Moving from the text to the sermon: preaching from Ecclesiastes

Some years later than I intended, I have added my Master dissertation (MTh) on Ecclesiastes to the "Writings" page of my website. I hope it will be useful to someone.

Masters dissertations aren't meant to be casual reading. But if you're interested, the title is "From text to sermon: A comparative study of two evangelical approaches to the interpretation and contemporary application of the book of Ecclesiastes". Below follows the abstract.  In brief, it is about how we read Ecclesiastes, and then how we apply and preach it in the church today, with understanding and confidence (and without contradicting ourselves by just mixing together second-hand ideas that don't actually blend!). It discusses this by using two contrasting commentaries to show and evaluate the different options.

Abstract

This study examines the routes from the text of the book of Ecclesiastes to applications to a contemporary Christian audience, for an evangelical preacher or teacher. This examination is carried out via interaction with two specific commentators. These are Tremper Longman III and Iain Provan. 

The major interpretative issues which will influence the application process are identified and analysed. As well as issues in reading Ecclesiastes commonly discussed by critical scholarship such as its structure, the identity, outlooks and relationships of the speaker or speakers within the books, the meaning of hebel, the relationship between “optimistic” and “pessimistic” passages, the question of multiple levels of context is identified as a crucial one. In this regard, the narrative context of the account of creation and fall is identified as especially important. The question of the author's attitude to Israel's narrative has some significance for interpretation despite Ecclesiastes' lack of explicit focus upon it. Ecclesiastes' canonical context is found to generate applications which are not part of the outlook of the original author's discussion. 

It is found that the effect of the canonical context is that a wide variety of interpretations of Qohelet's thought will result in similar applications of the book as a whole, though the balance of emphasis between different kinds of applications may differ. This conclusion is well illustrated by Longman and Provan. Furthermore, it is argued that the original author's discussion is deliberately narrowly focussed, and as a consequence that such applications are legitimate. 

Overall, it is believed that the analysis and distinctions in this study will help the development both of a deeper understanding and of a greater confidence in applying this ancient book to contemporary hearers. 

People who want to live their dreams cannot be Jesus' disciples

 These are very challenging words from the mouth of God's Son, recorded in Luke 14:25-33:

²⁵ Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, ²⁶ “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. ²⁷ And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. ²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— ²⁹ lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? ³¹ Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³² Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. ³³ So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

Note that Jesus is not talking about how to advance to a higher level of discipleship. He is not giving tips on growing as disciples, upon improving and maturing. He is talking about an absolute requirement to be a disciple at all. Those who fail this test are not simply those who are inferior disciples, or immature disciples; according to Jesus, they are just not disciples. If Jesus is not supreme above those with the greatest claim upon your love and devotion, be it parents, be it the one to you are united in the marriage union where God puts two together (and let not man part them), be it your own dear offspring: if what they claim from you clashes with what God demands from you (and we are thankful that in the ordinary paths of daily  duty, the  two usually coincide), then you cannot put any other claim above that of Jesus.

You cannot be his disciples unless you live the crucified life, taking the beams of wood to the place of death so that your own  desires for pleasure, for fame, for wealth, for success, for achievement, for pre-eminence, for recognition, for comfort, and whatever else, are put to a brutal and shameful death, and instead Jesus is served. Unless you forsake all that you have, and give it to Jesus, then you cannot be his disciple. You cannot gain your life unless you first give it away.

How quick we are to want to clarify this, and explain what it "really" means - which so often in effect seems to mean turning it on its head, and explaining that Jesus was wrong, and that we can seek and prioritise all of these things. How strong is the desire to domesticate and tame what Jesus has proclaimed, so that following him can be reduced to a nice orderly package, a collection of well-constructed and striking doctrines that we nod our heads to, whilst remembering that there are in fact  many ways to have the best of both worlds, to have our cake and eat it after all. How readily, in the service of having orderly churches, orderly programmes, orderly routines  that allow Christianity and its outward institutions to flourish peacefully in society, we reduce all that Jesus said with the caveat "but of course, if your pattern of life is something else, then Jesus is full of grace and will understand."

Jesus will understand? Will he? What do we mean by that? Why would we want to find out the answers to those questions anyway? Jesus tells us plainly, in advance, several times that there are many who are going to be surprised to hear the fearful words one day "I never knew you". 

The happiest man we know in the Bible after Jesus was the apostle Paul. As he tells us in Philippians, he had learned the secret of contentment in every situation. To him, to rejoice in the Lord was not an idea to be admired, but the reality of his experience. He lived with joyful hope, looking for the coming of his Lord. And he also said, 1 Corinthians 15:31, "I die daily".  Those two things aren't contradictions. They're the same thing. The person who dies daily to self, rises also with Christ.

If your Christianity is respectable and safe, a gentle routine, beautiful, elegant ideas and comfortable familiarity, then that's very sad. If you're building a church that looks beautiful to the world, polished music, finely nuanced doctrines, so orderly, but without the daily struggles of crucified people who can say they've gone through and are going through the war with the flesh as they again and again give away their own lives for the sake of Christ, then that's a sorry thing. You need to be converted. Then you can know what Paul meant when he said (Galatians 2:20) "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." If you are not yet crucified with Christ, and are not then responding by taking up your cross daily, then you are not yet Jesus' disciple; but if you'll go to Calvary with him, you can be.

If the Western church is full of disciples with Jesus, then why are there such a small proportion of its adherents whose lives resemble what Jesus said was fundamental to even being a disciple at all? Why does "my aim as a Christian is to give my life away, so that others can receive life" characterise us so little? Brothers and sisters, let us not take our standards from what passes as respectable around us. Let us listen to what Jesus actually said, and then do it.

Sell your possessions

From my Bible reading this morning in Luke 12: 

12:29 “And do not seek what you should eat or what you should drink, nor have an anxious mind. 30 For all these things the nations of the world seek after, and your Father knows that you need these things. 31 But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.

32 “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell what you have and give alms; provide yourselves money bags which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

That's an interesting clause there in verse 33 which I've highlighted, isn't it? "Sell what you have".

We're accustomed in Western conservative evangelicalism to emphasise thinking about what proportion of "our" income we'll give to the kingdom. The way round this ought to be said, biblically, is thinking what proportion of God's money that he has decided to channel through us will be given directly and immediately to kingdom projects, and what proportion will serve God in other ways, including through our immediate needs. 

But let's leave that aside for now. Here, Jesus didn't speak to us about giving from our income. He spoke about giving from our possessions. He told his disciples to liquidate from their assets, and give specifically from that. He even told us what specifically to do with the liquidated assets.

How often, I wonder, have you or I heard about that? Memory is very unreliable when trying to review a lifetime of hearing, but frankly, I don't ever remember hearing it. I've read it a handful of times (book recommendation). But if I've ever heard it taught in church ministry - well, at the very least, it must have been very rare.

Our temptation is to immediately jump to caveats and questions such as "of course he didn't mean all of them so that you become a beggar yourself, of course some people are still dependants, students, spending other people's money, of course we must be wise, this, that and the other....". This temptation should be resisted. Let's not start with what we're not going to do, and what Jesus did not tell us to do. We might take in what we're not going to do along the way at the appropriate point: but that can never be the departure point.

The Son of God did tell us to do something, and did not clarify, immediately or otherwise, that it was in fact optional. What did he teach, what does the positive response look like for us? Do we actually want to receive the wonderful promise that he attached in the following verses? Or will we be quite content if he eternally chips the promise away into essentially nothing in the way that seems to be the norm for Christians in our setting and culture with his instruction?

The confusing world of BBC morality - "sex workers", or victims of exploitation?

"British soldiers using sex workers in Kenya despite ban, inquiry finds", proclaims the headline. And the piece continues along the same lines:

An investigation by the British army has found that some soldiers stationed at a controversial base in Kenya continue to use sex workers despite being banned from doing so.

Soldiers at the British Army Training Unit Kenya (Batuk) used sex workers "at a low or moderate" level, a report said, adding that more work was needed to stamp out the practice.

In the propaganda of our crazy Western societies, since any sexual activity between  consenting adults can never be immoral (self-determination, expressed most fundamentally in sexual self-expression being the most basic values of post-sexual-revolution thought), it follows, logically, that neither prostituting oneself nor exploiting prostitutes can be fundamentally wrong. The idea that sexual intercourse involves a union which far transcends bodily pleasure, and that our Creator designed it as part of an expression of whole-life-union, in that sense sacred, intimate, private, and impossible to conceive of as a commercial transaction just for sensual pleasure, has been abolished by secular humanists. It is utterly incompatible with their claims about the cosmos.

As such,  following the logic of their views, if bodily sexual pleasure is sold as a commodity, then that is legitimate - and the person selling it is a "sex worker". It's how they choose to earn their living, just like you or I may choose to earn ours by fixing electrics or adding up accounts. It is - that most sacred of things for the modern materialist - a career, and choosing it is a career choice. It is through our career choices that we (in the modern world) are supposed to find our true value and worth, and to prove ourselves as we make our way to discovering and expressing all our potential.

