Here are my feelings about the Republican primary election so far:
Author: Matt Powell
Good works, thankfulness and assurance
The third part of the Heidelberg Catechism, which is all about good works, is called “Thankfulness.” Good works in Heidelberg 64 are called “fruits of thankfulness.” In question 86, the first question in the third section of the Heidelberg, the first reason given for why we should do good works is to show our thankfulness to God. One of the prooftexts in this section in 1 Corinthians 6:20, in which Paul exhorts us to good works because of the fact that we were bought with a price. Thankfulness for that fact, for our having been bought with a price, motivates those good works.
Romans 12:1 likewise exhorts us to good works as the sacrifice of our whole lives to God. That cannot be a propitiatory or expiating sacrifice, since Christ is that sacrifice. The sacrifice instead is a thank offering, which is confirmed by Paul calling it our “reasonable service”- that is, the service (latreia, meaning service as worship) that is reasonable, appropriate. Our salvation can elicit no other response than this dedication of the whole life to God.
In short, all these speak of good works as flowing out of thankfulness. But how can I be thankful for what I am not sure I have? In other words, how can I do good works if they are not done out of a motivation of thankfulness? Are they even good works if they are not done out of that motive?
The Battle We Are Actually Fighting
Christians in the present day are often distraught over the loss of the Christian consensus in America. This is indeed a sad development. But we must, in our zeal to be faithful soldiers in the war for the kingdom of God, know what battle we are actually fighting.
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight.” Sadly many of Jesus’ servants do fight as if they were fighting for a kingdom of this world. The battle that is actually being fought, the battle that matters eternally, is the battle for the hearts and souls of men. This is why the battle cannot be fought with the weapons of this world, because those weapons are only useful for fighting battles in the name of kingdoms of this world. The real battle is to free my mind and heart from the rule of Satan. But if Satan can convince me to fight a battle for earthly cultures and nations, then he’s halfway to convincing me to use his weapons to do so, and then I will come to find that I have been serving Satan’s kingdom all along even as I thought I was serving Christ’s.
Jesus Does Want You to be Rich
I think there’s a real problem with the way that we often respond to the “health and wealth” version of the gospel. We hear people teaching that being a Christian will make you wealthy, that God wants you to be rich, “name it and claim it” kind of teachings, and we know it’s wrong, and our response is, “Jesus didn’t die to make you rich. Jesus died to keep you out of hell.” Here’s a good example. (Reposted from here.)
Now I agree with most of what Dylan Justus has to say there. But it needs correction, for a couple of reasons. The fact is, Jesus absolutely did die, among other reasons, to make us rich, in material wealth. When we respond to the false teaching of the prosperity gospel, it is really easy for them to come back with a whole bunch of Bible verses that seem to support their point:
Legalism = Antinomianism
Legalism and antinomianism always end up looking the same. The devil tricks us into thinking we’re correcting an error when we end up just committing the same one. Reacting against legalism, the devil lures us with antinomianism, saying, “Don’t go that way, go this way instead!” And then we just end up falling off the ditch in the other direction.
This is because we can’t live without law. We must have principles that guide our lives and judge the appropriateness of actions. The only question will ever be whether it’s man’s law or God’s. So the legalist might begin by looking very concerned about God’s law, like the Pharisees, but condemned by the actual law of God, they reduce it merely to doable outward observances and add to it their own hedges and glosses, claiming to have great respect for the law but in fact teaching as law their own commandments. Thus they have become antinomians, substituting their own law for God’s. The teetotaler movement, for example, is both legalistic and antinomian- it imposes law-keeping on people, but it is not God’s law, but man’s.
The antinomian on the other hand might start looking like he has a great appreciation for God’s grace, resting in the fact that Christ has completely satisfied the demands of the law on their behalf. But they ignore the purpose of this salvation, which is that we walk in good works in glory to God (Ephesians 2:8-10). And then, because man cannot live without law, they invent other principles by which they justify themselves and judge others, whether it is political values, diet, money management or other things. Some antinomians ironically become extremely judgmental whether or not you are preaching the gospel in exactly the way they think you should, talking about God’s law in exactly the way they think you should, or following exactly the liturgical formula that they prescribe. Man cannot live without law, so having rejected the law of God as a normative guide for our lives, the antinomian inevitably substitutes his own law, and thus becomes a legalist.
