Toward Denominational Unity

There is no doubt the theme of this year's General Synod is unity. It's been in the songs, the liturgies, the prayers, and the sermon. On one level, this is great. Jesus prayed for and Paul commends it, so who doesn’t want unity? Truth-filled, grace-saturated, gospel-centered, Bible-grounded unity is precious beyond measure. And yet, such unity does not come by wishing for it, announcing it, or devaluing truth. The only unity worth having is a unity that takes doctrinal backbone, effort, prayer, and guts.

So what events would have to take place and what problems would have to be addressed for the RCA to experience genuine, vibrant, Christ-pleasing, Spirit-filled, God-glorifying unity?

Here are ten suggestions.

1. Admit we do not have unity in the RCA. The first step to solving the problem is admitting we have a problem. We are kidding ourselves if we think every pulpit preaches the same gospel and every minister believes the same basic things. We don’t all agree on hell, Scripture, the atonement, the virgin birth, the uniqueness of Christ, the purpose of missions, gender roles, sexuality, and a host of other crucial matters. When someone leaves your church, do you feel confident telling them “Just go to another RCA congregation. I’m sure it will be great”?

2. Draw doctrinal boundaries. Ironically, we cannot be inclusive if we don’t have anything in which to include people. We must get better at saying no and establishing our identity. We need less dialogue and more tough decision making. It’s always easier to expand the boundaries or delay the inevitable, but no church or institution grows in the long run by being all things to all people. We have to be okay with people getting off the bus. I’d rather the RCA develop a strong identity and run with it, even if in the end it’s not an identity I like.

3. Make our Standards the standard, especially the Three Forms of Unity. Those who did not vote for Belhar will need to decide if they can still thrive and exist in a denomination that has, for the first time, changed its formal doctrinal foundation. But the Belhar question aside, our Standards aren’t worth much unless they are actually standards of unity. How many of our churches regularly utilize and teach from Heidelberg, Belgic, and Dort (yes, Dort too)? If “historic and faithful witnesses” only mean “these are faithful to what Christians in history have believed” then our confessions mean very little.

4. Put to rest the political pronouncements. If the Bible speaks clearly to an issue or if our theology is at stake, we must speak out. But let’s be honest about all the things we don’t know and aren’t qualified to pronounce a churchly judgment upon. Are we really equipped to weigh in on the latest farm bill, the embargo on Cuba, immigration policy, or the Israel-Palestine conflict?

5. Talk honestly about what is (and isn’t) the mission of the church. If mission is everything, then mission is nothing. We cannot be held together by missionalism, not least of all because mission and missional have become junk drawer terms filled with whatever we want them to mean. Is our mission to reach the lost, be the presence of God in the world, fight injustice, be the hands and feet of Jesus, renew cities, transform culture, care for the poor, and bless others? Is it really all of this, without distinction or priority? When we talk about “mission” we don’t mean the same thing.

6. Exercise church discipline. This starts in our own churches with careful membership and shepherding. It must also happen at the classis level. We don't want to be guilty of overindulgent parenting. Some church families can be too combative, but the RCA is a nice place that rarely disciplines ethical or doctrinal deviation. If the RCA has no courage or no mechanism to discipline those who blatantly contravene the Scriptures and thousands of years of Christian consensus, we have lost the third mark of the church.

7. Make the ordination process an actual evaluation of fitness for ministry. I understand the desire to mitigate the fear factor of exams and to make the process more enjoyable. But this cannot be done at the expense of doctrinal integrity. Our exams are far too easy and our evaluation process can be all over the place. A denomination will only ever be as good as its ordination process.

8. Make our seminaries accountable to the churches. The churches should know what is being taught in our schools. What is the doctrine of Scripture being espoused? What about three Isaiah’s? What about an historical Adam? What about creation and evolution? What about the “I am” statements? What is taught about propitiation, penal substitution, reprobation and other doctrines affirmed in our Standards? What is taught about homosexuality, the wrath of God, and the warnings of hell?

9. Stop focusing on unity. Unity will only be vibrant and lasting when it is a by-product of the pursuit of truth. We must do more than explore our feelings, share our experiences, and tell our stories. Unity cannot be achieved by lowest common denominator theology and negotiating competing interests so the getting along is the predetermined outcome.

