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.
Roger Olson on Fundamentalism: Part Two
Roger Olson asserts that the difference between fundamentalism and other forms of evangelicalism is secondary separation. I agree. But what does he mean by secondary separation? And does his understanding do justice to the idea of fundamentalism?
Olson summarizes secondary separation in these terms: “There arose ‘secondary separation’ in which many, perhaps most, true fundamentalists decided they could not cooperate with or have Christian fellowship with even fellow conservative Protestants who were not sufficiently separated from liberal theology (and Catholicism!).” In other words, Olson thinks that secondary separation is separation over separation, or more accurately the lack thereof. So fundamentalism has to be defined by, “separation from liberal theology and the organizations and institutions that were considered too lenient in terms of including and/or cooperating with Christians not sufficiently separated from liberal theology.”
Now, I want to make certain allowances in reading Olson. He is writing informally. We should not demand the level of precision in a blog post that we might expect in, say, a chapter in a volume about Four Views on the Spectrum of Evangelicalism. Having said that, I wish that he had offered a more robust and nuanced understanding of secondary separation. As he describes it, secondary separation is simply separation over the lack of separation, and it precludes all Christian fellowship.
To be fair, many fundamentalists hold an understanding of separation that is not much more articulate than Olson’s. Their one attempt at furthering the discussion is to suggest that secondary separation involves separation from “disobedient brethren.” I find their articulation even less helpful than Olson’s. How many of our Christian brothers obey all of Scripture all the time, affirming all and only the truth that Scripture teaches, performing all and only those duties that Scripture requires, displaying all and only those attitudes that Scripture affirms, thinking all and only those thoughts that Scripture endorses? The answer is that all of our brothers are disobedient, as are we ourselves. If we were simply to separate from disobedient brethren without qualification, we would exclude everyone. But that would not be enough, given that we ourselves are often disobedient. How does one separate from oneself?
Some fundamentalists have tried to solve the problem by denying that any separation could ever be secondary. This attitude characterized Bob Jones University during the 1970s and 1980s, and it came to be embodied in George Dollar’s definition of fundamentalism: “Historic fundamentalism is the literal interpretation of all the affirmations and attitudes of the Bible and the militant exposure of all non-biblical affirmations and attitudes.” This definition was published in bold, block letters on a separate, unnumbered page at the beginning of Dollar’s A History of Fundamentalism in America, which was published by Bob Jones University in 1973. The problem is that no one, not even the most rigorous fundamentalist, separates over “all the affirmations and attitudes of the Bible.” Dollar’s definition does not fit fundamentalism so much as everythingism.
The “disobedient brother” approach won’t work because not all disobedience counts the same. The “all the affirmations and attitudes” approach won’t work because not all affirmations and attitudes bear equal weight. Olson’s “separate over separation” approach won’t work because not all separation is the same.
Olson cites two paradigmatic examples of fundamentalists practicing secondary separation. The first involves Billy Graham.
Graham came to the fore as a leader among “the new evangelicals” and he did not practice separation sufficiently for the fundamentalists among whom he was raised and spiritually nurtured. Fundamentalist Protestants rejected Billy Graham and his ministries, not because they were not Christian, but because they were “tainted” by the inclusion in and cooperation with allegedly liberal Christians.
I shall have more to say about Billy Graham and cooperative evangelism in my next article. For the moment, it is worth noting that refusal to participate in the Graham crusades after 1956 was not secondary separation. It was separation from the apostate churchmen whom Graham recruited to participate in his crusades. Whether Graham should have personally been the object of secondary separation is another question, and one that I intend to address, but one did not have to believe in secondary separation to refuse participation in Graham’s crusades.
Olson’s second exemplar of secondary separation comes up in the comment string appended to his original post. There he discusses the relationship between Richard V. Clearwaters and the Conservative Baptist Association.
