Theology Central

Theology Central exists as a place of conversation and information for faculty and friends of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Posts include seminary news, information, and opinion pieces about ministry, theology, and scholarship.
A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

The New Testament mentions three sorts of gifts connected with the three persons of the Godhead. First, in general, every good and perfect gift comes down from the “Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). Second, the ascended Lord Jesus Christ gives certain individuals as gifts to humanity through His church—apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers (Eph 4:8–11). Third, the charismata or pneumatika are given by the Holy Spirit to individuals. These last are usually spoken of as “spiritual gifts,” and they are mentioned and even listed in multiple passages (Rom 12:6–8; 1 Cor 12: 4–11, 28–30; and possibly 1 Pet 4:9–11).

The remarkable thing about these lists is that, while they contain overlap, they also differ considerably. Leaving aside 1 Peter 4 (which does not really offer a list), each summary mentions at least one item that does not appear on any other list. In other words, none of these lists is intended to be an exhaustive inventory of spiritual gifts. Each provides only a sampling of the broader category of spiritual gifts.

Many Bible students have assumed that they could get an exhaustive list of spiritual gifts by simply collating the lists. The problem is that if each individual list is merely a sampling and not intended to be exhaustive, then there is no particular reason to suppose that a collated list would be exhaustive either. In other words, we can offer no real justification for claiming that the New Testament provides a comprehensive catalog of spiritual gifts. We cannot rule out the possibility that the Holy Spirit gives some gifts that the New Testament does not mention.

The common denominator shared by all spiritual gifts, whether or not they are mentioned in the New Testament, is that they are given by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12:11). Yet the gifts appear to be given in different ways. Some of the gifts are clearly miraculous or revelatory (e.g. tongues, healing, prophecy, miracles). Other gifts resemble natural abilities shared even by unbelievers (e.g., helps, administrations, serving, teaching). Obviously the former involve some direct agency of the Spirit in bestowing supernatural ability. The latter are not so clearly supernatural, but may involve some indirect focusing and heightening of a natural ability by the Holy Spirit. People who are gifted administrators or teachers in Christian enterprises are likely to be able administrators or teachers in mundane contexts as well.

Consequently, no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between spiritual gifts and natural abilities. The differences are most clearly seen with the miraculous gifts, which by definition do not resemble anything natural. The non-miraculous gifts, however, seem to involve some conjunction of native ability with giftedness from the Holy Spirit.

Since the purpose of miraculous gifts was to authenticate the apostles during the period when God was shifting His work in the world away from Israel and toward the Church (Heb 2:4; 2 Cor 12:11–13), those gifts stopped when the apostles were gone. The rest of the gifts, however, seem to have been intended for serving rather than as signs. These gifts most likely function throughout the church age.

Evidently every Christian possesses at least one spiritual gift (1 Cor 2:11). Some Christian leaders have suggested that it is important for believers to identify their gifts so that they will know how to serve. Several have developed long inventories of gifts, complete with descriptions of how each gift functions, what sort of person is most likely to be given a particular gift, and which strengths and weaknesses typically accompany the various gifts. A few have even developed instruments, resembling psychological tests, that are supposed to tell believers what gifts they possess.

The New Testament itself, however, does not provide a detailed description for most gifts. Students of the Bible can only guess at what some of them might, or might have, involved. Furthermore, the New Testament offers no procedure for helping Christians to know which gifts they have received. It would seem that this matter was rather less important to the apostles than it is to some noteworthy modern Bible teachers.

The New Testament emphasizes serving more than it emphasizes giftedness. In moments of weakness and trial our gifts will not be sufficient for us. Only our Lord will. But then, our Lord is always sufficient. Sometimes we find ourselves challenged to serve in areas where we do not believe ourselves to be particularly gifted. If so, we should not shrink from the opportunities that the Lord gives us. Under normal circumstances about ninety percent of ministry is a matter of just showing up—whether we are gifted or not.

I do not mean to deny that we might know at least some of our giftedness. I believe that I know some of mine. But we discover our giftedness in the process of serving, not by completing evaluative instruments. We also learn about our gifts as we see where God uses us in real ministry and as we listen to the counsel of those who know us well.

Too much talk about giftedness smacks of the effort to grant each person her or his own bespoke ministry. Under these circumstances, spiritual giftedness becomes a kind of ministry boutique in which expressions of service can be customized. Faced with this problem, we must avoid encouraging people to think of spiritual giftedness in terms of their own self-assertion and personal gratification. Let us remember that the needs of the body come first, while expressions of giftedness follow after.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Great Was the Day

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

Great was the day, the joy was great,
When the divine disciples met;
Whilst on their heads the Spirit came,
And sat like tongues of cloven flame.

What gifts, what miracles he gave!
And power to kill, and power to save!
Furnish’d their tongues with wondrous words,
Instead of shields, and spears, and swords.

Thus arm’d, He sent the champions forth,
From east to west, from south to north;
“Go, and assert your Savior’s cause;
Go, spread the mystery of His cross.”

These weapons of the holy war,
Of what almighty force they are,
To make our stubborn passions bow,
And lay the lowest rebel low!

Nations, the learned and the rude,
Were by these heav’nly arms subdu’d;
While Satan rages at his loss,
And hates the doctrine of the cross.

Great King of Grace, my heart subdue,
I would be led in triumph too,
A willing captive to my Lord,
And sing the victories of His word.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Another Year

Central Baptist Theological Seminary held its first commencement in 1957. Except for last year (2020) we have celebrated graduations every year since. As with other seminaries, last year’s ceremonies were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, however, we were able to award degrees to a dozen graduates in three programs.

None of this year’s graduates was under thirty years old, and their ages ranged upwards to past sixty. We used to get students right out of college, and they would push through seminary in three years. Now we tend to get students who are already in ministry, who are rearing families, and who want to take their time finishing school. Some of them have already enjoyed complete careers and hope to devote the rest of their lives to ministry. Some of them are taking advanced degrees. In most cases they have substantial experience behind them.

For example, we graduated four Doctors of Ministry this year. One is a veteran missionary church planter. One is a professor in a Bible college and seminary. Two are senior pastors, one in Colorado and one in Michigan. Of these four, two are in their sixties. All intend to continue in the same ministries that they have held for years (or, in some cases, decades).

At the opposite end of the academic spectrum are those individuals who are graduating with the Master of Arts degree. This is our least advanced and least demanding degree, but all three who received it have already been actively involved in pastoral ministry. One has pastored the same church for upwards of a decade. All are mature men.

Five Master of Divinity graduates crossed the platform this year. The oldest is at the age at which most people retire. The other four have all been pastors. Three of them will continue in their present ministries. The other had left a pastoral ministry in Michigan to move to Central Seminary, and he has already been called to a church in Alaska.

Rarely have I been more pleased with a graduating class. These are tested men, not novices. They have survived trials and choices. They have already shown that they will persevere in ministry. They have also demonstrated their ability to balance study, family, and work. To all appearances, they should have fruitful years of serving the Lord ahead of them.

What we do not have are recent college graduates who have completed seminary and who are eager to step into the pulpits of the many smaller, pastorless churches around the country. Hardly a week goes by without some congregation asking Central Seminary’s staff or faculty for help finding a pastor. Too often we must reply that we have no recent graduates to suggest, because our graduates are already active in ministries.

Here and there are many churches, most of them small, that seem to have difficulty finding a pastor. They can gather names quickly enough; indeed, many men seem quite prepared to recommend themselves to any pulpit committee that will listen. Finding someone who is qualified to hold the office of pastor-bishop-elder, however, turns out to be more of a challenge. If you are a member of a pulpit committee, you can expect to receive names of men who have disqualified themselves from ministry morally or financially—and you will have no way of knowing it until you do a thorough check of their backgrounds and references. You can expect to receive names of men who have neglected to gain adequate understanding of the Bible and doctrine. You can expect to receive names of men who interview well but who have proven their lack of ability to work with people. You can expect to receive names of men who imagine ministers to be social justice warriors, ecclesiastical entrepreneurs, or religious impresarios. You can expect to receive names of men who will see your church as a platform for advancing idiosyncrasies (whether doctrinal or practical) that will fundamentally alter the direction of its ministry. Only rarely will you receive names of men who really desire to do the work of a bishop, who have been tested, and who have improved their gifts so that they can fulfill their calling.

If it were up to me, I would wish that we were enrolling a hundred young men every year—a hundred men who had the desire and gifts to become pastors. Better still, I could wish that we were graduating a hundred men who, in addition to desire and gifts, had received the best preparation that we could give them in biblical languages and content, systematic and historical theology, and ministry practice. I would love to see a hundred men going out every year who were committed to proclaiming not only the gospel but also the whole counsel of God, men who would foster and nourish congregations in knowledge, love, and obedience toward Christ.

If it were up to me, that is what I would wish for. But it is not up to me. I cannot call men into ministry. Seminaries cannot call men into ministry. Only the Holy Spirit calls pastors, and He uses local churches as His nurseries for those whom He intends to call.

May the Lord of the harvest send forth laborers into His harvest. While He does, my co-laborers and I will continue to do the best job we can of preparing those men whom the Lord does send, whether they are younger or older. For the moment, I thank the Lord for this year’s dozen fine graduates.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Lord, Thy Church, Without a Pastor

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892)

Lord, Thy church, without a pastor,
Cries to Thee in her distress;
Hear us, gracious Lord and Master,
And with heavenly guidance bless.

Walking midst Thy lamps all golden,
Thou preservest still the light;
Stars in Thy right hand are holden,
Stars to cheer Thy church’s night.

Find us, Lord, the man appointed
Pastor of this flock to be,
One with holy oil anointed,
Meet for us, and dear to Thee.

Send a man, O King in Zion,
Made according to Thine heart,
Meek as lamb, and bold as lion,
Wise to act a shepherd’s part.

Grant us now Thy heavenly leading,
Over every heart preside,
Now, in answer to our pleading,
All our consultations guide.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

How To Think About Israel

[This essay was originally published on June 5, 2015.]

The state of Israel is in the news at least weekly, sometimes daily. The United States is still the greatest supporter of Israel, but public perception is that the Obama administration’s backing is less than enthusiastic. In spite of this assessment, the Obama administration was the first to sell bunker-buster bombs to Israel, and it vetoed down a UN resolution that would have declared Israeli settlements illegal on the West Bank.

Given all the controversy, Christians sometimes wonder how they should think about Israel. The problem is especially acute for dispensationalists, who believe that national Israel is still a chosen people of God and will someday be restored to God’s favor. Several observations might help Christian people to adopt a correct attitude toward Israel.

First, the modern state of Israel is not equivalent to the national Israel of the Bible. Most of the world’s Jewish population is still scattered in the Diaspora. In fact, about as many Jewish people live in the United States as live in the state of Israel (perhaps more—getting a count of the Jewish population in America has been controversial). Israel was not regathered to the land (in any prophetic sense) in 1948 or at any time since. Furthermore, about a quarter of the Israeli population is not Jewish.

Second, as a corollary of the foregoing, the modern state of Israel is not in a position to claim promises made to the biblical nation of Israel. It is not in any sense inheriting the “land” provisions of the Abrahamic covenant. In fact, no part of biblical, national Israel can claim those promises at this moment. The apostle Paul depicts biblical Israel as presently experiencing a dual relationship with God during the present age. Concerning the gospel, God has permitted national Israel to fall into a position of enmity for the sake of the church. Concerning their election, however, God still loves national Israel for the sake of the patriarchs (Rom. 11:28). While occupying the status of “beloved enemy,” biblical Israel is temporarily under the judgment and not the blessing of God. The modern state of Israel can certainly point to its territory as a historic homeland, but it has no right to claim the land by divine title.

Third, no aspect of biblical prophecy depends for its fulfillment upon the existence of the state of Israel. Specifically, the Rapture is not contingent upon Israel being in the land. If the Arabs were to succeed in pushing Israel into the Mediterranean, not one biblical prophecy would be altered. Those who believe in a pretribulational Rapture could still believe in a pretribulational Rapture, complete with a doctrine of imminency.

Fourth, while the modern state of Israel is not identical with the biblical nation of Israel, those Jews who are presently in the land do constitute a part of national Israel as it exists today. Furthermore, even though national Israel is presently and temporarily under God’s judgment (the Diaspora has not been revoked), God cares about His people while they are being judged. In the Old Testament, God used Gentile nations to judge Israel, but He held those nations accountable for what they did. As instruments of judgment, they had a choice about how they would treat Jewish people. God blessed those who treated Jewish people well, and He visited calamity upon those who persecuted Israel. In other words, Gentiles will always find it in their interest to treat Jewish people with respect and to provide protection when they come under attack. This respect and protection should have been extended to the Jewish population of Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. It should be extended to the Jewish population of the United States and other countries today. And it certainly could be extended to the state of Israel.

Fifth, the modern state of Israel was not imposed by the aggression of one nation against another. Rather, it was carved out of a decaying section of a disintegrating Ottoman Empire by powers that had defeated the Ottomans in just war. It was created to provide a home for a displaced and decimated people, only a fragment of whom survived Hitler’s death camps. Those who survived had endured the confiscation of their homes and their wealth. Many were interred in refugee camps. No wonder they flocked to Israel when the opportunity presented itself. The state of Israel has every right to exist and every right to survive.

