"Christian nationalism"

Mark Tooley on "Douglas Wilson’s America." The subtitle is "His work to create a confessionally Christian state is the wrong antidote to what he seeks to cure." From that post:

...[T]he chief challenge to Christianity in America, and perhaps even to the broader unity of our democracy and civil society, is the stunning decline in religious affiliation. Only several decades ago, 90 percent of Americans identified as Christian, and now just about 60 percent do. Nearly 30 percent identify with no religion. Americans are not bewitched by Hindu statues or other religions; they are less interested in institutional religion. The fault can lie only with America’s Christian churches, which no longer command transgenerational loyalty. Yet few postliberals, religious or not, talk about the imperative of reviving churches and their affiliated institutions in America, absent which there can be no “Christian America.” Many postliberals celebrate Hungary under Viktor Orbán, who stresses his nation’s Christian identity. Recent data shows that church attendance in Massachusetts is 50 percent higher than in “Christian” Hungary, where the regime, despite its rhetoric and state-controlled media, has not increased religious observance. No government can.

Christianity can survive and thrive in America, as everywhere else, only through evangelism—making new converts—and discipling—strengthening its adherents in the faith. An agenda of state promotion of Christianity may rhetorically scratch itching ears eager to attack liberalism and its principles of religious freedom and legal equality for all. But it almost certainly will have no effect on rejuvenating Christian influence. At least Wilson, unlike most of the rhetoricians and social influencers touting Christian nationalism of some sort, is a pastor who plants churches and builds Christian institutions. Many of his ideas are offensive, unhelpful, or implausible. The company he keeps and the followers he attracts are often disturbing. .... (more)

Mark Tooley, "Douglas Wilson’s America," The Dispatch, August 17, 2025.

"Nondenominational"

I find it annoying when local churches indulge in cute "branding." The first time I recall feeling that way was when a church that had been known by its location and denomination became the "High Point" church. It is particularly annoying when a church actually conforms to a particular doctrinal tradition but conceals the affiliation. I liked this defense of clear denomination:

Nondenominational churches are the single fastest-growing Christian affiliation in the U.S. I regularly talk to believers who tell me their church isn’t a part of any denomination. Often, that comes with a hint of smugness, as if they are the ones truly being faithful to Scripture while the rest of us are in bondage to the traditions of man. ....

No individual or church simply “believes what the Bible says.” Every one of us engages in an act of interpretation when we read Scripture. We are shaped by our fallibility and sin, and limitedness. We are also shaped by the community of people around us. We learn to read Scripture from influential pastors, seminary professors, or that guy we had in a college Bible study. They learned from others as well, and those people together form a tradition that inevitably affects how we understand the Bible.

The broad traditions within Christianity exist because there are questions that are key to our life together as Christians which we disagree about. ....

Nondenominational churches inevitably have conclusions on these topics that place them in certain theological traditions. Indeed, it is a running joke in some circles that when a church says they are nondenominational, they’re really saying they’re either Baptist or charismatic and just trying to hide it. Such churches aren’t more theologically inclusive; they’re just less clear about their convictions. They are the neighbor who always votes Republican (or Democrat) and gives to Republican causes and has Republican yard signs but insists that they’re an open-minded independent. What’s worse, by pretending they don’t have convictions and “just teach the Bible,” they encourage a kind of arrogance that assumes they and they only have opinions of equal authority with God’s Word.

I think a much healthier approach is clarity with charity. We should be clear about our convictions and the broad theological categories they land us in. I’m happy to use terms like “Reformed” or “Presbyterian” to describe my theological opinions, not because I’m celebrating some man-made tradition but because I think the Bible teaches stuff that puts me in that camp. You might disagree, and that’s fine. Being up front about our differences allows us to recognize where we are united and have friendly and clarifying debates about the jumping-off points. Transparency makes room for grace; obfuscation inhibits it. .... (more)

Eric Tonjes, "Why Denominations Are Good, Actually," Mere Orthodoxy, July 9, 2025.

Agree when you can. Disagree when you must.

I am a believer in "honest ecumenism," that is, ecumenism that does not ignore or minimize the real doctrinal differences that do exist, but does focus on real areas of agreement. I've been encouraged by what I've read about Leo XIV. He seems committed to orthodoxy and seems to lack many of his predecessor's more annoying traits. Protestants and Catholics share much in common, but some differences ought not be ignored. Several years ago, Kevin DeYoung explained "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants."  He began:

Ask a serious Protestant today what is the biggest threat to orthodox Christianity, and he might mention cultural hostilities, the sexual revolution, or nominalism in our churches. But if you would have asked a Protestant the same question a hundred years ago, he would have almost certainly mentioned the Roman Catholic Church. Until fairly recently, Protestants and Catholics in this country were, if not enemies, then certainly players on opposing teams.

