Larger Catechism, week 1 « Daily Confession
Recommending all adult readers memorize Q.1-90 from the Westminster Larger Catechism. It has surely served me well through the years (of course, that's not to forego Q.91-196.) The Shorter Catechism should, of course, be in the blood and bones of all Churchmen, age 12 and up.
Larger Catechism, week 1
January 7, 2010
Q. 1. What is the chief and highest end of man?... See More
A. Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God,[1] and fully to enjoy him forever.[2]
Q. 2. How doth it appear that there is a God?
A. The very light of nature in man, and the works of God, declare plainly that there is a God;[3] but his word and Spirit only do sufficiently and effectually reveal him unto men for their salvation.[4]
Q. 3. What is the Word of God?
A. The holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God,[5] the only rule of faith and obedience.[6]
Q. 4. How doth it appear that the Scriptures are of the Word of God?
A. The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty[7] and purity;[8] by the consent of all the parts,[9] and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God;[10] by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation:[11] but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of God.[12]
Q. 5. What do the Scriptures principally teach?
A. The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.[13]
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Trinity Broadcasting Network / TBN/ Paul & Jan Crouch
Trinity Broadcasting Network / TBN/ Paul & Jan Crouch
This is a must read on TBN enthusiasts. I never was connected or travelled in the enthusiast sector. Was and am an old Prayer Book Calvinist. I've caught a few glimpses on TV of these characters, but some research is very troubling.
This is a must read on TBN enthusiasts. I never was connected or travelled in the enthusiast sector. Was and am an old Prayer Book Calvinist. I've caught a few glimpses on TV of these characters, but some research is very troubling.
Articles about Trinity Broadcasting Network - Los Angeles Times
Articles about Trinity Broadcasting Network - Los Angeles Times
Series of investigative articles by LA Times on the TBN crowd, Paul Crouch and Mrs. Hairdo. Some very, very bizarre stuff in research on Todd Bentley, Benny Hinn and others. The URL will give some leads.
Series of investigative articles by LA Times on the TBN crowd, Paul Crouch and Mrs. Hairdo. Some very, very bizarre stuff in research on Todd Bentley, Benny Hinn and others. The URL will give some leads.
Reformation Theology: The Gospel of Prosperity Part 1 By Marco Gonzalez
Reformation Theology: The Gospel of Prosperity Part 1 By Marco Gonzalez
Some Reformed thoughts on the prosperity Gospel.
Some Reformed thoughts on the prosperity Gospel.
Measuring Oral Roberts' Influence
Measuring Oral Roberts' Influence
John MacArthur's sage assessment of the influence of Oral Roberts, tele-enthusiast, revivalist, faith-healer, and sponsor of the TV-Tetzelian Health & Wealth nutcases.
MacArthur does a nice job.
John MacArthur's sage assessment of the influence of Oral Roberts, tele-enthusiast, revivalist, faith-healer, and sponsor of the TV-Tetzelian Health & Wealth nutcases.
MacArthur does a nice job.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Modern Reformation - Print Friendly
Modern Reformation - Print Friendly
The Pelagian Captivity of the Church
R. C. Sproul
Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen-that it's actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.
I've often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can't answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church.
Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation-sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia-Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.
In the Fleming Revell edition of The Bondage of the Will, the translators, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, included a somewhat provocative historical and theological introduction to the book itself. This is from the end of that introduction:
These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognised by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther's day and our own. Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimise and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? (1)
Historically, it's a simple matter of fact that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences. In asserting the helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them these doctrines were the very lifeblood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther's works says this:
Whoever puts this book down without having realized that Evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith alone, which became the storm center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers' theology but this is not accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed by Augustine and others, that the sinner's entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only, and that the doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a more profound level still in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration. (2)
That is to say, that the faith that receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God. The principle of soli fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which is left to man to fulfill? Do you hear the difference? Let me put it in simple terms. I heard an evangelist recently say, "If God takes a thousand steps to reach out to you for your redemption, still in the final analysis, you must take the decisive step to be saved." Consider the statement that has been made by America's most beloved and leading evangelical of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who says with great passion, "God does ninety-nine percent of it but you still must do that last one percent."
What Is Pelagianism?
Now, let's return briefly to my title, "The Pelagian Captivity of the Church." What are we talking about?
Pelagius was a monk who lived in Britain in the fifth century. He was a contemporary of the greatest theologian of the first millennium of Church history if not of all time, Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. We have heard of St. Augustine, of his great works in theology, of his City of God, of his Confessions, and so on, which remain Christian classics.
Augustine, in addition to being a titanic theologian and a prodigious intellect, was also a man of deep spirituality and prayer. In one of his famous prayers, Augustine made a seemingly harmless and innocuous statement in the prayer to God in which he says: "O God, command what you wouldst, and grant what thou dost command." Now, would that give you apoplexy-to hear a prayer like that? Well it certainly set Pelagius, this British monk, into orbit. When he heard that, he protested vociferously, even appealing to Rome to have this ghastly prayer censured from the pen of Augustine. Here's why. He said, "Are you saying, Augustine, that God has the inherent right to command anything that he so desires from his creatures? Nobody is going to dispute that. God inherently, as the creator of heaven and earth, has the right to impose obligations on his creatures and say, 'Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do that.' 'Command whatever thou would'-it's a perfectly legitimate prayer."
It's the second part of the prayer that Pelagius abhorred-when Augustine said, "and grant what thou dost command." He said, "What are you talking about? If God is just, if God is righteous and God is holy, and God commands of the creature to do something, certainly that creature must have the power within himself, the moral ability within himself, to perform it or God would never require it in the first place." Now that makes sense, doesn't it? What Pelagius was saying is that moral responsibility always and everywhere implies moral capability or, simply, moral ability. So why would we have to pray, "God grant me, give me the gift of being able to do what you command me to do"? Pelagius saw in this statement a shadow being cast over the integrity of God himself, who would hold people responsible for doing something they cannot do.
So in the ensuing debate, Augustine made it clear that in creation, God commanded nothing from Adam or Eve that they were incapable of performing. But once transgression entered and mankind became fallen, God's law was not repealed nor did God adjust his holy requirements downward to accommodate the weakened, fallen condition of his creation. God did punish his creation by visiting upon them the judgment of original sin, so that everyone after Adam and Eve who was born into this world was born already dead in sin. Original sin is not the first sin. It's the result of the first sin; it refers to our inherent corruption, by which we are born in sin, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. We are not born in a neutral state of innocence, but we are born in a sinful, fallen condition. Virtually every church in the historic World Council of Churches at some point in their history and in their creedal development articulates some doctrine of original sin. So clear is that to the biblical revelation that it would take a repudiation of the biblical view of mankind to deny original sin altogether.
This is precisely what was at issue in the battle between Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. Pelagius said there is no such thing as original sin. Adam's sin affected Adam and only Adam. There is no transmission or transfer of guilt or fallenness or corruption to the progeny of Adam and Eve. Everyone is born in the same state of innocence in which Adam was created. And, he said, for a person to live a life of obedience to God, a life of moral perfection, is possible without any help from Jesus or without any help from the grace of God. Pelagius said that grace--and here's the key distinction--facilitates righteousness. What does "facilitate" mean? It helps, it makes it more facile, it makes it easier, but you don't have to have it. You can be perfect without it. Pelagius further stated that it is not only theoretically possible for some folks to live a perfect life without any assistance from divine grace, but there are in fact people who do it. Augustine said, "No, no, no, no . . . we are infected by sin by nature, to the very depths and core of our being-so much so that no human being has the moral power to incline themselves to cooperate with the grace of God. The human will, as a result of original sin, still has the power to choose, but it is in bondage to its evil desires and inclinations. The condition of fallen humanity is one that Augustine would describe as the inability to not sin. In simple English, what Augustine was saying is that in the Fall, man loses his moral ability to do the things of God and he is held captive by his own evil inclinations.
In the fifth century the Church condemned Pelagius as a heretic. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange, and it was condemned again at the Council of Florence, the Council of Carthage, and also, ironically, at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century in the first three anathemas of the Canons of the Sixth Session. So, consistently throughout Church history, the Church has roundly and soundly condemned Pelagianism-because Pelagianism denies the fallenness of our nature; it denies the doctrine of original sin.
Now what is called semi-Pelagianism, as the prefix "semi" suggests, was a somewhat middle ground between full-orbed Augustinianism and full-orbed Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism said this: yes, there was a fall; yes, there is such a thing as original sin; yes, the constituent nature of humanity has been changed by this state of corruption and all parts of our humanity have been significantly weakened by the fall, so much so that without the assistance of divine grace nobody can possibly be redeemed, so that grace is not only helpful but it's absolutely necessary for salvation. While we are so fallen that we can't be saved without grace, we are not so fallen that we don't have the ability to accept or reject the grace when it's offered to us. The will is weakened but is not enslaved. There remains in the core of our being an island of righteousness that remains untouched by the fall. It's out of that little island of righteousness, that little parcel of goodness that is still intact in the soul or in the will that is the determinative difference between heaven and hell. It's that little island that must be exercised when God does his thousand steps of reaching out to us, but in the final analysis it's that one step that we take that determines whether we go to heaven or hell-whether we exercise that little righteousness that is in the core of our being or whether we don't. That little island Augustine wouldn't even recognize as an atoll in the South Pacific. He said it's a mythical island, that the will is enslaved, and that man is dead in his sin and trespasses.
Ironically, the Church condemned semi-Pelagianism as vehemently as it had condemned original Pelagianism. Yet by the time you get to the sixteenth century and you read the Catholic understanding of what happens in salvation the Church basically repudiated what Augustine taught and Aquinas taught as well. The Church concluded that there still remains this freedom that is intact in the human will and that man must cooperate with-and assent to-the prevenient grace that is offered to them by God. If we exercise that will, if we exercise a cooperation with whatever powers we have left, we will be saved. And so in the sixteenth century the Church reembraced semi-Pelagianism.
At the time of the Reformation, all the reformers agreed on one point: the moral inability of fallen human beings to incline themselves to the things of God; that all people, in order to be saved, are totally dependent, not ninety-nine percent, but one hundred percent dependent upon the monergistic work of regeneration in order to come to faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God. It's not that we are offered salvation and that we will be born again if we choose to believe. But we can't even believe until God in his grace and in his mercy first changes the disposition of our souls through his sovereign work of regeneration. In other words, what the reformers all agreed with was, unless a man is born again, he can't even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Like Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John, "No man can come to me unless it is given to him of the Father"-that the necessary condition for anybody's faith and anybody's salvation is regeneration.
Evangelicals and Faith
Modern Evangelicalism almost uniformly and universally teaches that in order for a person to be born again, he must first exercise faith. You have to choose to be born again. Isn't that what you hear? In a George Barna poll, more than seventy percent of "professing evangelical Christians" in America expressed the belief that man is basically good. And more than eighty percent articulated the view that God helps those who help themselves. These positions-or let me say it negatively-neither of these positions is semi-Pelagian. They're both Pelagian. To say that we're basically good is the Pelagian view. I would be willing to assume that in at least thirty percent of the people who are reading this issue, and probably more, if we really examine their thinking in depth, we would find hearts that are beating Pelagianism. We're overwhelmed with it. We're surrounded by it. We're immersed in it. We hear it every day. We hear it every day in the secular culture. And not only do we hear it every day in the secular culture, we hear it every day on Christian television and on Christian radio.
In the nineteenth century, there was a preacher who became very popular in America, who wrote a book on theology, coming out of his own training in law, in which he made no bones about his Pelagianism. He rejected not only Augustinianism, but he also rejected semi-Pelagianism and stood clearly on the subject of unvarnished Pelagianism, saying in no uncertain terms, without any ambiguity, that there was no Fall and that there is no such thing as original sin. This man went on to attack viciously the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and in addition to that, to repudiate as clearly and as loudly as he could the doctrine of justification by faith alone by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This man's basic thesis was, we don't need the imputation of the righteousness of Christ because we have the capacity in and of ourselves to become righteous. His name: Charles Finney, one of America's most revered evangelists. Now, if Luther was correct in saying that sola fide is the article upon which the Church stands or falls, if what the reformers were saying is that justification by faith alone is an essential truth of Christianity, who also argued that the substitutionary atonement is an essential truth of Christianity; if they're correct in their assessment that those doctrines are essential truths of Christianity, the only conclusion we can come to is that Charles Finney was not a Christian. I read his writings-and I say, "I don't see how any Christian person could write this." And yet, he is in the Hall of Fame of Evangelical Christianity in America. He is the patron saint of twentieth-century Evangelicalism. And he is not semi-Pelagian; he is unvarnished in his Pelagianism.
The Island of Righteousness
One thing is clear: that you can be purely Pelagian and be completely welcome in the evangelical movement today. It's not simply that the camel sticks his nose into the tent; he doesn't just come in the tent-he kicks the owner of the tent out. Modern Evangelicalism today looks with suspicion at Reformed theology, which has become sort of the third-class citizen of Evangelicalism. Now you say, "Wait a minute, R. C. Let's not tar everybody with the extreme brush of Pelagianism, because, after all, Billy Graham and the rest of these people are saying there was a Fall; you've got to have grace; there is such a thing as original sin; and semi-Pelagians do not agree with Pelagius' facile and sanguine view of unfallen human nature." And that's true. No question about it. But it's that little island of righteousness where man still has the ability, in and of himself, to turn, to change, to incline, to dispose, to embrace the offer of grace that reveals why historically semi-Pelagianism is not called semi-Augustinianism, but semi-Pelagianism. It never really escapes the core idea of the bondage of the soul, the captivity of the human heart to sin-that it's not simply infected by a disease that may be fatal if left untreated, but it is mortal.
I heard an evangelist use two analogies to describe what happens in our redemption. He said sin has such a stronghold on us, a stranglehold, that it's like a person who can't swim, who falls overboard in a raging sea, and he's going under for the third time and only the tops of his fingers are still above the water; and unless someone intervenes to rescue him, he has no hope of survival, his death is certain. And unless God throws him a life preserver, he can't possibly be rescued. And not only must God throw him a life preserver in the general vicinity of where he is, but that life preserver has to hit him right where his fingers are still extended out of the water, and hit him so that he can grasp hold of it. It has to be perfectly pitched. But still that man will drown unless he takes his fingers and curls them around the life preserver and God will rescue him. But unless that tiny little human action is done, he will surely perish.
The other analogy is this: A man is desperately ill, sick unto death, lying in his hospital bed with a disease that is fatal. There is no way he can be cured unless somebody from outside comes up with a cure, a medicine that will take care of this fatal disease. And God has the cure and walks into the room with the medicine. But the man is so weak he can't even help himself to the medicine; God has to pour it on the spoon. The man is so sick he's almost comatose. He can't even open his mouth, and God has to lean over and open up his mouth for him. God has to bring the spoon to the man's lips, but the man still has to swallow it.