Negatively, then, according to this belief nobody should be stigmatised for their sexual choices; that smells of being an unenlightened Victorian reactionary. However you express yourself is good for you, and don't judge anyone else for expressing themselves otherwise. The only thing to be stigmatised is stigma itself (a position which, of course, cannot be ultimately held on to, since it's arbitrary  - why should only stigma be stigmatised? If no consensual bodily act someone else commits can be deserving of stigma, then why is someone else's expressed opinion be? Just why can words cross these boundaries when acts cannot?).

In this "enlightened" world-view, which the BBC very much approves of and promote, then, prostitutes are not prostitutes (how dare you stigmatise them); they are "sex workers". They are working, and should be allowed to do so without being shamed by reactionaries.

Do you spot the problem here, though? These things supposedly being so, why would any soldiers need to be investigated for employing these "workers"? If that is their chosen field of work, then it is, for one thing, one which cannot actually be worked in without someone else coming along to purchase the product; until purchased, there is no product. Even a baker can bake loaves when nobody buys them, as long as he has enough funds in reserve to keep providing the raw goods. A "sex worker", though, cannot exist at all unless someone else is buying. Until that point, they're merely a would-be sex-worker. Can I be a Formula 1 driver if I've not yet been in a car and done a lap? As such, then, it's only because there are soldiers who are "using" these "sex-workers" that there even are any "sex-workers" to begin with. And why that's a problem, is not explained at this point.

But later, it is.... not by the journalist's chosen framing but in the actual bona fide reportinng:

UK Chief of Defence Staff Gen Sir Roly Walker said in a statement that the army was committed to stopping sexual exploitation by those in its ranks.  ... There is absolutely no place for sexual exploitation and abuse by people in the British Army. It is at complete odds with what it means to be a British soldier. It preys on the vulnerable and benefits those who seek to profit from abuse and exploitation.

Ah. It's not work after all. It's exploitation. It is an abusive activity, with an abuser, and an abused person (who may or may not have consented to her own abuse). The women are not "workers"; they're financially (or physically) desperate people who have gone into prostitution, selling the "permission" to others to exploit them in consequence in order to alleviate their financial desperation. It's something dishonourable, wrong and to which zero tolerance should be applied. A woman's body is not, in fact, a work-place, and even if two adults consent to gross exploitation when one is in a desperate situation, it is still completely wrong; grossly wicked, in fact, at many levels.

Often the woman will have been trafficked; in this case she is more accurately called a "prostituted woman" than a "prostitute". That term can really do in all cases, since it can be understood to cover the cases where she willingly prostituted herself. But in many (most?) cases, she is herself a victim. Terminology of "worker" which suggests choice and agency then tells a lie. To call trafficked people and enslaved people "workers" is like calling a someone who is repeatedly assaulted a "sparring partner", or saying that a shop-keeper who gets burgled every night must presumably in their economics be a communist.

Financial desperation itself does not transform the tragic decision (whether voluntary or under coercion) to prostitute oneself into one of selecting the caerrer of "sex worker", any more than a financially desperate man who is persuaded to join a gang of bandits is now a "redistribution worker". Somewhere there is a line between choice and coercion/exploitation, and we are not always competent to judge - and wherever the line goes, there will be someone fractionally one side, and someone else fractionally the other. Nevertheless, nobody who is selling access to their body is a "sex worker", and calling them such is unhelpful and nonsensical. If a default assumption has to be made, then "prostituted woman" in Kenya in my judgment is likely to cover more cases than any other.

Shame on the BBC. This so-called "sex-positive" vocabulary is nothing of the kind. It is a word-game played by privileged people which covers up serious exploitation and serious depravity, to nobody's gain.

"British soldiers using sex workers", BBC ? No. "British soldiers exploiting prostituted women".

Christian Nationalism: becoming all things to no men

Christian Nationalists appear to believe, in practice, that the truism "in all things (including in the state) God should be obeyed" is a truth that trumps all others, and erases and obliterates all other considerations.

When Christ was on the earth, he was asked by a man (in Luke 12:13-14) to give him assistance with obtaining his rightful inheritance from his brother. Christ asked the man what this concern had to do with him.

When the Corinthian church wrote to Paul about marriage (1 Corinthians 7), amongst the many things Paul had to say, he reminded his readers that "the form of this world is passing away" and on this basis included the exhortation "that from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none".

Jesus informed Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18) - one of the major themes of John's gospel is that it is of heaven, and thus is superior. Christians of a theocratic persuasion like to point this out if someone should mis-use the verse to imply that that the church has nothing to say to the world outside; but they seem to miss the corollary that Jesus drew from his own observation: "If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight." Since the kingdom is not of this world, it does not operate in a worldly way.

There are things which belong to Caesar, even though Caesar is a thorough-going pagan, and in this age, the correct response to that  is to render those things to Caesar. The small-print to that does not say, "whilst making clear your contempt for him, and giving him a lecture" (see Romans 13).

The fact that our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20) does not only affect the future; if affects our outlook on the present too. Paul wrote those words whilst unjustly a prisoner for the gospel's sake. Whilst he did on appropriate occasions call for his rights as a Roman citizen to be honoured, he entirely omitted to make a major, or even a minor, part of his apostolic ministry calling for the crown rights of King Jesus to have the laws altered to be more reflective of biblical law. Why is this fact treated as of no ultimate significance? What do Christian Nationalists know that Paul misunderstood?

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he gave him a word that would be profitable if considered with wisdom: "No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier." If you are called to be a pastor, or gospel worker who in some manner represents the kingdom of God, then you are warned to avoid being "[entangled] with the affairs of this life", on pain of displeasing the one who called you. No one should attempt to do this, even if they consider themselves very wise and astute political pundits.

The Corinthians (1 Corinthians chapter 6) were rebuked for their use of the secular courts. The rebuke did not entail that all such use was automatically ungodly. We must consider the reasons given. The reasons given are that the church is a superior kingdom which transcends those overseen by the ungodly. For the church to ask the ungodly to be our judges is to deny who we are. Christian Nationalists do not ask the ungodly to judge church disputes; but they do, in practice, testify through their actions and allocation of energy and resources that the great drama of this world is centred around who has gained the upper hand in the things of this life. There are the things we should fight over and be known for fighting over.

Paul knew a lot of things, and had the great privilege of being Christ's apostle. He had great spiritual gifts, and had received great revelations (see 2 Corinthians 12). Happily for him and for us, he was also a man who knew what his calling was. He was called to the work of calling, shepherding, teaching and guarding the flock of Christ. To this end, he became "all things to all men". Amongst Jews, though free from Jewish regulations, he lived as if he were a Jew, accepting things that were indifferent to him, so that the focus of his Jewish hearers could be drawn not to things of comparative indifference, but to Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah. Amongst Gentiles, though he was himself a Jew, he lived as if he were a Gentile, so that the focus of his Gentile hearers could not be drawn to the strangeness of Jewish things of indifference,  but to Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah.

If Paul were with us today, he would avoid like the plague being associated with a campaign to have pastors and churches telling law-makers how they should legislate the kingdoms of this world, and telling those kingdoms that they speak on behalf of Christ. He would, as he did when he was with us, be following his Master who, though actually being himself the Son of God and heir of all things, took the form of a humble servant so that sinners might understand how much God loves them.

Christian Nationalism is a prideful and repugnant doctrine which takes the words of men who gave up their rights and became all things to all men so that they might be saved, and instead takes a public stand, demanding our rights (supposedly in the name of Jesus), associating him with a stance and outlook utterly foreign to his actual servant mission and plan. As Christians, we may respectfully present our reasons to our rulers for considering wise and God-pleasing laws. What we may not do is have the church of Jesus Christ known as a place that thinks it should be running the present age, and falsely demanding or implying that this is the church's right or calling. Those who are called to take up the cross and follow Jesus may not also become Christian Nationalists.

The Lord, to be my shepherd

Inverting Psalm 23, some of us have probably seen "If the Lord is not my shepherd", laying out what we do not have, if we do not belong to God through Christ. No doubt you can find it quickly with a search engine.

But what did it cost the Lord Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd, the fulfilment of the promise made several times through various prophets that God himself would come and shepherd his people, to take on that role? What was his own experience, in order that ours might be that of this beautiful Psalm? This question invites us to have a go at the Psalm looking at it along these lines.

1 The Lord Jesus has become my shepherd; he suffered every want.

2 He left behind the green pastures; led into the waters of tumult.

3 His soul made an offering of sin; he was led away as one of the wicked for my sake.

4 Yes, he walked into the tomb, into death itself, and endured every evil; the rod of God's anger struck and no staff guided away, no comfort at his demise.

5 His enemies feasted at his death, as he was taken away from the table; his head was crowned with the thorns, and the cup of suffering overflowed.

6 Bitter hatred and scorn were his lot in life; he came and dwelt in our ruined house, to save us forever.

I'm not sure I've handled all the lines consistently and at the level of scanning there's infinite scope to do better. I hope somebody will! 

What or whom do you love?

Do you love the comfort zone of the Christian church in a world of chaos?

Do you love the beautiful order and comprehensive of Biblical ideas and doctrine?

Or do you love Jesus?

