Sacramental Activity?

The distinction between the faith, piety and practice of confessionally Reformed Christianity and the faithfulness, pietism and practicality of much of Evangelicalism becomes apparent in the contrast of response to initiative. The difference between Word and Sacrament vs. advice and excitement is that one produces gratitude in response to the Law and Gospel, while the other incites, through psychological manipulation and suggestion; an introspection and insecurity that in turn is used to justify the pursuit of a pietism that produces a rationalistic gnosticism nourished by a lack of confidence in the life and work of Christ and an overemphasis of the ability of the individual. Sin becomes confused with the affectations and accouterments of the sinner and creation is divided into the “sacred” and the “secular”. By this conflation of substance into the sin which utilizes it, an inverse conclusion is arrived at; for if one thing can be sinful than why can’t sanctification be caused by the possession and use of Christian “culture” and “merchandise”?

The reinvention and reintroduction of iconoclasm into much of mainstream Protestantism is the result of a loss of confidence in the traditional method of preaching and by a view which transforms the sacraments into empty sepulchers of memory. The verbal method of transmission that is preaching is no longer viewed as sufficient to reach the masses. Baptism has become a mere act of obedience and communion a memorial, remembering nothing but a name. Nothing is communicated, nothing is received other than the reminisce of a deed. So what inevitably occurs is that other, cultural and non-ordained practices are elevated to the level of sacrament and thought to communicate that necessary spiritual food to our souls. The most notable example is contemporary Christian music, but this envisioning of “stuff” that sanctifies by communicating grace is extended into the civil realm.

Thus, what we do has become sacramental in much of Evangelicalism; in the counter culture of societal sanctification or the sacramental application of Christendom, vocation has become a sacrament, rather than a common element of creation. It is thought that we must now resort to the contextualization of the Church and the Gospel into the new media, maintaining relevance in the new world. And so the recidivism of the verbal to the pictorial is of inevitable necessity in the new paradigm in order to advance the kingdom of God. Spiritual utilitarianism, the new iconoclasm, the new industry of indulgences fueling the false expectation that a parochial culture will produce a life of sanctity, mortification of the flesh, and ultimately the notion that we can express and present the life and work of Jesus Christ with nary a word from our mouths; personal piety over corporate, covenantal participation, one finds that the objectivity of the covenant to be too rankling to man who would pull God down to him.

This is a form of Christianity that has more in common with the pioneer spirit and rugged individualism of early America than the historic Christian Church; the me first and God second religion, looking to God for reward and safety rather than mercy and grace. Furthermore, in this commingling of cult and culture, this confusion of the two kingdoms, some within the Church begin to see themselves as a political body empowered and compelled to take action by virtue of their status and possession of moral and ethical “superiority” in the culture to transform it. Yet, lacking authority, but proclaiming superiority of ethics and culture, they inevitably generate the the notion that they are fundamentalist, extremist, intolerant of all but their own kind and seeking to bring all people under the sway of their ideologies.

My position is that this, if practiced on a large scale this cannot but help to cause a reaction of oppression, discrimination, and fear. Thus the identity of the Church, when not in political ascendency will be that of the oppressed, but a persecution  caused by a paradigm of manifest destiny rather than simply the preaching of the Gospel. And to begin to associate the people of God, or the Church, with the political and socially oppressed is to incorporate, implicitly, the notion of revolution as a viable act in the furtherance of the Gospel and the liberation of God’s people in order to extend the reach of the Kingdom of Heaven. What makes this even more odd is that this notion of being on the outside looking in is developed by the American Church in a situation of affluence and in the absence of real political and social oppression in comparison to the global, in/visible church; this is not the liberation theology of Latin America, where there is real oppression. Therefore, any oppression that does occur is the consequence of an attitude of ascendancy and arrogance, not on account of a confession of Christ as Lord as primary but the way in which they use the Word of God as a manifesto for all life.

To do this is to believe that the Church’s place in this present evil age is one of social and cultural domination and enforced cultural homogeny rather than contribution without permanence; that we contribute to society, on the terms that Caesar has set without seeking to become Caesar. The Church must be content to dwell in the tents of impermanence rather than in cities of permanence.

One step forward, two steps back: Confessional Digression

Convictions are the root on which the tree of vital Christianity grows. No conviction, no Christianity. Scanty conviction, hunger-bitten Christianity. Profound conviction, solid and substantial religion. Ignorance is not the mother of religion, but of irrreligion. The knowledge of God is eternal life, and to know God means that we know him aright.

