiguously biblical in their theologising, you might expect some family resemblances.

I hope to return to these questions in a few weeks' time. However, I was fascinated to discover a controversy over just this subject in the early years of the University of Oxford. A recent book by Ulrich Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology (Washington: Catholic University of America, 2010) drew my attention to a controversy in the years 1313–1317 over a matter of principle: 'what should have priority in university theology, the Sentences [of Peter the Lombard] or the Bible?' (pp. 126–7). The mendicant orders who had a long association with the universities were determined to preserve the traditional emphasis on the teaching of the Bible. New additions to the theology faculty were bringing a different emphasis from the universities of Paris and Bologna.

Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253) had been a staunch advocate of the priority of the biblical text in theological education. He was convinced that 'the Bible and theology (as sacra pagina) are still one. Perhaps even stronger still, Roger Bacon (1220–1292) emphasised that the real concern of theologians is 'circa textum sacrum sciendum' ['understanding the sacred text']. (p. 127) He railed against the move towards focussing on questions, as the more recent theological treatises had most clearly done. He apparently considered compiling theological questions as 'in principle a betrayal of theology as scriptural exegesis' (p. 128) The innovation of the Parisians, to concentrate on the summa of a particular magister, most often the Sentences, he denounced as sin.

Leinsle's conclusion is salutary:

This biblical reaction to the situation in Paris and Bologna came too late, however, to do anything about the decline in biblical theology and the rise of the questions and commentaries on the Sentences. (p. 129)

So it seems debates about the place of Scripture in the practice of systematic theology, and what is implied in our answer to that question about the nature of systematic theology itself, have a very long pedigree.

The danger of labels (and of trying to enlarge them)

2011-09-22T22:44:00.003+10:00

Labels can be dangerously misleading. Consumer advocates insist labels must be policed. They must accurately describe the product and not trade in ambiguity as a way of making outrageous claims. ‘Organic’ or ‘Fat-free’ or ‘No artificial additives’ must mean what they say.

One of the problems with labels is that when they begin to succeed everyone wants to claim them. For a while everyone wanted the big red tick of the Heart Foundation. Manufacturers stretched the truth in order to gain the ‘Made in Australia’ logo. A label or logo originally intended to make a clear differentiation — between cardiac healthy foods and the rest, between goods manufactured and owned by Australians in Australia as opposed to imported or partly imported goods — was claimed by some on the other side of the differentiation. They wanted to be included under the label without conforming to the original definition. And so the meaning of the ‘Made in Australia’ logo was stretched so far that it was almost meaningless. New labels needed to be invented to do what was intended at the beginning.

In the field of theology and church life labels are almost inevitable, unhelpful and vulnerable all at the same time. Martin Luther famously went into a rage when those who endorsed the theological reforms he had been advocating were labelled ‘Martinists’. Yet ‘Lutheran’ became a shorthand way of distinguishing the theological system associated with Luther and Melanchthon from the ‘Reformed’ system associated with Zwingli and Bullinger and Calvin. ‘Anglican’ marked out recognisable doctrinal and ecclesiastical territory in the beginning — shunning Catholicism on the one side and the Anabaptists on the other, with debts to both the Lutherans and the Reformed. Most notorious of all, perhaps, ‘evangelical’ started out as the descriptor embraced by Luther for the new theology — its origins and shape were tied to the evangel, the gospel. Its classic use was in the eighteenth century, when it differentiated those concerned with conversion, preaching and the transformed life from those whose commitments were more institutional or sacerdotal. More recently, ‘complementarian’ and ‘egalitarian’ represented clearly defined positions on the question of gender roles, especially when it comes to the exercise of Christian ministry (including the propriety or otherwise of women preaching to mixed congregations of men and women).

Theological labels can be unhelpful because they often elevate incidentals at the expense of primary commitments. The Southern Baptists are apparently considering a change of name which will not be so ‘regional’ and will ‘maximise our effectiveness in reaching North America for Jesus Christ in the 21st century’ (Christian Post, Sept. 20 2011). Labels can also be used inappropriately as a way of distancing ourselves from others with whom we have differences of opinion. Of course such differentiation is not always inappropriate, but sometimes in the highly charged and politically overlaid arena of theological discussion, labelling ourselves or others can simply be an expression of a partisan spirit or sheer ungodliness. We might not be able to do without theological and ecclesiastical labels but we do not always use them with care either.

Each of these labels has been vulnerable to distortion over time, especially when they begin to ride a wave of popularity or if they are seen as the self-descriptors of those with power and influence. In the wake of Time Magazine’s ‘Year of the Evangelical’, almost everyone, it seemed, wanted to call themselves an evangelical in America in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. Men and women who would never endorse the solas of the Reformation described themselves as ‘evangelical’. Time and again over the last thirty years there have been calls to abandon the label altogether because those claiming it are so diverse as to render it meaningless.

A personal anecdote might help here. My Christian upbringing has taken place in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, which unambiguously delights in the label ‘evangelical’. With our debts to the Clapham Sect, to men mentored by Charles Simeon and those who came after him, to J. C. Ryle and W. H. Griffith Thomas, to Billy Graham and John Stott and Jim Packer (not to mention the home-grown leaders who have served us over the past two hundred years), we know exactly what we mean by the word. Yet when in my 30s I travelled across the world to study, I was a little taken back to find that the evangelicalism I’d grown up with was known in the U.K. as ‘conservative evangelicalism’. Later, one English theologian described it as ‘highly conservative evangelicalism’. And with each added adjective two things were happening — the idea of a definable set of theological commitments was replaced with the image of a spectrum of opinions and what had once been universally recognised as the central commitments were moved from the centre out on to one edge of that spectrum.

What once was clear over time can become rather hazy and ill-defined, and it is not at all surprising that the calls come to abandon the terminology altogether. Reformed theology/Evangelicalism/ Complementarianism — all these, we are now told, admit of a range of opinions: conservative and liberal, hard and soft, thick and thin. And yet at one time the opinions some claim are entirely acceptable and part of a legitimate variety within the family were most decidedly labelled unreformed not reformed, liberal not evangelical, or egalitarian not complementarian. The larger field of reference allows some who want to be known as reformed while holding unreformed theological convictions to do so, and the same is true of the much looser use of ‘evangelical’ and ‘complementarian’ too.

Thankfully there is no ‘theological consumer watchdog’ to police the use of theological and ecclesiastical labels. However, it would help our interaction with each other if we were bold and honest enough to be transparent in the way we use them and then to be gracious towards those with whom we disagree.

Is Sydney Anglicanism really Anglican in any meaningful sense?

2011-09-08T15:10:00.000+10:00

My colleague Michael Jensen has posted an excellent article on this question. It is definitely worth reading, especially since the question is repeatedly asked by some both inside and outside the diocese. Well done, Michael! Read his post here.

With thanks for John Stott

2011-07-30T07:59:00.003+10:00

I have elsewhere posted a tribute to John Stott on behalf of the ACL and its Council (read it here). However, I thought that it might be important to post here my extensive personal debt to this godly and faithful servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. After all, though he made a global impact as he taught the Bible and his contribution was critical in the resurgence of evangelical theology in the twentieth century, the story of his ministry is also the story of individuals whose lives were enriched and Christian faith emboldened by his example and his teaching.

In my early years as a Christian I read a number of John Stott's pamphlets and brief booklets on Christian discipleship. However, my first more extensive exposure to his teaching ministry came when, as preparation for my confirmation in Christ Church Blacktown in 1977, the curate of the day took me through John Stott's book Your Confirmation, chapter by chapter. Only a couple of years afterwards, I was encouraged to go to Blacktown Civic Centre to hear the man himself speak on life as a Christian in the modern world. With all the boldness of youth, I rushed to speak to him after the address, not least to thank him for his contribution in setting firm evangelical foundations for my own life and ministry. As he no doubt did countless times, he bore with this young man's exhuberance and encouraged me to continue on the road.

In the years that followed I heard him speak a number of times, at Moore College and in other venues during his visits to Sydney. What always impressed me was the clarity of his biblical expositions, their disarming simplicity and their rich application to everyday life as a follower of Jesus Christ. I did not know then his challenge to young pastors to take the text to the world by understanding both well — to read carefully their Bibles and the newspapers. Yet it was obvious that he understood the world into which he preached; he understood the real struggles of life as a Christian; and above all he understood and rejoiced in the word which God addresses to his people.

John Stott was a remarkable man. When all is said and done he was a simple man with a simple life goal: to serve the Lord who rescued him at such cost and claimed him as his own. His astonishing intellectual gifts, his ceaseless energy, the resources that gathered around him — everything was directed towards Christ's service. He had a large, global vision, always looking for ways to facilitate the spread of the gospel all over the world. He began ministries that profoundly transformed the landscape (witness today's All Souls Langham Place, the Langham Partnership, Lausanne, and many others). And yet at the heart of it all was a simple personal faith. No one who spent time with him failed to be influenced by him.

When I eventually travelled to England for further study in the 1990s, John Stott was already retired but still busy encouraging, preaching and writing. I remember him attending the first conference a few of us organised to encourage those with the gifts to consider theological education as an avenue of Christian service. We met at Oak Hill College in London in 1997. He warmly applauded the initiative, encouraged each of us in turn and gave advice about how the vision might be expanded and realised. It quickly became apparent why so many of the evangelical leaders in Britain and elsewhere speak of him as 'Uncle John'.

Later still we corresponded after I had written a review of one of his books and sent him a copy out of courtesy. It was a warm and encouraging letter which expressed gratitude for the review and gently chided me with 'your comments about the charismatic movement are typically Sydney, if I may say'. He remained gracious even in debate.

I went alongside Michael Hill to visit John in his flat in 2001. We were to talk with him and others about the opportunities for training two-thirds world emerging leaders in Australia as well as Europe and America. It was obvious immediately that he was the visionary in the room. He saw the possibilities where others only saw obstacles. The most positive aspect of the entire meeting was the open-armed and open-hearted welcome we received from him. He knew, understood and appreciated the work of Moore College and the Diocese of Sydney.

The last time I saw him was a year ago, in his retirement home to the South of London. His health was obviously failing but his mind was as sharp as ever. His priorities were still very obviously gospel integrity and gospel ministry. His commitment to Christ and his word had not diminished in the slightest. He took time to encourage each one of us who came to see him. It was clear yet again that he was positively disposed towards the Diocese of Sydney and had a genuinely personal interest in its archbishop, Peter Jensen.

His death has made me realise afresh that I've been reading John Stott all my Christian life. The Cross of Christ is still my favourite among his books, but My Confirmation, as I have said, shaped me at a very significant stage of my development. Tapes of his sermons, books and articles written by him have been helpful in the years that followed. I've read his last few books with particular interest. They are the lasting testaments of an elder statesman, deceptively simple and yet rich in biblical truth and gospel wisdom.

I haven't always agreed with everything John Stott has written, but none of those disagreements really seem to matter in the context of a long life of faithful service to his Lord and mine. I remain grateful for the leadership he exercised — leadership that arose explicitly from his faithful exposition of the word of God rather than from the baptism of secular business theory. I remain grateful for the model of what Paul meant when he spoke of 'a worker who doesn't need to be ashamed, correctly teaching the word of truth' (2 Tim 2:15). I remain grateful for his single-minded determination to see Christ honoured in the churches and throughout the world. And I remain grateful for his example of tenacity laced with courtesy — a disciple of Christ who would not budge from biblical truth and yet treated everyone, even those with whom he disagreed, as human beings created in God's image, who need to hear God's truth and be transformed by it.

God has been very kind in giving John Stott to the world of the twentieth and twenty-first century. I, together with countless others, owe him an enormous debt, not least in encouraging, resourcing and exemplifying the expository preaching which nourished, and still nourishes, my own walk with the Lord.

Another attack upon Sydney Anglicanism

2011-07-29T10:11:00.006+10:00

Muriel Porter has been attacking Sydney Anglicans for years. In synods and committees and in print, she has vociferously opposed the position of the Diocese of Sydney on a whole range of issues. Never very far from the surface, though, is her anger at the diocese's attitude towards women priests and bishops. She has campaigned on the other side of this debate with vigour for more than twenty-five years. She takes no prisoners and has been willing to use whatever means might be at her disposal to further her cause and, as even those who agree with her in principle have often recognised, to vilify those who, for whatever reason, disagree with her.

In 2006 she produced a rather more extended attack on Sydney theology and practice entitled The New Puritans: The Rise of Fundamentalism in the Anglican Church (Melbourne University Press). The review of that book in Melbourne's The Age (18/03/06) described it as 'a little breathless and over the top'. Though it presented itself as a serious piece of scholarship (published by a university press, no less) it was really just the latest salvo in a propaganda war. She presented the theological commitments of the diocese as eccentric and extreme, and sought an analogy in the popular parody of Puritanism as joyless, legalistic and a threat to Anglican 'moderation'. Here was a phenomenon that any thinking person would want to resist and denounce in the strongest possible terms.

In 2011 The New Puritans has been revised and brought up to date with a new title: Sydney Anglicans and the Threat to World Anglicanism: The Sydney Experiment. As with the earlier volume, Muriel Porter acknowledges quite openly that she is 'obviously not able to report on Sydney objectively and evenhandedly' (xv). The acknowledgement was unnecessary. Even without it, the highly polemical nature of the book — and a significant degree of distortion that inevitably arises from that — is obvious. The book is littered with unsubstantiated assertions introduced with words such as 'Some have suggested ...' (e.g. pp. 70, 107), 'I suspect the real reason ...' (e.g. p. 71, 75) and 'Perhaps ...' (e.g. p. 159) (The title of the book itself is a giveaway of course, but the final titles of books are sometimes the work of the publishers rather than the author.) Unfortunately, it is also littered with factual error, half-truth and the attribution of false or hidden motives to those with whom she disagrees. Sydney Anglicans might think they are taking a stand on the teaching of Scripture but in reality, she repeatedly asserts, their motivation is much more sinister.

The book is organised around the premise that Sydney's experiment with radical Protestantism, sourced in the theology of a maverick principal of Moore College, Broughton Knox, and given full expression in the episcopate of his student, Peter Jensen, represents a serious threat to faithful Anglicanism in both Australia and throughout the world. In order to support this contention, Porter needs to recast the doctrinal, ethical and ecclesiastical innovations of the past thirty years in global Anglicanism (women's ordination, revised attitudes on divorce, acceptance of homosexuality, the rejection of exclusive claims about Jesus and salvation, and a rejection of the thoroughgoing truthfulness and reliability of the Bible) as faithful discipleship and the decisions of Sydney's synod and archbishops (not to mention the teaching at Moore College) as aberrant, unAnglican and ultimately a misuse of Scripture.

A clear instance of how she does this is found quite early on in the book:

The 'uniqueness of Jesus' is something that Sydney Anglicans — along with other conservative Christians — are passionate about. Jesus' redemptive death on the Cross, they maintain, only redeems those who explicitly and consciously make a faith commitment to him. The classical Christian position is rather more nuanced: Redemption is only through Jesus, yes, but that does not require explicit faith in him, but rather is effective wherever God's love evokes a response. (22)

On what definition of the 'classical Christian position' could this be true? Is it what Thomas Cranmer taught and embodied in the Articles, the Homilies and the Book of Common Prayer? Can it be found anywhere in the church fathers? Is it consistent with the New Testament? However, for Porter, only a radically conservative Christian would raise such questions. When it comes to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, in particular, she wonders why anyone would make them a 'yardstick of orthodoxy' (23).

To my mind the Articles are a quaintly-worded, seriously limited summary of Anglican understandings of faith and doctrine, scarcely relevant to modern Australian life. (24)

The book takes aim at a number of targets within Sydney, including Moore College, AFES, and the ACL but it returns again and again to attack Peter Jensen, and, as the source of the distinctive and in her mind aberrant theological stance of the diocese, Broughton Knox. (Porter's chief complaint against Knox is, unsurprisingly, his tenacious opposition to the ordination of women. As the book draws to a conclusion, the Sydney experiment is relabelled 'the Knox experiment, 163.) An interesting array of sources can be found in the footnotes, but it is rather odd that at some points (e.g. pages 41 and 42) summaries of positions are taken from comments and published work by implacable opponents of Sydney: Duncan Reid from Melbourne provides a summary of Peter Jensen's thinking on revelation and he and Peter Carnley (a previous Archbishop of Perth) provide a summary of Broughton Knox's views. More than odd is the rehearsal of Kevin Giles' widely discredited attack on the theology of the diocese and its leadership. Even Peter Carnley's ludicrous suggestion that T. C. Hammond was Arian is given a re-run (116–7) (one would have thought that fabrication had been put to bed by David Wright's courteous yet telling rebuttal in the St Mark's Review several years ago).

It is entirely unsurprising that in her treatment of the relationship between the Diocese of Sydney and the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia, Sydney is repeatedly cast in the role of the spoiler, who prevents a united and longsuffering majority in the national church from faithfully exercising the ministry God has entrusted to them. The unilateral action of Dowling and Carnley with regard to the ordination of women is presented as a courageous attempt to bring faithfulness and justice in the face of Sydney's intransigence. The use of the Appellate Tribunal to find a way to consecrate women bishops in the wake of repeated failure to persuade the requisite majority of the General Synod that this should be authorised, is also recast as positive, healthy and necessary. The insistence by Sydney that the machinery of the Anglican Church of Australia, including the Primate, act within the expectations of Constitution is considered unreasonable and that constitution itself is described as 'very limited' (78). Porter is willing to suggest that instead of the constitution as it exists, it may have been 'wiser to create a national church that did not include Sydney' (48).

An Australian church without Sydney, I believe, would have released enormous energy for growth and renewal in the rest of the dioceses, freed from Sydney's relentless negative impact. (48)

No mention is made of the way on successive occasions the Diocese of Sydney has been openly and vehemently attacked on the floor of the General Synod. Unsurprisingly, there is no mention of the move in 2007 to avoid voting on a motion thanking God for his provision of free salvation in Christ by 'moving the previous question'. Many newcomers to General Synod were distressed by this inability to unite around central gospel truths. No mention is made of the way in which, without consultation with the dioceses who finance the General Synod by their assessments, the administration of the General Synod has been enlarged and the role of the Primate expanded.

Porter's characterisation of the role of Sydney in the wider Anglican Communion is equally innovative. Lambeth 1998, and in particular its motion affirming biblical teaching on human sexuality and rejecting homosexuality as 'incompatible with Scripture', was the result of the conference being 'shanghaied by an astonishingly well-organized and vocal anti-gay lobby' (53). Of the alliance forged between 'first-world conservatives' and 'third world conservatives' (53), she asks

Is it possible that backroom deals were also done to forge the winning alliance between conservative first-world leaders and their third-world friends? One deal might have been: 'Don't hassle us about polygamy, and we will back you on homosexuality.' (54)

GAFCON 2008 is almost inevitably painted in a similar light, and she is clearly no fan of the Jerusalem Declaration. She is troubled by Peter Jensen's role in the movement (60-63). Nevertheless, in her view, the continuing problem transcends both the Declaration produced at GAFCON and its current leadership.

It is not the Declaration that is the problem for the future of the Anglican Communion. Rather, it is the goals of FCA [the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which sprang out of GAFCON] that are quite confronting. There are two goals — the first is 'missional', the second is a 'consequence', as the online document describes it. The first goal, to preach the biblical gospel, includes defending 'the gospel and the people of God against their spiritual adversaries, notably the revisionist theology which has become so prevalent in the West'. The second is 'to provide aid to those faithful Anglicans who have been forced to disaffiliate from their original spiritual homes by false teaching and practice'. The FCA then is a political movement designed to perpetuate and even foster division across the Anglican Communion. (64)

There is no comment about the way in which faithful men and women have been hounded from their churches for refusing to abandon the historic teaching of the Anglican church. The scandalous use of the legacy of previous generations of Christians to prosecute those who object to the decsions of the hierarchy of The Episcopal Church is passed over in silence. No mention either of the repeated and unheeded warnings sounded by orthodox Christians around the world prior to, during and after the events which have proven to be a catalyst for such decisive action.

Porter acknowledges that Sydney Anglicans would argue that they are following the teaching of Scripture in their opposition to innovations such as the endorsement of homosexual behaviour. However, she does not believe them.

So biblical authority alone seems unlikely to be the reason why homosexuality has become the 'line in the sand' in world Anglicanism. I suspect it is respectable window-dressing for the exercise of blatant power politics. (75)

However, for all the forays into other issues — and the Sydney discussion of lay administration also gets an extended treatment (97-110: its purpose is, according to Porter, 'to lay the symbolic axe finally and decisively to the root of traditional church order' as 'the culmination of Sydney's relentless drive for Puritan purity' (109))— the real issue to which Porter returns in every chapter is the difference she has with the decisions of Sydney with regard to women's ministry. (In addition to dominating every other chapter, the issue is the sole focus of chapter six.)

