An Aesthetically-Burdened Theology

Man, as made in the image of God, is a connoisseur of beauty. Every eminent feature of the created order is reflective of the perfections of God; hence, it is but fitting for man to appreciate His various creaturely analogies. However, when the comeliness of natural revelation begins to impose upon one's apprehension of special revelation, problems arise.

Somehow, the recent anomalies of "conversions" to Rome by prominent names in Reformed circles are instances of a specific kind of swimming goggles already worn years in advance, even before the Tiber was actually swum. A certain predisposition to beauty, commingled with religious convictions, lends these people weak to the transcendent, and what is it that Roman pomp and pageantry offer but the transcendent mediated through architecture and ritual. Given the almost irresistible tug of these sense-pleasers, the mind, and the theology it once held dear and defended, give in and conform (mutate), in accommodation to the aesthetic presupposition.

But are we promised grace from the both-immanent-and-transcendent God through such means? No. The presumptuously immanentistic trajectory of the low-church modern evangelical is no better countered by the awe-inspiring transcendentalism of the high-church Romanist.

But how is grace from God mediated to His worshippers? Through the Word of God.

The Word of God is communicated to God's people as grace through its faithful preaching and its proper administration as the Sacraments (the tangible/material Word).

I think it is in keeping with the humility of God that present age grace is delivered in a package of meekness, i.e., weak and faltering human ministers and the mundaneness of water, bread, and wine. However, thrill-seekers will not be disappointed at the glory and grandeur that will accompany Christ's second coming—something that will reduce today's incredible cathedrals to yesterday's crumbled bastions of idolatry.

But that is for a future day. Today, those faithful to the Gospel must content themselves with the beauty of holiness as it is presented in a run-down church.

The Anabaptist/Baptist Confusion

Many are perplexed as to how the Reformed can tie OT circumcision with NT baptism and how infant baptism, practiced by the universal Church of Christ for 1500+ years prior to Anabaptism, is biblical, both on theological and exegetical grounds.

The fretting will cease (at least it must for the thinking Christian!) after one goes through this essay by Rev. Professor-Emeritus Dr. Francis Nigel Lee, entitled, From Circumcision to Baptism "Circumcised...in Baptism" – Colossians 2:11-12 (Biblical refutation of the baptismal views of Baptists and Anabaptists).

The material can be accessed here or here.

The Trinity in Everything

To be Christian is to be Trinitarian. To be anything otherwise and still claim Christianity is to be in a state of damnable error and deception. In fact, the whole of created reality bears the stamp of the-One-and-the-Many as evinced in the universal-particulars relationship inherent in every created object. God's Trinitarian "seal of approval" is emblazoned on creation as it is on redemption.

Robert Letham, a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and teacher of Systematic and Historical Theology at Wales Evangelical School of Theology, explains how our whole being must possess an utterly Trinitarian thrust in terms of the expressions of our piety—in prayer, preaching, the worship service, and the Sacraments:

All Trinitarian Baptism is Valid—Hence, the Invalidity of Anabaptism

Christian baptism is not a baptism into a denomination, group, etc., but a baptism into the Christian faith, as grounded upon the ontological Trinity. This speaks of the universality (catholicity) of the true Church of Christ, marked by its confession of the Trinity, and that baptism in any of the different denominations, groups, etc. that have this Trinitarian confession is a valid baptism, as it is a baptism into the Trinity. Hence, Anabaptism (rebaptism) is definitely error of an egregious sort, if not utterly sinful (as absurd as regrowing foreskin for recircumcision!).

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee explains:

Westminster Wednesday: The TV Church

What is the 'electronic church'? If you turn on your TV, you will find a variety of religious broadcasting, from Roman Catholic masses to traditional Presbyterian services to charismatic talk shows. Some of these programmes are rather amateurish local broadcasts of local worship services. Others are sophisticated and expensive programmes syndicated all over the world. Some of these programmes are produced by honest, earnest people trying to be helpful to others. Others seem to have questionable messages and methods. In one sense, all these programmes are part of the electronic church.

Reformed Rap

There's this discussion over at The Reformed Pinoy about whether "Christian rap" is permissible in the context of the corporate worship of the church.

The Reformed Regulative Principle of Worship immediately informs us that the biblical reply is No.

Simply put, the RPW is sola scriptura applied to the corporate worship of God's people during the Sabbath assembly. It is not that, where Scripture is silent, we are free to devise our own schemes as pertaining to the elements of worship, but that we are to implement only those which Scripture explicitly mandates.

