Happy Reformation Day!

The Reformation Polka
by Robert Gebel

[Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious"]

1. When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh...

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

2. When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:
"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!
Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!" Oh...

[Chorus]

3. They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;
The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor.
"Are these your books? Do you recant?" King Charles did demand,
"I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!" Oh...

[Chorus]

4. Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,
By knighting "George" as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.
Use Brother Martin's model if the languages you seek,
Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh...

[Chorus]

5. Let's raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,
And spread the word that 'catholic' is spelled with lower case;
The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,
So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh...

[Chorus]

Politics

You are a Social Moderate (41% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (70% permissive) You are best described as a: Republican Link: The Politics Test

Where do YOU come down?

St. Crispin's Day

Today is St. Crispin's Day, and the 590th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. We may remember it with the words of William Shakespeare:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Luke 15:11-32: Two Perspectives

The love with which God has loved his children through Christ is amazing, magnanimous, and over-generous. It is prodigal. He demonstrated that love most fully on the Cross, but Jesus also illustrated that love in his parables, particularly his story of the Lost Son. In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus responds to the criticisms of the Pharisees for his eating with sinners by telling three stories of seekers who rejoice when they find a lost thing they were looking for. The third, and most pointed, is the parable often called the Prodigal Son. Dr. Roy Clements, former pastor of Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, and Dr. Philip Ryken, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, each exposit this text well, for they both understand that the story is at least as much a lesson about the elder son as about the prodigal son.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 3 of 12)

This post is the third of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In Section III of The Reformation of the Church, Iain Murray begins the examination of “The Need for Reformation” with three excerpted articles, one on the many abuses in the Church of England in the sixteenth century and two on the relation of the state to the church. Thomas Wilcox, in “The Necessity of Reformation”, written to Parliament in 1572, lays out various ways in which the English church still resembled too much the Roman church and failed to reflect the standards of Scripture. Among the abuses he attacks are absenteeism, scarcity of preaching, lack of a plurality of elders, corruption of the office of deacons, and failure of “ecclesiastical discipline.” William Ames, writing in 1631, continues a dialogue “Concerning a National Church” by responding to an essay by Dr. John Burgess. In the excerpt, Ames argues that a state-run hierarchy ruling local churches is found nowhere in Scripture, and that unity among particular churches is found primarily in common confession, not in organizational rule. Finally, Charles Hodge, writing in 1863, surveys various ways in which state and church related to one another throughout history, showing that the separation of church and state that has characterized the United States is both biblical and a historical innovation.

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Corporate Worship and the People of God

For millennia, worship of God has been the fundamental act that characterizes His people. From the Old Testament distinction between the pagans who worship false gods and the Israelites who worship the true God to the New Testament division between the church and the world, worship has always defined the people of God, for it is fundamentally what God’s people are all about. Since the Reformation dispensed with the idea that the practice and pronouncement of the Church are inherently infallible, Christians have asked what worship is, and how Christians should go about doing it. They have answered these questions in many different ways. Ligon Duncan, in his two chapters in Give Praise to God, Don Carson, in his chapter in Worship By the Book, Terry Johnson, in Reformed Worship, and David Peterson, in Engaging with God, all address the topic in slightly different, yet helpful, ways.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 2 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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The second section of Iain Murray’s The Reformation of the Church is titled “The Rule for Reformation—The Word of God.” Martin Luther argues, over against the Roman doctrine of the infallibility of the Church and the Pope, that all human men are sinners subject to error, and that therefore their writings must be submitted to the judgment of Scripture. William Cunningham lays out the Regulative Principle established by the reformers—the doctrine that all the Church’s practices in worship must be positively found Scripture, and he goes on to apply it to the matter of church government, arguing that the Scriptures set out a particular form of government to which we must hold. John Hooper, writing during the Vestment Controversy in England in the 1550s, gives four criteria which must be met for something to be considered a “thing indifferent,” and concludes that the wearing of special priestly garments does not meet the criteria and is therefore prohibited by Scripture. John a Lasco delves into the vestments issue more deeply, showing how their use is prohibited by the abolition of the Aaronic priesthood in Christ. Finally, an excerpt from the Geneva Service Book of 1556 gives several scriptural proofs for the Regulative principle.

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Meme

Time for a meme:

Go into your archive.
Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
-->"High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing " - From "The Windhover", September 13, 2004.

Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 1 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In his introduction to The Reformation of the Church: a collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues, Iain Murray lays out his reasons for publishing this volume of collected works. He outlines how questions of the internal life of the Church were being discussed widely in England at the time of the volume’s publication, driven largely by an ecumenical movement that raised these topics in an attempt to “burst the bands” of denominationalism (p. 7). Murray points out that the Reformers and Puritans wrote extensively on the Church, and that their works had virtually disappeared from the conversation by the early twentieth century. This volume is intended to remedy that deficiency, providing the perspective of the men who perhaps more than anyone else in history had to consider the nature of the Church as they dealt with the world-shaking implications of the recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

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Habakkuk 1:1-11: Two Perspectives

For as long as sin and its effect have been at work in the world, people have looked around them at the evil and misery they see, and asked the question “Why?” The people of God have often asked it of Him, and a similar one: “How long will you tolerate this?” This is precisely the question that the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk raises at the beginning of the book that bears his name. Two sermons, one by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and the other by Andrew Davis of First Baptist Church, Durham, NC, each look at Habakkuk 1:1-11 and seek to explain and apply it to the congregation. Each deals with the text, each applies the 2600-year-old story to modern life, and each presents the Gospel. One of them, however, explains the text in relation to the rest of the message of the Bible, and for this reason it is a better sermon.

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CD recommendation

If you like a capella choral music, and you like hymns, check out "Amazing Grace," by the Robert Shaw Chorale. It's far and away the best I've ever heard. You can find it on Amazon or download it from the iTunes Music Store.

Are there other albums of this type you enjoy?

GodBlogger meeting

If you're a God Blogger in the DC/MD/NoVA area, think about attending a meeting organized by David Wayne on the evening of Sept. 30. I personally won't be able to make it to this one, but it seems like a great opportunity for some of us in the Christian blogosphere to meet and be encouraged by one another.

More info here. If you're planning on going, leave a comment and let David know whether you'll be bringing anyone with you.

Review: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, is presented in Scripture as an inescapably fearful figure. The vision of Him that John records at the beginning of Revelation left John on his face as though dead, and considering Christ as the great Judge who will destroy His enemies at the last day has caused many more men to be utterly abased and driven to despair. But, strangely, gloriously, Jesus is also the Comforter, the Wonderful Counselor and Good Shepherd who is wondrously tender with His sheep. It is this tender, comforting side of Christ’s nature that Richard Sibbes is primarily concerned with meditating on in The Bruised Reed, and it is indeed a wonderful meditation.

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Review: The Worship of the American Puritans by Horton Davies

In The Worship of the American Puritans, Horton Davies provides an in-depth study of the theology and practice of the Puritans in New England in the seventeenth century that is useful as a historical study, as an aid for any Christian who wants better to understand the background for many Reformed worship practices today, and as a glimpse of the wholehearted devotion of a people perhaps more dedicated to Godliness than any other in American history. As he examines their religious calendar, sermons, singing, prayers, administration of the sacraments, marriages, funerals, ordinations, and even their architecture, several themes or beliefs emerge that pervaded Puritan life and shaped every area of their public worship. Among these are their belief in divine sovereignty and predestination, their concern for “visible sainthood” and maintaining a pure church, and their application of the regulative principle which resulted in a relentless determination to subject everything they did in worship to the rule of Scripture.

Davies seems to make much of what he regards as a paradox in Puritan theology. On one hand, they were rigorous Calvinists, with a firm belief in man’s natural depravity and the complete sovereignty of God in electing men to salvation. On the other hand, their extreme emphasis on holy living made it seem as though good works were an essential part of salvation. Furthermore, very few Puritans seem to have had much assurance of their salvation, as they often subjected themselves to intense soul-searching, wondering if their professed faith were true and they were indeed among the elect. To Davies, the very idea of a covenanting Calvinist—one who commits to live a life of visible sainthood in the community of believers—is somewhat paradoxical.

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The Reformation of the Church

The Protestant Reformation was a world-shaking event. It changed the structure of society wherever its doctrines took root, and the recovery of the Gospel which was its central focus brought millions of people out of spiritual darkness and into the light of Christ. The doctrine of justification by faith alone, which Luther called “the article by which the Church stands or falls”, was at the center of the radically different Protestant understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Three important areas of thought were particularly affected by sola fide: the understanding of the church, the pastor and his role, and the sacraments.

First, the Reformation turned upside down the doctrine of the church. In medieval Roman Catholicism (and in the Roman church to this day), the church was understood to be the visible structure of priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, nuns, and other ordained officials who all owed allegiance to the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ. The Nicean attributes of the church—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—were abused by Catholic theologians foundational to the claim that Rome’s visible structure was the only true church and that salvation could only be found in obedience to Rome and her dispensation of the sacraments.

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Fundamentalism

In 1922 in New York City, Harry Fosdick preached a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” At the time, Protestants were embroiled in a debate between liberal theology that had been on the rise for at least half a century and Fundamentalist theology, so named for its emphasis on “fundamentals of the faith” such as the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, divinity, resurrection, and second coming of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. In his sermon Fosdick rails against the supposed intolerance of the Fundamentalists, arguing that Christians on both ends of the spectrum should be tolerant of each others’ views and avoid breaking fellowship with those of different opinions on these matters.

Though Fosdick has many good things to say, and his seeming zeal for spreading the Gospel is admirable, he ultimately is guilty of a dangerously errant view of the Scriptures, the Christian faith, and the place of tolerance in the Church. First, he has a poor understanding of the doctrine of Scripture and the nature of God’s Word. Fosdick accuses Fundamentalists of believing that the entirety of the Bible was “inerrantly dictated by God to men.” While there may have been a very small minority of Fundamentalists who held to this view in Fosdick’s day, it has never been the dominant or orthodox understanding of the mode of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures. This is simply a caricature by Fosdick that has little to do with the true Protestant doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible..