Today, much of that animosity has melted away. And to a large extent, the thaw between Protestants and Catholics has been a good thing. Sincere Protestants and Catholics often find themselves to be co-belligerents, defending the unborn, upholding traditional marriage, and standing up for religious liberty. And in an age that discounts doctrine, evangelical Protestants often share more in common theologically with a devout Roman Catholic steeped in historic orthodoxy than they do with liberal members of their own denominations. I personally have benefited over the years from Catholic authors like G.K. Chesterton, Richard John Neuhaus, and Robert George.

And yet, theological differences between Protestants and Catholics are still wide and in places very deep. It’s important to be conversant with some of the main issues that legitimately divide us, lest we think all the theological hills have been laid low and all the dogmatic valleys made into a plain. .... (more, with the differences)

Kevin DeYoung, "8 Key Differences Between Catholics and Protestants," Clearly Reformed, September 12, 2017.

Integral to humanity

From a review of Alister McGrath's Why We Believe:

His latest book, Why We Believe, provides McGrath with another opportunity to defend belief in the face of those who deride it as at best irrational and weird and at worst, dangerous. It coincides with the 1,700th anniversary of the Christian Nicene Creed, first adopted by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, and still used today as a profession of faith by those with official positions in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Lutheran Churches.

But as McGrath rightly says of a creed – a word taken from the Latin credo, “I believe” – it might be a description of what a Christian believes, but it’s a limited statement. To truly understand belief, he argues, we need to see it lived. As he reminds his readers, CS Lewis, one of the 20th century’s most high-profile atheists-turned-Christians, as well as the creator of Narnia, understood that “the Christian narrative is primary; Christian creeds are secondary… creeds cannot convey either [Christianity’s] imaginative appeal or its subjective impact.”

McGrath’s basic premise is that belief, rather than being outmoded and unscientific superstition, is integral to being human. In a rewriting of Descartes’s cogito ergo sum, he argues that homo sapiens needs to make sense of life, not merely survive it. As the novelist Jeanette Winterson would put it, we are meaning-seeking creatures. Beliefs, whether humanist, or Christian, or that of another religion, shape the way we understand and experience the world.

The most interesting issue about faith and its understanding of human nature, after all, is how it keeps bubbling up, not only in people’s everyday lives but in public discourse. While humanists, as McGrath points out, believe in the inherent goodness of people, a Christian such as Miss Marple understands the simultaneous capacity for its opposite. Only this autumn, forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead reached for Christian theology in her Reith Lectures to help explain evil. It was, she argued, an absence of good, and its antidote to evil was therefore to practise goodness – in other words, the development of virtue that theologians and philosophers from Aquinas onwards have been advocating.

McGrath uses this book to take on Dawkins et al once more: he complains that the New Atheists “degraded and rationalised faith”, and treated it as though it were “simply a form of data”. But he also gives an account of belief’s many facets, from the search for a big picture to the difference it makes to navigating a difficult world. He perceptively comments on how suffering, once seen as a connection between Christians and Christ, is now often perceived as a problem by Christian thinkers drawn into trying to rationalise pain. .... (more)

Catherine Pepinster, "Atheists, you don’t even understand what ‘belief’ is," The Telegraph, Jan. 9, 2025.

The rightful king has landed...

C.S. Lewis on the Incarnation:

• 
  …the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. (God in the Dock)
• The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. (Miracles)
• In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down;…down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature he has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him. (Miracles)
• The Incarnation…illuminates and orders all other phenomena, explains both our laughter and our logic, our fear of the dead and our knowledge that it is somehow good to die, and which at one stroke covers what multitudes of separate theories will hardly cover for us if this is rejected. (Miracles)
• But supposing God became man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God…. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man, That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. (Mere Christianity)
• Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.” (Mere Christianity)

"Our list of allies grows thin"

First Things is a magazine that has always had Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish contributors. Carl Trueman, a Protestant, is one of them. He was recently asked why he isn't a Catholic. Part of his answer:

Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. ....

J. Gresham Machen, the Presbyterian controversialist who came to prominence in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, argued that confessional Protestantism and Roman Catholicism were separated from liberal Christianity by, among other things, their commitment to supernaturalism. (Both agreed that the tomb was really empty on the third day.) In other words, the former were species of Christianity while the latter was a completely different religion. ....

Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process. (more)

Carl Trueman, "Why I Am Not Catholic," First Things, Dec. 12, 204.

