Eugene Peterson will be here at RTS next week for the annual Kistemaker Lectures. I don't know too much about Peterson, aside from having read an article or two by him in the past, but I'm looking forward to hearing him. He has a reputation for possessing a great deal of wisdom in regards to pastoral concerns and various issues that arise in ministry.

Part of the reason I'm looking forward to the lectures is because of Peterson's commitment to Christian formation and discipleship (his title while at Regent was Professor of Spiritual Theology), and his recognition that the church is to be intimately involved in the lives of believers. The American church, both historically and presently, has demonstrated a great interest in saving souls and seeing people converted, but has not often invested in their lives as they subsequently learn what it looks like to have a life transformed by the gospel. Peterson addresses this in the introduction (and presumably the rest of the chapters) of his latest book, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing up in Christ:

We cannot overemphasize bringing men and women to new birth in Christ. Evangelism is essential, critically essential. But is it not obvious that growth in Christ is equally essential? Yet the American church has not treated it with an equivalent urgency. The American church runs on the euphoria and adrenaline of new birth—getting people into the church, into the kingdom, into causes, into crusades, into programs. We turn matters of growing up over to Sunday school teachers, specialists in Christian education, committees to revise curricula, retreat centers, and deeper life conferences, farming it out to parachurch groups for remedial assistance. I don't find pastors and professors, for the most part, very interested in matters of formation and holiness. The have higher profile things to tend to.

Americans in general have little tolerance for a centering way of life that is submissive to the conditions in which growth takes place, quiet, obscure, patient, not subject to human control and management. The American church is uneasy in these conditions. Typically, in the name of 'relevance,' it adapts itself to the prevailing American culture and is soon indistinguishable from that culture; talkative, noisy, busy, controlling, image-conscious.

Meanwhile, what has in previous centuries and other cultures been a major preoccupation of the Christian community, becoming men and women who live to 'the praise of God's glory,' has become a mere footnote within a church that has taken on the agenda of the secular society—its educational goals, its activity goals, its psychological goals. By delegating character formation, the life of prayer, the beauty of holiness—growing up in Christ—to specialized ministries or groups, we remove it from the center of the church's life. We disconnect growth from birth, and, in effect, place it on a bench at the margins of the church's life. Wendell Berry, one of our most perceptive prophets of contemporary culture and spirituality, wrote, 'We think it ordinary to spend twelve or sixteen or twenty years of a person's life and many thousands of public dollars on "education"—and not one dime or a thought on character.'

It takes a serious amount of effort to invest that much in someone's life, but Peterson obviously stands as an advocate for the essentiality of this fully-involved discipleship. And the Bible, of course, is replete with examples of this—one only need look to the three years Jesus spent in forming his disciples.

If we truly believe that all of life is to be lived under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we as the Church need to ensure that we become fully invested in each other's lives as we learn together what that looks like.

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If you study the history of American Christianity, as I have been doing over the past couple of months, one of the themes that appears again and again is the emphasis on conversion. It is not an emphasis that has faded over time, either—even today many Christians continue to hold to the idea that one must have a definable moment of conversion followed by a decision on their part to follow Christ in order to legitimately be considered a Christian.

In the 18th and 19th century, during a period of revivalism, men like Charles Finney made this emphasis the cornerstone of their preaching. These preachers would constantly urge their listeners to make a decision to follow Christ in the hopes of seeing many conversions take place on the spot, much like the modern "altar call." Predictably, there was strong reaction against this from certain quarters. Back in 1902, for example, the Reformed Church in the United States had published an edition of the Heidelberg Catechism (rather unoriginally titled The Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed Church in the United States, 20th Century Edition) in which it was made clear that while some people would legitimately be able to point to a time when they first believed, this was not something that every Christian had to articulate (contrary to the opinion of Finney, et. al.). Under the heading "On Confirmation, Catechism, and Conversion," was this:

What are the qualifications for full [communicant] membership?