If the denial of full equality to women in the church is Sydney Diocese's 'great cause' [really?], then the full equality of women in church leadership at every level is my 'great cause', a Gospel imperative that I believe cannot be denied. (134)

She ridicules the complementarian position without, it seems, ever understanding it. She suggests that 'the slogan "equal but different" sounds close to one of the descriptions of the place of women in Islam: not inferior, just different' (125). She cannot see how submission and equality can coexist.

And what about the 'difference' they claim? This seems to be a matter of 'distinctive roles', though that is not spelt out other than the opaque, nonsensical terminology of 'loving, self-denying, humble leadership' for men and 'intelligent willing submission within marriage' for women. It is not apparent just what loving leadership means in this context, let alone intelligent and willing submission. It is a rhetoric that belongs to an earlier age ... (126)

It is often when addressing this issue that the book is most disappointing. She repeats comments by others which even she has to admit were and are inappropriate.

A former Australian Primate, Peter Carnley, speaking in the 1987 General Synod debate on women priests, described opposition to women clergy as as much 'psycho-spiritual' as theological. He said he had a 'funny feeling' it was psycho-spiritual because such deep emotions were obviously stirred by the debate. He suggested that fear of dominance by women may well be involved. The absence of father-figures during World War II may have left many men then in power in the church with a hostility to women, a result of their mothers' strong presence in early childhood. Had too many mothers supervised their sons' baths for too long? he asked. His comments were not well received! But though the point was perhaps not appropriate as a debating tactic, it may well have had some substance. (114)

The inclusion of these inappropriate remarks by a trenchant critic of Sydney is unsurprising in the end. In an earlier chapter Porter herself suggests the early history of the colony, and later the dominance of women in the perfectionist movement, may be in some large measure responsible for the peculiar stance of Sydney on this issue (chapter 3).

Once again Porter questions the appeal to the plain teaching of Scripture in support of the decisions taken by successive Sydney synods on this issue. She repeatedly points to other interpretations of biblical passages cited, interpretations put forward even by some evangelical scholars, as evidence that Sydney's position is untenable (e.g. 65, 71, 73). This completely ignores other interpretations of precisely this phenomenon: there may be other reasons for a plurality of interpretations, and these need not be indicative of ambiguity or obscurity in the biblical text. Just because a variety of interpretations currently circulate in Christian circles does not mean they should. Not all interpretations of Scripture are valid interpretations of Scripture. All interpretations need to be tested by their faithfulness to the text in question in its context and according to its nature as the written word of God (and undoubtedly this goes for the interpretation or reading adopted in Sydney as much as any other).

Muriel Porter believes the Sydney experiment is faltering. The financial crisis and the absence of a recognised successor to Peter Jensen provide, from her perspective, a sliver of hope that Sydney will abandon its radicalism and join the rest of the Anglican Communion in a bright new future. She declares herself 'hopeful that in time the traditional Anglican penchant for moderation will prevail in Sydney' (164). Evangelicals in Sydney and elsewhere hope for something quite different.

There is very little that is new in this book and the narrative Muriel Porter seeks to relate is undoubtedly as onesided as she acknowledges it to be. She is a determined advocate of her own views and a powerful polemicist. Sadly, what she has not given us in these pages is an accurate picture of the Diocese of Sydney or of World Anglicanism. What she casts as a threat many others around the world would welcome as a beacon of hope.

An apology to all readers of this blog

2011-05-31T17:52:00.002+10:00

My apologies for the infrequency of my posting to this blog over the past few weeks. A particularly heavy teaching load (well, a particularly heavy load of new material to prepare anyway) has kept me occupied, amongst other things. Unfortunately, things aren’t likely to get much better in the near future. I will do what I can, but on 25 June I leave with the family for 10 weeks of Long Service Leave (D.V.) — a wonderful part of Australian employment law that provides a certain amount of paid leave for those who have worked with the same employer for 10 years (accruing additional amounts of paid leave every five years thereafter).

This year I have been teaching at Moore College for 20 years and it is 24 years since I was ordained in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney. It has been a wonderful privilege given graciously by our heavenly Father. I never cease to be astounded that he is willing to use people like us (weak, fallible, and deeply compromised by sin) to fulfil his purposes. The amazing blessings of the forgiveness of sins, of justification and adoption, all won by Christ when he bore our sin, exhausted its consequences and triumphed over all that stands against us, continues to take my breath away. I marvel that for 37 years or so I have been a disciple of Jesus Christ, made so by his design.

So, the Long Service Leave will be an opportunity to rejoice with those God has given to be closest to me: Kathryn and our four adorable girls (Elizabeth, Anna, Rachel and Mary). We plan to spend most of the time at our church in Oxford: St Ebbes — a place very special to Kathryn and me. I might catch a moment to post something along the way and I hope to do some more posting before we leave in just under four weeks’ time. But I thought I owed those who read this blog an explanation of why the action has slowed somewhat and will be slow for a little while yet. But when September comes ....

Just for fun, I’ve attached a photograph of me with the man who confirmed me when he was Bishop in Parramatta, ordained me when he was Archbishop of Sydney and who continues to inspire me as a teacher of the Bible: Donald William Bradley Robinson. This is all the more appropriate because next week I have to speak on the Knox-Robinson doctrine of the church and explain why the attempt of Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox to expound the Bible’s teaching still has great relevance for Christians (and particularly Anglican Christians) today.

The Sydney Family Album — 6

2011-05-30T22:30:00.002+10:00

The sixth post in this series comes from Guest Blogger Peter Bolt.

Thomas Moore came to Australia from England at the age of thirty. Until recently, little was known of Moore's origins. In 2005 some of his personal papers have enabled the discovery that he grew up in Northumberland, England, in the coastal village of Lesbury. Here the young Thomas would have had seafaring and shipbuilding as part of his everyday life. Many a young man was inspired to go to sea as news came to England of the discoveries of that great adventurer, Captain James Cook. Perhaps Thomas was one of them.

For when Thomas Moore first arrived in Australia on 26^th July 1792, he was the ship's carpenter on the brig, Britannia. This vessel brought much needed supplies to the almost starving infant colony. She also held a three-year licence from the East India Company to fish in the local waters. Captain Cook had reported abundant seals at Dusky Bay in New Zealand, and her master and part owner, Captain William Raven, was keen to make some profit from their loss. But on the eve of her departure from Port Jackson, the Britannia was commissioned by the officers of the New South Wales Corps for a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope for further supplies. Undaunted from his first object, after leaving Sydney on 22^nd October 1792, Raven dropped off a sealing party at Dusky Bay, and then headed for the Cape.

Thomas Moore was left with the sealers. He build a house for their shelter, then began building a vessel in case Raven failed to return. Just ten months later, the Britannia appeared, and Moore's vessel was almost completed. They sailed away, leaving it on the stocks at Dusky Bay. Raven sang his carpenter's praises in government circles, almost certainly enhancing Moore's reputation as a shipbuilder. In 1796 he was appointed Master Boat Builder to the colony of New South Wales. In January of the following year, he married ex-convict Rachel Turner. His marriage also brought Thomas responsibilities for Andrew, whom Rachel had born to Surgeon John White. Thomas doted on them both until they predeceased him in 1838 and 1839.

In 1809, the year after he had been caught up in the famous 'Rum Rebellion' against Governor Bligh, Thomas Moore resigned his position at the Dock Yard. He had built a house on the George's River, which he called Moore Bank. 'Thomas Moore Park' in Chipping Norton now commemorates the site of his home, and its memory lives on in the suburb 'Moorebank’.

In November 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie arrived at Moore Bank. Thomas joined the Governor as he chose the site of a town, which he named Liverpool. Macquarie appointed Thomas Moore superintendent of public works at Liverpool. The development of this new town was under his charge for the next thirteen years.

Also in 1810, Macquarie appointed Thomas Moore as Liverpool's first resident magistrate, a duty he performed until the day he died.

Macquarie was also a great builder of churches, and St Luke's Liverpool was his second, built under Thomas Moore's supervision. When the foundation stone was laid (7^th April 1818), Thomas and Rachel were present, as well as Governor Macquarie's four-year-old son, Lachlan. Thomas and Rachel had been appointed guardians for young Lachlan, should anything happen to his parents while in the colony.

Thomas and Rachel were keenly involved with the Liverpool congregation from before the building existed, right through to when they were each buried from St Luke's. They were hospitable people, and their visitors were impressed by their devotion to Christ. In those days Liverpool was strongly associated with missionary work. Moore had an early interest in the Church Missionary Society's mission to New Zealand, and later actively supported the Wesleyan Auxiliary Missionary Society in the same region.

Thomas Moore's Christian devotion was also expressed in his widely-recognised generosity. In his Dockyard days he had dabbled in the seal-trade, and did a little trading of his own in ‘exotic goods’ such as tea and asian dressing gowns, acting as agent for ship’s master. He acquired property from Petersham to the Cook's river, then in Banks Town, Liverpool, Airds, and Sutton Forest, making him one of the early colony's major landholders. His cattle made him one of the largest suppliers of meat to the Government stores. He bred horses with a fine reputation. Even before he became a founding shareholder in the Bank of NSW and the ill-fated Bank of Australia, he was already a banker, issuing bills of exchange and mortgages. As he accumulated wealth, he also gave it out. He subscribed to a variety of charitable organizations, such as the Benevolent Society and the Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. He assisted orphans and the poor. He had an interest in Education, and his money assisted several fledgling schools. As the responsibility for church building moved from the government to the churches, Anglican, Methodist and Presbyterian churches — and possibly also Baptist and Roman Catholic— benefited from Moore's money.

On Christmas Eve, 1840, Thomas Moore died quietly in his home. His Will continued the generosity he had shown in his lifetime. He left money to the Anglican church and for the poor. Combining his long-term interest in education with his Christian faith, he also left his Liverpool home and a considerable proportion of his estate for the purposes of founding a college that would educate 'young men of the Protestant persuasion'. It took a further 15 years before three students and one teacher (William Macquarie Cowper) sat in Moore's Liverpool home —which had already been renamed 'Moore College’.

Conference celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version

2011-04-19T14:36:00.000+10:00

Since I've blogged a little lately about Bible translations, I thought I should advertise a conference being held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of one of the most enduring English translations. The King James Version of the Bible (also known as the Authorised Version) was first published in 1611 and is still used by many today. I am not sure how many of today's translations will still be in use in 2411!

The conference is being held at Moore College on 7 July 2011. Speakers include Professors Mark Strauss and Diane Speed, and Drs Greg Clarke, Michael Jensen and Greg Anderson.

Details and a registration page can be found here.

Can we be the world’s friend?

2011-04-18T06:30:00.000+10:00

It’s not unusual today to hear people insist that the Christian attitude to the world needs to change — more accurately that the attitude of some Christians to the world needs to change. They suggest that too often we’ve adopted an unnecessarily adversarial position vis a vis the world. We challenge the world whenever we can rather than seek opportunities to affirm the world. And the result, they suggest, is a widening gap that actually makes evangelism much harder. We are the nay-sayers. We’re always looking to pick a fight. We have nothing good or positive to say - or so it appears to many who listen to us. And so they stop listening to us.

The first thing to say is that there is abundant evidence that they have a point. There are people, Christian people, who seem to relish every polemical opportunity. They love to use military metaphors and cast themselves as the champions of truth in a world compromised in all its thinking by sin (mind you, military metaphors can’t always be out of place since the apostle Paul used them, Eph. 6:10–20; Phil. 2:25; 2 Tim. 2:3–4). Such belligerent Christianity most certainly does repel — the recent incident in which a copy of the Qur’an was burnt has outraged not just Muslims but many Christians and avowed atheists as well. It has rightly been condemned on all sides. What is more, such pugnaciousness is the very opposite of the compassion and concern modelled by the Lord Jesus himself. When he looked over Jerusalem he genuinely lamented its captivity to sin (Mtt 23:37–39; Lk 19:41–44). He had compassion on the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd (Mtt 9:36). He saw those outside the congregation of the faithful, not as enemies to be repelled, but as those who were lost and needed to be found. So when we offend because we are offensive, the problem lies with us and we can hardly claim the example of Jesus.

It is, of course, just as true that there are people who run as far as they can from every conflict. They avoiding saying ‘No’ at all costs. For them each new challenge is ‘not worth fighting’. We need to be ‘smarter’ than that, ‘more nuanced’ than that, they keep insisting. This is ‘not a hill to die on’ and for the sake of the things that really matter we are best remaining silent on this one. But then the next hill isn’t that one either and you soon are left wondering whether there is any hill, anywhere, worth dying on. Such people are not temperamentally suited to confrontation. They protest that traditional boundaries are too tightly drawn, that there is room for a ‘generous orthodoxy’. If only we were more conciliatory, if only we tolerated more diversity of opinion, if only we recognised that the world is not really against us and we do not have to be against it all the time either, we would win far more people.

Such people are keen to show the world that we are not obscurantist, not violent or aggressive, not judgemental, and, in the end, not all that different. They pursue credibility and acceptability in the eyes of the world. ‘We are your friends’, is the message they want the world to hear from Christians. ‘We value the same things that you do. We see beauty in the things you consider beautiful too. Your achievements are most certainly worthwhile and of lasting value.’ ‘What we offer is simply the icing on the cake, the fulfilment (rather than subversion or overturning) of all your hopes and dreams and desires.’ In each of these statements there is undoubtedly a measure of truth but it is not all the truth and the part it leaves out is the confrontation, the challenge, the transforming power of the gospel of Christ.

Their problem is that Jesus did not use this tactic. He was most certainly not belligerent. He did not go around Judaea and Galilee picking whatever fight he could. He loved and wept and reached out to those around him with genuine compassion. And yet his whole ministry is cast by John as a great conflict between the light and the darkness (Jn 1:5). He expected the hatred of the world and told his disciples to expect it too (Jn 15:18–25). He came not to bring peace but a sword (Mtt 10:34). This is a perspective we cannot afford to overlook. Of course this doesn’t mean we must try to generate this hostility by our own foolishness. But it does mean we cannot expect to be servants of God’s Son and friends with the world who refuses to bow the knee to him and seeks to exclude him from every facet of life.

The ideal would appear to be winsome engagement with the world which is courageous enough to say ‘No’ whenever what the world is proposing involves a rejection of God and his purposes as he has revealed them to us in Scripture, while at the same time being generous enough to recognise good — imperfect though it may be — wherever it is found. Yet it must be an engagement that realises that in the end there can be no alliance between the people of God and the world without compromise — and we are simply not in a position to compromise on the gospel. The opposition of the world to Christians is not entirely the result of our failure to engage wisely with it. At root the world will always hate the gospel and so it will dismiss, in whatever way is practicable, the people of the gospel. We must take seriously the dire state of the world and revealed truth that it is in fact ‘passing away’ (1 Cor 7:29–31; 1 Jn 2:15–17). We are promised not just this world renewed but ‘a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells’ (2 Pet 3:11–13). There is most definitely continuity between this world and the next, but there is a striking discontinuity too.

Of course there remains a deep sense in which we hold out the only hope for the world — the triumph of Jesus over death and decay in his own death and resurrection. Men and women currently arraigned against Christ can come to him in repentance and faith and accept his offer of forgiveness and life. We can’t afford so to set up boundaries between ourselves and the world around us that we embody the very opposite of the free offer of the gospel to all (Mtt 11:28–29; Jn 6:37). But it is a muddle-headed strategy to think that by becoming like the world, only speaking conciliatory words to the world — in a calm, dispassionate and carefully reasoned manner — we will see more people saved. Perhaps James was right after all to warn that friendship with the world only leads to worldliness and that can only end up as enmity with God (James 4:1–10).

Bible Translations - even the best aren’t perfect

2011-04-16T13:53:00.000+10:00

One of the great benefits of being Christian at this point in history is the access we have to such a variety of biblical translations. In English in particular we have a wonderful array of translations which suit a wide range of purposes. Some translations are easier to read. Others sacrifice that as they seek to make accessible some of the features of the original text which are lost in more simple idiomatic translations. There are translations I love to read with my children and translations which I find are more helpful for preaching.

The use of multiple translations is a healthy practice. It keeps you aware that you are, in fact, dealing with a translation — and every translation involves decisions about the right word or sentence structure to convey the meaning of the original text. It also adds colour to group reading of the Bible. In Bible study groups the use of different translations can prompt the question ‘Why does your translation adopt this word or expression?’ It can create room to look at the original text without undermining confidence in the Bibles we actually have on our laps.

Translation need not be treason — no matter how the proverb goes. Human language is capable of translation. The Bible itself seems to have little problem with the phenomenon of translation per se. After all, there are a few examples in the New Testament of Hebrew and Aramaic terms being translated for the Greek readers, which are given without the slightest indication that the need to do this is a weakness in human theological discourse. God himself is capable of using human words to speak about himself, of giving human words to his creatures to use with each other when talking about him, on both sides of the Tower of Babel. Translation is God’s gift - vernacular translations of the Bible have been a remarkable instrument in God’s hand to bring about the salvation of men and women and to help his people grow into the fullness of the stature of Christ. Protestants have almost always championed them.

It is possible, however, to claim too much for a particular translation of the Bible. A few months back I published a blogpost criticising the Holman Christian Standard Bible, partly as a way pricking the pretensions of those who were claiming this is the translation we’ve all been waiting for. No doubt it is a good translation, in fact in many ways it is one of the better English translations around. But it is not perfect. And some of its imperfections are far from trivial (the point of my previous posting on the subject). The current hype around the Holman is reminiscent of the hype around the release of the ESV. A friend of mine went into print describing it as the translation we’ve all been waiting for. Soon the latest revision of the NIV will be released and I am sure there will be some who will tell us this is the one we should all be using.

What is particularly dangerous is when particular values, theological, ecclesiastical, or even cultural are attributed to those Christians who use a particular translation. No doubt an analysis of the readership would reveal some similarities amongst those who still insist upon the King James Version (Authorised Version) of 1611. Similar studies could be done for a number of the most popular English translations. But to cast all who use the Holman as conservative, or to insist that everyone who advocates the ESV is a progressive bordering on liberalism is absurd (as it would be the other way around).

I’m all for multiple translations — and for the study of the original languages of both testaments for those who have the time and ability to do so — and don’t want to be restricted to any one of the very find translations in print at the moment. I also don’t want to surrender to the hype that surrounded the ESV, currently surrounds the HCSB and undoubtedly will surround the new NIV (and let’s remember that publishers spruke their product because they need to recover costs and make a profit).

Vernacular translations are a great gift to us. Let’s welcome each new, faithful translation that is made available to us. Let’s rejoice that so many translations in so many different languages have been produced and are being produced. But let’s not put all our eggs in one basket or rush to make claims that go over the top for any particular translation. Let’s delight in the Scriptures, not just because this group of translators did a great job, but because it is the word of God to us — and that word has been powerfully effective despite the fact that no translation is perfect.

The Sydney Family Album — 5

2011-04-15T17:01:00.000+10:00

The Christian character of the colony of New South Wales was determined in the earliest days by its chaplains and by a number of influential Christian laymen. In time bishops would be sent by the English church to oversee the work in Sydney. Undoubtedly the greatest of the nineteenth century bishops of Sydney was Frederic Barker.

Barker was born into a clergy family in 1808, educated at Grantham School and then Jesus College Cambridge. While at Cambridge he came under the influence of Charles Simeon and by the time he left the university he was a keen evangelical. After ordination he served at Upton by Birkenhead and then a suburban parish in Liverpool, St Mary's Edge Hill. One of the features of this time was a series of publications against Roman Catholicism. After Edge Hill he and his wife Jane moved to Baslow, and had only been there for three months when he received the offer to become Bishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of Australia.

Barker arrived in Sydney on 15 May 1855, more than two years after the death of his predecessor, Bishop William Grant Broughton, in London. He brought with him strong evangelical convictions, a view of his chief task as that of evangelism, and a fierce opposition to Tractarianism with which his predecessor had considerable sympathy. He also brought with him a number of clergy and ordinands who shared his basic convictions.

Barker's long episcopate (until his death in 1882) saw massive change in the colony. Barker was certainly up to the challenge. He was a gifted administrator and was both visionary and practical. He formed the church society to raise money to supplement clergy stipends and to finance church expansion. He oversaw the establishment of Moore College (which was endowed by the will of Thomas Moore who had died in 1840). He also negotiated the struggles which finally resulted in an enabling Act of the New South Wales Parliament, which effectively provided a constitution for the church in Sydney. He initiated synodical government and financial reform. He enabled the creation of the diocese of Goulburn and made a number of shrewd ecclesiastical appointments (including William Cowper as Dean and Archdeacon).