Marcionism

An ancient heresy returns again in support of political bigotry. From The Free Press:

.... Like a boil on the backside of the body politic, there has been an ugly irruption of Jew-hating foolishness over casting in the upcoming Netflix film Mary, about the life of Jesus’s mother. People are outraged—outraged!—that director D.J. Caruso cast an Israeli Jew, Noa Cohen, to play the title character. ....

...[E]very Christian knows from the Bible that Mary was a Jewish maiden visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who told her that, though a virgin, she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bear Israel’s long-awaited messiah.

“Behold, the handmaid of the Lord,” she replied. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” (Luke 1:38)

The Gospel of Matthew begins with a recitation of the long lineage of Jesus, to demonstrate that the Nazarene son of Mary descended from both Abraham and King David. This is not coincidence: It is necessary to establish Jesus’s messianic credentials according to the Hebrew Bible.

Of course Jews don’t accept this, but believe that the messiah is still to come. The point is simply that it is impossible to extricate Jesus and his mother from Judaism. ....

To deny the Jewishness of Jesus is not only to negate the clear and unambiguous testimony of Scripture but to render as nonsense the entire salvation narrative.

Indeed, as Jesus himself told the Samaritan woman, God sent salvation to all of humanity through the Jewish people. No Jews, no Jesus. Though from the Christian perspective, Jews today reject the divinity of Jesus, as did their ancestors—while from the Jewish perspective they have merely remained true to their covenant with God—followers of Jesus cannot reject the Jews without being guilty of a serious, even fatal, heresy.

That heresy is a very old one, and it is called Marcionism. Marcion was a wealthy second-century Christian who, under the influence of Gnosticism, taught that the God of the New Testament was not the God of the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew god was, according to Marcion, a god of wrath; the Christian god was a god of love. These are two distinct deities, he said, and the Christian god is sovereign. ....

Marcionism was strongly condemned by the Church fathers, who defended the legitimacy and necessity of the Hebrew scriptures. In Marcionism, Christianity replaces Judaism; in Christian orthodoxy, Christianity fulfills Judaism. “Don’t misunderstand why I have come—it isn’t to cancel the laws of Moses and the warnings of the prophets,” said Jesus (Matthew 5:17). “No, I came to fulfill them and to make them all come true.” ....

...[W]hat all authoritative Christian traditions share is an irrevocable, undeniable testimony that God chose the Jewish people to make Himself known to all of humanity, and that without Hebrew Scripture and tradition, the Christian faith would make no sense at all. .... (more)

Rod Dreher, "On Mary and the Mob," The Free Press, Dec. 1, 2024.

Nicaea

Philip Jenkins, always worth reading, on "The Nicene Myth," in which he argues that the Council of Nicaea wasn't the inflection point that many historical accounts suggest. Here he describes the council, but the essay is much longer (do read it all, if you have the time):

The story of Nicaea is quickly told. In 312, Constantine consolidated power in the Roman Empire and granted toleration to Christianity the following year. He accepted some leading Christians as his advisors on religious matters and felt the need to demonstrate his leadership of the larger church when it fell into crisis or division.

Such a situation developed in Alexandria, where the presbyter Arius argued that Christ the Son was not fully equal to God the Father. Because the Father was unique in being unbegotten, he must be different from the Son, who was begotten in time, and through whom the Father created the world: “There was a time when He [the Son] was not.” Just how directly these ideas stemmed from any one individual such as Arius is much disputed, but it is rhetorically useful to label any given teaching as the quirky sentiments of one lone individual, rather than a broad intellectual current. It should be noted, though, that Arius was actually not departing too far from views held by eminently respectable earlier thinkers.

Even so, as the Alexandrian church debated the issue, it was Arius personally who attracted the stigma for venturing on dangerous ground, and he was condemned. To resolve the spreading controversy, Constantine summoned a great council from the whole world, the oikou mene, which thus became the church’s first “ecumenical” council.

Between 250 and 300 bishops gathered at Nicaea, representing a minority of the 1,800 or so who then held that office; only five came from the Western church. Tensions ran high during the month or so of debate, and legend holds that Arius was publicly slapped by Bishop Nicholas of Myra—the historical original of Santa Claus. Ultimately, Arius was condemned, with only two bishops prepared to speak up for him. Christ’s full equality with the Father was proclaimed in a new creed, which declared him to be of the same substance, homoousion.

With their mission duly accomplished, the Fathers dispersed to their homes, and every one, we assume, lived orthodox-ly ever after.

