Novelty or Antiquity?

One of the questions frequently raised with regard to Christian preaching by some of its earliest hearers in the Roman Empire is one that is rarely heard today: why has this new way of thinking or mode of living just appeared now if it is really true? It was axiomatic among the ancients—both Greeks and Romans—that what was true was old and that what was new was questionable and probably false. Our culture, it should be noted, has the opposite problem with regard to the Faith. It regards what is old as useless and ready for the garbage heap. That which is the latest is regarded as the best and most desirable. Christianity—with its antiquity—seems far too antiquated for far too many in our world. But to the ancient world, Christianity’s big problem was its novelty. Since Christianity appeared to take its rise from the appearance of Christ, this was a major question that had to be answered. Theophilus of Antioch (fl. c.180 A.D.), an early Christian apologist, noted that pagans responded to his testimony about Christ with the assertion that the Christian “Scriptures are new and modern” and are therefore utter nonsense. He quoted some pagans as saying that the Christian “message has been made public only recently, and that we have nothing to say in proof of our truth and our teaching; they call our message foolishness.” [To Autolycus 3.1, 4, trans. Robert M. Grant, Theophilus of Antioch: Ad Autolycum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 101, 105].

The standard answer among Christian apologists was Christianity was rooted in the Old Testament era. Seen in this light, Christian truth had a much better claim to antiquity than either Greek or Roman thought, neither of which were over a millennium old.

The Letter to Diognetus

One early defence of Christianity against the pagan charge of novelty, though, takes a somewhat different approach to this question. The Letter to Diognetus, an anonymous tract written in defence of Christianity some time in the late second century, argues that although God conceived the design of sending his Son to redeem humanity, at first he told it to nobody but the Son. Then, when men and women had shown by their “unruly instincts and…sensuality and lust” that they were both “unworthy to achieve life” and “unable to enter into the kingdom of God by [their] own power,” God sent forth his Son Letter to Diognetus 8.9-9.2 [trans. Maxwell Staniforth, Early Christian Writings (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 147, altered].

The unknown author does not say a word about the Old Testament period of preparation for the coming of Christ. One possible reason may be that while Christianity is indeed the Ancient Faith, it does partake of a quality of newness that the author does wish to emphasize, as we shall see.

“O sweet exchange!” Something new

The author has argued that God revealed his plan of salvation to none but his “beloved Son” until men realized their utter and complete inability to gain heaven by their own strength. But then, when men were conscious of their sin and God’s impending judgment, God,

“instead of hating us and rejecting us and remembering our wickednesses against us, he showed how long-suffering he is. He bore with us, and in pity he took our sins upon himself and gave his own Son as a ransom for us—the Holy for the wicked, the Sinless for sinners, the Just for the unjust, the Incourruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal. For was there, indeed, anything except his righteousness that could have availed to cover our sins? In whom could we, in our lawlessness and ungodliness, have been made holy, but in the Son of God alone? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable working! O benefits unhoped for!—that the wickedness of multitudes should thus be hidden in the One righteous, and the righteousness of One should justify the countless wicked!” [Letter to Diognetus 9.2-5 (trans. Staniforth, Early Christian Writings, 147-148, altered)].

This is a truly marvellous text, as the author, overwhelmed by what took place at the cross, is lost in rapture, awe, and praise. Here, as so often happens in the writings of Paul, theological reflection leads to praise and worship and doxology.

Yet, the doxological nature of this passage should not lead us to overlook the way that it also contributed to the author’s defence of the Christian worldview. Why should the truth claims of Christianity be weighed seriously? Because, unlike other religions, it deals decisively with the ever-perennial problem of human sin. A renowned historian of this era, Henry Chadwick, puts this point well when he states that one of the major reasons for the growth of the church was the fact that the gospel it preached “spoke of divine grace in Christ, the remission of sins and the conquest of evil powers for the sick soul, tired of living and scared of dying, seeking for an assurance of immortality” [The Early Church (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1967), 55].

And this was something truly new for the pagan world and something that that world truly needed to hear.