Answer: an intelligent, cheerful, humble, sincere, earnest 'yes' to the three confirmation vows of repentance, faith, and obedience.

Need I tell you that this fitness is conversion? Some persons, not understanding our church life and customs, foolishly think that we confirm our young people no matter what their state of mind and heart is, and that we do not believe in conversion. This is a great mistake. We require a high degree of fitness for confirmation, namely, an intelligent, sincere, and unreserved taking of three most searching and far-reaching vows in the name of the holy Trinity.

Then, too, this fitness for confirmation may be called 'a change in heart,' though this is only another name for conversion. This change is not sudden, but runs through years. You have not had any wonderful religious experiences, such as you hear about in others; but the Holy Ghost has done much in you in a very quiet way.

Nor need you doubt your conversion, your change in heart, because you cannot tell the day when it took place, as many profess to do. It did not take place in a day, or you might tell it. It is the growth of years (Mark 4:26-28), and therefore all the more reliable. You cannot tell when you learned to walk, talk, think, and work. You do not know when you learned to love your earthly father, much less the heavenly.

This the Reformed doctrine of 'getting religion.' We get religion, not in bulk but little by little. Just as we get natural life and strength, so spiritual life and strength, day by day.

To this fitness, this preparation of heart and mind, you profess to have come. You are about to take your vows, turning your back to the Devil, the world, and the flesh, while you look heavenward. Fix your whole heart upon Christ. Consecrate yourself fully to his service, realizing that with body and soul, in life and in death, you are his.

I found this to be very interesting, not least for its emphasis on the idea that precisely because you cannot point to a specific time of conversion, you should consider it all the more reliable. One did not need a Damascus Road experience to be certain of their faith, for the work of God in the heart of the believer was a gradual, ongoing process. Religion does not come in bulk, it is here argued. What do you think?

*Thanks to my professor, John Muether, for sending this my way.

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I love these folks. They are doing great things.

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Mark Driscoll apparently made a comment once something to the effect of it being ridiculous that people could sprinkle babies with a few drops of water and call it baptism. Let me make clear, though, that I can't verify he actually said that, and so by no means claim that he did—indeed, it would surprise me; I understand that the Acts 29 Network includes both paedo- and credo-baptist churches—but I know these sentiments exist (if you'd like to read something delightfully inflammatory, read this from Spurgeon on the "abomination" of infant baptism).

I grew up in paedo-baptist churches, and have long held to the conviction that infants should be baptized, although there was a period when I wrestled quite extensively with the question of who are to be the subjects of baptism. In the last few years, however, I have found my conviction that the infants of believers must be baptized strengthened, especially in light of the covenant. In volume four of his Reformed Dogmatics (yes, this will be an oft-quoted text on this blog), Herman Bavinck makes a number of arguments in favour of the baptism of children. I find his discussion of the relationship between baptism and the covenant particularly important:

The covenant of grace established with Israel, though it changed in dispensation, remained the same in essence. The church (ἐκκλησία, ekklēsia) has replaced the Israel of the Old Testament. It is now the people of God, and God is its God and Father (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:17; Acts 3:25; Rom. 9:25-26; 11:16-21; 2 Cor. 6:16-18; Gal. 3:14-29; Eph. 2:12-13; Titus 2:14; Heb. 8:8-10; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 21:3). As was the case in the Old Testament, so now too the children of believers are included among the people of God. The church of the New Testament, after all, is not a collection of individuals, but an organism, a body, a temple, and as such, as a people, it took the place of Israel. As wild olive shoots—since some of the branches of the old olive tree have been broken off—they have been grafted onto the trunk of the same olive tree and so share in the nourishing sap from its root (Rom. 11:16-17). Hence at times entire households converted to Christianity. The household itself is an institution of God, an organic whole, which shares in a common blessing or a common curse...[Peter] says that the promise of the old covenant that God would be the God of believers and their children passed into the dispensation of the New Testament (Acts 2:39) [528-529].

