Evangelical History near Biggleswade

I am currently in the UK—in Biggleswade, Beds., England, to be exact—staying with my dear friends Nigel and Janice Pibworth. I flew over last night into Heathrow on British Airways. Nigel picked me up and today he and I visited nearby Moggerhanger Park—For more information visit the Moggerhanger Website (click here)—built by Sir John Soane and linked with the Thorntons of the Clapham Sect (the abolitionist friends of William Wilberforce), and Moot Hall in Elstow, which is associated with John Bunyan (1628-1688) (see Elstow Moot Hall photo).

There is so much Evangelical history in this area of England! What a delight to the soul to remember the works of the Lord in the past and trust him to do similar great things again.

Spinoza and God

In a recent review of Rebecca Goldstein’s Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Nextbook/Shocken, 2006), literary critic Harold Bloom notes that “Spinoza’s God is scarcely distinguishable from Nature, and is altogether indifferent to us, even to our intellectual love for him” [“The Heretic Jew”, The New York Times Book Review (June 18, 2006), 7]. Despite some critical remarks about Spinoza as a thinker, Bloom feels that his Ethics is quite illuminating, though “light without heat” [ibid., 7]. I could not help but think of Jonathan Edwards when I read this remark, for Edwards loved to use this metaphor of light and heat. But how different Edwards’ philosophical reflections: there we find both heat and light. And, although Bloom calls Spinoza “greatly cold and coldly great” in his thinking about God, he feels that this perspective is vastly better than the situation that currently prevails in what he calls “our religion-mad” United States. For in the latter, many are “persuaded that God loves each of them, personally and individually” and this, from Bloom’s vantage-point, is surely one of the reasons for “the daily slaughters on the streets of Baghdad” during “this era of George W. Bush.” [ibid., 7].

The logic here is tenuous at best and at worst is a mockery of what is at the heart of biblical Christianity. Belief in a personal God who is active in history and loves men and women as individuals does not necessarily entail what Bloom claims. And how can one explain the passion we feel and the longing for both heat and light if our Maker is merely Cold Light?

Oliver Hart on the Necessity of Theological Education

“South Carolina Baptists, and Southern Baptists, have no more important pioneer than Oliver Hart” [Oliver Hart 1723-1795. A Biography (Greenville, South Carolina: The South Carolina Baptist Historical Society, 1966), 3.]. Hart served as Pastor of First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina—the oldest Baptist work in the South—from 1750-1780. Hart strongly promoted theological education of young men for the ministry. Here he is speaking in a sermon entitled A Gospel Church portrayed and her Costly Service pointed out (1791), which he preached on 2 Chronicles 29:35b (“So the service of the house of the Lord was set in order.”). The “house of the Lord” in question was the Temple in Jerusalem. But the idea of “good order,” Hart emphasizes, pertains to “the whole of social, publick [sic], gospel worship” and thus can be viewed as a principle for New Testament churches. It is, he goes on to emphasize, “a mere burlesque on religious worship, to attend on it, in a confused, clamorous, frantick [sic] manner, as some do,” so that “the house of God…seems to be metamorphosed into a bedlam.” [A Gospel Church portrayed and her Costly Service pointed out (Trenton, 1791), 6-7]. This is an interesting remark that indicates that our Baptist heritage has sought to achieve a balance between freedom (of the Spirit) and all things in worship being done in order and decently.

Now, of the key elements that help maintain order in the church, Hart mentions those in leadership, namely ministers, whom he likens to pillars within the structure of the house. Ministers are like pillars in three respects. First, just as a pillar must be “erect” and “unwarped,” so ministers are to be “upright in their outward deportment” and orthodox in theology. When “a minister inclines to and embraces error,” he not only falls himself, but he “generally brings down others with him, and occasions a terrible breach in the church.” (A Gospel Church portrayed, 15-16).

Then, pillars support a building. Similarly ministers are “set for the defense of the gospel,” and should be able to “preach and defend” Scriptural truth and encourage those among God’s people who are weak and fearful (A Gospel Church portrayed, 16).