Sixth, modern Israel is a sovereign state with the rights and privileges of any present-day nation. These rights and privileges include self-determination and self-protection. They also include the right to form alliances or treaties, and modern Israel has chosen to do just that with the United States. As a purely pragmatic matter, Israel is the only reliable ally that the United States has in the Middle East. The interest of America is served at multiple levels by helping to secure the peace and prosperity of Israel.

Seventh, Arabs, including those who consider themselves Palestinian, also have rights. Furthermore, God has a future for other Middle Eastern nations besides Israel. A day is coming when both Egypt and Iraq will stand beside Israel as peoples of God (Isa. 19:19ff). Christians must not allow their genuine respect for Jewish people or their loyalty to the state of Israel to blind them to the real rights of the surrounding nations—or of the Arab population within Israel.

Eighth, no nation is without fault, including the state of Israel. Neither Christians nor Americans are obligated to defend every choice and every action taken by the Israelis. The United States has sometimes been wrong in its own policies—so has Israel. The United States has sometimes blundered and committed evil deeds—so has Israel. Both Israelis and Americans ought to work to correct past wrongs and to prevent future ones. Deciding what those wrongs are, however, and determining how they are best corrected requires mature and responsible deliberation, not political grandstanding or visceral reactions. Such decisions cannot be made justly or effectively at gunpoint.

The Christian attitude toward modern Israel ought to be one of committed but tempered support. Under all circumstances, Christians ought to be found blessing the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—never cursing them. Realism requires us to recognize that Israel will commit injustices, but occasional injustices should not lead us to abandon our closest ally in the Middle East.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


How Shall I Sing That Majesty?

John Mason (1646?–1694)

How shall I sing that Majesty
which angels do admire?
Let dust in dust and silence lie;
sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.
Thousands of thousands stand around
thy throne, O God most high;
ten thousand times ten thousand sound
thy praise; but who am I?

Thy brightness unto them appears,
whilst I thy footsteps trace;
a sound of God comes to my ears;
but they behold thy face.
They sing because thou art their Sun:
Lord, send a beam on me;
for where heaven is but once begun,
there alleluias be.

How great a being Lord, is thine,
which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
to sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
a sun without a sphere;
thy time is now and evermore,
thy place is everywhere.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Faithful Servants

One of the best periods in the history of Central Baptist Theological Seminary unfolded during the first two thirds of the 1960s. With Richard V. Clearwaters as president and Warren Vanhetloo as dean, the seminary assembled a cluster of amazingly bright young professors. These included men like Ernest Pickering, Robert Delnay, and Robert Myrant. While young themselves, these professors brought impeccable academic credentials to the classroom. They also brought a heart for ministry. Both Pickering and Myrant pastored churches while they taught for Central Seminary. Delnay’s teaching reflected his experience as a missionary in Haiti. These were teachers who loved God, loved truth, and loved to serve.

They left their mark on young men who studied under their instruction. When they graduated, these students left Central Seminary prepared to serve in small churches or obscure fields. They knew that they would never become men of reputation, yet they believed that Christ was doing a work and they wanted to be part of it. They threw themselves into ministry, leading souls to Christ, organizing churches, and building up little congregations. During its heyday, fundamentalism was erected upon the labors of men such as these.

Some of those men eventually did gain recognition from their peers. Others just labored on, content to wait until they were recognized by the Lord in His own time. They never became household names even within the small orbit of fundamentalists, but they did leave a legacy of souls who were converted to Christ and growing in the faith.

We at Central Seminary still want to produce graduates like that: men who through faithful labor serve their Lord lifelong, and men who do not constantly need to be propped up with human praise to convince them to remain in ministry. Most of all we want graduates who will be faithful to the end: we want men who will fulfill their ministries by finishing well.

We need such servants because the graduates of that now-distant decade are finishing their tasks. Their ministries are largely behind them, and they are being taken one by one into the presence of their Lord. The revelation of their true significance awaits the completion of the general assembly and church of the firstborn. Yet here and there we can guess at the degree to which the Lord has used them.

One such servant of the Lord and alumnus of Central Seminary passed away just this week. In the following paragraphs he is remembered by his friend, Dr. Fred Moritz. Incidentally, Dr. Moritz is another graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary from that same decade.

In Memory of a Friend
Fred Moritz
May 4 2021

We have just received word that evangelist David Baughan (1939-2021) has passed from this life to Heaven. We mourn his passing and extend our sympathy to his wife Bettye, his daughter Traci Baughan Mayes, and his son Torrey Baughan. Although earthly relationships are temporarily broken, we know he is in the presence of his savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. We take comfort in the assurance that when our Lord Jesus returns, we will “…ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess 4:17).

David was a West Virginia native, and grew up in the historic Old Kanawha Baptist Church. He graduated from Bob Jones University during the late 1950s. He then enrolled at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, earning the Th.B. degree in the spring of 1963. I enrolled at Central in the fall of 1963 and heard about his ministry.

I was privileged to have him preach on several occasions during my pastoral ministry. He was a gifted evangelist whose preaching was both expositional and expository. His ministry, grounded in the Word of God, was always positive and enduring in its impact on local churches where he ministered. He was a convicted Baptist, fundamentalist, and a separatist.

We also developed a friendship with the Baughan family when our daughters were young. Traci and Torrey are about the age of our girls.

When I began my teaching ministry at Maranatha Baptist University, providentially, I was assigned to be the office mate of his son-in-law, Dr. Preston Mayes. I fondly remember the positive interaction and Christian fellowship with Preston.

A friend has preceded us to Heaven. We thank God for his ministry and anticipate the day when we will see our Lord and renew our fellowship with brothers in Christ for all eternity. “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…and rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Rom 5:1-2).

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Blest Be the Tie That Binds

John Fawcett (1740–1817)

Blest be the tie that binds 
our hearts in Christian love; 
the fellowship of kindred minds 
is like to that above. 

Before our Father’s throne 
we pour our ardent prayers; 
our fears, our hopes, our aims are one, 
our comforts and our cares. 

We share our mutual woes, 
our mutual burdens bear, 
and often for each other flows 
the sympathizing tear. 

When we are called to part, 
it gives us inward pain; 
but we shall still be joined in heart, 
and hope to meet again. 

This glorious hope revives 
our courage by the way; 
while each in expectation lives 
and waits to see the day. 

From sorrow, toil, and pain, 
and sin, we shall be free; 
and perfect love and friendship reign 
through all eternity. 

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Sharing the Glory

The God of the Bible is infinitely glorious! His glory is beyond comprehension or adequate description. Scripture has far more to say about that glory than this brief essay can reflect, but one concept arrested my interest while reading in the New Testament: the truth that God planned in eternity to share His glory with men.

What is glory? The word group translated glory, glorious, or to glorify in the Old Testament has the basic concept of heaviness or weightiness. However, of the 376 times it occurs in the Old Testament it describes physical weight only twice (1 Sam 4:18; 2 Sam 14:26). Most of its uses are figurative, communicating the honor, magnitude, noteworthiness, or severity of an event, object, or person. When used to describe God, those terms speak of His excellence, His greatness in knowledge and power, the honor (weight) due to Him, His magnificence, and His splendor.

The manifestation of God’s glory is beyond human comprehension or expression. The best the prophet Ezekiel could manage when describing the images which manifested God’s Person and presence was to write that He was “like” a variety of more familiar items (79 times). Isaiah was awestruck when granted a vision of the glory of the pre-incarnate Christ (Isa 6:5).

Scripture reveals that God’s glory is His supreme objective. A. H. Strong wrote, “God’s supreme end in creation is nothing outside of Himself, but is his own glory…, the infinite perfection of his own being.” The OT describes Him as being jealous of His glory in twelve passages (cf. Exod 34:14). He refuses to share that glory with any other being or object of worship (Isa 42:8; 48:11).

Evidently, Adam and Eve observed God’s glory in their original state (Gen 2:15, 19, 22). Genesis 3:8 suggests that they engaged in intimate fellowship with this glorious God regularly. However, Adam and Eve forfeited their opportunity to experience God’s glory when they gave their personal desire greater weight than God. As a result, they were evicted from the Garden and God’s glorious presence. In the process, Scripture teaches that “all sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). “To fall short” means to lack, to fail to experience, to be deficient of something. This verse describes sinful man’s continuing state. As a result of our sin, mankind is impoverished when it comes to God’s glory and incapable of experiencing it. Sinful humans have no hope of experiencing God’s glory!

God revealed His presence in a variety of ways in history but men observed His glory in limited ways. The people of Israel saw it in the pillar of cloud and fire during the Exodus (Exod 13:21-22). God’s glory filled the most holy place in the Tabernacle following its construction (Exod 40:34-35). Later, the glory filled Solomon’s Temple, forcing the priests to evacuate (2 Chron 5:11-14). On Moses’ sixth climb to the summit of Mount Sinai, he asked God to reveal His full glory (Exod 33:18). God responded that it was not possible, “for no man can see Me and live!” (Exod 33:20). Moses would have died if exposed to such glory in its full intensity. Graciously, the Lord permitted him to see a reflection of His glory after His presence passed by. Peter, James, and John saw Jesus undergo a transformation in appearance which reflected His pre-incarnate glory, describable only in terms of the brightness of the sun and the whiteness of light (Matt 17:2). John wrote, “We saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father” (John 1:14). Few have had that experience.

Where does that leave us? Are we without hope of experiencing God’s glory? No! Paul indicated that God’s eternal plan provided opportunity for sinful man to share His glory. He described the gospel as “the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory” (1 Cor 2:7, emphasis added). Christ’s suffering was an essential part of “bringing many sons to glory” (Heb 2:10). The gospel is God’s invitation to sinners to share His glory (2 Thess 2:14). The apostle Peter affirmed that God invited believers to His eternal glory (1 Pet 5:10). That is no bargain basement version. It is “His own glory and excellence” (2 Pet 1:3). Jude assured his readers that God is fully capable of sharing His glory with believing sinners inasmuch as He is “able to keep you from stumbling, to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24). The whole purpose of preaching the gospel is that those whom God has chosen “may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim 2:10).

When and how might that occur? At one level, it is occurring right now in the process of sanctification as believers “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18). However, the process will be full and final only when believers are raptured at some future date. Though the body of a believer who dies before Christ’s return “is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory” (1 Cor 15:43). At that moment, Christ will “transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory” (Phil 3:21). In fact, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Col 3:4). The believer’s glorious state will be permanent from that point on. God has invited sinners to experience His “eternal glory” (1 Pet 5:10, emphasis added). Every believer “will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess 4:17).

A final note: the anticipation of sharing God’s glory is not based on individual performance. Believers who have this hope should always be “abounding in the work of the Lord” (1 Cor 15:58). However, the possibility of glory does not lie in personal effort. It is purely the result of the sinner’s union with Christ, for “the riches of the glory of this mystery…is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27, emphasis added). Glory!

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This essay is by Don Odens, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


How Will My Heart Endure

Philip Doddridge (1702–1751)

How will my heart endure
The terrors of that day,
When earth and heaven before His face
Astonish’d shrink away?

But ere the trumpet shakes
The mansions of the dead,
Hark! from the Gospel’s cheering sound
What joyful tidings spread.

Ye sinners, seek His grace,
Whose wrath ye cannot bear;
Fly to the shelter of His Cross,
And find salvation there.

So shall that curse remove,
By which the Saviour bled;
And the last awful day shall pour
His blessings on your head.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Civil Air Patrol

The Civil Air Patrol (CAP) was founded less than a week before the invasion of Pearl Harbor. Its purpose was to use general aviation (light planes flown by civilian pilots) to supplement the domestic operations of the United States military. The CAP proved its worth by helping to patrol the borders and to spot submarines offshore. CAP planes actually sank a couple of subs and spotted many more.

After the war, the mission of the CAP shifted toward search and rescue, aerospace education, and cadet programs. Cadets are the junior members of CAP, aged from 12 to 21. They are taught military customs and courtesies, physical training, leadership, and character development. Cadets have been part of CAP’s mission since 1942.

During the mid-1990s I was planting a church northeast of Dallas, Texas, and I was looking for ways to involve myself in the community. That’s when I first became involved with CAP. The cadet program has always emphasized character development, which in those days was called moral leadership. This part of the program was normally taught by chaplains, but in those days a squadron commander could use community pastors as “visiting clergy.” I served as visiting clergy for over a year before joining CAP and then becoming the chaplain for Lakeshore Composite Squadron in Rockwall, Texas.

Because Civil Air Patrol is the civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force, chaplains must meet the same Department of Defense requirements as all military chaplains. They must have the equivalent of a Master of Divinity degree; they must be ordained; they must be endorsed by a recognized ecclesiastical body. My endorser is the American Council of Christian Churches through its constituent member, the Independent Churches Affiliated.

Those early years of CAP ministry were fruitful. While the purpose of a CAP chaplain is not to proselytize, opportunities for ministry do arise. People who are accustomed to talking to the chaplain because of his “ministry of presence” will naturally turn to him in times of spiritual and emotional perplexity. I eventually had the privilege of baptizing my squadron commander and his wife, and then pastoring them as long as they remained in the area.

In those days chaplains were in much demand. All cadets had to take moral leadership (character development) in order to be promoted. This program belonged to the chaplaincy, but chaplains to teach it were in short supply. The curriculum itself was sparse—barely suggestions toward covering a topic. Chaplains could select a topic and develop it as they saw fit, tailoring their presentations to the needs of the cadets in their individual squadrons. Since chaplains were highly trained professionals, this degree of independence was considered appropriate.