“At once so ancient and so new”

But that message—“at once so ancient and so new” (Augustine, Confessions 10.27)—is equally needed in our world that seems capable of only being fired up by what is modern and up to date. The ancient message of the new birth and the new covenant is still good news to modern—or should I say post-modern?—men and women and children grappling with the ever-present problems of sin and death and meaning and hope.

Piper on Athanasius

In a blog entitled Four reasons there was no regular blogpost today Phil Johnson directs his readers to a three-part series of talks that John Piper is doing on the great fourth-century Church Father, Athanasius (c.297-373). Well did Louis Berkhof regard Athanasius as “by far the greatest man of the age, an acute scholar, a strong character, and a man who had the courage of his convictions and was ready to suffer for the truth” [The History of Christian Doctrines (7th ed.; Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 87]. Listen to Dr Piper’s series here: Oneplace.com.

Some Words of John Gill at the Opening of the Carter Lane Meeting-House

The words of C. H. Spurgeon at the opening of the Metropolitan tabernacle in 1861 are well-known. Below are some of the words spoken by his distinguished predecessor John Gill (1697-1771) when the Carter Lane meeting-house opened in Southwark, London, on October 9, 1757. Gill was preaching from Exodus 20:24, in the course of which he stated: “As we have now opened a new place of worship, we enter upon it recording the Name of the Lord by preaching the doctrines of the grace of God, and free and full salvation alone by Jesus Christ; and by the administration of gospel ordinances, as they have been delivered to us. What doctrines may be taught in the place after I am gone is not for me to know; but as for my own part, I am at a point; I am determined, and have been long ago, what to make the subject of my ministry. It is upwards of forty years since I entered into the arduous work; and [the] first sermon I ever preached was from these words of the apostle, “For I am determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified”: and through the grace of God I have been enabled, in some good measure, to abide by the same resolution hitherto, as many of you here are my witness; and, I hope, through divine assistance, I ever shall, as long as I am in this tabernacle, and engaged in such a work.”

Over the course of the past 250 years there have been especially four distinguished ministries in this congregation—those of John Rippon, C.H. Spurgeon, Tydeman Chilvers, and currently that of Peter Masters. Like that of Gill, they have faithfully upheld “the doctrines of the grace of God, and free and full salvation alone by Jesus Christ” and we trust that Gill, if he could have seen the future, would have rejoiced in this remarkable succession of biblical preaching.

Andrew Fuller Works on Cd

The one-volume 1845 Bohn edition of Andrew Fuller’s works, The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, has just been released on CD. K. David Oldfield, who is the pastor of Calvary Independent Baptist Church in Post Falls, Idaho, and who has done the scanning of this work via OCR, rightly notes in the “Preface to this Electronic Edition” that “modern Baptists may have heard about this man and his theology, but very few have ever directly read any of his material. In many cases, based upon hearsay, people have formed negative conclusions about him and in the process dismissed the wealth of wisdom and instruction that he has left us.” Oldfield also believes that a hard copy of Fuller’s works that is available may be too prohibitive cost-wise for wide circulation. Is he referring to the three-volume edition that Sprinkle Publications issued a number of years ago: The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (1845 ed.; repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: 1988)? If so, it should be mentioned that this three-volume work has certain other inadequacies, including its incompleteness, the small font size of the text, and the lack of both critical annotation and adequate indices.

This electronic edition by Oldfield also suffers from not being complete, for there are two volumes of additional writings of Fuller that it does not contain. These are not included in any of the standard hard-copy editions of his works and neither of them is readily available today: J. W. Morris, collected, Miscellaneous Pieces on Various Religious Subjects, being the last remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller and Joseph Belcher, ed., The Last Remains of the Re. Andrew Fuller (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, [1856]). Nevertheless, having Fuller’s works in electronic form is fabulous, both in terms of research possibilities and usability.

Oldfield rightly notes that although “most of us would quarrel with Fuller in some areas of theology, in the main, most sovereign grace Baptists would not only agree with him, but would be blessed by reading his expositions and closely thought-out arguments against the heretics of his day.” And as he further notes, modern-day Baptists are deeply indebted to Fuller, for “along with a few others,” Fuller “was instrumental in bringing Baptists back to their “evangelical” and New Testament roots, helping to send William Carey as a missionary to India and imploring the lost of Great Britain to come to Christ.”