It’s never a question of whether or not you will live by law. It’s only a question of whether that law will be God’s law or one you make up. That is the only real choice. If we recognize that Christ has completely satisfied the demands of God’s law on our behalf, for the very purpose of conforming us to that law, then we will avoid either error.
Coercive vs. Voluntary Poverty Alleviation
I am opposed in principle to all government transfer programs. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, all of it.
People who hold to these positions are often accused of a lack of charity, of compassion toward the poor. John Kasich, a long-shot Republican contender, has been declaring that people who are opposed to the Medicaid expansion need to read their Bibles, that it tells us how to treat the poor.
Continue reading “Coercive vs. Voluntary Poverty Alleviation”
God’s Glory in our Suffering
Jesus says the man born blind (in John 9) was born that way not because of any particular individual’s sin, but so that God’s works could be shown in him. Jesus would heal the man, and even more importantly save the man, and all of his suffering was to that end, to glorify God through His act of salvation for this man.
People say this doctrine makes God out to be a monster, to be cruel and unfair. If you think that, I have a suggestion to make. When you get to heaven, look that blind man up and ask him whether or not he got a good deal from God, whether suffering blindness and all the misery associated with that, especially in an ancient culture, outweigh the joy and glory he has already experienced from God for around two thousand years.
Those who accept the primacy of God’s glory in all the events of history will never have any reason to complain that God treated them unfairly. Those who reject the right of God to glorify Himself even through the suffering of man will have a lot more to worry about than anything they do or don’t experience in this life.
“We distinguish”: Conditions of Salvation
There’s been some back-and-forth over a forward that John Piper wrote for a book by Thomas Schreiner about the doctrine of justification. In that foreword, Piper wrote that there are conditions to salvation beyond just faith, that we are justified by faith alone but that entrance into heaven is about more than faith. Scott Clark took issue with him; Mark Jones took issue back. Jones correctly asserts that the Reformed have long spoken of good works as necessary for salvation. Clark correctly asserts that good works are in no sense instrumental to our salvation.
One of the things that I really appreciate about reading older Reformed authors like Francis Turretin is that he labors to be extremely precise in his use of words. He will say, “We distinguish,” an will then launch into exhaustive distinctions about what he does and does not mean by particular statements. This can make for long tedious books, but if you put in the effort, there can be no real question about what he means. He is very precise as are many of the Reformed scholastics, and that is a virtue we could use more of these days. Take the word “condition”, for example. That word has a great many meanings, some of them shades of difference apart, and some of them completely separate. “Condition” might mean an instrumental condition, meaning that my entrance into heaven is dependent on me passing some requirement that has to be there as the means by which I attain the thing. Or “condition” could mean a state of being that will always be there when something else is there, or what we would call a “consequent condition” or concomitant condition. So when John Piper says there are “conditions” to salvation, and then Mark Jones can draw up lots of Reformed authors saying the same thing, that doesn’t really help us very much, because it doesn’t tell us in what sense good works are a condition of salvation. That may not make for a nice elegant forward, but it avoids misunderstandings. The sloppy use of words is the bane of every good theologian.
When I read Piper’s forward, this, it seems to me, is the troublesome paragraph:
The stunning Christian answer is: sola fide—faith alone. But be sure you hear this carefully and precisely: He says right with God by faith alone, not attain heaven by faith alone. There are other conditions for attaining heaven, but no others for entering a right relationship to God. In fact, one must already be in a right relationship with God by faith alone in order to meet the other conditions.
Now that sounds to me a lot like he’s saying that good works are an instrumental condition for entering heaven- because he’s saying it’s a condition “for attaining heaven.” That is to say, that Jesus is going to look at my life, and decide whether or not to admit me to the kingdom based on some subjective level of righteousness in my life. If this is true, then the Reformation is overthrown and we never should have left Rome. If this is not what Piper is saying, then he should be more careful with his words.
I think that we have a problem on the other side of the road with people denying that good works have anything at all to do with our salvation, that is, denying essentially that good works are a consequent condition. The truth is that good works are the purpose and goal of our salvation- we are saved from sin in order to make us holy, to make us fit members of the eternal kingdom, worthy of sharing fellowship with God forever.