That began to change some years ago when the CAP decided to supplement the chaplain corps by adding Moral Leadership Officers (now called Character Development Instructors). These CDIs are not ministers—in fact, they are not even necessarily religious people. They do not have to be as highly educated as chaplains. Consequently, they cannot perform most of the functions of a chaplain. For example, they are not allowed to offer counsel in a privileged, legally confidential relationship. What they can do is to teach character development.

Because CDIs tend not to be as highly educated, the character development curriculum has become much more directive. Topics are chosen for each monthly lesson at the national level. All cadets in all squadrons hear the same presentations each month. The lessons themselves are written with a minimum of flexibility. Almost anyone could teach the material.

The result is that CAP now has something like double the number of CDIs than it has chaplains. In fact, the growing attitude is that chaplains are wasted if their main occupation is teaching Character Development. They are not as needed for this task as they once were.

Other responsibilities have grown in importance, however. New emphasis is being placed upon the importance of chaplains as leaders of Chaplain Support Teams involved in CAP missions (these missions may involve search and rescue or disaster relief). Also, the relationship between the CAP and the Air Force is closer than ever—CAP is reckoned as part of the “Total Force” of the USAF (I even wear the ribbon for the Air Force’s Organization Excellence Award). This relationship has resulted in a growing emphasis upon preparing CAP chaplains to take over stateside responsibilities that would otherwise be performed by active duty, reserve, or national guard chaplains. Most recently, CAP chaplains are being trained to take responsibility for military funerals.

The reason I joined CAP was exactly to work in my community at the squadron level. I’ve had no desire to become involved in the larger work of search and rescue or disaster relief, much less to advance up the chaplain chain of command. Increasingly, however, it looks as if these other activities are the price I’ll have to pay if I want to continue to minister in my local squadron.

By the way, my local squadron really is local. I live across the street from the Crystal, Minnesota, airport (KMIC). North Hennepin Composite Squadron (the first squadron in the nation to include cadets) is less than a five-minute walk from my front door. Nobody lives closer than I do. Nobody could.

In my opinion, CAP still provides a useful opportunity to minister to real people. Gaining opportunities for ministry, however, takes plenty of personal involvement. Over the past several months I’ve taken training to renew my ratings as mission scanner and mission observer. I’m pursuing training over the next several weeks to become rated as a mission chaplain. Along the way, I must also complete plenty of other training, such as the Region Chaplain College (this week’s big activity).

It’s a heavy investment, but I really need to do something like this. As a seminary professor I could go for weeks on end and never have a conversation with an unsaved person. CAP is my way of meeting people in the real world, of serving them, and of developing relationships into which I can speak the gospel. It’s not always easy, but few worthwhile things are. This activity in particular has opened the door to much fruitful ministry.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Captain of Thine Enlisted Host

Christopher Batty (1715–1797)

Captain of Thine enlisted host,
Display Thy glorious banner high;
The summons send from coast to coast,
And call a numerous army nigh.

A solemn jubilee proclaim
Proclaim the great Sabbatic day;
Assert the glories of Thy name;
Spoil Satan of his wished-for prey.

Bid, bid Thy heralds publish loud
The peaceful blessings of Thy reign;
And when they speak of sprinkled blood,
The mystery to the heart explain.

Chase the usurper from his throne,
Oh! chase him to his destined hell;
Stout-hearted sinners overcome;
And glorious in Thy temple dwell.

Fight for Thyself, O Jesus, fight,
The travail of Thy soul regain;
To each blind soul make darkness light,
To all let crooked paths be plain.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Associationalism

This weekend I am traveling to Lake Benton, Minnesota, to address the southwestern fellowship of the Minnesota Baptist Association (MBA). The MBA is the current permutation of what used to be the Minnesota Baptist Convention. It is the organization that W. B. Riley and Richard Volley Clearwaters managed to separate from the old Northern Baptist Convention. Later on, Clearwaters led the state’s Baptist fundamentalists to prevent the convention from being captured by neo-evangelicalism. It continues to perpetuate a solidly separatist position to this day. In fact, before I will be permitted to speak, I will be required to sign a document expressing my agreement with the ideals of separatist fundamentalism.

The MBA is divided into several regional fellowships. I’m not sure that I can remember them all, but I know that there are distinct southwestern and southeastern fellowships, and I believe that highway US-169 is just about the dividing line. The Twin Cities has its own fellowship. There is also a fellowship, or maybe more than one, for the northern part of the state. Northern Minnesota is sparsely populated and the churches are pretty spread out.

All these fellowships, including the MBA itself, are organized along the associational principle. Baptists have found different ways to cooperate. In some cases, their cooperation is on a purely case-by-case basis. Sometimes pastors form preachers’ fellowships. Sometimes Baptists establish independent service organizations that are not subject to local church control. Occasionally, a larger church will invite smaller churches to help in accomplishing some great purpose. Historically, however, Baptists have usually chosen to organize in church associations. The characteristic of associations is that the decisions are made by messengers from the churches that fellowship with the association.

The rationale for associationalism centers on the priority of the local church in the New Testament. During this age, God is not primarily doing His work through independent preachers or through loose alliances of individuals. Rather, God has created the local church as the primary agency through which He is accomplishing His purpose. The local church is the temple of God (1 Cor 3:16) and it is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15). Consequently, Baptists have usually concluded that when some aspect of God’s work is too large for a single congregation to accomplish, it is best pursued by churches working in cooperation.

Why do churches need to work together? One reason is education: few churches are able by themselves to train their next generation of leadership. Another reason is missions: raising support for missionaries, getting them to the field, and coordinating their activities requires specialized knowledge that few individual congregations possess. Pulpit exchange and transfer is another: associations provide a way of connecting pastorless churches with potential pastoral candidates. Furthermore, as governmental pressures are increasingly brought to bear against biblical Christianity, churches will experience a greater and greater need to encourage and support one another. An association provides a structure that formalizes such relationships. It provides for direct accountability to the fellowshipping churches while at the same time giving them a common voice.

Of course, associationalism is not the only way of meeting these needs. Nothing in scripture requires churches to form or fellowship with associations. Nevertheless, associations have often proven a useful tool in helping churches to accomplish those things that scripture does require them to do.

A good association also meets another need. Ministry is hard for both pastors and churches. We need to find ways to encourage one another. Associational meetings provide a venue for sharing ministry challenges, praying for each other, and finding mutual strength in the God of scripture. May I say that the southwestern fellowship does a good job in these areas.

Associations are organizations. With all organization a certain amount of planning and executing must take place. Otherwise, communication lapses, meetings don’t get planned, and nobody gets to fellowship. Many pastors are more expositors than they are administrators. Others are more gifted in relationships. Associations need at least some leaders who are gifted in planning and managing.

Of course, the danger is that planners and managers can take over the whole show. When that happens, the result is called conventionism, and it means that the planners and managers start to pry into the affairs of the churches themselves. The MBA and its regional fellowships have taken measures to guard against conventionism, resulting in fellowship meetings that have been conspicuously free of ecclesiastical politics.

I know nearly all the pastors in the southwestern fellowship. Many of them were my students. I also know many of the members of their churches. As I meet with them this weekend, my goal will be to give them scripture that will encourage them in the challenges that they face. Along the way we’ll talk informally about what our churches are going through and what our pastors are experiencing. We’ll discuss what we’ve been reading. We’ll enjoy table fellowship. We’ll probably laugh together, maybe weep together, and certainly pray together. By the time it’s all over, I’ll have received more encouragement than I’ve given. That is associationalism at its best.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Jesus, Lord, We Look to Thee

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

Jesus, Lord, we look to thee;
Let us in thy name agree;
Show thyself the Prince of Peace;
Bid our jars forever cease.

By thy reconciling love,
Every stumbling-block remove:
Each to each unite, endear;
Come, and spread thy banner here.

Make us of one heart and mind—
Courteous, pitiful, and kind;
Lowly, meek, in thought and word—
Altogether like our Lord.

Let us for each other care;
Each the other’s burden bear;
To thy church the pattern give;
Show how true believers live.

Free from anger and from pride,
Let us thus in God abide;
All the depths of love express—
All the heights of holiness.

Let us then with joy remove
To the family above;
On the wings of angels fly:
Show how true believers die.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

The Holy Spirit and Production of Scripture

According to 2 Timothy 3:16, all scripture is God-breathed or inspired. In other words, inspiration applies to the scriptures themselves, not to the process by which they were produced. The word inspired is a result word, not a process word. The writers were not inspired. The thoughts were not inspired. The various activities in which the biblical authors engaged while preparing to write were not inspired. Scripture itself was God-breathed, and that is what inspiration means.

Nevertheless, God did use a process that resulted in the inspired text. The Bible does not refer to this process as inspiration, but understanding the process helps to explain how the finished product (scripture) could be spoken of as God-breathed. This process is described in 2 Peter 1:20–21.

In the preceding context, Peter discusses the Mount of Transfiguration, where he and other apostles witnessed the splendor of the Lord Jesus and heard the heavenly voice (1:16–18). Having drawn attention to the magnificence of this incident with expressions like majesty, honor, glory, and excellent glory, Peter then pivots to the subject of scripture. His point is that the written scriptures constitute a firm and reliable word from God (1:19). This is the point that he will explain more fully in verses 20–21.

The thrust of Peter’s argument is that the written scripture (or, more specifically, every “prophecy of scripture”) constitutes a revelation from God. God truly spoke on the Mount of Transfiguration, but He speaks just as truly when He reveals Himself in the Bible. This is Peter’s whole point: the Bible is from God. The passage is about where scripture comes from. This emphasis is underlined by the leading verb in verse 20, which is the verb for becoming or coming into being. Peter means to explain how scripture came to be, i.e., how it originated, and he starts by stating how it did not come to be.

Most English translations take verse 20 to be saying that no scripture is of any “private interpretation” (KJV), “one’s own interpretation” (NASB), or “someone’s own interpretation” (ESV). Such a statement, however, makes little sense in a discussion of how scripture came to be. The noun that is translated interpretation (epilusis) can be used as a metaphor meaning to explain, which is how these translations take it. More literally the word means to release, as from prison or exile; to set free, as from fear; or to discharge, as from military service. In context, Peter is talking about how scripture originates, not about how it is to be understood. Consequently, the literal use of the term is far more germane to his point than the metaphorical use. Peter asserts that no scripture “came to be” of “its own unloosing.” To put his statement in a modern idiom, Peter is saying that the Bible didn’t write itself.

In the first half of verse 21, Peter makes this statement even more emphatic. Here he talks about how prophecies are produced, first by stating how they are not. Using a very strong negative, Peter denies that prophecies were ever produced (a past tense of phero) by human will. In other words, nobody ever simply decided to utter a prophecy or to write a passage of scripture. God spoke through human prophets and He produced scripture through human authors, but neither the decision to produce the message nor the content of the message itself was theirs.

Thus far, Peter has been speaking more about how scripture was not produced. It did not come to be of its own unloosing. It was never the result of any human decision. How, then, did scripture arrive? Peter offers his positive observations in the last half of verse 21.

He begins these observations with a strongly stated but, using this adversative to draw sharp contrast between how scripture did not originate and how it did. In contrast to scripture coming to be by its own unloosing, and in contrast to scripture ever being produced by an act of human will, people spoke from God.

The word for people (which most versions translate as men) is the generic word for humanity. As far as we know, all the authors of books of the Bible were males. Nevertheless, these documents contain within them multiple separate utterances that were originally produced by women (for example, the songs of Miriam, Deborah, and Mary). These, too, are now part of the “prophecy of scripture,” and their authors were among those through whom God spoke. Peter’s main point is that these people spoke from God. The message that they delivered was not merely their own; it was God’s message. The Bible is God’s Word.

How could this be? How could mere humans speak a message that was genuinely from God? Were they mere automatons, losing their individual identities as God used them as His mouthpieces? Not at all! Peter says that people spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. The participle that is translated as they were moved is a form of the same verb (phero) that appears earlier in the verse. Here it has the sense of being borne or carried along.

The word is used in a similar way in Acts 27. There, Paul and his companions are passengers on a ship that is caught in a storm. The sailors are far from inactive, but the tempest is overpowering. Although they do what they can to sail the ship, they eventually allow it to be driven along by the wind (Acts 27:17). The expression driven along is a form of the same verb that Peter uses in 2 Peter 1:21.

In other words, the recipients of prophecy and the authors of scripture were carried along or borne along by the Holy Spirit. This does not mean that they became mere recording devices for God. They were still the ones who did the actual speaking and writing. They retained their own personalities and even idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, the decision to communicate God’s message was not theirs but His, and God’s Holy Spirit assured that what was written was exactly what God wanted.

In other words, every scripture has two authors: a human and a divine. God is fully and completely the author of every word of scripture, but so is each human author of the text. The true humanity of the authors is on full display as each exhibits unique interests and writes in a unique style. The divine authorship of scripture is also on full display, as every word comes with the full authority of God.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Blessèd Jesus, at Thy Word

Tobias Clausnitzer (1619–1684), tr. Catherine Winkworth (1827–1878)

Blessèd Jesus, at Thy Word
we are gathered all to hear Thee;
let our hearts and souls be stirred
now to seek and love and fear Thee;
by Thy teachings sweet and holy
drawn from earth to love Thee solely.

All our knowledge, sense, and sight
lie in deepest darkness shrouded,
till Thy Spirit breaks our night
with the beams of truth unclouded;
Thou alone to God canst win us;
Thou must work all good within us.

