Nature, Grace, and Film
Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
When we think about film we should ask, “is this a good piece of filmmaking? What is the nature of film? What makes a good film (e.g., screen writing, cinematography, directing, editing, acting etc)? These are the sorts of questions that Christian film critics ought to be asking and answering about film
.
I love a good film. I took three courses in film criticism as an undergraduate. They were more difficult than one might think. First, taking notes in the dark is challenging and reading them afterward is even more difficult. Second, I had to watch a lot of hard-to-watch films, which I would not recommend. Still, I got to watch a number of great films and got to learn a bit about how films are written, shot, and edited. I learned that the really great thing about Citizen Kane is not the banal script or even Orson Welles (1915–85)—the best performance in the film is Joseph Cotton’s—but the cinematography of Gregg Toland (1904–48). The opening shot amazes me still, even after CGI, etc. By the way, the best way to experience Orson Welles is to listen to him. If you enjoy podcasts go to archive.org and search for “Orson Welles old time radio.”
There is an approach to film criticism popular among evangelicals that seeks to find some aspect of a film, e.g., a theme, a story arc, or a character that somehow connects to the Christian faith. This is a mistake driven by a confusion over nature and grace. Evangelicals have long had trouble with the category of nature. For the most part they do not have that category in their intellectual toolbox. Things are thought to be valuable only insofar as they relate to grace (e.g., the new life).
When I became a Christian in the mid-70s, one of the fist things I learned informally, from other Christians, was that once a Christian has been redeemed he should no longer be interested even in the ordinary things that interested him when he was a pagan. Thus, an interest in sports must be replaced by an interest in what they called “spiritual things.” What they were saying is that Christians need to abandon nature for grace.
The Three Ways of Relating Nature and Grace
My new evangelical friends did not realize it but they were repeating an Anabaptist way of thinking about nature (creation) and grace (e.g., redemption). There are broadly three ways of relating nature and grace. The Anabaptist view is, as the Reformed complained, that “grace destroys nature.” The way I explain it to my students is to say that, in the Anabaptist view (which has greatly influenced American evangelicalism since 1800), grace obliterates (i.e., paints over) nature. They think this way because they have an over-realized eschatology, they expect too much of heaven and the future state now. This over-realized eschatology iReas a leaven throughout their theology. It leavens their theology, their ecclesiology, their view of the sacraments, their ethics, and their rejection of nature as a category of thought. In the Anabaptist/evangelical system, nature is thought mainly in terms of fallen nature and thus there is a quasi-Manichaean quality to the way they relate nature and grace.
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Trinitarian Personalism and Christian Preaching
Written by Scott R. Swain |
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
He, someone not something, is the supreme subject matter and scope of Christian preaching: God the Son incarnate, clothed with the promises of the gospel, crucified and risen, ascended and coming again.The Trinity and Christian Preaching
Recent days have prompted me to think about the relationship between trinitarian theology and Christian preaching.
The first prompt came in June while participating in the International Presbyterian Church’s Catalyst Conference in London. Over the course of three days, I had the opportunity to listen to a lot of good preaching, including three sermons from Sinclair Ferguson on the Pastoral Epistles. In the evenings, I had the opportunity to spend time with a number of IPC ministers and ministerial candidates, discussing the nature and calling of gospel preaching, as well as the current status of gospel preaching in the UK and North America. The second prompt came in July when I finished a short manuscript on the doctrine of the Trinity (which is to be published by Crossway next year). The third prompt came from research I am doing for other projects. The following are a few scattered thoughts on the relationship between trinitarian personalism and Christian preaching inspired by the confluence of these three prompts.
What Is Trinitarian Personalism?
“Personalism” is a term with specific philosophical connotations that I do not intend here. What I mean by “trinitarian personalism” follows from an insight, expressed by Thomas Aquinas in his disputation on divine power, that the term “person” is a term of dignity, which indicates two things about God’s supreme greatness and goodness.[1]
First, that God exists in three “persons” indicates that God’s manner of existing is the highest manner of existing. Specifically, the triune God is the living God; and the life he lives is a life of perfect intelligence, love, and beatitude. Second, that God exists in three “persons” indicates that God’s intelligent, loving, and blessed manner of existing subsists in three distinct, irreducible, unsubstitutable ways: as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The true and living God is the tripersonal God; and the life he lives is the life of the Father who begets, of the Son who is begotten, and of the Spirit who is breathed forth in their mutual love.