That history seems straightforward, and far too much so for many tastes. Through the centuries, Nicaea has become a potent symbol of whatever later believers wished to find: it offers a splendid hook on which to hang whatever trends or facts need to be stigmatized. .... (more)

Jenkins on Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code should convince readers to never rely on thrillers for historical knowledge. Jenkins also addresses, and corrects, errors from other, more serious sources.

Philip Jenkins, "The Nicene Myth," Modern Age, Nov. 18, 2024.

Boundaries

Foundations of Faith begins with a quotation often attributed to St Augustine: “In the essentials, unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.” He then lists the categories his professor used to classify doctrine:

• Essential Doctrine 
• Cardinal Doctrines 
• Non-Essentials
• Tertiary and Peripheral

What is essential, and what is not?

Essential Doctrines are doctrines that put you outside of the faith if you deny them. To reject these teachings means you are not a Christian, and the word “Heresy” is usually invoked for this category of error. Examples of essential doctrines are the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. ....

Non-essential doctrines are the ones that usually distinguish denominations. The Baptists, the Presbyterians, and the Pentecostals are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Still, they hold doctrines that are significant enough to impact how they worship and, therefore, opt to attend different churches. Examples of non-essential doctrines include questions such as, “Does the gifts of tongues continue or cease after the Apostles? Predestination or libertarian free will? Baptism—infant or believers? Covenant theology or dispensational? And questions surrounding the rapture. These can significantly impact our worship, but the wrong answers to these questions rarely put us outside of the faith. .... (more)

My denomination—Seventh Day Baptist—holds that the Sabbath should be observed from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday, the Biblical Sabbath, but would categorize that belief as important and correct but "non-essential," in the sense that those who disagree with us are not heretics and thus the doctrine belongs in category three of this taxonomy.

9/24  I read today that the quotation in the first paragraph above is not from Augustine but has often been erroneously attributed to him.

Doug Eaton, "4 Categories of Doctrinal Weight in Christian Theology," Fight of Faith, August 20, 2024.

"Dust to dust"

Re-posted because it is so right:

Jonathan Aigner ponders "How To Choose Music For A Funeral." I agree with much (not all) that he writes but very much agree with the following and have made my preference clear to my pastor, relatives, and friends:

One of the things the baby boomer generation has introduced into the liturgical sphere is the “celebration of life” service. That’s quite unfortunate.

A “celebration of life” points to a dead person. A funeral points to the cross.

A “celebration of life” sidesteps grief. A funeral confronts grief head-on.

A “celebration of life” ignores resurrection. A funeral depends on resurrection.

Funerals aren’t celebrations of human life. Funerals are proclamations of another life, a life that ended in a death that ended in a life.

That is the life worth celebrating. The music you choose must point to Jesus, not to the casket. ....

Death sucks. It just sucks. And when we lose someone we love, we remember how badly it sucks. And we helplessly face the fact that we can’t do a damn thing about it.

It’s not supposed to be that way.

But Jesus lives, and so shall we.

And that makes all the difference.

How To Choose Music For A Funeral

We believe...

Upon occasion, the congregation in my church would recite the Apostles Creed in the Sabbath morning service. That isn't typical of Baptist worship. Many among us claim to be non-creedal, basing belief only on Scripture. Actually, that means creating a personal creed, since interpretations of Scripture can differ. This summer, the Southern Baptists will consider adding the Nicene Creed to the "Baptist Faith and Message," that denomination's belief statement. A few excerpts from arguments made by advocates of the proposal:

As each generation of Christians since the fourth century has rightly noted, the Nicene Creed’s statements are thoroughly biblical. It covers the full slate of major loci in Christian theology – the Trinity, Christology, salvation, creation, Scripture, the church, and the last things. ....

Affirming the Nicene Creed is not new in Baptist history. The rich confessional tradition among Baptists, both General (Arminian) and Particular (Calvinist) Baptists, has often made use of creedal language. For example, the influential Second London Confession of Faith (adopted in 1689) utilized specifically creedal formulations in its statement on the Trinity and the Incarnation: “one substance”, “begotten”, “proceeding,” “very…God,” and so on. ....

In addition to this general creedal dependence, at least two Baptist confessions included the full text of the three ecumenical creeds. First, the Orthodox Creed, an important seventeenth-century General Baptist confession compiled by the influential Baptist theologian Thomas Monck, affirms and includes the text of all three ecumenical creeds in Article 38. Echoing the language of the Articles of Religion, the confession begins as follows,

The Three Creeds, (viz.) Nicene Creed, Athanasius his Creed, and the Apostles Creed, (as they are commonly called) ought throughly to be received, and believed. For we believe they may be proved by most undoubted Authority of holy Scripture....