Glorious Lord, Thyself impart!
Light of Light from God proceeding,
open Thou our ears and heart,
help us by Thy Spirit’s pleading,
hear the cry Thy people raises,
hear and bless our pray’rs and praises.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
praise to Thee and adoration!
Grant that we Thy Word may trust
and obtain true consolation
while we here below must wander,
till we sing Thy praises yonder.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Inspiration

When people think about the inspiration of the Bible, they tend to imagine it as a process. They think of inspiration as a way of stating how the Bible got to be what it is. Trying to answer the how question is one of the reasons that we are surrounded by so-called “theories of inspiration.” Some theories suggest that God gave ideas to the writers, which they then expressed in their own words. Others argue that God simply dictated every word of the finished text. Still others speak in terms of inspired writers rather than an inspired text. Some talk about documents other than the Bible being inspired to some degree, and some see the Bible as inspired to varying degrees. To clear up these misunderstandings, our doctrine of inspiration should rest firmly upon the Bible’s own use of that term.

The only biblical passage that speaks directly about the inspiration of the Bible is 2 Timothy 3:16. Unfortunately, the older translations tend to obscure the meaning of the text. Both the King James and the New King James versions read, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable….” In this translation the first verb is given, which does not even appear in the Greek text. Alternatively, the American Standard Version of 1901 reads, “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable….” This translation seems to imply that some scriptures are inspired while others are not, and that only the inspired scriptures are profitable.

This verse is critical for defining a biblical doctrine of inspiration. Given the variety of ways in which it has been interpreted, how should we understand it? The answer is that we will grasp its meaning correctly only if we pay close attention to its grammar and structure.

The first thing to notice about the verse is that the Greek text does not contain a verb. That is not an uncommon occurrence: Greek sentences have ways of implying verbs rather than stating them outright. In this case, the implied verb must be some form of the verb to be. The verse is stating that every (or all) scripture is something.

But what is it? The verse contains two adjectives: inspired and profitable. This is the point at which a problem arises. Are both adjectives to be understood as predicates of every scripture? Or is inspired a qualifier that narrows the scope of the scripture that is in view? In other words, should the verse be translated, “Every scripture is inspired and profitable,” or should it be translated, “Every inspired scripture is profitable”? The first usage is called the predicate usage; the second is the attributive usage.

As shown above, Bible translations have gone in both directions. How, then, is an interpreter to make a choice? The hard work has already been done. During the late 1970s Daniel Wallace wrote his Th.M. thesis for Dallas Seminary on this problem. He later published the results as, “The Relation of Adjective to Noun in Anarthrous Constructions in the New Testament,” Novum Testamentum 26 (1984) 128-167. Wallace decisively showed that in constructions like that of 2 Timothy 3:16, both adjectives must be taken as predicate adjectives.

In other words, the verse is predicating two properties that apply equally to every (or all) scripture. The first is that all scripture is inspired. The second is that all scripture is profitable. For the moment we can set aside the discussion of what the verse means when it says that all scripture is profitable. What we want to do is to explore the meaning of all scripture being inspired.

The Greek term translated inspired is a compound word that Paul appears to have coined just for this occasion. The word is theopneustos, which means something like God-breathed (see the New International Version for this exact translation). What the verse affirms is that every scripture possesses the quality or property of being God-breathed.

The meaning of the text is not that God has breathed something into scripture, as if scripture might stand on its own as a human product apart from being God-breathed. Instead, the verse is teaching that every scripture is itself breathed by God. A more interpretive but very legitimate way of translating this verse is to say that all scripture is “breathed out by God.” Indeed, the International Standard Version uses just that language.

Inspiration, then, does not answer a how question but a what question. It does not tell us how scripture came into existence but what scripture is. It is God-breathed. It is the product of God, something that proceeds from God Himself.

To state it differently, the subject of inspiration is the scripture itself. Scripture is inspired—all of it. The writers are not inspired. The ideas are not inspired. The scriptures (i.e., the writings) themselves are inspired.

Since inspiration applies to the writings, not the writers, then it must involve the words. One cannot have writings without words, sentences, grammar, and syntax. If the writings are inspired, then all these matters are included within the orbit of inspiration. This teaching is sometimes called verbal inspiration.

Furthermore, since inspiration applies to all scripture (the entire Bible), then there are no degrees of inspiration. Either a writing is inspired or it is not. Either it is breathed by God or it is not. Consequently, the whole of scripture—the entire Bible—is inspired. This teaching is sometimes called plenary inspiration.

Finally, if all scripture is God-breathed, i.e., it is the product of God and proceeds from God Himself, and if God is incapable of error, then scripture must include no error in anything that it affirms. Of course, the Bible might inerrantly record the errors that others have committed (and it does), but the Bible does not affirm those errors. A necessary consequent of verbal, plenary inspiration is the inerrancy of scripture.

2 Timothy 3:16 provides a very strong statement of the divine origin of scripture. This statement does not contradict in any way the genuinely human authorship of the biblical text. Exploring that issue, however, would take us beyond the scope of our present discussion. Perhaps we can return to it at some future point.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


‘Twas on That Dark, That Doleful Night

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

‘Twas on that dark, that doleful night
When pow’rs of earth and hell arose
Against the Son, our God’s delight,
And friends betrayed him to his foes.

Before the mournful scene began,
He took the bread and blessed and broke.
What love through all his actions ran!
What wondrous words of grace he spoke!

“This is my body, slain for sin;
Receive and eat the living food.”
Then took the cup and blessed the wine:
“‘Tis the new cov’nant in my blood.”

“Do this,” he said, “till time shall end,
In mem’ry of your dying friend;
Meet at my table and record
The love of your departed Lord.”

Jesus, your feast we celebrate;
We show your death; we sing your name
Till you return and we shall eat
The marriage supper of the Lamb.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Seek the Peace of the City

We all oppose something, but there’s opposition and then there’s opposition. I can think of at least three levels at which our opposition can be pursued. Which level we employ is not simply a tactical or even strategic decision. It is a moral choice.

Though the phrase seems antiquated now, we used to talk about the “loyal opposition.” The loyal opposition consisted of members of the party that was out of power. They opposed on principle certain goals, policies, and initiatives of the other party. Nevertheless, the loyal opposition recognized a large sphere of common interest. This common interest was grounded in both their common humanity and community. Within the sphere of this common interest they committed themselves to work constructively with, rather than against, their opponents. Loyal opponents could cooperate to solve problems and make advances, and both parties could legitimately claim credit for any progress. It was possible to oppose some principles and policies while still to have common interests.

Then someone figured out that more votes could be gained by pointing out an opponent’s failures than by pointing to one’s own successes. This tactic was particularly useful for candidates or members of parties that had few actual successes. From then on, opposition became less about principles and more about making one’s opponent look as bad as possible. This new level of opposition shifted the focus from opposing principles and programs to demonizing one’s opponents.

For the demonizer, all aspects of an opponent’s life are fair game: family activities, personal idiosyncrasies, social standing, even tangential acquaintances and loose affiliations. Failures of policy are particularly celebrated as evidence of an opponent’s incompetence or even ill will. Demonizers try to  portray their opponents as flatly evil, and failing that, they will depict them in the most awkward and ridiculous ways possible. In the absence of a unique positive and constructive agenda of their own, demonizers hope for their opponents’ political and even personal failures.

One more level remains. Once people discover that they can flourish by demonizing their opponents, they begin to rejoice in those failures and even to anticipate them. Once they begin to hope for failures, they find that they can covertly sabotage their opponents’ initiatives. At this point they have become not simply demonizers, but destroyers.

Destroyers promote the failure of their opponents by as many means as possible. They quietly subvert even good and useful policies so that their opponents can be presented as incompetent or malicious. They consistently deride their opponents’ initiatives as pointless, wrongheaded, or even immoral, not because they necessarily are, but simply because they are advocated by their opponents.

The problem with destruction is that nobody can consistently subvert all of an opponent’s policies, programs, and initiatives without subverting the common good. By attacking the persons and subverting the programs of their opponents, destroyers attack order itself. Destroyers no longer operate as the loyal opposition—they are almost by definition disloyal. Their chosen avenue to power is to make everything worse for everyone, hoping that when things get bad enough their opponents will be blamed and repudiated.

In a two-party system, each party finds itself in power only some of the time. Consequently, each party must find ways to oppose the other. Ideally, the goal is to oppose the other party’s most obnoxious policies while remaining loyal to common principles and interests. In the past, demonizers and especially destroyers inhabited the extreme fringes of the parties. In recent years, however, and especially in America, the balance has shifted. Both parties have found that demonization and even destruction can disable their opponents, and so demonization and destruction have grown within the mainstream.

This situation presents an opportunity for Christians to display their commitments. When lies, half-truths, and innuendo become the medium of political exchange, Christians ought to model truth-telling. When cynicism dominates the political landscape, Christians need to model sincerity. When suspicion and vituperation are the ordinary mode of discourse, Christians must model charity; at minimum they must grant their opponents the benefit of the doubt. Most importantly, when subversion and sabotage have become powerful political weapons, Christians must model a commitment to the common good.

Joseph must have objected to elements within Pharaoh’s court, but he was able to work for the common good. Daniel certainly disapproved of some Babylonian and Medo-Persian policies and initiatives, but he was able to work for the common good. When the nation of Judah was sent into captivity, Jeremiah wrote to tell the exiles to build houses, plant gardens, marry, bear children, and most importantly, to seek the peace of the city where they were captive, for their peace was bound up with its peace (Jer 29:4–7). In other words, Jeremiah wanted them to stress the common good.

Christians in this world are no less aliens and exiles than the children of Israel were in Babylon. Like them, we live under regimes committed to some policies of which we must disapprove. Yet like them, we must also recognize that the order offered by those regimes is necessary for us to live quiet and peaceable lives (1 Tim 2:1–2). Consequently, we must pray for the success of the order in which we find ourselves. To the extent that we are able, we must work for its success—not in every policy, but with respect to the general welfare, the common good. It is permissible and even necessary for us to be loyal opponents, but we must never permit ourselves to become demonizers or destroyers.

To cite one example, my congressional representative is at the opposite end of the political spectrum from mine. She advocates many policies and initiatives that I cannot support and must oppose. I did not vote for her, nor shall I. Nevertheless, she is entitled to a level of human dignity in the way that I speak about her (1 Pet 2:17). Furthermore, she merits the respect that is due to her office (Rom 13:7). Most importantly, where her policies genuinely promote the common good (as they sometimes do), I have a duty to lend my support and to help her succeed.

Of course we can confront wrongdoing where it really occurs. Of course we ought to oppose policies that are genuinely wrong and harmful. By itself, however, opposition solves nothing and it builds nothing. Nothing permanent can be erected upon destruction, including our reputation. Let us be known, not for what we tear down, but for the good that we do (Matt 5:16).

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


And Shall We Still Be Slaves

Philip Doddridge (1702–1751)

And shall we still be slaves,
And in our fetters lie,
When summon’d by a voice divine
T’assert our liberty?

Did Christ the Savior bleed,
Our freedom to obtain?
And shall we trample on his blood,
And glory in our chain?

Shall we go on to sin,
Because thy grace abounds;
Or crucify the Lord again,
And open all his wounds?

Forbid it, mighty God!
Nor let it e’er be said,
That those, for whom thy Son has died,
In vice are lost and dead.

The man that durst despise
The law that Moses brought,
Behold! how terriby he dies
For his presumptuous fault.

But sorer vengeance falls
On that rebellious race,
Who hate to hear when Jesus calls,
And dare resist his grace.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

A Shift In Reading

My friend Dave was ordained in the mid-1980s. The offering for his ordination was supposed to go toward his library. To make the most of it, he decided that he wanted to visit the Christian publishing houses and used bookstores in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He invited me to go along. We lived in Iowa, which placed Grand Rapids within a reasonable drive. It turned out to be a good trip from which both of us returned laden with books.

Dave brought along a new toy for the trip. Somebody had given him a Radio Shack TRS80 Model 100 computer. At about two inches thick, this model featured a small screen inset just above the keyboard. I’m pretty sure the computer would qualify as the very first affordable laptop and perhaps even as the first tablet. What fascinated me was that Dave could read electronic books off that small screen. I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if somebody could design a way to carry a library in a little computer like that?”

Fast forward three and a half decades. As I type, I am sitting in my study, where I am surrounded by between two and three thousand books. They occupy shelf space around all the walls of the room. I’ve even added a bank of bookshelves down the middle of the floor. They take lots of space. They’ve also cost lots of money. Over the years I have invested well into five figures to accumulate these volumes.

From a financial point of view, these books are now nearly worthless. A small handful may appeal to collectors, but I can hardly give most of them away to today’s seminarians. An entire shift has taken place in the way that we read.

Two study tools have propelled this shift. The first is Logos, an electronic library from Faithlife company. I received Logos 2 at a demonstration seminar for free many years ago. The price was right, but I hardly used it because the interface was opaque to me. With subsequent releases, however, the Logos design became much more intuitive. I began to employ it for my serious study, starting with its Greek and Hebrew tools. Its main competitor was BibleWorks, which was more powerful for working in the original languages. I had both programs, but I ended up using Logos for two reasons. First, it was just easier to navigate. Second, it offered many more auxiliary tools such as commentaries, dictionaries, and biblical and theological tools of all sorts.

Consequently, my Logos library began to grow. I bought commentary sets, scholarly journals, and systematic theologies. At one point Faithlife introduced a parallel line of publications for the humanities called Noet; I began to accumulate works of philosophy, literature, and history. While Faithlife eventually stopped producing Noet, some of the same volumes are still marketed under Faithlife Ebooks. Most of my “serious” library is now stored in Logos, and my collection is approaching 7,000 volumes.