Barker's role in establishing Moore College as a theological college (Moore's will had spoken only of a college 'for the eduction of young men of the Protestant persuasion') would be the critical part of his lasting legacy. His clear vision came from the urgent need to see men trained locally for the ministry in the colony. He sought out William Hodgson of Old Brathay to be the first principal but couldn't wait for his arrival and so appointed William Macquarie Cowper as acting principal so that the College could open on 1 March 1856 (with 3 students!). His interest in the College never waned and his efforts on its behalf were tireless. Barker would in fact appoint the first three principals of Moore College: Hodgson, Robert Lethbridge King and Arthur Lukyn WIlliams. During Barker's own lifetime, Marcus Loane suggests, 'Moore College had become the key to the spiritual strength and well-being of the Diocese of Sydney'.

Barker had inherited a diocese divided and compromised by the ermerging Tractarian movement. Through a long and faithful ministry he 'was responsible for the rebirth of the Evangelical School in the Diocese of Sydney' (M L Loane). This he did, not principally through the use of his skills as an administrator and a strategist but through his unswering commitment to acquiring faithful, biblically-minded, well-trained men to share the work of taking the gospel to the people of New South Wales. Here are his own words from his first Primary Visitation of Moore College in November 1858:

This is your high and glorious mission. It is your privilege to persuade men to be saved. You have an undoubted commission. You have faithful promises of direction and help. You have the testimony of your hearers' consciences when your work is carried on with the highest degree of earnestness and vigour. Let me exhort you never to lose the testimony of your own consciences that your work is thus carried on. Live in and for your ministry, for this is indeed your happiness and your life.

Sources include K. J. Cable, 'Barker Frederic (1808-1882), Australian Dictionary of Biography and M. L. Loane, Hewn from the Rock: Origins and Traditions of the Church in Sydney.

Congregationalism - real, radical, or imaginary?

2011-04-09T23:00:00.001+10:00

The attacks on the Anglican Diocese of Sydney will probably never go away. It is almost certainly right that they don’t. We are far from perfect and our mistakes will always leave us open to criticism. Yet I’m convinced there’s much more to rejoice in than to criticise.

What is more, often the most virulent attacks come from the most predictable places. Men and women whose hopes and/or ambitions were somehow never realised in the Diocese of Sydney have waged war on the diocese and charged it with all manner of heinous crime. Sometimes they leave and hurl their grenades from other places. At other times they stay within, yet they characteristically speak of the diocese in the third person and are almost always harsher in their criticism of their own family than in their criticism of those fundamentally opposed to it.

Nevertheless, it is worth engaging with the criticism rather than dismissing it out of hand. To put a little bit of a spin on the apostle Paul’s words, it doesn’t matter what the motive, or from which direction it comes, it is always worth examining criticism carefully in order to see if there is indeed something to learn from it.

In a book to be released later this year, Sydney Anglicanism is once again attacked, this time as a group of renegades who represent one of the single most serious threats to the worldwide Anglican Communion. The publishers promotional blurb goes like this:

Sydney Anglicans, always ultra-conservative in terms of liturgy, theology and personal morality, have increasingly modelled themselves on sixteenth century English Puritanism. Over the past few decades, they have added radical congregationalism to the mix ... they have become prominent in the leadership of the global movement that is threatening worldwide Anglican unity.

Leaving aside the inaccuracies — some of our critics have long complained we haven’t paid enough attention the Puritans! — the question remains, has Sydney Anglicanism morphed into radical congregationalism? It’s a reasonable enough question. But what does it mean?

Congregationalism might be defined as a system of church government where the right and responsibility of each properly organized congregation to determine its own affairs, without having to submit these decisions to the judgement of any higher human authority, is the organising principle (this is a variation on the definition in the Encyclopedia Britannica). In other words, there is no extra-congregational authority. Presumably ‘radical congregationalism’ leaves no place at all for relationships of any kind beyond the local congregation. Each congregation is independent and autonomous.

Though I have sometimes heard loose talk that heads in this direction, I can’t remember any decision to abandon synodical government, the oversight of bishops, and fellowship between congregations in Sydney. Sydney Anglican congregations are bound together by a common heritage and a common commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ. A web of relationships facilitates care and support — prayerful, financial and myriad other types — and the provision of resources far beyond the capacity of an individual congregation. The diocese of Sydney is not just a theoretical abstraction. It lives and breathes as congregations serve something larger than themselves — the cause of Christ. It is the tangible form of a fellowship that is not preoccupied with my own immediate needs or those closest to me. It makes possible a world class theological college, a social welfare network, a strategic centre for outreach and discipleship of youth, and much else besides. There are, of course, legal dimensions to this fellowship of congregations, but these are not the most important nor the most fundamental dimensions.

Of course, in Sydney the local congregations are regarded as the central arena of God’s purposes. They do not serve a central body (‘the diocese’), but the central body exists to serve and facilitate their life and witness in the community. Centralism, too-often a feature of national and indeed international Anglicanism, is strongly resisted. What is more, we have insisted that the ‘diocese’or the ‘denomination' needs to be distinguished from the ‘church', as the New Testament uses the latter term. The dignity and place in God’s purpose that the New Testament attaches to the otherwise ordinary word ‘church’ or ‘gathering’ (ekklesia) ought not to be transferred unthinkingly to something that never actually gathers. That doesn’t mean that the diocese or the denomination are unimportant or ultimately dispensable. But it does mean that the local congregation has a priority that ought to be reflected in the way the support structures generated by our inter-congregational fellowship operate.

So how could the author of this soon-to-be-released book come to the conclusion that such things have been abandoned in Sydney? I suspect the answer lies with the difficulties the Diocese of Sydney have experienced as part of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Australia. The structures put in place by the 1962 Constitution for the Anglican Church of Australia have grown considerably over the past ten years or so. What was designed in a minimalist way to give expression to a common origin and common purpose among the various dioceses of Australia has developed into a more complex organisation which pursues a centralism hardly envisaged by the framers of the constitution (and explicitly repudiated by the Sydney representatives at the time). On the floor of General Synod, representatives of dioceses with different practices and different theology to the Diocese of Sydney have repeatedly clashed with the diocese’s own representatives. Tension grew during the debates over the ordination of women. It has increased on a range of other issues as well. The embrace of a liberal agenda by a considerable number of dioceses has seen the room for common ground continue to shrink. To them it must appear that Sydney is being belligerent, refusing to play ball and failing in its obligations to the ‘national church’. To Sydney it often appears that our concerns about the impact of changes made at a national level and in other dioceses are not taken seriously. Increasingly it looks like two different churches under the same umbrella and both are getting wet!

But it may also be that the way some in Sydney speak of ‘the diocese’ contributes to the picture painted in this book. Instead of emphasising fellowship, they seem to suspect some kind of competition — competition for resources, competition for priority in mission strategy, competition for leadership between the parishes and the diocese. The shift in rhetoric amongst some who have felt the bite of the Global Financial Crisis, and the financial losses the diocese suffered in the midst of that, may actually feed the caricature that Sydney is becoming more and more congregationalist (is there really a conspiracy to siphon resources from the parishes to feed an ever expanding centre?). A fascination with the larger independent American churches might also provide a different kind of nourishment to a rather novel kind of ecclesiastical individualism which sees little value in structures or relationships outside the local congregation.

There is something wonderful and valuable about the fellowship between parishes in the diocese of Sydney and the structures which we have created in order sustain, nourish and resource our common mission to take the gospel of Christ to our city and to the world. The actual congregations which meet week by week are undeniably at the centre of God’s purposes in this mission. They have and must retain a priority in our thinking and our decision making. But the Diocese of Sydney has never been congregationalist (let alone radically congregationalist) in any formal sense. That is why someone like Broughton Knox, one of the iconic figures in contemporary Sydney Anglicanism, could speak both about the sin of denominationalism and the value of faithful denomination. It is also why Donald Robinson, another key contributor to our heritage, could both write of the local congregation as the chief earthly manifestation of ‘church’ and give so much of his life to leading and shaping the Diocese of Sydney.

When this book comes out it may well prove to be yet another rant against Sydney by someone implacably opposed to our theological commitments. Nevertheless, notice of its publication gives us another opportunity to reflect on whether the fragmentation, individualism, and indeed selfishness, of early twenty-first century Western culture has taken more root among us than we at first realise.

Undoubtedly readers will notice that I have not mentioned the title of the forthcoming book or its author by name. That’s because this post is not really about that book in the end, and I have no desire to promote it. It is much more important to engage the criticism the book puts in such a provocative way.

An Exposition of the Theses -4

2011-04-01T04:30:00.024+11:00

My exposition of the theses I suggested as the basis of a new reformation of the Anglican Communion continues with thesis 4:

If the Anglican Communion is to be reformed again it needs to hear and heed these crucial truths:

4. The gospel which the Christian church proclaims is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3–8). Christ was delivered up for our transgressions and was raised for our justification (Rms 4:25). This is the provision of the triune God whose determined love for the men and women he has made causes him to bear all the consequences of their sin and exhaust them (Eph. 2:4–7).

This thesis is directed against those attempts to redefine the gospel in ways which take the focus from the person of Jesus and his work for us in his death and resurrection. The gospel passed on to us in the New Testament is the gospel concerning God's son (Rom. 1:3). It is not an abstract principle, whether that principle be freedom, forgiveness or social inclusion. Its focus remains on Jesus of Nazareth, his person, his words and his work. He is the eternal Son of the Father who is incarnate as the promised Jewish Messiah. He is Lord (Phil. 2:11) and his is the only name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

It is clear in the New Testament that the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ are not simply the last in a series of saving words and actions by this remarkable person. His death and resurrection, tied so intimately to our predicament of sin and death, are the reason for his coming — this is where it has all been heading from the announcement to Mary and Joseph (Mtt. 1:21), from the promise amidst the curse in the Garden of Eden (Gen 3:15), indeed, from before the foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8). Of course these events and their significance cannot be isolated from the personal identity of the one who sovereignly undergoes them. He who has the power to lay down his life and to take it up again (Jn 10:18) is the one who from eternity shared a glorious equality with his Father (Phil. 2:6). Precisely because he is the eternal Son, his incarnation, his obedience to death and his glorious resurrection have a unique character. This is the work of the Saviour. This is why he came.

The apostle Paul was determined to 'preach nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified' (1 Cor. 2:2). The final clause in Paul’s declared determination reflects a realisation that Jesus is always now the lamb who was slain (Rev. 5:12). Even at the end, in the middle of the perfected new creation the gloriously reigning Jesus bears the marks of his violent death to deal with the seriousness of human sin (Rev. 5:6). We never get away from the gospel, or grow beyond the gospel. Our Lord is always the one who has won our salvation at great personal cost. The death and resurrection of Jesus shapes the entirety of the Christian life, not simply its beginnings.

So the ‘sin reference’ of Jesus’ death cannot be elided from the gospel message without transforming it into a banal caricature of ’the power of God for salvation’ (Rom. 1:17). Christ died for our sins; he was delivered up for our transgressions. But neither should the glorious ‘justifying reference’ of his resurrection be pushed into the background. It is by means of this astonishing event in universal time and space that the Spirit declares the crucified Jesus to be the Son of God in power (Rom 1:4). It is by means of this that God’s own justice is exposed for all to see (Rom 3:26). It is by means of this that all who are included in Christ by faith receive their own vindication (Rom 4:25).

The atonement effected in and by Christ is the work of the triune God and is motivated by his uncompromising love for men and women. Rather than abandoning us to our folly or trivialising our choices, God has acted justly in the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son in order to justify those who are united to Christ by faith. It is an extraordinarily costly redemption, willingly effected out of love for sinners (Rom. 5:8).

The gospel we proclaim is always a gospel of sin acknowledged and dealt with fully, finally and forever. It is a gospel of salvation won. It is a call to abandon all attempts at self-justification and recognise that if I am to have any hope, it can only be by being rescued in the most profound way possible by someone far more powerful than me or us.

The redefined gospels of our time are almost always minimalist gospels, effectively endorsing rather than transforming the lives of those who hear them. In contrast, those who understand that they have been ‘immersed’ in Jesus’ death for sin and rising for our justification cannot simply continue on as if nothing had happened. ‘How can we who died to sin [in Christ] still live in it?’ (Rom. 6:2, 10) This gospel remains the powerful way God saves people on every level imaginable.

The Sydney Family Album — 4

2011-03-30T15:00:00.009+11:00

The fourth post in this series also comes from guest blogger Peter Bolt:

William Macquarie Cowper was born on 3 July 1810, the only child born to Rev. William Cowper and his second wife, Ann Barrell.

After being educated by his father at home, in 1827 sixteen year old ‘Mac’ left for England to prepare for Holy Orders. He holds the honour of being Australia’s first native-born clergyman, and, because he was educated in England, he would always be regarded as a first-class clergyman, not just a colonial. His father wrote to him regularly during the period of his education, not only answering his son’s questions and offering advice for further reading, but also urging Mac to carefully watch his life as well as his doctrine, because of the seriousness of the call to the ministry of Christ’s gospel. These letters clearly played an important part in William Macquarie being more firmly grounded in the evangelical vision which he had caught from his father, and which he would himself staunchly maintain the rest of his days.

In 1835 William Macquarie graduated, got ordained and married to Margaret Burroughs. The pair arrived back in NSW early in 1836, and almost immediately went to Stroud, where Cowper junior served as the Chaplain to the Australian Agricultural Company for the next twenty years. When Bp Tyrrell arrived in 1848, he found W.M. Cowper his loyal supporter and a key influence in the building of the Diocese of Newcastle. Tyrrell recognized Cowper’s considerable gifts and invited him to move to Morpeth to begin a training institution for Newcastle Clergy.

But it was another theological college that took Cowper from Stroud. Following the death of his wife Margaret in 1854, and the arrival of the new Bishop of Sydney in 1855, William Macquarie felt it was time to return home. Bishop Barker provided him the opportunity to do so by inviting him to become the Acting Principal of Moore College, which opened at Liverpool on 1 March 1856.

Once William Macquarie Cowper was back in Sydney, he was here to stay. Having served in the ministry for 20 years already by the time he arrived, he went on to serve in this diocese for a further forty-six years. After Moore College, he went to St John’s Bishopthorpe, Glebe, at the end of 1856. Here he supervised the planting of a new church in the Blackwattle Swamp area, later known as St Barnabas (Broadway). When his father died in July 1858, he was almost immediately appointed to be his replacement at St Philip’s. At the same time, Bishop Barker announced that Cowper had become the first Dean of Sydney. This was a nominal appointment for about ten years, but when St Andrew’s Cathedral was consecrated in 1868, Cowper properly entered the ministry that gave him his long-remembered title, that still differentiates him from his father, Archdeacon Cowper, namely, Dean Cowper.

William Macquarie Cowper became Barker’s right hand man, thus bringing the older evangelical heritage of Sydney into the inner circle of Barker’s ‘new broom’.

When Cowper died in 1902, just before his 92^nd birthday, Australia’s first native-born clergyman had earned such respect that he was ‘the Church’s unquestioned patriarch’ (S. Braga).

Together, the two William Cowpers were largely responsible for the strength and vitality of Evangelicalism in Sydney. This father and son succession took the evangelical beliefs and patterns of ministry rooted in eighteenth century Yorkshire, and brought them across nineteenth- and into early twentieth-century New South Wales.

Further Reading: P.G. Bolt, William Cowper (1778–1858). The Indispensable Parson. The Life and Influence of Australia’s First Parish Clergyman (Studies in Australian Colonial History 2; Camperdown, NSW: Bolt Publishing Services, 2009), and its companion Commemorative Pictorial Edition.

Thanks Peter for helping us to remember another highly influential member of the family.

The Sydney Family Album — 3

2011-03-30T14:00:00.003+11:00

The third post in this series comes from guest blogger Peter Bolt:

William Cowper came to New South Wales immediately from Hull, in Yorkshire, where his faith had been nurtured in Evangelical circles, especially under the ministry of Thomas Dykes. After returning bruised from his stint as Chaplain in Sydney, Richard Johnson was Dykes’ curate at this time. At the end of 1807, when Samuel Marsden arrived to recruit more clergy for New South Wales, he enlisted Robert Cartwright and William Cowper.

Cowper preached at St Phillip’s the day after he had disembarked (20^th August)— the first sermon of a ministry that would last for forty-nine years in that parish. Here Cowper established patterns of ministry learned in Yorkshire, and over time he also influenced the patterns of ministry that were established elsewhere in Sydney Town. Cowper’s evangelical vision of life and ministry led him to give himself to preaching, to prayer and worship, to championing the importance of the Sabbath and the sanctity of marriage and its necessity for the good of society. Like a true evangelical, his sermons were peppered with Bible texts; preaching was central to his Church services; he established a Thursday evening Lecture; he tirelessly visited his parishioners, whether convict, military, or free. The vision of our early evangelicals included the building of a wholesome society, in which the worship of God was the centre from which human beings and human society would be rebuilt, reformed and rejuvenated— especially important in a penal colony moving towards becoming a proper civilized society. This was the day of establishing ‘societies’, and whatever new society was formed in early nineteenth century Sydney, William Cowper was almost certainly associated with it.

In the 1840s some tension opened up between Cowper and Bishop Broughton when a new breed of clergy began to arrive, influenced by the Tractarian teaching emerging from Oxford. Increasingly dissatisfied with their Bishop, Sydney’s laity turned to William Cowper, who emerged as the clear leader of the Evangelical cause in Sydney. In August 1852, when Broughton went to England, he left Cowper in charge — now a very old man. When Broughton died, Cowper continued to run the Diocese, while praying for ‘a godly Bishop’, suitable to the evangelical laity of Sydney. In May 1855, he was overjoyed to be able to welcome Bishop Barker, someone who shared his evangelical faith and vision.

Just three years after Barker arrived, in July 1858, the city closed down while 25,000 people (that is, one third of Sydney) pressed around Cowper’s funeral procession—a testimony to the deep impact the St Philip’s clergyman had made on his parish and beyond.

The local church and evangelism

2011-03-15T22:28:00.002+11:00

Back in 1974 Donald Robinson (second from the left in this photograph of the four most recent Archbishops of Sydney) addressed a conference on evangelism with a paper entitled ‘The Doctrine of the Church and its Implications for Evangelism’ (Selected Works, II, 103–113). I was too young at the time to know whether or not it caused a stir among evangelicals in Sydney and elsewhere (though I later learnt there was a subsequent correspondence between Francis Foulkes and Donald Robinson on the subject in the AFES journal Interchange). However I do suspect that its argument, if taken seriously, would certainly cause a stir today. Patterns of thinking and church practice have developed which move in an entirely different direction and I am not at all sure that these have been as well thought-out theologically as Robinson’s article back in the 1970s.

Three years before, Robinson had published a brief piece on ‘The Theology of Evangelism’ ( Selected Works, II, 99–102). Here he stressed the necessity of evangelism and the nature of the evangel (‘gospel’: an authoritative proclamation of coming judgement and hope in the salvation of God in Christ addressed to the whole world and demanding the response of repentance and faith). So it was clear that Robinson was committed to evangelism. While he did not believe every Christian is given the gift of evangelism, he insisted that ‘all may have fellowship or partnership with those to whom this ministry has been given’.

As usual, Robinson’s paper on the doctrine of the church and evangelism argued for greater clarity in our thinking and speaking on the subject. It also argued that our language should be disciplined by the language of the New Testament. Not unexpectedly he repeated an insight that had become a theme of his writing: ‘“The church” is not just another word for Christians, or for the people of God. It is quite specifically, the assembly of the people of God. There is high significance in this activity of gathering together, though it is not the whole story of what Christians are or do in the world’ (p. 109). The church is the people of God meeting in the name of Christ and with the promise of his presence in their midst (p. 110). God has always been about gathering his people rather than just dealing with us as isolated individuals. And the purpose of the gathering, the local congregation or church, is that ‘God’s children, ordinarily scattered in the world, might strengthen one another’s hands in the sharing of ministries to their mutual edification, and be renewed and inspired for godly living in their ordinary avocations’ (p. 109).

So the church, precisely as church, finds its focus in Christ and in building up each other towards ‘the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Eph. 4:13). The goal is that those who have been brought into this fellowship might grow to maturity, to a point where they will not be vulnerable to every new fad of doctrine or practice that comes along but rather will speak the truth to each other — and all they come in contact with — in love (Eph. 4:14–15). The boundaries of the fellowship may be porous: the outsider is not excluded and for his or her sake intelligibility and order are guiding principles for organising what happens when we gather (1 Cor. 14:15–17, 23–25). Nevertheless all that happens is, first and foremost, directed towards the edification of those who have already been gathered (which must, of course, include helping them to grow in the same concern for the lost that characterised Jesus’ ministry, Luke 19:10).