[W]hen the Conservative Baptist Association of Churches split away from the Northern Baptist Convention fundamentalist leader Clearwaters of Fourth Baptist Church in Minneapolis (I don’t recall if he was GARBC or something else) wrote a book I have read called “The Great Conservative Baptist Compromise.” It was a harsh attack on the CBA for not practicing secondary separation and not requiring belief in young earth creationism, etc. The CBA is a truly conservative evangelical denomination and in some cases I would say even “fundamentalish.” Why did Clearwaters feel it necessary to attack fellow evangelical Christians that way?
Of course, I ought to know something about R. V. Clearwaters. For the past twenty-five years I have been a member of the same Fourth Baptist Church that Clearwaters pastored. For twenty-five years I have taught in the seminary that he founded. I was president of that seminary for eight years. I have served on the board of the Minnesota Baptist Association, which Clearwaters helped to separate from the Northern Baptist Convention. I believe that I may be able to offer a word of explanation that will set The Great Conservative Baptist Compromise in context. Even if my explanation does not justify Clearwaters’s book (and I think it largely will), it should at least help Olson to understand why the book was written and what it aimed to accomplish.
Clarifying Clearwaters’s position, however, is subsidiary to a much more important concern. That concern is to show how secondary separation, rightly understood, is (1) coherent, (2) necessary and inescapable, and (3) biblical. I intend to pursue that task in the next In the Nick of Time by turning for help to a source that some may find surprising: an essay by John Piper.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
Christian Hearts, In Love United
Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760); tr. Frederick W. Foster (1760–1835)
Christian hearts, in love united,
seek alone in Jesus rest;
has He not your love excited?
Then let love inspire each breast.
Members on our Head depending,
lights reflecting Him, our Sun,
Christians, His commands attending,
we in Him, our Lord, are one.
Come, then, come, O flock of Jesus,
covenant with Him anew;
unto Him who conquered for us,
pledge we love and service true;
and should our love’s union holy
firmly linked no more remain,
wait ye at His footstool lowly,
till He draw it close again.
Grant, Lord, that with Thy direction
“Love each other,” we comply.
Aiming with unfeigned affection
Thy love to exemplify,
let our mutual love be glowing,
so that all will plainly see
that we, as on one stem growing,
living branches are in Thee.
O that such may be our union
as Thine with the Father is,
and not one of our communion
e’er forsake the path of bliss;
may our light shine forth with brightness,
from Thy light reflected, shine;
thus the world will bear us witness,
that we, Lord, are truly Thine.
Roger Olson on Fundamentalism: Part One
Roger Olson has been writing on fundamentalism again. Olson likes to write about (and usually against) fundamentalism. His remarks are helpful for several reasons. First, Olson is one of the most accomplished authors in the evangelical theological world. He co-wrote one of the best short surveys of twentieth century theology. He is a well-known advocate and defender of Arminian theology. Second, Olson grew up in a Pentecostal movement that was a kissing cousin to fundamentalism. Consequently, he sometimes shows a measure of sympathy with some fundamentalist concerns. Third, Olson is generally a good interlocutor. In our interactions he has always been personally gracious. When he taught at Bethel Seminary, Olson regularly brought professors such as Rolland McCune and Charles Hauser to his classes to present their views.
Olson blogs on Patheos, and he recently published a post entitled, “What Is ‘Fundamentalism?’” The post contains some valuable insight. It also contains some unwarranted criticism. In any event, it begs for a response from a fundamentalist.
According to Olson, the defining feature of fundamentalism is secondary separation. He claims that during his seminary training, he “was encouraged to think that the main difference between us and ‘them’ (the fundamentalists) was something called ‘secondary separation.’” He also lists other features of fundamentalism, such as young-earth creationism, profession of the inerrancy of Scripture, rejection of Pentecostalism, and an insistence upon interpreting the Bible as literally as possible (is he referring to dispensationalism?). These features, however, are only mentioned in passing. The thrust of Olson’s post is toward secondary separation as the distinguishing feature of fundamentalism.