It's quite clear that there are plenty of influential people in the orthodox world of Christianity today who love ideas, at least as much if not more than they love Jesus himself. 

Or at least, if they don't, they have a strange way of going about things in their ministries.

What, then, about I or you?

If our initial reaction is to deny that there's a real difference between these things, then Jesus reminds us otherwise; this problem was there in the first century:

“2 I know your works, your labour, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; 3 and you have persevered and have patience, and have laboured for My name’s sake and have not become weary. 4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. 5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent." (Revelation 2:2-5)

The blessings of the Christian life, and the beauty of Christian truths are wonderful things. They are, though, simply rays coming from the sun. Jesus himself is infinitely above, and all other true beauty is coming to us from him. So let's admire God revealed to us in Christ first, and then admire what comes from him as part of our admiring of him. Let's love them because they lead us to him. Let's love them because they lead others to him too.

The cessation of the miraculous/charismatic gifts

Recently I was asked to make a presentation upon why we should believe that the miraculous gifts of the apostolic era (especially particular people who were given a spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, or prophesying) ceased.

I've put the slides for my presentation on the "Resources" page of my website, together with a booklet I wrote on the subject in 2007. The presentation proceeds under these four headings:

1️⃣ Today’s “gifts” clearly differ from those in the Bible.
2️⃣ The Bible’s gifts are tied to the age and ministry of the apostles.
3️⃣ Having those gifts today would be against God’s revealed purposes.
4️⃣ Answering objections. 

If you think the arguments have faults or need sharpening, fire away - comments are open!

In praise of United Beach Missions

https://www.ubm.org.uk

Whether you have, or have not, previously come across United Beach Missions ("UBM"), let me commend them to you!

Firstly, it's an organisation in which the purpose is to serve others, and particularly, to serve the lost by reaching them with the gospel. There are many fine Christian organisations in the world, and the work of the Great Commission involves many different tasks. Nevertheless, all armies and nations are especially grateful for those on the front-line. Without the front-line activities, nothing else would or could exist. UBM makes it easy for busy people to get to the front-line, and take part in the work of Jesus Christ, coming and being where lost people are, showing love to them and declaring him to them.

Taking part directly in such work, even if it's just one or two weeks a year, is very good for our souls. Life is full of many responsibilities once you reach the adult world, and faithful servants must be careful to remember the primary and direct purposes that their Master has given to them in their service. The Master has given us many helps in this: the local church, its worship, his word, prayer, the Lord's Day - and these are all things that UBM stands for. Team members are not only given service opportunities, but service opportunity in the context of the local church, worship, teaching, training, fellowship and prayer within the team, and the Lord's Day is honoured.

As such, I find it very much preferable to most Christian camps for teenagers and young people. I don't want to denigrate them: it's surely infinitely preferable to go on a camp where there's teaching in a Christian community setting led by godly people, rather than to spend the time at home gawping at the world's media. And no doubt on all camps there is some measure of service as you do the washing up and clean the camp toilets (though I think some misguided souls have eliminated even these minimal duties). But UBM reflects the fundamental principle of how Jesus taught his disciples (and indeed, what wise people do in pretty much every walk of life): learning by doing. Learning by working alongside the experienced folks who are not simply telling you what should be done, but doing it too, leading by example, encouraging and showing.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 8. It's too easy for one's Christian life to drift into focussing upon comfortably accumulating knowledge at a distance. Alongside the teaching of the church, there are books, conferences, podcasts - all available from our preferred celebrity pastors, and glowingly endorsed by all the big-wigs who inhabit their particular circles to assure us that we're in the right place. But in the end, we may end up resembling the overweight armchair sports pundit who knows everything about his preferred sport, and can explain in detail exactly how the game should have been won, but hasn't done any exercise for years and whose confident proclamations have no beneficial impact on anyone, anywhere. The Christian life turns into an intellectual game, in which the aim is to be more right than others, to stake out our position better than others do. Meanwhile, our actual spiritual muscles atrophy, and we're good for nothing except illustrating the folly of knowing our Master's will but not doing it. (The New Testament tells us directly, many times, that this policy will have disastrous results for us on the final day). Jesus spent his time with needy people, and gave up his life for theirs. The church today has built vast "comfort zones" where Christians can live their whole lives in ease and only rarely come into contact with the lost. In the "secular" West, of course, there are often many barriers to making meaningful contact, and it can take a long time to move from "building bridges" to actually driving something across them. Many give up along the way. UBM makes it easy: it's a straightforward Christian mission (it's there in the title), which is up-front about what it's doing, whilst forcing nobody to be involved in anything they're not comfortable with. Moreover, there are pathways through its associated organisations to keep on serving in various ways, at whatever stage of life.

Another way in which UBM keeps you humble is the other Christians that you'll meet. It is easy for us to become "wise in our own conceits". We have worked out all the details of the Christian life, and are wiser than the ancients, or so we think.... until such ideas are best exposed by reality. There are many Christians with fine knowledge and reputation, who serve little. But at the front-line of service, there are many Christians at all kinds of stages, holding many beliefs we find strange, dubious or flat-out wrong, who love the Lord and are full of zeal to serve him in all sorts of difficult circumstances. They resemble Christ and remind us of him. We are reminded of  what the Spirit of Christ is really like, and led away from the pride that had started to grow, that all the best Christians are found in our own circles and look quite like us and hold our opinions. In fact, we begin to see things differently: there are lots of us who have every advantage, but are going in the wrong direction... but others who, despite many disadvantages, are doing a lot better than us with what they have. God's wisdom, and God's choices of who he uses, humble and correct us. Moreover, by being actually exposed to people who see things differently (and not only exposed to people who already agree with us who describe the beliefs of others), we might find out that in fact we were wrong!

UBM is not perfect; unfortunately every person involved is a son or daughter of Adam. But, it does have a track record of serving on the front lines whilst simultaneously giving people (both young and old) opportunity for evangelistic service, fellowship and growth. May God keep and bless them for many more years to come.

(Footnote: my parents encountered UBM on a beach on a holiday when I was a child and found that in one of God's "coincidences", that the team leader lived in our home town. Later again "coincidentally" meeting the same church in an "in the park" service, we began attending there. Not long after that a visiting evangelist, strongly associated with UBM for many years, came to our church and talked to all the Sunday School classes. That day the Lord saved me through the gospel of Christ which he explained. Over a decade later whilst at university my first UBM team week was led by the same leader as on the original beach; and indeed the visiting evangelist spoke at my first UBM annual reunion).

God wants us for ourselves

God doesn't want us for our talents, our time, our gifts or our energy. He doesn't need any of those things. He is himself eternal, infinite in power, infinite in wisdom and capability. He is himself absolute perfection in himself, not by anything that he does, seeks or finds, but in whom he is. He doesn't need us to be or become anything, because he already is. He is glorious.

And as such, it is not because of anything that he can gain from us that he sent his Son to die for us. It is out of pure love. He does not seek what belongs to us, but he seeks us, ourselves, that he may lavish his love upon us.

Christian service is a wonderful thing; but not because we are giving something to God in order to add to him. He is no Pharaoh, who demands a daily load from us, and is ready to beat us if we do not produce. He is wonderful in himself, and out of his generosity and goodness desires that we partake in his divine life. He saves us so that we might be joined to him, through our union with his Son. God so loved the world, that he gave, and in that giving, takes us to himself. If we see, we will give too: not because a quota of bricks has been demanded from us, but because such a glorious, all-encompassing, all-consuming divine life cannot but overflow in the same way to others: not because we want something out of them, but because the love that is in us, by its very nature, must flow out to them too. That is its nature, because it is God's nature. God loves us, not because of what is in us, but because of what is in him. For that reason, it is a love that cannot fail, no matter how much we do. He did not want us because he reasoned we would never fail. He wanted us so that his life might swallow up and overcome and dissolve all our failures, replacing them with his perfect love.

Stuart Olyott on Money

This is a pithy and precious summary of the Christian believer's attitude to money, as described throughout the New Testament: https://www.knowyourbiblerecordings.org/_files/ugd/6d6075_c5cdf7b33bdb480898a730e0592b6a5b.pdf. Here's a quote:

Unconverted people look on money as something they have earned, which belongs to them, and which they can spend as they like. This is true even of generous people. Unfortunately, when it comes to money, many Christians have an unconverted mindset. Little by little this mindset ruins them, until they are spiritually fit for nothing. 

From: https://www.knowyourbiblerecordings.org/notes-and-articles

Christian Nationalism, and the need for new hearts

As explained previously, I am no fan of "Christian Nationalism" (inasmuch as it's still possible to be for or against a label which increasingly appears to mean something different to each person who uses it. That in turn is a sign of a project that's dominated more by in-house debate rather than useful service of people in need).

It's certainly infinitely superior, for everyone, to have laws that are based on truth than laws based upon lies, and it's a good thing when the One who is the Truth is explicitly named and honoured by those under him. This observation, though, has only the slightest overlap with the Christian Nationalist idea that Christ has called churches in the West to take political power over nations, and that we are now at a stage where we can put such a plan into action.

In fact, such an idea completely contradicts important and central things that the Bible does clearly tell us.