Now, if we're going to use analogies, let's be accurate. The man isn't going under for the third time; he is stone cold dead at the bottom of the ocean. That's where you once were when you were dead in sin and trespasses and walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. And while you were dead hath God quickened you together with Christ. God dove to the bottom of the sea and took that drowned corpse and breathed into it the breath of his life and raised you from the dead. And it's not that you were dying in a hospital bed of a certain illness, but rather, when you were born you were born D.O.A. That's what the Bible says: that we are morally stillborn.
Do we have a will? Yes, of course we have a will. Calvin said, if you mean by a free will a faculty of choosing by which you have the power within yourself to choose what you desire, then we all have free will. If you mean by free will the ability for fallen human beings to incline themselves and exercise that will to choose the things of God without the prior monergistic work of regeneration then, said Calvin, free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to a human being.
The semi-Pelagian doctrine of free will prevalent in the evangelical world today is a pagan view that denies the captivity of the human heart to sin. It underestimates the stranglehold that sin has upon us.
None of us wants to see things as bad as they really are. The biblical doctrine of human corruption is grim. We don't hear the Apostle Paul say, "You know, it's sad that we have such a thing as sin in the world; nobody's perfect. But be of good cheer. We're basically good." Do you see that even a cursory reading of Scripture denies this?
Now back to Luther. What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received? Or is it a condition of justification which is left to us to fulfill? Is your faith at work? Is it the one work that God leaves for you to do? I had a discussion with some folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently. I was speaking on sola gratia, and one fellow was upset. He said, "Are you trying to tell me that in the final analysis it's God who either does or doesn't sovereignly regenerate a heart?"
And I said, "Yes," and he was very upset about that. I said, "Let me ask you this: are you a Christian?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Do you have friends who aren't Christians?"
He said, "Well, of course."
I said, "Why are you a Christian and your friends aren't? Is it because you're more righteous than they are?" He wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to say, "Of course it's because I'm more righteous. I did the right thing and my friend didn't." He knew where I was going with that question.
And he said, "Oh, no, no, no."
I said, "Tell me why. Is it because you're smarter than your friend?"
And he said, "No."
But he would not agree that the final, decisive issue was the grace of God. He wouldn't come to that. And after we discussed this for fifteen minutes, he said, "OK! I'll say it. I'm a Christian because I did the right thing, I made the right response, and my friend didn't."
What was this person trusting in for his salvation? Not in his works in general, but in the one work that he performed. And he was a Protestant, an evangelical. But his view of salvation was no different from the Roman view.
God's Sovereignty in Salvation
This is the issue: Is it a part of God's gift of salvation, or is it in our own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter, that it ultimately depends on something we do for ourselves, thereby deny humanity's utter helplessness in sin and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. It is no wonder then that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being, in principle, both a return to Rome because, in effect, it turned faith into a meritorious work, and a betrayal of the Reformation because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the reformers' thought. Arminianism was indeed, in Reformed eyes, a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism. For to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle than to rely on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus there is no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment.
And yet this view is the overwhelming majority report today in professing evangelical circles. And as long as semi-Pelagianism-which is simply a thinly veiled version of real Pelagianism at its core-as long as it prevails in the Church, I don't know what's going to happen. But I know, however, what will not happen: there will not be a new Reformation. Until we humble ourselves and understand that no man is an island and that no man has an island of righteousness, that we are utterly dependent upon the unmixed grace of God for our salvation, we will not begin to rest upon grace and rejoice in the greatness of God's sovereignty, and we will not be rid of the pagan influence of humanism that exalts and puts man at the center of religion. Until that happens there will not be a new Reformation, because at the heart of Reformation teaching is the central place of the worship and gratitude given to God and God alone. Soli Deo gloria, to God alone, the glory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 [ Back ] J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, "Introduction" to The Bondage of the Will (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1957), 59-60.
2 [ Back ] Ibid.
The Pelagian Captivity of the Church
R. C. Sproul
Shortly after the Reformation began, in the first few years after Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, he issued some short booklets on a variety of subjects. One of the most provocative was titled The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. In this book Luther was looking back to that period of Old Testament history when Jerusalem was destroyed by the invading armies of Babylon and the elite of the people were carried off into captivity. Luther in the sixteenth century took the image of the historic Babylonian captivity and reapplied it to his era and talked about the new Babylonian captivity of the Church. He was speaking of Rome as the modern Babylon that held the Gospel hostage with its rejection of the biblical understanding of justification. You can understand how fierce the controversy was, how polemical this title would be in that period by saying that the Church had not simply erred or strayed, but had fallen-that it's actually now Babylonian; it is now in pagan captivity.
I've often wondered if Luther were alive today and came to our culture and looked, not at the liberal church community, but at evangelical churches, what would he have to say? Of course I can't answer that question with any kind of definitive authority, but my guess is this: If Martin Luther lived today and picked up his pen to write, the book he would write in our time would be entitled The Pelagian Captivity of the Evangelical Church.
Luther saw the doctrine of justification as fueled by a deeper theological problem. He writes about this extensively in The Bondage of the Will. When we look at the Reformation and we see the solas of the Reformation-sola Scriptura, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria, sola gratia-Luther was convinced that the real issue of the Reformation was the issue of grace; and that underlying the doctrine of sola fide, justification by faith alone, was the prior commitment to sola gratia, the concept of justification by grace alone.
In the Fleming Revell edition of The Bondage of the Will, the translators, J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, included a somewhat provocative historical and theological introduction to the book itself. This is from the end of that introduction:
These things need to be pondered by Protestants today. With what right may we call ourselves children of the Reformation? Much modern Protestantism would be neither owned nor even recognised by the pioneer Reformers. The Bondage of the Will fairly sets before us what they believed about the salvation of lost mankind. In the light of it, we are forced to ask whether Protestant Christendom has not tragically sold its birthright between Luther's day and our own. Has not Protestantism today become more Erasmian than Lutheran? Do we not too often try to minimise and gloss over doctrinal differences for the sake of inter-party peace? Are we innocent of the doctrinal indifferentism with which Luther charged Erasmus? Do we still believe that doctrine matters? (1)
Historically, it's a simple matter of fact that Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and all the leading Protestant theologians of the first epoch of the Reformation stood on precisely the same ground here. On other points they had their differences. In asserting the helplessness of man in sin and the sovereignty of God in grace, they were entirely at one. To all of them these doctrines were the very lifeblood of the Christian faith. A modern editor of Luther's works says this:
Whoever puts this book down without having realized that Evangelical theology stands or falls with the doctrine of the bondage of the will has read it in vain. The doctrine of free justification by faith alone, which became the storm center of so much controversy during the Reformation period, is often regarded as the heart of the Reformers' theology but this is not accurate. The truth is that their thinking was really centered upon the contention of Paul, echoed by Augustine and others, that the sinner's entire salvation is by free and sovereign grace only, and that the doctrine of justification by faith was important to them because it safeguarded the principle of sovereign grace. The sovereignty of grace found expression in their thinking at a more profound level still in the doctrine of monergistic regeneration. (2)
That is to say, that the faith that receives Christ for justification is itself the free gift of a sovereign God. The principle of soli fide is not rightly understood until it is seen as anchored in the broader principle of sola gratia. What is the source of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received, or is it a condition of justification which is left to man to fulfill? Do you hear the difference? Let me put it in simple terms. I heard an evangelist recently say, "If God takes a thousand steps to reach out to you for your redemption, still in the final analysis, you must take the decisive step to be saved." Consider the statement that has been made by America's most beloved and leading evangelical of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who says with great passion, "God does ninety-nine percent of it but you still must do that last one percent."
What Is Pelagianism?
Now, let's return briefly to my title, "The Pelagian Captivity of the Church." What are we talking about?
Pelagius was a monk who lived in Britain in the fifth century. He was a contemporary of the greatest theologian of the first millennium of Church history if not of all time, Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. We have heard of St. Augustine, of his great works in theology, of his City of God, of his Confessions, and so on, which remain Christian classics.
Augustine, in addition to being a titanic theologian and a prodigious intellect, was also a man of deep spirituality and prayer. In one of his famous prayers, Augustine made a seemingly harmless and innocuous statement in the prayer to God in which he says: "O God, command what you wouldst, and grant what thou dost command." Now, would that give you apoplexy-to hear a prayer like that? Well it certainly set Pelagius, this British monk, into orbit. When he heard that, he protested vociferously, even appealing to Rome to have this ghastly prayer censured from the pen of Augustine. Here's why. He said, "Are you saying, Augustine, that God has the inherent right to command anything that he so desires from his creatures? Nobody is going to dispute that. God inherently, as the creator of heaven and earth, has the right to impose obligations on his creatures and say, 'Thou shalt do this, and thou shalt not do that.' 'Command whatever thou would'-it's a perfectly legitimate prayer."
It's the second part of the prayer that Pelagius abhorred-when Augustine said, "and grant what thou dost command." He said, "What are you talking about? If God is just, if God is righteous and God is holy, and God commands of the creature to do something, certainly that creature must have the power within himself, the moral ability within himself, to perform it or God would never require it in the first place." Now that makes sense, doesn't it? What Pelagius was saying is that moral responsibility always and everywhere implies moral capability or, simply, moral ability. So why would we have to pray, "God grant me, give me the gift of being able to do what you command me to do"? Pelagius saw in this statement a shadow being cast over the integrity of God himself, who would hold people responsible for doing something they cannot do.
So in the ensuing debate, Augustine made it clear that in creation, God commanded nothing from Adam or Eve that they were incapable of performing. But once transgression entered and mankind became fallen, God's law was not repealed nor did God adjust his holy requirements downward to accommodate the weakened, fallen condition of his creation. God did punish his creation by visiting upon them the judgment of original sin, so that everyone after Adam and Eve who was born into this world was born already dead in sin. Original sin is not the first sin. It's the result of the first sin; it refers to our inherent corruption, by which we are born in sin, and in sin did our mothers conceive us. We are not born in a neutral state of innocence, but we are born in a sinful, fallen condition. Virtually every church in the historic World Council of Churches at some point in their history and in their creedal development articulates some doctrine of original sin. So clear is that to the biblical revelation that it would take a repudiation of the biblical view of mankind to deny original sin altogether.
This is precisely what was at issue in the battle between Augustine and Pelagius in the fifth century. Pelagius said there is no such thing as original sin. Adam's sin affected Adam and only Adam. There is no transmission or transfer of guilt or fallenness or corruption to the progeny of Adam and Eve. Everyone is born in the same state of innocence in which Adam was created. And, he said, for a person to live a life of obedience to God, a life of moral perfection, is possible without any help from Jesus or without any help from the grace of God. Pelagius said that grace--and here's the key distinction--facilitates righteousness. What does "facilitate" mean? It helps, it makes it more facile, it makes it easier, but you don't have to have it. You can be perfect without it. Pelagius further stated that it is not only theoretically possible for some folks to live a perfect life without any assistance from divine grace, but there are in fact people who do it. Augustine said, "No, no, no, no . . . we are infected by sin by nature, to the very depths and core of our being-so much so that no human being has the moral power to incline themselves to cooperate with the grace of God. The human will, as a result of original sin, still has the power to choose, but it is in bondage to its evil desires and inclinations. The condition of fallen humanity is one that Augustine would describe as the inability to not sin. In simple English, what Augustine was saying is that in the Fall, man loses his moral ability to do the things of God and he is held captive by his own evil inclinations.
In the fifth century the Church condemned Pelagius as a heretic. Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange, and it was condemned again at the Council of Florence, the Council of Carthage, and also, ironically, at the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century in the first three anathemas of the Canons of the Sixth Session. So, consistently throughout Church history, the Church has roundly and soundly condemned Pelagianism-because Pelagianism denies the fallenness of our nature; it denies the doctrine of original sin.
Now what is called semi-Pelagianism, as the prefix "semi" suggests, was a somewhat middle ground between full-orbed Augustinianism and full-orbed Pelagianism. Semi-Pelagianism said this: yes, there was a fall; yes, there is such a thing as original sin; yes, the constituent nature of humanity has been changed by this state of corruption and all parts of our humanity have been significantly weakened by the fall, so much so that without the assistance of divine grace nobody can possibly be redeemed, so that grace is not only helpful but it's absolutely necessary for salvation. While we are so fallen that we can't be saved without grace, we are not so fallen that we don't have the ability to accept or reject the grace when it's offered to us. The will is weakened but is not enslaved. There remains in the core of our being an island of righteousness that remains untouched by the fall. It's out of that little island of righteousness, that little parcel of goodness that is still intact in the soul or in the will that is the determinative difference between heaven and hell. It's that little island that must be exercised when God does his thousand steps of reaching out to us, but in the final analysis it's that one step that we take that determines whether we go to heaven or hell-whether we exercise that little righteousness that is in the core of our being or whether we don't. That little island Augustine wouldn't even recognize as an atoll in the South Pacific. He said it's a mythical island, that the will is enslaved, and that man is dead in his sin and trespasses.
Ironically, the Church condemned semi-Pelagianism as vehemently as it had condemned original Pelagianism. Yet by the time you get to the sixteenth century and you read the Catholic understanding of what happens in salvation the Church basically repudiated what Augustine taught and Aquinas taught as well. The Church concluded that there still remains this freedom that is intact in the human will and that man must cooperate with-and assent to-the prevenient grace that is offered to them by God. If we exercise that will, if we exercise a cooperation with whatever powers we have left, we will be saved. And so in the sixteenth century the Church reembraced semi-Pelagianism.
At the time of the Reformation, all the reformers agreed on one point: the moral inability of fallen human beings to incline themselves to the things of God; that all people, in order to be saved, are totally dependent, not ninety-nine percent, but one hundred percent dependent upon the monergistic work of regeneration in order to come to faith, and that faith itself is a gift of God. It's not that we are offered salvation and that we will be born again if we choose to believe. But we can't even believe until God in his grace and in his mercy first changes the disposition of our souls through his sovereign work of regeneration. In other words, what the reformers all agreed with was, unless a man is born again, he can't even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it. Like Jesus says in the sixth chapter of John, "No man can come to me unless it is given to him of the Father"-that the necessary condition for anybody's faith and anybody's salvation is regeneration.
Evangelicals and Faith
Modern Evangelicalism almost uniformly and universally teaches that in order for a person to be born again, he must first exercise faith. You have to choose to be born again. Isn't that what you hear? In a George Barna poll, more than seventy percent of "professing evangelical Christians" in America expressed the belief that man is basically good. And more than eighty percent articulated the view that God helps those who help themselves. These positions-or let me say it negatively-neither of these positions is semi-Pelagian. They're both Pelagian. To say that we're basically good is the Pelagian view. I would be willing to assume that in at least thirty percent of the people who are reading this issue, and probably more, if we really examine their thinking in depth, we would find hearts that are beating Pelagianism. We're overwhelmed with it. We're surrounded by it. We're immersed in it. We hear it every day. We hear it every day in the secular culture. And not only do we hear it every day in the secular culture, we hear it every day on Christian television and on Christian radio.