Before proceeding to summarize Olson’s argument, I need to get one mild criticism out of the way. Learned as he is, Olson seems not to have studied the relationships among fundamentalism, evangelicalism, and neo-evangelicalism very deeply. The consequence is that he tends to get events and people a bit jumbled. He states that Bob Jones refused to join the National Association of Evangelicals, but Bob Jones was actually a founder of the NAE who later left the organization. He has fundamentalists objecting to Billy Graham and then the founding of Fuller Seminary. The reality is that Fuller Seminary was founded as an anti-fundamentalist institution in 1947, at which time fundamentalists were still firm supporters of Billy Graham. The split between Graham and fundamentalists didn’t come until nearly a decade later with Graham’s 1957 New York City crusade.
These criticisms, however, do not detract from Olson’s main point, which is that secondary separation is what distinguishes fundamentalism from other species of evangelicalism. On this point, Olson and I agree. What we disagree about is how to understand secondary separation and whether we believe that it is biblically required. That is the direction I want to go in this conversation.
First, however, I need to say something about the matter of definition. Definitions can be formed in different ways. To be technical, Olson’s definition of fundamentalism is intensional, and it works by way of genus and differentia. This kind of definition specifies what a thing is like (its genus) and then states how it is different from what it is like (differentia).
Fundamentalism belongs to the genus evangelical. To be evangelical is to be gospel-centered. To be gospel-centered is, among other things, to believe the teachings that are essential to the gospel. In other words, one cannot rightly claim to be evangelical while denying fundamental doctrines. Affirming the fundamentals never makes anyone a fundamentalist. It just makes one evangelical. Belief in the fundamentals, along with certain other beliefs and practices, may be necessary conditions of fundamentalism but they are not sufficient conditions.
For example, one teaching that is fundamental to the gospel is the inerrancy of Scripture. This is not to say that people must believe in inerrancy to be saved. Nevertheless, if God can make mistakes or speak falsehoods, then He cannot be trusted. If the Bible is His word, then it must be inerrant in all that it affirms. This was the near-universal consensus of American evangelicalism until the emergence of the Evangelical Left, which, as Harold Lindsell argued, is properly not evangelical for that very reason. Inerrancy is a belief shared by all true evangelicals, and not just by fundamentalists.
So fundamentalism belongs to the genus of evangelicalism. How, then, does it differ from other evangelical streams? The answer lies in how fundamentalists weigh the gospel. They consider affirmation of the true gospel to be essential to recognition as a Christian. Since the fundamentals are essential to the gospel, they are also essential to Christian recognition. Anyone who denies a fundamental doctrine cannot rightly be recognized as Christian. Furthermore, fundamentalists believe that extending Christian fellowship to people who must not be recognized as Christians is a hypocritical act that usurps the authority of Christ. To put it in other terms, the differentia of fundamentalism is separatism.
Olson notes that, “Fundamentalists, in the beginning, simply wanted to expel true liberal theology…from their denomination’s seminaries.” Actually, they wanted to expel liberals (whom they saw as non-Christian) from their entire Christian fellowship, including their denominational machinery. Call that “purge out” separatism.
Olson continues, “But the[n], in the 1920s, American fundamentalism took a sharp turn in the direction of separation and many conservative members of mainline Protestant denominations separated….” He is correct about this change in direction. Call this exit from the denominations “come out” separatism. It became necessary when fundamentalists found that liberals so controlled the councils of their denominations that they were irremovable.
The point that Olson seems to miss is that both “purge out” and “come out” are legitimate separatist options, depending on the circumstances. For example, Baptists in Minnesota never did have to come out of the state convention. They had sufficient strength to remove liberal theology from the organization. What is now the Minnesota Baptist Association is the renamed Minnesota Baptist Convention. It represents one of the few instances when, as R. V. Clearwaters used to say, fundamentalists managed to save the furniture along with the faith.