Faith and Life by B. B. Warfield from Selected Shorter Writings, Vol 1

I think at the heart of the motivation for the confessional subscription of both the parish assembly and the governing officers, there lies conviction. Not the desire for status but submission and accountability is what compels the faithful to bear the weight of their conviction. Subscription is nothing more than a public proclamation and attestation to the biblical content of the confession regarding the faith, piety, and practice of the Christian, but it is nothing less than that either.

The abandonment of the confessional framework for preserving and instructing the Church in many areas emanates from the dissolution of conviction-unable to stand against the unwavering assault of cultural secularism and inclusivism- which leads, I think, to the slow, and methodical abandonment of the purity of the Gospel. Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is simply too exclusive, too socially passive for the philosophical pluralism that seems to be holding sway at this point in history.

But it does not stop at the mere dissolution of conviction but in the concession to ideologies and the metaphysical narratives of secular, philosophical pluralism. With convictions left to wither, a void is left which must be filled in order to balance the ballasts. In relation to this loss of grounding, the question of ecumenism is often at the heart of the call for either the revising or abandoning of the confessional structure and method of subscription because the less that is said, the easier, it is said, we can avoid unnecessarily schismatic altercations and preserve and broaden the unity of the body of Christ; the five sola’s of the Reformation and those who hold to them, being the main cause of such schism. Often it is precisely not that which is common to the historic Christian creeds and confessions which is included in such documents but that which is the bare minimum that must be believed in order to don the moniker of Christian. In relation, Warfield said,

Least of all, are we to seek unity by surrendering all public or organized testimony to all truth except that minimum which-just because it is the minimum, less than which no man can believe and be a Christian-all Christians of all names can unite in confessing. Subjection to the tyranny of the unbeliever is no more essential to unity than subjection to the tyranny of the believer (say the Pope); and this of course can mean nothing other than-”Let him that believes least among you be your lawgiver.” There is a sense, of course, in which the visible unity of the Church is based on the common belief and confession of the body of truth held alike by all who are Christians; but this is not the same as saying that it must be based on the repression of all organized testimony to truth not yet held by all alike.

True Church Unity: What It Is, in Selected Shorter Writings Vol. 1

It seems for some reason that many Churches and Denominations are digressing to a past recollection of a time of ignorance, calling it a simple faith. From Confession to simpler Creedal statements, to end in heresy. Inevitably, the degradation of the confessional nature of a protestant congregation or denomination will result in the loss of that which is exclusive and essential to the historic Christian faith, those theological and doctrinal threads which come together to weave the tapestry of the Drama of Redemption.

We May Be Pilgrims But This Ain’t Plymouth

With Noah we find a brief unmasking of the doctrine of election, regarding the unmerited favor in saving Noah and his family and the gathering from every type of creature of the earth. The widespread selection indicates mercy not caprice. Whereas God could destroy all because of their wickedness, dealing with mankind in a context of “in Adam” covenant infidelity-instead he plucks Noah and his family out in mercy and graciously protects them through the flood, bringing them out to a new land, a cleansed land, a hearkening back to paradise lost and a murky image of paradise to come.

This is the nature of a peculiar people, those saved not by any merit of their own but by the grace of God. Though belonging to a people broken and wicked, subsisting in the ruins of creation brought about by covenant infidelity, finding solace in the deluded superiority-idolatry-of human nature over evil; people caught up in a recapitulation of Babel, a movement back towards cultural and religious homogeny and hegemony. It is from these people that God chooses, that the Spirit calls through the preaching of the Gospel, that Christ unites to himself by faith. It is these people, chosen in mercy and grace, placed in the ark of the Church, to be kept by the Holy Spirit, in the midst of this present evil age until they depart it or it comes to a close who are the people of God, who live in a new covenant relationship with their Creator, experiencing what it is to be truly human, heirs of the promise.

Therefore, the Church and her Gospel is not a choice of collective resolve to simply live better lives as is the minimal result in Pascal’s Wager. Rather, it is the manifest statement by God that he has kept a people for himself out of the midst of fallen humanity. And it is not wickedness on the part of God to choose one and not the other, to choose Jacob over Esau-in order to show mercy to the former and judgement to the latter-because all have sinned, all are guilty before the law. It is his prerogative to do so-in point of fact, a God who displayed no justice in the face of transgression could not be merciful nor gracious. To do so would render the active and passive obedience of Christ to an exemplary model at best regarding the atonement, leaving the resurrection as nothing but a husk from which we must draw the kernel of our own moral and political liberation; leaving us as Pelagius, no savior and ultimately no God but our own will to power.