One of the key lessons throughout the Old Testament is the need for a new heart. Without regeneration, we cannot even see the kingdom of God. Man's heart, after the fall, is blind, ignorant and deceitful - to such an extent, that there is no hope for man at all, unless he has a new heart. If the entire earth is washed clean in a cataclysmic judgment, man does not long retain the lessons. If people are scattered and divided across the earth and their languages confused because of man's pride, he soon puts it aside in his thinking. If a ruler's nation suffers plague after plague, he will carry on in his hardness of heart until all his people and even his own household is destroyed, rather than consider the wisdom of truly turning to the LORD.

But, but, what if man was given a perfect law, given directly from the mouth and finger of Almighty God himself? What if the people to whom it was given had seen his great signs and wonders, and been redeemed as slaves and brought into a wonderful inheritance, led there personally by the divine presence? What if his tabernacle were amongst them? What if he gave them peace from their enemies, insofar as they kept his law, giving them perfect freedom to walk in his ways, and brought them trouble only when they turned away from it, so that they would turn back? What if they actually heard his voice speak from the holy mountain? Surely, surely, then, they would be a wise people and walk in his ways forever?

No, they would not; because of their hearts. Only a New Covenant, in which the law is written upon their hearts, inscribed upon their very souls by the Spirit of God directly, can do this. Only by becoming part of this New Covenant can people be changed. Otherwise, they will love evil, and pursue it relentlessly, because it is what they admire and desire.

What, then, do "Christian Nationalists" hope to achieve by calling for laws that are explicitly based upon the Nicene Creed, whose fundamental principle is "Jesus is Lord", etcetera? Is it something more than an Internet parlour game for those apparently without enough other things to do in serving Jesus, or whose main aim is to gain followers after themselves by staking out their positions rather than doing the things Jesus actually told us to be doing? The very best laws, so the biblical narrative intentionally and explicitly teaches us, will not succeed in stopping the people under them from continually turning to rank idolatry. On the contrary, they will spectacularly fail. Even if God himself dwells in your midst, you will become a nation given over to grinding the faces of the poor, the most depraved vices, and open advocacy of what is evil, no matter how good your laws are (though if they are Bible-based, there is also likely to be a good dose of hypocrisy, the kind that God finds even an even worse offence than the above, around too).

So again, what are they hoping to achieve?

From what I can discern, at this point in discussion, a list of either/or fallacies and truths that aren't the pertinent ones to our actual context are likely to be trotted out. "So, you want ungodly laws!" "If you don't want ungodly laws, you're already a Christian Nationalist!" "We're just campaigning for to get rid of ungodly laws, what's wrong with that?" "It's Christ or chaos!" "He is the king of kings!" "You are supporting the secular consensus that is ruining us!", etcetera.

• "So, you want ungodly laws": no, I want godly laws.
• "If you don't want ungodly laws, you're already a Christian Nationalist!": no, the idea of building a "Christian nation" through political campaigning for better laws is a significant error. The Christian nation is the kingdom of God, which you enter through being born again, repentance and faith in Christ. The church is the city on the hill which acts in society as salt and light, but is not called upon to rule over it.
• "We're just campaigning to get rid of laws, what's wrong with that?" That's a classic motte-and-bailey move; Christian Nationalists in their published literature are arguing for vastly more than this.
•  "It's Christ or chaos!" - quite so, but please do not identify Christ with your particular campaign for political power, as that dishonours him and puts a barrier between people and coming to him. For the truth of that, please consult actual real-world experience, not empty theories; I don't think either of us find it convincing if  a Communist says "ah, but it just hasn't been implemented quite correctly yet, and the results would have been entirely the opposite if it had".
•  "He is the king of kings!" - Amen, and please read the New Testament when he has told you is the time when you can reign with him, and stop asking if you can yet now sit at his right or left hand.
•  "You are supporting the secular consensus that is ruining us!" - this is an empty slur. It's as likely to convince me as "you're just a wannabe theocrat who isn't happy unless he's policing the details of everybody else's lives" is to you (unless of course, you actually are).

If someone actually wants to see a nation that more closely reflects God's truth, the thing to do is to work on plans for spreading the gospel, to pray earnestly for God's blessing on those plans, and to put them into action, repeatedly. When I see Christian Nationalists online, their main interest seems to be in staking out their personal positions, drawing the already-converted into their folds, and enlarging their personal reach into more and more existing churches. The very thought of such a thing, in light of the fact that Christ will soon judge us for what we have done with the minas that he left in our hands, ought to make us tremble. Brothers and sisters, let us give ourselves to serving Christ by reaching the needy, and like the plague let us avoid empty talk, especially including empty talk about the law.

Is infant baptism a "natural and inevitable consequence of the fundamental pattern of covenantal integration" ?

 "The fact that identity is constituted in covenant bodies requires that we baptize our babies. Infant baptism is not explicitly taught in Scripture because it is such a natural and inevitable consequence of the fundamental pattern of covenantal integration."

Kip Chelashaw - https://xcancel.com/ChelashawKip/status/1940003362335867137#m

This is a favourite argument of many evangelical Presbyterians. The fundamental reason why, we are told, nothing teaches, requires or alludes to infant baptism in the New Testament is because it's something so integral to everything that a biblically-minded person would already think, that it would be entirely redundant. Not just in keeping with, but "because" it is so "natural and inevitable", it isn't mentioned.

Firstly I'd like to note and bank the true and in honesty unavoidable concession that "Infant baptism is not explicitly taught in Scripture". But is it, as asserted, taught implicitly?

What things does the Bible assume and for that reason not directly state?

I've never yet read an explanation from brethren who hold this belief as to why it is, in their understanding, that the New Testament does frequently and clearly state so many other fundamental beliefs. Infant baptism, we are told, is not taught explicitly because something so important is all-pervasive. But what about other all-pervasive, fundamental truths? Are they not taught explicitly either? Or not taught every often? Quite the opposite....

There is one God; the God of Abraham is the Creator of the world; his blessings are received by grace through faith based upon his own works and not ours; God will judge the world; God deals with people through covenants; the covenants climax and are fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah; etc., etc., etc. Although all of these things are as inherent and integral as you could get, yet, they don't therefore escape mention - on the contrary, they are mentioned early, often, and late, and often again. Of course they are: it was the intended purpose of Christ and the apostles he sent to manifest the truth openly and clearly, so that even a child could grasp the essentials. As wise teachers, dealing with weak, foolish and fallible human beings, Christ and his servants therefore made sure to lay out their teachings clearly and frequently. Moreover, since these things were in many cases being taught to those who were either strangers and foreigners (Gentiles), who were previously bathed in all kinds of wrong understandings, or who even as Israelites had been indoctrinated in very wrong ideas by the Pharisees or others, it was necessary to rewire them at every level.

The idea that because infant baptism is so obvious a teaching to those to whom the apostles wrote, that therefore it is not something that we'd expect them to openly mention, flies in the face of everything they did mention.

Things that the first Bible readers needed explicitly stated for them

I see this idea as something from Presbyterian fantasy-land (do feel free to share with me the things that you think come out of Baptist fantasy-land). Let us look at the actual churches and Christians we find in the New Testament. To the Galatians, the idea that justification was by faith alone apart from the works of the law, had become vague and cloudy; the very doctrine that underpinned their salvation was being twisted and lost. To the Hebrews, it was no longer entirely clear that Christ's coming meant that all the Old Covenant ordinances were annulled and done away with in Christ. To the Corinthians, the fact that our bodies would be raised from the dead, and that Christians should not consort with prostitutes, was something they were losing their grip on and needed strong instruction and exhortation over. And so on, and so on. In the gospels, Jesus must patiently and repeatedly explain to his hearers that God requires mercy, not sacrifice; that the fundamental commandments are of love; that it is no part of God's law that we treat human beings worse than animals; and many other fundamental things that are part of the warp and woof of all the Scriptures to that point. 

But, but, but.... all of these brethren, we are assured, of course never wavered for even a minute in their inevitable and unshakeable understanding that wherever there was a divine covenant, those whose immediate physical parents were covenant members must also be thereby be entitled to that covenant's sign. This was a point, we are solemnly assured, beyond the possibility of anyone's misunderstanding; merely appealing to the idea of a "covenant" was enough to make this perfectly plain. And anyone who doesn't see this just doesn't understand covenants at all. He is still a babe, and the apostles, supposedly, didn't stoop to explaining things necessary for babes.

Is not merely to state these ideas to expose their complete absurdity? The Corinthians, the Galatians, the Hebrews, the first disciples of Jesus, the crowds, etc., suffered from great darkness and prejudice (as is common  across the entire human race and our own personal experience too) on the most fundamental and basic topics of Scripture.... but somehow, all with the marvellous exception that they were fine covenant theologians who were beyond all possibility of error on any of the relevant details and important consequences? Are you being serious?

The fact that infant baptism is nowhere, whether directly or indirectly, alluded to (without painful contortions), is, in reality, a great embarrassment to the paedobaptist case. The fact that, where historically churches have practised it, they have done so on mutually contradictory and incompatible grounds, is equally embarrassing. Which is to say, if the Presbyterian "covenantal" argument were such a clearly Biblical one, then Lutherans, Roman Catholics, etc. would have been glad to take it up and add it to their arsenals. The fact that the Presbyterian argument for paedobaptism has to appeal at its heart (having conceded that there is nothing explicit) to a priori claims is not a strength, but a significant "tell".