In the nineteenth century, there was a preacher who became very popular in America, who wrote a book on theology, coming out of his own training in law, in which he made no bones about his Pelagianism. He rejected not only Augustinianism, but he also rejected semi-Pelagianism and stood clearly on the subject of unvarnished Pelagianism, saying in no uncertain terms, without any ambiguity, that there was no Fall and that there is no such thing as original sin. This man went on to attack viciously the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ, and in addition to that, to repudiate as clearly and as loudly as he could the doctrine of justification by faith alone by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. This man's basic thesis was, we don't need the imputation of the righteousness of Christ because we have the capacity in and of ourselves to become righteous. His name: Charles Finney, one of America's most revered evangelists. Now, if Luther was correct in saying that sola fide is the article upon which the Church stands or falls, if what the reformers were saying is that justification by faith alone is an essential truth of Christianity, who also argued that the substitutionary atonement is an essential truth of Christianity; if they're correct in their assessment that those doctrines are essential truths of Christianity, the only conclusion we can come to is that Charles Finney was not a Christian. I read his writings-and I say, "I don't see how any Christian person could write this." And yet, he is in the Hall of Fame of Evangelical Christianity in America. He is the patron saint of twentieth-century Evangelicalism. And he is not semi-Pelagian; he is unvarnished in his Pelagianism.
The Island of Righteousness
One thing is clear: that you can be purely Pelagian and be completely welcome in the evangelical movement today. It's not simply that the camel sticks his nose into the tent; he doesn't just come in the tent-he kicks the owner of the tent out. Modern Evangelicalism today looks with suspicion at Reformed theology, which has become sort of the third-class citizen of Evangelicalism. Now you say, "Wait a minute, R. C. Let's not tar everybody with the extreme brush of Pelagianism, because, after all, Billy Graham and the rest of these people are saying there was a Fall; you've got to have grace; there is such a thing as original sin; and semi-Pelagians do not agree with Pelagius' facile and sanguine view of unfallen human nature." And that's true. No question about it. But it's that little island of righteousness where man still has the ability, in and of himself, to turn, to change, to incline, to dispose, to embrace the offer of grace that reveals why historically semi-Pelagianism is not called semi-Augustinianism, but semi-Pelagianism. It never really escapes the core idea of the bondage of the soul, the captivity of the human heart to sin-that it's not simply infected by a disease that may be fatal if left untreated, but it is mortal.
I heard an evangelist use two analogies to describe what happens in our redemption. He said sin has such a stronghold on us, a stranglehold, that it's like a person who can't swim, who falls overboard in a raging sea, and he's going under for the third time and only the tops of his fingers are still above the water; and unless someone intervenes to rescue him, he has no hope of survival, his death is certain. And unless God throws him a life preserver, he can't possibly be rescued. And not only must God throw him a life preserver in the general vicinity of where he is, but that life preserver has to hit him right where his fingers are still extended out of the water, and hit him so that he can grasp hold of it. It has to be perfectly pitched. But still that man will drown unless he takes his fingers and curls them around the life preserver and God will rescue him. But unless that tiny little human action is done, he will surely perish.
The other analogy is this: A man is desperately ill, sick unto death, lying in his hospital bed with a disease that is fatal. There is no way he can be cured unless somebody from outside comes up with a cure, a medicine that will take care of this fatal disease. And God has the cure and walks into the room with the medicine. But the man is so weak he can't even help himself to the medicine; God has to pour it on the spoon. The man is so sick he's almost comatose. He can't even open his mouth, and God has to lean over and open up his mouth for him. God has to bring the spoon to the man's lips, but the man still has to swallow it.
Now, if we're going to use analogies, let's be accurate. The man isn't going under for the third time; he is stone cold dead at the bottom of the ocean. That's where you once were when you were dead in sin and trespasses and walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. And while you were dead hath God quickened you together with Christ. God dove to the bottom of the sea and took that drowned corpse and breathed into it the breath of his life and raised you from the dead. And it's not that you were dying in a hospital bed of a certain illness, but rather, when you were born you were born D.O.A. That's what the Bible says: that we are morally stillborn.
Do we have a will? Yes, of course we have a will. Calvin said, if you mean by a free will a faculty of choosing by which you have the power within yourself to choose what you desire, then we all have free will. If you mean by free will the ability for fallen human beings to incline themselves and exercise that will to choose the things of God without the prior monergistic work of regeneration then, said Calvin, free will is far too grandiose a term to apply to a human being.
The semi-Pelagian doctrine of free will prevalent in the evangelical world today is a pagan view that denies the captivity of the human heart to sin. It underestimates the stranglehold that sin has upon us.
None of us wants to see things as bad as they really are. The biblical doctrine of human corruption is grim. We don't hear the Apostle Paul say, "You know, it's sad that we have such a thing as sin in the world; nobody's perfect. But be of good cheer. We're basically good." Do you see that even a cursory reading of Scripture denies this?
Now back to Luther. What is the source and status of faith? Is it the God-given means whereby the God-given justification is received? Or is it a condition of justification which is left to us to fulfill? Is your faith at work? Is it the one work that God leaves for you to do? I had a discussion with some folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, recently. I was speaking on sola gratia, and one fellow was upset. He said, "Are you trying to tell me that in the final analysis it's God who either does or doesn't sovereignly regenerate a heart?"
And I said, "Yes," and he was very upset about that. I said, "Let me ask you this: are you a Christian?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Do you have friends who aren't Christians?"
He said, "Well, of course."
I said, "Why are you a Christian and your friends aren't? Is it because you're more righteous than they are?" He wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to say, "Of course it's because I'm more righteous. I did the right thing and my friend didn't." He knew where I was going with that question.
And he said, "Oh, no, no, no."
I said, "Tell me why. Is it because you're smarter than your friend?"
And he said, "No."
But he would not agree that the final, decisive issue was the grace of God. He wouldn't come to that. And after we discussed this for fifteen minutes, he said, "OK! I'll say it. I'm a Christian because I did the right thing, I made the right response, and my friend didn't."
What was this person trusting in for his salvation? Not in his works in general, but in the one work that he performed. And he was a Protestant, an evangelical. But his view of salvation was no different from the Roman view.
God's Sovereignty in Salvation
This is the issue: Is it a part of God's gift of salvation, or is it in our own contribution to salvation? Is our salvation wholly of God or does it ultimately depend on something that we do for ourselves? Those who say the latter, that it ultimately depends on something we do for ourselves, thereby deny humanity's utter helplessness in sin and affirm that a form of semi-Pelagianism is true after all. It is no wonder then that later Reformed theology condemned Arminianism as being, in principle, both a return to Rome because, in effect, it turned faith into a meritorious work, and a betrayal of the Reformation because it denied the sovereignty of God in saving sinners, which was the deepest religious and theological principle of the reformers' thought. Arminianism was indeed, in Reformed eyes, a renunciation of New Testament Christianity in favor of New Testament Judaism. For to rely on oneself for faith is no different in principle than to rely on oneself for works, and the one is as un-Christian and anti-Christian as the other. In the light of what Luther says to Erasmus there is no doubt that he would have endorsed this judgment.
And yet this view is the overwhelming majority report today in professing evangelical circles. And as long as semi-Pelagianism-which is simply a thinly veiled version of real Pelagianism at its core-as long as it prevails in the Church, I don't know what's going to happen. But I know, however, what will not happen: there will not be a new Reformation. Until we humble ourselves and understand that no man is an island and that no man has an island of righteousness, that we are utterly dependent upon the unmixed grace of God for our salvation, we will not begin to rest upon grace and rejoice in the greatness of God's sovereignty, and we will not be rid of the pagan influence of humanism that exalts and puts man at the center of religion. Until that happens there will not be a new Reformation, because at the heart of Reformation teaching is the central place of the worship and gratitude given to God and God alone. Soli Deo gloria, to God alone, the glory.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 [ Back ] J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston, "Introduction" to The Bondage of the Will (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming Revell, 1957), 59-60.
2 [ Back ] Ibid.
Heidelcast: Brit Was Right (and Wrong) « Heidelblog
Heidelcast: Brit Was Right (and Wrong) « Heidelblog
Dr. Scott Clark on the dustup over Brit Hume's evangelical comments re: Tiger Woods.
Dr. Scott Clark on the dustup over Brit Hume's evangelical comments re: Tiger Woods.
Belgic Confession, week 1 « Daily Confession
Belgic Confession, week 1 « Daily Confession
The Belgic Confession. We will want to compare the XXXIX Articles, a young and less mature Confession, to more mature Reformation ones. This is a lovely little one, worth memorizing.
Article 1: The Only God
We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God — eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse. Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.
Article 3: The Written Word of God
We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of men, but that holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit, as Peter says.[1] Afterwards our God– because of the special care he has for us and our salvation– commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit this revealed Word to writing. He himself wrote with his own finger the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures.
The Belgic Confession. We will want to compare the XXXIX Articles, a young and less mature Confession, to more mature Reformation ones. This is a lovely little one, worth memorizing.
Article 1: The Only God
We all believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that there is a single and simple spiritual being, whom we call God — eternal, incomprehensible, invisible, unchangeable, infinite, almighty; completely wise, just, and good, and the overflowing source of all good.
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
We know him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse. Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.
Article 3: The Written Word of God
We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of men, but that holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit, as Peter says.[1] Afterwards our God– because of the special care he has for us and our salvation– commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit this revealed Word to writing. He himself wrote with his own finger the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
VirtueOnline - News - News - Hindsight - The Most Newsworthy Events of 2009 - Albert Mohler
VirtueOnline - News - News - Hindsight - The Most Newsworthy Events of 2009 - Albert Mohler
Al Mohler gives dishonourable mention to the Episcobaalians' continuuing lurch and march against HM (again, for my FB friends, HM = His Majesty, Three-in-One). The much-ballyhooed M3-phenomenon, Murrikan Mutant Manglicans, is at present, over-rated without further Reformational doctrine AND discipline. The old Tractos have feathered their nests without DISCIPLINE or courageous leaders. M3-weakness. Thanks Al for a good note. Why do I have more in common with a Rebaptizer than the Baalian-crowd? I do. Sad. It's, indeed, lonely to be a Protestant, Reformed, Calvinistic, English Reformational Anglican in the M3-world of A-Murrika.
Al Mohler gives dishonourable mention to the Episcobaalians' continuuing lurch and march against HM (again, for my FB friends, HM = His Majesty, Three-in-One). The much-ballyhooed M3-phenomenon, Murrikan Mutant Manglicans, is at present, over-rated without further Reformational doctrine AND discipline. The old Tractos have feathered their nests without DISCIPLINE or courageous leaders. M3-weakness. Thanks Al for a good note. Why do I have more in common with a Rebaptizer than the Baalian-crowd? I do. Sad. It's, indeed, lonely to be a Protestant, Reformed, Calvinistic, English Reformational Anglican in the M3-world of A-Murrika.
YouTube - John MacArthur Explains what Happens part 1
YouTube - John MacArthur Explains what Happens part 1
An effort to get a handle on the Bishop of evangelicals, allegedly, the Baptist John MacArthur. An old name, but I don't run in Baptistic or Charismatic circles at all. An FB friend has prompted an effort to take a look.
This is another Larry King appearance amongst a variety of clerics. Some notes, germane to MacArthur.
"What happens after we die?"
1. Heaven and hell. Believers in Christ vs. non-believers.
2. Resurrection of the dead is discussed. Basic Christian view.
3. A Romanist posits faith-based + works-based salvation in response to Mac.
4. The Rabbi speaks of "God grading on a curve" and living a "decent life."
5. It's gentlemanly.
6. Mac brings in 2 Cor. 5.1.10 and the assurances of heaven.
7. A Muslim scholar enters the interaction on the "Village Green" [PV's metaphor, not on the show]. No one is perfect and is guaranteed, based on works, life after death. Mac engages the Muslim with justification by faith alone by the imputed merits of Christ alone.
8. All panel particpants believe in the after-life.
An effort to get a handle on the Bishop of evangelicals, allegedly, the Baptist John MacArthur. An old name, but I don't run in Baptistic or Charismatic circles at all. An FB friend has prompted an effort to take a look.
This is another Larry King appearance amongst a variety of clerics. Some notes, germane to MacArthur.
"What happens after we die?"
1. Heaven and hell. Believers in Christ vs. non-believers.
2. Resurrection of the dead is discussed. Basic Christian view.
3. A Romanist posits faith-based + works-based salvation in response to Mac.
4. The Rabbi speaks of "God grading on a curve" and living a "decent life."
5. It's gentlemanly.
6. Mac brings in 2 Cor. 5.1.10 and the assurances of heaven.
7. A Muslim scholar enters the interaction on the "Village Green" [PV's metaphor, not on the show]. No one is perfect and is guaranteed, based on works, life after death. Mac engages the Muslim with justification by faith alone by the imputed merits of Christ alone.
8. All panel particpants believe in the after-life.
YouTube - John Macarthur Abandoned by God
YouTube - John Macarthur Abandoned by God
A blogger prompted me to look at Rev. John MacArthur, a 5-point, dispensational Baptist from Grace Chapel, California. Some quick notes.
1. Abandonment by God of 'Merica, our nation. Evidenced by rampant, lawless, godless and immorally disastrous sexuality. Rom.1.18ff.
2. This is a very bold and admirable preacher, albeit we differ profoundly on ecclesiology, covenant, sacraments, Prayer Book Churchmanship and other matters.
3. Moving musical track as the backdrop. The question, "Has HM withdrawn His hand on this culture and this nation?" Deny Biblical authority, the deity and humanity of Christ, the character of God, atonement, propitiation, etc. 'Merikan mainliner [PV, my insert] chaos, including the Episcobaalian perversions. "Even though they knew God..."
4. PV comment: As a Law and Gospel man, inculcated by long exposure to the old Prayer Book and English Bible, this man, Mac, bring law to bear on the culture. "Abandoned by God?"
5. A "famine for the hearing of God's Word."
Commendable leadership in conversation with the issues of the day.
A blogger prompted me to look at Rev. John MacArthur, a 5-point, dispensational Baptist from Grace Chapel, California. Some quick notes.
1. Abandonment by God of 'Merica, our nation. Evidenced by rampant, lawless, godless and immorally disastrous sexuality. Rom.1.18ff.
2. This is a very bold and admirable preacher, albeit we differ profoundly on ecclesiology, covenant, sacraments, Prayer Book Churchmanship and other matters.
3. Moving musical track as the backdrop. The question, "Has HM withdrawn His hand on this culture and this nation?" Deny Biblical authority, the deity and humanity of Christ, the character of God, atonement, propitiation, etc. 'Merikan mainliner [PV, my insert] chaos, including the Episcobaalian perversions. "Even though they knew God..."