Thus, moralism/pietism strips Christianity of all that separates it from the other religions of the world, depleting it of all that is exclusively and externally redemptive, leading man back into himself instead of causing him to look outside of himself for reconciliation. For the only one he is beholden to, the only one he has sinned against, is himself, because God is merely the projection of his ideal self and so the Gospel does indeed become “seven steps to a better you”. Whereas, Christian belief or faith has traditionally and rightly been seen as that which is caused by God, moralism creates their god by their belief, relegating the Gospel to an action that they must live out in lieu of one that has been done for them apart from their consent and not categorized by the cultural mores of the day.

And this is the point, the Church is peculiar, it doesn’t belong here and has no need to either assimilate the culture nor be absorbed by it. The people of God must militate against this, convincing the more impressionable members of it’s community of this and simultaneously making it a credible representation to the culture at large. The modern Church is at many places at a point of crisis and it must decide whether it would be a peculiar people in covenant with God subsisting here as pilgrims in the midst of an evil age which is hostile to it or one of many “faiths” in the pantheon of mankind’s pursuit of deification.

Worship: Divine Service or simply competition for network television?

Really good stuff on worship and the necessity of being fed by God over at The Pilgrim People

Points To Ponder

Confessionalism is a churchly, theological, sacramental, disciplined approach to Christianity that is probably fairly described as elitist inasmuch as The faith is mediated to the masses by the ministers. There are not endless permutations of the “Reformed” faith. As Hodge pointed out in the 19th century, anyone with a little effort can discover what Reformed folk believe by reading the classic theologies or, better yet, the Reformed confessions. Further, there is not only a Reformed theology, but also a Reformed piety and a Reformed practice and none of these three things is very compatible with American evangelicalism or liberalism. Both evangelicalism and liberalism are theologically subjectivist, pietist, and pragmatist in praxis.

There are conservatives, who embrace the past but must negotiate a modus vivendi with American Religion, and there are liberals who are quite ready to discard the past and go where ever the culture demands so as to try to remain “relevant” and influential. There is a third way to relate to American religion, however, and that is confessionalism, which is neither liberal nor conservative, but it is what the Reformed Churches have always confessed to be the theology, piety, and practice revealed in the Word of God.

Dr. R. S. Clark

Read the whole article here…

Reformed and Medicated Pt. 1

I grew up–yes-more of my evangelical anecdotes-fed the notion that any problem you might have could be fixed with the bible. Financial problems, go to the bible, issue with particular sin in your life, you must not be doing your daily devotions, psychological or emotional problems, we’ve got counseling God’s way, no need to go to any of those worldly mental health deceivers, obesity, we’ve got a diet for you right out of the old testament that is guaranteed to work by virtue of its divine origin, etc, et al.

Granted, at the root of all these issues is sin, but not simply sin, I think that it is a bit more complicated than that. For instance, the regular reading of scripture will undoubtedly assist you in the mortification of the flesh, yet reading scripture is not like performing an incantation or casting a spell of protection, it is not magic, nor is it divine in itself. As well, the scriptures reveal to us that gluttony is a sin, yet it does not speak about genetic disorders which can cause unintentional weight gain or prescribe regular activity to stave off obesity. Does this denigrate the authority and power of the scriptures or does it reveal that many of the mundane and ordinary aspects of our lives are not the things which the revealed word of God speaks of or was intended to speak on. We all know that the bible will not help us fix our car, yet many evangelicals who would affirm this will also look for special (extra-biblical) words from God or specific verses from the bible to reveal to them who they should marry, what job they should take, or perhaps even where they should live. For example, when my wife and I were engaged, many of her friends and quite a few of mine would congratulate us and then ask us what verse the Lord gave us that revealed he/she was the one. And now, to the topic that is truly close to my heart, psychopharmacology and Christ, two words that sound odd when paired together in the same sentence, but not as odd as you might think.

