TO KNOW OR NOT TO KNOW? That is the Question

I have often heard well-meaning teachers and colleagues say that we must be careful not to discount the importance of mystery while doing theology. This is difficult for me to understand. (Maybe that's the point and I'm just too dumb to figure it out. :-) It seems to me that this kind of counsel begs two important questions, namely: (1) How can we know what we cannot know? (which is what my first blog post two and a half years ago was about, part of my three-part How Can We Know? series) and (2) How can we worship what we do not know? I think these are important questions to ponder.

Today, John Piper posted an excellent article briefly examining this issue. Here's an excerpt:

There is something fishy about saying our wonder and worship are greater, the less we understand about God. One gets the impression that such “wonder” and “worship” are vague aesthetic feelings on the brink of a void, rather than what we meet in the Psalms: “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” (Psalms 139:17).

DESPAIR.COM: Latest Demotivator

If you haven't visited Despair.com or the Despair blog, I encourage you to check it out. You'll be rolling in your seat. Above is their newest demotivator poster.

I have this one hanging in my office:

FELICH COMMENTS: The PCUSA Membership Report

Tony Felich has posted a comment on the recent PCUSA (not the PCA) membership report. I had no idea the PCUSA was heading this far afield.

JOHN CALVIN: On the Detestable Madness of Atheism

I was scanning through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion last week and found this gem:

How detestable I ask you, is this madness: that man, finding God in his body and soul a hundred times, on this very pretense of excellence denies that there is a God? ("Book One: The Knowledge of God the Creator" Chapter 5, Section 4).

RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS GETS WORDLED

Brandon Cozart over at the Jonathan Edwards Center Blog has wordled Edwards's Religious Affections. Click here to see a larger image.

FERGUSON'S SERMON SERIES ON JAMES

I just started listening to Dr. Sinclair Ferguson's excellent sermon series on the epistle of James. Justin Taylor has provided a nice tidy list of links here.

FRIDAY EDWARDS EXCERPT: A Multi-Stage Typology

I came across an interesting excerpt this afternoon while reading the eighth sermon of Jonathan Edwards's A History of the Work of Redemption. Edwards was a master at locating and expounding biblical typology. In this excerpt he skillfully demonstrates a sort of multi-stage typology. Both Moses' tabernacle and David's temple were types of Christ, but Moses' tabernacle was also, in a sense, a type of David's temple. And as Edwards demonstrates, the transition from Moses' tabernacle to David's temple typified the transition from the old administration of the covenant of grace to the new. He writes:

David by God's appointment abolished all use of the tabernacle that was built by Moses and of which he had the pattern from God. For God now revealed it to David to be his will that a temple should be built that should be instead of the tabernacle, a great presage of what Christ, the son of David, would do when he came, viz. abolish the whole Jewish ecclesiastical constitution which was but as a movable tabernacle, to set up the spiritual gospel temple which was to be far more glorious and of greater extent, and to stand forever.

Brilliant! I don't recall ever encountering a multi-stage typology. Edwards never fails to further unfold the beautiful symmetry of the gospel to my mind.

KANT'S ANTINOMY: Digging God's Grave

The Oxford Companion to Philosophy describes Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) as "perhaps the most important European philosopher of modern times." Kant was born and died in Konigsberg, East Prussia. In his masterpiece A Critique of Pure Reason, he worked to formulate a metaphysic (i.e. an answer to the question: What is the basis of reality or being?) that neither touted the simple analytical (i.e. self-referentially provable, e.g. "I am myself" or "God is omnipotent") assertions of rationalism or degenerated into the abject skepticism (i.e. self-referential incoherence, e.g. "I truly know that I cannot truly know") of empiricism. Slowly plodding my way through The Cambridge Companion to Kant, I came across something very interesting today.

Kant was especially motivated by two desires in his work to formulate a new metaphysic. On the one hand, he wanted to rescue science from radical skepticism, the logical conclusion of a thoroughgoing empiricism. On the other hand, he wanted to maintain the possibility for autonomous human decision-making, which he felt was a logical prerequisite for morality. But these two desires result in an antinomy. In order to rescue science from skepticism and give it a basis for certainty, one must establish universal coherence via some law of causation, which undermines human autonomy. Likewise, in order to maintain the possibility of human autonomy, one must allow for freedom from the law of causation (i.e. incoherence), which undermines scientific certainty.