10. Don’t assume; articulate. The first generation receives the gospel. The second generation assumes the gospel. The third generation loses the gospel. We must not only affirm the gospel when having it presented to us. We must teach our people to articulate it. We must sing it strong and preach it loud. We must be passionate about clarity and be clear with our passions.

RCA Integrity Annual Conference

RCA Integrity is a renewal group in the Reformed Church in America. The aim of our annual conference is threefold:

• Celebrating the gospel
• Renewing the local church
• Encouraging new partnerships

This year’s conference will be held at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois on May 16-17. The cost is $50. We are pleased to welcome Ligon Duncan as our 2011 keynote speaker.

More information about the conference can be found at our newly designed RCA Integrity website. Registration is now open, though the web registration isn’t functioning yet. Check back in a week or so to register online, or simply print out the registration form and mail it in the old fashioned way.

We realize others outside the RCA may be interested in this conference. Last year we had a few people from other networks and that was fine. But please keep in mind that space is limited and the focus of the conference is to build up RCA pastors, students, and lay leaders.

Did John Calvin Believe in Inerrancy?

Many in the young, restless, reformed movement do not realize that there is an alternate stream of Reformed theology, one that stands more in the tradition of Barth, Berkouwer, and Torrance than Warfield, Berkhof, and Frame. I happen to think that second stream is truer to the source, but not all agree.

Of course, the most important source is the Bible, but when it comes to Reformed theology John Calvin naturally carries a lot of weight (to mix my metaphors). One of the debates between the two Reformed currents is whether Calvin believed in inerrancy. That is, did he believe the Bible was true only in matter of faith and practice or did he believe the Scriptures to be completely without error in all they affirm? In short, was Calvin an inerrantist?

The answer, in a word, is yes. For Calvin, we “will be safe from the danger of erring” so long as we “inquire from the Scriptures what is right and true” (Calvin’s Comm., Matthew 22:29). Indeed, it is our wisdom to embrace “without finding fault, whatever is taught in Sacred Scripture” (Inst. I.xviii.4). The biblical writers were, according to Calvin, “organs of the Holy Spirit” uttering only what they were commissioned to declare (Calvin’s Comm., 2 Timothy 3:16). The Holy Spirit is “the Author of Scriptures” (Inst. I.ix.2). Consequently, “we owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God; because it has proceeded from him alone, and has nothing belonging to man mixed with it” (Calvin’s Comm., 2 Tim. 3:16). For Calvin, Scripture is so well-ordered, so unified, so beautiful and perfect that it “savor[s] of nothing earthly” (Inst. I.viii.1).

It is not hard to find quotations like these throughout Calvin’s writings. For example, according to the Genevan reformer, the apostles were “sure and genuine scribes of the Holy Spirit” (Inst. IV.viii.9). God so controlled the process of inspiration that Calvin can speak of the Spirit “in a certain measure dictating the words” of Scripture (Inst. IV.viii.8). By this Calvin does not mean the human authors were passive copyists who simply wrote down what they heard from heaven. He means that the process of inspiration was so complete and total as to yield the same result as if the Bible were nothing but dictation. God put into the minds of the men who wrote Scripture what should be written (Inst. I.vi.2) and even directed their pens (Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists, Argument).

Calvin was not naive about the apparent discrepancies in Scripture, nor did he expect biblical numbers to be exact. He accepted that Scripture uses phenomenological language and figures of speech. He often probed the difficult issues stemming from mistakes in translation and transmission. All that to say, he made the same sort of distinctions careful modern-day inerrantists make.

More to the point, however, he held to the same view of verbal, plenary inspiration. Calvin never rejected the truthfulness of any Scriptural affirmation. He believed the Bible to be the Word of God and without error. He argued on many occasions that to disagree with the Bible was to disagree with God himself. Conversely, those submissive to God, he maintained, would submit themselves to the Scriptures. They would never be led by the Spirit away from the Bible, for the Bible is the Spirit’s book.

In conclusion, let me humbly and confidently suggest that those wishing to stand downstream from Calvin ought to be standing in the tradition of Hodge, Machen, and Boice . Like those inerrantists, not to mention the vast majority of Christians throughout history traveling down the wide river of mere Christianity, Calvin understood that “we owe to Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God.”