Reference to Paul’s call for intelligibility and order in 1 Corinthians 14 deserves a slight digression. It has too often been assumed that this means dispensing with anything that might be misunderstood, any specifically Christian vocabulary, anything that might seem alien to our contemporaries outside of church. Church must be comfortable not ‘strange’. Was this really what Paul had in mind? Was prophecy such a familiar phenomenon in Corinth that it was less likely to alienate any visitor to the gathering than speaking in tongues? Was this why Paul preferred it? In our own context, should we scrap reading systematically through the Bible, expository preaching, common prayer, singing, and even sharing the Lord’s Supper, in the interests of a more seeker friendly program? Would we really be following Paul’s lead if we made church more like a cafe or a theatre? [Perhaps this subject could be addressed in more detail in a future post.]

Robinson boldly insisted that the church is not ‘a direct agent in evangelism’. The gathered people of God is the end towards which the entire gospel mission is directed. Of course the gathering is not isolated from or uninterested in the mission. After all, it is brought into being by the gospel. As already observed, the church’s Lord came to seek and save the lost. The apostles who with the prophets are the foundation of the church (Eph. 2:20) spent their lives seeking to persuade men and women to be reconciled to Christ, modelling for us ‘the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Cor. 5:11–21). The first congregations entered into genuine and practical partnership with the apostle Paul as he took the gospel to the nations (Phil. 1:3–11). Members of these congregations actually became fellow-workers, themselves engaged in the gospel mission — and in this extended and indirect sense the church can be spoken of as an agent of mission. Above all, the church prays, echoing the request Jesus commended to his first disciples: ‘pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest’ (Matt. 9:38). We do that, Robinson reminds us, confident that 'Christ, who has all authority and power, still gives gifts to men’ (p. 113).

Christians undoubtedly need to share a passion for the lost. We seek to connect with those in our community, build relationships, take every opportunity to bear witness to the God we serve. Some will be uniquely gifted as evangelists, taking the authoritative message of judgement and salvation — both arising powerfully from the love of God — to men and women in the world who desperately need to hear it. And Christians do not leave the gospel behind once they have been converted. We too need to keep hearing it and rejoice again at what God has done for us in Christ. But Robinson’s challenge is to understand church for what it is and let God’s purpose for his gathered people direct what we do when we come together. Misunderstanding church or misdirecting the focus of church runs the risk of ignoring the reason the New Testament gives for meeting together. In the long run it might in fact end up undermining the evangelism we long to see happening.

Of course that will be controversial today, won’t it? It will all too easily be caricatured as a return to inward thinking and a devaluing of evangelism. Some will argue that if we go off message for even a moment, the priority of rescuing lost men and women will be obscured. Everything needs to be explicitly, repeatedly and insistently related to evangelism. After all, the rebellious human heart latches on so quickly to anything that gives us an excuse not to be involved in the mission. However, can Donald Robinson’s challenge be dismissed so quickly? In an age when everyone wants to tell us how to be more effective as church (usually defined in terms of numerical growth, impact in the community, etc.) can we afford not to stop and think again about what this specific aspect of our corporate identity as Christians — the local gathering of forgiven men and women around the word of God — is really all about?

An Exposition of the Theses -3

2011-03-06T23:28:00.006+11:00

I turn now to the third of the twelve theses which I posted as a way of giving shape to a new reformation of the Anglican Communion.

If the Anglican Communion is to be reformed again it needs to hear and heed these crucial truths:

3. The most urgent and important need of every human being is to be reconciled to God. We are all naturally God's enemies (Rms 5:10) with the result that we stand under the wrath of the God who loves us (Rms 1:18; Eph. 2:1–3). Our natural disposition is to insist on our own autonomy, to repeat the folly of the Garden of Eden where the goal was to determine right and wrong without reference to God and the word he had given (Gen. 3:4–6). If we are to be reconciled to God, then the cconsequences of our rebellion against him — our guilt, corruption, enslavement to sinful thinking and behaviour, and death — must all be dealt with in their entirety. A gospel which does not explain this most basic need is no gospel at all.

This thesis challenges the new gospel of inclusion that in some circles has replaced the gospel of Jesus Christ. At the heart of this new gospel is a refusal to face the truth about the natural condition of all men and women. The consistent testimony of the New Testament is that those who do not come to Christ in repentance and faith are lost, alienated from God, arraigned as his enemies, and stand under his judgement (Rom 3:9–20; Eph. 2:1–3). Paul was crystal clear and uncompromising when he wrote: '... the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth ...' (Rom 1:18).

It is not at all surprising that the language of sin, judgement and the wrath of God are absent from much contemporary theological writing, for at least two reasons. First, it has been the satan's tactic from the Garden onwards to cast doubt on the reality of judgement and the sinfulness of sin (Gen 3:1–7). Grasping at independence from God — the possibility of deciding what is good and evil without reference to God — was presented as the entirely desirable pursuit of wisdom then, just as it is still in many circles today. What was most decidedly wrong was not only made to look right, it was presented as something entirely to be applauded (cf. Rom 1:32). 'Spin' is not a new phenomenon. It has been a feature of rebellion against the living God for a very long time.

In addition, today we have been desensitised to moral evil. Like Israel in Jeremiah's day (Jer. 6:15) we do not know how to blush anymore. Things of which we ought to be ashamed are paraded as our virtue. Language is bent to serve the interests of those who have no conscience — so now in Australia the debate over community attitudes towards homosexual activity has been rebadged as a debate over 'marriage equality'. In the last few days crowds have assembled for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Yet while there are still some who find the public endorsement and celebration of homosexual behaviour a bridge too far, other serious sins (pride, greed, lying, adultery) receive little comment.

For some the chief difficulty lies in their inability to reconcile talk of judgement and wrath with the love of God. Either God is loving, forgiving and merciful or he is wrathful and preoccupied with judgement and penalty. Yet this is a dichotomy that is not found anywhere in the New Testament. There is never a suggestion that a wrathful God needs to be made loving, but rather that the love of God both takes sin seriously (and so wrath actually arises out of love — the opposite of love is not wrath but indifference) and is determined to deal with it in full (the Father gives the Son out of love, John 3:16; the Son lays down his life out of love, John 10:11–15).

It is all too easy to settle for a truncated gospel rather than the full-orbed version preached by the apostles and recorded for us in the Scriptures. Christ's death and resurrection secure a victory over evil and all the enemies of both God and humanity. The gospel is about God's triumph in the cross (Col. 2:15). It is about liberation from bondage (Col. 1:13). It is about overcoming death (John 11:25–26; Rom 8:2, 38; 1 Cor 15:21). And yet Christ's death and resurrection are presented in other ways in the New Testament as well. Our guilt before God is dealt with by Jesus' death as a propitiation in Romans 3 and 1 John 2. The juridical element in the work of Christ and hence in the gospel just cannot be erased or neglected without harm to the whole picture (even it it is not itself the whole picture). Of course it is important to recognise that our hostility towards one another, the division between the races, is torn down by the cross (Eph. 2). Yet the reconciliation of men and women from all races and all walks of life is inextricably tied to a common share in the justification anchored in the cross and resurrection and appropriated by faith. What is more, the idea of our corruption being cleansed by the death of Jesus is found in the book of Hebrews and the first letter of Peter (with special references in those texts to the blood of the Christ). How can we who have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection continue to embrace the sin which corrupts us all so profoundly (Rom 6:1–4)?

The apostle Paul was ferocious with those who taught a different gospel (Gal. 1). Powerful language was necessary because to tinker with the biblical gospel is to endanger lives. It risks leaving those who hear and believe these new gospels on a collision course with the God who loves all men and women too much to ignore their sinful behaviour. But the biblical gospel does not turn a blind eye to sin. It faces this awful reality head-on. Sin and all its consequences must be dealt with if we are to survive our inevitable rendezvous with the living God (Heb 9:27–28). The great news of the gospel is that this has indeed been done through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Contemporary reinterpretations of the gospel too often fail to do justice to the majesty and mercy of God (and strangely, the love of God as well), the serious of the predicament from which he rescued us in Christ, and the radical transformation which the gospel effects in the lives of believers by the power of the Spirit.

The Sydney Family Album — 2

2011-03-04T04:00:00.000+11:00

The second post in this series comes from guest blogger David Pettett:

The Rev. Samuel Marsden, second Chaplain to the Colony of NSW, was born in Farsley, Yorkshire on 25 June 1765. He was brought up under a Methodist and Evangelical influence and came under the patronage of the evangelical Elland Society which provided for his education from Grammar School to Magdalene College, Cambridge University, the centre of Evangelical influence at the time.

He was appointed second Chaplain to the Colony of NSW, arriving in 1794 with the backing of the Rev. Charles Simeon, William Wilberforce and the Rev. John Newton.

Marsden saw his first priority to be a preacher of the Word of God. He was horrified at the immorality in the Colony and set about calling men and women to repentance and faith. His priorities brought him into conflict with the Authorities who saw his role as simply a keeper of morals.

Marsden also found himself in great conflict within the Colony over his role as a Magistrate, from which he earned the epithet, 'the flogging parson'. He threw himself with great energy into the development of the Colony, becoming a successful and wealthy farmer and trader.

At the same time Marsden was instrumental in the establishment of the Benevolent Society, the NSW Agricultural Society, and the colonial branches of the Bible Society, the London Missionary Society and the Church Missionary Society. He made seven journeys to New Zealand, preaching the first Christian sermon there on Christmas Day 1814. He is known in New Zealand as 'The Apostle to the Maori'.

In his preaching Marsden was not afraid to be direct in calling for repentance. 'Some of you are on your way to Hell with a Bible in your hand', is one memorable line when pointing out to his congregation that the form of religion would not save them.

In one famous sermon preached in 1815, for which he was publicly rebuked by Gov. Macquarie who clearly misunderstood the intent of the sermon, Marsden drew attention to drought, failing crops, dying cattle and the death of the Judge Advocate, as being signs of God’s anger, and he encouraged his congregation to examine themselves and repent of any sin, in the hope that God would have mercy upon them and relieve their suffering.

Marsden recruited other evangelical clergy for the Colony, notably the Revs. William Cowper and Robert Cartwright. He was criticised by Bishop Broughton for being too 'Methodistical' in his preaching but in his energies, focus and strategic thinking, Marsden clearly set an evangelical agenda for those who would follow him.

Thanks David for helping us to remember a very important member of the family.

A hell of a ruckus

2011-03-01T22:51:00.007+11:00

Rob Bell is no stranger to controversy. Yet fresh controversy has erupted over his latest book, or more precisely, the promotional video he has made for his latest book. If you've never heard of Rob Bell, then you are among a select few. He is the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan and he has been one of the leading preachers in the Emerging Church movement. He is an outstanding communicator and his NOOMA clips are often spellbinding. It is just that increasingly what he communicates raises concerns.

The book being promoted is subtitled 'A Book about Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person who Ever Lived'. The video, together with the book's title and subtitle, have led people to conclude that Rob Bell has embraced universalism. Hell will be empty; God's love triumphs even over our persistent rebellion. An unnecessary offence has been created by traditional Christian talk of a narrow way, a chosen few, and a mass of perdition. The gospel really is good news for everyone and it is far more amazing, far broader in scope and effective in power than we often convey in our preaching, especially in conservative circles. Its time we broke free from dogma and tradition and returned to the powerfully attractive and life-giving message of the Bible. So Rob Bell in the video. And influential voices (including that of John Piper) have been raised loudly in protest.

Of course, this promotional clip smuggles in a series of caricatures and half-truths. The problem is that most people don't quite know yet whether he will expose these in his book or endorse them. To suggest that Jesus 'rescues us from God' overlooks the critical fact that Jesus is himself God incarnate. It is vital that we accent the love God and, indeed, the triumph of God's love in the death and resurrection of the Christ, but the same God who is love is also light and God's own righteous character must be taken seriously alongside his loving determination to redeem men and women. Rather than simply insisting that 'love wins' might it not be closer to the biblical message to insist that 'God wins'?

It must be said that the video is a teaser. It is intended to get people interested and hopefully to get them buying this latest book. It is mostly a series of provocative questions rather than a collection of answers. However, the way you frame questions and the tone in which you ask them are not incidental. Very often these are what shape the ensuing discussion and they can, rightly or wrongly, imply an answer. Rob Bell may be hoping to help people feel the weight of objections he has heard to Christian doctrines of judgement, hell, election and salvation, doctrines which he will go on carefully to explain and justify from the teaching of Scripture. He may be trying to move us beyond a premature dismissal of the objections many of our contemporaries have to these doctrines as simply hard-hearted unbelief, towards a more sympathetic engagement with the concerns of the people we are trying to reach with the gospel. Or he may be preparing the way for a radical redrawing of the Bible's teaching.

Perhaps it would be wise to just wait for the book to come out (on 29 March) and read what it is he really believes. Those with some knowledge of the directions in which his theology has been heading of late think they know the answer already and, what's more, they have come out swinging not just because of what they guess he might say in the book (as some cheap shots suggest) but because of what he has already said in the promo (see the responses from Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung and Tim Challies). I'm not really in a position to suggest their concerns are unfounded.

Given the publicity the book has been given (especially by those who are warning against it), it is bound to sell well. Yet the opportunity provided by this current controversy is to return ourselves to the often neglected teaching of the New Testament on judgement, the wrath of God, the reality, profundity and universality of human sin, the necessity of faith in Christ, and the glory of God. After all, warnings against the hell were given, not simply by a traditionalist Christians over the centuries, by the loving, bleeding, dying and victorious Saviour himself, the one who was sent in love (Jn 3:16) and who came to seek and save the lost (Lk 19:10):

You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment'. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. (Mtt. 5:21–22)

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Mtt. 29–30)

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Mtt. 7:13–14)

So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Mtt. 10:26–28)

Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. (Mtt. 18:7–9)

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (Jn 14:6)

Love, judgment and the exclusive claims of Jesus go together in the Gospels. Perhaps that is what Rob Bell will tell us in his book and his video 'trailer' will prove to be a clever way to engage contemporary audiences with the sheer wonder and magnitude of the gospel. In that case many of us will cheer, even if we continue to have questions about aspects of the video. However, if not, we will need to be sincere in our praise of those who have wisely and courageously reminded us of what is at stake if the gospel is massaged to make it more palatable to postmodern and post-postmodern minds.

I expect to read Rob Bell's book alongside another, James M. Hamilton's, God's Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton: Crossway, 2010).

Postscript: Rob Bell has been interviewed about this book recently. See what he says here.

Brilliant expositions of Colossians and Philemon

2011-03-01T13:08:00.002+11:00

What do you get when one of the finest Bible teachers in the world slightly modifies a brilliant series of sermons on Colossians and Philemon for publication as a commentary? You get John Woodhouse's latest book, a commentary in the Focus on the Bible series. I can't wait to work my way through these two New Testament letters again, aided by John's expositions. I was riveted as he preached them in the Moore College chapel and on every occasion I left the building knowing that I had been addressed by the living God through his word.

If you have never had the privilege of hearing a part of the Bible expounded by John, you will get some sense of the gift he is to us by reading through this book (his sermons are regularly posted on the Moore College website as well). Careful attention to the details of the text, informed by a richly theological understanding of God's purposes and our human situation, makes these expositions rich nourishment. In a world where too often Christian preachers want to draw attention to themselves and ape the antics of rock stars and stand up comics, congregations need to be fed by pastors whose concern is that God's word is heard rather than they are recognised. John Woodhouse's humble recognition of the power of God at work as the word of God is faithfully taught — engendering a confidence that God will accomplish his purposes in precisely the way he has promised — is an inspiring model. John's preaching is not boring because God, his purposes and his perspective are never boring. His preaching is not self-indulgent because your attention is drawn to the God who is speaking in these words rather than the preacher himself.

I warmly commend this little commentary on Paul's letters to the Colossians and to Philemon. You will undoubtedly be enriched by reading it.

Mike Horton's Systematic Theology

2011-02-24T23:38:00.014+11:00

Mike Horton, of Westminster Theological Seminary in California, has produced a one volume systematic theology which is already highly acclaimed (endorsements include those by Hunsinger, Webster, Vanhoozer, Wells, and Sproul). Horton has been genuinely prolific over the past fifteen years. He has been a key figure in the White Horse Inn, written four volumes of theology in conversation with the Reformed Orthodoxy of the seventeenth century, and many other books besides, edited Modern Reformation, and featured in major conferences all over America and elsewhere. How he has done all this, and much more, while remaining a devoted family man, is beyond most of us. He is undoubtedly a major voice in the theological conversation taking place in the English speaking world at the moment.

Mike Horton's capacity for clear and engaging prose, his careful reading and evaluation of contributions from a wide range of theological perspectives, and his determined biblical stance, ensure that this volume, massive though it is (990 pages), will be of considerable benefit to all who read it. My skimming of this work (all I have been able to do to this point) has whet my appetite for a more sustained engagement with his presentation of the faith.

Mike understands that theology is preeminently talk about God. He has structured the work in a way that emphasises precisely this point:

Part 1: Knowing God: The Presuppositions of Theology
Part 2: God who Lives
Part 3: God who Creates
Part 4: God who Rescues
Part 5: God who Reigns in Grace
Part 6: God who Reigns in Glory

There are some things I might have done differently. Mike is a big 'R' Reformed man who remains deeply committed to the Westminster Confession of Faith and this is obvious throughout. On the other hand, I am an Anglican Evangelical, albeit one who is convinced authentic Anglicanism has been Reformed in its theology from the outset. I would have constructed the section on the atonement differently (I am deeply uncomfortable with the language of 'atonement theories' — used by some to suggest all explanations of the atonement are later, secondary additions to a simple New Testament testimony to the event — and I am not wedded to the idea of 'limited atonement' in the way that Mike is). I would have treated the doctrine of the Trinity as the first element in my exposition of the Christian doctrine of God rather than leaving it until after a discussion of the incommunicable and communicable attributes. Most important of all, I would have placed the gospel — and so the person, words and work of Christ — up front, as the starting point for Christian thinking about who God is and how he is working in the world to accomplish his purpose. However, these differences do not dull my enthusiasm for the book in the slightest. Here is an impressive piece of theological theology which deserves to be taken seriously.

I suspect that Mike Horton's systematic theology will become the standard in reformed circles for many years to come. Undoubtedly it won't be perfect, but those who know the man, and those who have only read or listened to him over the airwaves in the past two decades, will testify that he has something worthwhile to say and he is able to say it in a way that all can understand. I am looking forward to making use of this book in some of my doctrine classes at Moore. I trust that those who get hold of it in other places will find it useful as well. Well done, brother!

An Exposition of the Theses -2

2011-02-22T04:49:00.178+11:00

Here is an exposition of second of the twelve theses I posted to help people think through the basis for a new reformation of the Anglican Communion. Once again it is important to remember these theses are not presented as definitive. There is most certainly room for improvement and development. However, as Luther found out in the sixteenth century, stirring people to think about the gospel, to return to the Scriptures to see what really has been written for our benefit, was not only appropriate in the wake of widespread defection from the truth, but also encouraged others to agitate for reform.

If the Anglican Communion is to be reformed again it needs to hear and heed these crucial truths:

2. The Spirit of God never leads people in ways contrary to the teaching of Scripture, which he has been instrumental in producing. Jesus' promise of the Spirit to his disciples was not that the Spirit will lead the churches on from Scripture into truth which somehow supersedes it, but that he will ensure that Jesus' words are heard until the end of the age (Jn 16:13–14). To pit the Spirit against the Scriptures is to fail to understand either.

This thesis is directed against the suggestion that Spirit has led us into a new understanding which renders redundant the teaching of Scripture. Such a suggestion can come from at least two different directions. One is that separation of word and Spirit which insists that the Bible is the first instalment of a continuing, progressive revelation. We have moved on, the Spirit has taught us so much more, and the Bible's teaching is best seen as a prototype, a first instance of a continuing conversation which takes us in startling new directions. From this direction the suggestion sounds exhilarating, dynamic and free of the suspicion of a tired old static legalism.

The second direction is a confusion of the ministry of the Spirit and the decisions of ecclesiastical institutions. Such a confusion insists that the voice of the church is the voice of the Spirit and so whatever is the consensus of the churches today, or the decision of duly constituted synods, councils or committees, must be accepted as the will of God, even if this consensus or decision contradicts or overturns the explicit teaching of Scripture. The Spirit is leading the church in the new age. God hasn't stopped speaking as he did through the prophets and by his Son; he still speaks today through the Spirit-led church. From this direction the suggestion resonates with our desire for contemporaneity and transparent relevance.

