Perhaps the most helpful part of this book, dare I say the most entertaining, is the section called “The Parable of the City Park.”  This is a fantastic little story meant to drive home the Biblical teaching of infant baptism, and it does the job.  This little story is well worth the read. Soon after reading it I read it to my family. In fact, this is a good example of how ministers might well communicate complex truths using simple methods without fear of distorting the truth.

Jonathan Gibson has gifted the church a wonderful book titled, I will build My Church: Selected Writings on Church Polity, Baptism, and the Sabbath, published by Westminster Seminary Press (2021). I say that Gibson has gifted the church, but he is the editor and not the author.  Who is the author?  In the foreword, Sinclair Ferguson reminds us that the author was a man little known to church history. His name is Thomas Witherow. Gibson has brought the three best known works of Witherow into one volume. Here we find a work on church polity (The Apostolic Church), baptism (Scriptural Baptism) and the Lord’s Day (The Sabbath).  He introduces all three with a brief but informative biography, which leans heavily on Witherow’s autobiography.
A Prince of Irish Presbyterianism: The Life & Work of Thomas Witherow
The brief biography of Witherow is about 66 pages in length and every one of them is interesting.  Packed into these pages we find Witherow’s work as a pastor and the transition to his work as a professor.  However, ironies abound in this little account.  For example, Witherow loved to preach but found the expectation of pastoral visitation tiresome.  He once said, “My people were not satisfied expect I paid three hundred and fifty visits in the year and preached twice every Sabbath.”  He even said, “There is nothing in regard to which the Presbyterian people seem to me so thoughtless and unreasonable as in the matter of pastoral visitation.” However, it was a man by the name of Henry Cooke, Witherow’s pastor while in his theological studies, who convinced him of Presbyterianism.  Yet, later when Witherow was seeking to become a professor at Magee College, Henry Cooke participated in some political maneuvering that would aid his son-in-law, Josiah L Porter, in landing the post instead of Witherow.  However, much later in life Witherow would be asked to deliver a lecture named after Cooke!  He gladly offered it.
It is also remarkable to read about the sad providences that characterized Witherow’s life.  Witherow’s grandfather died the day he preached his first sermon.  What is more, Witherow preached the day he lost his five-year-old son, Hugh, named after his father. Grief was only compounded when Thomas and his wife Catherine experienced yet another death of a son. He too was named Hugh after his brother and grandfather.  However, the biography contains many other interesting elements.  Witherow did transition to the life of a professor, he witnessed the Ulster Revival of 1859 and he even served on the local committee that oversaw food rations during the Great Famine of 1845-49.  The biography is only one of the book’s delights.
The Apostolic Church
The second section of the book is titled the Presbyterian Distinctives of Thomas Witherow, which is made up of a collection of three short books from his pen. The first is The Apostolic Church, which was published in 1855 though the imprint says 1856.  The book is simple and straightforward.  However, its simplicity should not lull the reader into thinking that it is not worth his time.  This book is a witty polemic which had, according to W. T. Latimer, a contemporary professor in Belfast, “the effect of rendering members of our church better Christians and more consistent Presbyterians.”
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And as in all areas of Christian discipleship, Jesus gives us the perfect example of what this looks like. In particular, His prayer to His Father in the garden of Gethsemane shows us the way. Jesus’ words on the night He was betrayed are some of His most remembered, as He prays “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). I want us to examine these words carefully because they give us three important insights into living in submission to the will of God.
The first thing to notice about Jesus’ example is how they express His relationship with His Father. This is a dynamic relationship in which Jesus talks with His Father, makes requests of His Father, and expresses His desires and fears to His Father as He walks through life.
It is significant, I think, that Christ has talked of His coming death throughout the Gospels. He has even said that the whole reason He came was to give His life as a ransom for many. So, given how completely His mission and identity as an incarnate man are tied to His death, it might be surprising that Jesus would pray here, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). But surely this is nothing less than an honest prayer as the cross looms right ahead. This is an example of Jesus, in His humanity, laying His heart bare before His father in perfect holiness as He stares suffering in the face. That honest dialogue is part of Jesus’ relationship with His Father, and such regular dialogue should be found in us, too, as we navigate the details of our lives in relationship with our heavenly Father.
The second thing to notice about Jesus’ example is how quickly and repeatedly He expresses His willingness to submit to His Father’s will. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ prayer in the garden, Jesus prays three separate times. And all three times Christ prays, He ends each prayer with the same thought: “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. . . . Your will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42).

The project of Christian political engagement…cannot be to prematurely sift the wheat from the chaff, but to work for earthly peace in humility, and to confess the city of God in love. Only in this way can our attempts to counteract the injustices of the earthly city be truly fruitful; only in this way can they bear witness to the limits of the earthly city’s political imagination.

Augustine’s message about the two cities in City of God has important implications for Christian political engagement today. By resisting a facile sorting of the good from the bad, he reminds his Christian readers that their own transformation is far from complete and so helps them work for earthly peace in a spirit of humility.
“Most glorious is the City of God: whether in this passing age, where she dwells by faith as pilgrims among the ungodly, or in the security of that eternal home which she now patiently awaits until ‘righteousness shall return into judgment’ . . .” It is with these words that Augustine famously begins the City of God. And yet what are we to make of them? What exactly is he glorifying, and why? And what political wisdom do they contain for us today?
Given Augustine’s reputation for polemics, it would be unsurprising if his readers interpreted these lines as a celebration of his city’s impending victory over its enemies, and in some ways, it is. Yet, not in the way that we would expect. Instead, Augustine’s opening lines subvert tribal triumphalism. To put this more plainly, Augustine glorifies the city of God as God’s city, and not as the Romans glory in theirs, which of course, is as theirs. Rather than glorying in a Rome that has conquered all, Augustine glories in the city of God as a gift offered to all, and extends the invitation as far as he can.
This message about the city of God, compacted as it is in the tome’s opening lines, also has important implications for Christian political engagement today. In brief, it shows us the ways we must be transformed in order to properly engage in politics. While the best way to make this case would be to embark on a thoroughgoing analysis of the entire City of God, as I try to do in Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God, perhaps it is sufficient to look at the aforementioned lines in light of the argument that unfolds in Book One.
Amor Dei and Humility
Doing so, we find that Augustine’s project in City of God is to show his readers that the distinction between self-love and love of God is a distinction with a difference. Thus, rather than another form of veiled self-praise, the book’s opening lines are meant as an exclamation of praise rooted in gratitude—a gratitude into which all readers are invited. As I argue more extensively in my book, Augustine presents this gratitude as the fruit of our participation in the very love of God that binds the city of God together.
Importantly, for Augustine, love of God is not simply our love for God—which is always imperfect—but God’s love for us, which we receive and return in (hopefully) ever greater degrees. By locating the glory of God’s city in this love, Augustine undercuts our ability to boast in ourselves, since this love is not originally ours, but God’s. We participate in it only insofar as it is given to us, despite our sinfulness. This to say, because Augustine presents love of God as something originating in God, he reveals the contradiction within all our efforts to present our membership in the city of God as something that we earned or as proof that we are already good. Worried that we easily forget this, Augustine repeatedly characterizes the city of God on pilgrimage as a mixed body—mixed not just in the sense of having good and bad members, but also in the sense of there being good and bad motives in each member’s heart. For Augustine, in other words, we must constantly be reminded that the pilgrim city is marked not by its moral perfection, but by its willingness to receive and return to God. Such a city leaves little room for triumphalism.
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