Social Justice and the Mission of Jesus

On my other blog (my real blog), I've been working through seven common "social justice" passages. I thought it might be worth sharing the last of these expositions.

Here are the other six posts: Micah 6:8; Amos 5; Matthew 25:31-46; Jeremiah 22; Isaiah 58; Isaiah 1.

And here are some earlier posts on the same theme: Moral Proximity; Leviticus 19; Leviticus 25; the term social justice.

Now on to Luke 4:16-21.

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

No doubt, this text is one of the clearest statements of Jesus’ mission and the goals of his ministry. It is also one of the most misunderstood. In popular explanations, Luke 4 underscores that Jesus’ mission focused on the materially destitute and the downtrodden. In this interpretation, Jesus is Messiah and social liberator. He came to bring the year of jubilee to the oppressed. He came to transform social structures and bring God’s creation back to shalom. Therefore, our mission, in keeping with Christ’s mission, is, to quote one well-respected book “to extend the kingdom by infiltrating all segments of society, with preference given to the poor, and allowing no dichotomy between evangelism and social transformation (Luke 4:18-19).” Above all else, Luke 4, it is argued, shows that Jesus’ mission was to serve the poor. Shouldn’t that be our mission too?

This common approach to Luke 4 is not entirely off base, but it misses two critical observations.

First, it overlooks the actual verbs Jesus’ read from the Isaiah scroll. The Spirit of the Lord, resting upon Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, would anoint him to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. With the exception of “to set at liberty the oppressed” (which we’ll come back to in a moment), these are all speaking words. While it’s certainly true that Jesus healed the sick and gave sight to the blind (as pointers to his deity and as signs of the kingdom’s in-breaking), the messianic mission statement in Luke 4 highlights the announcement of good news. If Luke 4 sets the tone for the mission of the church, then our mission ought to focus mainly on the preaching of the gospel.

Second, the “missions as social transformation” reading of Luke 4 assumes too much of a strictly economic understanding of “the poor” (ptochos). While ptochos in verse 18 is probably not without some reference to material poverty, there are several reasons to think the word signifies much more than this.

(1) The quotation is from Isaiah 61:1 where the poor are lumped in with the “broken-hearted” and “all who mourn.” The poor in Isaiah are not just materially poor; they are the humble poor, the mournful ones waiting for their promised “oil of gladness” and their “garment of praise” (Isa. 61:3). The Hebrew anaoim in verse 1 can be translated “poor” (ESV, NIV) or “meek” (KJV) or “afflicted” (NASB, ESV footnote). All are possible because something more than material poverty is in mind.

(2) Likewise, the Greek word ptochos can speak of literal or figurative poverty. Of the ten uses of ptochos in Luke, seven should be taken as literal poverty (14:13, 21; 16:20, 22: 18:22; 19:8; 21:3), while three may be figurative (4:18; 6:20; 7:22). Elsewhere in the New Testament, Revelation 3:17 is a clear instance where ptochos should be taken figuratively. Laodicea thought themselves rich (and they were materially), but on a deeper spiritual level they were “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.” As in English, the Greek word for “poor” carries different shades of meaning, both literal and figurative.

(3) A strictly literal understanding of “the poor” in the immediate context would not make sense. If “the poor” are the literally poor, then “the captives,” “the blind,” and “the oppressed” should be taken literally as well. And yet there is no instance in the gospels of Jesus setting a literal prisoner free (something that confused John the Baptist [Luke 7:18-23]). Quite naturally we understand captivity and oppression to include spiritual bondage. It is not inappropriate, then, to put a spiritual gloss on “the poor” as well.

(4) The slightly wider context makes the same point. Jesus mentions two examples of the type of person who experienced the Lord’s favor in the Old Testament. One is the widow of Zarephath. She was materially poor. But the other example is Naaman, the important Syrian general who humbled himself by dipping seven times in the Jordan River. If these are the examples of good news for the poor, the poor has more to do with poverty of spirit than material destitution.

