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Calvinism 4.0: Biblical Absolutes and the Spirit of the Age

Christ Church on April 29, 2018

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.

Calvinism 4.0: The Sin of Sectarianism

Christ Church on April 22, 2018

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Introduction

What I would like to do, Lord permitting, is preach a series of messages through the basic doctrines of the Reformed faith, as we understand the teaching of Scripture. This is particularly important if you have been attending here for many years, or if you have grown up in this church. It is of course bad to be steeped in sectarian doctrines and be full of pride over it. But it is far worse to be deeply attached to a doctrine or tradition that you know nothing about.

The title of this series refers to Calvinism 4.0. What is that about? The history of the Reformed faith covers one fourth of the entire history of the church, and there have naturally been developments—in my mind, each one consistent with and augmenting what went before. Calvinism 1.0 was the initial period in the 1500s, the time of Calvin’s Institutes. Calvinism 2.0 was the period of the Reformed scholastics, culminating in the Westminster Confession. Calvinism 3.0 is best represented by the fusion of American evangelicalism and the orthodoxy of Old Princeton. Calvinism 4.0 is what we are attempting here in our ministry, fully in line with what has gone before, but with a few additions that I will develop as we go.

The Text

“Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other” (1 Cor. 4:6, NKJV).

Summary of the Text

The Scriptures plainly prohibit any kind of factionalism that arises from undue loyalty to particular Bible teachers (1 Cor.3: 4, 21-22). To prohibit such attitudes is no slam against those teachers necessarily because the ones named in this section by Paul were particularly godly — two were apostles (Paul and Peter), and the other was eloquent and mighty in the Scriptures (Apollos). The problem is one of conceit and pride, taking credit for something that you had actually received as a gift (1 Cor. 4:7). The fact that the problem lies in attitudes, and not in names per se, can be seen in the fact some at Corinth were guilty of this factionalism while using the name of Christ (1 Cor. 1:12). A denomination refers to a name, and you can’t escape denominationalism through the simple expedient of calling yourself non-denominational, or “simply Christian.” It should be so easy.

How Our Statement of Faith Works

Our church has adopted the original British version of the Westminster Confession of Faith. What this means is that it represents the kind of doctrine you can expect to hear taught from the pulpit. Members of the church are not required to subscribe to it—members of the church are simply required to be Christians who are living decent and responsible Christian lives. So this means that a man who loves Jesus, and who is walking in accordance with the gospel can join this church, even if he is a Wesleyan charismatic dispensationalist.

Not Our Table

We practice what is called open communion. This means that anyone who visits us is welcome to partake with us, provided they have been baptized in the triune name by a Trinitarian church or individual, and provided further that they are not under lawful church discipline. This is the Lord’s Table, not ours, and so it is open to any of the Lord’s people. But this is open communion, not promiscuous communion. Vacationing Lutherans are as welcome as anyone, but we do not say the same thing about visiting meth dealers.

An Optical Illusion

The way God created the world, it is necessary for us to live in particular communities. This means that, in a certain stipulated sense, we have to major on minors. What do I mean by this? If you were to quiz me on what doctrines I believe to be very important, the doctrine of an optimistic eschatology would be in the top three. And yet a person could conceivably join our church and not find out about this emphasis for a year and a half. It might occur to him to wonder from time to time about how cheerful these people seem to be in these Last Days, but yet still not encounter an explicit statement of it.

And what is the doctrinal importance of the songs we sing? Well, they are important also, but about seventeen things are on the list ahead of them. And yet he finds out about our music on the first Sunday with us, the second Sunday with us, and so on. It turns out the music is a different kind of important.

Beyond What Is Written

The basic injunction that Paul gives us in our text is that we must be people of the Word. We must be in the Word, and we must live out the Word. We must not get out ahead of ourselves when we assume that “this is what the Bible must teach.”

Churches that have defined systems of doctrine (as we most certainly do) will have temptations that correspond to what they possess. If you enroll in a math class, you will have math problems. If you are a confessional Christian, you will have confessional temptations. And this why all of you need to be Bible readers. This prevents you from relying “for the gist” on the Cliff Notes provided by sermons, catechisms, or Christian books. There is a vast difference between teaching a Bible reader, as Philip did with the Ethiopian eunuch, and providing dashboard summaries for Christians who can’t be troubled. You are exhorted to desire the milk of the Word (1 Pet. 2:2), and while it is sometimes more convenient to get it third hand, the chances of the milk being watered down are greatly increased. This is why a lot of Christians are drinking milk that looks like water somebody cleaned their paint brushes in.

Plausibility Structures

When you grow up in any culture, the assumptions of that culture will naturally seem reasonable to you. This sometimes troubles Christian kids—are Hindu children, and Muslim children, and Mormon children being taught in just the same way that I am being taught, i.e. that “their religion is true.” The answer to that is yes, they quite possibly are. It is possible for Christian kids to be indoctrinated in just the same ways that other kids are indoctrinated elsewhere. This is why you must come to Christ yourself; come to His Word yourself; live by faith yourself. Christianity on cruise control is not what we are after.

Jesus is Everything

When you grow up in a church like this one, it would be a grave mistake to think that we are simply indoctrinating you. What we are seeking to do is tell you the good news in a manner that is consistent with the message itself. You do not know yourself to be a sinner because that was in your catechism. You know that because you read it in your heart. You can see your heart, can you not?

And when Christ is presented to you, as He is every week, you know that He is the Savior of every sinner. It is true that I am telling you this, but someone else is also telling you this. And this is the work of the Spirit of Christ, present with us now, the one who makes all things new (Rev. 21:5).