The Reformed Reckoning Continues
Another tendency in the Reformed world is pastors using “expository” preaching as a tactic to avoid courting controversy, as Pastor Matt Marino discussed during the most recent episode of the Old Paths Podcast. In a piece Marino wrote that sparked excellent conversation on the podcast, he explained, “Sermons are not expositional unless and until they expose not only God’s meaning but our obstacles. God’s meaning must penetrate our whole heart and permeate our whole lives.” Explaining a passage’s context, history of interpretation—and even the passage’s connection to Christ—is essential, but it’s not enough.
Following up on my piece from last week, much more can be said about the general state of the modern Reformed movement. While there are certainly good aspects of it, from its general reverence in worship to its theological rigor, there are also shortcomings that need to be addressed. These problems include rhetorical traps, not always preaching the full counsel of God, and the prevalence of gatekeepers who seem more interested in condemning their Reformed enemies than promoting a historically based understanding of the Reformed tradition as a whole.
One such rhetorical snare is hiding behind confessionalism to excuse questionable theology that parrots the pieties of our age. After being outraged that anyone would dare question their Reformed credentials, these types like to claim that they’re “confessional” and therefore beyond criticism.
Confessionalism is a good and necessary thing. Confessions bind us to the faith as delivered by the church throughout the ages. In the Reformed tradition, they 1) outline the key doctrines of orthodoxy as taught in Scripture (as well as being ecumenical about certain second- and third-order issues), 2) establish methods of discipline should the teachers of the church subvert those doctrines, and 3) catechize congregants and their children in patterns that should pervade all areas of life.
Importantly, confessions do not overturn the principle that, in the language of Article Six of the Thirty-Nine Articles, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” Confessions, along with the ecumenical creeds, are subordinate in authority to Scripture. They are derived from it and are held accountable to it. What the Southern Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney has written about creeds applies just as much to confessions and other secondary statements of basic Christian doctrine: “He who would consistently banish creeds must silence all preaching and reduce the teaching of the church to the recital of the exact words of Holy Scripture without note or comment.”
Confessions are also the answer to the problem of “Calvinism,” or making one theologian the standard of Reformed orthodoxy as I pointed out last week. As J.V. Fesko argues, doing this means diving headlong “into the pitfall of theological genius—defining doctrine by the cult of personality rather than through the church’s careful and prayerful deliberation on Scripture in dialogue with the church throughout the ages.” Reformed confessions are the products of the best theological minds of their eras. They carefully summarize the doctrines of the faith for the broader church, ensuring that the theological issues of their time are given due attention and correction.
As good as confessions are, however, they can be weaponized. Some individuals can hide behind a strict literalism that fails to engage with the underlying anthropological foundations on which those doctrines rest. One of the most famous memes from Philip Derrida’s collection of evangelical countersignaling memes shows a man saying that he affirms the ecumenical creeds but rejects the basic, commonsense truths of sex and gender. This is clearly occurring in the controversy over Side-B and Revoice. Like in a game of Jenga, followers of these movements subtly remove the foundational pillars of the created order, one by one, until the edifice suddenly collapses.
Some also fail to heed the straightforward teachings of their confessions. It would be interesting to see how many so-called strict subscriptionists who have later deconstructed ever assented to the Westminster Larger Catechism’s teaching on the duties that inferiors, superiors, and equals owe to each other as part of the Fifth Commandment. My guess is, they never did. And their pastors either neglected to discuss those points or actually helped undermine the teachings of their confessions.
Like the U.S. Constitution, confessions are functionally useless absent good men who will ensure that those under their care stay within its boundaries. What American Reformer’s own Timon Cline has written about the case of “strict subscriptionists” who blanch at their confession’s teaching on the civil magistrate holds true no matter the specific doctrine being jettisoned.
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Church Leaders: June Is Not the Time to be Silent
The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies,” (John 8: 44) who “deceives the whole world,” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14). In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.
June, which some have designated as “Gay Pride Month,” is not the time for church leaders to be silent. It’s the most appropriate, opportune, pertinent, and relevant time to address the heavy spiritual darkness hanging over the Church and our nation.
Pastors and elders, follow the model of the Apostles who addressed serious issues as they arose. Remember the Jerusalem Council in Acts. Remember the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans—especially chapter one, his letter to the Corinthians dealing with incest in the church, and Jude’s short epistle dealing with the sin and doom of ungodly people.
The month of June has been usurped by the “father of lies” (John 8: 44); who “deceives the whole world” (Revelation 12: 9), and who disguises himself as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11: 14). In other words, many churches and our nation have readily turned over an entire month to serious evil—serious, yet so deceptive that it is embraced by so many, even believers in Jesus Christ.
Pastors and elders, this is not the time to ignore such evil, to be cowardly in the face of such evil, or to be compromised by such evil. Your flocks, your sheep desperately need your faithfulness to God’s Word in exposing evil for what it is. See Ephesians 5:11-12: 1:
“Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them; for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of” (ASV).
“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (ESV).
“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret” (NIV).
The your sheep are inundated with deceptive messages deviously proclaiming sexual immorality and more as blessed, good, loving, righteous, wholesome and legal. Your flocks contain some mature believers, but many new believers, many youth believers, many parents, and many children—all of whom are vulnerable to such strong messaging. Sadly, many churches and Christians have not only accepted the message but have embraced and even practiced it. The deception is so appealing, attractive, beguiling, captivating, enticing, seductive, and subtle. These may be many words, but they powerfully define and describe Satan’s devices.