The elements of worship consist substantially of the Word of God and formally of the Word preached, the Word prayed, the Word sung, and the Word eaten and drunk. The circumstances of worship are those peripherals that do not impinge upon the nature and character of the dialog that ensues between God and His people (marked by reverence, awe, and humility), such as the building where the assembly is held, microphones, pews, etc. It is a universal phenomenon, and not cultural, that heavy, crunching guitars, slamming drums, and screaming (or rapping) vocals do not make for reverential, awe-struck, and humble expression.

Click here for the biblical arguments for RPW, and here for Calvin's take on worship.

Now that I'm at it, here's how a "Reformed rap" might look like (my own "composition"):

Hey, everybody, have you got a flowah
That changes lives, ooooh, what a powah
Comin' from mah homies, number one is Piper
But he's Baptistic, ooooh, makes me shudder

TULIP is the flowah everybody's pickin'
Even heretics, just look at Rick Warren
It's so cool, jump on the bandwagon
Just so you know, that's not the Reformation

TULIP! TULIP! TU-TU-TU-TULIP!
Not the Reformation
TULIP! TULIP! TU-TU-TU-TULIP!
Just look at Rick Warren
TULIP! TULIP! TU-TU-TU-TULIP!
Number one is Piper
TULIP! TULIP! TU-TU-TU-TULIP!
Ooooh, it makes me shudder

(Repeat indefinitely until crowd frenzy ensues)

Doing Church

Contrast the rantings of this "young, restless, and reformed," Emergent type on his ideals for "doing church" with this treatment of the marks of a true church by Dr. R.S. Clark.

There are three marks of a true church:

1.) The whole counsel of God is preached (Law and Gospel).

2.) The sacraments are faithfully administered.

3.) Discipline is enforced among the membership.

The YRR guy may claim compliance to the first two marks, but his 8th point leaves more to be desired as it relates to the third mark:

"8. If you think this will be a nice little church that stays the same size, where everybody knows your name and you have my cell number on speed dial and we have a picnic lunch together every week (By God’s grace, we want to grow)."

How can discipline be enforced in the form of submission to the rule of elders, as these elders dispense of their God-ordained duties, when anonymity is encouraged and accountability frowned upon? He says they want to grow? By growth it seems is meant the bursting at the seams in terms of population when genuine fellowship then proves impossible.

He does get one thing right, though: I certainly wouldn't want to join his church.

Might Infrequency Lead to Lethargy?

In contrast to the mysticism that is the staple in broad evangelicalism, Reformed theology, piety, and practice recognize that growth in sanctification is wrought primarily through participation in the means of grace, i.e., the hearing of the Word of God (Gospel) preached and the partaking of the Sacraments, wherein the Holy Spirit unites the recipient of the water in baptism and the bread and wine in the Supper to the thing signified, the substance, which is Christ, hastening the growth of faith even as small as a mustard seed.

In the weekly Sabbath assembly, the proclamation of the promises of the Covenant of Grace is declared through the ordained mouthpiece of Christ, the pastor, and is ratified in the physical representation of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. But what if the Supper is not administered weekly? Could this lack somehow account for some, if not many, of the instances of spiritual torpor among the sheep of Christ's flock? If it be in the capacity of the church to celebrate the Supper weekly, should it not do so for the love of those for whom Christ lived and died, that they may be conformed ever increasingly to His image and likeness?

"Calvin and other reformers argued that the Supper should occupy a central place alongside preaching each week. Yet its strange absence from the regular gathering of many churches today impoverishes the saints, weakens the diet and the sinews that connect us to our living Head and to each other as members of his body, and dampens the gratitude that feeds our missionary zeal. It is the Eucharist, along with preaching and baptism, that not only generates a church in the first place, but keeps its focus on Christ's presence in action as well as his absence in the flesh, generating our longing for his return." (Michael Horton, The Gospel-Driven Life [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2009], 203).

Infant Baptism: How My Mind Has Changed (by Dennis E. Johnson)

Get the PDF here.

      

The Inseparability of Covenant-Renewal with Covenant-Ratification

When the Word of God (Law and Gospel) is preached during the weekly Sabbath assembly, it is actually a declaration of the terms and stipulations of the Covenant of Grace. We hear of the demands of God in the Law, and we also hear of Christ as having fulfilled all the requirements of the Law on our behalf, which is the Gospel. God's pledge of faithfulness to this covenant is brought to the fore and we are comforted and motivated to grateful obedience.

