Some Christians are urging others to pull their children out of public school due to the new pro-homosexual bill that our hero Arnold Schwarzenegger just passed. The dividing line between the wheat and the chaff is becoming more and more evident as proclaimed Christians will be showing just whose side they are on.
Here are a few questions I answered for my Anglican Spirituality class.
1. How do you define spirituality?
The basis of spirituality is humility and submission to Christ and His Church. This means becoming obedient both internally and externally in a humble manner, for the love of God and man. It means becoming engrafted in both the first and second table of the Law through Christ. Christ summarizes obedience to His law by commanding us to love our neighbor.
Spirituality involves love; what love looks like; and how love actually takes form within us. But what this Trinitarian God of ours prompts us to is the law of God in its Christological ethic. Christian ethics is the very Law of God expounded upon through Christ’s practical application to our lives. Without practical application we have ambiguous thoughts of what we think is right and spiritual. And we know that the Bible warn us against leaving our thoughts to ourselves (Psalm 94:11).
To conclude, spirituality is the working of God within us, humbling us to become faithful to Him!
2. What is your understanding of spiritual discipline and of spiritual gifts?
In Galatians, Paul says that the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. This is where the discipline comes in. The war inside of man that Paul talks about in Romans 7 is more spiritually described in Galatians 5 where Paul speaks of putting away fleshly habits. We are to deny our fleshly habits by – as Dr. Piper says – believing that sin does not give reward and that obedience to the Spirit does. That is, turning away from sin brings us to the path of righteousness where all good things are found. I like what Augustine says: “Think God’s thoughts after Him.” Our thought life needs constant discipline so that – as St. Paul says – we encounter the renewing of the mind.
God helps us with spiritual disciplines by giving us spiritual gifts. This involves the empowerment that the Holy Spirit gives us through the sacraments, the Body (Church) and the Word itself. Christ tells us that He will send us the comforter, who is the Holy Spirit (John 16:7), to comfort and give us power.
This power can and does pan itself out into spiritual gifts such as those that St. Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 12. These gifts unite the Body of Christ (v. 14) for the great commission of the New Covenant. But these gifts are mere tools and should not be viewed as litmus tests for spirituality. St. Paul says that although he may manifest all the greatest gifts, but does so without love, he works in vain (1 Cor. 13). Also, Christ says that even the heathen, at times, will manifest the spiritual gifts St. Paul speaks of (Matthew 7:22).
3. Who models true Christian spirituality for you (living or deceased)?
There are many living and deceased men who model true spirituality through what they teach in their writings, but the best source of learning spirituality is from life itself, following the examples of godly men in the local churches. I constantly look to various leaders in order to see how the Spirit guides them; and when they fail I try to also learn from that failure. I apply this same principle to corrupt leaders, watching them to see what becomes of their folly.
It appears that Islam is gaining more momentum…only to be crushed, of course. Bush has called our fight against Islam a “crusade.” Well, maybe this time we can recapture Jerusalem!
I have often wondered just why we, as Christians, are constantly attempting to create a legalistic America. You will often find arguments as to why certain laws are so wrong and how public schools are so corrupt etc., but you will seldom hear of the true Gospel remedy; that is, that the State needs to submit to the Gospel and those that God has given the Gospel to: The Church!
Ethics without Christ is legalism, plain and simple! We have no right telling the State (the State that we do not want to run) to live by our ethics, it’s ludicrous. Our State and educational system was given over, piece by piece, ever since the Revolutionary War. There are no longer any laws directly requiring the State and all her entities to submit to Christian ethics. If, for instance, the State wants to abort children, we certainly have the right to voice our opinion, but we really do not have the right to use the authority of the Scriptures until we make it clear that the Scriptures and the Church (the Church is the only body that can teach the Scriptures) have authority over the State in spiritual/ethical matters.