Bavinck goes on to note that children are sanctified by virtue of their parents, citing Paul's discussion of believing and unbelieving spouses in 1 Corinthians 7:14ff. He observes that when Paul speaks about the holiness children receive from a believing parent it is not a subjective and internal holiness, but a "theocratic kind of holiness." As such,

it teaches that the whole family is regarded in light of the confession of the believing spouse. The believer has the calling to serve the Lord not only for oneself but with all that belongs to oneself and with one's entire family. For that reason the children of believers are admonished by the apostles as Christian children in the Lord (Acts 26:22; Eph. 6:1; Col. 3:20; 2 Tim. 3:15; 1 John 2:13)...Scripture knows nothing of a neutral upbringing that seeks to have the children make a completely free and independent choice at a more advanced age. The children of believers are...children of the covenant and are holy, not by nature (Job 14:4; Ps. 51:5; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3) but by virtue of the covenant...The basis for baptism is not the assumption that someone is regenerate, nor even that [there is] regeneration itself, but only the covenant of God (529-531).

It is a significant point, I think, that in the New Testament we always see a heightening in the fulfillment of something from the Old Testament. That is the case with typology, for instance, and so it is the case with the covenant. The promises of the covenant are fulfilled in a much greater way in the New Testament. To restrict the promises of the covenant, then, to those who are able to make a verbal profession of faith, seems to be a regression and not a heightened fulfillment. In the Old Testament, if the promises of the covenant were to "you and your seed," how much more should they be in the New Testament and subsequent ages! Additionally, one's incorporation into the covenant is never an autonomous act, but always and only an act of God bringing that person into the covenant family.

Of course, this by no means exhausts the case for infant baptism, but for me it is the most powerful argument in favour of it. Thoughts?

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Henry R. Van Til (the nephew of Cornelius) is often credited with the remarkable insight, "Culture is religion externalized." However, if you read the following portion from the chapter on the relationship of religion and culture in his book, The Calvinistic Concept of Culture, you will find out that those words are actually a paraphrase of a quote properly attributed to Paul Tillich.

At any rate, Van Til makes the crucial point here that our deepest religious convictions penetrate our entire being and form the axis on which our lives rotate. Every human being is a religious being at the very core. Says Van Til,

It is...more correct to ask what the role of culture is in religion than to put the question the other way around, as Hutchison does, 'What is religion's role in culture?' For man, in the deepest reaches of his being, is religious; he is determined by his relationship to God. Religion, to paraphrase the poet's expressive phrase, is not of life a thing apart, it is man's whole existence. Hutchison, indeed, comes to the same conclusion when he says, 'For religion is not one aspect or department of life beside the others, as modern secular thought likes to believe; it consists rather in the orientation of all human life to the absolute'. Tillich has captured the idea in a trenchant line, 'Religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion.'

The Westminster Shorter Catechism maintains at the outset that man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. However other-worldly this may sound to some, Presbyterians have interpreted this biblically to mean that man is to serve God in his daily calling, which is the content of religion. This service cannot be expressed except through man's cultural activity, which gives expression to his religious faith. Now faith is the function of the heart, and out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). This is the first principle of a biblically oriented psychology.

No man can escape this religious determination of his life, since God is the inescapable, ever-present Fact of man's existence. God may be loved or hated, adored or debased, but he cannot be ignored. The sense of God (sensus deitatis) is still the seed of religion (semen religionis). All of primitive religion is corroboration of the cry of the Psalmist, "Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or wither shall I flee from thy presence?" (Ps. 139:7).

And it is for this reason I steadfastly maintain that life is religion. There simply is no way around it.

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You would be hard-pressed to find something Herman Bavinck has written that is not rich in insight, cogent, and bursting with theological significance. Of course, this is an exaggeration (and a clear indication that I have not read everything Bavinck has written), but I find that almost every time I open one of his books and start to read him, my soul is fed.