The good and right motive behind all this is the desire to affirm that the living God has not abandoned the church to its own devices (Deism) but instead remains vitally active within the churches today, in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Sometimes, tragically, the evangelical rhetoric of the word can be overblown and give the impression that God's activity in the world ceased the moment the last of the apostolic writers laid down their pen (read 'quill' or 'writing implement'). It can retreat into a fresh round of legalism which reduces Christian engagement with the Bible to the search for laws and instructions — a study of the text which terminates with the text rather than a living, growing knowledge of the God who gave us the text.

The triune God is at work among us today. He continues to rescue men and women from their choices and the judgement these deserve. He transforms lives, gifts his people to serve each other, answers prayer, and restrains evil. The Father still draws men and women to himself. The Spirit still brings about the new birth. The Son continues to gift his church with faithful teachers who proclaim his purposes to his people and to the world. The living God is not silent nor is he mute. He addresses the words of Scripture to us today: 'For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope' (Rms 15:4). All Scripture, God-breathed as it is, remains 'profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness' (2 Tim 3:16).

None of this, however, negates the simple truth that Word and Spirit are inseparable in the New Testament. God's will and purpose remains undivided. Jesus insisted that just as he did not speak on his own authority but rather spoke those things given to him by his Father (Jn 12:49), so the Spirit will not speak on his own authority but rather what he hears (Jn 16:13). He filled this out as 'he [the Spirit] will take what is mine and declare it to you' (Jn 16:15). When a little earlier he had broached the same topic, he insisted that the Spirit would 'teach you all things' which he then explained as 'bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you' (Jn 14:26). Paul explained that the Spirit bears witness with our hearts (or perhaps even 'to our hearts') that we are children of God (Rom 8:16) in the wake of an exposition of the gospel and its significance (Rom 8:1–11). 'No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit' (1 Cor. 12:3). It is critical to remember that the Holy Spirit is always the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. He is the one who spoke through the prophets (Acts 28:25; Eph. 3:5), who descended upon the newly baptized Christ (Lk 3:22), who enabled the apostles (Jn 20:22; Acts 2:1-4; Eph 3:5).

So to suggest that the Spirit of God is leading his people to affirm things which Scripture (understood in terms of the redemptive-historical movement from Old Testament to New Testament) explicitly denies or prohibits is both false and dangerous. To suggest that Scripture needs to be supplemented (in the light of our contemporary understanding of the world, human nature, or the changed circumstances in which we live) raises enormous questions about God's capacity to communicate effectively to the twenty-first century just as well as the first century. Nothing that has happened in the centuries since the apostles has caught God by surprise. [Of course, appeal to a trajectory which takes us beyond Scripture in a way that allows us to say 'Yes' today to things about which the whole of Scripture said 'No' back then, is simply a more sophisticated version of the same move.] God's Spirit keeps bringing his people back to the word which God has given to us rather than inventing a new word to suit our times.

The Sydney Family Album — 1

2011-02-21T21:25:00.001+11:00

I've been banging on a little lately about the importance of Christians looking at the family album (ie remembering those who have come before us, who have shaped our identity and have given us the inheritance we currently enjoy). Evangelicals in Sydney have especially good reasons to remember our forebears and give thanks to God. The strong and clear evangelical witness of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney has not been an accident. Under God, it has been the result of the faithful labour of many men and women. I propose periodically over this year to post brief entries reminding us about some of the key figures who have shaped Sydney Anglicanism. I will inevitably miss out many who should be mentioned, and my selection is bound to reflect my own limited knowledge, so please accept my apologies in advance if your favourites are omitted. Undoubtedly, there is good reason to start at the beginning ...

Richard Johnson was the chaplain sent with the First Fleet to New South Wales in 1788. He was a Yorkshireman, born around 1753 (so he was 35 years old when he arrived in the new colony). His appointment as chaplain to the settlement of New South Wales in 1786 was due to the influence of the Eclectic Society, and especially of William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton. As early as November 1783 the Eclectics had discussed the question 'What is the best method of planting and propagating the gospel at Botany Bay?'

Provided with resources by the SPG (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) and the SPCK (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge), after having been introduced to both groups by Wilberforce himself, Johnson left from Portsmouth with the First Fleet (sailing in the ship The Golden Grove) on 13 May 1787. He had married Mary Burton just five months earlier. His designated salary would be £180 per annum.

Johnson's ship arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788 and on 3 February 1788 he conducted the first Christian service in Sydney, preaching on Psalm 116:12 — 'What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?'

Johnson was a determined evangelical and this would lead to clashes with a number of the early governors. Many of them saw religion as an instrument to help maintain civil order and to promote social welfare. They were rather unimpressed by Johnson's commitment to preaching Christ and calling for repentance and faith in him. Governor Philip asked him to stick to moral subjects. Governor Grose described him as 'a very troublesome, discontented character' and did everything in his power to obstruct the exercise of his ministry. Johnson had to build the first church in the colony at his own expense.

But Johnson was interested in seeing men and women come to Christ and so continued to preach gospel sermons. The determined evangelical temper of his ministry set the course for what would eventually become the Diocese of Sydney.

Yet while preaching the gospel remained his lifelong priority, Johnson did not just preach. His almost legendary acts of compassion to convicts and militia are perhaps best typified by his decision to go into the holds of the ships of the Second Fleet (the infamous 'Death Fleet'), despite the very real risk to his own health and survival, in order to pray, feed and tend to the wounds of those few who had outlasted the voyage. His care and respect for the indigenous people he encountered led him to give his daughter the aboriginal name Milbah Mary. He has a good claim to be the pioneer of education in New South Wales, an education which he extended from the children of free settlers to the children of convicts and even some of the indigenous children. He was also a very successful recreational farmer.

Richard Johnson was willing to risk everything to take the gospel to men and women abandoned by the society of their time. Not knowing what he would encounter, he endured an arduous sea voyage, the privations of those early years, and the hostility of those who saw no need for God and no value in gospel preaching. Yet what he did know was that hostility was just one more demonstration of the desperate need of every human being. Alienated from God and at war with him, their only hope lie with the Jesus who was the constant focus of Johnson's preaching.

In poor health (Samuel Marsden would describe him as 'a mere skeleton'), Johnson returned to England in October 1800, after twelve years' service in the colony, and died on 13 March 1827. His final seventeen years were spent as Rector of St Antholin in the City of London.

Archbishop Donald Robinson summarised Johnson's life and work in these words: 'His gift was faithfulness rather than vision, courage and steadfastness rather than aggressiveness, and if we reckon that God demands not success but faithfulness, we can have no doubt that Johnson fulfilled his high calling of God'.

[Sources for this post include Australian Dictionary of Biography and Marcus Loane's Hewn From the Rock, pp. 2-10.]

An Exposition of the Theses -1

2011-02-11T21:52:00.007+11:00

A number of people have suggested that, like Luther, I should expand on the theses I posted to help people think through the basis of a new reformation of the Anglican Communion. Luther's Resolutiones disputationum de indulgentiarum virtute was published in 1518 and sought to explain the basis for each of the 95 theses. I have already risked mockery for being so presumptuous as to write the twelve theses I posted in January. Who do I think I am to suggest such a theological basis for the necessary change? But now do I dare go further and explain my own theses as Luther did?

I have decided it is worth doing, if for no other reason than the opportunity to clarify my own thinking and make it just a little more difficult for my words to be misunderstood. But just in case anyone doubts I believe this, let me again confess freely that the theses still need work if they are to be anything more than a curiosity on the edges of the Anglican world. So here goes ...

If the Anglican Communion is to be reformed again it needs to hear and heed these crucial truths:

It is impossible to take Jesus seriously without taking the teaching of Scripture seriously. Faith in Christ entails acknowledging Christ's Lordship. Submitting to Christ as Lord means being willing to conform our thinking and our behaviour to the words he has given us. Since he endorsed the Hebrew Old Testament (Lk 24:44) and appointed those whose mission produced the New Testament (Mtt 28:18–20; Acts 1:8), we cannot avoid the reality that faith in Christ manifests itself in obedience to the teaching of Scripture (Mtt. 7:24; Jms 1:22).

This thesis is directed against the suggestion that I can be a faithful follower of Jesus while at the same time rejecting the teaching of Scripture by arguing it is limited to its original situation, irrelevant to the changed circumstances of the world we live in, or just plain wrong. Some suggest that a relationship with Jesus is in no way dependent upon the teaching of Scripture (as if we know who Jesus is or what relationship with him entails apart from the testimony of the Gospels and the apostolic ministry which produced the New Testament and was always 'according to the Scriptures' [1 Cor. 15:3–5]). Others speak of personal revelation as the preferred alternative to propositional revelation (as if propositions are always impersonal or personal relationships can exist without any cognitive content). Still others speak of the centre of our faith as a person not a book (as if serious attention to Scripture on its own terms could ever dislodge Jesus from the centre of God's purposes — after all, Jesus spoke of the way the Scriptures bear witness to him [Jn 5:39], and the apostle Paul spoke of how all God's promises finding their 'yes' in him [2 Cor. 1:20]). Faithfulness to Jesus and faithfulness to the teaching of Scripture go hand in hand. Each reinforces the other. They are most certainly not alternatives.

There are some who baulk at the very language of lordship and submission, arguing that any kind of kyriarchy is a distortion of God's loving engagement with the world. Jesus walks alongside us, such people argue, suffers with us, and draws out of us the fullness of what it means to be human; but he does not command or expect obedience. To suggest otherwise would be to recast our understanding of God in terms of flawed human ideas of coercion and domination (and there are ample examples of our abuse of relationships for our own ends). However, this is a one-sided picture of Jesus, an insipid caricature whose concerns the Gospels do not share. The same Jesus who acts in love, humility and self-surrender, commands the wind and the waves (Mk 4:35–41), the demons (Mk 5:1–20), and his own disciples (Jn 13:31–35). He warns that it is not enough to mouth the words, to address him as 'Lord' (Mtt. 7:21). He will not recognise those who claim to be his disciples but refuse to order their lives according to his words. The one who hears but does not obey courts disaster (Mtt 7:26–27). In contrast the one who hears and obeys is prepared for what is to come (Mtt 7:24–25). Jesus Christ is the one before whom every knee must one day bow (Phil. 2:9–10). Those who are his are willing to bow now.

It is certainly not our obedience that saves us or predisposes God to save us. God's powerful salvation springs from his own love and is extended to people like us 'while we were still sinners' (Rom 5:8). Yet just because we are saved by grace, and the instrument of salvation is faith not works, does not mean that obedience is unimportant. Obedience flows out of faith and gives tangible expression to faith. At the time of the Reformation, Luther could even talk about the necessity of obedience, though he perhaps more than any other stressed that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works.

Where churches or individuals claim to belong to Jesus but will not allow their thinking and behaviour to be shaped by the teaching of Scripture to which Jesus consistently appealed (or, in the case of the NT, which he brought into being through his commissioning of the eleven and Paul, his promise of the Spirit, and the scope of the mission he gave them — 'to the ends of the earth until the end of the age') they are self-deceived. We cannot avoid the reality that faith manifests itself in obedience to the teaching of Scripture. Paul would even talk about a heartfelt recognition that these words are God's address to us — words which have a claim on us and change the way we behave and the priorities we embrace — as a decisive evidence of God's election, the Spirit's power, and the work of the word of God in those who believe (1 Thess 1:4–10; 2:13–16).

Theses for a new reformation in the Anglican Communion

2011-02-02T09:00:00.015+11:00

Speaking prior to last week's meeting of some of the Anglican Primates in Dublin, Bishop Mouneer Anis spoke of the need for a new reformation within the Anglican Communion. The failure of its current leadership to guard and proclaim the gospel, to live consistently according to the teaching of Scripture, and to discipline those who would undermine the faith and the godly lifestyle of Christians around the world, cannot go unchecked forever.

Of course we should recognise that faithful Anglicans around the world have attempted repeatedly to call the denomination back from the brink. In particular, the Global South and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (arising from GAFCON in 2008) have been crystal clear in their stand for biblical truth and for integrity in our personal and corporate lives in line with the teaching of Scripture. Yet to this point their protest, and the message they have promoted so consistently, have been steadfastly ignored. Bureaucrats from the Anglican Communion Office (amongst whom the most notorious is Canon Kenneth Kearon) have ensured a distorted version of the facts reaches the world's media and even the church press. The false shepherds continue to protect themselves at the expense of the people of God. And so the crisis goes on.

Undoubtedly the trumpet calls from the Global South and the Jerusalem Declaration of June 2008 provide a basis for the kind of reformation Bishop Mouneer is calling for. These have not received anywhere near the attention they deserve. Even in Australia, where the General Synod resolved to encourage dioceses and parishes to study the Jerusalem Declaration (and also, in a separate resolution, the Anglican Covenant), attempts have been made to make sure that consideration is framed in ways which ensure it will be dismissed as the sectarian ravings of a fundamentalist fringe group within the communion. Little or no attention will be given to the fact that those who met in Jerusalem in 2008 represented by far the majority of Anglicans worldwide.

I suspect nothing more is needed than the Jerusalem Declaration and the Thirty-nine Articles to which it refers. Here is a statement which, while certainly not perfect, forms a sound basis for authentic Anglican mission far into this century and beyond.

However, I was wondering what I would personally want to say if I was to follow the example of Martin Luther and nail theses for debate to the nearest church door. Of course, Luther had no idea he was igniting the Reformation when he wrote the 95 theses, while today Bishop Mouneer and many others are consciously and deliberately calling for a repeat performance. Those of us who long for vibrant evangelism, theological orthodoxy and personal godliness right across the entire Anglican Communion pray that God might take all of our feeble attempts to protest and proclaim, and use them to bring glory to his Son by the working of his Spirit.

So here is a shot at my top twelve (it is presumptuous enough to do this without attempting to get anywhere near ninety-five, and anyway each of mine is a little more long-winded than Luther's and so should by rights be called 'paragraphs' rather than 'theses'. However, they are like Luther's in one respect: they are by no means comprehensive and by no means present an outline of a complete systematic theology. Rather, they are focussed on the current situation or, more precisely, on the theological issues underlying the current crisis):

If the Anglican Communion is to be reformed again it needs to hear and heed these crucial truths:

It is impossible to take Jesus seriously without taking the teaching of Scripture seriously. Faith in Christ entails acknowledging Christ's Lordship. Submitting to Christ as Lord means being willing to conform our thinking and our behaviour to the words he has given us. Since he endorsed the Hebrew Old Testament (Lk 24:44) and appointed those whose mission produced the New Testament (Mtt 28:18–20; Acts 1:8), we cannot avoid the reality that faith in Christ manifests itself in obedience to the teaching of Scripture (Mtt. 7:24; Jms 1:22).
The Spirit of God never leads people in ways contrary to the teaching of Scripture, which he has been instrumental in producing. Jesus' promise of the Spirit to his disciples was not that the Spirit will lead the churches on from Scripture into truth which somehow supersedes it, but that he will ensure that Jesus' words are heard until the end of the age (Jn 16:13–14). To pit the Spirit against the Scriptures is to fail to understand either.
The most urgent and important need of every human being is to be reconciled to God. We are all naturally God's enemies (Rms 5:10) with the result that we stand under the wrath of the God who loves us (Rms 1:18; Eph. 2:1–3). Our natural disposition is to insist on our own autonomy, to repeat the folly of the Garden of Eden where the goal was to determine right and wrong without reference to God and the word he had given (Gen. 3:4–6). If we are to be reconciled to God, then the cconsequences of our rebellion against him — our guilt, corruption, enslavement to sinful thinking and behaviour, and death — must all be dealt with in their entirety. A gospel which does not explain this most basic need is no gospel at all.
The gospel which the Christian church proclaims is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3–8). Christ was delivered up for our transgressions and was raised for our justification (Rms 4:25). This is the provision of the triune God whose determined love for the men and women he has made causes him to bear all the consequences of their sin and exhaust them (Eph. 2:4–7).
The embrace of this salvation is only possible by the work of the Spirit transforming human hearts, bringing new life, creating faith and uniting us to Christ (Jn 3:5–6; Rms 8:9–17; 1 Cor 12:3; Eph. 1:3–14). Without such a work we all remain lost. No human effort will bring us within the orbit of Christ's salvation, it is entirely a gift of grace to undeserving sinners (Eph. 2:8–9). We are justified by faith alone and this faith which is the instrument of our justification is produced in us by the Spirit (Rms 5:1; Gal. 5:5).
To be forgiven, and so incorporated into the family of God, transforms the entirety of our lives. The gospel of Jesus Christ determines an entirely new set of priorities which shape life in the public square, in the workplace, in places of recreation and in our homes. There is no facet of life which stands beyond the claims of Christ's lordship (Phil. 1:27; Col. 2:6–4:6; Eph. 4:1–6:9).
While each of us continues to struggle with various forms of temptation, the continuing dynamic of the Christian life is one of repentance and faith (Mk 1:15; Acts 20:21; Heb. 6:1). Our orientation to sin, in whichever form it is expressed in each of us, is not what defines us and should not be given expression in our thoughts, words or actions. Once again it is the Spirit who has been given to us who enables us in this struggle: 'the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do' (Gal. 5:17).
We are not saved to a life of individualism, self-realisation, independence or autonomy. God has always been about saving a people for himself (Gen 12:2–3; Ex. 19:3–6; Jn 12:32; Rev. 5:9–10). Following Christ means serving others just as he has served us. This is why the local congregation is at the centre of God's purposes. Here the life of service and love is lived out in relationship with others who have been saved by Christ and reaching out to those who are still lost. After all, it is the church — and not just individual Christians — which Christ presents to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish' (Eph. 5:27).
This is not to deny important responsibilities beyond the local congregation, responsibilities modelled at points even in the New Testament (e.g. Acts 15:1–35; 1 Cor. 16:1–4; 1 Thess. 1:6–8). Over the centuries, various institutional structures have been developed in order to support, resource and assist the faithful life and witness of the gathered people of God. Yet these must never become the focus of loyalty themselves nor must the unity of the Spirit be confused with a common institutional structure. The unity the Spirit brings is neither created nor preserved by institutional regulation. It arises out of a fellowship in the gospel (Phil. 1:5) which is maintained 'in the bond of peace' (Eph. 4:3). It is a unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God (Eph. 4:13) which cannot be separated from a unity of mind (Phil. 2:2; 1 Pet. 3:8). Denominations need to concerned with faithfulness to the gospel of Christ above any consideration of structural cohesion.
Leadership amongst God's people is first and foremost about fidelity to the gospel and a transparent, humble submission to the teaching of Scripture. There should be a mutual accountability of those set apart to serve the churches and those who follow their lead in the churches (Mtt. 23:8). Leaders who abandon the biblical gospel in teaching or lifestyle (ie a lifestyle either lived by them or endorsed by them and contrary to the teaching of Scripture), should be held to account and if they will not repent, be removed for the sake of the people they are meant to be serving in truth and faithfulness (Acts 20:29–31; 1 Tim. 1:18–20; Jude 3).
The mission of Christ is the priority of Christ's people. Amidst the myriad of demands made upon the resources of individual Christians, churches or denominations, those being conformed to the image of God's Son share his concern to save the lost. Preeminently concerned to see lost men and women come to faith in Christ and grow to maturity in him, they will not let evangelism and discipleship be overshadowed by other worthwhile activity.
A longstanding temptation facing the churches has been a longing for acceptance, a sense of respectability, and an acknowledgement by those with power or influence that they have a legitimate place in contemporary society. Such a temptation has often led to an accommodation to elements of the contemporary secular agenda. In all of this the words of Jesus are easily forgotten: '... because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you' (Jn 15:19; 17:14). The church will always be a despised minority in a world arraigned against God. Nevertheless, despite such opposition, even the power of death will not prevail against the church that Christ is building (Mtt. 16:18). Though we ought not to seek the animosity of the world, or indeed provoke it by our own arrogance or folly, we need to remember that vindication and legitimization will only come on the day we are invited to 'enter the joy of our master' (Mtt. 25:21, 23).

Well, it's a start. Already I can see ways in which these statements might be improved to better reflect the teaching of Scripture and more directly face the issues Anglicans must urgently address. More important than agreeing to any particular form of the current protest, though, is the necessity of the protest itself. Global Anglicanism might as well be abandoned if it continues to refuse to be reformed according to the teaching of Scripture. The insipid, compromised inclusivism of so much of the Communion has no future anyway. It already stands under the judgment of God.