So next time you get excited over what Hilary Clinton is saying or what Bush did not do right, think of whether or not we have even earned the right to be angry. It’s almost as if we want both to eat and keep our cake. All throughout history, families have been martyred for the sake of evangelizing their State, but today we would like to skip the persecution and get right to the prize. How arrogant is this, to claim we deserve such a prize? It is likely, at this point, after opening our borders wide to other religions and cultures (we did this not only in the early days of the Revolution, but also in 1965 through Pres. Johnson), that we are going to have to suffer in order to evangelize the State. May we prepare our children!
Norman Shepherd’s book The Call of Grace, has aided to the current justification controversies within the Reformed faith. It is provocative to many Reformed, in my opinion, not because it is unbiblical, but because it ceases to be a part of any one particular camp. It really is a book that seeks to be both orthodox and ecumenical. It teaches covenant theology from a more rational and corporate perspective, rather than the individualistic and rhetorical perspectives that many teach through today.
In the beginning of the book, Norman Shepherd mentions how “there have been long standing differences between adherents of the historic Lutheran and Reformed confessions.” He goes on to say that there are significant differences in the doctrine of the law. No problem there, right? Reformed pastors teach the moral law to be valid after conversion, but Lutheran believe in a more “spiritual” law, or a law that is not still mandated by the Old Testament.
These type of disagreements have caused many to teach a law-gospel dichotomy; that the law is a type of detour sign that shows us the gospel. The law is said to be part of a “covenant of works” that no man could tackle and so the detour aspect comes into play to show “grace” to the recipient. Then, after conversion, depending on your denomination, a type of new law comes in to help guide the Christian.
But Norman Shepherd proposes something different, he says that the Abrahamic covenant was a covenant of grace (with conditions of obedience) and the Mosaic covenant was also a covenant of grace (with conditions of obedience).
Many Reformed teach that there was a covenant of works with Adam (Westminster Confession mentions this term but does not say it is a “meritorious” covenant). And yet some Reformed even teach, as the dispensationals do, that the Mosaic covenant was yet another covenant of works. This then leads to that law-gospel dichotomy; that the law was completely separate from grace, and that only the new covenant was a covenant of grace.
If the covenants of old were covenants of works then, at best, they were covenants of grace disguised as covenants of works. In other words, God would have had to be deceiving the people since, according to Paul, even the OT saints were saved the same way we were (Romans 4). Why would God lie? Or, why would Moses propose a false promise?
Shepherd goes on to say that the OT covenants were full of promise and grace. This then leads to the proposition that Christ did not come to morally earn a covenant of works, as many men teach. They call this Christ’s “active obedience.”
The author continues to move on through this little book to teach us that we should view election through covenant, rather than viewing covenant through election. He says that when we view covenant through election we attempt to become “as God.”(p.83)
Please allow me to comment a bit more: Ever since I became a pastor I have believed that we should teach election through covenant. To me it was the only way out of being tried as one who is judgmental. The accusations against Calvinists have been that they do not evangelize because they believe it is a waste of time to preach to reprobate, and that God will draw the elect. But we do not know who the elect are, as Shepherd proposes, and so we make a covenant assumption when evangelizing, hoping that all who we come in contact with are God’s elect. Subliminally we know this is likely not true, since God has told us there are people going to hell. But we don’t presuppose things based on what God knows, but based on what we know, on what God has revealed to us. And God has not revealed to us who the elect are and are not. The debate narrows to that epistemological question: Do we act on what God knows or what we know? Which is reality to us on earth: the invisible or the visible? Covenant or election? I believe it is covenant!
Many Reformed do not understand the implications of epistemology and polemics within theology. The study of knowledge and the art of debate have come a long way since the Reformation. We certainly need to learn how to apply the great doctrines of grace in a more concise and logical way to where God’s righteousness and God’s mercy (law and grace) do not oppose one another to create the confusion of today’s many divided camps. We need to know when the more platonic philosophy is important and when the Aristotelian philosophy is important (two camps that have created harsh and unreasonable dichotomies).