The main problem with Logos ebooks is that they are often as expensive as, and sometimes more expensive than, their print equivalents. Even so, given a choice between a print book and a Logos book, I will choose Logos. For one thing, the book travels with me wherever I can take my computer. For another, I like the ability to cut and paste the text. Furthermore, every Logos book is tagged and cross-referenced with every other Logos book. To give Logos credit, they do give away free books every month, and they put even more on sale cheaply. Overall, I spend less using Logos than I would spend on print.

When I was in seminary, our dean once told us, “If you haven’t bought a typewriter yet, you haven’t prayed about it.” Now I would say the same thing about Logos. It is an indispensable tool for anyone who wishes to study, teach, and preach the Word of God and the system of faith. But it is not the only one.

Almost as useful is the second tool, Amazon’s Kindle. I was introduced to Kindle by one of our students about ten years ago. At first I was skeptical; software platforms come and go. Kindle, however, now dominates the ebook market, and it appears to be here to stay.

I don’t use an actual Kindle device, though I hear that they are quite good. I simply run the Kindle software on my personal computers. The program is free, as are many, many good books. In fact, one of the selling points for Kindle books has been that, in the past, they have been substantially less expensive than their print equivalents. That’s changing and prices are rising, but Kindle books are usually still a bit cheaper.

The software is not as versatile as Logos. For example, many books come with “Kindle locations” instead of real page numbers, which can be annoying. I find that sometimes I will read a book in Kindle, and then need to hunt for pages that I wish to cite from the print version. Nevertheless, Amazon offers books on Kindle that Logos does not, and the portability of an electronic library makes the inconveniences worthwhile. My Kindle library now numbers into five digits. Plenty of those are free books that are nothing but junk reading, but thousands of them are substantial volumes. Some are books that I could not access in any other way. Kindle is a useful tool for pastors, scholars, and students of the Bible.

While it isn’t a separate study tool, I should mention that I also use ebooks in one other format. Google Books and the Internet Archive have scanned some of the nation’s great libraries into PDF format. These PDF scans reproduce the pages of the original volumes. Sometimes one can even see marginalia left by earlier readers. The number of public domain texts available from these two sites is genuinely overwhelming. I am not sure how many books I have in my scanned PDF library, but they must number several thousand. A good PDF reader like the Adobe Acrobat program gives readers the ability to highlight and annotate these PDF books, and I take full advantage of that ability. PDF books are bulky files, so they live on a separate, detachable hard drive rather than my local drive.

Some people cannot read comfortably from a computer screen. That has never been my problem. As my eyes grow older and dimmer, I have come to appreciate the brightness of the computer. I’m now using a Microsoft Surface, and I love knowing that I have access to my library and study tools any time I wish. I can study at my desk, in the car, or even from a park bench. I can now carry tens of thousands of books with me as easily as I used to carry a single paperback. I could not have imagined in 1987 that I would be able to use tools like these on every single working day.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


One There Is, Above All Others

John Newton (1725–1807)

One there is, above all others,
well deserves the name of Friend;
His is love beyond a brother’s,
costly, free, and knows no end;
they who once His kindness prove,
find it everlasting love!

Which of all our friends to save us,
could or would have shed their blood?
But our Jesus died to have us
reconciled in Him to God;
this was boundless love indeed!
Jesus is a Friend in need.

Men, when raised to lofty stations,
often know their friends no more;
slight and scorn their poor relations
though they valued them before.
But our Savior always owns
those whom He redeemed with groans.

When He lived on earth abased,
Friend of sinners was His name;
now, above all glory raised,
He rejoices in the same;
still He calls them brethren, friends,
and to all their wants attends.

Could we bear from one another
what He daily bears from us?
Yet this glorious Friend and Brother
loves us though we treat Him thus;
though for good we render ill,
He accounts us brethren still.

O for grace our hearts to soften!
Teach us, Lord, at length to love;
we, alas! forget too often
what a Friend we have above;
but when home our souls are brought,
we will love Thee as we ought.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Is Debt Still Slavery?

Proverbs 22:7 says that the rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender. This counsel runs contrary to North American sensibilities. The most recent figures (for 2020) indicate that household debt in the United States totals $14.35 trillion, for a mean household indebtedness of $145,000. Of that number, mortgages account for the majority—about $9.86 trillion. Even with mortgages subtracted, however, household debt runs to nearly $4.5 trillion. Of that amount, Americans owe $1.36 trillion on car loans and another $807 billion in credit card debt.

These numbers are genuinely staggering. They are for household debt, not commercial debt. The average household in the United States earns only $61,000 plus change—less than half of its indebtedness. No wonder many Americans feel like they are impoverished—their income is going to service their debt.

Some people want to argue that Proverbs 22:7 no longer applies. These people point out that in previous generations debtors could literally be put in prison. They could lose their personal freedom, or even the freedom of their children, who could be taken as slaves to pay the debt. Interest rates were exorbitant. Now, these objectors argue, laws limit rates of interest, and they protect both the freedom and basic property of the borrower. This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that in the modern financial system, borrowers are no longer slaves to lenders.

We can certainly celebrate the protections that modern laws provide. Nevertheless, those protections do not void the warning of Proverbs 22:7. If a household earns $61,000 and owes $145,000, then it cannot possibly pay off its debt for more than two years. During those years, everything the debtor earns goes to the lender. In a very literal sense, the borrower is not working for himself but for the lender. In that sense, he is a slave.

Very few people can actually put more than two years’ income into paying off their debts. They must also buy food, clothing, gasoline, and other necessities. They will also pay their taxes, purchase various insurance policies, and usually spend some amount on simple enjoyments. Consequently, they are going to have to stretch out their payments over many more years—perhaps even over decades. While they are making those payments, however, interest on their loans will continue to accrue, stretching out the arc of their repayment even further. For that entire time, these borrowers will be working to pay off the lender. In that sense, they will be slaves.

The only time that this kind of borrowing makes good sense is when it meets two conditions. The first condition is that the borrowed money is going to purchase something that is genuinely necessary and not merely something desirable. The second condition is that the item being purchased is one that will either appreciate in value or whose value can be improved. In that case, the increased value of the item will at least help to offset the cost of the loan. Apart from these two conditions, debt should be avoided.

Of all forms of indebtedness, credit card debt is one of the worst. This does not mean that credit cards are necessarily bad. They are convenient when they are used as a cash substitute, which means that the cardholder pays off the balance at the end of each month. Any balance carried on a credit card, however, will be charged a relatively high rate of interest. The combination of large balances and minimum monthly payments is a surefire way to enslave oneself financially for years to come.

What is the alternative to borrowing? It can be summed up in one word: contentment. God wants His people to be contented with His provision. Creature comforts can be legitimate purchases, but they are not necessities. They should never be acquired on credit. Instead, if we wish for something beyond what we genuinely need, then we should save up for it ahead of time. Then we should purchase only what we can pay for. Otherwise, it is a virtue to be content with what the Lord provides.

Another virtue that will help us to avoid debt is thrift. We should shop frugally even for necessities. Often, new shoes and clothes can be purchased in thrift stores at a remarkable discount. Furniture and tools can come from yard sales or consignment shops. Americans give plenty of stuff away or sell it for pennies on the dollar, and much of it is barely used (or not used at all). If we are too proud to avail ourselves of such venues, then we are indeed too proud.

Freedom from debt truly does liberate God’s people. It sets them free to give to the needy and to the Lord’s work. It sets them free to make provision for emergencies and for the time when they will no longer be able to earn a living. It sets them free to follow God’s leading into a new sphere of life and ministry. The borrower is still a slave to the lender, and it is a slavery that God’s people should avoid whenever possible.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Come All Ye Mourning Pilgrims Dear

John Adam Granade (1763?-1807)

Come all ye mourning pilgrims dear,
Who’re bound for Canaan’s land;
Take courage and fight valiantly,
Stand fast with sword in hand!
Our Captain’s gone before us,
Our Father’s only Son;
Then pilgrims dear, pray do not fear,
But let us follow on.

We have a howling wilderness
To Canaan’s happy shore,
A land of dearth, and pits, and snares,
While chilling winds do roar.
But Jesus will be with us
And guard us by the way;
Though enemies examine us,
He’ll teach us what to say.

The pleasant fields of Paradise
Are glorious to behold;
The valleys clad in living green,
The city paved with gold,
The tree of life with heavenly fruit
Behold how rich they stand!
Blow, gentle gales, and bear my soul
Away to Canaan’s land!

Already to my raptured sight
The blissful fields arise,
And plenty spreads her smiling stores
Inviting to my eyes.
O sweet abode of endless rest,
I soon shall travel there;
Nor earth, nor all her empty joys
Shall long detain me here.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Most Interesting Reading of 2020: Part Two

Last week I began listing the “most interesting books” that I read last year. As you can tell, the list is eclectic. While I read mostly in my discipline, much of the reading that I find interesting is outside it. Here’s the rest of my list.

Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage. New York: Basic Books, 2015. 357pp.

In September 1914 Ernest Shackleton set sail to lead an expedition across Antarctica. Before he reached the continent, ice trapped and sank his ship. The crew camped on ice floes, not touching land for 497 days. After reaching the inhospitable Elephant Island, Shackleton and five companions from the crew took a twenty-foot boat across more than 800 (land) miles of open sea to South Georgia Island. They climbed and then descended from the island’s unexplored mountain range using only fifty feet of rope and a carpenter’s adze. From there, Shackleton tried three times to lead rescuers to Elephant Island. He finally reached his crew at the end of August 1916. Every member of his expedition survived. This story, told in very readable prose by Alfred Lansing, is a testimony to the possibilities of human endurance.

Leslie, Edward E. The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clark Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1998. 516pp.

Before reading this book I’d heard about Quantrill, but I’d never read much about him. The book provides considerable biographical detail but its chief value is its depiction of the “border warfare” between Missouri and Kansas. This warfare was producing atrocities on both sides long before the South seceded from the Union. The resulting scars were part of what Abraham Lincoln had in mind when he spoke of the need to “bind up the nation’s wounds.” Leslie’s depiction of Quantrill helps the reader understand both why this healing was necessary and why it was so hard.

Michener, James A. Tales of the South Pacific. West Bloomfield, MI: Franklin Library, 1986 repr. 415pp.

________. The Novel: A Novel. New York: Random House, 1991. 446pp.

Last year I read two works by James A. Michener. The first, Tales of the South Pacific, is his memoir of the Pacific Campaign of the Second World War. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and became the basis for the musical South Pacific. It was my first introduction to Michener’s writing, and I read it partly because he served in the same theater of war as some of my family members. Of the volumes that I’ve read about the war in the Pacific, this was by far the most engaging.

Because I enjoyed the first volume so much, I decided that I’d like to try another work by Michener. I picked up The Novel because I assumed that a book with that title must be about writing novels—after all, Michener’s written a bunch of them. On the contrary, the book is a novel about a novel, or more particularly, about a novelist. It does provide an inside look at the publishing industry as it stood immediately before the Internet changed everything. In a backhanded way, it also provides a glimpse into Michener’s own literary theory.

Murray, Douglas. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019/2020. 384pp.

This book was good enough that I read it twice. Murray could hardly be called a conservative, but he does several things well. First, he explains the theoretical roots of contemporary identity politics as embodied in Critical Theory and the “woke” movement. Second, he surveys the movement itself. Third, he draws attention to the excesses and internal contradictions of “wokeness.” Murray also prescribes an agenda for responding to the madness of this movement. This is not a book for the faint of heart: Murray deals with his subject matter thoroughly and even graphically. It is a book that every pastor ought to read.

Peterson, Jordan B. Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Abingdon-on-Thames, UK: Routledge, 1999. 564pp.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Jordan Peterson is a Christian, this book ought to answer that question for you. Peterson believes that myth is unavoidable, that it is built into the very structure of both knowing and being. He also believes that myth is essential for making sense of the world. He believes that Christianity is myth. This volume is probably his most theoretical, but reading it provides valuable background for understanding his more practical works.

Rumsfeld, Donald. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. New York: Sentinel, 2011. 883pp.

Rumsfeld served three terms as a congressional representative, as Secretary of Defense under both Gerald Ford and George W. Bush, and as an adviser to Richard Nixon. Here he offers his memoirs, including a fairly extensive look into the administrations with which he served. He depicts the rivalries, both interpersonal and interdepartmental, that shaped government policy. He is hardest on the press, but not unfairly so. Unlike most memoirs, this is not an exercise in self-justification. Instead, Rumsfeld tries to acknowledge his mistakes and to explain why things happened as they did.

Sowell, Thomas. A Personal Odyssey. New York: Free Press, 2000. 320pp.

I’ll read anything that I can get my hands on by Thomas Sowell. This book is different than most of his work, however. It is his autobiography. It details his rise from poverty to scholarship in some of the nation’s most prestigious universities while at the same time telling the story of his shift from Marxism to a species of conservatism. As usual, the book contains valuable advice for those readers who are clearheaded enough to heed it.

Waymeyer, Matt. Amillennialism and the Age to Come. The Woodlands, TX: Kress Biblical Resources, 2016. 326pp.