When I was about 25 years old I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and prescribed certain medications designed to be both regulative and preventative. It explained a lot for me, why despair and elation seemed more common to me than contentment. It also helped me to understand why, when I had those moment of doubt, in regards to my faith, they seemed to linger and grow until they seemed to loom like judgement itself. Happily, though, it also helped me to more firmly grasp the objective, definite, and historical nature of salvation, to look less at my experience and more at the gospel. A reminder of this that I keep in my wallet is Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 23, Question 60:

Q. How are you righteous before God?
A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ.¹ Although my conscience accuses me that I have grievously sinned against all God’s commandments, have never kept any of them,² and am still inclined to all evil,³ yet God, without any merit of my own,⁴ out of mere grace,⁵ imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ.⁶ He grants these to me as if I had never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me,⁷ if only I accept this gift with a believing heart.⁸

¹ Rom 3:21-28; Gal 2:16; Eph 2:8, 9; Phil 3:8-11. ² Rom 3:9, 10. ³ Rom 7:23. ⁴ Deut 9:6; Ezek 36:22; Tit 3:4, 5. ⁵ Rom 3:24; Eph 2:8. ⁶ Rom 4:3-5; 2 Cor 5:17-19; 1 Jn 2:1, 2. ⁷ Rom 4:24, 25; 2 Cor 5:21. ⁸ Jn 3:18; Acts 16:30, 31; Rom 3:22.

But it was not and is not an easy thing to do, accepting the fact that you need something extra in order to function properly, especially when your own homegrown narcissism, reinforced by the pietism in which you were raised and the therapeutic, deistic culture that surrounds you, instructs and encourages you to put your needs before everyone else, to seek your own comfort, consolation and absolution before that of those around you. The I before the we, the me before the Thee, the feeling that you were ill-made or being punished for some sin, continuously focusing inward, becoming evermore enraptured by your own petty desires, self condemnation, and ultimately, self-exaltation.

I still carried a lot of baggage that had been laid at my feet when I was a boy, that psychology and its elder brother psychiatry were inventions of Satan, that in the end they cause much more harm than good and ultimately leave you in bondage to man and chemicals rather than God, and that there was a direct relationship between my personal piety and the state of my emotional, temporal state. Now, intellectually I knew that this sort of approach was extremely flawed both logically and theologically, yet my desire to see myself as normal became a tie that seemed to bind me to this notion that all that I needed was God and the scriptures. And in consequence, that I could elevate myself from my predicament by mere mental flagellation and fervent, personal piety, implicitly dismissing common grace as a category of blessing and care; if not for others, then certainly for myself.

Right here is the point where ones theology begins to manifest itself, specifically as to whether one approaches life with an understanding of the Church and the world existing as distinct kingdoms grounded in extraordinary and ordinary grace respectively or one views the purpose of the Christ and his Church as that which devours and transforms the culture through the subjugation and transformation of vocation into a vehicle of propaganda and dissemination and re-categorizing the sacred and the secular as places intrinsically righteous and unrighteous. In this sense, and I use it loosely, I think that one is either reformed or theonomically oriented in regards to their view of the secular culture and the Christians in it.

Back to the issue of medication. There are many in the church who would like to believe that all deviant behavior has at its root sin, I think that they are both correct and incorrect, depending on how they are speaking of sin as the root. If they are referring to the sin nature which we receive by virtue of being in Adam, then I wholeheartedly concur, but if they begin to see personal sin as the unilateral cause of depression, mania, schizophrenia, multiple-personalities then I must disagree. I once thought as they did, but then I was forced, through my own circumstance, to rethink my opinions, to find bridges that lead from me the Christian to me the medicated Christian, all the while realizing that nothing had changed in view of my union with Christ, my standing before the Father, nor the presence of the Holy Spirit. The startling revelation for me was looking at the fall and the perversion that came with it as not simply spiritual, but physical and intellectual as well. Realizing that sin has not simply separated us from God, but that it has clouded are intellects, preventing us from viewing reality properly, and distorted our physiology, introducing untold disease, genetic anomalies and other malformations. That my condition, though not excusing my sin, was a result of creations distortion by sin, that it was not the result of either my sin nor the sin of my parents. So the remedy cannot be burdening the church, both ministers, elders, and parishioners alike, with problems they cannot and were not intended to solve.

No, the mind and body is the realm of the physician, one whose calling it is to study and treat the creature as instruments of common grace, seeking not the reconciliation of the person with God but simply the maintenance of the creature in the creation without partiality. Broadly speaking, this allows the Christian to exist in this present evil age surrounded by fall and yet live in it without hesitation, seeing that it is not evil nor divine. That medicine and other “secular” sciences are gifts and means for image bearers to care for others and the world that they live in. Vocation being a means whereby those both in covenant with God and those in rebellion jointly glorify God and fulfill a purpose for their creation as his image bearers.

Hopefully this is somewhat coherent and lends some comfort to those suffering, if even a little.