The CD can be ordered from kdoidaho@earthlink.net at a very reasonable price. The Works on the CD come in WordPerfect, MS Word and Adobe PDF.

A Calvin Quote

John Calvin’s love for the Church made him reluctant at first to embrace the Reformation for fear of involving himself in an unholy schism. But he soon realized, as he put it: “The communion of the Church was not instituted to be a chain to bind us in idolatry, impiety, ignorance of God, and other kinds of evil, but rather to retain us in the fear of God and obedience of the truth.”

The Clash of Civilizations and the Comfort of Irresistible Grace

It is interesting that the full details about the current rioting in Paris and its suburbs are not being given in most of the media. Here is the opening line of a report from today on AOL: “Bands of youths torched more than 750 cars and burned warehouses and a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France.” You have to read most of the article to find out that the rioting is taking place in areas that are “home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.” The riots are being done by Muslims. Similar riots have also been taking place in Denmark, which are clearly religiously motivated. See this post at Southern Appeal. What will it take for the western media to realize that Islam is not a religion of peace, as so many blithely claim, but one that clearly espouses violence and that in its holy book? “Holy” violence is at the heart of Islam from its earliest history and is central to its current reality. Of course, this is not to deny that the poverty and despair of the housing estates play a significant factor in the cause of the riots. But the western media, and especially that in France, have been reluctant to admit that what is going on here is really a clash of civilizations, to use a well-worn phrase made popular by Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard political scientist.  

Huntington used this phrase in his Summer 1993 Foreign Affairs essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” and he later expanded the idea into a book. In essence, he argued that Islam has bloody borders and wherever it is currently advancing in the world there is violence. Huntington’s hypothesis has not been without significant critique (see the items listed @ Clash of Civilizations?), but it does seem to have substantial evidence to back it up. The rioting in France seems to offer further support for Huntington’s hypothesis.

How then do we, who are believers, need to live in such a day as this? We need to pray passionately for the invincible advance of the gospel (see the model for this in 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2). And we need to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers amidst the harvest fields of Islam, ever confident that God will save his people. Is the salvation of a spiritually dead western secularist easier than that of a fervent, yet also spiritually dead, Muslim? Of course not! The power needed to bring about salvation of both is alike to the Spirit. Oh the comfort of irresistible grace!

Carey & a Summary of the Serampore Form of Agreement

It was a good number of years ago in the mid-1980s that the band of brothers associated with William Carey gripped my attention and it has not wavered since. So anything linked to Carey and his friends is of interest. I just came across this entry @ Oren Martin: William Carey (posted by cindy) . It contains an excellent summation of the Serampore Form of Agreement (1804) drawn up by the Serampore Trio: Carey, Joshua Marshman and William Ward.

For an essay on Carey that discusses the Serampore Form of Agreement, see this blogger’s “A Wretched, Poor, And Helpless Worm”: The Life And Legacy Of William Carey (1761-1834).

Loving the Church

What a precious text is Ephesians 5:25b: “Christ … loved the church and gave himself for her.” Before time began or space was formed, the One we know as the Lord Jesus Christ had set his heart on dying for those human sinners who would one day make up the church, the Bride of the Lord Jesus. Not out of necessity or from need, not by constraint or grudgingly, but from a heart of love, out of mercy and kindness, freely and willingly, Christ came into this world to die for the church. It is unfortunate that our word “church” is commonly used as a description of the building in which God’s people meet to worship. We thus talk about “going to church.” Early Christians, of course, were spared such confusion, for until the late third century believers did not have distinct buildings set apart for worship. Instead they would meet in Christian homes and for them the church easily had the quality of a family. And it was in the intimacy of this setting that they learned to truly love one another. So the Apostle refers to fellow-believers in the church at Rome as “my beloved Epaenetus” (Rom 16:5), Amplias, “my beloved in the Lord” (Rom 16:8), and “Stachys, my beloved” (Rom 16:9).

And earlier in the chapter, Paul shows us true love in action. Aquila and Priscilla, husband and wife, loved Paul so much that they were willing to risk their very lives for the Apostle. Literally, they put their necks on the line for Paul (Rom 16:4). When this happened we do not know. But that it happened spoke volumes for Paul about what it means to be in Christ. He never forgot what could have been a very costly display of love. He treasured the memory of the incident and the love that lay behind it. The love of Aquila and Priscilla powerfully illustrated genuine Christlikeness.