What does this rather fine metaphysical point have to do with Christian preaching? Stay with me.
Trinitarian Personalism in Patristic Exegesis
The Church Fathers display a kind of trinitarian personalism in the ways they read Holy Scripture. Three examples stand out.
The first example comes from Irenaeus of Lyon. In his dispute with Gnostic interpreters who so twisted Holy Scripture that its unified message became unrecognizable, Irenaeus argues that the main purpose of the “rule of faith” is to help readers identify the person of Jesus Christ as the handsome king to which all scriptures point. The scope or aim of Scripture, on this understanding, is not something but someone. Holy Scripture, in all its literary and historical diversity, is a book that holds forth before the eyes of faith God the Son, the handsome king.
The second example agrees with Irenaeus in seeing the persons of the Trinity as the central subject matter of Holy Scripture and (potentially) explains the origin of the term “person” in Christian theology. As Matthew Bates and others have recently argued, New Testament and early patristic interpretation of the Old Testament exhibits an ancient reading strategy known as “prosopological exegesis,” the practice of identifying otherwise unnamed or ambiguously identified characters (dramatis personae) within the drama of scriptural discourse. For example, the author of Hebrews identifies the king whom God addresses in Psalm 2:7 as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity (Heb 1:5). This “person-centered” approach to exegesis is the “birth” of trinitarian personalism: the scriptural foundation of the church’s perception of three “persons” in one God.[2]
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Can Faith Move Mountains?
Because of Christ, that old covenant religion was cast into the deepest seas and replaced by something so much better: the fount of Living Water! Jesus’ faith unleashed His Kingdom of salvation upon the world by putting away the types and shadows that came before. That is what this verse is trying to get at and that is why its true interpretation cannot be attacked by the moths and rust of materialism.
INTRODUCTION
If you have been a Christian for any length of time you have probably heard someone say: “if you have enough faith, then you can move mountains.” This, of course, sounds pretty epic until you nearly burst a blood vessel in your forehead trying to move a small ant hill in your back yard. It is then that you realize something. Either, you don’t have enough faith to move anything or you come to see that you have misunderstood this passage and need to relearn what it means. Today, I want to help you with the latter.
Here is the text in its immediate context.
18 Now in the morning, when He was returning to the city, He became hungry. 19 Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it except leaves only; and He said to it, “No longer shall there ever be any fruit from you.” And at once the fig tree withered. 20 Seeing this, the disciples were amazed and asked, “How did the fig tree wither all at once?” 21 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” – Matthew 21:18-22
As you can see, Jesus’ point is couched in a pretty specific context. He is teaching His disciples why and how He cursed a specific tree and rendered it barren forever. He was not vying for a regular spot on the TBN miracle hour where He teaches carnal Christians to actualize their materialistic fantasies. He was not saying: “Hey Christian, if you just believe super hard on this you can move whatever metaphorical mountain is standing in your way.”
If that were the case, we could join in with the prophets of Baal, trying to figure out which spiritual convulsion, faith cut, or liver-shiver of sincerity will get the fire to drop from heaven. If we say this prayer, sow this seed, or really really really believe, then that mountain of sickness will run away, that apex promotion will fall in my lap, and that zenith sports car I have always wanted will show up in my driveway.
Even though our flesh would certainly crave such a sensate and self-centered interpretation, this could not be further from what Jesus is actually saying. This passage, at least not directly, is not about you and the things you want! This passage is about Jesus and what He wants!
To understand all of this, let us discuss the two main ideas in the passage. What does it mean that He cursed the fig tree? And what does it mean to speak to a mountain and throw it into the sea?
CURSING FRUITLESSNESS
In Matthew 21, Jesus comes to Jerusalem, a fruitless mountain city that offered Him only leaves (Mt. 21:8). After that, He goes to the high point of the city, the temple mount, where fruit for God should have been present but all He found was rot and decay (Mt. 21:12-17). So, on the next morning, when Jesus curses a rotten tree, at the base of a mountain, because it would not bear any fruit, we should begin to pick up what Jesus is laying down.