To use the Biblical analogy, you grow fruit trees in order to have fruit. If you get no fruit from a branch, you cut the branch off and burn it up. If you get fruit, you keep the branch on the tree (John 15), and further, you prune the branch to get even more fruit. If someone abides in Christ, then they produce fruit, and they stay in the vineyard. If they do not abide in Christ, then they are removed. In this analogy, it is abiding in Christ which is the instrumental condition, and it is fruit which is the consequent condition. “Abiding in Christ” guarantees that one will stay a part of the vine. “Bearing fruit” is the consequent condition- it’s a condition that must be there if the “abiding” is there. “Bearing fruit” is what “abiding” looks like. And how to we abide? We do so by faith, by believing Jesus’ words, and by believing in such a way that we do them. Therefore, what Jesus says here is perfectly consistent with what he says to so many others, that believing in Jesus grants one eternal life.
Faith alone therefore is the instrumental condition of salvation. Not just of entering into a right relationship with God, but of the attainment of the eternal kingdom. This is necessarily true, for the one contains the other. If one has entered into a right relationship with God by faith in the Messiah, then the state of attaining the eternal kingdom in principle is already there. We believe in the perseverance of the saints, remember. And this is where I think John Piper’s foreword is guilty of at least equivocation, of using words in different senses. For if faith is a condition of entering into a right relationship with God and works are a condition of entering into heaven, and the word “condition” there is being used in the same sense, then Piper is guilty of teaching the Roman Catholic (and the Federal Vision) doctrine of salvation, of progressive justification that begins with faith and concludes with works. We should reject that. If he’s teaching the necessity of good works in the sense that the Reformed always have, then he’s equivocating, using “condition” in different senses within the same argument. He has failed to distinguish between these different senses.
Mark Jones uses a quote from Michael Horton at the end of the article to try to prove how unobjectionable Piper’s statement is:
“The New Testament lays before us a vast array of conditions for final salvation. Not only initial repentance and faith, but perseverance in both, demonstrated in love toward God and neighbor…Holiness, which is defined by love of God and neighbor…is the indispensable condition of our glorification: no one will be seated at the heavenly banquet who has not begun, however imperfectly, in new obedience.”
But again, Horton is clearly speaking of all the conditions for final salvation, of which faith and repentance is one. These are consequent conditions. These are all things that will be there in the one who is to be saved. But this is not the same as saying that these conditions are ways by which we earn a place there, or gain a right to them, or maintain the right we had previously attained by faith to that place. Horton constantly asserts that justification is achieved by faith alone, and that all of the benefits of Christ are attained through justification. Jones doesn’t provide the source of his Horton quote so I can’t look at the context. But I’m plenty familiar with Horton.
So I think I cautiously side with Clark on this one. I’m not absolutely sure that Piper is saying what Clark thinks he’s saying, but if he’s not, then he is at least being careless. But I think Jones either lets Piper off the hook far too easily and with Reformed teaching that doesn’t really support his point, or else Jones has some questionable beliefs himself. Faith is the instrumental condition of justification- faith is the way we enter into that right relationship with God, and once we are in that relationship, all the blessings of heaven are ours. The result of that, the “concomitants” of that, are going to be good works, perseverance, love, etc- but none of those things are the way we earn, achieve, maintain or improve upon the total attainment of blessedness we already have in principle when we enter into a right relationship with God in Jesus Christ. They are the way we experience and enjoy all the blessings that Christ has for us, nothing more.
Differing Views of Assurance within the Reformed Camp
Earlier I asserted a real difference between the Heidelberg’s approach to the question of the assurance of salvation and that of the Westminster. There I used some quotes from John Owen to illustrate the point.
It is common in Reformed circles today to deny that there is any real difference. At most a difference of emphasis is allowed between the two camps, but no real difference. For some reason there seems to be a common tendency these days to gloss over the very real differences that existed on a number of topics within the Reformed world. There was a movement for a while that’s sometimes called the “Calvin vs. the Calvinists” school that greatly exaggerated these differences, and the current trend is pushback against that I think. But I believe they have overcorrected. There were real differences, and this is one of them.
From John Calvin, Institutes (1541), chapter 4:
“Here then, we have a complete defiition of faith: we describe it as a firm and certain knowledge of God’s goodwill to us which, being founded on the free promise given in Jesus Christ, is revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
…
“In short, the genuine believer is the man who, assured with firm conviction that God is a propitious and kindly Father to him looks to his goodness for all things and who, resting on the promises of his goodwill, awaits his salvation with never a doubt, even as the apostle says, “keeping faith to the end, and glorying in our hope’ (Heb. 3:6). By these words he shows that no one can truly hope in God who does not confidently boast that he is an heir of the kingdom of heaven. The genuine believer, I repeat, is the one who, relying on the assurance of his salvation, dares unflinchingly to defy the devil and death, as the apostle explains in the conclusion which he draws in Romans (Romans 8:38-39). Accordingly the apostle does not consider the eyes of our minds to be truly enlightened until we behold the hope of the eternal inheritance to which we are called. As he everywhere teaches, we do not really understand God’s goodness unless we find in it our full assurance.”