(5) The materially rich do not always fair badly in Luke-Acts. In fact, David Bosch, one of the seminal thinkers in the missional theology, goes so far as to say Luke is more “the evangelist of the rich” than “the evangelist of the poor.” Bosch doesn’t mean at all that Luke favors the rich. That’s plainly not the case. What he means is that Luke more any other evangelist tries to show how the materially rich can, and do, get it right. So only in Luke’s gospel do we get John the Baptist’s instructions on what repentance looks like for tax collectors, soldiers, and those with two tunics (3:10-14). Only in Luke do we have the story of Zacchaeus to offset the story of the rich young ruler (Luke 18-19). And in Acts, Luke mentions the generosity of land-holder Barnabas immediately before he tells the story of lying Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 4:36-37; 5:1-11). If Jesus were only good news for the materially poor, there would be no way to explain these stories of the commendable rich.

So for all these reasons I agree with Andreas Kostenberger and P.T. O’Brien that “The ‘poor’ to whom the good news is announced are not to be understood narrowly of the economically destitute, as most recent scholars have suggested; rather the term refers more generally to ‘the dispossessed, the excluded’ who were forced to depend upon God.” I agree with David Bosch when he concludes, “Therefore, in Luke’s gospel, the rich are tested on the ground of their wealth, whereas others are tested on loyalty toward their family, their people, their culture, and their work (Lk. 9:59-61). This means the poor are sinners like everybody else, because ultimately sinfulness is rooted in the human heart. Just as the materially rich can be spiritually poor, the materially poor can be spiritually poor.” Many other scholars past and present, including Eckhard Schnabel, David Hesselgrave, Robert Stein, Christopher Little, I. Howard Marshall, and Darrell Bock have come to similar conclusions.

This does not rule out an economic component to ptochos in Luke 4. The poor are often the economic poor because material hardship more often than material plenty translates into spiritual sensitivity, humility, and the desperation that gives you the ears to hear God’s voice. There’s a reason Jesus said “blessed are the poor” instead of “blessed are the rich.” The poor are more apt to see their need for help than the rich. The Greek word ptochos is, to use quote Darrell Bock, best described as a “soteriological generalization.” It refers to those who are open to God, responsive to him, and see their dependence upon him. It is to these that Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. Therefore, Jesus’ mission laid out in Luke 4 was not a mission of structural change and social transformation, but a mission to announce the good news of his saving power and merciful reign for all those brokenhearted enough to believe.



American College of Pediatricians: Homosexual Attraction is Neither Innate Nor Unchangeable

The American College of Pediatricians has cautioned "educators about the management of students experiencing same-sex attraction or exhibiting symptoms of gender confusion." An April 5 press release explains.

The College reminds school superintendents that it is not uncommon for adolescents to experience transient confusion about their sexual orientation and that most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged. For this reason, schools should not seek to develop policy which “affirms” or encourages these non-heterosexual attractions among students who may merely be experimenting or experiencing temporary sexual confusion. Such premature labeling can lead some adolescents to engage in homosexual behaviors that carry serious physical and mental health risks.

There is no scientific evidence that anyone is born gay or transgendered. Therefore, the College further advises that schools should not teach or imply to students that homosexual attraction is innate, always life-long and unchangeable.  Research has shown that therapy to restore heterosexual attraction can be effective for many people.

In their letter to school superindents, the College provides more rationale for their advice.

Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the Genome Project, has stated that while homosexuality may be genetically influenced, it is “… not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.” He also states [that] “…the prominent role[s] of individual free will choices [has] a profound effect on us.” 6

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) recently released a landmark survey and analysis of 125 years of scientific studies and clinical experience dealing with homosexuality. This report, What Research Shows, draws three major conclusions: (1) individuals with unwanted same sex attraction often can be successfully treated; (2) there is no undue risk to patients from embarking on such therapy and (3), as a group, homosexuals experience significantly higher levels of mental and physical health problems compared to heterosexuals. Among adolescents who claim a “gay” identity, the health risks include higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. Encouragingly, the longer students delay self-labeling as “gay,” the less likely they are to experience these health risks. In fact, for each year an adolescent delays, the risk of suicide alone decreases by 20%.7

In light of these facts, it is clear that when well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel encourage students to “come out as gay” and be “affirmed,” 8 there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling students (who may merely be experiencing transient sexual confusion and/or engaging in sexual experimentation). Premature labeling may then lead some adolescents into harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue.

You can read the press release here.

For the letter to school superindents go here.

There's also a fact sheet on what we should know about "Sexual Orientation of Youth."