Third, Hart notes that pillars often have an ornamental function in buildings. So, he argues, faithful ministers provide a sheen and beauty for the church. In his words:

“Pillars are ornamental to a building; for which end they are hewn, planed, painted and varnished. None need be informed how much an able and faithful ministry adds to the beauty, as well as strength of the church. For this purpose they are hewn by the ax of the law—smoothed by the plane of the gospel—painted by the gifts and graces of the Spirit, and varnished by human erudition. This varnish, some deem superfluous, although a qualification of great importance, and ought never to be dispensed with, when it can be obtained.

“In ancient times, there were schools of the prophets; and they are not less needed now. May such institutions be encouraged. We can do little or nothing else towards preparing these pillars [i.e. ministers]. It is a pity we should be reluctant in this. I am sorry to say, that several young ministers, of bright natural parts, and gracious endowments, are groaning for want of this advantage.” (A Gospel Church portrayed, 16-17).

Hart’s focus here is on the necessity of a learned ministry. Some consider learning, or “human erudition,” a matter of little significance in the training of ministers. From one perspective Hart is prepared to grant this. True ministers are created by the Spirit of God, and given “gifts and graces” by him. No amount of education can render a man a true minister of the gospel where this work of the Spirit is absent. In this light, “human erudition” must be considered simply a “varnish” that beautifies and finishes the pillar (i.e. the minister).

On the other hand, Hart is confident that learning is “a qualification of great importance” and if it can be obtained, it should be. In other words, Hart believes that some sort of formal theological education, while not sufficient to make a man a minister, is nonetheless needful.

Mentoring

“Music, Meaning, and Mentoring”: this is a really great post by Russell Moore about the nature of mentoring. It is something that many Christian men long to have happen in their lives (witness the posts by Tim Challies —A Desperate Jealousy & A Desperate Jealousy - Further Thoughts from last year), but so many do not have. Why is mentoring in such short supply? Well, partly, I suspect, because so many of the generation of Christian leaders from the generation before mine (I’m a boomer) were not mentored and they did not know how to do it with others. Then today so many men feel so rushed for time—and mentoring takes time, time to be with others and pour into their lives and have their lives impact you.

One model here biblically here is 2 Timothy 3:10-11. Here is what is happening in mentoring and as you can easily see it takes time.

One thing that I have been especially reminded of with regard to this whole subject is that I also need to be involved in mentoring my kids. There is no excuse for that not happening! I still remembering reading of the great Christian historian Herbert Butterfield, how one of the greatest impacts on his life were nightly walks after dinner with his father.

HT: Justin Taylor

Andrew Fuller on Genesis 45:4-8

Two hundred years ago this year, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), who normally preached in an expository manner, had his series of sermons on Genesis printed by his friend and fellow pastor, John Webster Morris for the London publisher J. Burditt. I have had a first edition of volume I for a few months now and serendipitously found just recently a first edition of volume II for sale at Aaron’s Books in Salem, Ohio (www.aaronsbooks.com). It just arrived in the post and is in fairly good shape, though it needs rebound. Glanced through it and read a little from Fuller’s sermon on Genesis 45, where Joseph makes himself known to his brethren. At one point Fuller draws an analogy between Joseph’s telling his brothers not to grieve or be angry with themselves (verse 4-8) and “the case of a sinner on Christ’s first manifesting himself to his soul.” Fuller notes that:

“the more he views the doctrine of the cross, in which God hath glorified himself, and saved a lost world, by those very means which were intended for evil by his murderers, the better it will be with him. He shall not be able to think sin on this account a less, but a greater evil; and yet he shall be so armed against despondency, as even to rejoice in what God hath wrought, while he trembles in thinking of the evils from which he has escaped.” [Expository Discourses on the Book of Genesis, interspersed with Practical Reflections (London: J. Burditt, 1806), II, 203].

Contrary to the thinking of some, Fuller was a crucientric theologian, of which the above extract is a good example.