Then he goes on to address the reality of the experience of believers doubting. This he attributes to temporary failures of faith, not to the need for something to be added to faith. Faith contains assurance, he clearly teaches, but sometimes our faith is weak. So doubts arise not from the fact that assurance is something separate from faith, but from the fact that our faith is often very weak. His point throughout is that true faith includes assurance, and that all true believers will have this assurance, though at times it will waver. This is very different from WCF which teaches that assurance is a fruit of faith, not part of faith itself, and that true believers may go their whole lives without any assurance of salvation.
The Westminster position is to say that it can be true faith to believe that Jesus Christ saves sinners, but be unsure that He has saved me. That is to say, it’s teaching that one can have true faith with no personal trust of Jesus. They would deny this, I’m sure, but I believe it to be the clear implications of the teaching.
Zacharius Ursinus was the author of the Heidelberg Catechism. Question 21 of that catechism says,
21. What is true faith?
True faith is not only a sure knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also a hearty trust, which the Holy Spirit works in me by the Gospel, that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merits.
Here’s a quote from Ursinus, from his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, on question 21, which takes the same position on assurance as Calvin:
Justifying or saving faith differs, therefore, from the other kinds of faith, because it alone is that assured confidence by which we apply unto ourselves the merit of Christ, which is done when we firmly believe that the righteousness of Christ is granted and imputed unto us, so that we are accounted just in the sight of God.
So not only does the Heidelberg and Ursinus take the position that personal assurance of salvation is of the very nature of saving faith, but that personal assurance is chiefly that which distinguishes real faith from a temporary or merely intellectual faith. Many people will react with joy to the Gospel, and continue in it for a time, but they have no real, personal trust in Christ, and therefore when the Gospel fails to deliver the earthly goals they crave, they fall away.
Compare this with a quote from Charles Hodge, from his Systematic Theology, part 3, chapter 16, under the subheading of assurance:
To make assurance of personal salvation essential to faith, is contrary to Scripture and to the experience of God’s people.
Hodge’s discussion in the rest of this section is quite good, though. He attributes a want of assurance either to a weakness of faith or to bad teaching. But of course Calvin would say the same thing- and those two things really come to the same thing, since knowledge is a component of faith. Bad teaching leads to weak faith. He decries the overly introspective approach of many of the Puritans:
We may examine our hearts with all the microscopic care prescribed by President [Jonathan] Edwards in his work on “The Religious Affections,” and never be satisfied that we have eliminated every ground of misgiving and doubt. The grounds of assurance are not so much within, as without us.
Hodge does a good job then showing us the differences of approaches that exist within the Reformed world, and clearly reveals the pastoral issues at stake. Nonetheless, because he is a Westminster man, he must maintain that assurance is not of the essence of faith, and that certainty of salvation is an “effect of faith,” not of its essence.
So there are real differences on this question within the Reformed camp, a spectrum of approaches. We should not exaggerate those differences, but neither should we minimize them. I myself believe that Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism has it right, and that later in the Reformation, out of a concern over the many nominal Christians in the state churches of England and Holland, the Puritan movement developed with an intense focus on shaking people out of their complacency, challenging them on the genuineness of their faith, producing the overly introspective approach that Hodge challenges. I think a lot of this problem, along with many others, can be laid at the feet of the existence of state churches.
Did a Muslim kid get arrested because he brought his clock to school?
Funny, how the same thing keeps happening. Some story comes out that confirms people’s already-held beliefs about something, and then over time the story turns out to be something other than what people at first thought. In the day of Facebook and Twitter, and I know it’s facile to say this, but the whole process is just amplified by about a million. Maybe at some point we’ll learn to slow down and find out what actually happened before we all shout about how this latest incident confirms all our previously held beliefs.
The kid who got arrested for making a clock because he looks Muslim? So what actually happened, it seems, is that the kid took apart a digital clock, repacked it in a non-descript box, and then took it to school, where the beeper went off in the middle of a class. He didn’t make a clock at all. He didn’t get arrested for making a bomb. He got arrested for making a hoax bomb.
But he got an invitation to the White House out of it, so, way to go, kid!