To resolve this dilemma Kant postulated two spheres of reality: the phenomenal and the noumenal. The phenomenal is the sphere of the perceivable; the noumenal is the sphere beyond the perceivable. The phenomenal is where human reason is able to operate properly; the noumenal is beyond reason. The phenomenal is the realm of causation, the noumenal is beyond causation. The phenomenal is the realm of certainty; the noumenal is unknowable. By postulating these two spheres of reality, Kant was able to offer certainty for scientific knowledge via normative (though not technically universal) coherence while leaving room for autonomous human decision making. In other words, by postulating two different senses of reality he was able to hold proposition A and proposition non-A simultaneously (i.e. the law of non-contradiction).

Kant wrote (my comments in red):

On a hasty overview of this work one will believe himself to perceive that its use is only negative, namely that we can never dare to exceed the bounds of experience (the phenomenal sphere) with speculative reason, and that it is indeed its first use. But this then becomes positive if one becomes aware that the principles with which speculative reason dares to exceed its bounds would not in fact have the inevitable result of extending but, more closely considered, that of restricting our use of reason, in that they would really extend the bounds of sensibility (the phenomenal sphere), to which they actually belong, to everything, and so threaten to obstruct the pure (practical) use of reason (scientific certainty). Thus a critique, which, limits the former, is so far to be sure negative, but, insofar as it removes a hindrance that threatens to restrict or even destroy the latter use of reason (using reason with respect to the noumenal sphere), is in fact of positive and very important use, as soon as one is convinced that it yields an entirely necessary practical use of pure reason (the moral use) (human autonomy), in which it is unavoidably extended beyond the limits of sensibility (the noumenal sphere), but thereby requires no help from speculative reason, but must nevertheless be secured from its opposition in order not to land in contradiction with itself (A Critique of Pure Reason, B xxiv-xxv, as quoted in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, 12-13).

It seems to me that the problem with Kant's view (besides its faulty presuppositions like neutral human observation and morality presupposing autonomy, et al.) is that in postulating these two spheres and offering certainty of knowledge through one of them, he made the other unknowable. And guess where God is? In the unknowable sphere.

My former historical theology professor, Dr. John D. Hannah, was fond of saying, "If there's a Hell's hall of fame, Immanuel Kant is the door keeper." I think he may be right. Kant's metaphysic opened the door for the radical secularization of western education and culture. Why study or worship God when he can't be known? Nietzsche may have officiated God's funeral, but Kant dug his grave.

CESSATIONISM CONTINUED

Recently I posted an article on my change of perspective regarding Spiritual gifts. I moved from from non-normative continuationism to cessationism. You can read that article here.

Two questions were raised in the comments section of that post. Since finishing Richard Gaffin's book Perspectives on Pentecost: New Testament Teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit a couple weeks ago, I'd like to reply to those questions.

The first question was regarding the redemptive-historical pattern of God working through prophecy in the Old Testament (OT). For instance, over the course of OT history God used prophecy to warn and chastise his people. Doesn't that pattern imply continuationism? The second question was offered with respect to the function of prophecy. Don't God's covenant people still need to be warned and chastised? To those two questions I would answer, respectively, possibly and yes.

First, the historical pattern could be an argument within a corpus of arguments given to support continuationism. But it is not sufficient in itself to prove continuationism. Redemptive history includes continuities and discontinuities. At the risk of stating the obvious, continuationists (as the label suggests) regard the gifts as continuous throughout redemptive history. Cessationists, on the other hand, regard them as discontinuous.

The full argument for discontinuity with respect to the Spiritual gifts is complex. But it is fundamentally based on the belief that the Apostolate was unique and temporary. It was unique in that it was foundational. Ephesians 2:20 speaks of the New Testament church as being "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone." The Apostles were special witnesses to Christ and empowered by his Spirit to proclaim, in a variety of ways, the fulfillment of redemptive history in his atoning work. In that way they laid the foundation for the New Testament church. Gaffin writes:

It is also important to grasp that the foundation here is absolute and historical in character. It does not describe particular situations which the gospel reaches for the first time, regardless of time and place. Rather, it is part of a single, comprehensive redemptive-historical image (house-building) which pictures, in the case of the apostles as well as Christ, what is done once, at the beginning of the church's history, and does not bear repeating. The period beyond this foundational period is not a time of perpetually relaying the foundation but is the superstructure built upon that (definitively laid) foundation.