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Coming posts

Since August, and through this December, deo volente, I am serving as a pastoral intern at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I'm reading quite a bit on ecclesiology, and writing 800-1000 words nearly every day, so I'm staying quite busy.

A friend encouraged me to post some of the papers I've been writing in this space, so I think I'm going to begin doing that. Not because I think many people will be particularly interested in what I have to say, but simply so that you all can see that I am keeping quite busy and writing regularly (which was, after all, the reason I started this blog).

St. Bartholomew's Day

Today, August 24, is known in much of the Christian world as St. Bartholomew's day. Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, was one of Christ's Twelve Disciples. After Christ's resurrection and ascension, Christian tradition tells us that St. Bartholomew worked to carry out Jesus' Great Commission by going on a missionary trip to India, taking with him a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. He also is believed to have traveled in Asia Minor--modern-day Turkey--and in Armenia, where he is understood to have brought the first news of the Gospel.

Protestants have other reasons to remember St. Bartholomew's Day, as well. On this day in 1572 began the mass slaughter of thousands of French Huguenots. The Protestant influence of John Calvin's French-speaking Geneva had spread widely throughout Calvin's homeland, and France seemed about to follow England, much of Germany, and the Low countries in becoming mainly Protestant nations. Under the authority of Catherine de Medici, several important Protestants were assassinated, and as many as seventy thousand Huguenots were murdered in the mob violence that ensued.

Also, in 1662, the English Parliament passed the second great Act of Uniformity, requiring all ministers of the Church of England to subscribe to a narrow set of practices and doctrinal beliefs. Nearly a third of the clergy--nearly all of the Nonconformists--lost their posts for objecting to doctrines and practices they believed were not Reformed enough. This great expulsion resulted almost immediately in the coalescing of distinct Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists. The American iterations of these denominations trace their history back to this time.

Church and College

It's that time of year again, and many of my friends are either heading back to college or attending for the first time. College can be a very fruitful time spiritually, or it can be very challenging, depending on how you approach it and what your priorities are. As I indicated in my last post, this often can have very little to do with whether you attend a "Christian" college or a secular school.

There are perhaps many things you can do to help ensure that your college years see growth rather than stagnation in your walk with God. Regular personal devotions and study of God's Word, for example. Or deep, Christ-centered relationships that provide mutual discipleship, accountability, and encouragement. One of the most essential, however, is membership in a healthy local church.

The church is, more than any other earthly institution, God's chosen arena for displaying His glory and working out His plan of redeeming a people for the praise of His name. God identifies Himself with the church to such a degree that when the risen Christ appears to Saul on the road to Damascus, he asks him, "Why are you persecuting me?" In a very real sense, to follow Jesus means to love His Body, the church.

For more on this, pick up a copy of Joshua Harris's book Stop Dating The Church!. For information on what to look for in a church, see Mark Dever's book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church or visit the website of 9Marks Ministries. Though 9Marks is primarily aimed at pastors and church leaders, it is also an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to know what a healthy church looks like. If you've just moved to a new place--such as for college--and are visiting different churches, these resources can give you ways to evaluate them.

"Christian" Colleges

There's an interesting discussion of Christian colleges going on over at the Zeitgeist blog of World Magazine.

Jack Crabtree has a long post on the phenomenon of many "Christian" young people losing their faith at college. Money quote: "Christian parents are being naïve and ignorant if they send their children to Christian colleges under the belief that there—at a Christian college—their children’s faith will be preserved." He also has a plug for Gutenberg College, a Christian school with a Great Books emphasis in Oregon. Gutenberg has an all-Christian faculty, but, interestingly, they don't require students to be Christians, they allow "complete freedom of thought and faith," and they have "few behavioral standards." This is pretty interesting, having graduated from Christian college where these are decidedly not the case. Without knowing anything more about the school, it seems on the whole to be a healthier way of constructing a Christian institution--though many in the culture out of which my alma mater arose would dismiss it as being too liberal, perhaps not really Christian at all.

There is a tremendous difference, as Crabtree points out, between faith in Christ and membership in a Christian sub-culture. A school where students are assumed to be Christians, where they are told what wonderful Christian young people they are, and where they are expected to live according to that sub-culture's idea of what the Christian life looks like is not necessarily the same thing as one that actually encourages students in their sanctification and pursuit of godliness. A college that zealously (some might say frighteningly) stresses conformity to The Christian Worldview is not necessarily the same thing as a college that encourages students to work through and work out their faith in the intellectual realm, helping them become men and women who can think critically to the glory of God.

PHC students and alumni: how do you think PHC fares in these areas? Is attending there actually a good thing for your faith? If not, why not? If so, is it simply because you developed good relationships or because the school played an active role in making the experience a good one?