James Grant
Website: http://www.inlightofthegospel.org/
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Friday, January 8, 2010, 10:58 PM
The beginning of a New Year is a time to reflect on God’s kindness and goodness to us, but we are often concerned and fearful about the future. What will happen this year? Will we make it through another trial? Can we survive another hard year?
In the face of an uncertain future, our hope as Christians is rooted in what older generations called “Providence.” Providence is the term we use to explain that God is so sovereign that everything takes place according to his purpose. If you affirm the providence of God, you are confessing, even in the face of all appearances to the contrary, that God cares for you and is in control of your life. One of the important passages describing the providence of God is Romans 8:28, where the Apostle Paul says, “All things work together for good to them that love God and are called according to his purpose.”
The word providence actually comes from two Latin words: pro, which means before or in front of, and videre, which means to see. The concept of providence is that God not merely looks at human affairs, but he looks after human affairs. Watching after us is the heart of the doctrine of providence.
One of the early examples of Providence occurs in Genesis 22, when God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. As they are going up the mountain, Isaac sees the fire and the wood, but he wonders where the lamb is for the burnt offering. Abraham says, “God will provide himself a sacrifice.” Indeed, God did provide a sacrifice in the place of Isaac, and Abraham called the name of the place, “The Lord will provide” (Genesis 22:14), which is where we get the older name Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides.
About two thousand years after God provided a sacrifice for Abraham, He again acted to provide a sacrifice through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The cross is at the center of our hope for the future, and the Apostle Paul explains it this way: “If God did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will He not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). If God has given us His Son, He will surely see us through the coming year. You can trust the Providence of God, for He has already provided for your greatest need: He has given you His Son, which is good news indeed.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009, 11:13 PM
With some of the discussion regarding the gospel, I wanted to point out a recent post by Mark Jones titled “The Gospel and Sanctification.” Mark did his doctoral work on the Puritan Thomas Goodwin, so some of the essay references Goodwin’s work regarding the nature of the gospel. Mark concludes the post by explaining:
All of this is to suggest that just because many in the church today have a faulty idea of “living the gospel”, we need not over-react to this principle by making the gospel to be totally outside of us. Such an idea would have been foreign to Thomas Goodwin, and I’m sure the Apostle Paul. Based upon the above, any charge of moralism towards those who make the gospel larger than simply justification by faith is utterly groundless. Indeed, in my opinion, moralism is best avoided when the gospel includes the whole Christ, who is both for and in us, the hope of glory.
Read the whole post here.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 11:38 AM
Ligon Duncan, a signer of the Manhattan Declaration and president of The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, explains that they have received a number of requests concerning the Manhattan Declaration and why some have signed it with leaders from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. He responded with a statement that has been posted at the Ref21 blog. He concludes with these words:
The issue boils down to a matter of judgment, not a disagreement in principle, between those Council members who signed and didn’t sign. The non-signers believe that the content of the document and the associations of the primary authors imply an ECT-like confusion about the Gospel. The signers believe that the explicit assertions and emphasis of the documents relate only to areas of principled social-ethical agreement between evangelicals and non-evangelicals. Further, they believe that it is important for individuals from the major quadrants of the historic Christian tradition to speak on these pressing matters in solidarity.
The Council members have had good, robust discussions on these things among ourselves about this whole matter. We continue to love and respect one another, and we all want to continue to serve and work with one another. The bonds of our fellowship are unbroken. Our commitment to the mission of the Alliance is unchanged. Our unity in the Gospel, and in the great solas of the Reformation is stronger than ever.
You can read his whole statement here.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 2:02 PM
Touchstone recently posted the weekly newsletter from Father Patrick Reardon, Pastor of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, IL, and a signer of The Manhattan Declaration. In the newsletter, Reardon addresses two of the specific concerns over the document: the articulation (or lack thereof) of the gospel, and a call for repentance, using John MacArthur as an example of the former, and Father Jonathan Tobias as an example of the latter. After explaining both of these objections, Reardon concludes:
The objections of MacArthur and Tobias are curious in their evident presumption that Christians, when they speak in public, should limit their discourse to the proclamation of the Gospel and the summons to repentance.
