Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples – An Early French Reformer
While Lefèvre’s writings include many of the teachings of the Reformation, they are not always consistent – possibly due to his desire to remain in the Roman Catholic Church and reform it from within. But they were influential enough that Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza allegedly spoke of Lefèvre as the man “who boldly began the revival of the pure religion of Jesus Christ”[3] in France.
The life of Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples ran almost parallel to that of Martin Luther. Born around 1455 (28 years before Luther), Lefèvre died in 1536, when Luther was still teaching, preaching, and establishing churches.
In 1512, when Luther received his doctorate and became a professor of biblical studies, Lefèvre had already established himself as an esteemed scholar. The same year, he published a commentary to the Epistle to the Romans that explained justification by faith alone as clearly as any Protestant reformer could later do: “Let every mouth be stopped; let neither Jew nor Gentile boast that he has been justified by himself or by his own works. For none are justified by the works of the law, neither the Gentiles by the implanted law of nature nor the Jews by the works of the written law; but both Gentiles and Jews are justified by the grace and mercy of God …. …. for it is God alone who provides this righteousness through faith and who justifies by grace alone [sola gratia] unto life eternal.”[1]
This is just an example of Lefèvre’s writings, that included all the five solas of the Reformation (Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus, Sola Scriptura, and Soli Deo Gloria), as well as the doctrine of assurance of salvation and perseverance of believers that so irritated Cardinal Robert Bellarmine almost a century later. He affirmed in fact that “‘the forgiveness of our sins, our adoption as children of God, the assurance and certainty of life eternal, proceed solely from the goodness of God’ through faith in ‘our blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus,’ and that thanks to God’s love ‘we have complete confidence in him…’”
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Reflecting on the Pastoral Failures of 2020
As a minister of the gospel, I should have “stayed in my lane,” stuck to the text, and more vehemently opposed any effort to impose a masking requirement upon the people of God. Such a policy and such an application of the Sixth Commandment was not based on the teaching of Scripture, but based on what the government-approved scientists were saying at that time regarding the “Masking-Preventative-Hypothesis.”
To the beloved congregation of First Presbyterian Church in Fort Oglethorpe:
Three years ago, I made the biggest mistake of my pastoral ministry. At the time, people exhibiting symptoms of a new virus were trickling in to Emergency Rooms in the Chattanooga area. We were told this virus was deadly and dangerous by the media, health experts, and government authorities. I believed them.
These “unprecedented events” would become a great test of the strength of my commitments and my consistency to my guiding principles. It was a test I failed.
I. Worldview
When it was suggested we should suspend the public worship of God for a few weeks I not only agreed to it, but also enabled the suspension of public worship. I was wrong. Although I was motivated by a desire to “do the right thing,” this was undoubtedly the wrong decision and is one the greatest regrets of my life.
This was a worldview failure. A worldview is supposed to help a person make decisions in the absence of all the facts and respond rightly to “unprecedented events.” But I ignored my worldview in March of 2020.
In a Christian Worldview, God is the ultimate reality and the ultimate end (goal) of life is His glory, and a crucial duty of the Christian is to give God the glory He deserves in the context of public worship. But at this time I agreed: the potential for danger was so great, I believed, that even public worship should be shut down.
Although at the time I thought what we were doing was right, in hindsight I see how it reflects a failure to apply my worldview to what I was reading in the news and hearing from other elders both near and far as well as the government authorities. While perhaps there may have been individual situations in which the risk to some people from the new virus was so great their own personal decision to absent themselves from the public worship of God for a season might have been legitimate, it was wrong of me to support suspending God’s public worship for the whole congregation. If the virus was as deadly as we were led to believe, then we needed corporate worship all the more.
I apologize for failing to rightly apply the Scripture to this situation:
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. (Psa. 63:2–4)
II. Wisdom
During the “Quarantine” closure, I began making a series of videos offering mostly half-baked pastoral reflections on the current unpleasantness. Mercifully, few of you watched them. In (at least) one of these videos, I asserted something along the lines of, “…we know masks work…” because there seemed to be no outbreaks tied to all the tourists coming to the Florida theme parks, which at the time required masking. So I encouraged people, as we resumed public worship, to wear a mask in order to prevent the spread of potential sickness.
This was a wisdom failure. As a trained and credentialed minister of the gospel, I do have a bit of expertise in biblical exegesis, theological matters, and ethical questions. But as to whether a piece of cloth can stop a particle of virus, I am wholly unqualified to give advice. But I used the influence of my position as an officer in the Kingdom of God to encourage the people in this congregation to wear masks. And the basis of my exhortation: it [allegedly] works at Disney World. I apologize for deviating from my expertise and training as a pastor to offer pronouncements on a subject about which I knew nothing.
Whoever restrains his words has knowledge, and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding. Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent. (Prov. 17:27–28)
III. Ecclesiology
Eventually the hospitals in Chattanooga did get a bit busy with people exhibiting symptoms of the virus that leaked from a communist lab in Wuhan, China. At that time, the Session chose to no longer simply encourage all God’s worshipers to wear masks, but require everyone worshiping or attending functions at the church to wear a mask. While I personally opposed this as a requirement, I dutifully announced it and explained the reasoning behind the policy.
Perhaps some of you may remember, I went so far as to explain – as I preached through the Decalogue – that the Sixth Commandment was the reason the Session required masking: to prevent the potential loss of life. This was inappropriate.