4. PV comment: As a Law and Gospel man, inculcated by long exposure to the old Prayer Book and English Bible, this man, Mac, bring law to bear on the culture. "Abandoned by God?"
5. A "famine for the hearing of God's Word."
Commendable leadership in conversation with the issues of the day.
YouTube - The Emergent "Church"/Cult Documentary on PBS
YouTube - The Emergent "Church"/Cult Documentary on PBS
A journalistic effort to understand pietistic, mysticistic, emotive, non-doctrinal religion. Some notes.
1. Called the "Emergent Church." Doug Pagitt, "Christianity is not a stagant belief."
2. Dr. Carson, TEDS, speaks of a major doctrinal shift.
3. Brian McClaren speaks of his disillusionment with his evangelical roots. A loose network of "emergents" developed.
4. Cross denominational. Call themselves "post-modern" and "post-evangelical." Couches, recliners, etc., for church gatherings, stressing relationships. Shorts, T-shirts, etc. Every member has a say. No sermons, just discussions. "There aren't necessarily answers." Very casual and experiential. Participatory and sensorial.
5. Various are leaving for Romanism and Orthodoxy. One UMC cleric calls himself a "Metho-Catho-Costalite."
6. Urging reformulation of classic Christian formulations. There is a McClaren v. Carson contrast. Dr. Carson has a book about it.
7. Tony Jones is not that concerned with the theological differences, apparently.
More as this develops. Only in Amurrica.
A journalistic effort to understand pietistic, mysticistic, emotive, non-doctrinal religion. Some notes.
1. Called the "Emergent Church." Doug Pagitt, "Christianity is not a stagant belief."
2. Dr. Carson, TEDS, speaks of a major doctrinal shift.
3. Brian McClaren speaks of his disillusionment with his evangelical roots. A loose network of "emergents" developed.
4. Cross denominational. Call themselves "post-modern" and "post-evangelical." Couches, recliners, etc., for church gatherings, stressing relationships. Shorts, T-shirts, etc. Every member has a say. No sermons, just discussions. "There aren't necessarily answers." Very casual and experiential. Participatory and sensorial.
5. Various are leaving for Romanism and Orthodoxy. One UMC cleric calls himself a "Metho-Catho-Costalite."
6. Urging reformulation of classic Christian formulations. There is a McClaren v. Carson contrast. Dr. Carson has a book about it.
7. Tony Jones is not that concerned with the theological differences, apparently.
More as this develops. Only in Amurrica.
YouTube - Let's Talk Post-Modernism and the Emergent Church...
YouTube - Let's Talk Post-Modernism and the Emergent Church...
Interesting. Sproul, Mohler, and Ravi Zacharias.
1. Language deconstruction resulting in anti-intellectual, irrational, mysticized theology. A friend, Rev. Castellano, an Anglican, is doing doctoral work on philosophical deconstructionism and relativism--at a more sophisticated level than this scribec.
2. Religion as a "mood." Rejection of cognitive and propositional revelation.
3. Emergent brand. Brian McClaren--relativistic religion. Rejection of the law of contradiction.
4. Today's liberals are yesterday's evangelicals. Liberalism was originally rooted in "pietism."
5. "Orthodox" or classical, confessional Christians. Erasmus's claim against Luther for propositional truths on predestination.
6. "Boredom of God." Non-critical people like sheep follow the Emergents and Emerging leaders.
7. Fear and dislike of debate. "Divisive" is the claim. "Relativize" doctrine. These men say, "You can't kill doctrine and truth in the streets over the quest for `peace.'"
Recommending Dr. Scott Clark's "Recovering the Reformed Confession." While not an Anglican, it has substantial import to classical, Reformational Anglicans---not the M3-types, 'Murrikan Mutant Manglicans. But brave, thoughtful, courageous, thinking Reformed Anglicans.
Interesting. Sproul, Mohler, and Ravi Zacharias.
1. Language deconstruction resulting in anti-intellectual, irrational, mysticized theology. A friend, Rev. Castellano, an Anglican, is doing doctoral work on philosophical deconstructionism and relativism--at a more sophisticated level than this scribec.
2. Religion as a "mood." Rejection of cognitive and propositional revelation.
3. Emergent brand. Brian McClaren--relativistic religion. Rejection of the law of contradiction.
4. Today's liberals are yesterday's evangelicals. Liberalism was originally rooted in "pietism."
5. "Orthodox" or classical, confessional Christians. Erasmus's claim against Luther for propositional truths on predestination.
6. "Boredom of God." Non-critical people like sheep follow the Emergents and Emerging leaders.
7. Fear and dislike of debate. "Divisive" is the claim. "Relativize" doctrine. These men say, "You can't kill doctrine and truth in the streets over the quest for `peace.'"
Recommending Dr. Scott Clark's "Recovering the Reformed Confession." While not an Anglican, it has substantial import to classical, Reformational Anglicans---not the M3-types, 'Murrikan Mutant Manglicans. But brave, thoughtful, courageous, thinking Reformed Anglicans.
YouTube - John MacArthur Explains True Gospel
YouTube - John MacArthur Explains True Gospel
As the WCF rightly affirms, to assert that there is salvation by any other way or means or name than Christ's is a "pernicious evil." On this, MacArthur holds the line....reminiscent of the Athansian Creed although Mac would never use that. The liberal Methodist is a tap-dancer. Vatican Two is pernicious on this point also.
The liberal Merikan Episcobaalian church has no Gospel either.
As the WCF rightly affirms, to assert that there is salvation by any other way or means or name than Christ's is a "pernicious evil." On this, MacArthur holds the line....reminiscent of the Athansian Creed although Mac would never use that. The liberal Methodist is a tap-dancer. Vatican Two is pernicious on this point also.
The liberal Merikan Episcobaalian church has no Gospel either.
The Amazing Heresies of Benedict XVI
The Amazing Heresies of Benedict XVI: "Bookmark & ShareX"
This fellow is gutting his own Romanist Popes. Who's tracking on this? I've read 8-10 of Joe Ratzinger's books and have seen some of these issues, preliminarily. Same with Vat 2 docs, but that was several years ago. There may be things out of context, but pre-Vat 2 and Vat 2 may well contain substantial contradictions. If so, Vat 1 is toast on his own internal presuppositions.
Thoughts?
This fellow is gutting his own Romanist Popes. Who's tracking on this? I've read 8-10 of Joe Ratzinger's books and have seen some of these issues, preliminarily. Same with Vat 2 docs, but that was several years ago. There may be things out of context, but pre-Vat 2 and Vat 2 may well contain substantial contradictions. If so, Vat 1 is toast on his own internal presuppositions.
Thoughts?
Vatican II: Council of Apostasy
Vatican II: Council of Apostasy
Some bizarre claims by devout Romanists against Vatican 11. Most Protestants have a small understanding of the Papacy and Romanism. Anglicans, esp. the 3-Mers, the Murrican Mutant Manglican types, the ACNA, is just as bad, effaced by liberalism and modernity. One has to do one's own heavy lifting and reading.
This is rather lengthy, but most curious.
Some bizarre claims by devout Romanists against Vatican 11. Most Protestants have a small understanding of the Papacy and Romanism. Anglicans, esp. the 3-Mers, the Murrican Mutant Manglican types, the ACNA, is just as bad, effaced by liberalism and modernity. One has to do one's own heavy lifting and reading.
This is rather lengthy, but most curious.
1517: A False Gospel
1517: A False Gospel
As ruthlessly cheap as I am (8th commandment, WSC) which has a great consequence (money in hand), may need to spring for this study by this new voice in modernity, critiquing these rash enthusiasts, unhinged and unanchored. Are there thoughts here?
There are enthusiasts in the 'Murrican Mutant Manglican, ACNA, world as well. Not sure of the extent or depth. We have reason to think VOL privately harbours a charismatic angle. ???
I generally avoid publishing anything by Rebaptizers, or modern Baptists, given their disobedience towards children and infant baptism, but there are some interesting takes here for development re: these modern Tetzelians.
As ruthlessly cheap as I am (8th commandment, WSC) which has a great consequence (money in hand), may need to spring for this study by this new voice in modernity, critiquing these rash enthusiasts, unhinged and unanchored. Are there thoughts here?
There are enthusiasts in the 'Murrican Mutant Manglican, ACNA, world as well. Not sure of the extent or depth. We have reason to think VOL privately harbours a charismatic angle. ???
I generally avoid publishing anything by Rebaptizers, or modern Baptists, given their disobedience towards children and infant baptism, but there are some interesting takes here for development re: these modern Tetzelians.
LC 3, SC 2 « Daily Westminster
LC 3, SC 2 « Daily Westminster
The great Westminster Catechism. Timeless. Important, especially for Anglicans, in a tradition that seriously erred in failing to adopt this standard. A must for memory and catechetical work. It does not conflict with the great doctrines, piety, or worship of the old Reformed Book of Common Prayer. Packer, with hi...s ECT-blodge on an otherwise good set of writings, called the WCF a good commentary on the XXXIX Articles.
These are things the 'Merican Mutant Manglicans, ACNA, aren't going to tell you. Why? Cluelessness in leadership. Lack of education. Lack of training in Reformation thought.
The great Westminster Catechism. Timeless. Important, especially for Anglicans, in a tradition that seriously erred in failing to adopt this standard. A must for memory and catechetical work. It does not conflict with the great doctrines, piety, or worship of the old Reformed Book of Common Prayer. Packer, with hi...s ECT-blodge on an otherwise good set of writings, called the WCF a good commentary on the XXXIX Articles.
These are things the 'Merican Mutant Manglicans, ACNA, aren't going to tell you. Why? Cluelessness in leadership. Lack of education. Lack of training in Reformation thought.
Shorter Catechism, week 1 « Daily Confession
Shorter Catechism, week 1 « Daily Confession
A must-memorize for every young Christian, covenant children of Christ's Church, or new-joins to Christ. Get this Catechism in the bloodstream. Master it. What a daily joy to enjoy God!
Anglicans grossly erred in failing to adopt this as a Catechetical standard. We need a Revolution of Mind in American Anglicanism.
A must-memorize for every young Christian, covenant children of Christ's Church, or new-joins to Christ. Get this Catechism in the bloodstream. Master it. What a daily joy to enjoy God!
Anglicans grossly erred in failing to adopt this as a Catechetical standard. We need a Revolution of Mind in American Anglicanism.
Monday, January 4, 2010
WCF 1.2 « Daily Westminster
WCF 1.2 « Daily Westminster
All which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.
All which are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Mockingbird: My Seven Favorite (Heretical Crazy-Talk) Videos of 2009
Mockingbird: My Seven Favorite (Heretical Crazy-Talk) Videos of 2009
Religious kooks. The first kook, Warren, spoke to Anglican kooks at funny hugfest in Bedford, TX.
Religious kooks. The first kook, Warren, spoke to Anglican kooks at funny hugfest in Bedford, TX.
Justification
http://www.churchsociety.org/churchman/back_issues.htm#Churchmanv115i1
Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of Justification
Churchman 114/4 (2000)
Martin Foord
Introduction
Richard Hooker has been described by Paul Avis as "unquestionably the greatest Anglican theologian." Yet there still remains disagreement about where Hooker stood theologically. Is he a champion for the magisterial Reformers, as Torrance Kirby suggests? Or maybe the great defender of the Anglican via media as Lee Gibbs asserts? Peter Lake has forcefully argued that Hooker found the perfect moment in history to be the mighty inventor of Anglicanism. Where did the "judicious" Hooker anchor his theological ship?
In this paper we propose to briefly examine Richard Hooker's doctrine of justification. This is a subject that has not received much attention in Hooker scholarship. But it reveals some fascinating insights into the thought of the great divine. Moreover, it may provide some further clues concerning what it actually was that Hooker was attempting to do in his theology.
There are broadly three positions concerning Hooker's doctrine of justification. Firstly, there are those who see Hooker as thoroughly Protestant. Paul Avis asserts "Richard Hooker's classical definition of justification in his great sermon of that title is pure evangelical theology." Avis believes that Hooker accepted with all the Reformers, and indeed the Puritans, that justification was the articulus standis aut cadentis ecclesiae.
The second opinion regarding Hooker's doctrine of justification comes from the Jesuit Joseph Devine. He argues that Hooker elucidated a version of the great doctrine that was contradictory and confused. According to Devine, Hooker sought to baptize the Protestant construal of justification in scholastic categories. But such an attempt turned out to be a failure. Devine argues that Hooker saw the formal cause of justification as the crux which divided Rome and Canterbury, but he did not and could not finally state what exactly the formal cause was.
The final evaluation concerning Hooker's doctrine of justification is that he was trying to produce something that was in fact a via media between Rome and Geneva. Hooker's doctrine of justification was neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic; it was comfortably settled at Canterbury. In the words of Alister McGrath:
Hooker attempts to construct a mediating doctrine of justification between Catholicism and Protestantism, which avoids the discredited eirenicon of double justification.
The Meaning of The Word "Justification"
Hooker tells us what, in his mind, was the meaning of the actual word "justification". The discussion appears in his late Dublin Fragments. Hooker asserts that generally "justification" means "to be made righteous", but more particularly it gives way to two further meanings:
To be justifyed, is to be made righteous. Because therefore, righteousness doth imply first remission of sinnes, and secondlie a sanctifyed life, the name is sometyme applyed severally to the former, sometymes joyntlie it comprehendeth both.
So Hooker understood that firstly "justification" signifies the forgiveness of sins. It is the forensic declaration of God that one is no longer guilty:
therefore in his blood we are justified, that is to say cleered and acquited from all sinne.
But Hooker believed "justification" had a second meaning। He asserted that "sometymes joyntlie it [justification] comprehendeth both" remission of sins and a sanctified life. The words "joyntlie" and "both" indicate that this second justification is not simply sanctification, but includes also the remission of sins. Such a construal is akin to that which Augustine pioneered and Western Christendom generally followed until Luther. In Hooker's mind St. Paul spoke of first justification, and St. James of second justification:
Now betweene the grace of this first justification, and the glorie of the world to come, whereof wee are not capable, unles the rest of our lives be qualifyed with the righteousness of a second justification consisting in good workes, therefore as St. Paul doth dispute for faith, without workes to the first, soe St. James to the second justification is urgent for workes with faith.
If there is any reformer that Hooker resembles in his understanding of the word "justification" it seems to be that of Martin Bucer. The difference between the two would appear to be that Hooker includes remission of sin in the second justification whereas Bucer appears not to. We note that Calvin saw three meanings of "justification" in scripture, none of them meant "to make righteous."