So, affirming the Nicene Creed is both biblical and Baptist, but it is also beneficial. Affirming the Creed in our confessional document would have the advantage of endorsing it and commending its use in the context of local church ministry. ....

R. Lucas Stamps & Matthew Y. Emerson, "Why We Support Adding the Nicene Creed to the Baptist Faith and Message," The Center for Baptist Renewal, June 8, 2024.

Grace sufficient

My denomination has an annual conference to conduct business, but also for worship and study, and the latter is planned by the conference president. This year the president is Johnmark Camenga (a first cousin, once removed), the pastor of a Seventh Day Baptist church in West Virginia. He has a blog called "Unearth the Church." That is also his chosen theme for the conference sessions and also the title of his recent book. The newest post on his blog is "Yes, Christ Alone" which asks whether there needs to be a "means" of achieving grace.

...[M]eans of grace theology establishes an expectation for ordinances that is not Scriptural and ultimately sets people up for disappointment (at best) and harm (at worst). ....

The means of grace demand more of Christ than he’s already done while also demanding of him something that he never promised. The declaration of Jesus that it is finished (John 19:30) and his promises to always be with us (Matthew 28:20) are indications of sufficient work and a sufficient presence. We don’t need more and Jesus didn’t promise more on this side of eternity. That which “manifests” grace within the believer is the work of Jesus and the believer’s participation in it through their belief. That’s it. ....

When Christ alone is insufficient, you can never have confidence about your eternal destiny. When there are hoops to jump through, hurdles to clear, booths to enter, bread to eat, wine to drink, and waters to traverse, each of those things only takes you further from grace, not closer to it. ....

I don’t need more means, I need to more fully understand the meaning of the life death and resurrection of Jesus. I don’t need more grace, I need to more deeply appreciate how much his grace has already accomplished; to know and trust that it is finished, that he is with me, and that he is sufficient.

Christ alone and nothing more. (more)

Johnmark Camenga, "Yes, Christ Alone," Unearth the Church, May 23, 2024.

Courage

According to Western tradition:

"...the seven Christian virtues or heavenly virtues refers to the union of two sets of virtues. The four cardinal virtues, from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (or restraint), and courage (or fortitude). The three theological virtues, from the letters of St. Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love).

Peter Kreeft:

The four cardinal virtues – justice, wisdom (prudence), courage (fortitude), and moderation (self-control, temperance) – come not just from Plato or Greek philosophy. You will find them in Scripture. They are knowable by human nature, which God designed, not Plato. Plato first formulated them, but he did for virtue only what Newton did for motion: he discovered and tabulated its own inherent foundational laws.

These four are called "cardinal" virtues from the Latin word for "hinge." All other virtues hinge on these four. That includes lesser Virtues, which are corollaries of these, and also greater virtues (the three "theological virtues"), which are the flower of these.

Courage may not be the greatest of virtues but it is the necessary one:

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.
— C.S. Lewis

Courage is the greatest of all the virtues. Because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
— Samuel Johnson

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
— Winston Churchill

Hell

I enjoy browsing through books of quotations, collections from many sources like H.L. Mencken's  A New Dictionary of Quotations (it was new once), but I also have books of quotations from individual authors who have proven to be eminently quotable, for instance, Samuel Johnson, Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. One of my favorite quotable authors is Dorothy L. Sayers, who never minces words, especially regarding Christian doctrine. Today I was looking through a book of Sayers' quotations, A Matter of Eternity, published by Eerdmans in 1973, and came across this:

...there seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to "the cruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell", or "the childish and grotesque mediaeval imagery of physical fire and worms"....

But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of Hell is not "mediaeval": it is Christ's. It is not a device of "mediaeval priestcraft" for frightening people into giving money to the Church: It is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from "mediaeval superstition", but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. If we are Christians, very well; we dare not not take the doctrine of Hell seriously, for we have it from Him whom we acknowledge as God and Truth incarnate. If we say that Christ was a great and good man, and that, ignoring His divine claims, we should yet stick to His teaching very well; that is what Christ taught. It confronts us in the oldest and least "edited" of the Gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realises, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of merely picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.

Originally from Introductory Papers on Dante, 1953.

"Any serious and thoughtful Christian..."

Thomas Howard:

Any serious and thoughtful Christian is a dogmatist, not in the sense of being pig-headed or ostrichlike, but in the sense of having a lively awareness that he stands in a defined tradition of received teaching that has been articulated by the holy prophets and apostles and handed down through the centuries. It is spelled out in the Bible and guarded and proclaimed by the Church. The Christian vision is a vision of the eternal, that is, of majestic fixities and mysteries that stand in judgment upon our history and our existence. The Word that was Incarnate in the drama played out on the stage of our history was the Word that articulated order out of chaos in the beginning and that will utter the final summing up at the end. ....