While I personally disagreed that any Church court has the authority to require masking, as I believe this violates both the liberty of conscience and the limits of church power, I nonetheless shared the Session’s embrace of the “Masking-Preventative-Hypothesis,” and I enabled the Session to transcend what I knew were the limits of its Christ-given authority by reminding people of the policy and urging people to comply with it.
This was a failure of my ecclesiology, my doctrine of the Church.
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Working through the Covenant of Works
Those who object to Adam meriting in Eden seem to neglect the distinction of his living continually before the Fall as righteous and good and thus enjoying further living communion with God.
In the first article of this series on covenant theology, we saw that “covenant” is, exegetically, essentially an “agreement.” Isaiah 28:15, 18 practically demonstrates this by twice using the words interchangeably as poetic synonyms. We also noted that some take strong exception to such an understanding of “covenant.” Much of the impetus of that concern seems to be what receives even more angst: the concept of the “Covenant of Works” and Adam meriting life with God in the Garden, of which the Confession next speaks.[1]
WCF 7:2: The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works,(b) wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity,(c) upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.(d)[2]
The Threat of Death Implied the Promise of Life in Eden
Again, some particularly express disdain for this section of the WCF because they think it makes man an equal partner with God,[3] and they especially reject the idea that man could have ever merited anything from the Lord based upon his behavior. But we do see the elements of a covenant of works in the Garden with righteous Adam before the Fall: parties, stipulations, wages of reward for obedience (continuing in life as they knew it) or disobedience (death, see Romans 6:23). In pre-Fall Paradise, God imposes the covenant and is the sovereign party to it, and He justly chooses to reward obedience with life.[4] Spear affirms life’s conditions in the Garden: “The Covenant of Works expresses the terms upon which God established a relationship with Adam immediately after his creation.”[5] The fact that there is only an explicit prohibition with the promise of punishment does not negate the implied opposite of the reward of life for obedience.
The guidance of the Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) Q&A 99:4 on interpreting the 10 Commandments is helpful to remember in this discussion: “ … where a duty is commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden; and, where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded: so, where a promise is annexed, the contrary threatening is included; and, where a threatening is annexed, the contrary promise is included” (emphasis added). J. Gresham Machen explains:“It is true, the Bible does not describe the covenant in just exactly that way. It does not describe it in positive terms but only in negative terms, and it does not describe it in general terms but only by the presentation of a concrete example of the kind of conduct on the part of man that would deprive man of the benefits of the covenant … But although the covenant is directly put only in a negative form, the positive implications are perfectly clear. When God established death as the penalty of disobedience, that plainly meant that if man did not disobey he would have life. Underlying the establishment of the penalty there is clearly a promise … The Bible seems rather clearly to teach that death, even physical death, was the penalty of sin, and that life, even physical life, would have been the result of obedience.”[6]
Adam agreed as a willing party of the covenant by virtue of his obedience; otherwise, it makes no sense to say he disobeyed and fell from life and original righteousness. Adam was obedient to God’s terms of life in Paradise, a covenant. One is faithful to a relationship by virtue of its mutual terms of agreement (written or oral, explicit or understood). Adam’s reward was promised life “upon condition of perfect and personal obedience”, says the Confession. He had to obey and thus maintain his original righteousness (given to him no doubt) to stay in the garden.
Adam Was a Good, Moral Being Living God’s Law Righteously Before the Fall
Those who object to Adam meriting in Eden seem to neglect the distinction of his living continually before the Fall as righteous and good and thus enjoying further living communion with God. Machen points out:
“Man as created … was like God not only in that he was a person but also in that he was good … How utterly the plainly intended parallel between the new creation and the first creation [in Col. 3:10 and Eph. 4:24 with Gen. 1:27] would break down if the image of God were to be interpreted in entirely different senses in the two cases—as involving righteousness and holiness in the case of the new creation and as involving the mere gift of personal freedom without moral quality in the case of the first creation! … So moral likeness is certainly not excluded when the first book of the Bible tells us that God created man in His own image … Man was created in knowledge, righteousness and holiness.”[7]
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What the Science Really Says About “Gender-Affirming” Medicine
At the heart of the case for so-called “gender-affirming care” is the claim that transition prevents suicide. Research, however, shows the opposite. In a summary of recent research, Ben Johnson described how life satisfaction among those who undergo “transition” surgeries decreases rather than increases.
While activists in the U.S. seek to eliminate any restrictions to so-called “gender-affirming” interventions for minors, a number of European countries are adding safeguards around or backing off altogether from these controversial procedures. Following European neighbors Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, the Norwegian Healthcare Investigation Board announced that it will revise its recommended standards of care for minors struggling with gender dysphoria. The proposed revisions would no longer allow the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transition surgery for minors.
As NHIB rightfully points out, the science surrounding “gender-affirming care” is far from settled. In fact, the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or transition surgeries to treat gender dysphoria lacks adequate research. There is hardly any substantial research on the long-term effects of these treatments on minors, and what we do know about them is disregarded by ideologically driven proponents. Puberty blockers, for example, have been known to plague patients with loss of bone density. Cross-sex hormones lead to sterilization. Transition surgeries are rife with serious complications. In the name of a dubious ideology, we’re experimenting on children.
Additionally, most of the long-term studies that proponents cite to support current “gendering-affirming” protocols are poorly designed. As the report summarized: “As a rule, there is no control group in the studies.” This means that any effects are “often assessed at group level and not at individual level, so that unwanted effects for some patients can be masked by improvement in the rest of the group.”
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