Matt Waymeyer writes this book to defend premillennialism against a new generation of amillennialists. His primary target is Kim Riddlebarger’s A Case for Amillennialism. Waymeyer argues that biblical prophecies cannot adequately be explained on a simple two-age theory (the present age and the age to come). Prophecies about the age to come cannot be read coherently without inserting some intermediate form of the kingdom before the final and everlasting form of the kingdom. This book is now the state of the art for premillennialism.

Wiesel, Elie. Dawn. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. 64pp.

Dawn is a very short work of historical fiction. The setting is Palestine during the closing years of the British Mandate. Zionists have been fighting the British for Israeli independence. Wiesel depicts them as terrorists. The British are threatening to execute a captured Jewish fighter. The Zionists in turn capture a British officer and threaten retaliation if the execution takes place. Dawn is the story of the final night as seen through the eyes of the young Israeli who has been ordered to carry out the execution. This book is a remarkable piece of writing from a remarkable perspective.

That’s my list of “most interesting books” from 2020. My tastes are admittedly odd. You may like some of these books, but you might hate others. In any event, I wish you happy reading during 2021.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


The Windows

George Herbert (1593–1633)

Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.

But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
More reverend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.

Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Most Interesting Reading of 2020

Lots of people produce recommended reading lists. Typically these are bibliographies of the books that the compiler found most useful. The lists are often labeled something like “Best Books of…” or “Best Books about….”

I do my list a bit differently: I give you a list of the reading that I found most interesting, even if it was completely useless. Furthermore, this reading might qualify as most interesting in various ways. Perhaps it was boring but particularly helpful. Perhaps it was useless but conspicuously funny. Perhaps it was so outstandingly bad as to become amusing.

What I’m saying is that my list is idiosyncratic. It is certainly not a list of recommended reading. You may find some of the books amusing or helpful, but you may find them tepid, off-putting, or even offensive. They are listed here only because I, and I alone, found them interesting. Read at your own risk, but here’s the first part of my list of “Most Interesting Books I Read During 2020.”

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Part I, Q 1–26. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. London: Burn, Gates, and Washburn, 1920. 366pp.

While I had already read the McDermott abridgment of the Summa, I thought that this standard version would be worth sampling. In fact, it was easier to follow. The length of the entire Summa Theologica can be daunting, but it is broken down into manageable parts. Thomas is not difficult to read, but you do have to know how to read him: when he is asking a question and limiting it, when he is giving answers with which he will later disagree, and when he is giving his own answers. You must also catch his definitions and pay attention to the way he expands upon them. In this first volume Thomas deals with the doctrine of God. It is a worthy statement of classical theism.

Bordewich, Fergus M. The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017. 416pp.

High school courses in American history teach that the US Constitution was worked out through a series of compromises—and that’s true as far as it goes. In this history Bordewich shows the competing interests fully at work, and he also sets them against a background affected by difficult travel, harsh weather, economic hardship, and competition between leading cities. I came away from this book marveling that the United States were able to adopt a constitution at all, let alone one that would endure for more than two centuries.

Dolezal, James E. All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian Theism. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2017. 176pp.

Classical theism is the belief that God is simple, eternal, immutable, omniscient, and impassible. Present-day evangelical theologians are tripping over one another to find ways to attenuate this classical perspective. Dolezal resists this revisionism and offers a brief, readable defense of classical theism on both biblical and systematic grounds. This is a book that every pastor needs to read.

Guyon, Jeanne. Autobiography of Madame Guyon. London: Kegan Paul, 1898. 338pp.

The works of Mme. Guyon are often viewed as classics of devotional literature. I began reading her autobiography with high hopes for edification. What I found, however, is that the work is offensively Romanist in doctrine, absurdly self-absorbed in its perspective, and annoyingly whining in its tone. It may contain a spiritual insight here or there, but frankly this book undermined any confidence that I might have placed in Guyon’s spiritual counsel. If I were publishing a list of “Most Annoying Books,” Guyon’s autobiography would have a place on it. I would rather read Edwards or Law for edification any day.

Hare, Robert D. Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. 236pp.

While I subscribe to biblical counseling, I also recognize a value in descriptions of behavior provided by careful observers. Hare has spent a career observing psychopaths; in fact, he was responsible for developing the standard instrument for detecting psychopathy. This book provides a useful definition and overview of psychopathic or sociopathic behavior. The author also speculates as to causes and treatments for psychopathy. Warning: this book contains factual descriptions of disturbing behavior that you may find offensive. I did. But the descriptions are necessary if the phenomenon is to be understood.

Hayek, Friedrich A. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 688pp.

Hayek did not wish to be called a conservative, but he was nevertheless one of the three founders of the modern conservative intellectual movement. This work is not his best-known volume, and at nearly 700 pages it can seem a bit intimidating. Granted, it is a manly book. Nevertheless, it is a valuable book, even a very valuable book. It is essentially a sustained argument against the totalitarian state and against the “planned economy” that leads to it. You’ve probably read The Road to Serfdom (and if not, why not?). If so, you really ought to read The Constitution of Liberty. Of the two, it is the greater book.

Henry, Marie. The Secret Life of Hannah Whitall Smith. Grand Rapids: Chosen/Zondervan, 1984. 186pp.

Hannah Whitall Smith was one of the founders and leading authors of the Keswick movement. She continues to be viewed as a leading devotional writer. Marie Henry sets out to produce a sympathetic biography of this perplexing woman. Along the way Henry provides evidence that is, or ought to be, devastating to Smith’s standing as a Christian leader. Smith was a woman who was wrong in so many ways (her universalism, for example) that it is difficult to see why she should be ceded any level of spiritual authority. The book also provides interesting historical detail about two sons-in-law, Bertrand Russell and Bernard Berenson, both of whom became intellectual leaders of anti-Christianity.

Kessler, Ronald. In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with the Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect. New York: Crown Forum, 2010. 285pp.

This book is partly a history of the Secret Service. It is partly a description of the kind of lives that Secret Service agents are required to lead. It is partly a glimpse into the managerial culture that governs the Secret Service. It is partly a narrative of how various presidents and their families have used and related to the Secret Service. The result is that agents end up looking pretty good, the organizational culture of the service ends up looking pretty bad, and various protectees end up looking either good or bad. This book was both enjoyable and instructive. Let the reader beware: Kessler places human coarseness fully on display.

At this point we’re about halfway through my list of most interesting reading from 2020. I’ll wrap up the list in next week’s In the Nick of Time. I’ve just noticed that this week’s list contains no fiction, but I promise to correct that deficiency in the second installment.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


They Cast Their Nets in Galilee

William Alexander Percy (1885-1942)

They cast their nets in Galilee
Just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisher-folk,
Before the Lord came down.

Contented, peaceful fishermen,
Before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brimful, and broke them too.

Young John who trimmed the flapping sail,
Homeless, in Patmos died.
Peter, who hauled the teeming net,
Head down was crucified.

The peace of God, it is no peace,
But strife closed in the sod.
Yet, brothers, pray for but one thing—
The marvelous peace of God.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Regional Delicacies

Last week I wrote about foods that I’ve sampled as I’ve traveled around the world. As it happens, I missed a favorite: Wienerschnitzel, which I have enjoyed right in Wien (Vienna). Did you know that it’s sold as a fast food there?

International travel is no longer part of my agenda, but I haven’t given up on unique dining experiences. The United States is a big country in which each region seems to offer delicacies of its own. I’ll list a few of my favorites below.

I was reared in eastern Michigan where I grew up eating Kogel’s pickled ring bologna. When my uncle would take me fishing, a ring of pickled bologna and a tube of saltines made for lunch. Only subsequently did I realize that some people don’t care for pickled meat. I think it’s great.

Another Michigan favorite is Vernor’s ginger ale. Vernor’s is one of the few golden ginger ales still in production—a completely different drink from the pale, tasteless stuff sold by—well, let’s not mention names—“North of the border desiccated.” I’m happy to be able to find Vernor’s in Minnesota now.

Another east Michigan favorite is the coney dog. For all its problems, the city of Flint still has the greatest variety of the best coney dogs on earth. Made with Kogel’s Vienna wieners and a dry chili sauce, coney dogs have been offered in diners like Angelo’s and Starlight for decades. Each diner has its own secret sauce. I’m OK with any of them, and I’ll eat mine with onions and mustard for a few moments of bliss.

One more eastern Michigan delicacy is blue moon ice cream. I don’t know what they put in it to get that flavor. It almost seems citrusy, but not quite. I first tried blue moon ice cream in Pinconning as a pre-teen. It has been one of my favorites ever since.

Driving into the Upper Peninsula is like traveling to an entirely different state with its own culture and cuisine. The most characteristic food in the UP is the pasty, a kind of meat pie folded into a turnover and baked. Traditional recipes call for beef or pork with rutabagas in the filling, but many pasty shops have experimented with various combinations. Now you can find chicken pasties, breakfast pasties with egg and bacon, and even pizza pasties that are virtually indistinguishable from calzones.

When I was thirteen my family moved to Iowa, where I first encountered the pork tenderloin sandwich. Back then, these savory treats were only available in a few Midwestern states. This sandwich begins with a tenderloin cutlet, pounded flat, breaded, fried, and served on a bun. It makes a perfect meal on a summer evening.

Later I pastored on the edge of the Dutch community that centers on Pella, Iowa. That’s where I discovered Dutch bakeries. The Dutch are some of the best bakers in the world, and my favorite confection was “Dutch letters.” These are crispy pastries, filled with almond paste and twisted into alphabetic shapes before baking. They make a great dessert after a Maid-Rite, a loose-meat sandwich that is another Iowa specialty.

I never tried Mexican food until I was a senior in high school. Mexican cuisine was hard to get in Iowa. When I moved to Denver for seminary, however, I experienced my first good Mexican restaurant. Denver had a chain of restaurants—the Holly Inn, or La Fonda de Acebo—that offered something they called a “tacorito.” It was essentially a smothered burrito. I wish I could get one now. I’ve had a love affair with Mexican cooking ever since.

Texas offers a different variety of Mexican food: Tex-Mex. I’d be hard pressed to say which I enjoyed more; the truth is that I love them both. When we lived in Dallas we could take our children to Panchos buffet where they could eat free and get all the sopapillas that they wanted. It was great fun.

Texas was also where I tried my first real barbecue. Barbecue certainly isn’t unique to Texas, but different regions celebrate different meats and sauces. In Texas, the church ladies provide pans of barbecued brisket for dinner-on-the-grounds. Barbecue was also available from fast-food joints and from fine dining establishments. There’s just something about the collision of smoked meats and well-seasoned sauce that is amazing, especially if it is served with blackberry pie for dessert.

Maybe the most uniquely Texan food, however, is chicken-fried steak. This dish is available elsewhere, but no place else does it like Texas. You can order it at any hole-in-the-wall lunch counter in any backwater town, and you’ll get a crispy fritter of meat that’s bigger than your plate and covered in cream gravy. I’ve never had anything quite like it anywhere else.

In east Texas, southern Arkansas, and Louisiana a different cuisine takes over. You can find deep-fried catfish served with a side-dish of gumbo over rice, and perhaps a cinnamon-caramel bun for dessert. If you’d prefer you can try a jambalaya or a crawfish etouffee.

You can also find grits in Texas, but the further east you go the better they get. Grits are eaten for breakfast and they look a bit like cream of wheat. The first rule for grits, however, is that you must never, ever eat them with milk and sugar. Butter is acceptable. Cheese is good. The best grits are served with gravy. I cannot understand why this food has never become popular in the North.

Let me mention just one more: the Wisconsin fish boil, which you can find up and down the eastern side of that state. The best place I know serves cod filets, boiled outdoors in a cauldron over an open fire. New potatoes are boiled in the same cauldron and served alongside the fish. If you don’t think that boiled fish and potatoes could be appetizing, think again.

I’m running out of space, and there are still so many foods to talk about. Wild rice soup in Minnesota. Whole-belly clams in New England. Seven-year-aged cheddar in Wisconsin (or, at the opposite end of the aging spectrum, fresh cheese curds). Cheese steak sandwiches in Philadelphia. Cincinnati chili, which is served over spaghetti, and I’ll take mine four-way.

The United States offers a welter of unique and sometimes overlapping cuisines. Some are drawn from European roots, some from Asian, many from other places. Often these foods get modified in their transition to the mainstream, but that’s alright. The variety of delicacies that one encounters from region to region is a source of delight. Again, these are good gifts from a heavenly Father who wanted us to have more than just locusts to satisfy our hunger (remember, locusts were a clean food in the Old Testament). One of my joys in life is sampling the local delicacies as I travel around the country.

So that’s all I have to say. Except—I didn’t mention poutine. Well, maybe some other time.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Let Us, With a Gladsome Mind

John Milton (1608–1674)

Let us, with a gladsome mind,
praise the LORD, for He is kind:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

Let us blaze His Name abroad,
for of gods He is the God:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

He with all-commanding might
filled the new-made world with light:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

All things living He doth feed;
His full hand supplies their need:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

He His chosen race did bless
in the wasteful wilderness:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

He hath with a pious eye
looks upon our misery:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

Let us therefore warble forth
His high majesty and worth:
for His mercies shall endure,
ever faithful, ever sure.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

International Delicacies

During the years that I was president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary I did a good bit of traveling. While traveling I also did a good bit of eating. I’m not exactly what you’d call a gourmet—I can enjoy a good hamburger as well as I can enjoy a steak. Nevertheless, one thing I’ve found interesting is the variety of unique foods in each region I’ve visited. Most of us eat three meals every day, and we can hardly remember any of them. Over the years, however, a few meals and a few foods stand out as worthy of recollection.

