The Glory of Christ’s Church
As we consider our calling as the Church of the living God, may we begin by recognizing how God sees us in Christ. May we start by realizing what God has declared about the purpose and nature of the Church, not settling for something that falls far short of the divine reality, but instead, setting our gaze upon the glorious certainty of what God is actually accomplishing through His Son.
What is the Church? If someone were to ask you that question, how would you respond? Would you reference the difference between the local and universal Church? Would you explain where your particular church is located? Maybe you would talk about the people who make up your church. Or, perhaps you would describe the programs and activities that your church is engaged in. Whatever your answer to that question may be, Scripture provides us with a number of descriptions which help us understand the nature and identity of the Church.
The Church is the Body of Christ
In Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthian believers, he writes to them, saying:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body (1 Cor 12:12-20).
Certainly, the most familiar of all the metaphors and descriptions for the Church found in Scripture, is the body. God, in his infinite wisdom and grace, has provided us with reference points, if you will, in order to better help us understand who and what the Church is. In doing so, he takes something far beyond our mind’s comprehension and brings it down to a level that we can begin to consider. Like a loving and patient father, our God stoops down, as it were, and provides us with descriptions we can understand.
Here, in 1 Corinthians 12, he does so through the Apostle Paul by referencing our own human bodies. The point of comparison is simply to say that just as the human body is one entity, yet has many members, such as ears, eyes, feet, and hands, so it is with the Church. The universal Church is one entity, yet it is comprised of believers from every nation, language, and people group of the world, with Christ as the Head (Col 1:18, Rev 7:9).
Now, there is certainly a profound mystery found within this metaphor, as we also find it utilized in the book of Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians, and recognize that in some unfathomable way we are spiritually united to Christ, who is seated at the right hand of the Father (Eph 2:6). Yet, at least one thing is obvious. This glorious description of the Church stands in blatant contradiction to the division and individualism found to be so prevalent in our culture, today. The Church of Christ is a living, active body of believers who are dependent upon their Head and upon one another.
The Church is the Temple of God
Turning our attention to the next description of the Church we find in God’s Word, the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesian believers, saying:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph 2:19-22).
The magnificence of this metaphor should not be overlooked. Since every genuine believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Paul uses the picture of a temple to explain that the Church is being built as a place where God, himself, lives both now and for eternity. Testifying to the Spirit’s divine authorship, the Apostle Peter echoes this same idea, saying:
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Pet 2:4-5).
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The Greatest Prooftext for the Doctrine of Eternal Generation?
The reason Jesus acts the way he does, the reason Jesus is worthyof the worship he receives, is that Jesus’ origin is what it is: he is the eternal Son of the eternal Father, the heavenly Son of the heavenly Father, the only-begotten Son who is from above, not from below, whose filiation is not of this world.
The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is a central feature of orthodox Christian teaching. In this doctrine, the church confesses not simply that the second person of the Trinity is the one true and living God but how he is the one true and living God: as the Son eternally begotten by the Father who thereby shares the Father’s self-same being, attributes, works, and worship.
The church confesses the doctrine of eternal generation on the basis of Holy Scripture. But it is precisely at this point that many contemporary Christians–who may otherwise sympathize with the importance of sharing the church’s universal confession–nevertheless stumble. Is the doctrine of eternal generation really a biblical doctrine? Does it truly possess the only force it could possess to command the assent of the faithful, i.e., the authority of the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture?
There are plenty of reasons for answering this question in the affirmative. Some reasons follow from the ways Scripture “names” the second person of the Trinity. Other reasons follow from the ways Scripture portrays the second person of the Trinity in his actions of creating, saving, and consummating all things. Still, many contemporary Christians continue to find these lines of argument unconvincing. Part of the problem doubtless stems from the hermeneutical culture in which they were trained, which tends toward atomism in exegesis or, when it does consider larger canonical patterns of meaning, tends to focus on “horizontal” redemptive-historical patterns to the exclusion of “vertical” analogical patterns of meaning.
There is a place for criticizing these hermeneutical cultures and for repairing them as need be (the latter is, as a matter of fact, my full-time job). But it is the responsibility of the church’s teachers also to address church doctrine to its members within the hermeneutical space that they actually inhabit, not simply in the ideal space that teachers believe they should inhabit. That’s part of faithful shepherding: leading God’s people from where they actually are to where they should be.
Now to the (pretentious) title of my post: What is “the greatest prooftext for the doctrine of eternal generation”? I hope it is clear, gentle reader, that I am not insinuating that there is one great prooftext for the doctrine that stands above all others. The doctrine of eternal generation is the teaching of the whole counsel of God read as a whole. What my title means to suggest is that there may be one particularly instructive, particularly helpful prooftext for leading those sympathetic to but still unsure about the doctrine to the place of more confident affirmation. That text, I suggest, is John 8.
In John 8, Jesus roots his actions of revealing God’s words and accomplishing God’s saving purpose, the very actions that reveal Jesus’ identity as the one true and living God (Jn 8:24, 28: “that I am”), in his origin, his being “from above,” his being from “the Father” (Jn 8:23, 27). Jesus acts the way he does because of where (or better: whom) he is from. Moreover, it is precisely in contrasting the analogy between Jesus’ origin and actions and his opponents’ origin and actions that Jesus confirms the deep biblical logic of the doctrine of eternal generation.
