Monthly Archives: May 2014

Reaching the YembiYembi Tribe

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Tim Challies writes:

This may well be the most moving and encouraging video I’ve seen in a long time. YembiYembi: Unto the Nations chronicles the work of modern-day missionaries Brooks and Nina Buser as they take the gospel to the unreached YembiYembi tribe in Papua New Guinea. It tells of their call to missions, their long labor, the remarkable response to the very first time they shared the gospel (and God’s kind providence in the moment), and the great celebration the day they delivered the very first complete New Testament. Watch it at this link and be encouraged!

What would “Unity” look like?

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Carl-TruemanCarl R. Trueman is a Christian theologian and church historian. He is Professor of Historical Theology and Church History and holds the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary. He asks all the right questions in an article entitled so may it be!’ seem somewhat curmudgeonly. Thus, when Peter Leithart opened last week’s discussion on the future of Protestantism by lamenting ecclesiastical disunity and expressing a desire for a visibly united church, there was an audible murmur of support and appreciation from the audience. I knew immediately I would emerge over the course of the evening as the nay-sayer.

I agree with Peter that unity is much to be desired. But two questions remain for me after the discussion and the various blog posts: What does this unity look like? And how do we get there? Claiming that God can slay and resurrect the church is true enough. He can also cure cancer by a mere act of his will. But, if diagnosed with such, I am still going to drive to the hospital to receive chemotherapy.

Peter offered an attractive and humorous vision of church unity, involving (among others) hierarchical Baptists, disciplined Anglicans, jolly Presbyterians, and practitioners of paedocommunion existing in harmony. The vision was humorous, though intended as more than mere jest, I think. The problem is that it cannot possibly be realized (and that not simply because the idea of a jolly Presbyterian is self-referentially incoherent): There can be no visible institutional unity in terms of liturgy or theology between Baptists and Paedobaptists, let alone between Baptists and practitioners of paedocommunion. Thus, the question: What will this unity look like in practice?

Peter did present a more practical vision of local churches talking and fellowshipping together. That already happens in many places, so I suspect he actually wants more, something with a definite liturgical and institutional expression. If that is the case, then numerous other questions arise, the first of which I posed on the night of the discussion: Where do we draw the boundaries for this fellowshipping into unity? Peter’s response seemed to be that we set the borders in terms of Nicene/Chalcedonian orthodoxy. That is a good answer in some ways, though it does appear to demand the relativizing of everything subsequent to that (and thus that Roman Catholics and Protestants regard that which gives them their doctrinal distinctiveness as basically negotiable).

That answer also leads to further, more pointedly practical questions: When do I close my church down and tell the people there to start attending another Nicene/Chalcedonian church in the locale? What precise criteria do I use for making that call? When does my church’s continued existence become an act of divisive schism (a question easy for Roman Catholics to answer, but what about Peter?). The town where I pastor has a Roman Catholic Church of impeccable Nicene orthodoxy. Do I serve any good purpose as a Presbyterian in that place? And if I do serve such a purpose now, what exactly is that purpose and when will I know that it has come to an end? (As an aside, this also points to the fact that, while Protestantism cannot be reduced to doctrine, doctrine is fundamental to its present identity and, indeed, to its very reason for existence in the first place).

There are questions here for Fred Sanders, too. At some point in the discussion, he stated that we should rejoice that the Eastern Orthodox Church spreads the knowledge of the Trinity. Indeed we should. But how much should we rejoice? Rejoicing in word only is not really rejoicing at all. Joyful action must surely be part of it. So do we rejoice to the point that Protestants cease to plant churches in parishes with Orthodox congregations? If not, why not? Or do we rejoice to the point where we even close down established Protestant churches in such parishes? The prioritizing of the doctrine of God over against the doctrine of salvation which seems explicit in Peter’s Nicene proposal and perhaps implicit in Fred’s attitude to Eastern Orthodoxy, is a move that I cannot make without ceasing to be Protestant and giving up all that makes me doctrinally distinctive. But should I nevertheless do so? Are the doctrinal differences over salvation simply not important enough for me to keep my church doors open when there is an Eastern Orthodox church across the street?

Discussions of church unity are so often an example of incontestably admirable aspirations combined with a complete lack of practical suggestions. Discussions of the future of Protestantism can tend that way too unless we ask the basic pragmatic questions of what we want to achieve and what steps we must take to achieve it.

The Nature of Hardening

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Sproul0003Some quotes from Dr. R. C. Sproul’s book, “Chosen by God:

“There are different views of double predestination. One of these is so frightening that many shun the term altogether, lest their view of the doctrine be confused with the scary one. This is called the equal ultimacy view.

