Got the Lot?
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When fidelity, honesty, society, morality and true biblical spirituality are turned on their head, and life turns upside down, most stresses and voices yield a counsel of despair.
Yet in David’s day, about 1000 BC, with His Kingdom perched on the brink, and about to slide off the cliff, this “bird in the cage” was not about to concede ground to the impulse of “flight or fight” – instead the Old Testament Christ is resolute in trust.
1 In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to my soul, “Flee like a bird to your mountain, 2 for behold, the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; 3 if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” – Psalm 11:1-3
It is the believing visualization of evil’s ultimate lot that brings sanity to the mind, confidence to the heart and endurance of such trials, if we are tempted to give up.
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John Davenant, Another Enticement for the “Reformed” (In Name Only)
That God’s omnipotence and decree are not mutually exclusive entailments implies that the latter does not diminish the former, though it will certainly curtail and redirect its decretive unleashing in ordinary providence. Davenant and his recent followers not only miss this. Is there any indication they’ve even considered it?
“If it be denied that Christ died for some persons, it will immediately follow, that such could not be saved, even if they should believe.”
I can understand Arminians saying such a thing but when those who profess to be Reformed say things like that, more than bad theology is at play. (And by the way, why do latent Arminians insist upon being considered Reformed?)
At the risk of addressing the obvious, such a sentiment assumes what must be proved, that those for whom Christ did not die can believe. From a Reformed perspective, how does this not deny Irresistible Grace and Inseparable Operations of the Trinity?
“If nothing else is judged possible to be done, except those things which God hath decreed to be done, it would follow that the Divine power is not infinite.”John Davenant, Dissertation On The Death Of Christ, N.D., 439
God having already decreed that the boulder would fall from the cliff entails that God could not prevent the boulder from falling from the cliff. The “could not” is due not to a lack of divine power but a want of divine will. Because God cannot deny himself (or act contrary to how he has determined he will act), God’s inability to act upon the boulder either directly, or through secondary causes, is ascribable not to finite power in the Godhead but the outworking of God’s internal consistency, from decree to providence.
That God’s omnipotence and decree are not mutually exclusive entailments implies that the latter does not diminish the former, though it will certainly curtail and redirect its decretive unleashing in ordinary providence. Davenant and his recent followers not only miss this. Is there any indication they’ve even considered it?
“The death of Christ is applicable to any man living, because the condition of faith and repentance is possible to any living person, the secret decree of predestination or preterition in no wise hindering or confining this power either on the part of God, or on the part of men. They act, therefore, with little consideration who endeavour, by the decrees of secret election and preterition, to overthrow the universality of the death of Christ, which pertains to any persons whatsoever according to the tenor of the evangelical covenant.” Davenant, loc. cit.
In other words, for Davenant, it is possible for those not elected unto salvation to be saved. Indeed, it is possible for those not chosen in Christ to be baptized into the work of the cross.
Pelagian connotations aside as they relate to faith and repentance, if Davenant is correct, then it is possible that God’s decree not come to pass. It is possible that more are saved than predestined unto salvation. It is possible that God can be wrong! Or does God not believe his decree will come to pass?
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CRT vs. Classical Liberalism vs. Christianity
The Bible presents a complex view of reality and how modern political ideologies dismember parts of this complex reality, isolate them, and treat them as the whole. And it helps Christians to engage with liberalism, CRT, and other political ideologies in a way that doesn’t invest them with ultimate, messianic hope or allow them to become the uncontested and sovereign ideology of our souls.
Perhaps you saw the video. A woman stares down the lens of the camera, straight into our eyes. Her expression is weary, her tone angry. “How can you win?” she cries, with the air of a question she’s asked a thousand times. “You can’t. The game is fixed,” she answers. “So when they say, ‘Why do you burn down the community? Why do you burn down your own neighborhood?’—it’s not ours. We don’t own anything. We don’t own anything.’”
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, Kimberly Jones’s viral video gave voice to the anger and anguish felt by many black men and women in the United States and beyond. She spoke of a society rigged so that most black people cannot succeed—however hard they work and whatever the content of their character.
Though the assumptions and commitments informing this view of a systemically racist society go by multiple names, here I’ll use “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) as a general term to capture the set of concerns. (To be clear, lamenting the presence of systemic racism does not necessarily make one a CRT proponent.)