The Marriage of Learning & Piety

One of the great challenges to contemporary Evangelicalism is the mentalité that divorces piety from learning. Yet, it’s not a new problem. It was, for example, during a trip that Samuel Davies (1723-1761), a Presbyterian minister from Virginia, made in September 1753 to Great Britain on what would turn out to be an arduous, though highly successful, fund-raising expedition for the then-fledgling College of New Jersey (later to be renamed Princeton University) that he encountered Baptist disdain for learning. He was gone for a total of eighteen months, and met quite a number of key British evangelicals and churchmen, among them the leading Baptist theologian of the era, John Gill (1697-1771). He paid a visit to Gill on January 30, 1754, and found him, in his description, “a serious, grave little Man.” Gill was quite willing to lend his support to the College, but he told Davies not to expect much from the English Baptists as a whole: “in general,” he said, the Baptists “were unhappily ignorant of the Importance of learning.” Being a convinced Baptist I am happy that there have been a goodly number in the Baptist tradition who have successfully married what Gill called “the importance of Learning” with vital piety—Gill himself being a good example. But there have been, and still are, far too many Baptists whose thinking on this subject is that of those whom Gill knew and of which he was rightly critical.

But it is not simply Baptists who exhibit this problem. Gill’s Evangelical contemporary, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), without doubt the most important theologian from the eighteenth century, was fond of emphasizing that genuine spiritual affections are “not heat without light.” In his thinking, genuine Christianity entails both spirituality and reason. Trust in the Scriptures as the supreme authority when it comes to truth and error does not entail, for Edwards, the casting aside of the use of one’s mind. And it is noteworthy that, in contrast to much of later American Evangelicalism that emphasized the “religion of the heart” over theological reflection, Edwards was firmly committed to an “affectionate knowledge” that avoided both “an anti-intellectual enthusiasm” as well as “an unfeeling rationalism.” In particular, Conrad Cherry has rightly argued, Edwards, “unlike the revivalists of a later America,…avoided the sanctimonious conclusion that religious intuition is sufficient unto itself and that theology is a waste of time.” [“Imagery and Analysis: Jonathan Edwards on Revivals of Religion” in Charles Angoff, ed., Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Influence (Cranbury, New Jersey/London: Associated University Presses, 1975), 19-21].

Of course, this interface of heart and mind has even deeper roots than the ones I have just noted. It can be found in the theological synthesis of Reformation thought that issued from the pen of John Calvin (1509-1564), whose motto was Cor meum tibi offere domine prompte et sincere, “Unto you, Lord, I give my heart, promptly and sincerely.” It’s there in the theology of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), whose work was shaped by his motto fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding.” And we find it in an Augustine (354-430), who, about thirteen years or so after his conversion described what God had done in his life in a deeply learned Latin:

“You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace” (Confessions 10.27).

Of course, the root of all of these thinkers and theologians are the Scriptures that display a piety that is suffused with learning and a doctrinal faith that burns for the glory of God. With such mentors before us, and with the Scriptures as a foundation, let us seek in our day to be distinctly counter-cultural and develop a piety that is aflame with the coals of doctrinal orthodoxy. What God has brought together, let not man put asunder!

Confession of Sin

Confession of sin is a lost “art” among Evangelicals. We are big on petition and more recently are learning again the beauty of praise and adoration. But confession of sin should naturally follow upon adoration and praise, for when we see how great a God we have, how holy and majestic, we also see how low and filthy we are in comparison (Isaiah 6.1-5).  We ought therefore to confess our sinfulness and unworthiness (Luke 18.13; Matthew 6.12; 1 John 1.9). We cannot simply saunter into God’s presence as if all was well with us. It is not. We must come with confession on our lips and repentance in our hearts.. Confession of sin ought to be made speedily after sinning.  If a seamstress has lost her needle that is vital to her trade, she looks until it is found. Similarly, when we sin against God (for in the final analysis, all sin is against God), we should not wait days till we confess it; we must seek His forgiveness as soon as possible.  As the Scripture says: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”  (Proverbs 28.13).