Luther famously began one of his 1520 treatises with 'The time for silence is over; the time for speech has come.' Let's pray that many around the world won't be afraid to speak and keep on speaking until repentance comes or the Lord returns.

Penal substitutionary atonement

2011-01-25T11:25:00.005+11:00

Last year the Sydney Doctrine Commission produced its report on penal substitutionary atonement in response to a request of the Sydney Synod in October 2007. I think the report is worth wide reading (and not just because I am the chairman of the Doctrine Commission). As the report itself remarks, 'Because the death of Jesus has a central place in Christian thought and Christian living, it is our ongoing responsibility to carefully consider its significance' (§2).

Here is part of the conclusion:

Penal substitution is an indispensable element in the Christian proclamation of the cross. It does not say everything about the atonement but it says a crucial thing, one which also helps to illumine every other facet of the Bible's teaching on the subject. It has been treasured all through Christian history because it enables us to see how the atonement which reconciles us to God can be at one time an act of love, an act of justice and an act of triumphant redemptive power. What has been done for us was truly, morally done. What was done for us was complete and entire, addressing every dimension of the predicament we have created for ourselves. What was done for us secures our freedom and gives us a solid ground for assurance and hope. Precisely because in this penal substitution the consequences of human sin have been dealt with for those who belong to Christ, the words of Jesus from the cross are cherished above all others: 'it is finished' (John 19:30) (§45)

The full report can be found here.

Excited all over again by the Reformation

2011-01-19T13:19:00.004+11:00

The season of summer reading is about to come to an end in this part of the world. One last hearty recommendation: I have just purchased Andrew Atherstone's new book, The Reformation: Faith and Flames (Oxford: Lion, 2011). Andrew is a careful and insightful scholar, an evangelical Christian man of deep integrity, and Tutor in History and Doctrine (together with being Latimer Research Fellow) at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.

The book is a brilliant resource. In the tradition of Lion books, there are the most marvellous photographs and drawings on every page. It is wonderfully set out and best of all, Andrew's own first-class scholarship informs every sentence.

This is a book to share with the family as you encourage them to look at the Christian family album and rejoice in those who have proclaimed and defended the gospel before us, often at great cost. In an age when the Reformation is sidelined by some in the interests of Christian reunification, this is a must read. Remember again why Luther made his stand. Feel bold and weak at the same time again with Cranmer. Think through the faith with your Bible in your hand like Calvin. Pray for those who are still blind to the gospel, as William Tyndale did just before he was martyred.

Students of the Reformation will delight in the way Andrew has so adroitly summarised the key issues. Heirs of the Reformation will thank God for the faithfulness of those brothers and sisters who risked not only ridicule and censure but their lives for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I cannot recommend the book highly enough. Every Christian home should have a copy.

Taking Christ's church seriously - a tonic for the confused and disenchanted

2011-01-16T21:00:00.008+11:00

Talk about refreshing! I was recently encouraged to read the relatively recent book by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion (Chicago: Moody Press, 2009). It helped that the person recommending the book was my principal, John Woodhouse. He said I'd like it. And he was right.

Book endorsements, in my experience, seem to be getting more and more out of touch with reality. They make grand claims which just aren't met when you shell out the money and buy the book. But on this occasion the endorsements by J. I. Packer — 'As I read, I wanted to stand up and cheer', by Mark Dever — the authors are 'theologically faithful, fresh, and insightful', and Al Mohler — 'a powerful word of correction, offering compelling arguments and a vision of church life that is not only convincing, but inspirational' all hold up. I was genuinely excited by what I read.

That is not to say this is an in-depth, carefully argued evangelical ecclesiology, though it is not at all hard to see a profound and biblical ecclesiology energising the argument as it progresses. It is rather a theological engagement with the current state of the churches in America, the trendy critiques and justifications some give for leaving their church to pursue an individualist 'spirituality', and a call back to basic and too-often neglected truths about the nature and purpose of church. Precisely because American trends are being repeated all over the world (as American books and internet resources on church, church growth, church leadership, church impact etc. are increasingly setting the agenda amongst many evangelicals) this theological engagement has a relevance way beyond its immediate situation.

If you are not familiar with the authors, one is the Senior Pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan and the other is a member of that same church who is an award winning sportswriter. Their last collaborative effort was Why We're Not Emergent (by two guys who should be) (Chicago: Moody Press, 2008). Their style is lively, engaging — amusing at points and deeply challenging at others. Those with whom they disagree are treated courteously and for the most part other views are weighed rather than dismissed entirely or prematurely. Though this doesn't quite do justice to the breadth of what each chapter accomplishes, Kevin's chapters are more analytic and theological while Ted's are more anecdotal and dialogical.

The introduction sets out the structure of the book: the reasons often given for disillusionment with the church are grouped into four categories and each of the authors examine each of these categories in matching chapters. They are:

Missiological — the church doesn't work and has lost touch with its mission to the world
Personal — the church is filled with people who give it a bad name
Historical — the church is an accident of history, a declension from the earliest pattern of Christian corporate life, which has shown itself to be an embarrassing failure
Theological — the church in the New Testament is any group of Christians who are together in the same place (and therefore the institution is irrelevant)

You might get a taste for the book from the following quotations (I've just noticed that each of them comes from Kevin's chapters, which says more about me than about the book I suspect):

When I hear people getting sick of church, I almost always see at the same time a minimizing of, or growing indifference toward, or ambiguous terminology for such phrases as 'substitutionary atonement', 'justification by faith alone', 'the necessity of faith and repentance', 'the utter inability of man to save himself', and 'the centrality of the cross and resurrection'. I really want to assume that the new missional Christians still believe we are sinners in need of grace, and that Jesus' death paid our debt and propitiated the wrath of God, and that we must repent of our sin and trust in Jesus alone for our our salvation. I want to assume this, but I wish I didn't have to. I wish the glory of Christ crucified, the offence of the cross, and the necessity of conversion were more explicitly stated and more clearly central. (p. 50)

It can be helpful to know how others perceive us, but not always. In our self-esteem-oriented, easily offended, suffering-averse world, I fear that the church is too eager to be liked. 'As we study the New Testament', suggests [Elton] Trueblood, 'we soon realize that part of the power of the early Christian Movement arose from the clear recognition that it was by no means popular or generally accepted. The hope of reaching the masses with a redemptive power was always prefaced by the clear recognition that the opposition was intense as well as abundant'. Of course Christianity has an 'image problem'. At times, this is our own fault. But at other times, our lack of an image problem has been just as damning. We've been indistinct from the world with nothing to set us apart, nothing to suggest a transformed life or renewed thinking bound by the Word of God. We've lusted after academic recognition and cultural validation. We've fancied ourselves fashionable and looked around for the world to take notice. (pp. 80–81)

C. S. Lewis is famous for many things, among them coining the phrase 'chronological snobbery'. The phrase refers to the all-too-common tendency among Christians to quickly discount what is old and automatically embrace what is new. We tend to think our problems are original to us and our solutions are one of a kind. We are faddish trend-watchers — ignorant of our own history, obnoxiously dismissive of the practices of our spiritual fathers and mothers, and easily duped. (p. 115)

The critique of churchless Christianity and of minimalist definitions of church, which takes up the bulk of the chapter on theological criticisms, is particularly helpful in the current climate, though overall, in my view, it wasn't as strong as some of the others.

It would certainly be good if this book found its way into the hands of the great majority of evangelical pastors the world over. Who knows, they might even find themselves standing and cheering with Jim Packer!

Unconsciously recasting the nature of gospel ministry

2011-01-10T20:35:00.006+11:00

Back in Jerusalem, in the early days of the Christian church, the apostles devoted themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word of God (Acts 6:4). Later, the apostle Paul dedicated himself to proclaiming the crucified Christ (1 Cor. 2:1-5) and spoke insistently of his prayers for those with whom he had shared the gospel (Phil. 1:3-11; Eph. 1:15-23; 3:14-18; etc.). This was the pattern of ministry that Paul commended to those to whom he gave responsibility among the churches (1 Tim. 4:11-16). There are a variety of gifts and forms of service, but of critical importance fore the life of the churches is prayer and the ministry of the word of God. Whatever else Paul did (and we know he did many other things, such as engaging others in the service of the gospel, gathering the collection for the saints in Jerusalem, meeting with other Christian leaders, and travelling the known world) he was first and foremost a man of prayer and a teacher of the word of God. Those who cared for the churches were to do so by following his example (Phil. 3:17; 2 Tim. 1:13). This is how Christ will build his church.

It is the word of God which nourishes faith and transforms lives. The word of God redraws our perspective on life and the world around us. The word of God penetrates to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, 'discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart' (Heb. 4:12). Paul pointed Timothy to the sacred writings ('the Holy Scriptures') 'which are able to make you wise to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ' (2 Tim. 3:15). He wrote to the Romans of how 'through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope' (Rom. 15:4). The Spirit-inspired Scriptures are not just the theoretical basis for Christian ministry; the faithful teaching of these Scriptures is the principal means of fulfilling that ministry. Devoting ourselves to teaching the Scriptures in the context of genuine personal relationships ('to preach the gospel by prayerfully expounding the Bible to the people God has given me to love', to use Philip Jensen's rich and memorable expression) is the staple of Christian ministry. Everything else can slip into the background, but against all odds this must remain front and centre.

In an era when some fear their backs are against the wall and that we must do everything in our power to arrest Christianity's slide into oblivion, the temptation to rework this classic understanding of Christian ministry is felt keenly. The ministry of the pastor is recast in terms of images gleaned from outside the Scriptures: a leader, a manager, a mission director. Yet these images must be subverted by the dynamics of the biblical gospel if they are to be of any use. The Christian leader leads by praying and faithfully attending to the ministry of the word. Effective management takes place through prayer and the consistent, faithful teaching of the Scriptures. The mission is properly directed by teachers rather than strategists, by prayer warriors rather than vision casters. It would be wrong to portray this as a battle between either/or (e.g. teaching vs leading) and both/and (e.g. teaching and leading). One is the means of the other (e.g. we lead by teaching). Christian leadership, management and mission direction is not simply a modification of what we might find in other walks of life. It is an entirely different phenomenon.

Of course Christian ministry is not the sole preserve of the ordained or those appointed to particular 'offices' within the churches. It is a collective activity, the employment of the gifts we have been given 'for the common good' (1 Cor. 12:7). The pastor need not be and perhaps should not be the only teacher in a congregation and he certainly should not be the only one who prays. Nevertheless, to assign these key activities to others in order to facilitate more time for 'team leadership', 'vision development', or 'directing the mission' is to misunderstand the pattern of ministry we have received from the apostles.

Christ is growing his church and the means by which he is doing this is through prayer and the faithful ministry of the word of God. It would be a tragedy if, in our great desire to see more and more men and women come to faith and knit into the fellowship of God's people, we unwittingly recast the nature of gospel ministry in a way which marks a departure from the apostolic pattern.

Simeon on Preaching

2011-01-04T10:20:00.007+11:00

I have just been listening to John Stott's talk on Charles Simeon, given at Taylor University in November 2004 (it can be found here). Simeon is one of the great evangelical heroes. The object of fierce opposition when he first took to the pulpit in Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, he went on serve God's people in that church for 54 years. He influenced generations of evangelical preachers and was active in a myriad of ways to transform the Church of England. His legacy continues in Anglican evangelicalism around the world today.

John Stott drew attention to Simeon's own summaries of his approach to preaching. They are worth pondering by new and old preachers alike.

Simeon aimed at

unity in his subject (likening a sermon to a telescope with one object in its field of vision)
perspicuity in his arrangement (a recognisable and memorable structure to the sermon)
simplicity in his diction (avoiding the temptations to display either rhetorical skill or a mastery of technical language)

He insisted that all his preaching (and all preaching in general) should be subjected to this test:

Does it uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Saviour, to promote holiness?

Simeon's preaching could not, in the end, be separated from his manner of life. His personal integrity, the transparency of his personal relationship with the one about whom he spoke so powerfully, and his hard won personal humility, reinforced all that he had to say. His was a broken and contrite heart at the foot of the cross and that simple truth about the man gave his sermons enormous impact.

John Stott's entire address is worth listening to. Simeon has much to teach those who want to preach well and are prepared to do more than simply ape the self-proclaimed masters of preaching in our own time.

Biblical inerrancy

2010-12-28T10:56:00.005+11:00

I have long wanted to write a serious piece on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. Recently I was given the opportunity to do so through an invitation to contribute to a volume essays, The Bible and the Academy: Critical Scholarship and the Evangelical Understanding of Scripture in the 21st Century, edited by James Hoffmeier and Dennis Magary and to be published by Crossway in 2011. I do not intend to reproduce the article here but instead simply to outline its argument.

My goal was not to present a comprehensive exposition of the doctrine (which would have required about three times the space) but to explore the strictly theological dimensions of the doctrine. While critically biblical inerrancy is a doctrine about the Christian Bible (and not first and foremost about the biblical authors), it has profound connections with the doctrine of God and his involvement in the world he has made.

Here is the outline:

1. Introduction

An acknowledgement of current difficulties with the doctrine and the need for a theological account.

2. A doctrine both theologically robust and exegetically defensible

A response to the charge that the doctrine is itself unbiblical, a brief exploration of how the doctrine raises acutely the question of theological method, and an examination of some classic definitions (Warfield, The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy, and Paul Feinberg) alongside Michael Horton's brief but decidedly theological definition.

3. The five theological pillars of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy

These are: (a) God's personal veracity; (b) God's concursive involvement in the created order; (c) God's willingness to accommodate himself for our sake; (d) God's creation and use of human speech and writing; and (e) God's gift of Scripture.

4. A perspective on the difficulties

A concluding comment that reflects on the way critiques of the doctrine routinely deal in caricature, the need to take difficulties with the text seriously without imposing a predetermined solution and recognising that we may not expect all answers to be known in the present, and a plea for maintaining perspective — inerrancy is not the only or perhaps even the most important characteristic of Scripture.

Here is an extract from the conclusion:

As we acknowledged at the beginning, there is much more that could be said. However, it is evident that the theological anchorage of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy is both broad and deep. Our understanding of Scripture cannot be isolated from the person and character of the God who gave it to us, just as it may not bypass the genuine freedom and conscious involvement of the human authors of each particular text. What it means for this collection of texts to be the written word of God and what it means for it to be 'genuinely human' must be determined first and foremost with reference to God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Yet what is involved is much more than a theological syllogism or a hasty and unqualified appeal to the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in Christ. Larger theological themes are integrated with Scripture's self-attestation and with a sensitivity to the textures of what we have in fact been given in Scripture.

Biblical inerrancy has more often been engaged by critics in caricature than with serious attention to the best and most serious expositions of the doctrine. Contemporary assessments of the phenomena of Scripture have too often been given priority over the express biblical affirmations or the broader theological framework sketched above. On the one hand, a preoccupation with incidental details has not often been disciplined by sustained attention to the purposes for which Scripture has been given, while on the other, too little attention has been given to the way in which the central message of Scripture is inextricably bound to matters of history and observations about the world in which we live ...

I hope that the full article, when it is published, will answer any questions which might arise from this bare outline and quote from its conclusion. Suffice to say that my research and the process of writing the article strengthened rather than diminished my commitment to this important doctrine, though I remain opposed to using it as a Shibboleth.

Assurance and Perseverance

2010-12-24T09:09:00.006+11:00

I was recently asked to write a brief response to a question about assurance. The questioner had been troubled by the question (or rather by some responses to the question) 'Can a believer lose their salvation?' The question of assurance is a deeply troubling one for many. In every church where I have served there have been people who have struggled with this question. How can they be sure they are saved now? How can they be sure they will make it to the end? What follows is not even close to a definitive answer to these questions. However, it is an attempt to set some important pegs in the ground and to point to the real grounds for Christian confidence. The confidence displayed by Paul in his letters was not simply the result of a special revelation given to him and him alone. It is the birthright of all who come to Christ in faith. So here is a slightly edited version of my response to question I was asked:

Dear brother,

... It seems to me that the issue is properly answered by reference to three factors:

1. The sovereignty of God in salvation. It is God's determination to save men and women in Christ which is the ultimate source of our salvation and therefore of our assurance of salvation. We are saved by Christ's death and resurrection for us and this secure anchor for our confidence is not affected by the weakness of our faith, the imperfection of our obedience, or the volatile nature of our sense of God's presence. What God begins he is perfectly able to bring to completion.

2. The nature of faith as personal trust in God and his promises. Faith is not just knowing the truth or assenting to the truth, as important as these both are. In other words, it is not just holding to true doctrine. Rather, it is a personal trust in our heavenly Father and his purposes, trust in the Son he sent to live a perfect life and die and rise again to free us from all the consequences of our sin, trust in the Holy Spirit who is able to bring dead hearts to life and produce in us his fruit. So assurance is not something added to faith but it is faith itself. To trust the Saviour with your life involves being confident that he is able to save not just men and women in general but you in particular, and that he has promised to save all who come to him in faith.

3. The warnings of Scripture are real and are heeded by those who are in Christ. Several times in Scripture we are warned of the dire consequences of abandoning our faith in Christ. Hebrews 6 is one of the most obvious places. These warnings are real rather than merely hypothetical. We all know ho disobedient we can be, how easy it would be to stop praying, to stop reading our Bibles, to stop trusting in our Lord and start trusting ourselves and our own achievements. We need to take seriously the dreadful (and absurd) possibility of turning again to a life characterised by sin. However, these same warnings are one of the chief means God uses to keep us from abandoning our faith in Christ. Those God has chosen and given new life hear these warnings and heed them. They persevere to the end. The perseverance of the saints turns out to be the preservation of God.

We might well conclude that those who have fallen away are either (a) those who never really believed (1 John 2:19), though they were able to counterfeit faith in a way that hid this truth from others and even, to a certain extent, from themselves; or (b) those who have wandered only temporarily, and who will return (often having been chastened along the way, e.g. the prodigal son, the apostle Peter who denied Christ in the courtyard three times). From our limited vantage point we can never really be sure which of these categories best suits any particular person. Only the last day will show the answer to these things. We should avoid assuming too quickly that this person was never really a Christian or that the current state of affairs is just a hiccup in that Christian person's walk with the Lord. We ought to pray that God might restore them, and if they did not have faith, that he might grant them what they cannot manufacture for themselves no matter how hard they try. We can never simply stand a distance from them, accusing and condemning them. We aim at restoration (2 Cor. 13:11).

What does this mean for me and my salvation? My salvation is secure, not because I have the capacity to make it secure, but because God's promise is unchanging and true and he who began a good work in me is able to bring it to completion on the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:16). God has predestined me to be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:28-29) and what began with God's eternal foreknowledge of me will be consummated when I share the glory of God's Son on his return. But in the meantime I must heed the real warnings of Scripture and take seriously the means God has given to strengthen and nourish faith amongst his people (the Spirit, the Scriptures, the fellowship of God's people, prayer, etc.). Preeminently, God gives me his Spirit as a guarantee of the inheritance that is mine (an inheritance shared with all who are in Christ, Eph. 1:13-14) and to testify to my spirit that I am a child of God who can call God 'Father' (Rom 8:15–17).

We must beware the kind of teaching which makes the confidence of the New Testament seem unattainable. On the other hand, we must avoid a superficial dismissal of the warnings against apostasy in Scripture which breeds a self-confidence not focussed on God's promises nor characterised by prayerful dependence upon him.

I was taught, long ago, that the assurance of salvation is the birthright of every Christian. It may be assaulted on all sides (even our own). But we can be confident that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Whatever happened to ad fontes?

2010-12-22T13:57:00.008+11:00

Many of the great advances of the Renaissance and Reformation eras were built upon the humanist program of education in the eloquence of antiquity. Intellectuals such as Desiderius Erasmus believed that society could be improved, and the abuses and errors of the past corrected, through serious and extensive engagement with classical literature. In the field of theology, one of the most decisive changes was an insistence on first-hand engagement rather than a reliance on secondary summaries of great thoughts from the past. Instead of relying on the Vulgate, Greek and Hebrew studies flourished. Instead of working from collections of purple passages from the church fathers, reading extensively in their works was encouraged as a means of properly understanding the context and significance of things they taught. Luther learned Greek and Hebrew and read Augustine for himself, rather than simply making use of the arguments and quotations extracted by Peter the Lombard and others. Calvin took seriously the need for careful and contextual reading of Scripture and the theological work of the great theologians of the past. It became a feature of the best evangelical scholarship. We go back to the sources (ad fontes).