Justification and Imputation
Martin Luther's great Reformation breakthrough was the notion of imputed righteousness. This is the idea that the alien righteousness of Christ was imputed to the believer, with the result that a believer could be justified or declared by God to be not guilty. Thus, in Luther's theological schema, the believer was simul iustus et peccator, "simultaneously righteous and a sinner." Imputed righteousness was a concept unknown for the first fifteen hundred years of Catholic theology. So it was this formal cause of justification (imputed righteousness) that demarcated Reformation theology from Rome.
Hooker himself followed the Reformers in having a clear doctrine of imputed righteousness. If his understanding that first justification was a declaration by God that a believer was acquitted, then the basis of such a declaration could only be the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer. Hooker is utterly clear about this from his earliest to his latest writings. So in his early sermon on Jude he declares:
Being justified, all our iniquities are covered, God beholdeth us in the righteousnesse which is imputed, and not in the sinnes which wee have committed.
In his great sermon on justification Hooker is at pains to distinguish between (first) justification and sanctification (or second justification). Justification consists in an imputed righteousness that is total and external, sanctification consists in an imparted righteousness that is incomplete and internal:
The righteousnes wherewith we shalbe clothed in the world to come, is both perfecte and inherente: that whereby here we are justified is perfecte but not inherente: that whereby we are sanctified, inherent but not perfect.
But the righteousness wherein we muste be found if we wilbe justified, is not our owne, therefore we cannott be justefied by any inherente quality. Christe hath merited rightuousness for asmany as are found in hym.
Nowe concerning the rightuousnes of sanctification, we deny it not to be inherente, we graunte that without we work we have it not, onely we distingusihe it as a thinge in nature differente from the rightuousnes of justification.
If one believes imputed righteousness marks the substance of reformation theology then Hooker is undoubtedly to be placed within the ambit of Protestantism. But Joseph Devine has argued that Hooker was confused regarding the formal cause of justification. He believes Hooker failed to define it, indeed he could not define it because Hooker used Thomistic categories. But Hooker did indeed elucidate the formal cause of justification:
As for the councill of Trent concerninge inherent righteousnes, what doth it here? No man doubteth but they [Rome] make another formall cawse of justification then we do, in respecte whereof I have shewed alredye that we disagree aboute the verye essence of that which cureth our spirituall disseas.
Here Hooker explains that the formal cause is the "very essence" of our spiritual cure, that is, the very essence of the righteousness that justifies. This must be the imputed righteousness of Christ that Hooker explained with great care in his sermon on justification. Devine is correct to say that a formal cause is by definition an internal cause, but he commits a non sequitur by concluding that justifying righteousness has to be internal to the person. If, as Hooker argues, justification is the action of God acquitting a person, then imputed righteousness is indeed an internal cause in such an episode. Devine fails to understand that (first) justification for Hooker is an action of God upon a believer.
Justification and the Sacraments
What does distinguish Hooker from magisterial Reformation theology generally is his doctrine of the sacraments. He believed that justification (both first and second) is an effect of the sacraments. This is seen in the Dublin Fragments where Hooker defines sacramental grace and then ties it to justification:
Touching Sacraments whether many or few in number, their doctrine is, that ours both signifye and cause grace; butt what grace and in what manner? By grace wee allwayes understand as the word of God teacheth, first, his favour and undeserved mercie towards us; Secondlie, the bestowing of his holy spiritt which inwardlie worketh; thirdlie, the effects of that Spiritt whatsoever butt especiallie saving vertues, such as are, faith, charitie, and hope, lastly the free and full remission of all our sinnes. This is the grace which Sacraments yeeld, and whereby wee are all justifyed.
Thus it would appear that Hooker understood the sacraments to be channels of justifying grace. Such a position may sound Romish, but it differs in one significant way. It rejects one aspect of justifying grace that Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics focused on. This was grace as a formal habit of the soul, which made a person acceptable to God, and allowed one to accrue merit. Hooker discards such a construct because it is not found in the New Testament or in the early church Fathers:
The Schoolmen which follow Thomas, doe not only comprise in the name of justifying grace, the favour of God, his spiritt and effect of that favour, and saving vertues the effects of his Spiritte, butt over and besides these three a fourth kind of formall habite, or inherent qualitie which maketh the person of man acceptable, perfecteth the substance of his minde, and causeth the vertuous actions thereof to be meritorious. This grace they will have to be the principall effects of Sacraments, a grace which neyther Christ, nor any Apostle of Christ did ever mention. The Fathers have it not in their writings, although they often speake of Sacraments and of the grace wee receive by them.
Because Hooker understood the sacraments to be channels of justifying grace, it led him to argue that the sacraments are indeed necessary for salvation, something the magisterial reformers never affirmed:
Seinge therefore that grace is a consequent of Sacramentes, a thinge which accompanieth them as theire ende, a benefit which he that hath receyveth from God him selfe the author of the sacramentes and not from anie other naturall or supernaturall qualitie in them, it may be hereby both understood that sacraments are necessarie.
In light of such a position Hooker propounded a doctrine of baptismal regeneration also quite unlike the magisterial reformers. Hooker labours the point in chapters 58 to 61 of book V in his Lawes. In this section he explains how first justification is tied to baptism:
baptisme is a sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the ende that they which receave the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most prestious merit obteine as well that savinge grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltines, as also that infused divine vertue of the holie Ghost which giveth to the powers of the soule theire first disposition towardes future newnes of life.
The imputation of Christ's righteousness occurs in the very action of baptism itself, whereby also the Spirit is received by the believer. Such a passage shows that in Hooker's sacramental theology baptism is not a meritorious work. Christ's merits are the entire basis of one's justification. So baptism is the instrumental cause of (first) justification. Such a position leads Hooker to two conclusions that differ from the magisterial reformers markedly. Firstly, Hooker believes that the very action of infant baptism leads to the child's sins being actually remitted even if faith is not present. Secondly, when Hooker talks of being justified by faith "alone" he assumes that the sacrament of baptism is included. The Dublin Fragments expound both points:
To the imputation of Christ’s death for remission of sinnes, wee teach faith alone necessarie; wherein it is not our meaning, to separate thereby faith from any other qualitie or dutie, which God requireth to be matched therewith, butt from faith to seclude in justification the fellowship of worth through precedent workes as the Apostle St. Paul doeth. For in Children God exacteth butt baptisme unto remission of sinne; in converts from infidelitie both faith and penitencie before baptism; and for remission of sinnes actuall after baptism, penitencie in all men as well as faith; Nor does any faith justifye, butt that wherewith there is joyned both hope and love. Yet justifyed we are by faith alone, because there is neyther Jewe noe Gentile, neyther Martyr, nor Sainct, noe man whose workes in whole or in parte cleere can make him righteous in Gods sight.
Hooker argued for the necessity of water baptism by appealing to texts such as Ephesians 5:26, Acts 2:38, Titus 3:5 and especially John 3:5, "no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit". He noted that in the latter "water" was universally accepted in the early church as literal and not metaphorical, as Cartwright (following Calvin) had argued. But Hooker also believed that the Fathers were too harsh in insisting that an infant would be damned if it died without baptism. In circumstances that made it impossible for one to receive the sacrament, God in his grace would extend acceptance.
If first justification is the effect of baptism, it would appear that Hooker believes second justification is the effect of the eucharist:
Wee receive Christ Jesus in baptisme once as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often as beinge by continewall degrees the finisher of our life. By baptisme therefore we receive Christ Jesus and from him that savinge grace which is proper unto baptisme. By the other sacrament wee receive him also impartinge therein him self and that grace which the Eucharist properlie bestoweth.
Such a sacramental theology interfaces well with Hooker's central doctrine of participation. This doctrine has two elements. Firstly the believer is said to be "in Christ" (by external imputation) and secondly Christ is said to be "in" the believer (by internal impartation):
Thus wee participate Christ partelie by imputation, as when those thinges which he
did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousnes; partlie by habituall and reall infusion, as when grace is inwardlie bestowed while wee are on earth and afterwardes more fullie both our soules and bodies made like unto his in glorie.
Baptism relates to the first aspect of participation (the believer in Christ), the eucharist to the second (Christ in the believer):
ech sacrament havinge both that which is generall or common, and that also which is peculiar unto it selfe, wee maie hereby gather that the participation of Christ which properlie belongeth to any one sacrament is not otherwise to be obtained but by the sacrament whereunto it is proper.
John Calvin, like Hooker, believed that the sacraments were able to impart grace. But Calvin and Hooker meant something very different even though their sacramental language was similar. Calvin believed that the sacraments imparted grace because they were a subset of the word. God's word of gospel promise, according to Calvin, strengthens and nourishes faith. The sacraments as visible words, to be sure words of promise, are performed in order to increase faith.
Hooker's theology of the sacraments places them side by side with the word as a means of grace in their own right. They are not simply a subset of the word, although they do function as signs of God's promises. This is particularly seen in Hooker's doctrine of infant baptism. We observed above that Hooker believed a child in baptism receives the remission of sins whether faith is present or not. Such a position is fundamentally different to Calvin.
Justification and Ecclesiology
The reformation doctrine of imputed righteousness led to a transformed ecclesiology. If a believer was simul iustus et peccator, someone viewed from two different perspectives, one sinful and one righteous, then the church also could be viewed from two perspectives. Firstly there was the human perspective, which became known as the visible church. Secondly, the church could be viewed from God's perspective, which was known as the invisible church; a group which only God knew. Hooker himself agreed with the magisterial reformers' distinction between the visible and invisible church, although he referred to the invisible church as the church "mysticall". But Hooker had a very different theology of the visible church. Whereas the magisterial reformers talked of the visible church as a "congregation", Hooker spoke of a "societie":
the [visible] Church is alwaies a visible society of men, not an assembly, but a societie.
The magisterial reformers believed the visible church could be identified by two marks (notae ecclesiae). These were the pure gospel (Luther) or word (Calvin) and the sacraments rightly administered. Hooker, on the other hand, identified different marks whereby the visible church could be identified. These marks were three: one lord, one faith, one baptism:
We speake now of the visible Church, whose children are signed with this marke, One Lord, one faith, one baptisme. In whomsoever these thinges are, the church doth acknowledge them for hir children; them onely she holdeth for aliens and strangers, in whom these thinges are not found.
For Hooker the visible church was recognised in those people who profess to have "one Lord" (Jesus Christ), who uphold the "one faith" which is the basic content of the apostolic faith handed on once for all, and who have been marked by "one baptism".
The key question that arises in Hooker's ecclesiology is what are the contents of the "one faith" that is to be professed? What doctrines does it include? Hooker dealt at length with this in his celebrated conflation of three sermons, A Learned Discourse of Justification, Workes, and How the Foundation of Faith Is Overthrowne.
A key concept for Hooker in this sermon is what he calls the "foundation of the faith". Hooker believes that this foundation is to be found firstly in the New Testament writings:
If the foundacion of faith do ymporte the generall grownd wherupon we reste when we do believe, the wrytinges of the evaungelistes and the apostles are the foundacion of Christian faith.
But he goes further and expounds what he believes to be the absolute non-negotiable kernel of Christian truth. It is the "foundation" which is to be believed for salvation. Time and again Hooker says what he believes this to be:
Christe crucefied for the salvation of the worlde.
Christ my savyor my Redeemer Jesus.
In dede mony of them in former tymes as theire bookes and writinges do yett shewe held the foundacion to wit salvacion by Christe alone, and therefore mighte be saved.
salvation purchased by the death of Christe. By this foundation ...
This is then the foundacion wherupon the frame of the gospell is erected. That verye Jesus whome the virgen conceyved of the holy goste, whome Simeon imbraced in his armes whome Pilate condempned whome the Jewes crucefied who the Apostles preached, he is christe the lord [Luke 2:11] the onely saviour of the world: Other foundacion can no man laie [1 Cor. 3].
For towching the principll objecte of faith longer then it holdeth that foundation whereof we have spoken it neither justefieth nor is, but ceaseth to be faith when ceaseth to believe Jesus Christe is the only Saviour of the world.
Salvation only by Christe is the true foundacion whereupon indeed Christiantye standeth.
Salvation therefore by Christe is the foundacion of christianitye.
Thus the absolute minimum to be believed is that Jesus is the only saviour and Lord. This is the confession that determines the boundaries of the visible church. But Hooker's position is not simply that anyone who holds to this foundation is in the invisible church as many have thought. His matrix is much more subtle. There are many who do hold to the foundation but are not to be included in the visible church. Hooker explains two key distinctions that qualify the foundation.
The first distinction is whether one denies the foundation "directly" or "indirectly". Those who deny directly Christ as the only saviour and Lord are clean excluded from the visible church. Whereas those who deny the foundation indirectly or "by consequent" are not necessarily excluded. Another distinction is needed.
The second distinction for Hooker is between those who err in "ignorance" and those who err in "stubborness". The ignorant are unaware that they hold to error and yet are desirous to know the truth. The "stubborn" are those who are aware of their error yet persist in it. So there may be people who hold to the foundation but indirectly deny it. If they are unaware of this, and also are desirous to know more of the truth they should be included in the visible church. Those who hold to the foundation but also are aware that they deny it by consequent, are to be excluded from the visible church.
Given these two distinctions Hooker is able to include Rome within the sphere of the visible church. This is because Rome does not deny the foundation directly but by consequent:
Then what is the faulte of the churche of Rome? not that she requireth workes att theire handes that wilbe saved but that she attributeth unto workes a power of satisfying god for syn and virtue to merite both grace here and in heaven glorye. That this overthroweth the foundacion of faith I graunte willingly, that it is a directe deniall thereof I utterly denye. ... Salvation therefore by Christe is the foundacion of christianitye. As for workes they are a thing subordynate, no otherwise necessary then becawse our sanctificacion cannott be accomplished without them. The doctrine concerning them is a thing builded upon the foundacion, therfore the doctrine which addeth unto them power of satisfying or of merittinge addeth unto a thing subordinated, builded upon the foundacion, not the very foundacion it self, yett is the foundacion consequently by this addition overthrowne.
Thus Hooker is able to conclude that many who died in the church of Rome before the reformation would have been saved. Yet those in Rome who are aware of justification by faith alone but continue to deny its truth are most likely excluded from the visible church. The corollary of Hooker's ecclesiology is that strictly speaking justification by faith alone is not the article by which the visible church stands or falls. It allows Hooker to hold that there was a church before Luther, indeed there has always been a church since Christ.
Should Protestants then treat Roman Catholics as brothers and sisters in Christ and thus not attempt to convince them of their position on justification? The outworking of Hooker's position would not allow this. Consistency with Hooker's position would be to take the pure gospel of justification by faith alone to Rome and call out of her those who truly are of Christ. This is because the true believers within Rome will be desirous to know the truth. Is this not exactly what the Apostle Paul did with the Galatians? He could not leave them in an error that destroyed the foundation by consequent, but preached to them justification by faith alone with white hot passion!