This may be a legitimate view, though it was neither shared by many Christians over the centuries nor obviously favored by the prophets. Jonah, for instance, preached judgment—not repentance—at Nineveh, nor did his proclamation include one syllable of Good News. If this was true of Jonah, what shall we say of Nahum, whose own message to the Ninevites was just an expansion of Jonah’s meager half-verse?
Respectfully, these objections to the Manhattan Declaration (including its rhetoric) could easily have been made against any one—and perhaps all—of the biblical prophets. Our modest Declaration, as a statement of social concern, invites the endorsement of Christians who share that concern. The matter is truly as plain as that.
You can read his article here. I personally think Reardon is right, and I found his reflection on this quite helpful and a wise caution against evangelicals who never seem to find any reason to agree with those who are Roman Catholic or Orthodox.
Saturday, December 5, 2009, 9:47 PM
When our hard copy of Touchstone arrived in the mail, my wife told me that I had to read John Granger’s article on the theology behind the Twilight series. The article is titled “Mormon Vampires in the Garden of Eden,” and it is now online here.
Granger gives us a reading of these books in light of Meyer’s Mormon faith, arguing that she is providing something of an apologetic for Mormonism. Granger explains:
Indeed, I think that resolving her misgivings and interior conflicts as a Mormon woman in a land of non-Mormons was a major impetus of Mrs. Meyer’s writing. In her books, she lays out defenses, often as inversions or compensating reversals (such as one would find in dreams), for at least ten specific Mormon beliefs, practices, and historic events that most outsiders would see as evidence that Mormonism is a fraud and a cult. One example from each category will illustrate this point.
Read the rest of his article to see how he argues for this interpretation and how this subtle message pervades the Twilight books.
Friday, November 13, 2009, 1:36 PM
I recently listened to an interview with Ken Myers at Ordinary Means, and I transcribed one of the questions and Myers’ answer from the interview at my blog. The question had to do with the two kingdom view of culture and the church. Justin Taylor picked it up on his blog, then Hunter Baker posted it here.
Readers could assume that Hunter is interacting with Myers’ view, and that Myers was saying that there is not a Christian view of politics (or whatever). Hunter responded to what the interviewer called the “high two-kingdoms view.” Myers was assuming the view for the sake of argument. If you read the whole answer, you will get some more of what Myers is trying to explain. Here is the whole exchange for context:
Question: One of the arguments out there by what I am going to call a “high two-kingdoms view,” is that there is not a distinctively Christian way of doing “X” vocation, even that we should resist that because that would be to mix the kingdoms, and if you were to, for example (this would be the anti-Abraham Kuyper position), be a politician, your Christian thought should not come in. Could you interact with that a little?
Myers: First of all I would agree…I am a believer in natural law. Let me put it this way. Let me say for the sake of the argument that I’ll agree with that, there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics and art, or anything. But there is a distinctively human view; that is there are de-humanizing possibilities in those spheres; Christians we are necessarily humanists. That is, Christians are necessarily interested in sustaining the best for human beings as human beings.
Now, having said that, I also do believe that any effort to understand the human apart from Christ falls short. Not that it is wrong, but I do think that we only understand our humanity fully by understanding [Christ]…I think that the biblical account of life helps us understand our humanity. So I think there are insights into humanity that come from all sorts of cultural sources through general revelation, but I do think that there are correctives that Scripture offers to understanding our humanity that are just not available elsewhere. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is distinctively Christian.
Let me put it the other way. What does Paul mean when he says in Colossians 1 that all things are through him and for him and to him in. That whole passage, that whole hymn from Paul seems to be that creation cannot be properly understood unless you understand it in a Christocentric form. And I think that it has as much to do with Christ’s identity as creator as it does Christ’s identity as redeemer.
This is where I challenge my two-kingdom friends. I think there is a danger in two kingdom thought of separating Christ as creator and Christ as redeemer, at least more than the New Testament does. I think that the New Testament speaks, just as the Old Testament, about the identity of God as creator and redeemer in a non-modalistic way. God is both creator and redeemer at once, and Christ is both creator and redeemer at once. In fact, redemption is a recovery of creation; redemption is a restoration of creation. So I think that we need to be careful from separating creation and redemption too starkly.
So I would say that there ought to be a Christocentric politic and aesthetic. Christians will not be the only ones who can recognize properly human and hence Christocentric realities. I think that is what the Reformed idea of common grace means. That non-believers will have the capacity to see that because they perceive things that are built into the structure of creation, built in there by Christ. So there is no getting away from Christ.