Careful and attentive reading of key contributors to each of the great theological traditions can most certainly aid careful theologising for our own times. Impressionistic readers end up doing impressionistic theology, and while this might be stimulating and suggestive, it is ultimately unsatisfying (and in fact deeply disillusioning) to discover that a source relied upon in the construction of a contemporary theological proposal does not really provide the necessary warrant for continuing down that path. When sources are misread, only partially read, or worst of all, not read at all, it is hard to have confidence that the proposal merits further consideration.

I would have thought this was all standard fare. In my own context, I tend to give lower grades to those whose engagement with their sources is clearly mediated by contemporary summaries. I expect that an analysis of Luther's argument, for example, will contain footnotes citing Luther's own work (even if it is just in translation), rather than comments like 'as cited by McGrath' or 'as found in Althaus'. McGrath and Althaus are undoubtedly important twentieth and twenty-first century interpreters of Luther, but in the final analysis Luther's own words have priority over contemporary constructions. McGrath and Althaus (and anyone else who has written on aspects of Luther's theology) need to be evaluated in the light of Luther's own literary legacy.

Why clog up cyberspace with these elementary observations? Because in recent days I have read a number of pieces which seem to have abandoned the Reformation's ad fontes principle. I recently read a ThD thesis in which far too many of the quotations were not sourced to the original writer or speaker but to a contemporary commentator on that writer's work. Just the other day I was reading a book which promised to provide an historical overview of the doctrine of biblical clarity or perspicuity but which repeatedly was content to rely on earlier scholarly work (some of it later discredited) rather than directly engage the sources. I have also read recently a number of articles which systematically take apart one contemporary proposal about the doctrine of Scripture, demonstrating misreading or partial reading of those texts which played highly significant role in the proposal. I still wince when I think about one often-cited book on trinitarian relations which is riddled with errors of this kind (its credibility has been called into question on these grounds by scholars on three continents).

When engaged in theological conversation — even more when engaged in theological debate — it is critical that we avoid caricature and distortion of the views of others. We need to cultivate the intellectual virtue of honest dealing with the work of people with whom we disagree (and with those of our own tradition as well!). Augustine's axiom of charitable reading — that we begin with the assumption that the writer has something worthwhile to say, something which is true and has been written for our edification — needs to be taken seriously. This can only really be done if we read the sources themselves. We cannot afford to cut corners and discover later that we were misinformed about the opinions of others.

Perhaps the general lowering of academic standards in the West (largely justified by a desire to provide greater accessibility to higher education) has made it possible for some to be satisfied with second-hand opinions rather than first-hand engagement with the sources. Perhaps this is also why in a growing number of theological institutions it is possible to avoid the study of the biblical languages. After all we have good translations and a plethora of commentaries don't we? But the explosion of learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was due in no small measure to a refusal to be content with indirect access to the sources. We will be impoverished if that trajectory is reversed for the sake of a questionable social agenda.

Moore Bolt

2010-12-02T21:41:00.005+11:00

Peter Bolt, the brilliant Head of New Testament Studies at Moore College, has published again. It is fascinating the way he has followed the same trajectory in research interests as another great New Testament teacher at Moore, Donald Robinson (who would later become Archbishop of Sydney). Like Bishop Robinson, Peter has taught and published landmark works on the New Testament. His The Cross at a Distance: Atonement in Mark's Gospel (Nottingham: IVP, 2004) comes to mind. But lately he has added a new passion: study of the early colonial period in Sydney, and in particular the influential gospel men who laid the foundations of Australian evangelicalism.

Thomas Moore is a particularly apt subject, as the man whose bequest established the theological college in which both Peter and I teach. Peter has published on Thomas Moore before (Thomas Moore of Liverpool: One of our Oldest Colonists [Sydney: Bolt Publishing, 2007]. But now he has turned his considerable skills to producing the definitive biography of the man who, as much as any other under God, was responsible for setting the course for two centuries of bold evangelical witness in the city of Sydney.

The discovery of Moore's private papers in 2005 (by Peter!) has opened up the possibility of knowing far more about this influential man than was ever thought possible. Peter has built upon this by careful and patient historical research both here in Australia and in England. The result is an embarrassment of riches that has made it necessary to produce Moore's biography in two volumes. Volume 1 takes us from his birth to his arrival in Liverpool. Anyone who has dipped into it, as I have, will not only be fascinated by the picture of early colonial life that it gives us but will undoubtedly be left impatient to read of the next stage in Moore's adventure.

A Portrait in his Actions: Thomas Moore of Liverpool (1762–1840) Part 1: Lesbury to Liverpool (Sydney: Bolt Publishing, 2010) was launched on 22 November by the Governor of New South Wales, Professor Marie Bashir. The Governor spoke of this as 'the best piece of historical work written for a wider audience' she had ever read. High praise indeed from an enthusiast for Australian colonial history!

It is important that Christians become familiar with our 'family album' — the life stories of those brothers and sisters who have gone before us. It gives us some perspective as well as an appreciation of why we are the way we are. Peter Bolt's biography of Thomas Moore is a case in point, of particular value to all who are, or who have benefitted from the ministry of, Sydney Anglicans. The book retails for $55.00 and can be ordered here.

Summer Reading on the Doctrine of Scripture

2010-11-18T09:36:00.006+11:00

As summer approaches here in the southern hemisphere, the opportunity for some more relaxed reading presents itself. Two recent books on the doctrine of Scripture would be among my top picks.

I have recently reviewed (rather belatedly) Tim Ward's brilliant little book, Words of Life: Scripture as the living and active word of God (Nottingham: IVP, 2009). Quite simply, it is the best and most edifying book on the subject I have read for some time. Tim takes us through the the biblical idea that God in fact speaks and what that most basic and yet crucial truth means. He then turns his attention to the connection between Scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity. Turning his attention next to the attributes of Scripture, he deals in particular with questions of sufficiency, clarity and authority. It is in this last section that he gives a deeply satisfying account of biblical inerrancy (pp. 132–142). The final chapter deals with the place and function of Scripture in the Christian life, in both its personal and corporate dimensions. This is a book that every pastor ought to have on his shelves (after it has been carefully read, of course).

I am at this moment waiting for my copy of John Frame's new book to arrive. (As an aside, I only recently discovered that Kevin Vanhoozer dedicated his latest book, Remythologizing Theology, to John Frame.) It is the fourth and final installment of his Theology of Lordship series entitled The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg: P & R, 2010). Though I have yet to read it, it comes wonderfully commended as the scholarly evangelical treatment of the subject for the twenty-first century. Let's see if it lives up to its pre-release publicity. Stay tuned for a verdict.

Evangelical Courage

2010-11-17T15:51:00.017+11:00

It is one of the many great sayings attributed to Luther, one which is often quoted in times of controversy or simply as an antidote to the loss of nerve that seems to overcome so many. It is quoted in popular magazine articles, posted on websites, and even referenced in more scholarly work. I know people who have it framed on their wall. If you are a fan of Luther at all, I'd be surprised if you haven't read or heard of these words. Luther's famous saying goes like this:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. To be steady on all battle fronts besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

It definitely sounds like Luther. He knew that we can't always choose where the battle will be fought today. Today's point of attack may not seem a 'first order issue', at least at first. But it may be that this is the point at which the gospel needs to be defended today and to look for another ground, to write off this cause as lost because it seems 'we just can't win this one', may be a very serious mistake.

I forget where I first read this quote. I do remember being excited by it all over again when I read it in George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1984), p. 75. I notice it also appears on the Anglican Mainstream website. It seems the perfect evangelical rallying cry.

Like many before me, I have wasted a deal of time trying to track down this particular quotation, eager to have a copy of it in Luther's original German or Latin so that it can be quoted in more academic settings as well. After long hours of searching, though, it appears that, at least in this form, the quote is not actually from Luther.

Others who have been in on the hunt for Luther's use of these words have traced it to a nineteenth century piece of historical fiction: Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family (London: Nelson, 1864), p. 276. In this work, quotation and narrative embellishment are not so easily distinguished, though the author did insist that

The portions of these Chronicles, which refer to Luther, Melanchthon, Frederic of Saxony, and other historical persons, can be verified from Luther's "Tischreden;" Luther's "Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken;" edited by De Wette; the four volumes called, "Geist aus Luther's (sic) Schriften," edited by F. W. Lomler, C. F. Lucius, Dr. T. Rust, L. Sackreuter, and Dr. Ernst Zimmermann ...

I haven't yet checked the De Wette edition of Luther's letters etc. (note that the above link is to the Google Books 'copy'). What I have noticed, though, is that the words attributed to Luther elsewhere are part of a longer paragraph in Elizabeth Charles' book in which her characters reflect on their willingness to stand with Luther when he was under attack. There is no direct attribution of these words to Luther. Indeed, the two sentences immediately preceding the quote read:

But now to confess Luther seemed to me to have become identical with confessing Christ. It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity.

Many have claimed the words come from WABr 3, p. 81ff. This is the footnote reference that Lindbeck gave, for instance. The sentiment can be found there but not the precise wording. The letter concerned is no. 619 from Luther to Count Albrecht of Mansfield, dated 3 June 1523. Here is a translation of the relevant section (WABr 3, 81.113–82.119) by Christopher Boyd Brown, the General Editor of the additional 20 volumes of Luther's Works currently being produced by Concordia Publishing House:

Neither is it of any help if someone should say, 'I will gladly confess Christ and His Word in every other article, except that I may keep silence about one or two that my tyrants may not tolerate, such as both species on the Sacrament and the like'. For whoever denies Christ in one article or word has denied the same Christ in that one article who would be denied by [denying] all the articles, since there is only one Christ in all His words, taken all together or singly.

So even if Luther did not say these words (and someone with more time than I will have to wade through the De Wette volumes to see if they can be found there) it is quite clear that the sentiment is his.

Do not despair, though, he definitely said this:

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. ('Letter to Philip Melanchthon, 1 August 1521', LW 48, 281–282 = WABr 2, 372.82–85)

And this:

In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. ('2nd Invocavit Sermon, 10 March 1522', LW 51, 77 = WA 10-3, 18.10–19.3)

And, of course, this (the absence of the final sentence [in German rather than in Latin] in the official record is explained, I believe, by the pandemonium which broke out when Luther uttered the crucial words 'I cannot and will not recant anything' revocare neque possum nec volo quicquam):

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me, Amen. ('Luther's speech to the Diet of Worms, 18 April 1521', LW 32, 112–113 = WA 7, 838.4–9)

Zaspel's fresh study of Warfield: An antidote to caricature

2010-11-03T11:58:00.005+11:00

I've just procured my copy of Fred Zaspel's acclaimed new study of the theology of B. B. Warfield. Warfield's theology has been loved by many and caricatured, misunderstood and pilloried by others. It has long needed a sympathetic scholarly analysis which would explain Warfield on his own terms, analyse both his method and his argument, and critically engage his relevance for Protestant theology almost a hundred years after his death.

I've only just skimmed the book so far, but that has been enough to see the breadth of scholarship which lies behind it. Zaspel has read not only an extraordinary amount of Warfield but also many of his fiercest opponents. He works through Warfield's contribution to Reformed thinking about apologetics and theological method, the doctrines of revelation, Scripture, God, Christ, the Spirit, Anthropology and Hamartiology, Salvation, Church and Eschatology. A reflection on Warfield's contribution as a whole (one which frankly admits his limitations as well as his strengths and influence) rounds out the volume. Fittingly, the final words are Warfield's own. The appendix reprints Warfield's A Brief and Untechnical Statement of the Reformed Faith.

I am looking forward to spending several enjoyable hours engaging with Warfield again over the summer. There may be points at which I might still want to demur, but I expect to learn a lot too.

Happy Reformation Day!

2010-10-30T21:41:00.007+11:00

This year the anniversary of Luther's famous nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg (31 October 1517) falls on a Sunday. I know some have argued that the theses were never posted, but I can see no serious reason to doubt the historicity of this act. It was a perfectly natural thing for a university professor to do. It was a call for public debate on a matter of urgency. The fact that Luther's theses were copied and distributed throughout Europe over the next few months demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that his concerns gave voice to those many others were feeling and were, perhaps, too afraid to express in such a public way. But the debate began here as part of Luther's faithful discharge of his duty as a doctor of the church.

It is fashionable in some circles to play down the significance of the Reformation. In the interest of overcoming the divisions that ensued, some Protestants have even gone into print to suggest it was a mistake. It was a misunderstanding in which the protagonists on both sides misheard each other. Issues were blown out of all proportion. Personal ambition and quirks of personality prevented a resolution that should easily have been reached.

I couldn't disagree more strongly. Luther's protest needed to be heard in the sixteenth century and it needs to echo in the twenty-first. Luther's challenge to the power of indulgences (for this is the great concern of the 95 theses) was in fact seen for what it was by one of his first opponents, Sylvester Prierias. Far from the incompetent he is sometimes portrayed, Prierias understood that Luther's protest about indulgences cut to the heart of Roman Catholicism and raised questions about the infallible authority of tradition. If Luther was allowed to get away with his critique of this aspect of Catholic practice, anchored as it was in theological and ecclesiastical tradition, on the basis of an appeal to the plain teaching of Scripture, the repercussions would be very serious indeed. Prierias was right about this at least. The repercussions were very serious.

Our theology and our church practice needs to be shaped and disciplined by the teaching of Scripture. Of course Luther and the other reformers understood that Scripture was to be read in the context of the communion of saints and so there was much to learn from those who had studied the Scriptures before them. The teaching of the theological tradition was not inevitably in error. The practice of the churches was not inevitably a betrayal of God's express intention for his people. It would simply be arrogant to suggest they were. However, all things are to be tested by the word of God, most especially the confession and the practice of the churches. And the faithful Christian pastor, in particular, must be prepared to say 'No' sometimes and not just 'Yes'.

Luther's bold act of publicly challenging, not only the scholastic theology of the universities, but a practice in the churches which had been sanctioned by the highest ecclesiastical authority, would cost him dearly. At Worms four years later he would be declared an outlaw, with a price on his head. Others who followed his lead in the years that followed would suffer and die, essentially for the truth that what God has to say is always more important, always carries more authority, always has a right to challenge, what we or any human institution might want to say.

In the end, the Reformation cannot be forgotten or minimised without jeopardising the gospel itself. For that reason alone it is worth celebrating, and encouraging our churches to celebrate, the anniversary of this great catalyst for the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

Do not be afraid

2010-10-26T05:44:00.005+11:00

It is amazing, once you are alerted to it, how often the brief encouragement 'Do not be afraid' occurs in Scripture. Often in the context there seems very good reason to be afraid. There might seem no way out. The opposition arrayed against you might seem overwhelming. The virulence and persistence with which you are opposed may be a very real cause for terror. And then the words come, 'do not be afraid'.

One of my favourite texts which includes these four little words of encouragement comes from 1 Samuel 22 (drawn to my attention by John Woodhouse). Ahimelech the son of Ahitub has fled from Doeg the Edomite who has just murdered the priests of Nob. Coming to David, he seeks refuge with him. And at this point the Old Testament Christ says to him 'Stay with me; do not be afraid, for he who seeks my life seeks your life. With me you shall be in safekeeping.' (v. 23)

Of course in the New Testament these words occur repeatedly on the lips of Jesus. His disciples, it seems, had ample opportunity to be afraid (sometimes of Jesus as they caught glimpses of his unique power and authority, Mk 6:45–51; Lk 5:1–11). And yet he kept saying 'do not be afraid' (Mtt 10:26, 28, 31; Mk 5:36; Lk 12:32; Rev 1:17).

It would be very easy to succumb to fear, especially at this moment in our history. The secularism of the West has turned nasty of late. Some demand that faith has no place in the public square. Others repeatedly point to the very real failures of religious institutions and religious leaders in an effort to erode whatever remains of the moral authority once exercised by those who appeal to the teaching of Scripture for the appropriate way to live in the world. Still others seek to dismantle any opportunities for Christian influence upon the wider community. Immorality is embraced as a lifestyle choice which ought to be respected even by those who do not so choose. The value of life is undermined at the edges where it is most vulnerable (the unborn child, the aged and infirm). And you do not have to go far to find evidence of these things. Each one of them could be documented here in my home town! It would be very easy to succumb to fear. The chasm between the church and the world is opening up again — or at least the long cherished pretence that it was not really such a chasm is crumbling before our eyes. We have fought so hard not to be seen as strange by those around us. But strangers we are being shown to be again.

Nevertheless, fear is something to which we must not succumb as Christians. Defensiveness and reactionary postures are neither necessary or appropriate. Nothing has dislodged Jesus from the throne. The Father's determination to give to his 'little flock' the kingdom he has prepared (Lk 12:32) has not been derailed. Not even the gates of hades can prevail against the church built by Christ (Mtt 16:18). The day is surely coming when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9–11).

Christian leaders of all persuasions have, through the centuries, reminded God's people not to be afraid. These words were, as I've noted before, a kind of chorus in the writings of John Paul II. They could be heard from Billy Graham's pulpit and read in John Stott's books. Giants of the past like Augustine and Luther stared into the face of opposition every bit as intense as anything we might face and insisted that God's city could not be plundered and God's promise is unfailingly sure.

I admit that sometimes when I hear yet another news story which is directed against the gospel in one way or another I wonder how we will survive. As Constantine's synthesis finally unravels, I wonder what shape Christian life and ministry will take in the next century and at what cost. But then I need to be pulled up short and reminded of this great biblical theme. And I need to be reminded of the end of the story. The world does not win. God wins.

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know, that God is for me. In God whose word I praise, in the Lord whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? (Ps 56:8–11)

An important distinction in our thinking about church

2010-07-16T22:59:00.006+10:00

It seems to me that we are not often as careful when we think and speak about church as we are in other areas of Christian doctrine. Confusions abound, sometimes through a lack of careful distinctions.

Earlier this year I was in a debate with some older brothers in the faith about the threefold order (bishops, priests, and deacons). I had been arguing that we can affirm such an order as consistent with the teaching of Scripture (that is, a case can be made that this way of ordering our ministry structures doesn't conflict with any specific element of teaching of Scripture and may indeed arise out of elements of that teaching — the same, of course, could be said for a number of different ways of ordering ministry structures) while we must not suggest that the threefold order is mandated by Scripture. These brothers, who have spent decades defending the faith, often in very difficult circumstances — i.e. their faithfulness and courage are both beyond doubt —insisted I needed to say more than this. They wanted to give the threefold order the dignity of biblical teaching rather than ascribe it to an exercise of our Christian freedom consistent with the teaching of Scripture. This, to them, is the biblical order.

This desire to invest our ideas with the authority of biblical teaching is something of which we ought to be very wary. The distinction between the normative teaching of Scripture, which we are all bound to submit to as the word of God, and our faithful, edifying reflection upon the teaching of Scripture is something we should be familiar with. With Luther, my conscience is bound by the word of God, but I am not bound by any particular doctrinal system. Such systems can have both strengths and weaknesses. But they must not stand in the place of Scripture or be confused with Scripture. This is nothing novel; it is standard Protestant and evangelical teaching. However, I want to argue that this distinction needs to be taken much more seriously, especially in the area of ecclesiology.

Of course, we must not avoid the fact there are some things about the nature of church and how we behave as members of churches that are in fact mandated by Scripture. Where Scripture has spoken, as the old Protestant saying goes, the matter is indeed decided. This needs to be strongly affirmed in opposition to a contemporary desire to trim the number of issues which are decided by Scripture (witness the debates about whether an immoral lifestyle disqualifes a person for ordination, or those about who may preach to a Christian congregation made up of both men and women). Over two thousand years we have shown a remarkable ability to artificially (and erroneously) expand the number of areas on which we claim that Scripture is silent. And we are also apt to confuse freedom and necessity (i. e. because I'm free to do such and such, I must do such and such).

But there is no real loss in saying that in some areas there is freedom to determine the shape of our life together in ways which are consistent with the teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the development of infant baptism properly belongs here. Perhaps too the proposal for lay administration of the Lord's Supper (or even the decision to restrict such administration to the pastor of the congregation?). Our decisions within any such area of freedom must not compromise the teaching of Scripture, but they are no less important for simply being our decisions. In the archaic language of the Thirty-nine Articles or Religion, 'Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to edifying' (Article 34). We can say this is how we are going to do things without disenfranchising those who choose to do things differently. As Broughton Knox, John Woodhouse and others have argued, a plurality of denominations may actually be a good thing — as long as there is a genuine recognition of brotherhood across denominational boundaries. They can provide an opportunity for the exercise of freedom in accord with the teaching of Scripture.

