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Different from and Different For

Egalitarianism treats men and women not just as equals but as persons who are equally fitfor various roles. This is a radical departure from the wisdom of our God, who made men and women different from each other and different for each other. And to speak or act in any way that ignores, diminishes, or denies God’s good design is to ignore, diminish, or deny the gender-specific blessings that God intends. 

If the state of Christianity today is disconcerting, the state of Christianity Today (CT) is more so. The magazine that was founded by Billy Graham with Carl F. H. Henry as its first editor-in-chief has  drifted from its historically evangelical roots toward theological and political progressivism. To be sure, CT isn’t alone in this regard. As one theologian lamented,
“You see the collapse of evangelicalism all around us. Pick up Christianity Today: Christianity Today is written by mainline Episcopalians. Go to Wheaton College: Wheaton College faculty is a mainline Episcopalian faculty. Look at Fuller Seminary: It is easier to find a creationist on the faculty at Berkeley than at Fuller Seminary. We [evangelicals] have turned into the culture because we want to be like them.”
Those are the words of Russell Moore in 2006. (Start at the 41:44 mark and stick around until 44:06.) It is more than a little ironic that Moore is now the editor-in-chief of CT. It would seem that not only have the times changed—his convictions have, too. Yet the Scriptures do not change. That is why I am saddened (though not surprised) to see an egalitarian view of the sexes all but cemented at CT these days.
For those who haven’t kept up with the gender debates over the last forty years: egalitarianism is the modern, mixed-up notion that because men and women are equally made in the image of God (which is true) they are therefore interchangeable in various roles within God’s world (which is false). Such an approach entails a quasi-gnostic view of gender that treats God’s design for men and women as arbitrary or superfluous. This contradicts the longstanding consensus of the church across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant lines, who, for over 1900 years, stood together in affirming that God’s differing directives to men and women in the Scriptures are rooted in God’s complementary design of men and women in creation. (This view goes by many names such as “biblical patriarchy” or “complementarianism,” a term that has picked up further qualification due to divergent trends within the movement.)
CT’s egalitarian trajectory has long been apparent to anyone who was paying attention. But over the last several years, CT has ramped up its promotion of egalitarianism in various forms. They’ve run articles decrying “toxic masculinity” (see here and here) but never toxic femininity. They have published articles discouraging men from asserting traditionally masculine traits and tendencies (see here and here). And they have interviewed Kristin Du Mez on evangelicalism’s alleged obsession with John Wayne.
CT has also run several articles exhorting us to transcend gender roles (see here, here, and here), which is a quintessentially egalitarian way of framing the discussion. Similarly, CT’s editor-in-chief (Moore) recently issued the call to rethink the evangelical “gender wars”, citing his frustration over the “ever-narrowing definition of complementarian [sic]” and his sense of the need for “rethinking who we once classified as ‘enemy’ and ‘ally.’” Meanwhile, other CT articles employ a strategy of dismissing theological discussion about God’s design for men and women as “a political battle that distracts from the gospel.”
CT has also hosted several I’m-not-that-kind-of-complementarian authors who wrote pieces like this one, which affirms the Danvers Statement while decrying attempts to faithfully apply it, or this one, which argues that those who hold to the church’s traditional view of the sexes are paternalistic. And in a move reminiscent of Screwtape’s strategy to entice Christians to bring a fire-extinguisher to a flood, CT ran an article worrying about a “narrowing” complementarianism in the SBC at a time when over a thousand SBC churches have women serving as pastors in open violation of the Baptist Faith & Message 2000.
In addition to all this, CT ran an article about using “preferred pronouns” with no substantive consideration of how lying to others is neither loving nor helpful (Eph. 4:15, 25) or interaction with Scripture’s clear “male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27; cf. Matt. 19:4). Instead, the article calls for us to “give each other grace” as people who are “figuring it out together.” (Which, in truth, is how people tend to talk when they’ve already figured out what they think and are just waiting for a sufficiently large sociological shift before announcing their stunning and brave conclusions.)
Comes now the latest barrage of egalitarian articles from CT, forming the central theme of their April 2024 issue: The Division of Labor. All the usual suspects are there: an article openly endorsing egalitarianism, an interview that calls the church to learn from the world’s diversity of viewpoints on gender roles, an article that attempts to carve a chimerical middle way between complementarianism and egalitarianism, and an article from a reluctant complementarian woman (Have men ever been permitted to write about complementarianism for CT?) who blames conservative Christians—not the gale force winds of the progressive zeitgeist—for the church’s setbacks. In addition to these cover stories, the issue also features an article on Mary Magdalene, which—following the work of Jennifer Powell McNutt, a Wheaton College professor and pastrix in the PC(USA)—equivocates the meaning of “apostle” in order to claim Mary for the egalitarian side of the debate.
Each of these articles probably deserves a rebuttal that roundly criticizes their methods and conclusions, but life is short and I’ve only got time for one. So here’s lookin’ at you, Gordon P. Hugenberger. Arguing that “the biggest New Testament passages on gender roles may have more to do with marriage than with ministry,” Hugenberger’s article is titled, “Complementarian at Home, Egalitarian at Church? Paul Would Approve.”
But actually, he wouldn’t.
Why Paul Isn’t an Egalitarian (And We Shouldn’t Be Either)
In the first place, Paul calls the church the household (oikos) of God (1 Tim. 3:15), that is, the family of God (cf. Matt. 10:6; 1 Tim. 3:4; 5:4). However, positing that God wants his children to live as complementarians in their own households but as egalitarians in God’s household (i.e., the church) would make God schizophrenic. For if men and women are differently directed in view of God’s differing design, then what is good and right in one realm would be good and right in the other.
Hugenberger seems to be unaware of the tension created by his view, as he devotes his arguments to affirming male headship in marriage (with a heavy dose of caveats and condemnations of “meanness, abuse, or even violence against women”) while denying male headship in the church. As I will show below, such a view is internally incoherent.
To advocate for egalitarianism in the church, Hugenberger marshals boilerplate egalitarian arguments, like the argument that ministry is a matter of spiritual gifts, which women possess as well as men (1 Cor. 12:7), or the argument that all Christians are called to teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16) with “nothing in the context suggest[ing] that Paul has only men in view.” Next comes Abigail’s rebuke of David (1 Sam. 25), followed by Priscilla’s instruction of Apollos (Acts 18:26).
The next stop for Hugenberger is 1 Cor. 11:5 and 14:3, where women prophesy as well as men. This naturally leads him to highlight women like Deborah the prophetess (Judges 4 and 5), Hannah the mother of Samuel, (1 Sam. 2) and Mary, the mother of Jesus (Luke 1), all of whom “were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write various portions of Holy Scripture.” In this way, Hugenberger says, “Through their writings, these women have taught both men and women with inerrant authority down through the ages.”
There are two problems here. To begin with, Hugenberger is equivocating what it means to “teach.” The apostle Paul knows what he wrote in Col. 3:16, and he knows what he wrote in 1 Tim. 2:12. Thus, unless we were to conclude that Paul is too stupid to realize he has contradicted himself, he clearly refers to a certain kind of teaching (or perhaps to teaching in a certain context) in one verse that he does not refer to in the other. It is not difficult to make this distinction. The second issue is that Deborah’s and Hannah’s and Mary’s words—as wonderful as they are—were not actually written into Scripture by these holy women. Instead, they were incorporated into Scripture by men named Samuel and Luke. This is not a throwaway detail, for the Scriptures sometimes quote pagans (Acts 17:28) and Apocrypha (Jude 14), so the mere presence of words in holy writ does not convey special teaching status or authority on the person who first uttered them.
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“Is It Bad?” Is the Wrong Question

The next time you have a choice to make…ask the question, “Is this good?” We want to pursue those things that build up, as well as avoiding the bad; to walk in righteous paths rather than just avoiding the sinful ones.

Me: “Hey Stacy, do you remember that kids movie?”
Stacy: “Sort of.”
Me: “Do you remember if it’s bad? Should we show the kids?”
Stacy: “I don’t know if it’s bad, but is it good? I think that’s the question we need to be asking.”
Me (in my head): “Ouch. Thank you Lord for a godly wife.”
Sometimes you need a good knock in the head to get your eyes watering and your brain to thinking straight. “Is it bad?” What a terrible question. There are a thousand things that are “not bad” that offer no net positive. And that is especially what we are aiming for with our children. We want to do more than avoid harm. We want to actively pursue good!
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A La Carte (April 24)

The God of peace be with you, my friends.
Westminster Books is offering $20 off a new book meant to help you better understand Covenant Theology.

“I’ve always thought of hospitality as opening my home to outsiders. And, of course, hospitality is not less than that . But as I’ve pondered this topic over the past few weeks, it has occurred to me that I I need to start my journey of hospitality with the people who make up my innermost circle. Hospitality to outsiders will be both hollow and shallow if I don’t practice it with my own family first.”

This is a very good question: What happens when the governing authorities are the ones who have done wrong? “The best available estimate is that 57 percent of wrongful convictions involved some type of government misconduct. Those 1,927 cases involving misconduct resulted in incarceration of men and women for a combined 19,976 years. In biblical terms, the sword of the state was wielded by wrongdoers against the innocent.”

This article explains a new report about transgender medications for kids.

Dane Ortlund celebrates Jesus Christ by offering 100 different “facets” of who he is.

Amy Shore: “The average married couple realizes at some point in their marriage that their spouse will not meet all their needs. As a single woman, I have learned in a different school. God has used Spiritual Mothers to teach me this lesson. Spiritual Mothers are a gracious provision in our lives given by God to both meet needs and to point us to Christ.”

For those who are interested in doing some theological reading, there is a new issue of Themelios that is free to read. It has 262 pages of editorials, articles, and book reviews. The best article title is “Swimming in a Sanctimonious Sea of Subjectivity.”

It’s wrong of me to make light of their little sorrows by comparing them to their future greater sorrows. It’s right of me to support them as they build the strength and endurance that will carry them into and through the trials to come.

When you are struggling with anxiety, you must talk to and relate to God. There is no other way to experience lasting, abiding change, for this is the only way to change our hearts.
—Tim Lane

Why Won’t Heaven Be Boring? Recovering the Beatific Vision

One of the most impactful theological conversations I remember being a part of happened when I was in my early twenties as a Bible-college student in Southern California. Some friends and I had stayed up way too late talking, and at one point our conversation turned toward the topic of heaven. I can’t remember what precise words we said, but I can recall the feeling. As we pondered the glories of the eschaton together, we whipped ourselves up into a flurry of joy, wonder, and longing.

Happier Visions of Heaven

At the time, I recall being captivated by the profound earthiness of the new creation. Like many, while growing up I had somehow absorbed the idea that the final promise of the afterlife was to depart from the real, physical world — the world of food and games and laughter and adventure — to ascend to an ethereal, floaty cloud-place, populated by chubby cherubs with harps. (And yes, I secretly dreaded going to heaven because of how boring such a place promised to be.)

By the time of that late-night conversation, I had thankfully been disabused of that conception. The promise of the afterlife, I had come to learn, was not the obliteration of all things God had previously declared good, but rather their restoration. Their transfiguration. Their glorification. It was not that the material would be swallowed up by the immaterial — as if we were ridding our souls of our flesh and bones — but rather that the mortal would be swallowed by immortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4).

“What makes heaven heaven is not merely that we will experience Earth 2.0, but rather that we will see God.”

I had come to see that everything good in this life would see its heightened and imperishable fulfillment in the next. The promise of the eschaton is not the intermediate state, but rather the resurrection — and not just our resurrection as humans, but the resurrection of the cosmos (Romans 8:18–25; Revelation 21:1–22:5). So, my friends and I let our imaginations loose as we wondered about how the sensations of the physical world we so enjoy now might be magnified and enriched in the age to come. And our blur of excited words was worship.

What I have since come to discover, however, is that even these aspects of the new creation are not final. Those heavenly joys my friends and I fantasized about were, like their present earthly corollaries, the joyous means to the greatest end: the vision of God himself. Theologians call this the beatific vision (or the blessed or happy vision). What makes heaven heaven, in other words, is not merely that we will experience Earth 2.0, but rather that we will see God. Now, if it seems like I am backtracking what I just affirmed and am once again trading an earthy vision of the eschaton for an ethereal one, let me assure you I am not.

Beckoned Through Beauty

The childhood conception of heaven I gladly shed in my early twenties was one of reality diminished. But the beatific vision promises something infinitely more enriched than anything we experience here. It is the ultimate end of our every joyous encounter with goodness, truth, and beauty.

The desire that earthly beauty awakens, for example, is not intended to terminate in the object that awakened the desire. This is why every delight that comes with the experience of beauty is accompanied by a stab of longing for more. When I am struck by the beauty and magnitude of the Grand Canyon at sunset, the longing that such a sight elicits is not satisfied by the visual encounter itself. The greater the enjoyment, the greater the longing. All this is by design: the earthly beauty that arouses our desire beckons us through and beyond to something greater. Earthly beauty constantly calls us not to itself, but through itself to its final source: the God of all Beauty.

This truth is often missed as the context for C.S. Lewis’s memorable line: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). In saying this, Lewis does not merely affirm that every human has a longing for God that can only finally be satisfied in the age to come. He is saying at least that much, but the immediate context shows that he goes a step further to say that all our longings in this life serve to arouse a deeper longing for enjoyment of God. He writes,

If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. (137)

The beatific vision — or the happy vision — is beatific because it is the vision of the all-blessed God. The one who is infinitely happy in himself begraces us with a participation in his own blessedness. Since the triune God is the plentitude of life and light and love — he ever burns in the white-hot fire of infinite pleasure as Father, Son, and Spirit — the blessing of eternal life is our coming to experience by grace what God is by nature: blessed. And this infinite blessedness is signaled to and previewed through all our earthly joys. God is, through all of them, beckoning us to come “further up and further in.”

Our Unnamed Ache

You are beginning to see now, I trust, that even while the doctrine of “the beatific vision” may sound exotic and alien to your ears, you have already been primed to receive it. It is true that the doctrine has fallen into obscurity in evangelical circles (though it enjoyed near-universal centrality for the majority of Christian history). Even still, the desire for the beatific vision is awakened by all manner of well-known evangelical convictions.

“Earthly beauty constantly calls us not to itself, but through itself to its final source: the God of all Beauty.”

The desire to experience the beatific vision is the deepest longing of the Christian Hedonist, who has been taught by John Piper that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” It is the longing provoked by every immersed reader of the Narnia books who yearns — along with the Pevensies and their comrades in The Last Battle — to go “further up and further in” to Aslan’s country. It is the longing Jonathan Edwards awakens when he opines about heaven as “a world of love.” It is the deep longing of those who have come to pray with Augustine, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” (Confessions, 1.1.5).

We all have been aching for the beatific vision, whether we had language to articulate this desire as such or not.

Where Every Desire Leads

The promise of the beatific vision is that none of our desires aroused in this life is ultimately for naught. None of them is wasted! Even our sinful desires are perversions of God’s good creation. He made us with certain faculties in our souls for longing, and this soulish thirst — even where it has been desecrated by the muddy cisterns of sin (Jeremiah 2:12–13) — is never intended to be utterly extinguished; it is designed to be satiated by God himself. This is why we can never be finally satisfied by anything in this life.

The soul’s cravings are infinitely insatiable because their object is itself infinite. God will never cease to be infinite, and we will never cease to be finite. Therefore, our enjoyment of God will, in the beatific vision, expand perpetually. We will never grow tired of delighting in God, any more than we will grow tired of delighting in anything, for earthly delights are summed up, purified, and perfected in our delight of God.

Every creaturely desire finds its final satiation in this happy vision of God. All the joys we experience in this life, which are ever tinged with the sting of disappointment, are designed to awaken a hunger that will be ultimately satisfied in God. But this state of rest in the happy vision of God — this state of eschatological Sabbath repose — will not be static thanks to God’s infinity and our finitude.

Let me explain. Sometimes we are tempted to lament our finitude, as if our creaturely limitations were themselves a deficiency. But God made us finite on purpose, and in the beatific vision, our finitude becomes a means of joy. Because God is infinitely delightful, and because our delight of him is finite, we can be assured that the beatific vision is a state of perpetual expansion. As we behold God, our joy in him full, our capacity for sight and joy will expand, and our satisfaction of beholding and enjoying him will also expand. We will never grow tired or become disappointed or bored. Our longing will increase in perfect proportion to our satisfaction, so that every “happiest” moment will be topped by the next “happier” one forever.

All roads of desire lead here, to the blessed hope of seeing God. When we become truly convinced of this fact, we pray sincerely with David, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). There are, of course, many questions left unanswered about the beatific vision. But worshipful longing rushes in where intellectual certainty fears to tread. Amen, may it be.

Against Brokenness Theology

Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Brokenness theology is not only unbiblical and spiritually damaging. It is also the gateway drug to a whole host of other heresies and errors. By teaching people that they are primarily helpless victims of forces outside their control, rather than willful sinners in need of salvation, it opens the door toward seeing every difficulty or challenge in life as an incapacitating force over which they have no control.

A popular, contemporary evangelical song opens with these words: 
O come, all you unfaithfulCome, weak and unstableCome, know you are not alone
A few verses later we read:
O come, bitter and brokenCome with fears unspokenCome, taste of His perfect love
A subtle, yet devastating error is found in such sentiments, one that is causing great mischief in evangelical churches. It is, at its most basic, a substitution of the language of brokenness for the biblical language of sin.
It is subtle, as much false teaching is, because it sounds on the surface very biblical. Has not the fall introduced disorder into the world? Has it not wrecked human relationships, destroyed families, churches, and nations, and brought about the dissolution of God’s good design for human life? It has done all of these things and more.
Is brokenness, then, such a bad way of describing the human predicament? It is indeed. Brokenness theology is, in fact, a denial of the Bible’s teaching on sin, a perversion of the Bible’s teaching on salvation, and a theology that leaves fallen sinners without hope.
What are the components of brokenness theology? First, it must be said that brokenness theology may give lip service to orthodox tenets of Christian theology. It may not deny that the Fall has corrupted human nature outside of Christ, or that we all are guilty sinners as a result. It does not, however, as a matter of routine patterns of speech (seen in sermons, songs, conference talks, articles, books, etc.) emphasize fallen human nature and individual acts of sinful rebellion as the most fundamental problem facing humanity. Instead, it emphasizes brokenness, which can be defined as disordered aspects of human existence. Brokenness, however, is not the same thing as sinfulness. Brokenness happens to a person. It comes from outside of him. The song I opened this article with gives a representative sample of the kinds of things one finds in brokenness theology: weakness, instability, loneliness, weariness, barrenness, bitterness, fear. But note that all of these states are framed in this song as if they were caught like the common cold; they are things that happen to you.
The biblical picture is far different: yes, we are weak in ourselves; yes, we face manifold temptations to give in to disordered instability in our lives, to succumb to self-pity and despair in the face of loneliness, to become bitter when God’s providence is hard, to rage against God for our barrenness, to succumb to fear and anxiety in moments of stress. But all of these responses are sinful. They are not neutral things that happen to us. Brokenness theology turns humans into passive victims of forces outside their control, rather than sinners who chose to rebel against God and who are therefore in desperate need of forgiveness and spiritual transformation.
In short, brokenness theology gives sinners a false understanding of the fundamental problem they face (God’s wrath), obscures the solution (repentance, faith, sanctification), and leaves them without hope (they’re simply broken victims). As such, it is a narcissistic, therapeutic perversion of the gospel. Sinners outside of Christ are indeed slaves to sin (Rom 6:17–21), but those savingly united to Christ are not helpless victims of forces outside their control. The grace of God has pulled us out of ourselves, to turn us to the savior in whom we find forgiveness for our rebellion, anxiety, fear, bitterness, grumbling, and doubts, and to find daily strength to fight against these sinful states of heart and mind. Brokenness theology teaches that God’s grace merely gives us help to endure all of these states, which are taken as characterizing the normal Christian life. These states, however, are sinful and must be repented of, not endured as so many unfortunate things that simply happen to us.
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Postmillennialism: A Reply to Doug Wilson

The eschatological kingship of Christ begins already at his first coming culminating in his resurrection and ascension. Already at and dating from Christ’s exaltation, “God has placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph. 1:22; cf. v. 20). This is a key eschatological pronouncement…. The entire period between his exaltation and return, not just some segment toward the close, is the period of Christ’s eschatological kingship, exercised undiminished throughout.

I am grateful to Doug Wilson for his amiable rejoinder to my critique of postmillennialism and for providing me with an opportunity to further address this topic.
Despite its promise to address seven critical points, Doug’s rejoinder leaves me searching for substantive engagement. Rather than grappling with the exegesis of any of my arguments, Doug selectively interacts with isolated sentences, entirely sidestepping the two challenges my article poses: (1) recovering postmillennialism’s pillar prooftexts and (2) addressing its problem passages.
A Bumper Car in a Demolition Derby
Doug astutely observes, and appears to lament, that discussions on eschatology often resemble “paradigm bumper cars,” lacking meaningful interaction and debate. This happens when we fail to discuss, as he puts it, “our root assumptions, how … we justify those assumptions, and who has the burden of proof,” creating conversations with no depth.
I provided an alternative to bumper-car discourse by writing a substantial critique rooted in the grammar and syntax of the very Scriptures that Doug has said are central to his eschatological assumptions. Why then did he show up at the demolition derby, to which I invited all postmillennialists, in his bumper car? To demonstrate that his paradigm is not simply bumping into the hard reality of the biblical text, he needed to show where my exegesis falls short.
Instead, Doug sought to establish his root assumptions elsewhere. Let’s examine his arguments to see if the foundations hold.
Unintended Universalism
Doug identifies my article’s thesis early on:
Postmillennialism lacks a biblical text to establish its assumption that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14) before the second coming.
In response, instead of trying to reclaim traditional prooftexts, Doug resigns himself to anchoring postmillennialism on John 3:16–17. He declares that postmillennialism’s foundation is “the love of God for the world as expressed in the cross of Christ,” concluding, “The love of God for this broken world is the bedrock. Everything else follows.”
While mining for postmillennialism’s elusive biblical bedrock in these parts, Doug tries to mix Arminianism and Calvinism, and thereby unwittingly makes a case for universalism:
I agree with the evangelical Arminians that the love of God as expressed in the atonement is a love that extends to the whole world (1 John 2:2). I also agree with evangelical Calvinists that the love of God as expressed in the cross of Christ is a love that secures the salvation of the object of that love (John 6:44). Put those two truths together and what you have is a robust and deep postmillennial foundation.
Actually, put those two statements together and what you have is universalism. Arminians believe the love of God as expressed in the atonement is a universally indiscriminate love that extends in the same way to every person without exception. Doug therefore affirms, by the time he finishes the second statement, that the love of God as expressed in the cross is a universally indiscriminate love that secures the salvation of its object, that is, the salvation of every person without exception.
In addition to Doug’s theological misstep, there are exegetical difficulties. For example, consider the key phrase “so that the world might be saved” in John 3:17. It does not imply that the majority of “the world” will be saved any more than the analogous phrase “so that you might be saved” in John 5:34 implies that the majority of Christ’s audience (“you”) would be saved. Both verses use the same construction: ἵνα (“so that”) + a passive aorist subjunctive of σῴζω (“might be saved”). In the second verse, the plural “you” refers to those who “were seeking all the more to kill him” (John 5:18; cf. 5:35–47). Consequently, John 3:17, in light of 5:34, actually challenges the belief that the majority of “the world” will be saved.
Passages referring to the salvation or Savior of the world (John 3:16–17; 12:47; 1 John 2:2; 4:14) do not imply that the majority of humanity will be saved. There is no need to explain away the straightforward meaning of texts like Matthew 7:13–14: “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (cf. 20:16; 22:14; Luke 13:23–24; 18:8).
God’s love for the world as expressed in the cross cannot support postmillennialism any more than it can universalism. I will grant that Doug is not a universalist, while reserving the right to question his clarity on definite atonement, if he concedes that he has not found in John 3:16–17 the sought-after text establishing his assumption that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab 2:14) before “the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:14).
Rightly Dividing the “Already” and “Not Yet”
According to Doug, non-postmillennialists insist that the future subjection of all things to the Second Man, the subjection that “we do not yet see” (Heb 2:8), “will never unfold.” He says, “To believe in it while also insisting that it will never unfold is hard for me to swallow.” Of course, no one believes “it will never unfold.” Non-postmillennialists simply recognize the subjection of all things to the Last Adam mentioned in Hebrews 2 as being “not yet” (Heb 2:8), as awaiting fulfillment in “the world to come” (Heb 2:5).
Doug appears similarly unaware of any paradigm but his own when he asserts, “It seems really odd to exult in a reign over the Lord’s enemies that His enemies never find out about.” Again, every Bible-believing Christian anticipates that all the enemies of Jesus will “find out about” his reign eventually. The only question is “When—before the second coming or at it?” Doug assumes that unless the enemies of Christ encounter his kingship in new and dramatic ways before the second coming, his interadvental reign will lack authentic victory.
Doug looks in the wrong direction for indications of Christ’s victorious inaugurated reign. The true indication lies in the past, not the future. The “already” subjection of all things to Christ fully unfolded when God “put all things under his feet” (Eph 1:22) in AD 30 (or 33). The exalted Christ has publicly triumphed over all his adversaries through the cross: “he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col 2:15). He “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Pet 3:22). The fullness of inaugurated, interadvental victory was secured and realized when the resurrected Christ ascended to his heavenly throne.
Richard Gaffin writes in “Theonomy and Eschatology: Some Reflections on Postmillennialism,”
The eschatological kingship of Christ begins already at his first coming culminating in his resurrection and ascension. Already at and dating from Christ’s exaltation, “God has placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph. 1:22; cf. v. 20). This is a key eschatological pronouncement…. The entire period between his exaltation and return, not just some segment toward the close, is the period of Christ’s eschatological kingship, exercised undiminished throughout.
The reign of Jesus stands resolutely victorious thus far. It remains fundamentally triumphant at every point on the interadvental timeline. No further subjugation of adversaries or conversion of nations is necessary to declare and experience the complete victory of the inaugurated kingdom. Nothing will (or even could) come under the feet of Christ at a future point in his inaugurated kingdom that was not already subjected to him at his inauguration: “all things” in Ephesians 1:22 encompasses everything. The subjugation of Christ’s enemies cannot unfold during the inaugurated kingdom any more than it already has.
The inaugurated reign of Christ certainly holds unrealized potential. Ultimate triumph lies on the horizon. Key passages, such as 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 and Hebrews 2:5–8, emphasize this “not yet” subjection of all things to Christ. Significantly, this future subjection will unfold at “the end” (1 Cor 15:24) in “the world to come” (Heb 2:5) and not before (see following sections).
Doug’s insistence that this future subjection will unfold in our present world contradicts these texts and wrongly divides the dual nature of NT eschatology—the “already” and “not yet.” In this framework, the “already” centers on the first coming of Christ while the “not yet” anticipates his second coming. Recognizing the robustness of the “already” subjection of all things to Christ within the context of this dual focus of eschatological fulfillment helps us appreciate two important truths: (1) there is no need for or even possibility of any further subjection of Christ’s enemies during the inaugurated kingdom (Eph 1:22), and (2) our eager anticipation should be directed exclusively toward the “not yet” subjection of all things to Christ in “the world to come” (Heb 2:5–8).
The New Jerusalem Is Not Yet
In “Can Kings Come in Too?” Doug suggests that the prophecy of kings bringing the glory and honor of the nations into the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:24, 26) will find fulfillment in this world. To make his case, he dons his preterist hat and identifies the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22 as the church on earth right now.
The preterist interpretation of the new heaven and new earth and new Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1–22:5 is surely one of the most implausible idiosyncrasies of any eschatological system. This passage only depicts the “not yet,” the world to come, for only then will death, mourning, crying, and pain be eradicated (21:4); only then will the unrepentant be thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death (21:8); only then will the sun and moon be unneeded (21:23–24); only then will the curse be no more (22:3); and only then will people on earth see Jesus face to face (22:4; 1 Cor 13:12).
The new Jerusalem has not yet come down out of heaven (Rev 21:2, 10). When John envisages the kings of the earth bringing the glory and honor of the nations into the new Jerusalem (21:24, 26), in fulfillment of Isaiah 60, he foresees events that will take place in the world to come.
“The Point When” Is Not Yet
Doug continues to hear the following when he reads 1 Corinthians 15:25: “For he must reign, gradually subduing his foes, until all his enemies are under his feet.” He still assumes that the subduing of enemies in this verse describes an interadvental process rather than a definitive point at “the end” (1 Cor 15:24). He overlooks the grammatical evidence that precludes his reading.
In section 2.2.2 of my original article, I show extensively that “the verse actually says that the subduing of all enemies will take place at the culmination of Christ’s reign and not before.” I defend the following translation: “For he must reign until the point when he shall put all his enemies under his feet.” There is actually a Greek word (οὗ) meaning “the point when” in this verse, and the aorist subjunctive verb translated “he shall put [all his enemies underfoot]” describes an action that will occur—from beginning to end—at that point. Apart from any engagement with my analysis, Doug concludes that “it sounds like an argument that Christ will reign over His enemies until the day when He finally starts to reign over them. Which maketh little sense.”
In addition to ignoring the grammar, this critique misunderstands the NT’s portrayal of eschatological fulfillment. It is entirely consistent with biblical teaching to affirm that the inaugurated King is reigning over all his subjected foes (Eph 1:20–22; Col 2:15; 1 Pet 3:22) while also anticipating a definitive subjugation of those foes at “the end” (1 Cor 15:24–28) in “the world to come” (Heb 2:5–8). Doug’s rebuttal fails to address the exegesis directly, leaving the initial interpretation unchallenged.
Anticipating His Inheritance
In “Trashing His Inheritance?” Doug isolates and focuses on my statement that “Psalm 2 nowhere prophesies redemption.” He disagrees, countering that the prophecy of Messiah’s “inheritance” (Psa 2:8) finds fulfillment in the “inheritance in the saints” (Eph 1:18), which according to Doug belongs to Christ through “redemption” (Eph 1:7).
The insurmountable problem with this counterargument is that the “inheritance in the saints” (Eph 1:18) belongs to the Father, not Christ (see 1:19–20). Jesus will not receive the inheritance promised to him in Psalm 2:8–9 until he returns (Rev 19:15).
A culmination of inheritances will occur at the second coming: (1) the Father will claim his “possession” on the day of “redemption” as anticipated in Ephesians 1:14 (NASB, NIV, CSB, KJV), (2) believers will receive their “inheritance” when they experience the “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” as mentioned in 1 Peter 1:4–5, and (3) Christ will obtain his “inheritance”—“the nations”—by means of “a sharp sword” and “an iron rod” on the day of “God’s wrath” as prophesied in Psalm 2:8–9 and Revelation 19:15.
My statement that Psalm 2 nowhere prophesies redemption is part of a broader argument demonstrating that this psalm predicts the rebellion and ultimate judgment of the nations, not their redemption or conversion. This interpretation is supported by Revelation 19:15, which aligns Psalm 2:8–9 with eschatological judgment.
Doug highlights the Second Psalm’s relevance to “studying how the New Testament instructs us in the reading of the Old.” He mentions (rightly, of course) that Acts 4:25–26 and 13:33 cite Psalm 2:1–2 and 2:7 respectively as prophecies of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Astonishingly, he fails to mention that Revelation 19:15 cites Psalm 2:8–9, which contains the prophecy of Messiah’s “inheritance.” Omitting this crucial discussion on Revelation 19:15 is significant, particularly since the near-universal consensus on Revelation 19:11–21 is that it prophesies the second coming.
In section 3.2, I argue that Revelation 19:11–21 depicts Christ’s return, as virtually all interpreters throughout history have concluded (Doug grants that this passage enjoys “virtually universal agreement from all interpreters” before going on in his commentary to place himself outside that longstanding consensus). Subsection 3.2.2 is even titled “Wilson’s Preterism.” Yet all of this remains unaddressed by Doug. Until he engages with these arguments, the prevailing interpretation stands: Psalm 2:8–9 foretells not the redemption but the decisive judgment of the nations at the kingdom’s culmination, at which point God will give the crucified and resurrected Christ his inheritance.
The exalted Christ already received what we might call the guarantee or downpayment of his future inheritance when the Father put “all things under his feet” (Eph 1:22). For God seated him “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:21).
The Success of the Great Commission
In “Can We Just Sit Tight Then?” Doug quotes one of my topic sentences (“Fourth, the apostolic era saw the success of the Great Commission”) and rejects it while disregarding the exegetical support (he also seems to think mistakenly that I use Matthew 24:14 here). Then he quotes Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation,” concluding that “we are nowhere close to being done with that assigned task.”
We agree that the church’s task won’t be complete until Jesus returns; we mustn’t just sit tight. Nevertheless, three decades after the cross, the apostle to the gentiles declared that “the gospel” had been “preached to all creation” (Col 1:23) and had done its saving work “in all the world” (Col 1:6). Note how closely Paul’s language here mirrors Mark 16:15—there is nearly a word-for-word correspondence.
Paul affirms elsewhere that the gospel had “gone out to all the earth … to the ends of the world (Rom 10:18; cf. Acts 1:8) and had “been made known to all the nations,” where it was producing “the obedience of faith” (Rom 16:26; cf. 1:5), in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise in Genesis 12:3 to bless all the nations (cf. Rev 5:9; 7:9). Remarkably, the advance of the gospel during the two millennia since Paul penned these words in Romans and Colossians is still not enough for postmillennialists to affirm the success of the Great Commission.
Christ’s prophecy that the gospel would be proclaimed “throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations” (Matt 24:14), according to Doug, “did happen, back in the first century.” He thus concedes that this did not necessarily include all global populations, such as the Mayans. In short, he acknowledges that “all the nations” does not imply comprehensive worldwide reach in Matthew 24:14. It’s unclear, then, on what basis Doug continues to infer that “all the nations” in 28:19 suggests a far more comprehensive scope than previously.
Consider the nations that did hear the gospel “back in the first century” in fulfillment of Matthew 24:14, such as the Macedonians. It would be unreasonable to assume that the majority of their populations were reached: “proclaimed … to all the nations” (24:14) does not imply that the majority of citizens in any nation heard the gospel. Similarly, “disciple all the nations” (28:19) does not imply that the majority of citizens in a discipled nation will be disciples.
The point is not that “proclaim” (24:14) and “disciple” (28:19) are synonymous. The point is that “all the nations” (24:14) and “all the nations” (28:19) are. These two verses do not necessarily describe the same activity, but they do share the same scope of activity when referring to “all the nations.” The phrase “disciple all the nations” communicates neither worldwide nor nationwide saturation. Doug’s counterargument needed to address this by engaging with the presented arguments.
Revisiting Doug’s Perspective
In “Heads or Tails,” Doug grants my argument in 2.2.3 that the verb “destroy” in 1 Corinthians 15:24 signifies the judgment of Christ’s enemies rather than their salvation. He claims I miss the point, though, which is that the salvation of God’s people is often the flip side of the coin: God saves his people by judging their enemies.
But that’s not how Doug argues on page 15 of Heaven Misplaced (which I quote in 2.2). There he interprets the destruction and subjugation of Christ’s enemies described in 1 Corinthians 15:24–25 as salvation (here is the quote again):
In the common assumption shared by many Christians, at the Lord’s return the first enemy to be destroyed is death. But the apostle here says that it is the last enemy to be destroyed. The Lord will rule from heaven, progressively subduing all His enemies through the power of the gospel, brought to the nations by His Church.
Here Doug posits that Christ vanquishes his foes “through the power of the gospel.” Recall that the gospel’s power is “the power of God for salvation” (Rom 1:16). Doug even clarifies in the final clause that the subjugation in view does not refer to punitive measures but to the evangelistic efforts of the church. This perspective is the focus of my critique in 2.2.3. As I wrote there, “καταργέω, the term Paul uses to describe the destruction of the rulers, authorities, and powers in 1 Corinthians 15:24, means ‘destroy, abolish, wipe out, bring to an end.’ To my knowledge, no lexicon, theological dictionary, commentary, or example from usage suggests that this verb can refer to salvation, the opposite of its meaning.”
In any case, the crux of the matter lies in the timing of the destruction. As I argue in sections 2.2.1 and 2.2.2, the definitive act variously described as destruction, subjugation, and subjection in 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 occurs solely at “the end” (1 Cor 15:24) in “the world to come” (Heb 2:5) “when all things shall be subjected to him” (1 Cor 15:28a; cf. Heb 2:5–8), “at which time the Son himself will also be subjected to him who subjected all things to him” (1 Cor 15:28b). Doug’s stance lacks scriptural support for a progressive salvation leading to a converted world prior to the second coming.
Doug’s Admission: The Core of Postmillennialism
Doug candidly confesses, “At the end of the day, if you ask me how I believe all this . . . I just do.” This underscores a critical point: eschatological convictions should be rooted in rigorous exegesis rather than one’s theological gut. The strength of one’s eschatology is measured by its scriptural foundation, not the depth of conviction.
The Superstore Remains Fully Stocked
Doug likens my comprehensive critique to a superstore brimming with arguments. He claims that his blog post—a mere shopping cart—is too small to address the breadth of content. He needs to get a bigger shopping cart. He owes readers a substantial response that avoids cherry-picking and engages in careful, methodologically disciplined grammatical-historical exegesis.
Jeremy Sexton is a pastor at Christ the King Church in Springfield, MO.
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The Sun Is Blotted from the Sky

“Give me Adam’s complaining and Jacob’s obstinacy and Samson’s lust.” The angels of heaven seem to shout, “Stop! Surely he has reached his limit!” But again he speaks to say, “Burden me more! Add to me the weight of all the sins of the next two thousand years, add to me all the sins of all the ages that will follow. Load on the guilt of the blasphemer, the perjurer, the murderer, the adulterer, then the shame of the thief, the gossip, the hater, the idler.”

When of great physical strength have sometimes carried outrageously heavy burdens—six hundred pounds, seven hundred pounds, eight hundred. And even then they have said, “I still have not been fully tested. Put on some more weight! Load me up!” With confidence they have gripped the bar and with great straining and groaning they have lifted it clear of the ground. Yet in every case, they have eventually reached a point where they have had to cry out, “Stop! I have hit my limit. I cannot carry any more weight.”
I wonder if you have ever considered that the burden Christ carried for us was without limit. Have you considered the tremendous weight he bore on Calvary?
There was his own burden of hunger and thirst and bereavement, and the burden of the thousand insults and outrages that had been heaped upon him. On top of that was the burden of seeing the sorrows of his mother and friends as they watched him suffer and struggle for breath. On top of even that was the burden of witnessing the crimes of the soldiers who were putting him to death and the mocking of the criminals who hung beside him.
Even as we consider this our hearts begin to cry, “Stop! Surely he cannot bear anymore.”
Yet Christ says, “Add more. Add to me the sins of the people of Israel as they turned and rebelled and chased after false gods.” 
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Your Elders Will Fail You

Your elder is not Jesus. They may be Christ-like, but the ultimate voice a Christian should hear and follow is Jesus’s, and not their elder’s. Your elder can pray for you, warn you, show you safe paths, and plead with you. But ultimately, every member is in the hands of the Lord Himself. We are God’s sheep, the people of His pasture.