The foundational nature of the apostles' comprehensive witness enables us to appreciate and correlate emphasis on the apostolic "tradition" to be held fast, found already in II Thessalonians (2:15; 3:6), on the "deposit" to be kept, in the Pastorals (I Tim. 6:20; II Tim. 1:14), and on the "faith once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). This emphasis reflects the binding authority of the apostles' witness and establishes lines that prepare for and point the way to the eventual emergence of the New Testament canon (see II Peter 3:16, where Paul's letters are already seen on the same level as "the other Scriptures").

This is the primary (though not only) argument upon which cessationism (discontinuationism) is based. The gifts of the Spirit are viewed by cessationists as accompanying the special revelatory ministry of the Apostolate. When it ended, they ended.

Second, God's covenant people do still need to be warned and chastised. This is what the book of Hebrews is all about. But our chastisement no longer requires direct prophecies as in the time of the OT. As the author of Hebrews writes: "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world" (Heb. 1:1-2). Therefore, we receive our warning and admonition according to the doctrine of the work of Jesus Christ, a doctrine that was fully established by the Apostolate and is now proclaimed by his church. Notice the movement of the author of Hebrews from the progress of OT revelation to the final revelation in Jesus Christ in the exhortation below:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives" (Heb. 12:1-6).

Cessationism is fundamentally based on the belief that the Apostolate was unique and temporary. God has used prophecy in the past to warn and chastise his people, but now we have the fullness of the gospel before us in the doctrine of the work of Jesus Christ, a doctrine fully established during the ministry of the apostles. God now warns and chastises his people through that doctrine.

PREACHING

Yesterday morning I was privileged to preach at Grace Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Shreveport, LA. Here's my basic sermon info:

Text- Exodus 19:16-21 (During the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai)
Theme- Reconciliation
Thesis- Christ has given his people intimate communion with God forever.
Title- "Touching the Untouchable God"

There is a link to the audio file of this sermon to the right under the heading Sermon Audios.

I love to preach. I love everything about it. I love studying and agonizing over texts in order to uncover and develop their themes. I love crafting the images and rhetoric of the sermon and writing the manuscript. And I love delivering it before God's people. What a privilege! What a challenge! What a joy!

I'm currently reading Calvin Miller's new book Preaching: The Art of Narrative Exposition. Miller is a pastor, preacher, poet, and professor of homiletics at Beeson Divinity School. So far I've enjoyed the book very much. Here's an insightful and compelling excerpt from my reading yesterday:

The world is tired of hearing pulpit "how-tos" that have arrived to take the place of genuine transcendence. How-tos seem to skate on the wheels of relevance. And no one wants to be accused of irrelevance in the pulpit. But if there really is a heaven and--God forbid--the hell that Jesus so frequently spoke of, never to mention eternity in favor of telling people how to handle their finances or relationships can hardly be called relevant.

FRIDAY EDWARDS EXCERPT: Sola Fide

Jonathan Edwards’s interest in the idea of imparted righteousness (i.e. the Spirit-renewed heart) and its relationship to justifying (i.e. living) faith has led some to question whether his teaching faithfully reflected the traditional Reformed doctrine of imputed righteousness, which is fundamental to the Reformed understanding of justification by faith alone (See the JEC's brief summary of Edwards's sermon "Justification by Faith Alone" which they acknowledge "has divided interpreters of Edwards’ Reformed understanding of salvation: the issue being the level of continuity or discontinuity between Edwards and his Puritan fathers.")

But as the excerpts below demonstrate, making the case that he abandoned the traditional Reformed teaching is untenable. Throughout the duration of his thirty-nine year ministry Edwards opposed the Arminians of his day holding firmly to the doctrines of imputed righteousness and sola fide. He may have elaborated on the traditional understanding by exploring truths that had previously been minimized, but he didn’t in any way abandon the traditional teaching.

At age nineteen Edwards delivered the Commencement address, a Latin Quaestio, at Yale University on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. One excerpt translated into English reads:

By justification we mean an act of divine favor towards the sinner which forgives sins and approves of him as righteous . . . through the righteousness of Christ. . . .