You and your seed, according to Scripture

Kip's fundamental error above is not, in fact, in noticing that the covenant is "to you and your children"; he is quite correct to hold that when God promised to Abraham that he and his seed would be his people forever. The error which pervades Presbyterian argument for infant baptism is the failure to notice how the New Testament has, explicitly and consistently, explained the fulfilment of the concept of "seed", and what it means to be born into the covenant. It is not silent, but speaks loudly, telling us who the "children" are. That concept has, as with many others, attained a point of transformation and fulfilment in the New Testament. See Romans 9, Galatians 3, Matthew 3, John 3, and many others. The Scriptures explicitly clarify who are the seed of Abraham, and directly deny that physical descent alone, under the New Covenant, means that you are one of them. The promise is to Abraham and his children - and it is those who are of faith who are believing Abraham's children. The preparatory shadow of literal, physical descent gives way to the glorious intended final reality of being born again, by the Holy Spirit, into the final family of God (and this often results in earthly households divided against themselves). 

Fulfilment and reality

We do baptise babies: babes in Christ. But we do not baptise babes born only of the flesh, because there is neither command nor example to do so. If you've been following, that silence is something that cannot be accounted for, if you believe that Christ and his apostles wished every Christian family anywhere and ever to do so, no matter their level of maturity. If you study everything (and there is plenty) that the New Testament does say about baptism, then amongst all the rich variation, one constant is the note of fulfilment, of reality, of accomplishment, of a meeting of the sign and the thing signified. Baptism is tied together conceptually with the coming of the Holy Spirit and receiving him, repentance unto life, the exaltation of the Messiah, being born into his kingdom, etc.... but universally this is depicted in terms of experienced reality, not of a kind of covenantal promise that still looks ahead to the baptisee being initiated into the personal experience of it if he will, when he reaches a stage of being able to respond, believe and personally appropriate it. He always already believes and is glorying in what he already experiences; the Spirit is come, and the New Age has dawned, not objectively only, but personally, too.

Doctrines of the gaps

Infant baptism is a "doctrines of the gaps". Such doctrines end up functioning as hermeneutics. i.e. They are used as controlling paradigms to pre-interpret Biblical texts, instead of allowing the texts which explicitly and directly discuss those subjects to determine what our hermeneutics will be. Overlooking and minimising the many things we are directly taught, "doctrines of the gaps" come in, with the claim that they are the real background, the fundamental assumption which must control the reading of everything else. The "a priori" conclusions rewrite the actual conclusions that the apostles explicitly and directly wanted us to understand when they exegeted the meaning of Christ and the nature of the New Covenant to us. Then when those hermeneutics are worked out, they lead on to all sorts of other mistakes as they are applied in other areas.

Kip is a Protestant, not a Roman Catholic. Thus, when a traditional Roman Catholic denies the explicit and direct teaching of Romans 3-4 or Galatians 3-4 with his claim that the fundamental hermeneutical assumption of The Church (TM) leads us to see justification as being channelled through the sacraments, Kip will rightly urge his antagonist to try, for a moment, to take off his glasses and first deal with what it was the direct concern of the apostles in these and other passages to seek to assert, as revealed firstly by their context and wording; and then to re-shape his doctrine of the church in the light of that, and not the other way round. But Kip needs to do the same when he reads all the direct and intentional teaching in the Bible about the New Covenant, and its relationship to what went before, and how this transforms our understandings of covenant membership, birth into the covenant, being a child of Abraham, the privileges of covenant membership, etcetera. The traditional Roman Catholic asserts that every member of the people of God always understood in every age that the church on earth has a visible head, whom we must all be in direct submission to. Kip will urge him to try to understand the Newness of the New Covenant, and that we do indeed still have a head, and he is actually visible; but that does not lead to the conclusions about Popes that the Roman Catholic holds to. The matter is not pre-determined by what comes before, but rather the fulfilment explains for us how to understand the earlier stages of the plan. I similarly urge Kip and all those who hold his views to try to understand analogous things in respect of Christian baptism.

Theonomic postmillennialism: nail, meet head

Some weeks ago I wrote on the topic "Postmillennialism - a theology of hope? On the contrary, a theology of hope misplaced", writing about how the thought-world and motivations that postmillennial advocates recommend in our service differ fatally from the thought-world and motivations of the apostles.

Today I came across this related quote which is so succinct, so apposite and relevant, that I gladly share it. The nail meets the head, without a word out of place. Firstly, the writer quotes a theonomic postmillennilist (which Googling reveals is CREC minister Uriesou Brito), who wrote as follows:

Our postmillennialism is deeply embedded in our lives. This is more than a preference for historical optimism. Postmillennialism is how we see the Bible moving. It is far from a mere academic discussion. In fact, it would not be easy to function happily in the CREC without that eschatological predisposition. It impacts everything from our preaching/teaching to our education and interpretation of the times.

And here, in response, Jacob Gonzales nails it:

So much for catholicity. Postmillennialism, in this formulation, is a hermeneutic rather than an eschatology. It shapes and determines the meaning of the prophets, rather than being shaped and determined by them.

None of the Reformed confessions speak this way. Our hope is in the coming of the Lord and the resurrection of the dead. There is no way, as this makes clear, to function happily within one of these churches without presupposing a very peculiar modern formulation of postmillennialism. Everyday a new application of this hermeneutic reveals itself, whether it be masks veiling the glory of God or some other religious-political commitment. I don’t see how binding the consciences of the sheep to eschatology in this way does anything but create schism.

The next commentator is also apposite: 

And so much for Ben Merkle’s sermon at the CREC general assembly (or whatever they call it) about 10 years ago. He urged that those things must not become the shibboleths of the CREC. It was a very encouraging sermon. Sad to see it so blatantly rejected.

To see an example of that, see this, in which postmillennialism has become the only real motivation for Christian service or strategic thinking, and paedocommunion has become the sina qua non of authentic Christian child-rearing.

Beware of theonomic postmillennialism. As it works out its presuppositions and conclusions consistently throughout someone's system of thought and church life, the negative fruits will become more and more apparent, and the churches and believers embracing it will become more and more sectarian and political in outlook and strident in tone, and it will be increasingly difficult for other believers to find common ground with them in any practical endeavour. Note that that's not just me observing that - that's what those of that persuasion are saying themselves. I'd plead with those of this persuasion to notice what a mistaken place they've got themselves into, and return. The mainstream Reformed tradition is not something that was discovered (or recovered) in the 1970s in a particular North American cultural milieu. There is another way, and a better way, and one that is explicitly shaped and determined by reading and submitting to the New Testament and then reading the whole Bible chronology in the light of the authoritative interpretation given there.

Choosing barbarity

It is difficult to find words to describe the British parliament voting to legalise of a mother killing her unborn child, for any reason she wishes, at any time, up until the moment of birth (at which  point it then becomes in law a heinous offence, leaving the perpetrator liable to the maximum penalty in British law of life imprisonment). This, as if there were something magical about passing down the birth canal which transforms the baby from having no rights whatsoever, fewer rights in law even than a pet hamster, into someone who suddenly has the full set of human rights.

This distinction (which end of the birth canal you are) is of course entirely arbitrary, and it remains to be seen what judges and parliamentarians will do with it in future. How long until it is argued that Mother Smith was just about to have the child hacked to death or have its skull pierced and brains vaccuumed out, as was her hard-won  legal right, when unfortunately labour began, and child was unexpectedly delivered two weeks prematurely, depriving said Mother of her rights to bash its skull in instead of now having a legal duty to raise it responsibly and lovingly to adulthood? Why does a 40-week baby  still in the womb have zero rights, whilst, if born 5 weeks early, those rights are received? It can't be because "in the womb the baby is dependent upon its mother", because in law, parents have non-negotiable responsibility to take care of their children until adulthood. Baby is dependent upon its mother after being born too. And so as I say, how long will this current, inconsistent settlement stand (for the previous inconsistent settlement  could not)? And what is this horrific doctrine, that anyone who is dependent has no rights and can be killed, by any means whatsoever, without consequence? Who in the world is independent in any case? Do all those who voted for this reach their current stage in life having been abandoned at the moment of  birth to their own glorious independence? Last time  I checked, we had a government dominated by self-proclaimed socialists, at any rate.

The brute fact is that parliament has voted that the weak and vulnerable can legally  be killed, should their lives be deemed to be undesirable by those who hold power  over them. We delude ourselves, of course, if we pretend that this is a new thing. Thus has human government, human authority, ever operated, when it has been allowed to. Thus has the British government long operated, though for the 60 years until now in the case of human abortion under the pretence that it was still legally a crime and that there were proper "checks and balances" to prevent abuses, as if the ending of innocent life (rather than vigorous activity to defend it) were not in itself always an inherently heinous abuse. We pretend to be sophisticated, and we look down on the moral reprobates of previous centuries. The Romans, if they did not want a child, left it on a rubbish heap to die from exposure after its birth. We pretend that they are savages, but we are enlightened, because.... because what? Because we do our killing using pills, scalpels and vacuums instead of leaving it to the elements?