One of the areas of theology that captures my interest most is ecclesiology. Bavinck makes much of the Church, as any good theologian should, given that it is in the Church that God joins His covenant people together, having called them to Himself and redeemed them. A couple of years ago, I remember coming across this passage on pages 280-281 in volume four of his Reformed Dogmatics, in which he gives wonderful expression to the organic unity of the Church.

All [local] churches are conceived of as one ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia) and described as the body, the bride, or the fullness (πλήρωμα, plērōma) of Christ.

This oneness of all the churches does not come into being a posteriori by the establishment of a creed, a church order, and a synodical system. Neither is the church an association of individual persons who first became believers apart from the church and subsequently united themselves. But it is an organism in which the whole exists prior to the parts; its unity precedes the plurality of local churches and rests in Christ. It is he who, continuing his mediatorial work in the state of exaltation, joins his churches together and builds them up from within himself as the head (Eph. 1:23; 4:16; 5:23; Col. 1:18; 2:19), gathers and governs it (John 10:16; 11:52; 17:20-21; Acts 2:33, 47; 9:3ff.), always remains with it (Matt. 18:20), is most intimately connected with it (John 15:1ff.; 17:21, 23; 1 Cor. 6:15; 12:12-27; Gal. 2:20), and dwells in it by his Spirit (Rom. 6:5; 8:9-11; 1 Cor. 6:15ff.; Eph. 3:17). The assertion that the universal ἐκκλησία precedes the local churches is correct in the sense that while it is not historically prior it is logically so. Every local church is the people of God, the body of Christ, built upon the foundation of Christ (1 Cor. 3:11, 16; 12:27), because in that location it is the same as what the church is in its entirety, and Christ is for that local church what he is for the universal church.

In the various local gatherings of believers, it is the one church of Christ that comes to expression. Its essence, both as it concerns the church as a whole and each of its parts in particular, is grounded in that it is the people of God (Rom. 9:25; 2 Cor. 6:16, 18; Titus 2:14; Heb. 8:10; 13:12; 1 Pet. 2:9-10), consisting of people who have committed themselves to the Lord and have turned to him (Acts 5:14; 14:15), who bear the name of disciples, brothers and sisters, chosen ones, called ones, saints, believers (Acts 1:15; 6:1; 9:1, 32; Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). In its broadest sense ἐκκλησία is the gathering of all the people of God, not only on earth but also in heaven (Heb. 12:23), not only in the past and present but also in the future (John 10:16; 17:20).

Bavinck is clearly talking here about the organic unity that lies at the very heart of the nature of the Church, speaking of the Church as God intended her to be. But I think there is a great deal of work to be done building on this foundation, both to understand what this unity would look like in reality and to begin to bring that unity to fruition. I have remarked before that the division and brokenness of Christ's Church grieves me so deeply that there are times I almost feel the effects of it physically. Although I recognize that we will never see this unity come to full expression before Christ returns, we are left with no excuse, on the one hand, to remain content in our division; neither, on the other hand, is it an excuse to force unity where there is none. There must be some way to make this organic unity more of a reality among the churches on earth.

To that end, I am thinking more and more that I should like to devote my life (or at least several years, initially) to begin the work of figuring this out. (On a side note, if someone over at Oxford, Edinburgh, the Free University of Amsterdam, or any other school is willing to pay me to do so, that would be even better).