Of course there are circumstances in which a particular exercise of Christian freedom (I take it in the corporate as well as the individual sense) becomes inappropriate and worse. The apostle Paul could talk about the freedom of Christians to eat whatever they choose, but to cause a brother or sister to stumble by the exercise of such freedom fails the test of love. Where a decision or act which we are free to make is theologised in a way that undermines the gospel of Christ or brings shipwreck to the faith of a brother, then that freedom should not be exercised. Arguably, the import of sacerdotal notions into the actions of the ordained minister changes entirely the context in which the decision is made about how we are free to order our remembrance of the Lord's death in the contemporary practice of the Lord's Supper.

So let's be circumspect in the claims we make for our preferred mode of church life and church structure. That needn't mean we remain uncommitted or pretend we have no personal preferences. But it will mean we will try to reserve the authority of Scripture for those things which Scripture does in fact teach. And it will mean that our freedoms are relativised by our concern to preserve the truth entrusted to us and to love those who meet with us as Christ's gathered people.

Some deep reflection needed

2010-07-12T16:30:00.008+10:00

I have been reading an immensely interesting book in the last couple of weeks. It is by Peter Hitchens, British journalist, author, broadcaster and brother of celebrated 'new atheist' Christopher Hitchens.

It is interesting for a whole host of reasons. It gives fascinating insight into life in post-war Britain and Hitchens has a number of penetrating insights into the way change has happened and why. His particular way of describing official Christianity's slide into superficiality (aping rather than challenging what was happening all around it) challenges some of my own sacred cows. What is more, his breadth of experience in Africa, Soviet Russia, America and elsewhere adds both colour and depth to his observations.

Perhaps some of his most fascinating suggestions, though, arise in response to questions about why Christianity is so fiercely opposed at the moment, not just by enthusiasts such as Hitchens' brother, but by opinion makers and power brokers all over the Western world. I'm fascinated if not yet quite convinced. Nevertheless, I'm certain his ideas bear further deep reflection.

Hear what he has to say:

Why is there such a fury against religion now? Why is it more advanced in Britain than in the USA? I have had good reason to seek the answer to this question, and I have found it where I might have expected to have done if only I had grasped from the start how large are the issues at stake. Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak. Only one reliable force forms the foundation of the concept of the rule of law. Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power. And, in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power. (pp. 82–3)

But what is it that they have against the Christian God? He is their chief rival. Christian belief, by subjecting all men to divine authority and by asserting in the words 'My Kingdom is not of this world' that the ideal society does not exist in this life, is the most coherent and potent obstacle to secular utopianism. (p. 98)

Hitchens fleshes this out in an amazing page about the significance of 'oaths':

... the more civilised a society is, the more power is available within it. Power cannot be destroyed, only divided and distributed. It may shatter into an anarchic war of all against all. Or it may solidify into a tyranny. Or it may be resolved into a free society governed by universally acknowledged laws. But on what basis can this be done? What agency can be used to place law above force? A law that does not stand above brute force, will not survive for long. How are inconvenient obligations, those of the banker and the messenger and the merchant, to be made binding? How are the young to [be] made to accept the authority of parents and teachers, once they are physically strong enough to ignore them, but too inexperienced in life to know the value of peace and learning?

The answer, from a very early stage, was that such contracts were made binding by solemn promises sworn in the name of Almighty God and, as Abraham Lincoln used to say of his Presidential Oath, 'registered in heaven'. These oaths called into every contract an external power, one whose awful vengeance no man could escape if he defied it, and which he would be utterly ashamed to break. As Sir Thomas More explains in Robert Bolt's play 'A Man for All Seasons', when a man swears an oath 'he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn't hope to find himself again'.

In their utter reverence for oaths, men of More's era were in my view as superior to us as the builders of Chartres Cathedral were to the builders of shopping malls. Our ancestors' undisturbed faith gave them a far closer, healthier relation to the truth — and so to beauty — than we have. Without the oath, where is the obligation or the pressure to fulfil it? Where is the law that even Kings must obey? Where is Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus or the Bill of Rights, all of which arose out of attempts to rule by lawless tyranny? Where is the lifelong fidelity of husband and wife? Where is the safety of the innocent child growing in the womb? Where, in the end, is the safety of any of us from those currently bigger and stronger than we are? (pp. 106–7)

In other words, the claims of Christ are not just opposed to individualism, to personal moral and intellectual autonomy, they cut right across the hopes and dreams of those who have convinced themselves of 'the greatness of humanity' and 'the perfectibility of human society' (p. 101). And furthermore, by ignoring them we are not only impoverished but left more vulnerable than we could ever imagine.

The book is worth reading and, indeed, arguing with at points. But more than that. It challenges us to think about how we might engage our contemporaries in serious and honest debate about the directions in which we all seem to be headed.

Recovering the priority of relationships

2010-07-05T17:57:00.010+10:00

With apologies for my absence from the blogosphere for the past few months.

Christian theology has moved in a more overtly trinitarian direction over the past twenty years. Of course the roots of the shift go much further back. The contributions of Barth, Lossky and Rahner are usually cited as critical to the contemporary renaissance of trinitarian theology.

There have been very many gains from this development. Much contemporary writing is more richly theological than that of a generation or two ago. The nineteenth century reduction of theology to anthropology has been, in very large measure, exposed as bankrupt and a fresh excitement about the doctrine of God, about exploring God's self-revelation on the terms in which it has been given, has taken its place. Of course, there have been excesses as well (wasn't that almost inevitable?). Colin Gunton once warned of the danger of a utilitarian approach to the doctrine, where the doctrine of the Trinity is prized, not so much for the way it helps us to understand God himself, but for the insight it gives us into the personal and social dimensions of human life. It has proven possible, in some cases, to transform the doctrine of God into a doctrine that is all about us. Some have even begun to call for a moratorium on moving so quickly from the doctrine of the Trinity to the intricacies of human relationships.

Nevertheless, while acknowledging this danger and insisting that the doctrine of the Trinity is first and foremost about the eternal life of God, it remains true that it provides us with a critical perspective from which to view our life as those made in God's image. This has been recognised by many, but I learned it first from D. B. Knox, who wrote back in 1979:

We learn from the Trinity that relationship is of the essence of our own existence, and we also learn that the way this relationship should be expressed is by concern for others. (The Everlasting God (Welwyn: Evangelical Press, 1982), p. 64. [This book contains the Annual Moore College Lectures for 1979.])

Observations such as this are commonplace in contemporary theology. Furthermore, through projects such as the Relationships Foundation, the importance of personal relationships is now recognised in many sectors of the wider community.

However, perhaps it is worth stopping to test our rhetoric against reality, especially in our churches and Christian organisations. It's a good practice to take stock from time to time rather than simply assume that all is well.

Some recent conversations to which I have been a party suggest we talk a good game when it comes to the priority of relationships while our practice is practically indistinguishable from the relational desert inhabited by those around us. Is there, as some people are beginning to suggest, a sad disconnect between our confession and life at this point? What priority is given to relationships in the way we organise ourselves? Would such a priority be recognised by others who observed our congregations, our theological colleges and our denominational organisations? Is it evident in our preaching and teaching of the Scriptures?

From anecdotal reports it would seem that too many of our congregations and Christian organisations are dysfunctional at this level. Other priorities seem far more prominent: the priority of growth, the priority of activity, the priority of efficiency, the priority of doctrinal precision. We appear task-oriented or program-oriented, even success-oriented, rather than people-oriented. People feel they are simply an unimportant means to another end, sometimes defined, sometimes not. Gospel proclamation and pastoral care can even be presented as alternatives rather than intrinsically related facets of the apostolic mission — making disciples always meant far more (though never less than) ensuring right thinking and consequently an efficient contribution to the group's strategic goals. Jesus once told his disciples that others would recognise them by their love (Jn 13:35).

Some pastors apparently give the impression (surely not the reality) that personal relationships, with all the demands that these entail, are simply irrelevant distractions from a much more important task. After all, relationships take time — time to establish, time to nurture, time to sustain. Relationships are notoriously inefficient: when taken seriously they are not a means to an end but an end in themselves. This much surely the relational character of the intratrinitarian life ought to teach us. However, it would seem that our busyness and the pressure for 'results' that can be measured by denominational strategists can keep us from remembering this very basic fact.

I remember a variation on this theme also taught by Broughton Knox. He suggested an amendment to the first answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Q. What is the chief end of man?
A. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him in the company of his people forever.

He reminded those of us who learnt from him that the great goal to which the Bible points is that day when God's people from every nation, tribe and tongue will be gathered around the throne of God and of the Lamb. In other words, the end to which all things are heading is indissolubly relational. Ought we not, then, take some time to recover the priority of relationships in our own lives and in those Christian associations to which we belong?

Mackintosh on the nature of Christian Doctrine

2010-05-04T13:40:00.003+10:00

I was first introduced to Hugh Ross Mackintosh through his book Types of Modern Theology, a text recommended by Bruce Smith in his Moore College course on modern theology in 1986. Mackintosh was Professor of Systematic Theology at New College, Edinburgh from 1904 until his death in 1936. His theology was characterised by strong critical engagement with the German liberal theological tradition associated with Schleiermacher and, more particularly, Ritschl. A particularly formative influence on his own theological education was Wilhelm Herrmann of Marburg (who would later teach Barth as well). Mackintosh himself would deeply influence one of his own students, T. F. Torrance.

I have recently been reading his The Person of Jesus Christ, a series of three addresses delivered at a summer conference of the Student Christian Movement in July 1911. (This was at the height of the controversy between the Student Christian Movement [SCM] and more determinedly evangelical student groups such as the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union [CICCU]). There is a lot in this book which is profoundly heart-warming, and though there are significant emphases with which I would beg to differ, his determination to see Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel and the eternal Son incarnate, as 'the hinge and pivot of the universe, the Person on whom everything turned in the relation of God to man' (p. 10) is deeply edifying.

In a famous essay by T. F. Torrance which is included in the edition I have been reading, he remarks that while Mackintosh was 'drawn to the Christ-centred emphasis on experience which he found in Schleiermacher' and 'the moral emphasis of Ritschl', right from the start he 'felt compelled to operate primarily with ontological, rather than with psychological or ethical categories, in his understanding of Jesus Christ, for the every essence of divine revelation and the very substance of the gospel of salvation were at stake' (p. 76).

Thus we find him insisting again and again that if the revelation of God in the New Testament is true, Jesus Christ must be in himself what he reveals; and if the New Testament message of salvation is true, what Jesus Christ does for us must be what God himself does. (p. 76)

What struck me, though, alongside this popular presentation of Mackintosh's Christology, was T. F. Torrance's summary of Mackintosh's approach to the study of dogmatics:

As Mackintosh used to teach us, dogmatics is not the systematic study of the sanctioned dogmas of the Church, but the elucidation of the full content of revelation, of the Word of God as contained in Holy Scripture, and as such is concerned with the intrinsic and permanent truth which Church Doctrine in every age is meant to express. It is 'systematic' only in the sense that every part of Christian truth is vitally connected with every other part. No doctrine can be admitted which does not bring to expression some aspect of the redemption that is in Christ. Thus for Mackintosh as for Barth it is in Christ alone that the truth of dogmatics finds its organic unity. There is no knowledge of Christ apart from his truth and no knowledge of his truth apart from Christ, for he himself is the co-efficient of his doctrine. Thus seriously to study Christian dogmatics was from beginning to end an empirical encounter and a personal engagement with the tangible reality of Jesus Christ. Properly pursued in this way dogmatic theology becomes 'the conscience of the Church'. (p. 74)

No doubt Mackintosh and Barth tend to merge in Torrance's description. No doubt too there is more than a little rhetorical overload. Yet in a very different context, where the theological academy can easily become too important an audience for our work, where making our own theological mark can even more easily become a preoccupation, perhaps there is something important here that we systematic theologians of today need to recover.

The Wheaton Conference engaging N. T. Wright

2010-04-30T16:08:00.006+10:00

Earlier this month a conference was held at Wheaton College, Illinois engaging the ideas of New Testament scholar and Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright.

Tom Wright's account of New Testament theology, and particularly Pauline theology, remains controversial amongst evangelical scholars (not least because his style of argument can be somewhat off-putting). I, for one, am not persuaded by his reconstruction of the doctrine of justification and I find the way he deals with those who disagree with him quite appalling actually. Nevertheless, his is a voice that cannot and should not be dismissed lightly and to disagree with him at some points is not necessarily to disagree with him on everything.

So I was disappointed that this conference was taking place on the other side of the world and I would not be able to attend. Thankfully, I have discovered that the lectures are available online (they can be found here) and that a stimulating blogpost by William Evans which provides a brief summary of each lecture and offers some even more succinct comments of his own about Tom's proposals is also available online (this can be found here).

The doctrine of justification by faith alone continues to be vital for the health of the churches (ie I think Luther was on to something). Most importantly, it guards in a critical way the even more foundational biblical teaching of salvation by Christ alone and so should shape our understanding of the Christian life in general and our corporate experience of that life in particular. So taking the time to think through the current debates is not just theological self-indulgence but pastoral necessity.

Church, mission, evangelism and programs

2010-04-14T21:07:00.012+10:00

Back in the 1940s and 1950s Alan Stibbs, an English evangelical Anglican theologian, wrote a number of very significant articles and booklets on the biblical doctrine of the church. In the 1960s and 1970s very similar things were written, in a very different context, by Donald Robinson and Broughton Knox in Sydney. (In the last decade or so the theological work of each of these men has been collected and made available afresh to a new generation of avid readers.)

In Anglican circles the perspective of these men on the nature and function of 'church' has remained highly controversial. It represents a significant challenge to centralising tendencies present in the denomination as a whole as well as in the individual provinces which make up the Anglican Communion. It privileges the local congregation above the denominational structures, without (it needs to be said) neglecting the relationships with and responsibilities to those in one sense or other 'outside' the group which gathers regularly in each place. It provides away of distinguishing between the normative and the conventional, what Scripture itself mandates and the way individual associations have decided to order themselves within the freedom that Scripture envisages in Christ.

It is important to remember that what has become known as the Knox-Robinson doctrine of the church, or the Sydney doctrine of the church, was never just an idiosyncratic expression of Australian anti-authoritarianism. It arose out of the revival of evangelical biblical scholarship following World War II — Alan Stibbs produced some of his material for Tyndale House conferences in Cambridge and Donald Robinson wrote the article on church for the IVF's landmark New Bible Dictionary.

Nor was it ever exclusively based on a limited word study of the Greek word for 'church' in the New Testament, ekklesia (a jibe still thrown about today). It was a richly theological approach to the subject, taking into account the importance of relationships even in God's own triune life, the broad sweep of biblical theology from the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem, and the relationship of the various biblical images used to describe the corporate identity of those God has gathered to himself.

At the heart of these expositions was an appreciation of the importance of God's purpose to gather men and women to himself. The gathering purposes of God, anticipated in the Old Testament by the fellowship in the garden, the call of Abram to become a great nation, the gathering at Sinai and the congregation of Israel before the Temple during the reign of Solomon, will all find their ultimate fulfilment in the great multitude from every nation gathered around the throne at the consummation of all things. This gathering has a peculiar identity in the light of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. It is Jesus, present by his word and Spirit, who stands at the centre of his gathered people. As one critical New Testament text puts it 'at this rock [the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God which had just been uttered by the apostle Peter] I will build my church' (Mtt 16:18). Here, I believe, we are meant to discern an unmistakable echo of the language of Exodus 19, where God gathered the Hebrews to himself and constituted them as his people by words spoken from the mountain.

The current level of confusion, even among some who consider themselves sympathetic to the basic outlines of this exposition of the doctrine, suggests that there is a need for a fresh restatement of it. Perhaps that is a task I can undertake in a number of future posts. However, I want to highlight one important element of this doctrine which demands urgent consideration by evangelicals — Anglican and non-Anglican — at the current time. That is the insistence — most explicit in the work of Donald Robinson — that the churches are not so much the agents of mission as the goal of mission. Members of the churches are and should be involved in evangelising the community in which the church exists, denominational structures might resource this mission in various ways, but the congregation participates in gospel mission in a unique way. It participates in this mission by being rather than doing. It is what the church is that is highlighted in the New Testament rather than what the church (as church) does. As the gathering which transcends the barriers to relationship generated by racial background, gender and social standing its very existence is a declaration to the heavens of the manifest wisdom of God (Eph. 3:10).

It is worth pondering what it would mean if we took this insight seriously. Perhaps we might think again about services or gatherings oriented entirely towards the outsider or 'seeker'. It is one thing for our gatherings to be accessible or intelligible to the outsider. It is quite another for everything that happens in these regular gatherings to be directed towards the outsider. There is a quite legitimate sense in which Christian gatherings should be strange. They don't quite fit in a world determined to exclude God from consideration. The Christian congregation cannot be just another variation on the local bowling club, not least because it is meant to anticipate our gathering around the throne of God and of the Lamb on the last day. The churches are meant to manifest on earth the fellowship we as Christ's people enjoy with him now in heaven (Heb. 12:18–24)

This insight might also challenge the suggestion that church is best construed as a training centre, the venue for one training course after another. Training for service is undoubtedly a good thing, but the training of Christians who come together as a local congregation does not mean that we should view the gathering first and foremost as an opportunity for training. The primary reality is our gathering around the word of God in order to be addressed by the God who promises to be present with his people. In one sense the vertical dimension of 'church' always takes precedence over the horizontal, though in another it is precisely the horizontal which forms the proper context for the vertical — 'where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them' (Matt. 18:20).

Perhaps more controversially, it might challenge the tendency in some circles to avoid at all costs the language of 'worship' with reference to the Christian congregation. Undoubtedly worship as Scripture envisages it is a whole of life affair (and so must include our gathered existence as well as our non-gathered, or dispersed existence). Undoubtedly in the New Testament it has been purged of all the cultic or sacrificial notions that were so prominent in the Old Testament. There are no sacred places or sacred practices under the new covenant. The only altar that counts is the cross on which Jesus died outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Jesus himself is our one true high priest and his death is the only sacrifice that deals with sin. Yet the New Testament does not shy away from the fact that the purpose of the final gathering is to hear again the eternal gospel and to adore the one who secured our deliverance. Is it just possible that, in an effort to avoid the extremes of catholic sacerdotalism and the self-indulgent mysticism of the charismatic movement, we have robbed ourselves of a perspective that the New Testament itself considers important?

I am convinced that the deeply relational and God-centred character of what we might more accurately call the 'Stibbs-Robinson-Knox' doctrine of the church is not often understood. The focus for some has been almost entirely on one aspect of their exposition — the centrality of the local congregation and the suggestion that other aspects (the diocese, the denomination) and those who function within them (the bishop, the synod, the primate) are meant to serve the group that actually gathers. A fresh exposition of the doctrine of the church in more fullsome conversation with the contributions of these faithful brothers might itself prove to be an answer to the caricatures.

We do not need less 'Knox-Robinson' (and Stibbs!) but more.

Steve Holmes on evangelical critiques of penal substitution

2010-04-13T12:44:00.005+10:00

I was recently directed to an article by Steve Holmes of the University of St Andrews entitled 'Of Babies and Bathwater? Recent Evangelical Critiques of Penal Substitution in the Light of Early Modern Debates Concerning Justification' (European Journal of Theology 16:2 (2007) 93–105). It has proven to be a fascinating read. With characteristic clarity and insight, Steve has explored the objections to the doctrine of justification by faith in the sixteenth century and their similarity to contemporary objections to the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. He does not argue that the same arguments are used, and he is cautious about too hastily condemning those who object to penal substitution today. However he does want to argue that these contemporary criticisms are mistaken, too often involve caricature, and fail to recognise the rich ethical consequences of the atonement understood as at heart (if not exclusively) a penal substitution.

Here are just two of the ethical ramifications of the doctrine as he expresses them:

one of the things a penal account of the atonement claims is that wrongdoing cannot be forgotten or hidden, but must be dealt with ... A penal account of the atonement, with a strong stress on the reality and ineradicability of guilt maintains a witness that even the most successful oppressor or abuser will be held accountable for his or her crimes. This is an ethical consequence, which it seems to me speaks very directly and helpfully to certain aspects of our culture, which comes straight out of a penal doctrine of the atonement. (pp. 102–103)

Understanding the atonement as an act of penal substitution teaches us that forgiveness is not free and easy, it is hard, hard as nails, and costly, even unto death. And thus when we are called to forgive freely we are called to love as God first loved us, to go to our sister or brother, to bear the pain and the cost, ourselves, whatever it may be, so that they may find in being reconciled to us, freely for them costly and painful for us, some small echo of the way God has antecedently reconciled each of us to Himself through Christ — free, wonderfully, astonishingly, amazingly, free for us; costly and painful for Him. (p. 103)

Profound and deeply edifying stuff — this makes me want to go now and read his book The Wondrous Cross: Atonement and Penal Substitution in the Bible and History (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007).