God, have mercy. This is us. This is who we are. This is what we want, and this is how we wish to live our lives. If anything should get in the way of self, then let its blood be poured out, has been our cry. Now we begin to throw off the pretence and to show who we are more openly. We hate God, and we love death. And God is allowing us to have what we wish for. God, save us from ourselves. May the death of your Son deliver us, and deliver the innocent who are assigned for slaughter.

"The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel"

I don't particularly remember coming across this document - "The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel" - at the time. I am not intending to comment on it as a whole. I do want to comment upon section 8, "The Church":

WE AFFIRM that the primary role of the church is to worship God through the preaching of his word, teaching sound doctrine, observing baptism and the Lord’s Supper, refuting those who contradict, equipping the saints, and evangelizing the lost. We affirm that when the primacy of the gospel is maintained that this often has a positive effect on the culture in which various societal ills are mollified. We affirm that, under the lordship of Christ, we are to obey the governing authorities established by God and pray for civil leaders.

WE DENY that political or social activism should be viewed as integral components of the gospel or primary to the mission of the church. Though believers can and should utilize all lawful means that God has providentially established to have some effect on the laws of a society, we deny that these activities are either evidence of saving faith or constitute a central part of the church’s mission given to her by Jesus Christ, her head. We deny that laws or regulations possess any inherent power to change sinful hearts.

These paragraphs reflect the concern of conservative evangelicals to guard against "the social gospel". In terms of the concerns that conservative evangelicals had/have, the social gospel would be seen as defining the mission of the church in terms of proclaiming Christ's love and advancing his kingdom by fighting against injustices in society. It is seen as the on-the-ground program of theological liberalism: the activities that churches give themselves to as their defining mission when the stop having the gospel of Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended and returning, and all the consequences (such as the necessity of preaching this gospel, calling upon people to repent and believe upon him to receive salvation) at the heart of their life.

As always, there is the possibility of over-reaction. Christ commands his people to be zealous for good works. We are to demonstrate his love and compassion in action, and not only as a way of testifying to the gospel, but because the love of Christ dwells in us too and God's love is to be made known to the nations. A church that has no concern for good works does not reflect the Scriptures of either the Old or New Testament, which consistently testify to God's special concern for the suffering, the abandoned, the needy, in society.... and also consistently testify to his wrath against complacent religious people whose lifestyles proclaim that they do not particularly care.

I read the above section, its affirmations and denials, seeking to understand how the statement (i.e. its authors and endorsers) see these things.

Having read it, I'm still not sure, which is a curious thing.... because such statements are intended to remove ambiguity, to clarify, to advance understanding by being specific.

Why do I say this?

Firstly, the statement leaves an awful lot unsaid. The "primary" role of the church is spoken of. Does the church have secondary (or tertiary) roles? If so, what are they? Or is "primary role" a synonym for "only role" or "only required role", or something else? We're not told. The importance of maintaining the "primacy" of the gospel is maintained, which sounds good and something I am likely to agree with; but unfortunately it too is not explained. What things threaten the primacy of the gospel has to be inferred from the surrounding context, but there's multiple ways in which that could be done, so, we are left to give our best effort.

The church upholding the "primacy" of the gospel is said to "often" have a positive effect on society, by mollifying (Britannica dictionary: "to make (someone) less angry : to calm (someone) down"; Collins dictionary: "If you mollify someone, you do or say something to make them less upset or angry. ... Synonyms: pacify, quiet, calm, compose") societal ills; I wonder what that is intended to mean? Presumably in some way to reduce or remove, to a limited extent, those ills? To what end(s)?

So, having read the affirmations, a lot is unclear - but one of the good things about denials is that these can add a lot of clarity. Unfortunately....

... again, with the denials, the language is very ambiguous. Political or social activism (which are not defined, presumably have considerable overlap), are not to be viewed as "integral components" of the gospel. What would that mean? An earlier section defines the gospel as follows: "WE AFFIRM that the gospel is the divinely-revealed message concerning the person and work of Jesus
Christ". If the gospel is (which I agree with!) a divinely revealed message of good news about Jesus, then what would it mean for societal activism to be an "integral component"? Does it mean to deny that the doing of the good works is not itself part of the gospel? Or that proclaiming their necessity is not? Or something else? Since the gospel, by definition, is the proclamation of Christ, then the proclaiming of the importance of the church doing good works cannot be any "component" of the gospel; so what is the purpose of the word "integral" in the denial?

"Or primary to the mission of the church" - again, that word primary. What is the concern here? Something might be compulsory, essential, obligatory, required - and yet not be "primary". For example, I am obliged to all sorts of things, though my primary duty as a human being is to love God with all my being, and to love my neighbour as myself. What would it mean if I denied that all the things I'm required to do were "primary" - what is the importance of making this distinction? No doubt it has one, and that's not something I'm contradicting; but it's not explained. Is the church required to be conspicuous in good works? Are we intended to achieve this whilst avoiding that particular local churches should be conspicuous in particular good works? Is it being said that the church, as the church, officially and outwardly, must keep quiet about good works, but merely enable and encourage individual believers to perform them in a private capacity, so as to not cause misunderstanding about the church's "primary" mission? What is, and what isn't, being said here?

As noted above, what social and political activism are isn't defined, but, in the denials as in the affirmations, the emphasis in what is said falls upon improving the nation's legal code. Here, what comes immediately next, is "Though believers can and should utilize all lawful means that God has providentially established to have some effect on the laws of a society". That's an interesting flow/development of the statement; I wonder what the exact thinking is here? Are believers not meant also to utilise lawful means to alleviate the suffering of God's image-bearers, and to allow the love of God which is in their hearts by the Holy Spirit to be expressed to those in need? I do presume and believe that the authors of the statement think so.... but why is it not discussed?

The statement goes on to deny that the non-primary activity of attempting to change laws (as I say, I don't know why that is specially emphasised) is evidence of saving faith. Did anyone ever suggest otherwise? That sounds truly bizarre. Neither (the denial continues), does it constitute a "a central part of the church’s mission". Again, that word, "central". Does it constitute a required part of the mission? We're not told. This seems to be a non-denial denial. Are there really people who think that specifically changing laws is the central part of the church's mission? If there are, they must dwell a long, long, long way from the orbit of your average conservative evangelical church.

Does the church's duty, given by Christ, include good works? What can be affirmed or denied about that? How do those works related to the church's proclamation that Christ is Lord, and that in him God's love to the nations is declared? The statement appears to have nothing to say on this subject. It's not that I agree or disagree with it; it merely hasn't spoken.

Now I find that profoundly odd, and curious. I could, of course, do some more research. Presumably it was discussed at the time. I can't help noticing it, though. In fact, I looked through the statement specifically to see what it said about these questions, because it is an area I have concerns about. When outsiders say that evangelicals are far too concerned about laying down the strict confines of orthodoxy and it'd be great if they demonstrated more energy in condescending to help suffering people in their very messy, practical situations, it might well be because, ever since evangelicals made it a priority to clarify that they do not believe "the social gospel", we don't seem to have made it the same priority to so clearly, and conspicuously, make it clear that our lives are handed over to showing love to people in need. If something is not quite right with us, then would it not lead to statements like the above being written. Is it just me? Does it not strike you as odd that the statement has the ambiguities, and the omissions, that it does? Where does that come from, and how does that happen? Does the above statement strike you like paragraphs written by people who are busy getting their hands dirty, sleeves rolled up, sharing the love of Christ with people in deep need?

If we read the rest of the statement, the specific concerns of the authors in relation to society and culture in writing the statement are clearly to do with refuting sexual immorality, feminism, identity politics, "Black Lives Matter"-adjacent-type ideology (though remember this is 2018, not 2020). One line that repeats the ideas of section 8 is "And we emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture." I again find myself wondering whether there has really been anyone of any note in, around or adjacent to Bible churches who has said that lectures on social issues are "as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel". But the next sentence is interesting: "Historically, such things tend to become distractions that inevitably lead to departures from the gospel." What are the "things" here? The only thing that seems to work grammatically is to say that it's the lectures and activism themselves, aiming to reshape the wider culture. i.e. They're positively dangerous. Does this only mean lectures/activism that are simply wrong (e.g. campaigning to redefine marriage) in themselves? Presumably not, since that's not a "distraction", that's just an evil. Evangelicals wouldn't speak of proclaiming false doctrine and denying God's creation order (things that are the concern of other parts of the statement) as merely a "distraction". The sentence comes in section 14, on racism. So does it mean that if the church speaks out or campaigns excessively about racism, then that is what tends to become a distraction and leads people away from the gospel? What in history is being referred to here? Must we actually, if we see actual (rather than pseudo-)racism prefer to keep quiet and do nothing because the defence of the gospel requires it? This sounds an extraordinary doctrine.... but it's outlined so briefly that it's really impossible to know.