Our seminary used to have a campus in Romania—specifically, in Transylvania. To get there, our faculty would fly into Budapest, then drive several hours to the border. Usually we would enjoy at least one meal in Hungary. I learned to look forward to goulash on those stops.

I grew up with something called goulash that was made from macaroni and tomato juice. Hungarian goulash is nothing like that. It is a soup. Every little bistro has its own version. It may or may not have tomato in it, but it is always meaty and always spiced with paprika and garlic. Often it is served with noodles called csipetke. And it is wonderful.

Romania itself features several gastronomic treasures. One is the Romanian national sausage, known variously as mititei or mic. This is a darkly-seasoned meat, and I’ve never found anything quite like it in any other culture. It is often grilled in the Romanian way, over an open fire in a large, concave steel disc. The mici are ringed around the outside of the disc. Often chicken pieces or some other meat forms the next ring, and potato wedges are heaped in the middle. As the mititei fries, oil from them flavors the chicken and the potatoes. The result is almost transcendently good.

Of course, the Romanian national dish is sarmale, which consists of seasoned meat and rice cooked in cabbage leaves. Festive occasions may call for whole cauldrons of sarmale. Depending on the season, the cabbage can be either fresh or pickled. It’s good either way. Of course, this dish is not uniquely Romanian—most Eastern European cultures feature some variety of it.

While we’re talking about Eastern Europe, one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever eaten was in Novi Sad, Serbia. I had wanted to meet the president of the Baptist Union of Serbia, who was supposed to be strongly evangelical. He turned out to be a graduate of Moody, and he was genuinely happy to see us. At lunch time he suggested a small local restaurant (in Eastern Europe all restaurants are local and most of them are small). Specifically, he recommended that we try the mixed grill. I have no idea exactly what I ate that day. I only know that it was the most marvelous assortment of sausages, potatoes, and pickled cabbage that I’ve ever sampled. This lunch was an unexpected delight during a difficult journey.

Of the various Asian countries I’ve visited, the food that stands out most in my recollection is actually a drink: tea. Of course we have tea in America, but the tea I encountered in India—masala chai—was unlike anything I’d ever had from Lipton. I believe that the tea leaves were steeped in (water buffalo?) milk, then spiced with fresh local seasonings. When served with a traditional dal (lentil soup) over rice, it made a good, basic meal.

On the subject of Indian cuisine, some of the most entertaining Indian food I’ve ever eaten was actually a crossover with Mexican, eaten at a hole-in-the-wall place in Toronto, Canada. Toronto is quite cosmopolitan, so it’s not surprising to find cultures borrowing from each other there. Thus I was introduced to the “currito,” which consisted of Indian butter chicken and rice wrapped in a genuine south-of-the-border tortilla. I thought the idea was laughable until I bit into one—and oh, my! I only wish that I could find something like that in Minneapolis.

Of the national cuisines I’ve sampled, Brazilian has to be the most varied and entertaining. If anything, Brazil is even more of a cultural melting pot than the United States. You can find good Arab food there. You can find some of the best pizza in the world. But of course, Brazil is best known for its churrasco.

What is churrasco? Broadly speaking, churrasco consists of a variety of meats, mostly beef, seasoned with granular salt and roasted over an open fire. In Brazil, these meats are served in a buffet restaurant known as a churrascaria. Waiters bring the various cuts to your table and slice off strips for your plate. The typical churrascaria also serves a variety of other foods—feijoada (meat and beans over rice), manioc, quail’s eggs, palm hearts, and so forth. These restaurants have become so popular that some of them are now opening in the United States, where they are extremely expensive. In Brazil, however, the typical churrascaria caters to working people and keeps its prices very reasonable.

Special mention should also be made of a large fish that is caught and eaten along the Amazon. Called the pirarucu, this fish is huge. It produces a mild, white meat that is very flavorful when eaten alongside beans and rice in the open air.

In the category of drinks, special mention should be made of Brazilian guaraná. The guaraná is a tropical fruit that Brazilians make into a soft drink. It tastes a bit like a golden ginger ale, a bit like a crème soda, and not a bit like either. It has to be experienced to be understood. Every Brazilian has his or her favorite brand, and they’re all good. My favorites are Guaraná Antarctica and Guaraná Real.

The hymn writer says, “I sing the goodness of the Lord that filled the earth with food.” God could have created us to absorb nourishment through the soles of our feet from the dirt we walk on. Instead, He has given us an amazing variety of foods, and He has further given us palates that can delight in them. Away with all false and unbiblical world-denying philosophies that would insult the Creator by denigrating His gifts! And away with all parochialism that disdains the unfamiliar. The marvelous variety of nourishing edibles is one manifestation of the Creator’s common grace. I for one am grateful for these good things that the Lord has permitted me to sample.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


O God of Bethel

Philip Doddridge (1702–1751)

O God of Bethel! by whose hand
thy people still are fed;
Who through this weary pilgrimage
hast all our fathers led:

Our vows, our prayers, we now present
before thy throne of grace:
God of our fathers! be the God
of their succeeding race.

Through each perplexing path of life
our wand’ring footsteps guide;
Give us each day our daily bread,
and raiment fit provide.

O spread thy cov’ring wings around,
till all our wand’rings cease,
And at our Father’s loved abode
our souls arrive in peace.

Such blessings from thy gracious hand
our humble pray’rs implore;
And thou shalt be our chosen God,
and portion evermore.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

On Causes, Confederates, and Christ

One of my favorite books on the Civil War was written by a chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia, Baptist preacher J. William Jones. Jones went from being a humble pastor to being named the Baptist missionary to Lieutenant General A. P. Hill’s corps. Jones’s book, Christ in the Camp or Religion in the Confederate Army, was originally published in 1887 and contains many letters and first-hand accounts from chaplains and soldiers in Lee’s infamous army. These correspondences describe in great detail almost unbelievable revivals during which thousands were saved. Jones estimated that during the army’s existence (1861–65), nearly 150,000 Confederate soldiers converted to Christ, representing almost one third of men under arms. This staggering number was not a mere guess taken from foxhole confessions, but reflected careful and copious records of personal testimonies, evangelistic services, and baptisms. The revivals were not only among the enlisted as Jones shared that “a large portion of the higher officers were men of faith and prayer.”

Lest one think this was the result of wartime fervor, at the time of book’s publication, out of the 410 men whom Jones had personally baptized, only three were known to have “gone back to the world.” Twenty years after the war Jones reported that according to many seminary presidents, “nearly nine-tenths of the candidates for the ministry had determined to preach while in the army.” Jones wrote of chaplains and generals alike who, after witnessing so many come to Christ, believed that this army held a unique providential blessing. Surely God would bless such piety and devotion. Convinced of the righteousness of his cause, Jones closed his book with the words, “Christian men of every section and of every creed will unite in thanking God that Christ was in the camps of Lee’s army with such wonderful power to save.”

While there are many historical and cultural complexities surrounding the Civil War, one of the most important questions to ask is, “How could this army bent on perpetuating the evil that is human bondage be so thoroughly infused with penitent Christians, many of whom gave their lives to Christ just before giving their lives, at least in part, for slavery? How could a cause so rooted in sin ever be mistaken as righteous or divinely blessed?”

Whether it was crusaders shouting “Deus vult” after a victory at the Siege of Antioch in 1098 or a man carrying a “Christian flag” onto the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on January 6, 2021, Christians have often employed Christ in defense of social and political causes. Sadly, I believe that many, like William Jones, have made egregious errors in so hastily engaging Christ to support their cause. While there are many that could be discussed, below are several fallacious assumptions that are all too common.

Victories in a cause equals God’s favor on a cause. Whether on the battlefield or at the ballot box, Christians often think that winning is the result of divine favor. The Army of Northern Virginia, for example, enjoyed extraordinary victories from Seven Pines to Fredericksburg to Chancellorsville, which many assumed were the result of divine favor. In fact, until Lee’s gamble at Gettysburg, his army rarely lost a fight, though facing overwhelming odds. Brilliant battlefield victories coupled with the aforementioned spiritual revivals led many Southern Christians to conclude that God was indeed on the side of the Confederacy. Similarly, in modern times, the church growth movement, built upon the premise that bigger is better, has ensnared many pastors with the faulty logic that more equals more blessed. Numbers, victories, and majorities are in no way an indication of God’s favor, nor do they indicate the righteousness of a cause. Causes are either good or bad based upon their reflection of either eternal truth, as revealed in Scripture, or earthly, bane wisdom.

Christians supporting a cause makes it a Christian cause. The fallacy of honor by association assumes that because a cause or movement (which is the actions done because of the cause) is made up of Christians or carries Christian themes, it is therefore a Christian cause. I once heard an evangelical declare from the pulpit that because some of America’s founders were Christians and often mentioned the divine in founding documents and monuments, America is a Christian nation and has therefore incurred God’s unique blessing. By this reasoning, the Vatican would be the most Christian place on earth. Thousands upon thousands of redeemed rebels fought for the cause of slavery. Just because a cause has Christians associated with it or uses the name of Christ does not make it a Christian cause.

Causes are simple. Causes are not simple; that is to say they rarely entail a singular principle or solitary moral outcome. They are as complex as the cultures, ideas, and times in which they arise. A cry for freedom by one may result in the enslavement of another. Clarity on one side may be confusion for the other. Even if a cause is straightforward and moral, the movements which it spawns may be twisted and immoral.

God works because of a cause. This is perhaps the most egregious assumption. Jones assumed that the blessing of spiritual revival within the army was the result, at least in part, of the Confederate cause. If God uses a cause, He therefore supports the cause. Many heresies have arisen with this line of thinking. Monergism reminds us that in regards to humanity, salvation is always despite. God’s blessings and salvation are granted because of God’s own glory and for His own end. Divine favor within a cause should never be viewed, even tacitly, as divine acceptance of a cause. Often God works despite causes, not because of them. Christ saved me despite myself and my ideas just as He saved my tragically-wrong rebel brethren.

I wholeheartedly agree with Jones on one point, Christ was indeed in Lee’s camps with wonderful power to save. Not however, because of the Confederate cause, but despite it. Christians, be very cautious of causes, even if they contain Christian themes or have Christian leaders. Jesus Christ is our cause and should not be easily employed in so many earthly endeavors.  

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This essay is by Brett Williams, Provost and Executive Vice President at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Let Us Sing the King Messiah

John Ryland (1753–1825)

Let us sing the King Messiah,
King of righteousness and peace!
Hail Him, all His happy subjects,
Never let His praises cease:
Ever hail Him,
Never let His praises cease.

How transcendent are Thy glories,
Fairer than the sons of men;
While Thy blessed mediation
Brings us back to God again:
Blest Redeemer,
How we triumph in Thy reign!

Gird Thy sword on, mighty Hero!
Make the Word of truth Thy car;
Prosper in Thy course majestic;
All success attend Thy war!
Gracious Victor,
Let mankind before Thee bow!

Majesty, combined with meekness,
Righteousness and peace unite
To insure Thy blessed conquests.
On, great Prince, assert Thy right!
Ride triumphant,
All around the conquer’d globe.

Blest are all that touch Thy sceptre,
Blest are all that own Thy reign;
Freed from sin, that worst of tyrants,
Rescued from its galling chain:
Saints and angels,
All who know Thee, bless Thy reign.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Those Little Churches

My father’s first pastorate was in Cambridge, Iowa. Other fundamental Baptist churches were located nearby. Slater had one less than ten miles to the west. Both Ames and Nevada had churches of like faith and order, each about twelve miles away. Ankeny had a regular Baptist church about twenty miles down Interstate 35.

Skip ahead. My first senior pastorate was in Newton, Iowa. Immanuel Baptist had at least three other Bible-preaching Baptist churches within about a twenty-minute drive, the closest of which was less than ten miles away. None was very large. The other churches were all older congregations, yet decades prior Newton had been specifically targeted to be a church plant.

These facts have occurred to me over the past weeks while I have been preaching in a little, rural Minnesota church. It is located near three other fundamental Baptist churches: one is about ten miles to the north, another about ten miles to the south, and still another perhaps eight or nine miles to the west. It is without a pastor and, thanks partly to COVID and partly to job transfers, can no longer afford to call a man full time.

The first time I visited this church I thought, “Is this church really necessary? It’s just a handful of people. They could easily drive to one of the other churches in the area. Wouldn’t they do better just to merge?” But then I remembered Cambridge, Newton, and the sprinkling of little, fundamental Baptist churches across the state of Iowa. I do not believe that these small churches are a waste of time, money, or effort. In fact, I think that far more ministry per capita takes place in them than in big churches.

I remember the Sunday that my father’s Bible college sent him to fill the pulpit at the Bible Presbyterian Church in Cambridge. Since it was close to home he took my mother and all five children. The seven of us accounted for somewhere between a third and a half of the congregation that morning. At the end of the service the church’s two elders approached Dad and asked, “Would you be our pastor?”

When my father recovered from the surprise, he reminded them that he was a Baptist, not a Presbyterian. He told them that he would preach New Testament doctrine, including believer baptism. They responded, “We’re willing to learn.”

He then observed, “I’m a dispensationalist and your church believes in Covenant Theology.” The two elders looked at each other for a moment, then responded, “We don’t even know what that means.” Long story short, my father accepted the pastorate and led them through the process of becoming a Baptist church. Interestingly, the presbytery readily accepted this change. They had not been able to support the church adequately for some time. Their attitude was that they would rather see a thriving Baptist church preaching the gospel than a dying Presbyterian church closing its doors and preaching nothing.

