Southern Presbyterians and the Roots of American Philosemitism
Like other southern Presbyterians—James Henley Thornwell, Daniel Baker, and John B. Adger among others all recorded marked sympathy for Jews in their writings—Palmer displayed noticeable philosemitism in an era when Jews were still routinely persecuted in Roman Catholic and Islamic societies, as well as in Lutheran monarchies in Europe.
In the inaugural volume of The Southern Presbyterian Review published in December, 1847, Benjamin Morgan Palmer the younger reviewed Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839. The Presbyterian Board of Publications initially published the work soon after its completion in 1839. A second edition made its way to North America in 1845.
Palmer’s review of the work made it clear that he thought the work not what he had hoped. He thought the two Scots had not provided enough background on Jewish history to give appropriate context for the Church of Scotland’s specific missionary efforts. As a “directory” of Jewish life and as justification for Protestant and particularly Presbyterian missionary efforts Palmer found the work “as unsatisfactory as the works of which it was intended to be the supplement.”
The actual review of Bonar and M’Cheyne’s work was less important than Palmer’s own views on Jews in general. Southern Presbyterians displayed an early and pronounced streak of philosemitism in an era when Jewish life in the United States could still be precarious. Palmer, and South Carolina Presbyterians in general, lived and worked among Charleston’s sizable and vibrant Jewish population. James W. Hagy’s This Happy Land: the Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston explained how Jews in the South enjoyed relative inclusion compared to northern cities of the same eras. In 1800, More Jews lived in South Carolina than anywhere else in North America. Philip Morgan of Johns Hopkins, in an endorsement of Theodore and Dale Rosengarten’s A Portion of the People Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, reminded audiences that “until 1830 Charleston was the capital of American Jewry; Christians in South Carolina elected the first professing Jew to office; Reform Judaism first came to the United States in the Palmetto State.”
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Atonement Is in Our Blood
Something stirs our souls when we watch someone willingly die for another—it moves and breaks us simultaneously. Why? It’s because our souls were formed by a Creator who sacrificed himself for us. We may deny atonement with our heads, but our hearts can’t be fooled.
In a recent sermon, I preached on substitutionary atonement—the belief that Christ absorbed God’s wrath for sinners through his death on the cross. While eager to teach this precious truth, I knew many people today find it untenable and unpalatable.
Modern people balk at the bloodiness of the cross. Why would God kill his own Son? Some even label it “divine child abuse.” One author describes God as a “bratty violent murderer who . . . desperately needed his son’s blood in order to save all the rotten humans he accidentally created.” Some emphasize other atonement theories that deal less with sin and sacrifice (i.e., Christus Victor, or Christ as example). These theories have merit, revealing implications of Christ’s death, but too often they’re wielded to oppose substitutionary atonement, not supplement it.
In this environment of skepticism, how do we preach Christ crucified? The obvious answer is: preach the Word. “Let the lion loose,” Charles Spurgeon said. But alongside clear exegesis is one of the preacher’s sharpest tools: illustration. We explain the truth, in part, by painting word pictures. We want people to hear, but also to see. Along these lines, John Piper writes:
Experience and Scripture teach that the heart is most powerfully touched not when the mind is entertaining abstract ideas, but when it is filled with vivid images of amazing reality.
Illustrations carry doctrines down from the unreachable heavens into our hands, where we can examine them. Illustrations persuade, not through manipulation but demonstration. They make truth more visible, graspable, concrete. Hence Jesus, master teacher, used them constantly.
Illustrations of Everyday Atonement
As I preached on the atonement, I used four illustrations from everyday life:
1. Food
Food demonstrates how everyone benefits from a form of atonement, whether they acknowledge it or not. Everything we eat—whether plant or animal—was once alive. It had to be plucked from the tree, pulled from the earth, or slaughtered in order to sustain you. Every meal is a testament to the fact that other things must die, if you are to live.
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Don’t Turn Your Faith Into a Work
Let’s not turn faith into a work but glory in the grace of God. Let us delight in the fact that it is all grounded in him, his sovereign choice, his willingness to submit to death on our behalf so that we – with no grounds for boasting in us as a result – might be saved. Making faith a work robs God of glory that should rightly and only belong to him.