The Christian will be forever asking how this idea or that one fits. Fits what? Fits the pattern, says the Christian, the solemn, blissful, austerely, and magnificently orchestrated pattern of glory that we call creation, or the Dance. The Christian will be forever testing things in the light of the bright fixities that Christian vision perceives and celebrates. This is the reason why Christians are not ordinarily found in the van of contemporaneity. The Palm Sunday mob is the same in every century, forever throwing down their garments and their palms at the feet of the new prophet, hailing and exulting in things simply because they seem new and promising. Innovative and creative and unstructured are their favorite words, but of course by Friday this crowd has gotten bored by the creatively unstructured innovations, so they crucify the prophet and chase after fresh ones. ....

.... You have heard people talking about self-affirmation, and self-discovery, and self-acceptance, and self-identity. The great idea is to discover who you are. Fine. But any Christian will listen to this vocabulary with some wariness, since the vision he is already committed to sees a drastic paradox in this matter of the self. The biblical notion seems to be that...we move toward authentic self-knowledge by abandoning the quest for self-knowledge. Self-knowledge seems to be more or less irrelevant in this vision. Or at least irrelevant while we are en route to where we are going. Then ah, then we get the white stone with our real name engraved on it. This is given to the men who overcome, whatever that means. It does not seem to be promised to those who have sought themselves all along the way. ..... 

Thomas Howard, "The Touchstone of Orthodoxy," collected in The Night is far Spent, Ignatius Press, 2007.

The hinge of history

On the importance of knowing whose birth we will celebrate on Christmas (John 1:14):

Who then was Jesus, really?

You cannot even ask the question without implicitly choosing among answers. The very wording of the question, in the past tense ("Who was Jesus?") or the present ("Who is Jesus?"), presupposes its own answer. For those who believe his claim do not say that he was divine, but is divine. Divinity does not change or die or disappear into the past. Furthermore, if he really rose from the dead, he still is, and is very much alive today.

The Importance of the Issue

The issue is crucially important for at least six reasons.

1. The divinity of Christ is the most distinctively Christian doctrine of all. A Christian is most essentially defined as one who believes this. And no other religion has a doctrine that is even similar. Buddhists do not believe that Buddha was God. Muslims do not believe that Muhammad was God: "There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet."

2. The essential difference between orthodox, traditional, biblical, apostolic, historic, creedal Christianity and revisionist, modernist, liberal Christianity is right here. The essential modernist revision is to see Christ simply as the ideal man, or "the man for others"; as a prophet, rabbi, philosopher, teacher, social worker, psychologist, psychiatrist, reformer, sage or magician—but not God in the flesh.

3. The doctrine works like a skeleton key, unlocking all the other doctrinal doors of Christianity. Christians believe each of their many doctrines not because they have reasoned their own way to them as conclusions from a theological inquiry or as results of some mystical experiences, but on the divine authority of the One who taught them, as recorded in the Bible and transmitted by the church.

If Christ was only human, he could have made mistakes. Thus, anyone who wants to dissent from any of Christ's unpopular teachings will want to deny his divinity. And there are bound to be things in his teachings that each of us finds offensive—if we look at the totality of those teachings rather than confining ourselves to comfortable and familiar ones.

4. If Christ is divine, then the incarnation, or "enfleshing" of God, is the most important event in history. It is the hinge of history. It changes everything. If Christ is God, then when he died on the cross, heaven's gate, closed by sin, opened up to us for the first time since Eden. No event in history could be more important to every person on earth than that.

5. There is an unparalleled present existential bite to the doctrine. For if Christ is God, then, since he is omnipotent and present right now, he can transform you and your life right now as nothing and no one else possibly can. He alone can fulfill the psalmist's desperate plea to "create in me a clean heart. O God" (Ps 51:10). Only God can create; there is even a special word in Hebrew for it (bara').

6. And if Christ is divine, he has a right to our entire lives, including our inner life and our thoughts. If Christ is divine, our absolute obligation is to believe everything he says and obey everything he commands. If Christ is divine, the meaning of freedom becomes conformity to him.

Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, IVP, 1994, pp. 151-152.

Sacred names

Michael J. Kruger is a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. He regularly teaches an elective, “The Origin and Authority of the New Testament Canon.” He writes "I think my students particularly enjoy a sub-module of that course where we study high-resolution photographs of early Christian manuscripts." I found this interesting:

...[W]e spend some time working through images of P66, one of our earliest (nearly complete) copies of John.