If we love Christ we cannot but love what he loves and be filled with the sweet love he has for his church.

Antoine Court & Francophone Evangelicalism

A close friend of mine, Stéphane Gagné, a Baptist pastor in Québec, went on a missions trip this past summer to Europe. A passionate student of history, Stéphane took time to visit key places associated with Francophone Evangelicalism. He was deeply moved by  being in Lausanne where the great French Calvinist Antoine Court—born March 17, 1695, at Villeneuve-de-Berg in France, and died June 12, 1760, in Lausanne, Switzerland—founded a seminary. By God’s grace, Court played a central role in the restoration of the Reformed churches in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and after the devastation caused by the disorderliness of the French Prophets. The story of the French Reformed community is a both a thrilling one and one of profound sadness—the missionary zeal during the Reformation, the steadfastness under persecution, the destruction of Reformed communities under the French sovereigns of the 17th century, the recovery of many of these communities under Court, the falling away of many into liberalism in the late 18th century, and then Le réveil of the 19th century—all areas of rich instruction. Yet, much of it is terra incognita to the Evangelical worlds of Anglophones and even Francophones. How much there is for us to read in the story of the Church!

Old and New Hymns

I have long lamented the current craze that rejects classical hymnody. The singing of the classical hymns of the past is possibly one of the few places, if not the only place, that many modern evangelicals have contact with our evangelical forebears. The rejection of these hymns, and by extension much of our past, is utter folly and will be devastating. May God wake us up and enable us to save our hymns. Alongside this, though, we need new hymn writers, writers of lyrics that share all of the features of classical hymnody. Praise God there seems to be a revival of genuine hymnody. Dr. Al Mohler draws attention to the work of Keith and Kristyn Getty in his most recent piece on his blog: “Oh, to See the Dawn”—A New Hymn Worth Singing… Over and Over Again” (http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=357). Keith Getty co-wrote the well-known “In Christ Alone” with Stuart Townend. Check out Getty Music at http://www.gettydirect.com/index.asp and hear excerpts from their new album, “Hymns for the Life of the Church” (New Irish Hymns 4, Kingsway Music), released in October.

May our glorious Triune God continue to empower this brother and sister and others like them, and raise up even more new hymnists to pen songs for his people to sing his praise!

“Always Sweet”: Augustine the Preacher

It has been estimated that Augustine of Hippo Regius (354-430) preached somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 sermons, many of which were recorded by notarii, that is stenographers, and some of which he dictated for distribution. In his sermons Augustine was well aware that a preacher must not only teach (docere) but also delight (delectare) [David Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church: Preaching in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 2005), 93]. Augustine was well fitted for such a role because of his literary training. He appealed to intellectuals because of his vast knowledge of Roman history and classical literature. But it is noteworthy that he also had time for those who were not learned. He used words that they could understand and asked them sometimes in the middle of the sermon if he had “expounded the text too hastily” (Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church, 93).

He was often transparent in his preaching, apologizing when he felt he had not done justice to a text and promising to return to it later. And unlike classical speakers who rarely regarded brevity as a virtue, Augustine never forgot that the congregation had to stand during the preaching and so he would apologize if his sermon was too long (Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church, 93-94).

He was a master of similes:

  • “Hope” is like an egg;
  • The Scriptures are likened to “the hem of Christ’s garment”;
  • Human life is like a leaky ship;
  • And human beings are “frailer than glass.”

He drew his imagery from diverse sources: the law-court, the realm of the gladiator, farms, doctor’s surgeries, orchards, athletic contests (Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church, 94).

At the heart of his preaching, though, was the exegesis of Scripture, a task that he loved, for “the words of the Lord,” he said, “are always sweet” [Hom. 75.1, on 1 John 5:2 (cited Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church, 94)]. He knew much of the Scripture by heart, and quoted it from memory when he was preaching, which he usually did extempore. On his love for and respect for Scripture, see Sermon 162C.15: “Let us treat scripture like scripture, like God speaking.”