Again, as I say, I could do more research and look more into this; as a statement from 2018, presumably there was debate about it at the time. For now, it's filed away in my head. But I must say that if this statement was intended to perform the normal function of such a statement, i.e. to clarify things and advance the state of understanding of one's position, by carefully distinguishing things that differ with accuracy and precision, so that the truth shines more brightly, then at least in the areas that I looked at it for, it badly failed.

The thought-world of Christ and the New Testament

Currently I'm reading the recently-published "Theonomy Old and New: A Reformed Baptist Assessment", which thus far is a very good book, critiquing a significant error, and one which after seeming to go into abeyance has seen a revival in recent years.

I was pleased and helped to see articulation and argument that it is not simply that paedobaptism in general is a root error that leads to prepares the way for receiving theonomist ideas, but specifically that theonomy is a more consistent outworking of some of the paedobaptist hermeneutic. Once the arguments that are made for Reformed paedobaptism are taken seriously, and allowed to come out of the narrow realm of disputes over baptism, and to influence other areas of theology, theonomy is one of the consequences. The things said within the paedobaptist hermeneutic about the precise nature of covenantal continuity can't be boxed up. The Reformers were neither paedocommunionists nor theonomists (and this is demonstrated clearly), but there were certain tensions in their arguments and overall views of God's covenant when they addressed paedobaptism specifically, which consistent thinkers will feel pressure to logically resolve one way or the other: either by ditching paedobaptism, or adopting, progressively, more and more unbiblical and wrong doctrines: paedocommunion, theonomy, political postmillennialism, stronger forms of preterism (e.g. interpreting the book of Revelation through the lens of preterism) and the progressive de-emphasising of Biblical mission with its replacement by deeper levels of political involvement and lobbying and/or attempts to replace other existing churches rather than to get the gospel to the unreached. The book hasn't made all of these links and I expect that it won't make all of them, (though where I've got to, has made several), but it's a set of logical connections I've been seeing more clearly.

Together with other recent studies, this book has also helped me more clearly articulate another matter. It's long been my view that, essentially, to be Biblical, we should not only be able to explain how our views and practices agree with the Bible's, but also that our way of seeing things should be such that, in the same situation, we'd actually say what the Bible says, with the same emphases. That is to say: there's something wrong with the posture by which, when our practices are challenged from Scripture, that we have to appeal to lots of doubtful small-print; or, if asked to explain a doctrine, then most of our explanation is caveats, carve-outs and apologies, rather than demonstrating that God's truth here is good and wholesome. To give a specific example, I can recall hearing explanations of Ephesians 5:21-31 (once at a wedding) where the main burden of the preacher appeared to be to tell us all the things that Paul didn't say - one was left with the distinct impression that he was embarrassed by the things that Paul did say. This can't be right.

As I say, it seems to me the right view that, to be Biblical, we must think as the Bible does, without fear or embarrassment. If we feel either of those, then we have further need of the transforming of our minds (Romans 12:1-2), so that we can better see and understand just how God's will is good, perfect and wholesome. Living in our Creator's world, it's those who don't have the same way of thinking as their Creator who have the explaining to do and ought to feel that something's wrong whilst they explain.

What connection does this have to the book and topics mentioned above? Simply this: there's a whole cluster of doctrines there which, when their proponents explain them, always require them to bring out what is (for them) implicit and in the background... but almost never (in their telling) makes it into the foreground. Or if it is in the foreground, it's in the foreground of the claimed interpretation of an Old Testament writer, and never makes it to be front-and-centre of any of the inspired (whether from the Son of God, or from his commissioned apostles) explanations of how to look at this subject area, or how they actually exegete the Old Testament. They are "doctrines of the gaps". Their proponents largely explain "how to read this-or-that text through the lens of the doctrine", rather than demonstrating that Jesus Christ, or Paul, or Peter, etc., had a specific burden to unfold and unpack that doctrine, glory in it, and make sure that the believers lived in the light of it in their daily lives. That's a very strong indication that the doctrine is false. And why? Because - and this is key - because in all the relevant areas, the New Testament writers are not silent, but they have clear doctrines that they self-consciously, deliberately explained, and applied. There are no gaps into which to insert other doctrines.

We can make this concrete. I've argued this recently in the specific case of postmillennialism: postmillennialism, if taken seriously, teaches its adherents to have a specific way of framing their thinking in regard of this present age, and how to see it, and how to live in it. Those consequences naturally and necessarily flow from its claims. But the New Testament has a different way of teaching believers to orient their thoughts towards this present age, and the two are different. You can read that post to see my argument for that. We can say the same about paedobaptism itself. The New Testament is not empty of detailed and deliberate explanations about how the New Covenant works, and how it relates in relation to the previous covenants (e.g. throughout the book of Hebrews, and the book of Galatians). Paedobaptism attempts to argue their schemes about precisely how circumcision and baptism relate, and whether the New Covenant is essentially "an administration" of a covenant with few practical differences in implementation to what came before, largely rely upon a priori claims, and explaining how isolated verses in other contexts can be read in harmony with their claims, rather than exegeting the abundance of available New Testament material that is specifically focussed upon these questions. (Here's an example of where I argue this in more detail in responding to a particular claim).

Paedocommunion, again, is not argued directly from statements that the apostles or Christ make about the Lord's Supper that would directly lead us to understand its nature and who the proper recipients of it would be, but from theological abstractions that are argued to lie in the background and indirect inferences from them.

Theonomy (and here's something related that I wrote recently that brings this out in response to a specific statement by a theonomist) does likewise. The New Testament has a clear doctrine of nationhood, that has been radically reshaped by the coming of the kingdom. A new nation, the true Israel, has been formed, which has out-moded the still-existing-but-fading-away nations of this present age. Christians live in a new epoch, through the resurrection of Christ, and are part of the nation that is eternal - which is defined not by ethnic descent, nor by physical boundaries, but by their second birth and the presence of the Holy Spirit. The previous understanding of nationhood has been transformed and changed. Meanwhile, the kingdoms of this world - as is well-argued in the book linked above - have been handed to the rule of the Gentiles, and we have been told that this is God's ordination (Romans 13) and that we should submit to them except in some clearly-defined and limited exceptional cases. So: the New Testament has a clear doctrine of nationhood, which the apostles laboured to teach; there is no vacuum into which theonomist thought can be injected.

If you do attempt to inject these various doctrines as the purported background of New Testament thought, then you can only do so by replacement. You're not filling in the presuppostions of apostolic thought; you're switching that thought for something else. The apostles had their own system of thought, and it led them to major on, emphasise and unfold the things that they did, instead of emphasising things like the reasons for baptising infants, capturing nation-states for theonomic rule, or taking heart and viewing the second coming of Christ in light of the doctrines of postmillennialism. They had a thought-world: we should live in it. If we do, then we can't accept these doctrines, we can't see them as harmless, and we must explicitly reject them. The people who believe these doctrines see them as very important, and as transformative. They're right. But also, more fundamentally, they're wrong, and it will help believers greatly to understand how that is, and the consequences of it. Which thought-world we live in matters, greatly: and we must live in that of Christ, as revealed authoritatively in his word.

Charismatic doctrine, charismatic reality

Doctrinally, I am a cessationist, which does not at all mean that I think supernatural events cannot or do not happen. Rather, it means that I think that the New Testament sign and revelation gifts have ceased. That is to say, that the state of affairs by which particular individuals were gifted to serve the early church in the role of apostles, prophets, miracle-workers or tongues-speakers or miraculous interpreters of tongues has ended. It belonged to the age of the apostles and incomplete inscripturated revelation, and ended when that age passed. From now, until the return of Christ, God intends the church to be ruled through an objective, written revelation - our fidelity to which will be judged upon the last day.

I can understand why an honest person, of honourable intent, might be persuaded otherwise, especially given the complicated ways in which people in general make up their minds. I  think that he would have to make significant and serious mistakes in doing so, and that further study without external pressures would lead him to change his mind. But nevertheless, I believe that a brother or sister in Christ could honestly and honourably believe that the Scriptures teach a non-cessationist, i.e. charismatic, position.

What I cannot understand, however, is how such a person with due respect for the Scriptures, could tolerate the practices of any charismatic church or movement I've ever come across. Rather, they ought to find it as offensive as I do. Theory is one thing, but practice is another. 

So, for example, you can believe that there are prophets today - but this is only honourable if you also believe in excommunication for false prophets. Once someone says "thus says the Lord", if they say something that it can be shown the Lord has not said, they're out, and that's it. That's is a clear and consistent standard in both Testaments, and never wavers in the slightest (e.g. Ezekiel 22:28, Jeremiah 14:14, Deuteronomy 18:22, Matthew 7:15, Romans 16:18, Revelation 22:18-19). There is no category, anywhere in Scripture, of the benign or sincerely misguided false prophet, who can be simply encouraged to try again next time. You can only believe in that category by sheer invention.