The new covenant, as Shepherd teaches, brings clarity. It is based on the same promises in the old covenants, but with that final fulfillment of the cross and resurrection. Christ is that living sacrifice that lives out His mercy and righteousness in our lives. Christ is obedient in us (p. 104); which is probably one of his harder statements to swallow if you are a modern Reformed - even though this is what Augustine taught. But suffices to say, the doctrine of sanctification and its very reason of existing (see Shepherd p. 62) is very seldom taught or written about in the Reformed world. In my opinion, this lack of knowledge has fueled and even ignited this whole controversy. Certainly Christ’s works are not infused like the Roman Catholics teach, but His works must indeed have an eschatological outcome of some sort.
The Call of Grace is packed with clear teaching if you are willing to break down the walls of today’s theological reductivism. And at only 105 pages, you should be able to read it in only a few days/nights.
I’m glad to see that the Americans are finally fed up with the birthday thing; not that birthdays are sinful in themselves, but the way we have been celebrating them is certainly not edifying for the child nor for those who surround him/her.
Expensive children’s birthday parties pose a number of problems:
1. If one cannot afford a gift they may feel a bit ashamed. The host will almost never come down on that person, but the truth of the matter is that the person is put in the spotlight almost by default.
2. Many children become completely spoiled and arrogant when receiving the gifts.
3. The logic of the party is pretty backwards and even man-centered. Where is God in all of this? And what does this celebration teach the child? One may say that it teaches thankfulness to a child but… well, I really doubt it does.
4. What child needs an abundance of toys every single year?
5. The parties cause various types of stress on the adults. If we want to get together, then let’s be mature about this desire and just say “let’s get together.”
So there you have it, a general Christian ethic on birthdays; hope you are not upset.
Do you see a contradiction in these statistics below? BTW, it looks like Senator Mccain is a part of that 65% (It appears that he has recently left the Anglican communion for the Baptists. He says that he will not be [re] baptized until after the campaign. Hm!).
1. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation’s founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the “State of the First Amendment 2007” national survey released Sept. 11 by the First Amendment Center.
2. Just 56% believe that the freedom to worship as one chooses extends to all religious groups, regardless of how extreme — down 16 points from 72% in 2000.
3. 74% said that it is essential to be able to practice the religion of your choice.
First, I do not agree with number One. I do not see anything in the founding documents that say Christianity is to be the predominant or influencing religion. I do believe this is a Christian nation, though not based on those documents. Taking Christ and the Bible out of conversations/documents about “God” leaves us with a totally different god; one that is open to different cultures and doctrines, including Allah!
Number Two and Three give rights for Muslims to persecute us and to rejoice in it (#2), as their Koran commands them to.
Christianity is both an inclusive and exclusive religion. It is exclusive in that all others systems of belief cannot be tolerated, but it is inclusive because we invite all to join us. It is also exclusive in that God requires us to be obedient to him in everything we do, including governing the country to which He has given us.
In Book Six of Augustine’s The Confessions, Augustine writes about one of his early disciples, Alypius, who gave up being entertained by the gladiator events in the Colosseum, only to relapse to it soon after. Alypius relapsed when his [former] friends literally dragged him back to the Colosseum tempting him to enjoy the show. At first, while seated for the event, Alypius kept his eyes closed. But, there came an instance where one of the gladiators let out an extremely loud cry; Alypius could not help but to look and thus was hooked again on what Augustine warned him against!
Shortly thereafter, Alypius was mistakenly identified as a thief in the marketplace, and thus had to rely on wisdom and grace to find the true culprit. Augustine links this particular instance of Alypius with his sinful desire to be entertained by the gladiator events. He mentions how now that Alypius has been detained under false circumstances he becomes like the gladiator: a victim of unjust authority.
How often do we attempt to weave our circumstances together to see if God is teaching us a valuable lesson? Nothing that happens in our lives is arbitrary. There are reasons for every little thing that happens; although, embracing this train of thought can sometimes border insanity, where we become trapped by paranoia. There seems to be a fine line between insanity and godliness; one that is often broken by men and women that can find themselves in different cults and even in mental institutions. They cross the line of self-examination and cannot see past themselves.
