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Calvinism 4.0: Chestertonian Calvinism

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Introduction:

When these precious doctrines of ours—referring to the sovereignty of God over all things—are twisted in such a way as to perpetuate gloom, severity, introspection, accusations, slander, gnat-strangling, and more, the soul is not safe.

Whenever God delivers His people in a remarkable way, as the years go by, the new wineskin will turn gradually into an old wineskin. Part of this process is that the number of unregenerate people starts to grow, but they are stuck with the vocabulary of the previous great reformation and revival. This gives them new material to work on, new material to distort. Given enough time, distort it they will.

The Text:

“And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever. Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee” (Deut. 28:46–48).

Summary of the Text:

In the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are being instructed on the nature of the blessings and curses that will come upon them in accordance with their covenantal obedience and disobedience. That whole chapter makes for sobering reading. The blessings are outlined in the first 14 verses. But beginning at verse 15, the bulk of the chapter is dedicated to a description of the curses that will come upon them. Not only will God curse them, but He will rejoice over their destruction (v. 63). But right in the middle of it, in our text, we are told why the people of God veered away from the blessings that follow obedience and into the dark world of insanity and disobedience.

It was because, while they had the blessings, they did not treat them or respond to them as blessings. Responding to blessing with greed or with guilt incurs wrath. The required response was gratitude. The curses will rest upon them for a sign and a wonder, and on their descendants as well (v. 46). The reason is then given. They are cursed because they did not serve God with two attitudes of thanksgiving—with joyfulness and with gladness of heart (v. 47). On top of this, they were not joyful and glad in heart because of all the stuff (v. 47). And that is why they will be turned out, consigned to the cruelties of their enemies, to the point of their final destruction (v. 48).

Lifted Out of the Mire:

As we will see later in this series, when we come to describe the sin of man, the heart of man is desperately wicked. Who can understand it (Jer. 17:9)? But part of this desperate wickedness and confusion can be seen in the refusal to get up when God declares an invitation to do so. We must humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Pet. 5:6). But if we have humbled ourselves in truth, then we won’t kick and squall when He does the next thing, which is to exalt us, lifting us up into gladness. If the humility does not end in gladness and triumph, then the humility did not begin (really) in humility at all.

“Glory and honour are in his presence; Strength and gladness are in his place” (1 Chron. 16:27).

“And the children of Israel that were present at Jerusalem kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with great gladness: and the Levites and the priests praised the Lord day by day, singing with loud instruments unto the Lord” (2 Chron. 30:21).

“The hope of the righteous shall be gladness: But the expectation of the wicked shall perish” (Prov. 10:28).

“And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart,” (Acts 2:46).

Some Historical Observations:

So we are addressing a biblical concept, but are not using a biblical word for it. Where do we get this word Chestertonian for what we are talking about?

“But there is no understanding the period of the Reformation in England until we have grasped the fact that the quarrel between the Puritans and the Papists was not primarily a quarrel between rigorism and indulgence, and that, in so far as it was, the rigorism was on the Roman side. On many questions, and specially in their view of the marriage bed, the Puritans were the indulgent party; if we may without disrespect so use the name of a great Roman Catholic, a great writer, and a great man, they were much more Chestertonian than their adversaries” (C.S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 116, emphasis mine).

As participants in a great and true reformation, this attitude really was characteristic of the early Protestants, for the first century or so. Lewis again: “From this buoyant humility, this farewell to the self with all its good resolutions, anxiety, scruples, and motive-scratchings, all the Protestant doctrines originally sprang” (English Lit, p. 33).

And here is the central point—this demeanor, this Spirit-given, Christ-exalting demeanor—is an essential part of the program. It is not an add-on extra.

Leaning Toward Resurrection:

The suspicion that is directed against an exuberant gratitude for stuff is a suspicion that places the things of earth in some kind of a competition with the things of heaven. This world competes with the eternal things, and so what we must do is get a five gallon bucket of dour paint thinner, and pour it over all our material possessions. We try to make Heaven thick by making earth thin. This is wrong-headed, and incurs the latter half of Deuteronomy 28 to boot.

