This is an excellent article. Well balanced and very thoughtful… (a breath of fresh air rather than simply caricaturing individuals!) Here’s a great paragraph:
“Finally, I worry that a movement built on megachurches, megaconferences, and megaleaders, does the church a disservice in one very important way that is often missed amid all the pizzazz and excitement: it creates the idea that church life is always going to be big, loud, and exhilarating and thus gives church members and ministerial candidates unrealistic expectations of the normal Christian life. In the real world, many, perhaps most, of us worship and work in churches of 100 people or less; life is not loud and exciting; big things do not happen every Sunday; budgets are incredibly tight and barely provide enough for a pastor’s modest salary; each Lord’s Day we go through the same routines of worship services, of hearing the gospel proclaimed, of taking the Lord’s Supper, of teaching Sunday School; perhaps several times a year we do leaflet drops in the neighbourhood with very few results; at Christmas time we carol sing in the high street and hand out invitations to church and maybe two or three people actually come along as a result; but no matter — we keep going, giving, and praying as we can; we try to be faithful in the little entrusted to us. It’s boring, it’s routine, and it’s the same, year in, year out. Therefore, in a world where excitement, celebrity, and cultural power are the ideal, it is tempting amidst the circumstances of ordinary church life to forget that this, the routine of the ordinary, the boring, the plodding, is actually the norm for church life and has been so throughout most places for most of the history of the church; that mega-whatevers are the exception, not the rule; and that the church has survived throughout the ages not just – or even primarily – because of the high profile firework displays of the great and the good, but because of the day to day faithfulness of the mundane, anonymous, non-descript people who constitute most of the church, and who do the grunt work and the tedious jobs that need to be done. History does not generally record their names; but the likelihood is that you worship in a church which owes everything, humanly speaking, to such people.”
Ten bucks to the person who can spot the sentence which made me laugh out loud! (Clue: it’s not in the above paragraph)
Mark Baddeley has posted up a great article on the Sola Panel about how our own Self-Knowledge can aid us in the Christian life (particularly here, ministry). Go and check it out – the next installments look promising too!
Also, he’s posted up some more extended thoughts on his blog here. Interestingly I think is the discussion on the use of the “law of non-contradiction” in theology. Good stuff!
Just a quick heads up for anyone who’s keen to come along:
The Prebyterian Theological College is hosting an Open Lecture by Paul Helm on the 15th September. Moore Theological College is hosting a Calvin500 Conference on the 16th-17th September.
Paul Helm is Professor in History and Philosophy at Kings College, University of London, and holds the J.I. Packer Chair in Theology and Philosophy, Regent College, Canada.
Amongst numerous other interests, Dr Helm has special expertise in the links between Calvin’s thought and its development among Calvinists of the 17th century and is the author of Calvin and the Calvinists, 1982. He’s written a whole lot of God, Time and Foreknowledge, and is coming to Australia at the perfect time for my doctrine essay!
If anyone’s keen to come along and grab dinner at the RSL before the lecture at PTC, let me know!
Mark Thompson has just posted up a bunch of short summaries of the papers given at the Edinburgh Dogmatics Conference. Very interesting bunch of speakers: Henri Blocher, Mike Horton, Bruce McCormack, John Franke and Mark Thompson himself. Here’s s little snippet from Mark’s summary of his paper:
“Perhaps the most controversial part of my paper was the suggestion that the relationship between preaching and the sacraments can help us to clarify what preaching is about. In other words, preaching can be displaced by sacramental maximalism and it can also be distorted by sacramental minimalism. The sacraments remind us that the Christ of preaching is ‘Christ crucified’ not some abstract theological principle; they insist on the proper posture of the Christian as one who receivessalvation rather than effecting it; and they will not allow us to reduce preaching and the Christian life in general to the purely rationalist apprehension of eternal truths.
Some rather insistent voices suggest that the problem with some of our preaching at least is that it contains too much theology, making the sermon too complicated or too remote from the concrete realities of Christian living. I suggest what we need is more theology, not less and, in particular, careful thinking about the place preaching has in our doctrine of the church.”
It’s an interesting few short posts. Michael Jensen has a go at John Owen for his Calvinism (it would be interesting to see what Carl Trueman or perhaps even John Webster thinks on this issue), Paul Helm brings up the pesky Trinitarian problem for those Amyraldians, and Ben Witherington focuses on the love of God.