There’s lot to say about P66, and early manuscripts in general, but when students see a NT manuscript up close for the first time, they notice something rather peculiar and unexpected. They notice that the Greek words for “God,” “Lord,” Christ,” and “Jesus” are not written out in full. Instead, they are abbreviated.

To abbreviate these words, the scribe would typically take the first and last letter of the word and put a horizontal stroke over the top. As an example, below are two instances of such abbreviations, side by side. The first is the abbreviation for θεοῦ and the second for Ἰησοῦς.

 Scholars refer to this scribal phenomenon as the nomina sacra (“sacred names”). ....

Our earliest New Testament manuscripts, a number of which date from the second century, already utilize this feature as far back as we can see. As a result, the nomina sacra are now regarded by scholars as the primary way that we know a document is Christian. ....

The nomina sacra are designed to show reverence and devotion to the name(s) of God. Contrary to what the term “abbreviation” implies, the nomina sacra were not designed to save space. Instead, they were a way for the scribe (and, later, for the reader) to set apart the divine name. Thus, as strange as it might sound, they were a form of worship.

Of course, it should be noted that the earliest Christians didn’t show devotion merely to the words “God” or “Lord,” but also to the names “Jesus,” and “Christ.” Thus, the nomina sacra constitute one of earliest pieces of evidence for the Christian belief in the divinity of Jesus. They demonstrate a remarkably high Christology, at least among these Christian scribes. ....

In sum, this oft-overlooked feature has tremendous significance for our understanding of early Christian culture. Not only did the earliest Christians care about books, and the careful copying of such books, but the nomina sacra demonstrate that they had a rather developed scribal infrastructure to make that happen.

Moreover, the scribes appeared to be fairly theologically astute. Through these abbreviations, they expressed a view that Jesus deserved honor and devotion right alongside God. The bundle of names—God, Lord, Jesus, Christ—showed that Jesus was not considered a new and separate divine being, but (somehow) shared the same divine identity as the God of the Old Testament. (more)

Michael J. Kruger, "One of the Most Remarkable Features of Early Christian Manuscripts," canon fodder, November 27, 2023.

Reformation Day

Re-posted

Today, October 31st, is Reformation Day. Kevin DeYoung reminded us of some of the most important reasons we are Protestants:

On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses concerning clerical abuses and indulgences on the church door at Wittenberg. This famous event is often considered the launching point for the Protestant Reformation.

The chief concern for Luther and the other reformers was the doctrine of justification. ....

There are five key concepts every Protestant should grasp if they are to understanding the reformer’s (and the Bible’s) doctrine of justification.

First, the Christian is simul iustus et peccator. This is Martin Luther’s famous Latin phrase which means “At the same time, justified and a sinner.” The Catechism powerfully reminds us that even though we are right with God, we still violate his commands, feel the sting of conscience, and battle against indwelling sin. On this side of the consummation, we will always be sinning saints, righteous wretches, and on occasion even justified jerks. God does not acquit us of our guilt based upon our works, but because we trust “him who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5).

Second, our right standing with God is based on an alien righteousness. .... I am not right with God because of my righteousness, but because “the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ” has been credited to me. .... We contribute nothing to our salvation. The name by which every Christian must be called is “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer. 23:6).

Third, the righteousness of Christ is ours by imputation, not by impartation. That is to say, we are not made holy, or infused with goodness as if we possessed it in ourselves, but rather Christ’s righteousness is credited to our account.

Fourth, we are justified by faith alone. The Catholic Church acknowledged that the Christian was saved by faith; it was the alone part they wouldn’t allow. ...[E]vangelical faith has always held that “all I need to do is accept the gift of God with a believing heart.” True, justifying faith must show itself in good works. That’s what James 2 is all about. But these works serve as corroborating evidence, not as the ground of our justification. We are justified by faith without deeds of the law (Rom. 3:28; Titus 3:5). The gospel is “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved” (Acts 16:30-31), not “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and cooperate with transforming grace and you shall be saved.” There is nothing we contribute to our salvation but our sin, no merit we bring but Christ’s, and nothing necessary for justification except for faith alone.