Therefore, we now fearlessly assert that as the truth of the Reformed religion is certain, as the first foundation of the gospel is certain, as the mutual consistency of God’s attributes is certain, as the incapacity of what is false to be strictly and absolutely demonstrated is certain, and as it is certain that both parts of a contradiction cannot be true, so it is certain that {a sinner is not justified in the sight of God except through the righteousness of Christ obtained by faith}.

Five and a half years later at age 25 he preached “None are Saved by Their Own Righteousness.” An excerpt from that text reads:

There are none saved upon the account of any habitual excellency, either the excellency of the natural temper or any good qualification obtained by education, or any moral or religious habit obtained by frequent acts or any truly gracious habit. Nor upon the account of any labor, diligence, devotion or affection in religion, or any exactness or brightness of morality, and justice or charity, though they should give all their goods to feed the poor. Men are not saved at all upon the account of any such habits or works of righteousness.

Again, five and half years later at age 31 he preached “Justification by Faith Alone.” An excerpt reads:

I would explain what we mean by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness . . . And by that righteousness being imputed to us, is meant no other than this, that that righteousness of Christ is accepted for us, and admitted instead of that perfect inherent righteousness that ought to be in ourselves: Christ’s perfect obedience shall be reckoned to our account, so that we shall have the benefit of it, as though we had performed it ourselves: and so we suppose that a title to eternal life is given us as a reward of this righteousness. The Scripture uses the word impute in this sense, viz. for reckoning anything belonging to any person, to another person’s account: as Philem. v. 18, “If he have wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on my account.”

Finally, approximately 20 years later, near the end of his life, he wrote a brilliant entry (1347) in The “Miscellanies” in which he defended the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone against those who understood the Old Covenant as essentially a covenant of works. He began by laying out what he believed to be the orthodox understanding.

Whereas it is insisted that we are justified by faith alone in that sense, viz. that we are justified (i.e. accepted of God as free from guilt, wrath and the punishment of sin, and as now righteous and so the objects of favor, and as properly entitled to the rewards of righteousness), not by any righteousness of ours, any virtue in us as recommending us to such a privilege by its moral beauty or value in the sight of God, considering us as we are in ourselves, but only by faith in Christ, or our cordial reception of Christ and active unition [sic] with him as our atoning and righteous Mediator; and that though faith be indeed an excellent virtue, yet in this affair it is not the virtuousness or value of its moral excellency that is the thing considered, but only its relation to Christ, as making one with him and so interesting the believer in his satisfaction and righteousness; and that it was always thus with regard to the justification of fallen man, the main qualification and condition of justification being the same in substance under the old testament as under the new . . .

BRADLEY ON BRANDING v. SHEPHERDING

My friend and colleague, Matt Bradley posted an article today that made my heart sing. As one who "aspires to the office of overseer" (1 Timothy 3:1b), it is a message I need to hear often. Matt writes:

If you are serious about being a shepherd, begin thinking like a shepherd and using terminology more consistent with shepherding. We tend and we feed. And what is that food that we are to feed our sheep? Christ! Moralism, while it tastes good in your mouth, does little to fill a belly. Permissiveness and enabling may keep the sheep content for now, but since they are effectively leading themselves, they will end up feeding on the wrong things, drinking from contaminated springs, and bedding down among wolves. Shepherds mend. Shepherds chastise. Shepherds sing over their flock. Shepherds answer to the owner of the sheep. And when the owner calls a shepherd, he does not call him to provide quality programming for the sheep. He does not require of the shepherd a long-range plan for peak efficiency. He does not speak to the shepherd of "metrics". He asks, "Do you love me?" And if you will answer yes, his response is "Feed my sheep."

AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION

Herman Bavinck writes:

Holy Scripture is self-attested (autopistoς) and therefore the final ground of faith. No deeper ground can be advanced. To the question 'Why do you believe Scripture?' the only answer is: 'Because it is the word of God.' But if the next question is 'Why do you believe that Holy Scripture is the word of God?' a Christian cannot answer. (Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 1: Prolegomena (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 589.

A few years ago I took a seminary course called History of Doctrine with Dr. John D. Hannah. I recall a moment in which tensions arose among many of the students. The lecture topic was the history of the doctrine of authority, particularly the doctrine of the canon.