Jesus introduces the link between action and origin in John 5, basing his authority to work on the Sabbath (a prerogative unique to God) in his status as God’s natural-born Son. As one who shares his Father’s nature, he also shares his Father’s self-existence, performs his Father’s works, and is worthy of receiving his Father’s worship (see here and here). Jesus takes up this theme again in John 8 and elaborates on it by contrasting his origin and action with his opponents’ origin and action. “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (Jn 8:23). “I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father” (Jn 8:38).
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Techno-Slavery
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
I recently sat in on a presentation delivered by the president of a prominent evangelical seminary. The topic was discipling the next generation–what some have nicknamed “the smartphone generation.” At one point, our presenter pulled out his own device. “The next generation will not remember a time without one of these,” he said.
That Zoomers are inured to supercomputers in their pockets is not shocking. But the point is usually meant as a set-up for a more audacious–but no less fashionable–assertion: because the next generation won’t remember a time without smartphones, they can’t imagine a future without them.
Hence, the countless articles from evangelicals about discernment and technology, all assuming a kind of techno-inevitability. These typically present as a moderated position between two extremes–a “third way” between total adoption and extreme luddism. Many writers have recently questioned the third way approach to politics. It’s time to do the same with technology.
In his insightful critique of a “third-way” approach to politics, James R. Wood focuses on retrieving the telos of politics itself. The same can be done–and is being done–for technology, especially with an eye toward emerging technologies like AI. But it is also important that we apply such questions to current technologies–even devices like smartphones which so many of us have grown accustomed to. As Jon Askonas points out in his essay, “Why Conservatism Failed,” it was the adoption of new technologies like the Pill that did more to transform the household than anything else. Like a steroid to a muscle, technology causes the nascent power of the idea to explode. Transgenderism lay dormant in academic circles for a while but has now arrived in mainstream culture largely because of innovation and advancement in sex-reassignment surgeries.
That Christians today are departing from historic Christian teaching about sex, gender, and contraception in the time it takes to fill a prescription or set-up an appointment is a warning to us today. What if the next major technological shift to threaten Christian discipleship isn’t sitting in some R&D lab but in our homes right now?
What I hope to offer is a practical diagnostic for Christians that helps them discern what technologies they will and will not adopt based on the purpose of technology to support humans in their calling to live freely before God and in community with one another. I call it the Terminator Test: does it aid human life, or does it try to replace it? I recently applied it in my own life to that smartphone I’m not supposed to imagine life without. Here’s what I learned.
Smartphones aren’t conducive to freedom.
Everyone from Patrick Deneen to Death Cab for Cutie has discovered the crushing yoke of expectations placed on us by smartphones. So much was evident when I compared my life with a smartphone to someone without one.
As a user, I had special access to life online. I was accessible whenever and wherever. Every bit of content in the world was at my fingertips. And yet, I was far less free than the typical Amish man–an example Deneen employs in Why Liberalism Failed.
The Amish man’s religious views preclude him from owning a smartphone among many other modern devices. He has no internet access, no email, no social media, no online identity. And yet, he rises with the sun and sets his plow down as he wishes. He lives and dies by the fruits of his own labors. He joins his family every night for dinner, undistracted by emails or texts from a workaholic boss. He doesn’t receive a barrage of push notifications warning him of social media trends or new seasons of Netflix shows.
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I Am One of The Eighty-Five Percent Who Did Not Persist in Pastoral Ministry
After 4 years of wrestling with burnout, supported by loved ones and guided by mentors, I stand even more firm in Jesus’s gospel and love, although I am not ready to go back to ministry. Nevertheless, I can testify to God’s faithfulness amid these trials. He has brought healing in my first church, to my wife and two sons, and His Word and gospel have never been so intimate in my heart and soul.
Numerous scholarly works, podcasts, and leadership materials reference a well-known Duke University study that stated 85% of seminary graduates leave the pastoral ministry within 5 years of completing their studies. But rarely do we hear firsthand from one of these individuals.
Well, I am one of the 85% who did not persist in pastoral ministry.
Allow me to share my story, and if it is a familiar story to you, I pray that this will be an encouragement to your weary soul, and even if ever so slightly, give you hope into believing that God is working in and through you still to this day.
How I Became a Pastor
Back in my days as a seminary student, anyone in my life would have told you that I was born to be a pastor. After leaving my life of pursuing a career in medical sciences, when I heard God’s calling, I left behind everything and started pursuing the pastoral calling.
I spent endless hours and sleepless nights trying to make financial ends meet during my time as a seminary student, all the while serving as an interning pastor at my local church. For over 8 years of my adult life, my entire identity was wrapped around earning the title of being a pastor.
Eventually, within 4 years of graduating, I was offered a co-leading pastoral position at my home church in downtown Toronto. It was an exciting time for everyone, especially for those who sacrificed greatly, like my family, my fiancé, church leadership, and longtime congregation members.
By that time, being a pastor had become more than just a personality or vocation, but my entire identity. Everything in my life was so intricately tied to being a pastor. Almost immediately after beginning as a co-leading pastor, the weekly feedback and criticisms of my sermons, my leadership, comparisons to other churches, and complaints about the ministry began to break my soul deep within.
Just to be clear, these things existed in my life before becoming the co-lead pastor, but the intensity of how personally I took them to heart became that much greater. Eventually, instead of drawing from God’s daily grace and the power of the gospel, I began to try and solve all the issues on my own strengths. Not long after, I fell into a deep depression believing I was a bad pastor.
How Depression Affected Me
That deep depression led to an abrupt stop in my ability to continue pastoring, and before my 5th year as a graduate and less than 1 year into my co-leading role at the church, I realized I could not continue.
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