Not every evangelical wanted either to purge out or to come out. Not all evangelicals were separatists; not all evangelicals were fundamentalists. Some were convinced that gospel believers could continue in Christian fellowship with people who denied fundamental doctrines. That was the group that later organized a new movement in reaction against fundamentalism. That movement was called neoevangelicalism. The core of neoevangelical thought was that one could be loyal to the gospel while extending fellowship to gospel-deniers. Neoevangelicalism was represented by several individuals and institutions that Olson names: Fuller Seminary, Christianity Today, Billy Graham.
The key difference between fundamentalists and neoevangelicals was over separatism, and that difference gave rise to a dilemma. It is a dilemma that all separatists must face at some point. The dilemma can be phrased as a question: what do you do with people who believe the gospel, but who want to extend Christian fellowship to people who do not? That is the dilemma that gives rise to the debate over secondary separation.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
Who in the Lord Confide
Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Who in the Lord confide,
And feel his sprinkled blood,
In storms and hurricanes abide
Firm as the mount of God:
Steadfast, and fixed, and sure,
His Zion cannot move;
His faithful people stand secure
In Jesus’ guardian love.
As round Jerusalem
The hilly bulwarks rise,
So God protects and covers them
From all their enemies.
On every side he stands
And for his Israel cares;
And safe in his almighty hands
Their souls forever bears.
But let them still abide
In thee, all-gracious Lord
Till every soul is sanctified,
And perfectly restored:
The men of heart sincere
Continue to defend;
And do them good, and save them here,
And love them to the end.
My First Theological Conclusion
In August of 1973 I drew my first independent theological and ethical conclusion. At least, it’s the first one that I can remember drawing on my own. By that time I knew plenty of theology, and I had a strong ethic in most ways, but it was all second-hand. I held my beliefs because I had been taught them, not because I had thought through them.
By the way, that’s not a bad thing. We all start out there, and we never progress any further on some of our beliefs. We don’t have time in a single lifetime to rethink everything. As we grow in maturity, however, we begin to examine our beliefs and to seek out the reasons. We reject some of those beliefs, but we find ourselves strengthened in others. This episode was part of my strengthening process.
On that afternoon I sat with a Bible open in front of me, considering the words of Psalm 51, David’s great prayer of confession. I was paying particular attention to verse 5: “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” As I pondered the verse, my first question was whether David was referring to his mother’s sinfulness or his own. The answer seemed clear: the psalm was David’s confession of personal fault, and to introduce the faults of anyone else would have disturbed the flow of thought. David was saying that he, personally, was a sinner from the moment of conception.
At that point I considered what it might mean that David was a sinner from his conception. Then I realized that if the verse was true, then David must have been a sinner before his birth. He was a sinner while still in his mother’s womb.
If David was a sinner, I reasoned, then he must have been a moral agent. We do not hold inanimate objects accountable for sin. We do not hold cows, dogs, or other brutes accountable for sin. Only moral agents can be sinners, so David must have been a moral agent.
At that point, I did not understand all the places that this conclusion would take me. For example, I later encountered the teaching that humans are born morally neutral. For people who held this view, “original neutrality” was a lynchpin of anti-Calvinism. I could never accept the notion of original neutrality because I already understood that humans are sinners from the womb onwards. They are already morally culpable.
I also did not yet realize that this verse underlined a distinction between imputed guilt and guilt as personally acquired. An infant in the womb is not capable of doing anything either virtuous or vicious. Therefore, the sin of which David was (and we are) guilty must have been imputed rather than individually merited. When I encountered the notion of original sin as imputed guilt, I was prepared to receive it because of what I already understood from Psalm 51:5.
What I did infer that afternoon was that if David was a sinner and consequently a moral agent, then he must already have been a person. Only persons are moral agents. Consequently, David’s personal moral agency must have begun at the moment of his conception. David was not merely a blob of tissue in his mother’s womb. That blob of tissue was a person.