It is good to explore our circumstances and relate them to a biblical model of Sowing and Reaping, but it is also good to step back and humbly acknowledge that we cannot figure circumstances out without God and His Church guiding us! Fortunately for Alypius, he had one of the greatest mentors of the Church to ever live: Augustine, who even in his early years was an incredible asset to God’s people. I think mentors and friends within the Church can help us hash out - even unconscionably - between what God is showing us and what we are conjuring up from our own vain imaginations. Sowing and Reaping is a valuable theology, but only when embraced with care.
In this post I shall make an attempt to explain that justification is eschatological by using Scripture, reason and tradition – the three-legged-stool, as Anglicans like to call it.
Justification Is Eschatological
Christ says in Matthew 24:13 that “he who endures until the end shall be saved.” Why does he say this? as if salvation is not finished once we “receive” Him.
Bishop NT Wright:
“It’s best to begin at the end, with Paul’s view of the future.(a) The one true God will finally judge the whole world; on that day, some will be found guilty and others will be upheld (Rom. 2.1-16). God’s vindication of these latter on the last day is his act of final “justification” (Rom. 2.13).”Again, Bishop Wright on justification and time:“Justification in the present is based on God’s past accomplishment in Christ, and anticipates the future verdict. This present justification has exactly the same pattern.(a) God vindicates in the present, in advance of the last day, all those who believe in Jesus as Messiah and Lord (Rom. 3.21-31; 4.13-25; 10.9-13). …The “faith” in question is faith in “the God who raised Jesus from the dead’; It comes about through the announcement of God’s word, the gospel, which works powerfully in the hearts of hearers, “calling” them to believe, or indeed (as Paul often puts it) to “obey” the gospel (Rom. 1.16f.; 1 Thess. 1.3f., 2.13; 2 Thess. 1.8). This faith looks backwards to what God has done in Christ, by means of his own obedient faithfulness to God’s purpose (Rom. 5.19; Phil. 2.6), relying on that rather than on anything that is true of oneself. For Paul, this meant refusing to regard the badges of Jewish law-observance (”the works of the law”) as the decisive factor (Phil. 3.2-11). And it looks forward to the final day: because this faith is the first sign of new God-given life, it is the appropriate anticipation of the final verdict, which is guaranteed by the same Spirit who inspired faith (2 Cor. 1.22; Phil. 1.6).”
I’m listening to Dr. James Bradley (not an Anglican but is inches away in many ways) for my Anglican Spirituality class at Andrewes Hall when I hear Bradley say, “God regards your actions in grace, doing good works, as meritorious - your works are rewarded; they are meritorious works!” Well how could he say such as thing? He says this because it is true, under the conditions of grace. He mentions how Augustine says that “when God crowns our works He is crowning His own works - His own grace” (slightly paraphrased).
Bradley then goes on to quote Augustine by saying that all merits are a gifts from God! The beginning and end of salvation are tied by God’s grace and include works. He is essentially saying that salvation is eschatological and that salvation cannot be reduced to some sort of half-a-second time frame of “receiving Jesus.” It is true that we are saved from our sin instantaneously, but it is also true that we are not fully saved until the end of our days. This is why Christ says in Matthew 24:13 that “he who endures until the end shall be saved.”
If the Federal Vision crowd - as well as any other denomination that is seeking to understand justification - would just take cover under St. Augustine, many ugly fights would be resolved. Is much of the Protestant/Reformed faith based on this type of drama-seeking? almost as if people like this drama. I sometimes wonder if it is a sort of legalism that Protestants partake in to make themselves feel like they are “wrestling with the Scriptures.”
My old Evangelical church thrived on the not-knowing. They carried their Bibles around the church; to their friends houses for dinner; nearly everywhere they went; not because they were scholars but because it made them feel they were scholars. Their chase of the Scriptures is based on that mountain that no one can seem to conquer. But if they would just acknowledge that it was already done, and that the ride to the top is free if one wants to submit to the historical church, then the zeal would finally turn into maturity.