Growing up in a Presbyterian, Reformed Faith church, it wasn’t until later in life I realized that any Scripture relating to the sin of homosexuality was skipped over in sermons and Sunday school lessons. We never learned there was such a sin being practiced. As a result, no young person was warned about the dangers or the temptations to these sexual sins and how to resist and renounce them. In other words, we grew up naïve and ignorant—thus vulnerable. Do you wish that for your young people and flock?
Pastors and elders, now is the time to address such a sinister sin. Do it in love, but firmly. Don’t soft-pedal it with jumping onto other sins such as greed, gossip, etc. In the hierarchy of sins, this is a serious one because God commanded death to anyone guilty, and He used the harshest of adjectives and modifiers to describe how heinous and serious it is. When preaching on the sins of greed, pride, adultery, concupiscence, one doesn’t veer off to other sins to soft-pedal those. The Church is dealing today with what is termed the “Third Way.” The emphasis is so much on love or ignoring some issues that truth is canceled out or dismissed. When it comes to sin, whether immorality or other acts of unrighteousness, there is only “One Way,” and that is to proclaim what God said about them– to expose them, call for confession and repentance, and then forgive and restore the sinners.
It gives me no personal pleasure in focusing on or writing about this topic, but the force of the advocates for sin are so strong and taking prisoners—even deluding Christians—that it demands being addressed openly, cautiously, firmly, lovingly—but above all faithfully and truthfully. Many lives are at stake, especially the lives of members of your flocks. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3: 4) relative to this issue. Don’t you wish to instruct and protect them? If you genuinely love your sheep, you will sacrificially protect or rescue them as much as you would feed and nourish them.
Pastors and church leaders, now is the time to stand up and step up to the present challenge. And while doing so, assure your flocks that believing God over Satan or the world does not make one “homophobic.” That has to be one of Satan’s shrewdest tricks.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.
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Carving Time
Written by T.M. Suffield |
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
To keep the Sabbath—the very aim of creation—is to understand that you are part of a complicated pattern of time, of bringing order to chaos, and knowing that you are a creature rather than the Creator. We keep weekly the day of stopping, of not-creating, so that we learn these truths from the world around us.The Bible starts with seven words. Then the second sentence has fourteen words. Then there are seven paragraphs each describing a day in this week of seven days. The seventh of these includes three parallel seven word phrases.
None of this is an accident. In our modern day with our modern eyes it can look like an accident, but it’s a deliberately formed piece of writing that is trying to instruct us. With our modern eyes we expect a sentence to do one thing, the first sentence of the Bible is doing so many different and layered things we can scarcely count them. We need new eyes.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Instantly we are confronted with time: God is there in the beginning before the heavens and the earth. We are confronted with the creator: it is God who creates as an act of fiat. We see that God creates from nothing, and in a few sentences time we discover that he does it by speaking. We can read this in parallel with other creation myths that the Hebrews would have known like the Enuma Elish and note the stunning parallels and differences that show us how different Yahweh is to the gods of the Babylonians, and much more besides.
But I’d like to start somewhere else.
This seven word sentence starts with the word בְּרֵאשִׁית, which we usually translate ‘in the beginning’. Nothing wrong with that translation, but it’s worth noticing that the Hebrew idiom which means first or beginning is ‘from the head’. Which means not a lot at all in and of itself, it’s idiomatic and arguing from etymology ends you up thinking a butterfly is a sort of fairy that attends milkmaids churning.
Except, with open eyes that know the hymn of Colossians chapter 1, the idea that from the head God created the heavens and the earth is evocative, to say the least. From him and to him and through him, in fact.
The opening word of the Bible announces—to those with eyes of faith—that the world is created from Jesus, and that everything else flows from him too. It preaches the gospel, that there is a Head in God who we can follow to be saved.
That’s not really where I wanted to start, either.
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Add a Little Extra Beauty
If God chooses to add a little extra beauty, shouldn’t I? In those matters God calls me to do, shouldn’t I go beyond merely getting them done and instead add an extra bit of effort? Wouldn’t I be most closely imitating him if I went beyond merely completing the task and chose instead to do it with joy, with excellence, with a desire to in some way make it beautiful?
The sky was still dark as I left the house this morning. When I went overseas just three weeks ago the sun had already risen by this time and I was walking in dawn’s early light. But summer has given way to fall and the nights have quickly grown longer. I press “play” in my Bible app and set out.
I round a bend and in the corner of my eye see an unusually bright star in the southern sky. I make a note to look it up when I return, though I know I’ll probably have forgotten by then. I realize my mind has wandered and while I still hear David Cochran Heath’s voice in my AirPods, I have lost track of chapter and verse. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD,” I hear him say, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch…” Ah yes, Jeremiah 23, one of the sweetest chapters in the whole book. “And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness.’”
My plan prompts me to skip ahead to Jeremiah 26, then to Psalm 77 and James 2. When I’ve heard “for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” it is time to pray and, as it happens, to turn to the southeast. I begin to thank the Lord for giving me the precious gift of faith and to ask him to help me be diligent in showing my faith by my works. As I glance toward where the sun will soon rise, I see that the sky has begun to turn shades of pink and purple.
I spend some time confessing sin and making requests on behalf of family members, and while I do so the sky continues to brighten.
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