When discussed in Christian circles, CRT is often explicitly or implicitly contrasted to a version of classical liberalism: not the liberalism of the liberal/conservative divide, but the liberalism of individual freedom, universal rights, and the importance of property propounded by thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith. Some Christians, rightly sensitive to the problems of CRT, end up espousing a secular liberalism because it provides an off-the-shelf alternative. Others, whose education or life experience have primed them to see liberalism’s dangers, give a free pass to CRT as the go-to tool for addressing them.
But both reactions sell the Bible short, not by opposing it at every point but by isolating an aspect of its interconnected truth, distorting it, and making it into the whole truth. Many of today’s social and political pitched battles are staged between complementary biblical truths that have been dismembered, isolated, and opposed. This tragic and unnecessary spectacle characterizes much of the struggle between CRT and liberalism.
To be clear, my aim in this article isn’t to keep score between these secular ideologies and pronounce which error is worse or which is more compatible with biblical Christianity. I simply aim to show how both reduce the complexity of biblical truth, often in symmetrical and opposite ways.
The Bible is not, of course, a book of secular political philosophy: it addresses ultimate realities and calls people to find eternal life in knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent (John 17:3). Nevertheless, the Bible does describe the world, human beings, and the flow of history in particular ways (in a forthcoming book I call them “figures”), and these ways have implications for how we think about political and social issues. So let’s consider the key biblical turning points of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation as a grid through which to compare CRT and liberalism to the biblical truth they both simplify and distort. -
WCF 29: Of the Lord’s Supper
The Eucharist is a true participation in Christ’s body and blood (1 Cor. 10:16). So to fake communion with Christ while having no saving interest in him is sacrilegious. We must examine and judge ourselves, respecting church leaders who either invite us to the Supper or insisting that, for now, we abstain (1 Cor. 11:28, 29, 31). Scripture requires us to heed warnings about the Lord’s Supper. But we mustn’t only focus on the negative. There are several things we must do to receive what Christ wants to give us in this meal.
After three years of walking with Jesus the disciples were about to face their greatest trial. God would strike the Shepherd and scatter his sheep (Matt. 26:31). Spiritual darkness would place the disciples under extreme pressure. They would not completely fail. But they would falter.
Knowing all this, how did Jesus prepare them for this dark hour? He instituted a special meal meant to remind them of who they were in him. This meal, called the Lord’s Supper, is also for us. The apostle Paul received from the Lord and delivered unto the church, the same institution that the first disciples received from Jesus shortly before his death (1 Cor. 11:23). Until he comes Jesus intends this meal to preserve our bodies and souls unto everlasting life.
What Is the Lord’s Supper?
The Lord’s Supper is “the sacrament of his body and blood.” “Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace” (WCF 27.1). This sacrament reminds believers of Jesus’ shed blood, and assures them that they possess all the benefits which his sacrifice secures. The Supper takes the place of the Passover which confirmed to believing Israelites that God had graciously spared them from the angel of death (Ex. 12:7–13). Since we, like the disciples, often suffer from many doubts and weak faith, the Lord’s Supper must be a regular part of congregational life. John Calvin thought the Supper so important, much like ordinary eating, that it should be celebrated “very often, at least once a week.” He thought that “no meeting of the church should take place without” it. [i] His conviction is worth our consideration. But however frequently we celebrate the Supper in terms of the its role in the Christian life we should think of it less like a birthday celebration and more like a family meal.
Scripture teaches us how to observe this meal. First, the church must hear Jesus’ words of institution. About the bread and wine we hear, “This is my body, which is for you, do this in remembrance of me. …This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:23, 25).
Second, the minister follows Jesus’ example and prays for the Lord to “bless the elements of bread and wine, and thereby to set them apart from a common to an holy use.”
Third, the bread is broken and the wine poured, and both are distributed to the professing members of Christ’s church. The result is a congregational celebration of the real, gracious presence of Christ among his beloved people. The Supper is not a mark of our obedience or personal worthiness but a testimony to the inherited riches that believers have in Christ.
Because this meal is so sacred we must approach it with care.
How Might I Misuse the Supper?
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 11 to correct the church’s table manners.
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