Finally, with all this talk about the necessity of faith, the Catechism explains that faith is only an instrumental cause in our salvation. .... It is the object of our faith that matters. If you venture out on to a frozen pond, it isn’t your faith that keeps you from crashing into the water. True, it takes faith to step onto the pond, but it’s the object of your faith, the twelve inches of ice, that keeps you safe. Believe in Christ with all your heart, but don’t put your faith in your faith. Your experience of trusting Christ will ebb and flow. So be sure to rest in Jesus Christ and not your faith in him. He alone is the one who died for our sakes and was raised for our justification. Believe this, and you too will be saved. (more)

From Nathan Finn: "Baptists and the Reformation":

...[O]n this Reformation Day, I’m thankful for the Protestant heritage we Baptists enjoy. We stand with Luther and Calvin on justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. We stand with the Anabaptists on a believer’s church committed to radical discipleship and confessor’s baptism. We stand with all three of these groups in their commitment to the supreme authority of Scripture. And as good Protestants, we ultimately stand where we stand, not because others stand there as well, but because we believe the Spirit still speaks through His Word to guide Christ’s people on the narrow way.

Five Key Concepts in the Reformation Understanding of Justification – Kevin DeYoung, Baptists and the Reformation

Are you a fundamentalist?

Russell Moore on the original meaning of fundamentalism:

.... It used to mean someone who believed in the “fundamentals” of the faith: the historicity of the biblical accounts, the Virgin Birth, the substitutionary Atonement, the bodily Resurrection, a visible and physical Second Coming, etc. By that definition, Billy Graham—the founder of Christianity Today—and all of those involved with the post-war evangelical movement were fundamentalists. And so am I.

In fact, in the old days of what was seen as a two-party system in the American church—of fundamentalists and modernists—the so-called fundamentalist party was broad enough to include hyper-creedal Presbyterians such as J. Gresham Machen, fiery revivalists such as D.L. Moody, experiential Baptists such as E.Y. Mullins, along with tongues-speaking Pentecostals and “deeper life” enthusiasts.

The problem with fundamentalism was that it came to not be about the fundamentals at all, but about an ever-narrowing sect based on grievance more than hope, quarrels more than cooperation. It came to be defined more and more by “secondary separation” from those who didn’t see everything the same way.

The renewal movement that came out of all of that, which came to be known as “evangelical,” struck out on a different path—though not a new path—back toward respecting what the creeds and confessions defined as essential for cooperation with conviction. This included biblical authority, the necessity of new birth, the reality of the supernatural and of sin, and the dual destinies of heaven or hell. When one knows what is fundamental, one is able, then, to work across differences on those things that we agree are important but are not of the essence of what it means to be a gospel Christian. ....

Russell Moore, "Two Cheers for Fundamentalism," Christianity Today.

"All work and all workers deserve honor"

On Labor Day weekend I return to Gene Edward Veith's explanation of "vocation," once posted on his blog (the link I originally used no longer works):

.... The word is simply the Latinate term for “calling.” Perhaps the best summation of the concept is in 1 Corinthians 7:17: “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”

God “assigns” different kinds and places of service for each Christian and then “calls” each Christian to that assignment. The Reformation theologians fleshed out this concept with other biblical teachings about God’s workings in society and the Christian’s life in the world (e.g., Ephesians 5:6, Romans 12:13, 1 Corinthians 7).

The great theologian of vocation was Martin Luther, who developed the teaching in his battles with monasticism—the view that the spiritual life requires withdrawal from secular life—and in defining “the priesthood of all believers.”

For Luther, vocation, like justification, is ultimately God’s work. God gives us our daily bread through the vocations of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. God creates new human beings through the vocations of fathers and mothers. God protects us through lawful magistrates.

Vocation is, first of all, about how God works through human beings. In His providential care and governing of His creation, God chooses to distribute His gifts by means of ordinary people exercising their talents, which themselves are gifts of God.

Thus, God heals by means of doctors, nurses, and other medical vocations. He makes our lives easier by means of inventors, scientists, and engineers. He creates beauty by means of artists, authors, and musicians. He gives us clothing, shelter, and other things we need by means of factory workers, construction contractors, and others who work with their hands. He cleans up after us by means of janitors and garbage collectors.

God thus looms behind everyone who provides us with the goods or services that we need. In one of Luther’s many memorable lines, God milks the cows through the hands of the milkmaid. This means that all work and all workers deserve honor. Whereas the world might look down on milkmaids and garbage collectors, they actually bear the sacred presence of God, who works in and through them.

God created us to be dependent on others—meat processors, manufacturers, journalists, lawyers, bankers, teachers, parents—and, through them, we are ultimately dependent upon God Himself.

Just as God is working through the vocation of others to bless us, He is working through us to bless others. In our vocations, we work side-by-side with God, as it were, taking part in His ceaseless creative activity and laboring with Him as He providentially cares for His creation. ....