Conclusions
Given Hooker's doctrine of justification how would this contribute to the grand question concerning the purpose of Hooker's theology? The view that Hooker was elucidating a via media is problematic because his doctrine of justification cannot be forced through this hypothesis. Indeed what does a via media approach mean? That some of the doctrines were Protestant and other were Roman or that each doctrine had Protestant and Romish elements? Kirby is right to note that the notion of a via media in Hooker is anachronistic.
We must conclude that Hooker is Protestant because he held to the doctrine of imputed righteousness. But he was well removed from the magisterial reformers by his sacramentology and his ecclesiology that allowed Rome into the visible church. Such a distance from the magisterial reformers does not fit well with the thesis that Hooker was an apologist for the magisterial reformation either.
To conclude that Hooker was inventing Anglicanism also has its problems. It seems that Hooker's great desire was to be truly catholic. Egil Grislis has argued that Hooker's methodology was that of "consensus". He sought to include the best of church tradition in his formulations, not democratically but aristocratically. Thus Hooker drew not only from the well of the early church fathers and the reformers, but also from the Aristotelian scholastics! So it is unlikely that in Hooker's mind he was inventing anything. His formulations may well have been novel, as it appears his full position on justification was, but in his mind he was formulating catholicism. This is no via media but a via catholica. Moreover to say that Hooker invented Anglicanism is to deny that there were other theological formulations that fitted the Anglican symbols of Elizabethan England such as that of Whitgift. Hooker's was a version of Anglicanism.
Well then, can we classify Hooker's version of Anglicanism? Given his sacramentalism and support of the royal supremacy it would seem best to describe him as a high churchman, indeed probably the first high churchman. It would appear he set the theological trajectory in which divines like Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, and William Laud would follow.
Martin Foord
Trinity Theological College,
Perth, Australia.
Richard Hooker’s Doctrine of Justification
Churchman 114/4 (2000)
Martin Foord
Introduction
Richard Hooker has been described by Paul Avis as "unquestionably the greatest Anglican theologian." Yet there still remains disagreement about where Hooker stood theologically. Is he a champion for the magisterial Reformers, as Torrance Kirby suggests? Or maybe the great defender of the Anglican via media as Lee Gibbs asserts? Peter Lake has forcefully argued that Hooker found the perfect moment in history to be the mighty inventor of Anglicanism. Where did the "judicious" Hooker anchor his theological ship?
In this paper we propose to briefly examine Richard Hooker's doctrine of justification. This is a subject that has not received much attention in Hooker scholarship. But it reveals some fascinating insights into the thought of the great divine. Moreover, it may provide some further clues concerning what it actually was that Hooker was attempting to do in his theology.
There are broadly three positions concerning Hooker's doctrine of justification. Firstly, there are those who see Hooker as thoroughly Protestant. Paul Avis asserts "Richard Hooker's classical definition of justification in his great sermon of that title is pure evangelical theology." Avis believes that Hooker accepted with all the Reformers, and indeed the Puritans, that justification was the articulus standis aut cadentis ecclesiae.
The second opinion regarding Hooker's doctrine of justification comes from the Jesuit Joseph Devine. He argues that Hooker elucidated a version of the great doctrine that was contradictory and confused. According to Devine, Hooker sought to baptize the Protestant construal of justification in scholastic categories. But such an attempt turned out to be a failure. Devine argues that Hooker saw the formal cause of justification as the crux which divided Rome and Canterbury, but he did not and could not finally state what exactly the formal cause was.
The final evaluation concerning Hooker's doctrine of justification is that he was trying to produce something that was in fact a via media between Rome and Geneva. Hooker's doctrine of justification was neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic; it was comfortably settled at Canterbury. In the words of Alister McGrath:
Hooker attempts to construct a mediating doctrine of justification between Catholicism and Protestantism, which avoids the discredited eirenicon of double justification.
The Meaning of The Word "Justification"
Hooker tells us what, in his mind, was the meaning of the actual word "justification". The discussion appears in his late Dublin Fragments. Hooker asserts that generally "justification" means "to be made righteous", but more particularly it gives way to two further meanings:
To be justifyed, is to be made righteous. Because therefore, righteousness doth imply first remission of sinnes, and secondlie a sanctifyed life, the name is sometyme applyed severally to the former, sometymes joyntlie it comprehendeth both.
So Hooker understood that firstly "justification" signifies the forgiveness of sins. It is the forensic declaration of God that one is no longer guilty:
therefore in his blood we are justified, that is to say cleered and acquited from all sinne.
But Hooker believed "justification" had a second meaning। He asserted that "sometymes joyntlie it [justification] comprehendeth both" remission of sins and a sanctified life. The words "joyntlie" and "both" indicate that this second justification is not simply sanctification, but includes also the remission of sins. Such a construal is akin to that which Augustine pioneered and Western Christendom generally followed until Luther. In Hooker's mind St. Paul spoke of first justification, and St. James of second justification:
Now betweene the grace of this first justification, and the glorie of the world to come, whereof wee are not capable, unles the rest of our lives be qualifyed with the righteousness of a second justification consisting in good workes, therefore as St. Paul doth dispute for faith, without workes to the first, soe St. James to the second justification is urgent for workes with faith.
If there is any reformer that Hooker resembles in his understanding of the word "justification" it seems to be that of Martin Bucer. The difference between the two would appear to be that Hooker includes remission of sin in the second justification whereas Bucer appears not to. We note that Calvin saw three meanings of "justification" in scripture, none of them meant "to make righteous."
Justification and Imputation
Martin Luther's great Reformation breakthrough was the notion of imputed righteousness. This is the idea that the alien righteousness of Christ was imputed to the believer, with the result that a believer could be justified or declared by God to be not guilty. Thus, in Luther's theological schema, the believer was simul iustus et peccator, "simultaneously righteous and a sinner." Imputed righteousness was a concept unknown for the first fifteen hundred years of Catholic theology. So it was this formal cause of justification (imputed righteousness) that demarcated Reformation theology from Rome.
Hooker himself followed the Reformers in having a clear doctrine of imputed righteousness. If his understanding that first justification was a declaration by God that a believer was acquitted, then the basis of such a declaration could only be the perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer. Hooker is utterly clear about this from his earliest to his latest writings. So in his early sermon on Jude he declares:
Being justified, all our iniquities are covered, God beholdeth us in the righteousnesse which is imputed, and not in the sinnes which wee have committed.
In his great sermon on justification Hooker is at pains to distinguish between (first) justification and sanctification (or second justification). Justification consists in an imputed righteousness that is total and external, sanctification consists in an imparted righteousness that is incomplete and internal:
The righteousnes wherewith we shalbe clothed in the world to come, is both perfecte and inherente: that whereby here we are justified is perfecte but not inherente: that whereby we are sanctified, inherent but not perfect.
But the righteousness wherein we muste be found if we wilbe justified, is not our owne, therefore we cannott be justefied by any inherente quality. Christe hath merited rightuousness for asmany as are found in hym.
Nowe concerning the rightuousnes of sanctification, we deny it not to be inherente, we graunte that without we work we have it not, onely we distingusihe it as a thinge in nature differente from the rightuousnes of justification.
If one believes imputed righteousness marks the substance of reformation theology then Hooker is undoubtedly to be placed within the ambit of Protestantism. But Joseph Devine has argued that Hooker was confused regarding the formal cause of justification. He believes Hooker failed to define it, indeed he could not define it because Hooker used Thomistic categories. But Hooker did indeed elucidate the formal cause of justification:
As for the councill of Trent concerninge inherent righteousnes, what doth it here? No man doubteth but they [Rome] make another formall cawse of justification then we do, in respecte whereof I have shewed alredye that we disagree aboute the verye essence of that which cureth our spirituall disseas.
Here Hooker explains that the formal cause is the "very essence" of our spiritual cure, that is, the very essence of the righteousness that justifies. This must be the imputed righteousness of Christ that Hooker explained with great care in his sermon on justification. Devine is correct to say that a formal cause is by definition an internal cause, but he commits a non sequitur by concluding that justifying righteousness has to be internal to the person. If, as Hooker argues, justification is the action of God acquitting a person, then imputed righteousness is indeed an internal cause in such an episode. Devine fails to understand that (first) justification for Hooker is an action of God upon a believer.
Justification and the Sacraments
What does distinguish Hooker from magisterial Reformation theology generally is his doctrine of the sacraments. He believed that justification (both first and second) is an effect of the sacraments. This is seen in the Dublin Fragments where Hooker defines sacramental grace and then ties it to justification:
Touching Sacraments whether many or few in number, their doctrine is, that ours both signifye and cause grace; butt what grace and in what manner? By grace wee allwayes understand as the word of God teacheth, first, his favour and undeserved mercie towards us; Secondlie, the bestowing of his holy spiritt which inwardlie worketh; thirdlie, the effects of that Spiritt whatsoever butt especiallie saving vertues, such as are, faith, charitie, and hope, lastly the free and full remission of all our sinnes. This is the grace which Sacraments yeeld, and whereby wee are all justifyed.
Thus it would appear that Hooker understood the sacraments to be channels of justifying grace. Such a position may sound Romish, but it differs in one significant way. It rejects one aspect of justifying grace that Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastics focused on. This was grace as a formal habit of the soul, which made a person acceptable to God, and allowed one to accrue merit. Hooker discards such a construct because it is not found in the New Testament or in the early church Fathers:
The Schoolmen which follow Thomas, doe not only comprise in the name of justifying grace, the favour of God, his spiritt and effect of that favour, and saving vertues the effects of his Spiritte, butt over and besides these three a fourth kind of formall habite, or inherent qualitie which maketh the person of man acceptable, perfecteth the substance of his minde, and causeth the vertuous actions thereof to be meritorious. This grace they will have to be the principall effects of Sacraments, a grace which neyther Christ, nor any Apostle of Christ did ever mention. The Fathers have it not in their writings, although they often speake of Sacraments and of the grace wee receive by them.
Because Hooker understood the sacraments to be channels of justifying grace, it led him to argue that the sacraments are indeed necessary for salvation, something the magisterial reformers never affirmed:
Seinge therefore that grace is a consequent of Sacramentes, a thinge which accompanieth them as theire ende, a benefit which he that hath receyveth from God him selfe the author of the sacramentes and not from anie other naturall or supernaturall qualitie in them, it may be hereby both understood that sacraments are necessarie.
In light of such a position Hooker propounded a doctrine of baptismal regeneration also quite unlike the magisterial reformers. Hooker labours the point in chapters 58 to 61 of book V in his Lawes. In this section he explains how first justification is tied to baptism:
baptisme is a sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the ende that they which receave the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most prestious merit obteine as well that savinge grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltines, as also that infused divine vertue of the holie Ghost which giveth to the powers of the soule theire first disposition towardes future newnes of life.
The imputation of Christ's righteousness occurs in the very action of baptism itself, whereby also the Spirit is received by the believer. Such a passage shows that in Hooker's sacramental theology baptism is not a meritorious work. Christ's merits are the entire basis of one's justification. So baptism is the instrumental cause of (first) justification. Such a position leads Hooker to two conclusions that differ from the magisterial reformers markedly. Firstly, Hooker believes that the very action of infant baptism leads to the child's sins being actually remitted even if faith is not present. Secondly, when Hooker talks of being justified by faith "alone" he assumes that the sacrament of baptism is included. The Dublin Fragments expound both points:
To the imputation of Christ’s death for remission of sinnes, wee teach faith alone necessarie; wherein it is not our meaning, to separate thereby faith from any other qualitie or dutie, which God requireth to be matched therewith, butt from faith to seclude in justification the fellowship of worth through precedent workes as the Apostle St. Paul doeth. For in Children God exacteth butt baptisme unto remission of sinne; in converts from infidelitie both faith and penitencie before baptism; and for remission of sinnes actuall after baptism, penitencie in all men as well as faith; Nor does any faith justifye, butt that wherewith there is joyned both hope and love. Yet justifyed we are by faith alone, because there is neyther Jewe noe Gentile, neyther Martyr, nor Sainct, noe man whose workes in whole or in parte cleere can make him righteous in Gods sight.
Hooker argued for the necessity of water baptism by appealing to texts such as Ephesians 5:26, Acts 2:38, Titus 3:5 and especially John 3:5, "no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit". He noted that in the latter "water" was universally accepted in the early church as literal and not metaphorical, as Cartwright (following Calvin) had argued. But Hooker also believed that the Fathers were too harsh in insisting that an infant would be damned if it died without baptism. In circumstances that made it impossible for one to receive the sacrament, God in his grace would extend acceptance.
If first justification is the effect of baptism, it would appear that Hooker believes second justification is the effect of the eucharist:
Wee receive Christ Jesus in baptisme once as the first beginner, in the Eucharist often as beinge by continewall degrees the finisher of our life. By baptisme therefore we receive Christ Jesus and from him that savinge grace which is proper unto baptisme. By the other sacrament wee receive him also impartinge therein him self and that grace which the Eucharist properlie bestoweth.
Such a sacramental theology interfaces well with Hooker's central doctrine of participation. This doctrine has two elements. Firstly the believer is said to be "in Christ" (by external imputation) and secondly Christ is said to be "in" the believer (by internal impartation):
Thus wee participate Christ partelie by imputation, as when those thinges which he
did and suffered for us are imputed unto us for righteousnes; partlie by habituall and reall infusion, as when grace is inwardlie bestowed while wee are on earth and afterwardes more fullie both our soules and bodies made like unto his in glorie.
Baptism relates to the first aspect of participation (the believer in Christ), the eucharist to the second (Christ in the believer):
ech sacrament havinge both that which is generall or common, and that also which is peculiar unto it selfe, wee maie hereby gather that the participation of Christ which properlie belongeth to any one sacrament is not otherwise to be obtained but by the sacrament whereunto it is proper.
John Calvin, like Hooker, believed that the sacraments were able to impart grace. But Calvin and Hooker meant something very different even though their sacramental language was similar. Calvin believed that the sacraments imparted grace because they were a subset of the word. God's word of gospel promise, according to Calvin, strengthens and nourishes faith. The sacraments as visible words, to be sure words of promise, are performed in order to increase faith.
Hooker's theology of the sacraments places them side by side with the word as a means of grace in their own right. They are not simply a subset of the word, although they do function as signs of God's promises. This is particularly seen in Hooker's doctrine of infant baptism. We observed above that Hooker believed a child in baptism receives the remission of sins whether faith is present or not. Such a position is fundamentally different to Calvin.
Justification and Ecclesiology
The reformation doctrine of imputed righteousness led to a transformed ecclesiology. If a believer was simul iustus et peccator, someone viewed from two different perspectives, one sinful and one righteous, then the church also could be viewed from two perspectives. Firstly there was the human perspective, which became known as the visible church. Secondly, the church could be viewed from God's perspective, which was known as the invisible church; a group which only God knew. Hooker himself agreed with the magisterial reformers' distinction between the visible and invisible church, although he referred to the invisible church as the church "mysticall". But Hooker had a very different theology of the visible church. Whereas the magisterial reformers talked of the visible church as a "congregation", Hooker spoke of a "societie":
the [visible] Church is alwaies a visible society of men, not an assembly, but a societie.