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Cornelius Van Til argued that Reformed theology demanded a Reformed apologetic, one based on its doctrine of God and doctrines of grace. John Muether, in his excellent biography of Van Til, quotes him at length on this issue:

A generally evangelical apologetic to a large extent defeats its own purposes. True enough much good may be accomplished, both by an Arminian theology and by a generally evangelical method of apologetic. In this fact all who love the Lord will rejoice. But how much more good may be accomplished by the grace of God through a more consistently Biblical theology and a more consistenly Biblical apologetic. A generally evangelical apologetic does not drive the natural man down into a corner with no hope of escape. It does not track him down till he is at bay. It does not destroy his last shelter. His fire is not altogether extinguished...A plea for a vigorous apologetic ought therefore to be a plea for a genuinely Reformed apologetic. We may not be clear, indeed as to the full implications of a truly Reformed apologetic. But this fact does not justify us in refusing to point out those who, with us, love the Christian faith that a generally evanglical apologetic...is inadequate for any time and especially inadequate for our time.

Van Til's presuppositionalism reflected his debt to the theology of Herman Bavinck, who had written in the first volume of his Reformed Dogmatics years earlier:

Apologetics cannot precede faith and does not attempt a priori to argue the truth of revelation. It assumes the truth and belief in the truth. It does not, as the introductory part or as the foundational science, precede theology and dogmatics. It is itself a theological science through and through, which presupposes the faith and dogmatics and now maintains and defends the dogma against the opposition to which it is exposed.

...If Christian revelation, which presupposes the darkness and error of unspiritual humanity, submitted in advance to the judgments of reason, it would by that token contradict itself. It would thereby place itself before a tribunal whose jurisdiction it had first denied. And having once recognized the authority of reason on the level of first principles, it could no longer oppose that authority in the articles of faith.

Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Van Til knows that the first thing he would do when entering a classroom is to draw the diagram you see at the left on the chalkboard. The two circle diagram was representative of the Creator-creature distinction, one which Van Til unapologetically (no pun intended) maintained was absolutely crucial to Christian thought. The two lines connecting the circles represented the covenantal relationship between God and man. Man, the creature, was always dependent on God, the Creator, and His revelation. The one circle on the left represented non-Christian thought, where any idea of "God" was rooted in the creature.

It was for this reason that apologetics could never have its foundation in any thought that rejected the Creator-creature distinction. No vague notions of reason would suffice, neither would the idea that Christians and non-Christians could find some sort of neutral ground from which to engage in apologetics. And so he devoted himself to working out an apologetic that honoured the relationship between God and man and rooted itself fully in the revelation of God. For Van Til, there simply was no other way.

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The doctrine of sola Scriptura has long been contentious, for any number of reasons. In the early American period, with a Christianity greatly influenced by populism and democratic ideals, it served as a license for people to interpret the Bible free of any traditional authorities such as ordained clergy and confessional standards. To put it bluntly, it gave them a license to do whatever they wanted. Nathan O. Hatch, in The Democratization of American Christianity, observes this:

Any number of denominations, sects, movements, and individuals between 1780 and 1830 claimed to be restoring a pristine biblical Christianity free from all human devices. 'In religious faith we have but one Father and one Master,' noted the Universalist spokesman A. B. Grosh, 'and the Bible, the Bible, is our only acknowledged creed-book.' 'I have endeavored to read the scriptures as though no one had read them before me,' claimed Alexander Campbell, 'and I am as much on my guard against reading them to-day, through the medium of my own views yesterrday, or a week ago, as I am against being influenced by any foreign name, authority, or system whatever.'

Protestants from Luther to Wesley had been forced to define carefully what they meant by sola Scriptura. They found it an effective banner to unfurl when attacking Catholics but always a bit troublesome when common people began to take the teaching seriously. For the Reformers, popular translations of the Bible did not imply that people were to understand the Scriptures apart from ministerial guidance. Thus when dealing with a scholar such as Erasmus, Luther could champion boldly the perspicuity of Scripture, its clarity for all: 'Who will maintain that the public fountain does not stand in the light, because some people in a back alley cannot see it, when everybody in the market place can see it quite plainly?' Yet when confronted with headstrong sectarians, he withdrew such democratic interpretations and admitted the danger of proving anything by Scripture: 'Now I learn that it suffices to throw many passages together helterskelter whether they fit or not. If this is the way to do it, I certainly shall prove with Scripture that Rastrum beer is better than Malmsey wine' (179-180).