What we must do is receive all God’s covenantal blessings, as thick as we can conceive of them, and then imagine how much thicker Heaven will be. We receive them, in the name of Christ, as hors d’oeuvres, to whet the appetite, to make us long for more. We are not trying to get out of a prison. We are trying to get out of the entry room, and into the mansion.

In George Herbert’s lovely poem, Sunday, he describes the Lord’s Day as “the next world’s bud.” Later in the poem, he calls Sunday “a day of mirth.” This is no incongruity. James, the Lord’s brother, suggested that if someone was merry he should sing psalms (Jas. 5:13).

“Puritan poets . . . knew that part of their work in this world was to wean their affections from the unmixed love of it. But they also knew that this world was God’s metaphor for His communicable glories and that another part of their duty was to see and utter that metaphor, to use the figural value of this world to turn their attentions and affections to the next” (Daly, God’s Altar, p. 81).

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Calvinism 4.0: Biblical Absolutes and the Spirit of the Age

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Introduction

In the second chapter of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar the king promoted Daniel after he had been able to interpret the troubling dream that the king had had. As a result of Daniel’s influence, Daniel’s three friends were established in the rule of Babylon. Sometime later, Nebuchadnezzar established a giant gold statue of himself in the plain of Dura, and the officialdom of all Babylon was commanded to assemble and do obeisance to that statue when the music commenced.

What we have in this story is an account of what happens when the absolute Word of God collides with the pretended absolute word of man.

The Text

“Then Nebuchadnezzar in his rage and fury commanded to bring Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego. Then they brought these men before the king. Nebuchadnezzar spake and said unto them, Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, do not ye serve my gods, nor worship the golden image which I have set up? Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Dan. 3:13–18).

Summary of the Text

The command was given, and everyone complied (3:7)—well, everyone except for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Certain Chaldeans accused them to the king, saying correctly that they had not complied (vv. 8-12). The three men were consequently summoned before the king (v. 13). “Is this true?” Nebuchadnezzar asked (v. 14). The king then magnanimously offered them a do-over. If they refused, it was the fiery furnace for them, in that same hour (v. 15). The king then uttered the fatal taunt—“who is that God that shall deliver?” The three replied that they had no need to reply (v. 16). God was able to deliver them, and they were confident that He would in fact do so (v. 17). But whether or not He decided to deliver them, they were not going to bow down in any case (v. 18). The rest of the story is well-known—God delivered them from the fire, not to mention delivering the king from his blindness.

Inescapable

The God of the Bible is transcendent, standing outside the created order. He is not contained by the material world, although He is present throughout it. This is the true God, the God who will not share His glory with another. “I am the Lord: that is my name: And my glory will I not give to another, Neither my praise to graven images” (Is. 42:8). This was not a battle between the god of Babylon and the god of Jerusalem. Rather it was a face-off between the God of Heaven and gods of earth.

Sentient creatures are finite, but because they are also fallen creatures they don’t want to be finite. This means that whenever the true God is denied, or when some aspect of His absolute attributes are denied, sinful men always see a job opening. They don’t want a foreordaining God because they want to make room for foreordaining man. Their problem is not that there is a throne over the cosmos; their problem is that they aren’t sitting in it.

And, not so incidentally, this is precisely why the nations which have the deepest legacy of Calvinistic truth are also the nations that have the deepest legacy of personal liberty for man. When God is God, man is free. Whenever man is god, men are enslaved. Foreordination is an inescapable concept—not whether, but which. It is not whether the future will be planned, but rather who will attempt the planning. God the Father? Or man as the sorcerer’s apprentice?

Creator and Redeemer

We must distinguish the question of God as Creator being sovereign, and God as Redeemer being sovereign. We are going to delve into the question of redemption later in this series, but we need to make this distinction early on. The free agency of man as creature is entirely consistent with the sovereignty of God as Creator—but there is true mystery involved in it. This is a subject where we can’t do the math. How can God sovereignly ordain (before all worlds) that I will in fact place this watch on the pulpit right now, and that I will do so freely? What does it mean when a preacher places a watch on the pulpit? Some wiseacres might be tempted to say that it doesn’t mean anything, but I have a larger point. There is a true creaturely freedom here, but the basis of it is mysterious.