The word "canon" comes from the Hebrew word for "reed." Reeds were used in ancient times to measure length. Just as the measuring reed (canon) was a standard of length, so also the canon of Scripture is a standard of truth.

So why would the history of the doctrine of the canon cause such tension in the classroom? Because the church made no formal declaration with regard to canon until the sixteenth century. Of course by the late-second century, we have clear evidence (i.e. the Muratorian fragment) that the canon, as recognized today among Protestants, was for the most part listed. And by the early fourth century the books of the complete NT canon were listed by Athanasius. But those things are beside the point. What was unsettling for many of the students was that the canon wasn't a central discussion in the early and medieval church. Some latitude seemed to be accepted on that doctrine.

The simple fact is that there is no universally accepted inspired text which lists the books of the canon for us. And Rome's reasons for accepting books we don't accept are just as good as our reasons for rejecting them. For American seminary students coming out of a background in which the doctrine of the canon was of central concern, namely the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this came as a shock. I remember one student asking, "How then can I trust that the Protestant canon is true?" I'll never forget what Dr. Hannah said, and, perhaps more importantly, what he didn't say.

What he said was (and I paraphrase): "I believe the Scriptures are true because I've met the One from whom they came; when I read them, I meet him there."

What he didn't say was: "I believe the Scriptures are true because they are inspired, inerrant, infallible, consistent throughout, majestic, and have been consistently acknowledged from the earliest times." No doubt he (and I) gladly affirm all of those doctrines (except of course their consistent acknowledgment from the earliest times), but they are not the reason why the Scriptures are trustworthy.

I'm reminded of the Westminster Larger Catechism question 4 which reads (emphasis added):

How does it appear that the Scriptures are the Word of God?

Answer: The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God, by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God; by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation: but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very Word of God.

Surely "by their majesty and purity; by the consent of all the parts, and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God" the Scriptures demonstrate to those who have met the One from whom they came something of the One from whom they came. The qualities of the Scriptures are wonderful doctrines to contemplate and embrace.

But the Scriptures do not become trustworthy to us because of those things. They are a priori trustworthy because they are the Word of God. Christians are persuaded of the trustworthiness of the Scriptures when they meet God there. As Bavinck says: "To the question 'Why do you believe Scripture?' the only answer is: 'Because it is the word of God.' But if the next question is 'Why do you believe that Holy Scripture is the word of God?' a Christian cannot answer."

FRIDAY EDWARDS EXCERPT: The Economics of God

Recently two things caused me to remember and be the comforted by the biblical doctrine of divine economics (i.e. how God assigns value among his creatures). First, my friend Gunny Hartman posted an intriguing article on success in pastoral ministry. Evaluating ministerial success is certainly a matter of divine economics. Second, while encouraging a dear friend today I recalled a trite saying I learned back in my BSU (Baptist Student Union) days. The saying goes: "Remember, David wasn't known as a man after God's own heart because he never failed but because he never failed to repent." Again, the issue at hand is the economics of God.

While reading Jonathan Edwards's seventh sermon in A History of the Work of Redemption this sabbath afternoon, I ran across the doctrine of the economics of God again. Edwards writes:

'Tis observable that God anointed David after Saul to reign in his room. He took away the crown from him and his family who was higher in stature than any of his people and was in their eye fittest to bear rule, to give it to David who was low of stature and in comparison of despicable appearance. So God was pleased to show how Christ who appeared despicable, without form [or comeliness], and was despised and rejected [of men], should take the kingdom from the great ones of the earth. And also that he was the youngest of Jesse's sons, as Jacob the younger brother supplanted Esau and got the birthright and blessing from him; and as Pharez another of Christ's ancestors supplanted Zarah in the birth, and as Isaac another of the ancestors of Christ cast out his elder brother Ishmael: thus was the frequent saying of Christ fulfilled, "The last shall be first and [the first last]" (205-06).

"The last shall be first and the first last" is a teaching that comes from Matthew 19:30. This is the essence of the divine economy with respect to creatures: It is good to be last in the kingdom of God.

Father, might you grant that all those who claim the name of Christ would also think with the mind of Christ. Might you cause us to "in humility count others more significant that [our]selves" (Philippians 2:3b). What do we have that we have not received? All good things proceed from your hand, O God. To you belongs all praise and honor and glory forever. Amen.