Jerusalem is not only a city that is compared to a garden vineyard in Isaiah (Isaiah 5), but its residents are compared to various kinds of figs in Jeremiah (24). More than that, it’s temple was intentionally decorated to look like the garden of Eden (See for example 1 Kings 6:18, 29, 32, 35; 7:18-20). By these facts alone, we can see Jerusalem’s purpose was to be fruitful and to multiply good fruit for God, not the poison berries of Sodom. But, by the time Christ visits the city in Matthew 21, something had gone terribly wrong!
In Matthew 21, Jesus came to a city that no longer looked like a garden but a wilderness. He came to a temple that was no longer producing fruit for God, giving life to its people, but was withered in total corruption (Mt. 21:12-13). He came to a people that looked just like that barren fig tree rotting along the road, and by cursing that tree, He was showcasing what He was about to do to them.
Just like the withering tree, Jerusalem was about to be chopped down and thrown into the fire of God’s wrath. That is not a matter of opinion or poetic interpretation, that actually occurred 40 years later when Rome burned the city to the ground. They sieged it, they invaded it, and they turned the withered city into a pile of hot ash without a single stone left upon another (Matthew 24:1-2).
CASTING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
It is clear from the passage that the disciples were amazed at Jesus’ behavior and likely did not see the connection He was making with Jerusalem. This is not an uncommon occurrence, since the disciples misunderstand the significance and meaning of so much of what Jesus is talking about and doing in the Gospels. There are countless times His disciples are left scratching their heads in total confusion and this time is no different. So, in order to help them understand, Jesus does what He often does elsewhere; He illustrates His main point with a secondary example so that the disciples will finally get it.
Notice the example Jesus provides.
21 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you say to THIS mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will happen. (emphasis mine)
By sharing this example, Jesus is not taking a break from His main point in order to establish a very disconnected word of faith / prosperity theology. He is not ignoring the disciples question so that He can empower future charlatans with ammunition to abuse God’s people. Instead, it is quite clear from the context that Jesus is making His main point even stronger with a good illustration. He has showcased Jerusalem’s downfall with the image of a fig tree. Now He will talk about it in terms of a mountain.
Why?
FIRST
Because Jerusalem was literally a city on top of a mountain. It was surrounded by valleys on all sides and to get into the city you would need to go up from every direction. Furthermore, the temple was at the highest point and pinnacle of that mountain which meant that you could see it for miles and miles looming over the horizon.
Thus, as Jesus stood speaking to His disciples about the downfall of fruitless Jerusalem, that cursed mountain would have been looming largely over them. It would have been an obvious point that Jesus was making for anyone standing in that valley. Especially to this group, whose destination was that very mountain city.
SECOND
Jesus does not promise, if you speak to “a mountain” then it will leap off the land and into the water, like Mount Everest canon-calling into the Indian Ocean”. He also does not promise if you say to “any old mountain-like problem” it will fall into a Mariana-trnech-like-hole. No! He stands at the foot of a very specific mountain that all of them were looking at, and traveling towards, and says “Even if you say to THIS mountain”. By using the near demonstrative pronoun, it could not be more clear what Jesus is referring to.
He has a very specific mountain in view that will be destroyed and tossed into the sea. That brings us to our third point.
THIRD
It is a matter of historical record that the Romans surrounded the city of Jerusalem in AD 70 and leveled its top like a blown off volcano. They built ramps up to the city, came in, and tore down every building, especially the Jewish temple and razed the city to the ground. But, not only that, they killed most of the surviving males, and they took nearly 100,000 others into slavery back to Rome. Along with the women, children, and others, they carried every item of value left in the city, placed the spoils on their ships, and cast off back to Rome. The mountain of Jerusalem had very much been cast into the sea, just as Jesus predicted.
CONCLUSION
In Matthew 21, Jesus is not speaking about the kind of name it and claim it faith that charlatans use to justify their extravagant lifestyles. He is not teaching about the kind of faith you need to have the material, emotional, mental, or relational things you want. He is talking about something infinitely better.
Standing between every Christian and their God was the apostate mountain of Jerusalem. That system of temples, priests, feasts, and sacrifices was the temporary placeholder that was meant to prepare the world for the unveiling of Christ. Now that Christ had come, it was time to put away that old mountain that has fallen into disrepair. In Matthew 21, Jesus is talking about the kind of faith that led Him to put away the old covenantal realities so that the new and better covenant would come!