However, if it ended there, the "covenant formula," if I may so speak, would be incomplete. Where is the ratification of this renewing of the covenant between God and His redeemed? In the Old Covenant, this would take the form of the blood sacrifice of bulls and goats, but in the New, Christ paid the price of His blood for our redemption from the curse of the Old Covenant, therefore, no blood sacrifice is left nor required. What the Lord Himself left us is the sacrament of Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper. In the Supper is the visible, material, and tangible sign and seal of the Covenant of Grace—the physical Gospel. Through it, the Spirit affords us the assurance that God is faithful, that we are justified in His sight through Christ's atoning sacrifice, and that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us—then our faith is invigorated. As Article 35 of the Belgic Confession affirms:

To represent to us this spiritual and heavenly bread Christ has instituted an earthly and visible bread as the sacrament of his body and wine as the sacrament of his blood. He did this to testify to us that just as truly as we take and hold the sacraments in our hands and eat and drink it in our mouths, by which our life is then sustained, so truly we receive into our souls, for our spiritual life, the true body and true blood of Christ, our only Savior. We receive these by faith, which is the hand and mouth of our souls.

Now it is certain that Jesus Christ did not prescribe his sacraments for us in vain, since he works in us all he represents by these holy signs, although the manner in which he does it goes beyond our understanding and is uncomprehensible to us, just as the operation of God's Spirit is hidden and incomprehensible.

Yet we do not go wrong when we say that what is eaten is Christ's own natural body and what is drunk is his own blood—but the manner in which we eat it is not by the mouth but by the Spirit, through faith.

So the case is made that the preaching of the Word, as it is the renewing of the Covenant of Grace, must always have with it the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, as it is the ratification, the sign, and the seal of the just renewed covenant.

The following are Calvin's thoughts on the frequency of the Lord's Supper:

"What we have hitherto said of the sacrament, abundantly shows that it was not instituted to be received once a-year and that perfunctorily (as is now commonly the custom); but that all Christians might have it in frequent use, and frequently call to mind the sufferings of Christ, thereby sustaining and confirming their faith: stirring themselves up to sing the praises of God, and proclaim his goodness; cherishing and testifying towards each other that mutual charity, the bond of which they see in the unity of the body of Christ. As often as we communicate in the symbol of our Saviour’s body, as if a pledge were given and received, we mutually bind ourselves to all the offices of love, that none of us may do anything to offend his brother, or omit anything by which he can assist him when necessity demands, and opportunity occurs. That such was the practice of the Apostolic Church, we are informed by Luke in the Acts, when he says, that 'they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers' (Acts 2:42). Thus we ought always to provide that no meeting of the Church is held without the word, prayer, the dispensation of the Supper, and [offerings]. We may gather from Paul that this was the order observed by the Corinthians, and it is certain that this was the practice many ages after. Hence, by the ancient canons, which are attributed to Anacletus and Calixtus, after the consecration was made, all were to communicate who did not wish to be without the pale of the Church. And in those ancient canons, which bear the name of Apostolical, it is said that those who continue not to the end, and partake not of the sacred communion, are to be corrected, as causing disquiet to the Church. In the Council of Antioch it was decreed, that those who enter the Church, hear the Scriptures, and abstain from communion, are to be removed from the Church until they amend their fault. And although, in the first Council of Tholouse, this was mitigated, or at least stated in milder terms, yet there also it was decreed, that those who after hearing the sermon, never communicated, were to be admonished, and if they still abstained after admonition, were to be excluded" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, (IV, xvii, 44); translated by Henry Beveridge).

The Word of God Creates

While it is indeed the profession of many Christians that the Bible is the inspired and inerrant Word of God, the essence and luminosity of the latter phrase has somehow lost its shine and sheen. These days, one can find Scripture being used in all sorts of ways as a "guide" to many schemes: from getting rich, to staying healthy, to developing leadership savvy, all the way to attracting a prospective mate!

In light of these misappropriations,

"...we will also have to recover the Reformation view that the Word of God is not only a canon that regulates our beliefs and practices...but that it is actually alive, accomplishing everything God intends. While upholding the reliability and authority of Scripture, conservative Evangelicalism has tended to reduce God's Word to a sourcebook for timeless doctrinal and ethical laws, missing the crucial point that the Bible itself underscores from Genesis to Revelation: namely, that God's speaking is acting, and this acting is not only descriptive but creative. God's Word is authoritative not only because of what it is (God's utterance), but because of what it does (God's utterance).

The Word of God written and preached is not simply legally authoritative and binding, but is the primary means of grace, through which the Spirit ordinarily creates communion with Christ and therefore the communion of saints: ekklesia. In other words, in this conception, the Word is not merely something that stands over us. It is also 'the implanted word' (James 1:21) that 'abides in you' (1 John 2:14), and is to 'dwell in you richly' (Col. 3:16). 'So then faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ' (Rom. 10:16).