Furthermore, I realized that if David was a person, then he was a human person. Both words are important. The tips of my fingers are human, but they are not human persons. When I lost the tips of a couple of fingers through the careless use of a power saw, the loss of those parts was not equivalent to the death of a human being. At his conception, David was smaller than my fingertips, but he was already a human person, a human being.
It was at that point in my reasoning that I recognized the relevance of my cogitations for the ethical issue of abortion. On the testimony of David, an embryo is a moral agent, a person, a human being. To kill that embryo is to take the life of a human being. To kill it deliberately is to commit murder.
That is the point at which my theological conclusion also became an ethical conclusion. Just that January (1973) the United States Supreme Court had ruled that women possessed a right to abort their unborn babies. If my conclusion was correct, then every abortion ended the life of a human being. Except for abortions performed to save the life or perhaps health of the mother, every abortion had to be considered murder.
That was not the moment that I became pro-life, but it was the point at which I understood how serious the issue was. I understood that Roe v Wade was a hellish decision, the reversal of which had to become the top concern in my political activity. I understood that the lives of embryos and fetuses had the value of human beings, and that any investment in saving those lives by helping mothers bring their children to birth was an investment well spent.
In 1973, the reversal of Roe v Wade seemed impossible. The process of accomplishing that task took 49 years. Now, as lower courts are overturning some states’ anti-abortion legislation, and as other states are actively legislating abortion as a woman’s right, and as pro-abortion activists are violently targeting pro-life pregnancy centers, the struggle to protect the unborn continues. That struggle is just as relevant and just as important today as it was fifty years ago.
Each January we devote special attention to the sanctity of life. We have already seen the dreadful consequences of a culture of death. We who are Bible believers need to continue to recommit ourselves to using every legal means to push back against those who wish to legalize murder, whether through abortion, assisted suicide, or euthanasia.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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, I Am Vile, Conceiv’d in Sin
Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
Lord, I am vile, conceiv’d in sin,
And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race, and taints us all.
Soon as we draw our infant breath,
The seeds of sin grow up for death:
Thy law demands a perfect heart;
But we’re defil’d in ev’ry part.
Behold, I fall before thy face,
My only refuge is thy grace:
No outward forms can make me clean,
The leprosy lies deep within.
No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast,
Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest,
Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea,
Can wash the dismal stain away.
Jesus, my God! thy blood alone
Hath pow’r sufficient to atone:
Thy blood can make me white as snow;
No Jewish types could cleanse me so.
While guilt disturbs and breaks my peace,
Nor flesh nor soul hath rest or ease;
Lord, let me hear thy pard’ning voice,
And make my broken bones rejoice.
Most Interesting Reading of 2022, part 2
This week I continue my list of the twenty most interesting books that I read during the past year. Remember, I choose to list these books for no other reason than that they held my attention. I found them to be good reads, for a variety of reasons. You may find them dull or worthless.
Letham, Robert. The Holy Trinity. Rev. ed. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013.
Theologically, the doctrine of the Trinity has been a major focus of the 21st Century. Letham’s volume is a tour de force of Trinitarian theology. He approaches the topic biblically, historically, and systematically. He interacts extensively with contemporary theologians, both East and West, who have wrestled with the doctrine, and he defends Trinitarianism as it has been historically understood.
Lewis, C. S. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. New York: Harper, 1966.
During my first year of PhD studies I read through almost all of Lewis’s work, much of which was difficult to obtain in those days. This particular volume is a collection of essays (and a transcription of a conversation) about fairy tales and fantastic literature. It also includes some of Lewis’s shorter fantastic stories. I found the book helpful thirty years ago. I found it equally helpful on this re-read.
Mungons, Kevin, and Douglas Yeo. Homer Rodeheaver and the Rise of the Gospel Music Industry. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2021.