What’s interesting is that each person takes their position to be the biblical position! So, interestingly enough the texts of Scripture can be used to argue each position. Perhaps another question worth asking is, which position is internally consistent and comes from the text. If, we let Scripture interpret Scripture and find coherent results, then that is the best option. To my mind, the Amyraldian (eg, one of the many problems: isn’t unbelief itself a sin Michael? Mark 9:24, Rom 4:20… And if so, then hasn’t Christ died for that sin?? Therefore shouldn’t all be saved despite their unbelief?) isn’t internally consistent over against the Calvinist position which is, and the Arminian position simply denies the sovereignty of God over man.
So, even though I reckon Michael’s a nice guy and a good lecturer at my own college, I’m siding with Paul Helm on this one! Sorry Mike, but I think there are too many problems with the Amyraldian system of soteriology!
Well, over Friday evening and through Saturday, a group of about 50 of us had the privilege of hearing Carl Trueman speak on the topic of Creeds and Confessions. It was excellent – lots of stuff to think about, and lots of great encouragement too! Carl took three sessions (with Mark Thompson taking a great session on the 39 Articles in between) which were:
Christians who know what they believe in a world which believes nothing
Confessing Christ in context
Confessing Christ in the future
These are some of the key points I thought Carl made during his lectures (it’s a little random, but worth putting down!):
- Contra today’s emphasis on progress, and the future, Christians know that 1) Truth is verbally formulated, 2) There are bodies which do the formulation, and 3) Truth can, to some extent, cross time and space.
- God does Church, we don’t! And Church is a doctrinal entity (not purely experiential), which presupposes knowledge and experience, which in turn presupposes office (Heb 14:7-9, 1 Tim 5:17, Romans 10:9, Titus 1:5, James 3). Thus, training and age are important.
- The order of Calvin’s institutes cannot be read up into his theology. Crucial.
- There are two types of Christian: One who writes their creeds down in order to be open with what they believe, and the other who prefers to keep them in the background
- The fact that Calvin and Luther didn’t reject the perpetual virginity of Mary shows how they valued tradition.
- The proof-texts of the Westminster Confession of Faith point you to traditions in the commentaries – they aren’t crude and brute proofs in and of themselves. They urge you to pick up the 30 or 40 commentaries on that verse to see why the point was made.
- Confessions are necessary for corporate unity. Eg: the Emerging Church is correct to point out the individualism of current evangelicalism, but hasn’t solved the problem since they haven’t produced any confession of belief. Thus, they have a rubbery, non-existent corporate unity.
- Confessions demonstrate our integrity. Eg, Luther and Zwingli and their disagreement on the Lord’s Supper: [it] “was a tragedy, but would have been an even greater tragedy if they had agreed.”
- Confessions require catechisms. They are vital to the communication of the faith. Carl agrees with Jaroslav Pelikan: “any movement that is based around personal salvation in Jesus but is divorced from creeds and confessions is doomed.”
- Confessions relativise the present. Since they stand the test of time, but they be used to measure how significant current issues are.
- Carl made an interesting suggestion of preaching through confessions. Morning worship with expository sermons, then a church family lunch, then afternoon worship with a sermon based around the week’s confessional point.
- Confessions must not simply be used as a test of orthodoxy, but they should ultimately bring us back to doxology – since of course, that was in the mind of the framers!
Personally, I’ve been challenged to think about my doctrine of baptism, and the importance of this for my future ministry in the Anglican Church. I think I’ve been taking this doctrine quite lightly, but actually should reconsider this, in light of upholding the 39 artictles. And also, I’d be keen to think about preaching through the 39 articles at some point also (bar the one on the Queen!).
So, all in all – a great conference and a great guy. I’m looking forward to Wednesday night’s lecture back at the PTC. It’s on BB Warfield’s theology. Info here.
Carl Trueman, of Westminster Theological Seminary is one of the best historical theologians I’ve heard before (along with Ashley Null who’s speaking at Moore College at the moment). Carl is the keynote speaker at the “Confess or Die” conference at the Presbyterian Theological College in Sydney this weekend. I’ll hopefully have some thoughts up about that over the weekend.
But here’s a great video to check out. It’s Carl Trueman speaking about John Owen, who was described by John Webster as the greatest ever english speaking theologian! Check it out! And if you’re free over the weekend, come down to the Confess or Die conference!
This is an excellent article. Well balanced and very thoughtful… (a breath of fresh air rather than simply caricaturing individuals!) Here’s a great paragraph:
Sorry Mike, but I think there are too many problems with the Amyraldian system of soteriology!
Well, over Friday evening and through Saturday, a group of about 50 of us had the privilege of hearing Carl Trueman speak on the topic of Creeds and Confessions. It was excellent – lots of stuff to think about, and lots of great encouragement too! Carl took three sessions (with Mark Thompson taking a great session on the 39 Articles in between) which were:
