First Principles: A Most Subtle Skepticism
Tradition serves to correct our assumptions, expose our blind spots, and cultivate accountability in a garden we have turned into a wasteland. But most of all, she introduces us to creeds so that we do not gather as one but join the assembly of believers now and yesterday to praise the King of glory with one voice.
It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
–G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Today we are experiencing a surge of renewed interest in retrieval. However encouraging that resurgence may be—and it certainly is reassuring—a lingering, even nagging hesitation remains among a remainder of theologians and pastors. Those reluctant are not identical with those alarmist fundamentalist “no creed but the Bible” types. Such an overt, frantic biblicism is conspicuous enough as a theological cancer. Instead, it stems from that type of theologian or pastor who appreciates the past, but nonetheless considers engagement with our Christian heritage as nothing more than a pragmatic recruitment of conversation cronies. At the end of the day, they are far more interested, so they say, in what the Bible says. Putting labels before that word “tradition”—whether it be “Great” or “Reformed”—is precarious business sure to distract from scripture or even overcome its message.
In a strange way, I almost prefer to battle with the overt, alarmist “no creed but the Bible” types than this second, more subtle biblicist. At least the former is honest. Disastrous no doubt, but honest. But the latter represents that quiet, almost indetectable cancer that is never caught by a doctor. Concealed, it infiltrates the blood system over years, even decades. When it’s finally identified for what it is everyone stares at the floor in defeat knowing it’s much too late. “You have three months to live,” says the helpless physician, conquered by a battle he never had the chance to help his patient fight.
Why is this more subtle form of biblicism so fatal to the health of the ecclesiastical body? It is so threatening because it preys on Christianity by means of a half-truth. It acts as if the past is important; it even encourages dialogue. Yet by the end of the day, its reason for doing so is quite secular: talking to the dead is merely pragmatic. If you find the Nicene Creed or a Calvin or an Augustine helpful, then by all means. That is, as long as they become nothing more than practical, mere aids to what really matters.
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West Lafayette RPCNA Changes Name After Abuse Allegations, ‘Painful Chapter’
The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A West Lafayette church at the center of “minor-on-minor abuse” allegations opted to change its name to put the “painful chapter in our story” behind them.
A December 2021 Indy Star investigation found Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian Church Pastor Jared Olivetti and elders Keith Magill, Ben Larson and David Carr failed to act with urgency in responding to inappropriate behavior and sexual offenses by a boy at the church.
In January of 2022, the national governing body of the Reformed Presbyterian Church announced that Olivetti must refrain from exercising his duties as pastor pending the result of his ecclesiastical trial, which resulted in his defrocking.
The congregation recently released a special statement highlighting its troubled history and explaining why the church changed its name to “Redeeming Grace Church.” The statement also explained why the congregation left the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America denomination. One factor in such a separation is that it would allow the church to welcome back some of the former leaders sanctioned for their roles in the abuse case.
“If you do know us by the name ‘Immanuel,’ it’s likely you know something of the negative publicity and very hard years recently suffered by our congregation,” the statement reads.
“Those years began with the revelation of minor-on-minor abuse in and around the congregation. As we worked through that painful chapter in our story, our former elders worked to follow the pertinent laws, to believe and support the victims, and to honor Christ.”
The IndyStar investigation revealed that leaders at the West Lafayette church were informed that children from multiple families had been abused and harassed by another minor within the congregation, according to internal church documents obtained by IndyStar.
The ecclesiastic trial revoked Olivetti’s ordination and status as an elder, the IndyStar reported, forbidding him practicing in any capacity within the denomination. He has also been suspended from participating in sacraments such as communion.
Olivetti and his fellow elders were found to have kept the abuse from church members for more than four months, even as they learned of additional transgressions.
The perpetrator, a teenage boy, was a relative of the pastor. Rather than immediately recuse himself, Olivetti continued to shape the church’s response, taking advantage of his position as a leader to interfere with the investigation, according to the IndyStar reporting.
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Book Review: Knowing Sin
Mark Jones has done the Church a needed service by putting together this accessible, precise, and thoroughly practical work on the doctrine of sin…Knowing Sin [is]…a mature discipleship resource, a means to expose the evil of our own hearts that we might continually turn to Christ in grateful repentance.
It’s a horrible, necessary paradox in the Christian life: If you want to know God more, then you need to know your sin more, too. Here’s how Calvin put it at the outset of his systematic theology, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves… Thus, our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us, that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves.Calvin, Institutes, I:1, 37-38.
Calvin’s point is not that our great, immortal, all-wise God is in some way dependent on our sin to be who he is, but exactly the opposite. Because we are sinful, we’re entirely dependent on God to reveal our sin to us so that we might be motivated to look to him, the great cure and antithesis of all our sin.
If we sinners want to love God more, we need to know and hate our sin more. And Mark Jones’ latest book aims to aid us on that dark and perilous journey.
In Knowing Sin: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine Through the Eyes of the Puritans, Jones delves into the theological deeps of the study of sin (what theologians call “hamartiology”) with the lantern of Puritan wisdom lighting the way. As a pastor, professor, and expert in the writings of those 17th century English non-conformists, Jones brings together precise doctrinal articulation and devotional Puritan application to lay sin bare in all its ugliness. Uniquely, Jones writes like a Puritan, full of theological depth and devotional fervor, but without any stuffy anachronisms or slavish imitation. If you’re looking for a personal or small group study resource that will convict you, challenge you, and provoke you to greater love for your sin-bearing Savior, then Knowing Sin should be at the top of your list.
To see the value of a resource like Knowing Sin, we need to feel the weight of the subtitle’s assumption: Seeing a Neglected Doctrine. What’s so neglected about the biblical doctrine of sin that this cobwebbed corner of systematic theology warrants our attention? Consider any modern public debate and you’ll see the need for more biblical precision about sin. For example: How should we think about the sins of our elected officials, the sins of our forefathers, the sins of someone else’s forefathers, the sins of ethnic groups, the sins of men, the sins of women, the sins of Christians, or the sins of the culture? In her foreword to Knowing Sin, Rosaria Butterfield shows how a robust theology of sin can help us respond to something as controversial as feminist arguments in the #Churchtoo movement. Today’s headlines and op-eds are littered with unwitting admissions of profound ignorance about the most fundamental human problem: our sin. So, our sin is worth discussing so we can speak credibly and biblically to current events and issues.
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Three Criteria for Using Prophecy in Apologetics
Micah 5:2 meets all three of our requirements and so gives evidence that God was supernaturally involved in the writing of this prophecy. Fulfilled prophecy is evidence that God communicates and is involved in mankind’s history. Pointing out all that Jesus fulfilled can help us draw people’s attention to his message and ministry. Let’s begin to use fulfilled prophecy in our apologetic approach.
If you were God, how would you grab people’s attention? You’d have to do something out of the ordinary, something that would pique people’s interest—something miraculous.
The Bible is a record of God doing this very thing. But what about those of us who have never seen a miracle in our life? How does God get our attention? One way is by performing miracles using history, time, and written records. We call it prophecy.
Biblical prophecy is often overlooked as an apologetic for Christianity. We need to change this. One type of Old Testament prophecy predicts the coming of the Messiah. In fact, some have counted three hundred prophecies predicting when, where, and what the Messiah would be. If we can show these predictions came true, it would help us to build a case for the validity of Scripture, God, and Jesus.
There are three important criteria for using a messianic prophecy in apologetics.Jesus didn’t fulfill the prophecy deliberately.
The prophecy predates its fulfillment.
The fulfillment of the prophecy can’t be a coincidence.Once, Jesus appeared to fulfill a prophecy on purpose. Zechariah 9:9 predicted the Messiah would come into Jerusalem seated on a colt. The fulfillment is recorded in Matthew 21:1–11 and John 12:12–16. Jesus, knowing what Zechariah 9:9 had predicted, deliberately fulfilled this prophecy by asking for a colt for his triumphal entry. This kind of fulfilled prophecy would not be persuasive to a non-Christian.
Next, what evidence do we have that a prophecy was written prior to Jesus’ life? If there isn’t evidence the prediction predated the fulfillment, we can’t claim a specific event was foretold and fulfilled in Jesus.
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