Andrew Fuller’s Epitaph

On the “Epitaph” erected in memory of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), he was remembered for: “His ardent Piety, The strength and soundness of his Judgment, His intimate knowledge of the human heart, And his profound acquaintance with the Scriptures.”

It was these things, the “Epitaph” went on to say, that “eminently qualified him for the Ministerial Office.” In a nutshell we have here what early nineteenth-century Baptists viewed as vital for the task of pastoral ministry.

For a picture of the “Epitaph,” see http://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/bios/fullerepitaph.jpg.

Rules of Engagement

The blogosphere being such a new entity and such a fluid medium it is not always clear, at least to me, what the rules of engagement are. Certain things should be basic, at least for Christian bloggers—things that have to do with kindness, love, speech that does not full under the prohibitions of a text like Ephesians 4:25-5:2. But what about comments left anonymously? Specifically, should a blogger reply to such? My inclination is no. Not because I am ornery—I do not think this is a major part of my makeup. But I have identified myself when I blog and if someone wishes to comment on what I say, I deem it appropriate in terms of mutual transparency for them to let me know who they are. If this is off the wall, let me know (but don’t do it anonymously!).

The Influence of Jacques Alexanian

One of the deep joys of the Christian life is that the Lord Christ uses his people to shape his people. “Iron sharpens iron,” as it says in Proverbs. As I look back on the last thirty years of my own Christian walk, among the brothers who have shaped my life one of the first that comes to mind is Jacques Alexanian, now residing with his wife Loretta in Gatineau, Quebec. Jacques served for a good number of years as the President of SEMBEQ. His influence on me has been enormous. In many ways, he has been a father in the Lord Jesus. In particular, he taught me about the nature of true Christian leadership, its vital importance for the Church, and the joy of serving Christ humbly.

I am also deeply thankful for the hospitality he and Loretta showed me year after year when I came up to Montreal to teach at SEMBEQ. Those days are over now, but not forgotten and times of fellowship with Jacques and Loretta are woven into the fabric of my Christian life. May the Lord continue to make both of them a blessing to his people and an ornament of grace.

Carl Trueman at Toronto Baptist Seminary

It was our delight as a seminary community at Toronto Baptist Seminary to have Dr. Carl Trueman of Westminster Theological Seminary as our guest speaker last night at the Principal’s Banquet in Toronto and then this morning for three lectures on Trinitarianism, creedal confessionalism and Reformed piety at the 3rd annual Jonathan Edwards Centre for Reformed Spirituality lectures. Carl Trueman’s talks this morning were really superb. They combined an historical depth with a passion for edifying the Church. They were a good balance of scholarship and piety. He pled for a greater Trinitarianism in all of our thinking and piety. One lecture I found particularly helpful as he showed how the covenant of peace arose from Calvinists thinking about how salvation was related to the Trinity in eternity past. But they were all very good stuff.

Here is a very brief report of yesterday evening’s talk by Kirk Wellum: Unashamed of the Gospel. And here, on Ian Clary’s blog, is a report of the lectures this morning: Spirituality Conference with Carl Trueman.

Recent F.I.R.E. Conference

I am just back home from the national conference of FIRE: Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, which was held this year in Hudsonville, Michigan, near Grand Rapids. What a delight to be there for the day and a half I was there. The host church, Grace Community Church, Hudsonville, did a superb job of hosting the event. Thank you, Pastor Krogh, and you, the brothers and sisters of this church! The conference concluded this evening, but I had to leave after breakfast and missed hearing Jason Deutsch and Jim Newheiser. It was a joy to hear, though, Erroll Hulse on Monday evening and Jim Grier last night. Last night was especially precious as Dr Grier expounded Isaiah 6. An anointed word!

It was also a delight to make the re-acquaintance of some dear friends and meet new ones. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the sweet communion of his people! May the Lord bless this fellowship of churches richly—what a joy to be a part of it.