When Jesus was lifted up and nailed to a mountain cross, He signaled a new era in human history. Instead of people going to Jerusalem to meet with God, now they would come to Christ (John 14:6). Instead of traveling to a distant temple, He made us into walking, talking, temples (1 Cor. 3:16). Instead of looking for fruit in the old covenant religion, He makes us bear fruit for His new covenant kingdom (Jn 15; Gal 5:22). Instead of old Jerusalem offering the starving world bitter withered leaves, He makes the New Jerusalem church to offer life-giving leaves and fruit for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).
Because of Christ, that old covenant religion was cast into the deepest seas and replaced by something so much better: the fount of Living Water! Jesus’ faith unleashed His Kingdom of salvation upon the world by putting away the types and shadows that came before. That is what this verse is trying to get at and that is why its true interpretation cannot be attacked by the moths and rust of materialism.
APPLICATION
When you come to a verse like this, read the context. Do not assume that it automagically applies to you in the basest sense. Do not use a verse like this to muster up big comical faith. Do not believe that God is just waiting on you to reach a certain level of sincerity before He will answer your prayers. Have faith! Pray big prayers! Yes and amen! But, also realize that Jesus is not giving you an blank check to satisfy your carnal wishlist. He has done something infinitely better. He removed the mountain of dead religion standing between you and God and He made it possible for you to know the LORD through Him.
Enjoy that truth and leave the mountains to Jesus.
Kendall Lankford is the Lead Teaching Pastor at The Shepherd’s Church in Chelmsford, Mass. This article is used with permission.
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A Sheep Speaks: A Testimony to the National Partnership, Part 5
If you will accept it, this is written not in belligerence and quarreling, nor to fulfill a salacious need to ‘fight a culture war’ or engage in doom-mongering, but to give you a frank, unfettered testimony to how your deeds appear to someone in the pews; and judging by the conversations and correspondence I have had with other members, this perception of you is by no means unique to me. Repent of your secrecy and of your scandalous deeds.
Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
A Final Concern
You seem to regard alcohol with excessive fondness. In speaking of a candidate for moderator you speak of his service and virtues and say that “this is not to mention his collection of whiskeys and his willingness to kindly share them.” In praising the vigor of the new members of your organization you say that they “were asking good questions, crafting motions, present for every major vote, worshipping well at the evening services, and keeping up with our whiskey consumption,” while elsewhere gratitude is extended “for working together, and for stepping into the gap when it was needed on committee reports, microphones, bottles of bourbon and cigars” and a reference is made to “a well-deserved beer after a long business meeting.” An observer may be forgiven for thinking there is something a little inappropriate in elders regarding themselves as ‘deserving’ a beer after doing denominational work, or in equating an elder’s possession of a fine whiskey collection with his years of service, to say nothing of putting “worshipping well” and “keeping up with our whiskey consumption” alongside of each other.
Now maybe you will object and note that you forewent beer in order to vote, as is stated several times, but it is curious that this seems to be, not so much restraint, but a practical necessity to advance your agenda: take a break from your drinking to come and vote, not because it is inappropriate for an elder to be out on the town during a week that he is supposed to be doing the grave, consequential work of the church of Christ but because the agenda needs your support. It is curious too that these rejoinders to abstain are frequently accompanied by an assurance that it will be compensated for by an occasion for communal drinking later, and that it is often enjoined that voting times are not a good time to get a beer, but somewhat less frequently that they are poor times to get coffee, read a newspaper, go for a stroll, make phone calls, or any of the other things an elder might be expected to do between assembly sessions.
Laying aside that this comes across as simply immature and juvenile, there are some pointed statements about such things in Scripture. As for your newer members doing well by keeping up with the whiskey consumption of the old hands, Isaiah testifies “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink” (5:22); while for his part Hosea condemns the faithless inhabitants of Israel because they “cherish whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding” (Hos. 4:10-11). In Prov. 31:4-5 Lemuel says that “It is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted.” The principle applies to elders as well: for as kings were the civil shepherds who were responsible for the temporal order, justice, and wellbeing of the people, so are elders responsible for the order, discipline, and fidelity of the spiritual commonwealth that is the church – yet their need for sobriety is greater, for they deal with questions of eternal significance, rather than ones of a merely earthly nature.