It is straightforwardly true, according to scripture, that we have been saved by grace. Faith is the product of God’s grace towards us. Faith is the only mechanism God could use to save us by grace because it is the only means that doesn’t require any outward activity whatsoever. It seems obvious enough that faith cannot be a work.
Yet, that is precisely what some of us want to make it. We want to believe that we welled up within ourselves the ability to put our own faith, of our own volition, in Christ. The moment we believe this, we have made our faith a work. Let’s just look at Ephesians 2:1-10 to see how it is so.
you were dead in your trespasses and sins 2 in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.[a] 3 We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us,[b] 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! 6 He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— 9 not from works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
Paul is at pains to point out our deadness in trespasses and sins. As has often been pointed out, dead people don’t will anything. They don’t do anything and they don’t believe anything. They are dead. Paul, in the first three verses, impresses upon us our deadness that was evidenced by disobedience. However, v4 marks a turning point. He notes that God takes the initiative and makes us alive with Christ ‘even though we were dead in trespasses.’ Our deadness meant God had to take the initiative. It is this, Paul says in v5, means ‘you are saved by grace’.
Paul picks up this idea again in v8.
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Comforting Lies about Suffering
Peter had to learn these lessons about suffering, and so do we. For the believer, suffering is not a curse, not an indication of weak faith or a lack of blessing, but rather an integral part of the Christian life. God may discipline us to awaken and refine us, but his discipline is a loving mercy. He uses suffering to shape us into the image of Christ, which the prosperity gospel, in its obsession with physical health and earthly wealth, overlooks.
I’ve been told that suffering cannot be God’s will for me. I’ve been advised not even to speak about suffering. I’ve been promised unconditional healing and wholeness if I have enough faith.
These statements came from proponents of the prosperity gospel, people who were convinced I could avoid suffering. I remember telling a fellow believer about my post-polio diagnosis twenty years ago, explaining how eventually I could become a quadriplegic. As I related the various implications, the man interrupted me, saying, “You need to stop talking about this right now. Just speaking of this diagnosis is agreeing with Satan, which might bring it into being. Suffering is never part of God’s will. I know God just wants healing and wholeness for you.”
His words took me aback. While I’d heard the claims before, this conversation triggered a flood of painful memories: being told by a faith healer in a crowded auditorium that I didn’t have enough faith to be healed. Being prayed over by strangers, in places ranging from grocery stores to sporting events, who were convinced they could heal me. Telling a friend about my unborn son’s serious heart condition and being told simply to claim our baby’s healing.
All these people asserted that if we “agreed in prayer” and “bound Satan,” I would be healed, my baby would be healed, the pain would end. They said I needed to believe in faith, warning me never to speak of suffering, fear, or loss.
Even Apostles Misunderstand Suffering
The apostle Peter didn’t want Jesus to speak of his coming crucifixion either. When Jesus told the disciples about his future suffering, death, and resurrection on the third day, Peter rebuked him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22). To Peter, it was inconceivable that Jesus would suffer and be killed. That couldn’t be part of God’s plan.
Perhaps Peter instinctively rebuked Jesus because Jesus’s words about his suffering and death went against Peter’s understanding of the kingdom of God. Just before, Jesus had told Peter that whatever Peter bound on earth would be bound in heaven, and whatever he loosed on earth would be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:19). Maybe Peter thought he could override the predictions by speaking against them.
Whatever the reason for Peter’s outburst, Jesus responded with a stinging rebuke: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:23).
Jesus’s reaction applies to the false teaching of the prosperity gospel, a doctrine that asserts suffering has no place in the life of a Christian. Proponents of the prosperity gospel often claim that we need to bind suffering on earth and not even speak of it, because affliction can never be God’s will for those who know Christ. They choose isolated verses to undergird their position, stressing a right to perfect health, ignoring the Scriptures that highlight God’s goodness and sovereignty in and through our suffering.
Based on Jesus’s exchange with Peter, I see three ways the prosperity gospel gets suffering wrong.
1. ‘Suffering Hinders Faith.’
While Peter’s words may seem like a loving reaction, born out of care for Jesus, Jesus saw them as the work of Satan, distracting Jesus from his purpose. Jesus came to suffer and die, and Peter tried to dissuade him from what was God’s will. At the time, Peter didn’t know that Christ’s suffering would save not only Peter, but all who trust in Jesus.
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