The magisterial reformers believed the visible church could be identified by two marks (notae ecclesiae). These were the pure gospel (Luther) or word (Calvin) and the sacraments rightly administered. Hooker, on the other hand, identified different marks whereby the visible church could be identified. These marks were three: one lord, one faith, one baptism:
We speake now of the visible Church, whose children are signed with this marke, One Lord, one faith, one baptisme. In whomsoever these thinges are, the church doth acknowledge them for hir children; them onely she holdeth for aliens and strangers, in whom these thinges are not found.
For Hooker the visible church was recognised in those people who profess to have "one Lord" (Jesus Christ), who uphold the "one faith" which is the basic content of the apostolic faith handed on once for all, and who have been marked by "one baptism".
The key question that arises in Hooker's ecclesiology is what are the contents of the "one faith" that is to be professed? What doctrines does it include? Hooker dealt at length with this in his celebrated conflation of three sermons, A Learned Discourse of Justification, Workes, and How the Foundation of Faith Is Overthrowne.
A key concept for Hooker in this sermon is what he calls the "foundation of the faith". Hooker believes that this foundation is to be found firstly in the New Testament writings:
If the foundacion of faith do ymporte the generall grownd wherupon we reste when we do believe, the wrytinges of the evaungelistes and the apostles are the foundacion of Christian faith.
But he goes further and expounds what he believes to be the absolute non-negotiable kernel of Christian truth. It is the "foundation" which is to be believed for salvation. Time and again Hooker says what he believes this to be:
Christe crucefied for the salvation of the worlde.
Christ my savyor my Redeemer Jesus.
In dede mony of them in former tymes as theire bookes and writinges do yett shewe held the foundacion to wit salvacion by Christe alone, and therefore mighte be saved.
salvation purchased by the death of Christe. By this foundation ...
This is then the foundacion wherupon the frame of the gospell is erected. That verye Jesus whome the virgen conceyved of the holy goste, whome Simeon imbraced in his armes whome Pilate condempned whome the Jewes crucefied who the Apostles preached, he is christe the lord [Luke 2:11] the onely saviour of the world: Other foundacion can no man laie [1 Cor. 3].
For towching the principll objecte of faith longer then it holdeth that foundation whereof we have spoken it neither justefieth nor is, but ceaseth to be faith when ceaseth to believe Jesus Christe is the only Saviour of the world.
Salvation only by Christe is the true foundacion whereupon indeed Christiantye standeth.
Salvation therefore by Christe is the foundacion of christianitye.
Thus the absolute minimum to be believed is that Jesus is the only saviour and Lord. This is the confession that determines the boundaries of the visible church. But Hooker's position is not simply that anyone who holds to this foundation is in the invisible church as many have thought. His matrix is much more subtle. There are many who do hold to the foundation but are not to be included in the visible church. Hooker explains two key distinctions that qualify the foundation.
The first distinction is whether one denies the foundation "directly" or "indirectly". Those who deny directly Christ as the only saviour and Lord are clean excluded from the visible church. Whereas those who deny the foundation indirectly or "by consequent" are not necessarily excluded. Another distinction is needed.
The second distinction for Hooker is between those who err in "ignorance" and those who err in "stubborness". The ignorant are unaware that they hold to error and yet are desirous to know the truth. The "stubborn" are those who are aware of their error yet persist in it. So there may be people who hold to the foundation but indirectly deny it. If they are unaware of this, and also are desirous to know more of the truth they should be included in the visible church. Those who hold to the foundation but also are aware that they deny it by consequent, are to be excluded from the visible church.
Given these two distinctions Hooker is able to include Rome within the sphere of the visible church. This is because Rome does not deny the foundation directly but by consequent:
Then what is the faulte of the churche of Rome? not that she requireth workes att theire handes that wilbe saved but that she attributeth unto workes a power of satisfying god for syn and virtue to merite both grace here and in heaven glorye. That this overthroweth the foundacion of faith I graunte willingly, that it is a directe deniall thereof I utterly denye. ... Salvation therefore by Christe is the foundacion of christianitye. As for workes they are a thing subordynate, no otherwise necessary then becawse our sanctificacion cannott be accomplished without them. The doctrine concerning them is a thing builded upon the foundacion, therfore the doctrine which addeth unto them power of satisfying or of merittinge addeth unto a thing subordinated, builded upon the foundacion, not the very foundacion it self, yett is the foundacion consequently by this addition overthrowne.
Thus Hooker is able to conclude that many who died in the church of Rome before the reformation would have been saved. Yet those in Rome who are aware of justification by faith alone but continue to deny its truth are most likely excluded from the visible church. The corollary of Hooker's ecclesiology is that strictly speaking justification by faith alone is not the article by which the visible church stands or falls. It allows Hooker to hold that there was a church before Luther, indeed there has always been a church since Christ.
Should Protestants then treat Roman Catholics as brothers and sisters in Christ and thus not attempt to convince them of their position on justification? The outworking of Hooker's position would not allow this. Consistency with Hooker's position would be to take the pure gospel of justification by faith alone to Rome and call out of her those who truly are of Christ. This is because the true believers within Rome will be desirous to know the truth. Is this not exactly what the Apostle Paul did with the Galatians? He could not leave them in an error that destroyed the foundation by consequent, but preached to them justification by faith alone with white hot passion!
Conclusions
Given Hooker's doctrine of justification how would this contribute to the grand question concerning the purpose of Hooker's theology? The view that Hooker was elucidating a via media is problematic because his doctrine of justification cannot be forced through this hypothesis. Indeed what does a via media approach mean? That some of the doctrines were Protestant and other were Roman or that each doctrine had Protestant and Romish elements? Kirby is right to note that the notion of a via media in Hooker is anachronistic.
We must conclude that Hooker is Protestant because he held to the doctrine of imputed righteousness. But he was well removed from the magisterial reformers by his sacramentology and his ecclesiology that allowed Rome into the visible church. Such a distance from the magisterial reformers does not fit well with the thesis that Hooker was an apologist for the magisterial reformation either.
To conclude that Hooker was inventing Anglicanism also has its problems. It seems that Hooker's great desire was to be truly catholic. Egil Grislis has argued that Hooker's methodology was that of "consensus". He sought to include the best of church tradition in his formulations, not democratically but aristocratically. Thus Hooker drew not only from the well of the early church fathers and the reformers, but also from the Aristotelian scholastics! So it is unlikely that in Hooker's mind he was inventing anything. His formulations may well have been novel, as it appears his full position on justification was, but in his mind he was formulating catholicism. This is no via media but a via catholica. Moreover to say that Hooker invented Anglicanism is to deny that there were other theological formulations that fitted the Anglican symbols of Elizabethan England such as that of Whitgift. Hooker's was a version of Anglicanism.
Well then, can we classify Hooker's version of Anglicanism? Given his sacramentalism and support of the royal supremacy it would seem best to describe him as a high churchman, indeed probably the first high churchman. It would appear he set the theological trajectory in which divines like Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, and William Laud would follow.
Martin Foord
Trinity Theological College,
Perth, Australia.
Church Society - Issues - History - Jewell
Church Society - Issues - History - Jewell
Where's our favourite Windbag, David Virtue, in presenting historic Anglicanism? Who can abide a poorly trained journalist?
Where's our favourite Windbag, David Virtue, in presenting historic Anglicanism? Who can abide a poorly trained journalist?
Church Society - Issues - History - Ussher intro
Church Society - Issues - History - Ussher intro
Move over ACNA Clerk-Bishops for some men like this one. The modern dweebs need to be removed.
Move over ACNA Clerk-Bishops for some men like this one. The modern dweebs need to be removed.
Church Society - Issues - History - Whitefield
Church Society - Issues - History - Whitefield
Time for a clean-up and clean-out of non-Calvinists in the Anglican communion. A fight will be necessary.
Time for a clean-up and clean-out of non-Calvinists in the Anglican communion. A fight will be necessary.
Church Society - Issues - History - Joynson-Hicks
Church Society - Issues - History - Joynson-Hicks
The great opponent of Tractarians and, put to a modern context, to the likes of Iker, Ackerman, Hewitt, and other AC-dweebs in the ACNA.
The great opponent of Tractarians and, put to a modern context, to the likes of Iker, Ackerman, Hewitt, and other AC-dweebs in the ACNA.
Church Society - Issues - History - Wace
Church Society - Issues - History - Wace
Another Anglican scholar, Calvinist, evangelical Churchman. A Dean of Canterbury. Time for another Reformation and purge of the loose-sitting American clerk-Bishops of the ACNA.
Another Anglican scholar, Calvinist, evangelical Churchman. A Dean of Canterbury. Time for another Reformation and purge of the loose-sitting American clerk-Bishops of the ACNA.
VirtueOnline - News - News - Barna's year-end wrap: Relativism on the upswing
VirtueOnline - News - News - Barna's year-end wrap: Relativism on the upswing
Another Reformation, Reformed and Calvinistic Anglican Churchmen. These American mutants, dweebs, and Anglo-Romanizers are squatters that should be evicted, for everyone's good. If they were but honest men, rather than duplicitous and double-dealers like Newman, Pusey and Keble---and ACNA clerk-bishops.
Another Reformation, Reformed and Calvinistic Anglican Churchmen. These American mutants, dweebs, and Anglo-Romanizers are squatters that should be evicted, for everyone's good. If they were but honest men, rather than duplicitous and double-dealers like Newman, Pusey and Keble---and ACNA clerk-bishops.
Church Society - Issues - History - Davenant
Church Society - Issues - History - Davenant
A great Anglican divine and Calvinist. He participated in the Council of Dordt. He was every bit as Calvinistic as any Dutchmen or Scots Presbyterian, yet, maintaining the good old Prayer Book---to his credit. Would that these useless American bishops were as learned.
A great Anglican divine and Calvinist. He participated in the Council of Dordt. He was every bit as Calvinistic as any Dutchmen or Scots Presbyterian, yet, maintaining the good old Prayer Book---to his credit. Would that these useless American bishops were as learned.
Church Society - Issues - History - Cranmer Intro
Church Society - Issues - History - Cranmer Intro: "“And as for the pope, I refuse him, as Christ’s enemy, and antichrist, with all his false doctrine."
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
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Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Cambridge, Oxford, or London
We've had a brief interruption to posting.
Also, inquiries are pending for a possible move to the UK in 4 years. Oxford, Cambridge or London. It's four years out.
From initial feedback, it appears quite possible, finanically speaking.
I have four children that I am putting through university. A budget-breaker. During these four years, I will be paying the house off.
Living in the Camp Lejeune area, our home would rent all day long over many years.
We've already had a few requests from C o E vicars to "come alongside." Perhaps.
It's definitely under consideration. A "Wycliffite ministry" of sorts. A "Lollardy" ministry from the Word of His Majesty.
Also, inquiries are pending for a possible move to the UK in 4 years. Oxford, Cambridge or London. It's four years out.
From initial feedback, it appears quite possible, finanically speaking.
I have four children that I am putting through university. A budget-breaker. During these four years, I will be paying the house off.
Living in the Camp Lejeune area, our home would rent all day long over many years.
We've already had a few requests from C o E vicars to "come alongside." Perhaps.
It's definitely under consideration. A "Wycliffite ministry" of sorts. A "Lollardy" ministry from the Word of His Majesty.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
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Friday, December 4, 2009
Justin Martyr and Biblical Authority/Sola Scriptura
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2009/12/justin-martyrs-source-of-apostolic.html
Justin Martyr's Source of Apostolic Information - the Memoirs of the Apostles
Justin Martyr's biography is necessarily a bit uncertain. Nevertheless, according to our best guesses, Justin Martyr was born around the year of our Lord 100, only a few years after the last of the apostles, the Apostle John, died. Thus, one might imagine that Justin Martyr's knowledge of the Apostles' teachings would come primarily from oral sources. However, Justin actually appeals to the apostles' writings rather than an oral tradition when disputing with his Jewish opponent, Trypho.1)
For [Christ] called one of His disciples— previously known by the name of Simon—Peter; since he recognised Him to be Christ the Son of God, by the revelation of His Father: and since we find it recorded in the memoirs of His apostles that He is the Son of God, and since we call Him the Son, we have understood that He proceeded before all creatures from the Father by His power and will (for He is addressed in the writings of the prophets in one way or another as Wisdom, and the Day, and the East, and a Sword, and a Stone, and a Rod, and Jacob, and Israel); and that He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 100 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 2)
For they that saw Him crucified shook their heads each one of them, and distorted their lips, and twisting their noses to each other, they spake in mockery the words which are recorded in the memoirs of His apostles: ‘He said he was the Son of God: let him come down; let God save him.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 101 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)3)
For the power of His strong word, by which He always confuted the Pharisees and Scribes, and, in short, all your nation’s teachers that questioned Him, had a cessation like a plentiful and strong spring, the waters of which have been turned off, when He kept silence, and chose to return no answer to any one in the presence of Pilate; as has been declared in the memoirs of His apostles, in order that what is recorded by Isaiah might have efficacious fruit, where it is written, ‘The Lord gives me a tongue, that I may know when I ought to speak.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 102 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)4)
For this devil, when [Jesus] went up from the river Jordan, at the time when the voice spake to Him, ‘Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten Thee,’ is recorded in the memoirs of the apostles to have come to Him and tempted Him, even so far as to say to Him, ‘Worship me;’ and Christ answered him, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan: thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 103 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)5)
Moreover, the statement, ‘All my bones are poured and dispersed like water; my heart has become like wax, melting in the midst of my belly,’ was a prediction of that which happened to Him on that night when men came out against Him to the Mount of Olives to seize Him. For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, and saying, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass:’ His heart and also His bones trembling; His heart being like wax melting in His belly: in order that we may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 103 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 6)
And the statement, ‘Thou hast brought me into the dust of death; for many dogs have surrounded me: the assembly of the wicked have beset me round. They pierced my hands and my feet. They did tell all my bones. They did look and stare upon me. They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture,’—was a prediction, as I said before, of the death to which the synagogue of the wicked would condemn Him, whom He calls both dogs and hunters, declaring that those who hunted Him were both gathered together and assiduously striving to condemn Him. And this is recorded to have happened in the memoirs of His apostles. And I have shown that, after His crucifixion, they who crucified Him parted His garments among them.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 104 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)7)
For I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become man through the Virgin, as we have learned from the memoirs.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 105 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)8)
The remainder of the Psalm makes it manifest that He knew His Father would grant to Him all things which He asked, and would raise Him from the dead; and that He urged all who fear God to praise Him because He had compassion on all races of believing men, through the mystery of Him who was crucified; and that He stood in the midst of His brethren the apostles (who repented of their flight from Him when He was crucified, after He rose from the dead, and after they were persuaded by Himself that, before His passion He had mentioned to them that He must suffer these things, and that they were announced beforehand by the prophets), and when living with them sang praises to God, as is made evident in the memoirs of the apostles.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 106 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 9)
And that He would rise again on the third day after the crucifixion, it is written in the memoirs that some of your nation, questioning Him, said, ‘Show us a sign;’ and He replied to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and no sign shall be given them, save the sign of Jonah.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 107 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)
As you can see from the nine examples above, Justin was not shy about appealing to the gospels, even when dialoguing with a non-Christian. Furthermore, note especially item (7) above, where Justin indicates that he learned this information from the memoirs. Notice that he doesn't say, "as the older Christians remember," but instead indicates that the Gospels themselves are his source of knowledge on this subject.