The New Testament supplies further instruction on this point, for it says of the man qualified to be an elder that he is “not (one who lingers) beside (his) wine” (1 Tim. 3:2, Hendriksen-Kistemaker commentary translation), while it elsewhere states that “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble” (Rom. 14:21). That last verse establishes the duty that all believers have to respect the rights of conscience of their brothers in matters that are unessential to the faith (v. 17), a duty you seem to forget in this matter. There are and have been numerous Presbyterians who are teetotalers, both within our denomination and in others such as the ARP, and to see your cavalier attitude toward drink is no doubt a source of offense to them. In addition, there is a much larger body of people, again within our denomination and outside its fold, that have struggled with alcohol addiction and abuse, and your behavior provides a terrible example and testimony to them. In this matter you disobey the great principle of Romans 14, and you ought to give thought that your actions may well lead others to stumble or otherwise limit the effectiveness of your ministry.
Perhaps you will rejoin that the talk of hardy drinking is all in jest; fair enough, but does Scripture condone such coarse jesting as appropriate for those that would rule Christ’s church? Does it not rather say that “All impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” and that there should be “no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking” (Eph. 5:3-4)? Or perhaps you will say that drinking is no sin and that it is excessive drinking that is the problem that ought to be foregone. There are sins besides excessive consumption that come into play in relation to alcohol: an excessive fondness of it (especially one that values it above good testimony and brotherly respect) or an excessive tendency to look to it to relieve distress (as in ‘deserving a beer’) are also faults in this respect, and they seem to show in your speech about alcohol. Then, too, excess is not always a question of drunkenness, as there are occasions where any consumption of alcohol is inappropriate, most notably in handling matters of great importance, whether temporal or eternal, civil or ecclesiastical. Our society frankly worships alcohol and our job as believers should be to extol its responsible use and a right attitude about it, and this is undercut when you join in the beer and whiskey worship yourselves.
Last, in this your behavior in this matter is like that of the old liberals in the PCUS, who loved drink and made wide use of it. Kennedy Smartt says in his I Am Reminded that some of them even gave drink to underage assembly attendants, and that the disgust this lawbreaking engendered was part of the impetus for desiring to be separate from such people, while an early PCA history mentions how the groups that laid the groundwork for the PCA sometimes received the PCUS liberals’ bar bills by mistake.
A Final Objection
Now you may object that much of this criticism proceeds on the assumption that the National Partnership is one, where in fact you have – and celebrate! – diversity of thought, voting habits, and manners of internal and external expression. You are both one and many. You have one purpose, one program, one agenda, and while there may be some diversity of thought or voting, it yet occurs within the scope of achieving the one, agreed-upon aim that you all share of giving the denomination the character you desire. As for those of you who have qualms with some of the precise behavior of some of your members that I have criticized here, consider the instruction God gives you: “Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals’” (1 Cor. 15:33). You are the company you keep (comp. Prov. 13:20), and as for those of you who do not approve some of the behavior or beliefs condemned here, why persist in keeping such company or in following the lead of those that do such things? Is it safe or wise to do so, or is it rather likely to bring you trouble (like Jehoshaphat allying with Ahab, 2 Chron. 18:1-19:2) and needless grief?
A Final Appeal
If you will accept it, this is written not in belligerence and quarreling, nor to fulfill a salacious need to ‘fight a culture war’ or engage in doom-mongering, but to give you a frank, unfettered testimony to how your deeds appear to someone in the pews; and judging by the conversations and correspondence I have had with other members, this perception of you is by no means unique to me. Repent of your secrecy and of your scandalous deeds. You have done an outrageous thing in Israel and have left a bad testimony to others both within and outside of our fold. You have despised both shepherds and sheep, and have sought to use our denomination for your own ends, rather than to serve it in humility and submission for the good of the sheep. Time will fail to tell of your failure to “be above reproach” (1 Tim 3:2) in these things; and however much you may be inclined to deny that, as you have for years, there is no sense of that phrase which is met by your secretive doings or by many of the things you have said or done. Repent in haste, with fullness of heart and sincerity of purpose, for this word stands, and it should give us all an occasion to fear: “For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Pet. 4:17).
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.