I became excited by this when I read Colin Gunton, who points out that there has long been a tendency by Christians to view creation as Unitarians, in other words, an impersonal and non-Trinitarian view of creation. So we think that God the Father made everything, things got screwed up, God the Son came and paid the penalty, and God the Spirit comes along and affirms it. So there is a type of sequential Trinitarianism. But Scripture affirms over and over that creation is a Trinitarian act, and so we don’t separate Christ from the fact of creation and the ordering of creation. To do that too starkly is to make a mistake.
For more of Myers view on culture, you can check out his book All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture, or you can visit Mars Hill Audio. He is the host of that audio journal.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 10:10 PM
Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio Journal, was recently interviewed on the podcast Ordinary Means about the topic of culture and the church. During the interview, Myers talked about different ways that the church must be counter-cultural in our current cultural environment. He outlined five main areas:
- Language
- Music
- Food
- Time
- Inter-Generational Relationships
We have been trying to do some of this at my church. We are cultivating an appreciation for the history of church music by learning a new Psalm and an older hymn each month. We have certain times of the year when we have days of feasting (Christmas, Easter, etc.). We are also committed to not segregating our younger people from our older people, and strategically planning times for them to work together. Anyone have other ideas?
Thursday, October 29, 2009, 5:02 PM
Given our discussion(s) about this blog (among other things!), Collin Hansen’s article at Christianity Today, posted this morning, caught my attention: “Not All Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” Hansen documents some of the conflicts between Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, and how it has developed over the past 10 years or so.
UPDATE: If you click through to Hansen’s article, you will find that he discusses a recent controversy at George Washington University regarding the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and its cooperation with Roman Catholics, so you will also want to check out this response from InterVarsity president Alec Hill (HT: Justin Taylor).
Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 12:27 AM
There is a debate among evangelicals as to whether Christians should fast with Muslims during Ramadan. At Christianity Today Ruth Moon asked 10 church leaders to comment on the debate, and their different responses are…not sure what word to use here…unbelievable? I’m still looking for the right word. Several said it was fine as long as it was done appropriately, but Doug Wilson, in his typical style, gets to the heart of the issue:
“It is not appropriate to fast alongside Muslims. I wouldn’t make a point, if I were in a heavily Muslim state where everybody is fasting during the day, of fixing a hot dog and walking outside and eating it … but to observe Ramadan along with your Muslim neighbors and friends, letting them know that you’re observing Ramadan as an act of some sort of religious or spiritual solidarity, is simply a fundamental compromise. They’re observing Ramadan in the service of a false God and a false gospel, and we shouldn’t be trying to express our solidarity with that.”
You know, there is nothing like putting a matter in perspective. Some things that we come up with in the American church just wouldn’t go over very well in the Middle East, or for that matter, when you are surrounded by those who worship Baal, or those who burn incense to Caesar.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009, 10:57 PM
Fred Sanders makes an important point about the dangers of assumed evangelicalism and the drift we all have to guard against, not only in movements but in our own life. We do have to keep the gospel central in order to guard against this, and although I am glad for the current emphasis upon a “Gospel-Centered” life (and everything else) that is taking place in evangelicalism, I am also worried. There is an important distinction that must be made and maintained between the gospel, the good news regarding the life and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, the historical event never to be repeated, and the “work” of the Christian life that flows out of it. When everything becomes the gospel (gospel life, gospel work, gospel parenting, gospel speech, gospel this and that, etc…..), then at some point, nothing is the gospel.
Monday, October 19, 2009, 6:30 PM
Joe Carter started this discussion by asking, “How would the bloggers here at Evangel define the term? What is is that we all have in common that allows us to share the label?” Timothy George provides a helpful short and concise summary:
At its heart [evangelicalism] is a theological core shaped by the Trinitarian and Christological consensus of the early church, the formal and material principles of the Reformation, the missionary movement that grew out of the Great Awakening and the new movements of the Spirit that indicate “surprising works of God” are still happening today (“Foreword,” in The Advent of Evangelicalism).
I like the fact that George starts with the early church and its foundational theology, which is not something we always do well as evangelicals, but I often wonder how Trinitarian we really are in practice. How many of us open our worship service in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Or have any confession of the Triune name during worship? Hmm…