I was talking to some elders of another church recently about struggles they were having, and they mentioned something I’ve heard countless times: A member is leaving the church and taking swings at the leadership as they walk out.
Please hear me out. The church needs elders. The church deserves to have good elders. God Himself demands elders to shepherd His flock well. However, the church can also be damaged by idealism. Sadly, we live in a world marred by sin. We live in a world where no elder on this side of heaven will ever live up to the ideal standard. Idealism, when it comes to either church membership or church leadership, will ruin relationships, destroy unity, and is deeply unbiblical. There will never be a perfect elder nor a perfect member.
I am not saying you should stay in an abusive church. I am not saying you should stay where the elders show blatant ignorance of your soul. I am not saying members should just put up with poor or sinful leadership. What I am saying is, elders will always fail you if the standard is perfection. Only Jesus, the chief shepherd, is perfect.
My hope from this article is that we, as a Christian community, may give and grow in grace. I’m not giving a pass to sloppy, neglectful, or even sinful shepherding. But, I am advocatign that we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. Why? Because your elders will fail you.
The Shepherd’s Heart
The church deserves to have a shepherd who shows Jesus’ compassion and love for His flock. Jesus routinely showed empathy and understanding to His people. He wept with Mary and Martha at Lazarus’s death. He understood perfectly the hearts of those around Him. Jesus, as the chief shepherd, knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves. My elders, and your elders, will never know your heart perfectly. Elders may be physicians of the soul, but it is Jesus who is the great physician. If a member expects the elders to understand everything going on in their hearts, they have expected men to do God’s work.
The Shepherd’s Vision
Jesus knew exactly why He was here. Jesus came to do His Father’s will. Jesus had a mission and accomplished that mission. Jesus then commissioned His Apostles to go and make disciples of all nations, promising them the Holy Spirit. But He never promised the Apostles they would have perfect mission vision. He did not promise Peter he would be right on everything. Sometimes the Apostles caught themselves off guard as they were prevented from doing things. Sometimes they would drift in the wrong direction and have to be rebuked by another Apostle.
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Poor Richard’s Christianity

Dawkins’ conundrum, of course, is that all the nice culturally Christian things he enjoys have been brought to him courtesy of “bad” Christians—those dreaded orthodox types who actually took the Bible seriously when it said, for instance, that man is made in the image of God. Dawkins likes the idea of human rights, but he has also decried “speciesism,” which leads him to conclude some humans (like the unborn or the mentally disabled) have fewer rights than others. But why stop there? Why assume Richard Dawkins has any rights?

Breaking news: Area Englishman announces he enjoys eating but is still glad that all the farms and gardens are dying. Oh wait, actually it’s Richard Dawkins, explaining that he considers himself a “cultural Christian,” even though he’s glad that fewer and fewer Westerners consider themselves “believing Christians.” In the full interview, he expresses shock and dismay at the display of a Ramadan message at the terminus in London’s King’s Cross station. Christianity as a belief system may still be “all nonsense,” but if it’s between a Muslim culture and a Christian culture, Dawkins says he will vote “team Christian” every time.
This isn’t exactly a new sentiment for the former New Atheist rock star. Some of us remember the small tweetstorm he impishly ignited back in 2018, when he said he much preferred the lovely bells of Winchester Cathedral to the “aggressive-sounding” cry of “Allahu Akbar!” His love for the King James Bible is also well known—though he once urged his atheist friends to make sure “religion” isn’t allowed to “hijack” that great “cultural resource.” One wonders exactly what kind of “resource” Dawkins thinks the Bible is. A collection of aphorisms? Ten rules for life? The best fairy tales ever? 
Whatever it is, Dawkins thinks it’s sort of, well, nice, and he thinks Christianity is “a fundamentally decent religion” by comparison with Islam.
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What Temptation Is and Is Not

Written by J. Garrett Kell |
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Understanding the nature of temptation should sober us. It reminds us that no matter how good temptation makes sin appear, it’s a mirage. The temptation to be stingy is an invitation from Satan to resist the generosity that reflects Jesus. The impulse to click on pornography is an invitation from Satan to grieve God for a quick rush of lust. The urge to hurry your prayers and neglect Bible reading is an invitation to trust your wisdom over God’s. Temptation stokespride and tells you that you deserve to be at the center of the universe. Indulging in its fleeting offerings only leaves us empty and full of regret.

What Is Temptation?
We must understand sin, but we also need to understand temptation and how it relates to our sin. Maybe a few stories will help:
Sarah sighed as she glanced at her phone. It was another message from her coworker Brian. He was charming, funny, and dangerous—at least to her. She knew a date with him was off-limits because he showed little interest in Christianity. At the same time, she was tired of being overlooked by the single men at church. Brian, on the other hand, flirted with her and flattered her. This awakened something inside her that she enjoyed and wanted to pursue. But she knew she shouldn’t.
With situations like this in mind, the apostle James vividly describes how sin and temptation work: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14–15).
Sin acts as an angler who baits the hook with a deceptive lure. The lure then floats along in front of us, and our sinful flesh is enticed. We crave what God forbids and give ourselves convincing reasons to succumb: “One look won’t hurt.” “You’ll miss out if you don’t.” “It’s not a big deal.” “God will forgive you.” “Just this one time.” “You deserve this.”
If we surrender to our evil desires instead of God’s Spirit, then sin comes to fruition. Sin rewards us with an initial rush of enjoyment and sense of satisfaction. But that sense of fulfillment is eventually replaced with regret, which affords an opportunity for repentance. But if we resist repentance, sin’s influence in us grows like a cancerous tumor in the soul, and we can become calloused to God. Inevitably, death results.1
Temptation, therefore, is not a friendly voice but a deadly invitation. To better understand the nature of temptation, let’s consider what it isn’t and what it is.
Temptation Is Not Iniquity (Matt. 4:1–11)
Reid was plagued by anger. In heated moments, he had an impulse to punch tables—or worse, people. His background as a brawler was difficult to escape. But just because he was tempted with outbursts of anger didn’t mean he was sinning.
Scripture repeatedly warns us not to give in to temptation. For instance, God warned Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). Likewise, Paul told the Ephesian church what my friend Reid needed to regularly hear: “Be angry and do not sin” (Eph. 4:26).
Scripture repeatedly shows us that temptation and sin are not the same. Jesus was tempted by Satan yet escaped without sinning (Matt. 4:1–11; Heb. 4:15).
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