Similarly, it is quite clear that in the Bible, tongues-speaking was the miraculous speaking of a foreign language that could be understood if a native speaker happened to be present, and which should only be spoken in church if an interpreter was able to interpret it (Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 14). The "tongues of angels" (in chapter 13) would a) still be an interpretable language subject to the rules of 1 Corinthians 14, and b) is quite clearly a piece of hypothetical hyperbole for the purposes of argument, no different to the person whose faith can physically move mountains from one place to another in the next verse. The concept of an uninterpretable "heavenly" language, which thus can be freely babbled into the air, apart from insulting the inhabits of heaven, does not exist anywhere in the Bible, and violates every rule which Paul set down for the early Corinthians to follow in regard of the tongues gift.

The amount of charlatanry and quackery that pervades the charismatic world (come get your holy oil, just £200 a bottle! come get your miracle! let the man of God come and touch you! I've seen a revival that's going to sweep our city that you need to get ready for in the next 3 years - and I've seen this every year for the last 50! Oh, and here's a prophecy specially delivered from heaven's throne-room about the future health of your cat) ought to have all sincere charismatics up in spiritual arms day and night. They ought to be doing very little else other than creating spiritual whip-chords to drive all this fakery and blasphemy out of God's holy temple tout-de-suite, lest judgment swiftly fall. But as it is, they accommodate themselves to it: it's part of the furniture. It goes with the territory. If they were to rise up and apply some godly church discipline to all the fakery and buffoonery, or separate themselves from it otherwise, then they soon instinctively realise that they'd soon be in a church in which you only need your thumbs to count the membership, and likely that'll persist after accidentally putting one of them in the blender.

An excellent point I've seen made a few times in recent years is that if God has, in a special way, been blessing the Charismatic movement with supernatural gifts of discernment in recent decades... then how come the movement has had such an endless catalogue of frauds, thieves, child-abusers and rapists promoted as figure-heads throughout that time? Why did nobody use their gift to discern their presence and expose them? To just pick out one example, how come not one person who possessed this New Testament gift managed to discern Mike Pilivachi, for example? Or why not call out someone outside their movement, which would also be fine? There have certainly been plenty to choose from? Why are all the Christian leaders living double lives exposed through the ordinary means, and never through the gift of supernatural discernment? Can we go somewhere to find where all these supernaturally discerning people have explained their 100% failure rate and inability to out-perform anyone else who didn't have such a gift? Why so quiet about that?

Jesus said that by their fruits you shall know them.

Make disciples, and baptise them

Peter Leithart is very, very, very clever. He's someone whose learning makes me feel that I need to return to nursery school and try again to see if perhaps next time I could reduce the distance between us.

One of the dangers, though, of being so clever, is that you can talk yourself into believing all kinds of things, which a lesser mind would never be able to accept because they're too preposterous.

Which brings us to this Tweet:

Baptize nations, Jesus says. That is: Do for all nations what Yahweh did for Israel at the sea.

Chosen nation status isn't here cancelled, but universalized, as one people after another is incorporated into the chosen nation, each receiving a new political identity by baptismal death and resurrection, each called to its unique historical vocation.

Concerning the grammar of the Great Commission "make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name", much ink has been expended (and if we're going to expend ink on anything, I can think of few better places, so no complaints there!). How do these clauses correlate? Are the nations baptised and then discipled? Must one be a self-conscious disciple to be baptised? Are the disciples called out from the nations, or do nations each themselves become some sort of corporate disciple, nationally brought under the tutelage of Christ?

As with many such questions, the grammar can actually bear more than one construction, and the syntax isn't finally determinative (even whilst we can argue about which is the more natural or likely meaning)....

.... but on the other hand, what the disciples actually went out and did in response to this command is recorded in great detail and is as plain as the proverbial pikestaff. And no less plain is what they then instructed those disciples to carry on doing, and also what they entirely omitted to ever make mention of in their teaching.

So plain, that only someone very, very clever and very decided upon using that cleverness to believe and uphold a doctrine that appeals to them, could fail to register. (It's somewhat akin to arguing about Jesus' words to Peter, "upon this rock I will build my church" - if by this, Jesus was telling Peter about an unbroken line of universal pontiffs based in Rome, succeeding from him to all generations, then Peter never afterwards appears to have known anything about it, and that stubborn fact remains no matter what you can argue that the better syntax-level understanding of the words is or isn't).

The New Testament has a nation in it. That nation entirely supersedes and relativises all other nations. The kingdom of God is not a collection of nations, beginning with the apostate 1st century Israel and then one-by-one progressively assimilating one more nation at a time; and if it were, it has not yet begun, if the New Testament's teaching about discipleship means anything at all. The New Testament's actual teaching gives no countenance to the fever-dreams of some post-millennial theonomic Presbyterians, who hold that once your nation is covenanted, it's always covenanted, end of - and nations never really cease to exist, or come into existence, so there's always an ever-growing number of covenanted nations. The New Testament explicitly and directly redefines the meaning of nations. There are the old nations, which are passing away. They still exist as this old age still endures, and they certainly still have much relevance to our lives; but they are nevertheless passing away. (Analagously: my marriage to my wife endures and is deeply important, notwithstanding my membership of the bride of Christ - it will continue until death do us part, and nothing about Christ's espousal to his eschatological bride can reduce the importance of this relationship in the here and now; and yet, at the same time, human marriages are already passing away, from the New Testament's viewpoint - 1 Corinthians 7:29-31). The kingdom of God is the one nation that will remain, and it exists where there are real disciples of Jesus, who have been born again of his Spirit and are then pass through baptism as individuals and who now belong to his glorious Body. Other nations are around: but also already fading.

If Jesus was telling his apostles to assimilate old-order nations, one-by-one, into his kingdom, as the constituent parts of his kingdom, then they utterly misunderstood, failing to either do it, or tell anyone else to do it, or explaining a theology that would ground it. More than that, they were false teachers, who openly, clearly and pervasively taught in its place a new theology of nationhood that was simply wrong, because Jesus was actually still asserting the old theology of nationhood.

Peter Leithart is very clever. This is a great gift. But his postmillennial/theonomic beliefs, on this subject, have blinded him to what the New Testament does straightforwardly and explicitly and pervasively teach, both at a doctrinal level, and in terms of what program the apostles of Jesus actually implemented.

(So note, in the screenshot above, John is correct, not specifically because of the syntax, but because of the New Testament's sufficient and authoritative record of what was actually then done and taught by the apostles).

Christians' children are worse off if not baptised during infancy?

"Those who claim that Hebrew infants should be circumcised, but that ours should not be baptized, make God more gracious to Jews than to Christians." - Peter Martyr Vermigli (Commentary on Romans, chapter 4 verse 11)

This is, of course, an archetypal supporting argument within circles that teach infant baptism for children of believers. And on the surface, it has an immediate plausibility: if Jews' children received the sign of welcome into the covenant family, then why would Christians' children no longer possess that sign? Has this privilege been withdrawn from them?

It is, however, not truly an argument at all. It is not an argument, but a re-wording of the conclusion. It is a statement that only follows if the actual argument has already been accepted. If the actual argument has not already been accepted, it does precisely nothing to advance it.

How so? Lying behind the statement is the belief that circumcision and baptism are not only divine ordinances with similarities as well as differences, but are fundamentally and essentially the same thing. Any differences are of strictly limited import and finally of no real weight in any practical matter, for they are both "the outward sign of the covenant of grace", signifying and sealing the recipient's membership of that covenant.

And note there that another concept has been admitted which must be viewed in a certain way, in order for that equation to work: there must be a "covenant of grace", and this covenant of grace cannot merely be a unifying concept for understanding God's overall plans throughout salvation history. It is absolutely required that all actual historical covenants (or, at least all those after the fall) found in the Bible, again, despite all their differences, are in the end found to be essentially the same thing, and these differences all found to be of no final weight or import. All Biblical covenants in history do not simply flow from, reflect or advance the purposes of the covenant of grace.... rather, they are "administrations" of this covenant of grace. Note specifically that what cannot be the case is that the New Covenant is the one actualisation in history of an eternal covenant, i.e. the New Covenant is "the covenant of grace" with all the preceding covenants being entities that should be approached firstly upon their own terms, whilst still being intended to ultimately reveal, lead to, and having a deeply important underlying continuity with it. That position (i.e. the Reformed Baptist position) is not enough; all covenants must fundamentally be the covenant of grace. There is really, in practice, only one covenant, under different names and times. The signs and outward accompaniments may change, but the covenant is always one and the same. Jews and Christians must, at the root of it, be the same thing: members of the one-and-only salvific covenant. Again I repeat: we are not talking here about underlying unity, but of to-all-intents-and-purposes identity.

Only then, if all this is accepted, can you speak as Peter Martyr does. Only then can we say that the immediate offspring of a descendant of Abraham according to the flesh before the coming of Christ has received "more grace" than an infant born to believing Christian parents, if the former (assuming that it's a male child) is circumcised on the eighth day, whilst the latter is not sprinkled with sacramental water. But as I say: that's actually the thing to be proved. In and of itself, "but then that means God has been less gracious to Christians than he has been to Old Testament Jews!" is not any sort of argument. It is merely the re-statement of the thing to be proved, but using different words. And as such, in all honesty, it ought to be struck out of the canons of paedobaptist argumentation. It has no actual content that is specific to itself. It simply re-labels the other, real arguments. It is not a supporting sub-argument: it is merely the begging of the question.