For compensation the church could offer a moldering parsonage and a pittance of a salary. My father had to work multiple jobs so that he could simultaneously feed his family and pastor the church. But the little congregation began to blossom. After many professions of faith, even more baptisms, a building renovation, and a strong pastoral presence in the community, it became a healthy, vibrant church. Dad went on to pastor bigger churches, but I doubt that he ever had a church respond more fruitfully to his ministry.

Well, there might have been one. It came after he had otherwise retired. He was living in northern Wisconsin. A little church an hour or so away in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was without a pastor. Like the church in Cambridge, the church in Wakefield could offer a parsonage but not a living wage. Dad was able to minister without a living wage. He accepted this church’s call and went to work. Again the ministry blossomed with professions of faith, baptisms, some building renovation, and a strong pastoral presence in the community. It has flourished even more under its present pastor.

These little congregations are precious in the sight of the Lord Jesus. They are temples in which the Holy Spirit dwells. They deserve good, sound, careful, caring, thoughtful pastors. To serve them is an honor. The men who pastor them almost never receive much recognition on earth, but someday they will stand to the applause of all heaven.

I know of a small group—almost a cadre—of young men who have earned good seminary degrees. In fact, most of them have earned doctorates. They have deliberately taken pastorates in small churches like these, investing themselves in ministries that will never make them famous. Some of them have had to seek outside employment for the privilege of laboring in these tiny congregations. To my amazement, I have heard others disparage them as men who “do not pastor churches that matter.”

Let me tell you something. These churches matter to God the Father, by whose election they exist. They matter to Jesus Christ, who died to present them to Himself. They matter to the Holy Spirit, who indwells them. Their members are Christ’s lambs who need under-shepherds. Thank God for learned, skilled, trained men who are willing to spend themselves in little ministries. To me they are genuine heroes.

Sometimes churches have good reasons to merge—especially if their separate existence was the result of an unbiblical division. Sometimes churches need to go out of existence, especially if they dwindle as the result of mere idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, we should not permit a church to die simply because another church is within driving distance. Nor should we conclude that a church does not deserve to survive simply because it is small. Instead, we should pray and work to prepare the kind of men who will devote themselves to serving these congregations. May God raise up more of them.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Christ Hath a Garden Walled Around

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

Christ hath a garden walled around, 
A Paradise of fruitful ground, 
Chosen by love and fenced by grace 
From out the world’s wide wilderness.

Like trees of spice his servants stand, 
There planted by his mighty hand; 
By Eden’s gracious streams, that flow 
To feed their beauty where they grow.

Awake, O wind of heav’n and bear 
Their sweetest perfume through the air: 
Stir up, O south, the boughs that bloom, 
Till the beloved Master come:

That he may come, and linger yet 
Among the trees that he hath set; 
That he may evermore be seen 
To walk amid the springing green.

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Christianity and the Alt-Right

The old dictum says that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I disagree. A friend is someone who values and honors what I value. An enemy is someone who destroys or debases what I value. It is quite possible for an enemy of my enemy to destroy or debase what I value. The enemy of my enemy may still be my enemy.

Modern conservatism was built upon three thinkers. Richard Weaver laid a philosophical foundation in Ideas Have Consequences. Russell Kirk traced the history of conservative thought in The Conservative Mind. Friedrich Hayek pointed out the connection between political and economic freedom in The Road to Serfdom. These were learned men. Each wrote many works, but ordinary readers found them challenging. To flourish, conservatism needed a popularizer.

Enter the young William F. Buckley, who burst onto the scene in 1951 with God and Man at Yale. In 1955 he launched a conservative journal of opinion, National Review. His goal was to establish an articulate, reasonable standard-bearer for a conservative movement. To achieve that goal Buckley had to distance conservatism from two pretenders: radical libertarianism, represented by Ayn Rand, and (usually antisemitic) conspiracism, represented by the John Birch Society. Consequently, National Review regularly denounced both Randian libertarianism and the Birchers.

Buckley saw liberals as opponents, but he saw the Randians and the Birchers as enemies. He understood that allying with these groups would poison conservatism. Instead of trying to rally the hard right, he aimed to persuade moderates on his left. The strategy worked. Buckley’s circle was chiefly responsible for the conservative takeover of the Republican party in 1964 and the eventual election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency.

This early version of conservatism was fully compatible with Christian principles. In fact, certain Christian insights were definitive: belief in a transcendent moral order, recognition of human fallenness and imperfectability, and private property as a fundamental right. Indeed, many of the leading conservatives were committed to some version of “mere Christianity.”

The origins of contemporary conservatism provides a contrast with the situation in which conservatives now stand. Donald Trump gained popularity through the support of the alt-right. After his election I began to follow the postings of alt-right figures. I wanted to understand what their values were and how closely they aligned with both traditional conservatism and biblical Christianity.

At this point two caveats are necessary. First, not every alt-right figure holds every objectionable opinion. The alt-right is not particularly systematic. Second, the alt-right objects to many things that any reasonable person should find objectionable. The press really is biased. Illegal immigration really is a threat. Politicians really are trying to take away your guns. Voter fraud really does take place. There really is an entrenched and powerful bureaucracy that resembles a “deep state.” So, is the enemy of my enemy my friend? Or is the enemy of my enemy also my enemy?

Despite these caveats, certain trends appear to be widespread within the alt-right. Here is a quick listing.

Conspiracy theories. Just over three years ago I started seeing references to “Q,” now often called “Q-anon.” This shadowy figure, who was supposed to be highly placed, began to leak news about a secret cabal of government officials and other powerful individuals who were involved in Satanism, cannibalism, and even worldwide child sex trafficking. Q also began to predict specific events such as arrests and a “storm,” or mass cleanup of corruption, most of which never came to pass.

Visceral reaction. Much of the alt-right is motivated and dominated by visceral reaction, relying less on thoughtful argument and more on screeds and memes. In moments of true emergency, visceral reactions may be useful, but as a way of life they are dangerous. Most people cannot think while they are reacting. Consequently, they are easily manipulated and driven by unscrupulous demagogues. Reactionaries cannot sustain the kind of decades-long momentum necessary to achieve a consensus and build a constructive movement. Reactionary movements are almost always destructive.

Exclusivist nationalism. Patriotism (the love of one’s country) is a good thing. Even nationalism (seeking the interests of one’s country) is not necessarily bad. There is a kind of exclusivist nationalism, however, that is dominated by xenophobia and is callous about the damage that self-seeking interest can do to others. This sort of national exclusivism is incompatible both with Christian charity and with the interconnectedness between the United States and many other nations.

Ethnic separatism. The alt-right is very white. It looks at other ethnicities with condescension, suspicion, and contempt. Much of the alt-right is openly hostile toward people of color. It is hard to say where the alt-right ends and where white supremacy movements begin. The alt-right is also laced with antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Its opposition to the state of Israel and its suspicion of Jewish ethnicity and culture run deep. These features cannot be reconciled with a biblical anthropology or Israelology. Neither can they be reconciled with the emphatic rejection of antisemitism by Buckley and other builders of conservatism.

Neopaganism. Connected with the antisemitism of the alt-right is a silly revival of paganism. In particular, the white supremacist side of the alt-right is seeking to reinstitute cartoon versions of the old Germanic religions, particularly devotion to Odin and Thor. These are sometimes combined inconsistently with Native American or other occult practices. The influence of paganism accounts for the haberdashery of the “buffalo man” Jake Angeli in the chamber of the United States Senate. Angeli considers himself to be a shaman—a pagan priest. This commitment to paganism is obviously incompatible with Christianity; this display of sheer looniness is at odds with any thoughtful conservatism.

Disorder. The first generation of modern conservatives emphasized that order must precede liberty. Disorder corrodes freedom, and anarchy dissolves it entirely. Conservatives have always recognized that “hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress” (Kirk, Conservative Mind, 9). For the alt-right, however, freedom comes first, even at the cost of complete social upheaval. One gets the impression that most figures on the alt-right are preparing for civil war. Some do so reluctantly, but others seem eager to precipitate Ragnarok. This willingness to promote disorder runs contrary both to conservatism and to biblical Christianity (Rom 13:1–7; 1 Tim 2:1–4; 1 Pet 2:13–17).

Even if conservatives and the Republican party can separate themselves from the alt-right today, it will take years to repair the damage. The alt-right is poison, and the body that has swallowed it will be sick for a long time. At minimum, Christians of all sorts—including the most genuinely conservative Christians—should repudiate the alt-right and its ideologies.

Granted, the alt-right is concerned about much of what I am concerned about. The alt-right opposes much of what I oppose. But sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy.

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This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Physician of My Sin-Sick Soul

John Newton (1725–1807)

Physician of my sin-sick soul
To thee I bring my case;
My raging malady control,
And heal me by thy grace.

Pity the anguish I endure,
See how I mourn and pine;
For never can I hope a cure
From any hand but thine.

I would disclose my whole complaint,
But where shall I begin?
No words of mine can fully paint
That worst distemper, sin.

It lies not in a single part,
But thro’ my frame is spread
A burning fever in my heart,
A palsy in my head.

It makes me deaf, and dumb, and blind,
And impotent and lame,
And overclouds and fills my mind,
With folly, fear and shame.

A thousand evil thoughts intrude,
Tumultuous in my breast;
Which indispose me for my food,
And rob me of my rest.

Lord I am sick, regard my cry,
And set my spirit free;
Say, canst thou let a sinner die,
Who longs to live to thee?

A Primer on Spiritual Gifts

Lord, Bless Kurt

Remember the scene from The Sound of Music when the recently-hired governess Maria is praying for her new charges? She does well to remember six of the children’s names but sadly forgets one of the boys, so she presumes on God’s knowledge and blurts, “Lord, bless ‘What’s-his-name.’” While the situation is rather humorous, I think it reveals the rather simplistic way we can often pray for each other.

Please permit me to suggest one scriptural path we can follow, one modeled by our Lord and His followers. Of course, we can find many biblical examples showing us how to pray for others, but I will spotlight one in particular: pray for their perseverance, for their obedience and continuance in the faith. Before I give scriptural proof for this kind of prayer, I want to answer some questions about perseverance.

For example, why would I pray that God help believers to persevere in the faith if He has already elected them to eternal life? After all, isn’t perseverance of the saints one of the doctrines of grace? Furthermore, we don’t see any examples in the Bible where people are praying that God would help the elect to “stay saved,” so why pray for their perseverance?

These questions come to mind and prompt us to understand the definitions of two important concepts. First, eternal security is the objective (biblical) guarantee of eternal salvation for all who believe in Jesus (John 10:28–29; Eph 1:13–14; 2 Cor 1:20–22). Second, perseverance is God’s promise to enable all true believers to continue in faith and good works until their earthly journey is complete. The Second London Baptist Confession (17.3) states: “And though [believers] may…fall into grievous sins, and for a time continue therein,…yet they shall renew their repentance and be preserved, through faith in Christ Jesus, to the end.” Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Paul said, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6). Peter says that true believers rejoice and believe in Jesus so that they “obtain the outcome of [their] faith, the salvation of [their] souls” (1 Peter 1:9). Thus, God promises to help believers to persevere in the faith just like He promises to ensure that they will never lose their salvation.

But herein lies an important distinction between security and perseverance. While God guarantees that the elect will never miss heaven, He does not use the same kind of language when speaking about perseverance in good works. In fact, while God does enable believers to continue in obedient living to the end, He also commands believers to continue in the faith. In short, believers will persevere (see the texts in the previous paragraph), but they must persevere. Hear again from Jesus in John 15:10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Hebrews 10:23 states, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Peter encourages faithful living in 2 Peter 1:10: “Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.” Finally, in 1 Corinthians 15:1–2 Paul writes, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”

Some theologians refer to this tension between the promises of perseverance and the calls to persevere as the indicatives (facts or realities) of our salvation and the imperatives (commands) of our salvation. Fact: God enables His children to live obediently to the end. Command: believers must hold on to Christ and obey His directives.

Now all of this forms the basis for how we should pray for each other. In His high priestly prayer (John 17:11) Jesus begs the Father, “Keep them [his disciples] in your name.” When Paul and Barnabas re-visit Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch at the end of the first missionary journey, they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to “continue in the faith” (Acts 14:22). We are always safe to pray in this way for our fellow brothers and sisters. Jude (20–21) exhorted his readers to “pray in the Holy Spirit” and to “keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”

Thus, we have ample reasons for praying wiser and more scriptural prayers than Maria, even when we can remember the names of those we pray for. Do we want God’s blessing (health, success, flourishing, etc.) to rest on these people we bring before our Lord? Certainly. But if I want to pray like Jesus, Paul, Barnabas, and Jude, then Lord, please keep my spiritual brothers and sisters in the faith and help each one to persevere in faith and good works until the day you return or call them home will also be the prayer on my lips.

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This essay is by Jon Pratt, Vice President of Academics and Professor of New Testament at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.


 


Lord, For Thy Name’s Sake

Josiah Conder (1789–1855)

Lord, for Thy name’s sake! such the plea
With force triumphant fraught,
By which Thy saints prevail with Thee,
By Thine own Spirit taught.

Now, for Thy name’s sake, O our God,
Do not abhor our prayer;
But, while we bow beneath Thy rod,
Thy chasten’d people spare.

Oh, for Thy name’s sake, richly grant
The unction from above;
Fulfil Thy holy covenant,
And glorify Thy love.