But when we are talking about redemption of men as sinners, we do not try to defend man’s freedom, and we do not try because men as sinners are not in fact free. They are slaves. They have no freedom. They are dead in their sins, and have no liberty. There is no mystery to this part of it.

Hostility to Graven Images

The Reformed tradition has long been hostile to the use of any kind of image in worship. This is based on two things. The first is the plain Word of God (Ex. 20:4-6). Such worship is prohibited in the Ten Commandments, and we have the glorious example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego here. This is sufficient.

But there is also a deep theological structure to our resistance to images. We have been given a vision of a transcendent God, and the only way the Creator/creature divide could be bridged is if God Himself does it in an Incarnation. When we make an attempt at such a bridge, our attempts may seem glorious to us, but they are infinitely lame.

This statue of Nebuchadnezzar was about 90 feet tall. We look up at such a thing, but we are just ants on the ground. This is a cheap knock-off imitation transcendence. This is a scratch n’ sniff transcendence. Instead of the ultimate vertical, all we do is try to make the horizontal impressive. It succeeds . . . with idolaters.

Anchored in Eternity

We do not start with a premise that assumes an all-controlling God. Such a premise would in fact be quite true, but our arms are not sufficient to get around it. We can’t hold it, so we cannot start there. And so we come first to Christ. Christ was sent to us from the Father. If we have seen Him, we have seen the Father. He is the way—no one comes to the Father but through Him. God has set eternity in our hearts (Ecc. 3:11), and in Christ all things hold together (Col. 1:17-18)—including that eternity.

We are not fatalists, worshiping an inscrutable Force. We are Christians, and because we have come to Christ we have been escorted into a true friendship with the mysteries.

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Psalm 22

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The Text

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?. . . “ (Psalm 22)

The Song of His Father David

“We shall not be able to ‘explain’ the content of the fourth utterance from the cross, at least, not the essence of it … A well known saying has it that those who would understand the poet must go to the poet’s country. And now the poet par excellence is appearing on Golgotha. Be quiet, for Jesus is speaking. The creative spirit. The sensitive soul. And the Author of the psalms. Now He will sing, will recite his severest hymn – and no longer endure his own verses. You all remember that the fourth utterance, to put it that way, is a ‘quotation.’ It is literally the overture of Psalm 22. The Son of David is repeating the song of his father David.” Klaas Schilder.

The Forsaken Messiah (vv, 1-2, 12-18)

The Faithful Messiah (vv,  1-2, 3-5, 9-11, 19-21)

The Victorious Messiah (vv. 21-31)

Dr. Michael McClenahan is an Irish Presbyterian minister and Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological College. He has degrees in Jurisprudence, Theology, and Ecclesiastical History from the University of Oxford, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the theology of Jonathan Edwards. He is the author of Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith (Ashgate, 2012). This academic year he is the holder of the New Saint Andrews Lectureship.

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Huguenot Hustle (State of the Church 2018 #5)

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Introduction

According to Scripture, a spiritual man is one who walks in step with the Spirit in this material world (Gal. 5:16). A spiritual man is not an ethereal man, or a wispy man, or a semi-transparent man. A spiritual man is never a worldly man (1 John 2:15), but he most certainly is a down-to-earth man. While there have been people who were so heavenly-minded they were no earthly good, it generally runs the other way. The people who have done the most earthly good have often been the most heavenly-minded. How could deep and intelligent love for ultimate wisdom incapacitate a person?

The Text

“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; He shall not stand before mean men” (Prov. 22:29).

“Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men” (Prov. 22:29, ESV).

Summary of the Text

The Bible teaches us that cream rises. This is not because cream has anything to boast of, but rather because of how God created and governs His world. We can plant and water, but God is the one who gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6-7).