With the above paragraph said, Augustine’s view of election/salvation does seem to pose danger for some: that assurance of salvation can be at stake, as one may always feel like they need to do more and more; and Bradley goes over this a bit. He mentions that the assurance that is seemingly missing in the epistemological aspect of Augustine’s teaching is gained in Augustine’s teaching of the Sacraments: that the Sacraments give assurance as they are distributed by the authorities that Christ has instituted - salvation is given through the Church and therefore assurance of salvation can be found there.
If one wants an existential/personal experience that is a bit more epistemological than the doctrine of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus(Outside the Church there is no salvation), then one can look to Hebrews 12 to see that those that God does not discipline are bastards. I think it is fair to say that after we have been walking with Christ for some time, we know what we can and cannot get away with - so to speak. We should be knowing and feeling the disciplines of God and be thankful for these disciplines. So lack of assurance cannot be used as a valid argument against Augustinian theology. Faith is the conduit of salvation and we need to lean on it in any time of doubt.
I received this from a well-intentioned friend regarding Church and State:
“Remember what the original colonists were fleeing; a FEDERAL CHURCH, run by the Government of England. They were not looking to abolish religion, only to keep the Government from establishing ONE GOVERNEMENTALLY CONTROLLED DENOMINATION.”
That seems like an oxymoron. How does one abolish Church while instituting it? Many say the early Americans (and the modern) wanted some sort of non-governmental church, where the government did not “control” the Church. But the Presbyterian Church, which essentially became the new American Church (over 80% of the Rebel soldiers were Presbyterian) after they warred against the Anglicans in the Revolutionary War, declared in their documents that they no-longer wanted the protection of the State.
This new church neither wanted the guidance nor the protection of the State. So what did they think would happen? that heretics would never take over? If you notice my post on The Fool a few days ago, you will notice that the liberal’s eschatology is over-realized in that their anthropology is so skewed that they have become completely naive. They underestimate the nature of sinful man!
You can’t fire your security force and expect there to be no break-ins. You cannot leave your doors open every night and expect no one to eventually walk in and harm you. I think we need to start admitting that America was far too arrogant by stating they wanted no oversight from the country that first funded their expedition in the very beginning. If we want the grace of God, we need to be humble (James 4:6). And it is certainly going to take the grace of God to ward off the Muslims and liberals that are after our country.
Rev. Wilson posted this link on church signs. I wonder if this is real. If it is, I think it is great that polar opposite churches like these are even having conversation, as silly as the conversation might be.
Many liberals are naive to believe that a utopia or kingdom can be established on earth without the mortification of sin, living as if there is no such reality as Total Depravity, and over-realizing their eschatology. They protest war as if countries are not plotting against us; They release prisoners as if they will not strike again; They promote sensual entertainment and dress as if sexual promiscuity and crime does not follow; They give their children over to Agnostics and other near-satanic people to raise (teach) them as if the child will not develop sinful doubt; They promote secular oversight of education as if the Christian worldview will not be banished from the system; And they even invite “other cultures” to participate in the governing of God’s people in America as if these other cultures will never take over. This is the short of what liberal philosophy contains.
The liberal (and many conservatives are falling into this mindset) is naive! The liberal does not understand basic psychology of the human mind. To them, man is basically good and is in no way naturally narcissistic. To the liberal, a little of this and a little of that will not affect their walk with God or the well-being of their church and family. They neither understand that the mind is built with doctrine nor that it is cultivated by liturgy. They cannot see the hidden liturgies and doctrines that the enemy has hidden in today’s culture. But as the Proverb teaches, sudden calamity will fall on those who consider themselves “progressive.” (Proverbs 24:21-22)
Yes, we will have revival and the changing of society through the good works of God’s Church, but it will not come without a fight. It will not come without realizing that sin needs to be mortified and caged. This does not mean that we will become superficial, as many of the Fundamentalists have insisted High Churchman are. This means that we will become humble, realizing that within the boundaries of the Kingdom only, will God’s people reach their destiny. This is a Kingdom on earth as Christ calls for in his Prayer, not a mere invisible relationship. Praying for His “Kingdom come thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” means focusing on heavenly realities that are not crowded by adrenaline-filled pleasures and skepticisms.