Thus the Word is not only the church's norm for faith and practice, but the primary means of grace, often referred to as the 'sacramental Word.' Although there can be no saving, personal, covenantal encounter apart from information and assertions of fact, the Word in this sense is much more 'living and active' than that. It not only tells us what God has done; it does what God tells.

Life is found only in God, located in Christ, mediated by his Word. Specifically, the gospel is that part of God's Word that gives life. Not everything that God says is saving. Sometimes God's speech brings judgment, disaster, fear, warning, and dread, Calvin reminds us. God's majesty is so terrifying that we would either be overwhelmed with despair or driven to idolatry and self-justification in an attempt to avoid the God who actually exists. The only safe route, therefore, is to receive the Father through the incarnate Son. Christ is the saving content of Scripture, the substance of its canonical unity. Calvin notes, 'This is the true knowledge of Christ: if we take him as he is offered by the Father, namely, clothed with his gospel. For as he himself has been designated the goal of our faith, so we shall not run straight to him unless the gospel leads the way.'

As Christ gives himself to us through creaturely elements of water, bread, and wine, so too he gives through the words of Scripture and the proclamation that is derived from it. As with baptism and the Supper, the Spirit creates a bond between the sign (proclamation of the gospel) and the reality signified (Christ and all his benefits). That is why the Heidelberg Catechism (Q. 65) answers the question, 'Where does this true faith come from?' by saying, 'The Holy Spirit creates it in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments.' Through such preaching, sinners are actually reconciled to God."

— Dr. Michael S. Horton, 'Creature of the Word' (A Liberating Captivity), Modern Reformation, March/April 2007.

The Price of Feeling Good in the Church

This has been shouted out from the rooftops time and again, but seeing that the glory of Christ is at stake—not to mention that souls are still being dragged off to hell with smiles on their faces—I believe with a passion that the following questions need to be asked once more, if not again and again and again: Does the church that you belong to preach the Gospel? Does it biblically and faithfully dispense of the Sacraments? Is discipline being carried out among the membership? Are the Scriptures preached expositorily?

If you attend one of the more famous megachurches (and some of the smaller ones seeking to be megachurches), the honest answer, in all probability, is NO! And if so, you may have been taught what your "purpose" in life is, you may have been shown techniques on how to be "happy" and "prosperous" in the present life, you may have been entertained into coming back for more Sunday after Sunday, and you may have been led to mutter the "sinner's prayer" in order for you to have a "personal relationship with Jesus"—all without Christ in the Law and Christ in the Gospel. The rude awakening may come now, when you can still seek the truth in Christ, or it may come later when you hear Christ's disownment with a finality that is hot and eternally aflame.

Step out into the light while life still courses through your veins.

Roast Pork, Roads to Truth, and the Church

When a person feeds on physical food, it becomes part of the person. The pig cells of roast pork don't remain as such after having entered my body—no, they become Warren cells. This is the nature of physical feeding.

When the mind feeds on truth, it can do so in three ways: subjectively, objectively, and divinely. Subjective feeding on truth is akin to auto-cannibalism, if there is even such a thing. The person is the sole source, judge, and consumer of truth—with truth being a generation of the self. Of course, this is problematic, as it would only be a matter of time before the whole self is consumed and obliterated. Postmodernists and relativists really don't live out their subjectivity consistently. How can they if they are to survive?

Secondly, there is the objective feeding on truth. This is the mind making judgments on the outside world based on how and what it actually is, regardless of personal convenience. It sees that the various objects extrinsic to itself have independent existence and that the act of knowing is the recognition of this and the various properties that make existence possible. This is at the root of factual learning.

If the assimilation of food alters its structure as it becomes absorbed into the body, the subjective approach to truth actually erodes and degrades the self, while the objective approach adds information to the mind's body of knowledge without effecting changes to the nature of the soul. The third approach to truth, feeding on the divine, does precisely that—it leaves the soul, the total person, changed to the core. This is at the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ's declaration that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4). Everything inferior to man that comes into him is either transformed, is destructive of him, or leaves no remarkable residue. Only as man enters into God's truth is he radically altered, the finite embraced by the infinite, coming out of the transaction not as the same Dick, Harry, Jane, Sue or Warren—but more Christlike.

These divine transactions, the feeding on divine truth, come through the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, corporate and private prayer, the ardent study of Scripture, and fellowship among the brethren. They are mediated—as would be the necessary case when the infinite engages the finite—through the church.