Abraham Kuyper once wrote, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, that it would be foolish for someone to attempt to hike through the mountains of Switzerland without the help of a guide or a map. That is analogous, of course, to saying neither is it wise for someone to take up the Bible and attempt to interpret it apart from the wisdom of the Church throughout the ages. "In its rich and many-sided life, extending across so many ages," Kuyper wrote,

the Church tells you at once what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, that the investigator of the Holy Scriptures shall take account of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning the general points of view, from which to start his investigation, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre.

Kuyper's sentiments are entirely antithetical to most of American Christianity, both past and present. As much as democratic ideals have done good things for America as a political entity, insofar as people have allowed those ideals to shape the Church in America, they have done a great disservice. Like I said in my last post, God grants authority to the Church, not the individual. He gives Scripture to His covenant people that it may reveal their Lord and shape and govern their life according to His will. To be sure, the individual must appropriate Scripture for himself (Deut. 6:4-9; Psalm 119; 2 Tim. 3:16-17, etc.), but never in a vacuum.

Our identity as Christians is not primarily that we are individuals saved by Christ. This is true, but it is not primary. What is first is that God has called a people to Himself, has redeemed them and brought them into a covenant relationship with them. Individual believers consitute that people, but not atomistically; their corporate identity as the body of Christ is at the fore. It follows here, then, that our reading of Scripture is to be done in this covenant community and not apart from it. This is not to say individuals should not read their Bibles on their own, of course, but that when they do so they should read it through what Kuyper calls the "consciousness of the Church." The Bible is, after all, God's covenant document with the Church.

When I was in college, Albert Wolters once said something like, "Don't worry, you can't come up with any new heresies. They've all been tried already." I'm not sure if that was intended to comfort us, but the point was that if we set ourselves some theological boundaries and recognize that the Church throughout history has already tried a myriad of interpretations, approving some and disapproving others, we have ourselves a pretty reliable guide as we travel today.

History matters, tradition matters, and the Church matters. They are gifts. Lean on them.

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John Williamson Nevin, the German Reformed theologian, wrote this in an article for the first edition of the Mercersburg Review in 1849:

The liberty of the sect consists at last, in thinking its particular notions, shouting its shibboleths and passwords, dancing its religious hornpipes, and reading the Bible only through its theological goggles. These restrictions, at same time, are so many wires, that lead back at last into the hands of a few leading spirits, enabling them to wield a true hierarchical despotism over all who are thus brought within their power.

The Holy Spirit grants authority to the Church, not to the individual.

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Yesterday, Robin and I drove out to Daytona Beach for the 52nd annual Daytona 500 (it was our birthday present to each other, as mine was on the 12th and hers is on the 17th). We went last year as well, although they ended up calling the race early due to rain. This year, it was clear and sunny all day, although chilly—by the time we left it was in the low 40s. We also sat there a lot longer than we anticipated due to a couple of red flags, the first one lasting almost two hours. Apparently the frost and rain we've had here over the past few weeks did a number on the track and created a pretty sizeable pothole that they had to fill to make the track safe for racing. As the cars were running over it, bits of asphalt were coming up and expanding the hole. But in the end the racing was great, and we were fortunate to have some really good seats on the frontstretch near the start/finish line to see the action.

Being the gearhead that I am, a get a big rush from the power, speed, and sound of these cars. Some people look at NASCAR and just see a bunch of cars turning left. But for me it's about tuning engines to squeeze out that extra bit of horsepower, setting up the suspension so that it will be able to hit the apex of the turn perfectly each time, making the right calls on pit road, and learning how to work the draft. It takes a lot of skill and talent from every member of the team, not just the driver.

Anyway, here's a short clip (really short!) of the pack of cars flying by at 190mph toward the end of the race. It's pretty wild to see them cover 2.5 miles in 30 seconds.

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