Equal ultimacy is based on a concept of symmetry. It seeks a complete balance between election and reprobation. The key idea is this: Just as God intervenes in the lives of the elect to create faith in their hearts, so God equally intervenes in the lives of the reprobate to create or work unbelief in their hearts. The idea of God’s actively working unbelief in the hearts of the reprobate is drawn from biblical statements about God hardening people’s hearts.

Equal ultimacy is NOT the Reformed or Calvinist view of predestination. Some have called it ‘hyper-Calvinism.’ I prefer to call it ‘sub-Calvinism’ or, better yet, ‘anti-Calvinism.’ Though Calvinism certainly has a view of double predestination, the double predestination it embraces is not one of equal ultimacy” (p. 142; emphasis Sproul’s; italicized in the original).

“To understand the Reformed view of the matter we must pay close attention to the crucial distinction between positive and negative decrees of God. Positive has to do with God’s active intervention in the hearts of the elect. Negative has to do with God’s passing over the non-elect.

The Reformed view teaches that God positively or actively intervenes in the lives of the elect to insure their salvation. The rest of mankind God leaves to themselves. He does not create unbelief in their hearts. That unbelief is already there. He does not coerce them to sin. They sin by their own choices” (pp. 142-143).

“The dreadful error of hyper-Calvinism is that it involves God in coercing sin. This does radical violence to the integrity of God’s character. The primary biblical example that might tempt one toward hyper-Calvinism is the case of Pharaoh” (p. 143).

The Bible clearly teaches that God did, in fact, harden Pharaoh’s heart. Now we know that God did this for his own glory and as a sign to both Israel and Egypt. We know that God’s purpose in all of this was a redemptive purpose. But we are still left with a nagging problem. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and then judged Pharaoh for his sin. How can God hold Pharaoh or anyone else accountable for sin that flows out of a heart that God himself hardened?

Our answer to that question will depend on how we understand God’s act of hardening. How did he harden Pharaoh’s heart? The Bible does not answer that question explicitly. As we think about it, we realize that basically there are only two ways he could have hardened Pharaoh’s heart: actively or passively” (p. 144).

“Active hardening would involve God’s direct intervention within the inner chambers of Pharaoh’s heart. God would intrude into Pharaoh’s heart and create fresh evil in it. This would certainly insure that Pharaoh would bring forth the result that God was looking for. It would also insure that God is the author of sin.

Passive hardening is a totally different story. Passive hardening involves a divine judgment upon sin that is already present. All that God needs to do to harden the heart of a person whose heart is already desperately wicked is to ‘give him over to his sin.’ We find this concept of divine judgment repeatedly in Scripture” (pp. 144-145).

“How does this work? To understand it properly we must first look briefly at another concept, God’s common grace …One of the most important elements of common grace we enjoy is the restraint of evil in the world…By his grace he controls and bridles the amount of evil in this world. If evil were left totally unchecked, then life on this planet would be impossible.

All that God has to do to harden people’s hearts is to remove the restraints. He gives them a longer leash. Rather than restricting their human freedom, he increases it. He lets them have their own way. In a sense he gives them enough rope to hang themselves. It is not that God puts his hand on them to create fresh evil in their hearts; he merely removes his holy hand of restraint from them and lets them do their own will” (p. 145).

“About the only restraint there was on Pharaoh’s wickedness was the holy arm of God. All God had to do to harden Pharaoh further was to remove his arm. The evil inclinations of Pharaoh did the rest.

In the act of passive hardening, God makes a decision to remove the restraints; the wicked part of the process is done by Pharaoh himself. God does no violence to Pharaoh’s will. As we said, he merely gives Pharaoh MORE freedom…We see the same kind of thing in the case of Judas…Judas was not a poor innocent victim of divine manipulation. He as not a righteous man whom God forced to betray Christ and then punished for the betrayal. Judas betrayed Christ because Judas wanted thirty pieces of silver…To be sure, God uses the evil inclinations and evil intentions of fallen men to bring about his own redemptive purposes. Without Judas there is no Cross. Without the cross there is no redemption. But this is not a case of God coercing evil” (pp. 146-147; Sproul’s emphasis is italicized in the original).

“In God’s ultimate act of judgment he gives sinners over to their sins. In effect, he abandons them to their own desires. So it was with Pharaoh. By this act of judgment, God did not blemish his own righteousness by creating fresh evil in Pharaoh’s heart. He established his own righteousness by punishing the evil that was already there in Pharaoh.

This is how we must understand double predestination. God gives mercy to the elect by working faith in their hearts. He gives justice to the reprobate by leaving them in their own sins” (pp. 147-148).