The point is to seek the blessings of being cream, and then secondarily, after that, seeking the blessing that comes to cream. And of course, having received such blessings, we are to boast —but we are only to boast in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31; 2 Cor. 10:17). What do you have that you did not receive as a gift? And if as a gift, then why do you boast as though it were not a gift (1 Cor. 4:7)?

So it is a gift from God to excel in your work. It is another gift from God to reap the benefits of excelling in your work. Though they usually go together (but not always), the two must not be confused, and the order of the two must not be reversed.

Vocation

One of the great accomplishments of the Reformation was the restoration of the idea of calling or vocation in every lawful endeavor. This abolished the old sacred/secular hierarchy, where it was assumed that if you were really sold out for Jesus you would be in a nunnery, or some other place that was equally high-minded. Being a merchant was kind of a tragic necessity, but somebody had to tithe.

Unfortunately, this medieval mistake is creeping back in, having made great inroads in the evangelical world. What do people who are “sold out for Jesus” do now? We call it “full time Christian work.” But what other kind is there? According to this unhappy assumption, if you don’t enlist in the Navy Seals for Jesus (NSJ), then you can always go into architecture, where you try to pay down some of the guilt for being such a partial Christian by giving donations to the real Christians.

But the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and Christ’s universal lordship over all things, means that we need to put down this idea for good. If you are a faithful Christian, walking in the will of God, then God is advancing the kingdom of His Son through your film-editing, back-hoe operating, diaper-changing, book writing, music composing, lawn mowing, classroom teaching, study-group organizing, and sermon preparing. All of it is in the palm of God’s hand. Remember—all of Christ for all of life.

Not Kidding Yourself

But in all of these endeavors, the biblical pattern is clear. First the planting, then the harvest (1 Cor. 3:6). First the race, then the medals ceremony (1 Cor. 9:24). First the cross, then the crown (1 Cor. 9:25). First the death, then the resurrection (Rom. 6:4).

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith” (Rom. 12:3).

Because we live in a flattering age, too many Christians have come to think that successful entrepreneurship is their birthright, and all they have to do is be energetic enough to scoop up the rewards. And we try to sanctify the attitude that James describes as evil boasting, and we try to sanctify it with “the will of God.”

“Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that” (James 4:13–15).

Peace and Purity

When you are engaged, as we are, in seeking to build true Christian community, the first thing that will happen is that an economy will start to take shape. And this means, in its turn, that disputes will arise. Most of the gnarly disputes will be about business or finances. This is borne out in my experience, and in line with the survey we recently sent out to you all.

Test your heart first. When you are thinking about a business opportunity with another member of the church, ask yourself this question first. If your first thought is that because so-and-so is a fellow kirker he might cut you a deal, then I would plead with you as your pastor to go do business with the pagans. You’ll fit in better there. Go buy it in Spokane. That’s how you can maintain the peace and purity of the church. How many Christians think something like this? “Ooo—he has that little fish in his window. I think I’ll add 10% to whatever he invoices. He’s a brother.”

And when the attitude is right, there is only one more thing I would ask you to include. Too many Christians think that regeneration, or good intentions, or having a nice personality will somehow make your memory perfect, or will prevent you from getting hit by a truck. So suppose you get hit by that truck, and your heirs and your partners’ heirs are all trying to figure out what that handshake fifteen years ago meant. Write it down. This does not make you suspicious and unloving. God loves us perfectly, and He still wrote it down.

Christ or Mammon

If you give yourselves to the pursuit of Mammon, it will do nothing but suck you dry. If Christ gives Himself to you, and you surrender yourself in response, the opposite thing happens. “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).

“The liberal soul shall be made fat: And he that watereth shall be watered also himself” (Prov. 11:25).

This spirit of grace and generosity does not take Mammon out of your hands, but it most certainly takes you out of Mammon’s hands. And while Mammon remains a snake, the Lord promised that we could handle serpents without harm (Mark 16:18). But apart from the sovereign grace of God, you cannot keep money from doing what money always does.

But Christ—in whose hands you are—can keep money from doing what money always does. What is impossible for man is always possible with God. But this only happens if the crucified and risen Lord is Lord of your bank account.

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