This is not surprising when we read, in Justin First Apology, about the weekly worship in Justin's church:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.- Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 57 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)
Finally, note that Justin actually indicates that the specific way that the Apostles delivered the tradition of the Eucharist was in the memoirs composed by them:
For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone.- Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 66 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)-
TurretinFan
Justin Martyr's Source of Apostolic Information - the Memoirs of the Apostles
Justin Martyr's biography is necessarily a bit uncertain. Nevertheless, according to our best guesses, Justin Martyr was born around the year of our Lord 100, only a few years after the last of the apostles, the Apostle John, died. Thus, one might imagine that Justin Martyr's knowledge of the Apostles' teachings would come primarily from oral sources. However, Justin actually appeals to the apostles' writings rather than an oral tradition when disputing with his Jewish opponent, Trypho.1)
For [Christ] called one of His disciples— previously known by the name of Simon—Peter; since he recognised Him to be Christ the Son of God, by the revelation of His Father: and since we find it recorded in the memoirs of His apostles that He is the Son of God, and since we call Him the Son, we have understood that He proceeded before all creatures from the Father by His power and will (for He is addressed in the writings of the prophets in one way or another as Wisdom, and the Day, and the East, and a Sword, and a Stone, and a Rod, and Jacob, and Israel); and that He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 100 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 2)
For they that saw Him crucified shook their heads each one of them, and distorted their lips, and twisting their noses to each other, they spake in mockery the words which are recorded in the memoirs of His apostles: ‘He said he was the Son of God: let him come down; let God save him.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 101 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)3)
For the power of His strong word, by which He always confuted the Pharisees and Scribes, and, in short, all your nation’s teachers that questioned Him, had a cessation like a plentiful and strong spring, the waters of which have been turned off, when He kept silence, and chose to return no answer to any one in the presence of Pilate; as has been declared in the memoirs of His apostles, in order that what is recorded by Isaiah might have efficacious fruit, where it is written, ‘The Lord gives me a tongue, that I may know when I ought to speak.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 102 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)4)
For this devil, when [Jesus] went up from the river Jordan, at the time when the voice spake to Him, ‘Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten Thee,’ is recorded in the memoirs of the apostles to have come to Him and tempted Him, even so far as to say to Him, ‘Worship me;’ and Christ answered him, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan: thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 103 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)5)
Moreover, the statement, ‘All my bones are poured and dispersed like water; my heart has become like wax, melting in the midst of my belly,’ was a prediction of that which happened to Him on that night when men came out against Him to the Mount of Olives to seize Him. For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His apostles and those who followed them, [it is recorded] that His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was praying, and saying, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass:’ His heart and also His bones trembling; His heart being like wax melting in His belly: in order that we may perceive that the Father wished His Son really to undergo such sufferings for our sakes, and may not say that He, being the Son of God, did not feel what was happening to Him and inflicted on Him.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 103 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 6)
And the statement, ‘Thou hast brought me into the dust of death; for many dogs have surrounded me: the assembly of the wicked have beset me round. They pierced my hands and my feet. They did tell all my bones. They did look and stare upon me. They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture,’—was a prediction, as I said before, of the death to which the synagogue of the wicked would condemn Him, whom He calls both dogs and hunters, declaring that those who hunted Him were both gathered together and assiduously striving to condemn Him. And this is recorded to have happened in the memoirs of His apostles. And I have shown that, after His crucifixion, they who crucified Him parted His garments among them.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 104 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)7)
For I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner Word and Power by Him, and having afterwards become man through the Virgin, as we have learned from the memoirs.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 105 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)8)
The remainder of the Psalm makes it manifest that He knew His Father would grant to Him all things which He asked, and would raise Him from the dead; and that He urged all who fear God to praise Him because He had compassion on all races of believing men, through the mystery of Him who was crucified; and that He stood in the midst of His brethren the apostles (who repented of their flight from Him when He was crucified, after He rose from the dead, and after they were persuaded by Himself that, before His passion He had mentioned to them that He must suffer these things, and that they were announced beforehand by the prophets), and when living with them sang praises to God, as is made evident in the memoirs of the apostles.- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 106 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted) 9)
And that He would rise again on the third day after the crucifixion, it is written in the memoirs that some of your nation, questioning Him, said, ‘Show us a sign;’ and He replied to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and no sign shall be given them, save the sign of Jonah.’- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 107 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)
As you can see from the nine examples above, Justin was not shy about appealing to the gospels, even when dialoguing with a non-Christian. Furthermore, note especially item (7) above, where Justin indicates that he learned this information from the memoirs. Notice that he doesn't say, "as the older Christians remember," but instead indicates that the Gospels themselves are his source of knowledge on this subject.
This is not surprising when we read, in Justin First Apology, about the weekly worship in Justin's church:
And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things.- Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 57 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)
Finally, note that Justin actually indicates that the specific way that the Apostles delivered the tradition of the Eucharist was in the memoirs composed by them:
For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone.- Justin Martyr, First Apology, Chapter 66 (emphasis added, footnotes omitted)-
TurretinFan
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Calvin's Institutes. 4.7.21: Cyprian, Gregory 1, and 12-Steps
Calvin’s Institutes, IV.7.19-22: “Later Papal claims contrary to principles of Gregory 1 and Bernard, 19-22”IV.4.7.21: “Gregory condemned what popes now affirm”
Observations:
1. Cyprian, d.258: “None of us says he is the bishop of bishops, or by tyrannical terror compels his colleagues to obey him.”
2. Gregory the Great: “Peter was the chief member in the body; John, Andrew, and James were heads of particular groups of people. Yet all members of the church are under one Head. Indeed, the saints before the law, the saints under the law, the saints in grace, all perfecting the body of the Lord, have been constituted as its members. And no one every wished himself to be called ‘universal.’”
3. Gregory the Great in response to Eulogius, bp. of Alexandria, who asked to be commanded by Gregory the Great. “Remove, I beg of you, this word ‘command’ from my hearing; for I know who I am and who your are: in degree you are my brothers; in moral character, my fathers. Therefore, I have not commanded but have taken care to indicate what things seemed useful.”
4. Calvin says the current bishop of Rome does a “grave and frightful injury not only to the other bishops but also to the several churches. For in this way he mangles and slashes them so that he may build up his see from the ruin of theirs.”
5. Calvin: “He exempts himself from all judgments and wishes to rule in such a tyrannical fashion that he regards his own whim as law—such conduct is surely so unbecoming and so foreign to the ecclesiastical order that it can in no way be borne. For it is utterly abhorrent not only to a sense of piety but also humanity.”
Correlations:
1. Tertullian-Cyprian-Novatian-Donatus connection. Cyrpian’s response to Pope Stephen 1. Cyprian rebukes the bishop of Rome.
2. Re: the efficacy of baptism conducted by pagans or unbelievers. Cyprian held that such a baptism was invalid. “The majority of the North African bishops sided with Cyprian; and in the East he had a powerful ally in Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea. But the position of Stephen came to find general acceptance. Stephen in his letters used the claim of superiority of the Roman See over all bishoprics of the Church. To this claim Cyprian answered that the authority of the Roman bishop was coordinate with, not superior to, his own.”
3. Hildebrand (1020-1085, Pope, 1073-1085): “The papal claim of infallibility is strongly asserted in the Dictatus Papae, a papal document usually attributed to Hildebrand, but possibly to be dated a few years later than his death (1085).”
4. Hildebrand, the theocrat: “One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor affirming the primacy of the papal authority and the new canon law governing the election of the pope by the college of cardinals. He was at the forefront of both evolutionary developments in the relationship between the Emperor and the papacy during the years before becoming pope…. Gregory was during his own reign despised by many for his expansive use of papal powers. Joseph McCabe describes Gregory VII as a `rough and violent peasant, enlisting his brute strength in the service of the monastic ideal which he embraced.’”
5. Hildebrand, the theocrat: “His life-work was based on his conviction that the Church was founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which divine will is the only law; that, in her capacity as a divine institution, she is supreme over all human structures, especially the secular state; and that the pope, in his role as head of the Church, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God: or, in other words, a defection from Christianity.”
Interpretation:
Calvin continues to draw the contrast between the humbler, smaller, and less developed papay and the arrogant, larger, and evolved papacy—the groundwork is being laid to demonstrate that Rome is Antichrist.
Application:
1. Consider the silence in Confessional and wider evangelical circles. Do not separate from Trent's doctrines.
2. Consider the worldwide implications of this silence and ignorance, e.g. Third World and Southern Cone countries.
3. Consider the impact on a solitary Roman believer, the evangelistic necessity of the True Gospel and also the apologetics in informing a Romanist he’s accepted fictions and that these fictions are grammatico-political, not grammtico-historical exegeses of Scripture.
4. Pull—as should be done for the obstinate and unteachable—the integrity card. They’ve had centuries to get “rehab” and into a “detox” program.
5. A twelve-step program.
Dr. James Innes Packer
Patriarch - Dr. J. I. Packer
In his ninth decade, J.I. Packer still points a distracted evangelicalism toward the right path
by Warren Cole Smith
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16150
December 1, 2009
When theologian, teacher, and writer Dr. J.I. Packer reached his 80th birthday on July 22, 2006, his home church in Vancouver, British Columbia-St. John's Shaughnessy Anglican Church-honored him with a special celebration.
One after the other, friends from church and colleagues from nearby Regent College, where he has taught for three decades, spoke of Packer's impact on the evangelical movement and themselves. Several, referring to the great mentor in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, called Packer their own Gandalf.
But Packer, when it came his time to speak, gently protested. "I am no Gandalf," he said, his normally strong and clear voice choked with emotion. "I'm much closer to the lowly Sam."
It was noble, humble Samwise Gamgee who kept Frodo on the right path despite distractions and dangers. Sam never sought to be the hero but spoke and acted with clarity and decisiveness when everyone else was confused. He made the hero's way passable.
So has James Innell Packer for evangelicals over the past 50 years, showing them the right theological path in 60-plus books, including the influential Knowing God. These books, and his long tenures as a teacher and active churchman, have given Packer a unique status in evangelicalism: He was the only academic and theologian named to Time's 2005 list of the most influential evangelicals in America.
Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center says that Knowing God provides a "sturdy, solid, orthodox understanding of basic Christian doctrine. God's character, His holiness, His justice, His wrath but also His mercy and His love-all explained with a pastoral warmth and in a clear style that we have come to admire in Dr. Packer. It is the kind of book that is foundational and it is worth repaying a visit almost every year. At least I know I do."
He is not alone. The book, first published in 1973 and now translated into at least seven languages, has sold more than 2 million copies, an astounding number for what is essentially a textbook in basic theology. "It was a surprise," he told me: "I wrote the first draft as a series of articles. It was essentially intended as a catechesis-a teaching book. At first I just hoped that it would go into a second printing."
As the book's sales and impact exploded, Packer helped evangelicals fight back against liberal theologians who assaulted the authority of Scripture. Packer was instrumental in the 1978 creation of the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy," a defining moment for which he is still thankful: "We carried our points, which were and remain the total trustworthiness and God-givenness of Scripture." Packer's signing of the 1994 ecumenical document, "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," indicated to many Protestants that the controversial statement was doctrinally "safe."
In 1979 Packer and his wife Kit surprised some of his colleagues by moving from his native England to Vancouver to take a position at tiny Regent College. For Packer it was a strategic move that involved him in North American evangelical activities-and his renown helped Regent to attract students from the United States (now 40 percent of the student body) and Asia (20 percent). Recently, he has bulwarked Americans and Canadians frustrated by the theological liberalism of U.S. Episcopalian and Anglican Church of Canada hierarchs. He recently handed back his British ministerial license and became a priest of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone of America: Anglicanism in the southern hemisphere still tends to be biblically orthodox and evangelical.
"What has happened to the Anglican Church of Canada makes me sick," Packer said. "Our diocese had enmeshed itself in heresy. Homosexual partnerships were not just tolerated but celebrated. And that was just one of several important issues." Nevertheless, Packer is upbeat about the future of evangelicalism in North America: "Evangelical seminaries are full. Liberal seminaries are half-empty. That steady flow of evangelical clergy is getting stronger. Of course, the secular culture is getting stronger as well, and everything that evangelicals do to further the gospel is opposed by Satan. Sometimes that gets the attention of the media. So even with Satan and secular culture aligned against us, when I see what God is doing in the lives of many of the young people I teach, I have much reason to hope."
Packer's hope goes with his upbeat nature and his steady work habits. His day typically begins at 5 a.m. or even earlier, with a cup of tea. He walks briskly almost everywhere he goes. Though officially retired from Regent, he still teaches classes there, maintains an office on campus, and keeps a teaching assistant busy with his projects. Two of his favorite pastimes are listening to jazz music-especially seminal pre--World War II masters such as Jelly Roll Morton-and reading mystery novels. Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr, Colin Dexter, and Agatha Christie are among the authors often on his nightstand. A mild stroke, or TIA, in late October temporarily limited his travels, but he has continued to preach.
He is maintaining literary productivity as he gets older, sometimes taking on collaborators. Packer served as general editor for the English Standard Version of the Bible, first published in 2001, and it is supplanting both the New International Version and the New American Standard Version as the preferred text for many evangelicals. Meanwhile, one of his books, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, is quietly becoming a standard text both at many seminaries and among serious lay readers of theology.
He also remains an active churchman. Packer now works closely with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), a group of theologically conservative Anglicans that has separated from the Episcopal Church. Recently, AMiA joined with other biblically orthodox Anglican groups to form the Anglican Church of North America. One of the leaders of that movement, Bishop Chuck Murphy, studied under Packer in England in the early 1970s, and Packer has been instrumental in the creation of ordination standards and other theological statements for this new group.
But one book is missing from the Packer canon: a systematic theology. He has been teaching systematic theology at Regent for years, so he certainly has done heavy lifting for such a book. Will one be forthcoming? "I have a plan," he said. "But I may not have the time. I would like to leave the world theology that was both catechetical and definitive. But we shall have to see what God has in store."
END
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