Kevin Mungons has long taken an interest in the gospel song era. He and his coauthor have produced an exceptional book about Homer Rodeheaver, Billy Sunday’s right-hand man. The book is more than a biography. It gives a glimpse into the workings of bigtime evangelism during the early 20th Century. It also provides valuable insight into the development of the gospel music industry.
Rubenstein, Richard E. When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
The author of this volume is a secular Jew whose field of expertise involves understanding conflict. Here he analyzes the Arian controversy as a conflict rather than for its theological value. The result is as good an overview as a non-theologian is likely to produce. In fact, it is better than most theologians would produce. The work is especially valuable for uncovering the ways in which social and political concerns worked to fuel the controversy. This is not a perfect book, but it is a very helpful and interesting book.
Tripp, Paul David. Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn’t Make Sense. Wheaton: Crossway, 2018.
Plenty of books have been written about suffering. Tripp writes about facing the calamities that completely stop us and that redefine our lives. The author is one of the best known of biblical counselors, but the book came out of his own personal trial by fire. What Tripp offers is great counsel coupled with the kind of conviction and compassion that can be found only in one who has personally endured such experiences.
University of Chicago Editorial Staff. But Can I Start a Sentence with “But”? Chicago: University of Chicago, 2016.
Wouldn’t it be great if a book of English grammar and style not only taught you how to keep the rules but how to break them well? That’s exactly what this work does. It is produced by the editors of the famed Chicago Manual of Style, but it poses the question, “Would you set your hair on fire if CMOS said you should?” The authors take their work, but not themselves, seriously. The book has (no pun intended) style, meaning panache. It’s also got a good bit of snark, and even a few laugh-out-loud moments.
Vance, J. D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir. New York: Harper, 2018.
J. D. Vance is now a United States Senator. At the time he wrote Hillbilly Elegy he was a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He grew up in a broken, blue-collar home, reared largely by his grandparents. They in turn were Southerners who had moved to Ohio seeking work during one of the migratory waves. Vance traces his family history within the larger context of hillbilly culture, using the narrative of his upbringing to examine the values perpetuated within this subset of American society. In spite of some pretty rough language I found this book to be a riveting exploration of Vance’s native culture.
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns. New York: Vintage/Random House, 2011.
The experiences narrated by Vance in Hillbilly Elegy are paralleled by those narrated by Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns. The difference is that Wilkerson writes about the Black experience during the Great Migration—the waves of Blacks who left the South for employment in the North. To the problems experienced by Vance’s forebears, Blacks also endured the hardship of racial hatred. Wilkerson tells the tale beautifully, helping readers of all backgrounds toward a sympathetic understanding of this aspect of the Black experience. Wilkerson has written a book that is both great history and great literature.
Winship, Michael P. Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America. New Haven: Yale, 2018.
By the expression “hot Protestants,” Michael Winship means Puritans, defined broadly enough to include Separatists and even some Baptists. He narrates the story of Puritanism and explores the divisions that doomed it in a detailed yet engaging way. He offers as good an explanation as I’ve seen for how the Puritan movement arose and why it eventually died. If you can read only one book on Puritanism, it should probably be this one.
Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. 2nd ed. New York: Farrar, Strous, and Giraux, 1979.
Tom Wolfe was an important figure in the New Journalism of the 60s and 70s—in fact, he was the writer who used that label as a title. The New Journalists dropped the façade of neutrality in their stories, often narrating factual (and sometimes semi-factual) events as if they were works of fiction. In The Right Stuff, Wolfe tells the story of the Mercury space program, and he tells it well. The book requires a warning about some of its language, but I learned a good bit of aviation history while reading it.
So those are the twenty titles that I found most interesting during 2022. They make up an eclectic batch. I’ve only just noticed that no works of fiction made the list this year except Pilgrim’s Progress, which is not so much pure fiction as it is an allegory of the Christian life. But to be fair, my reading was preempted for some months by a bout of COVID, so I read less of everything.
You might like some of these books. On the other hand, you might not like any of them. I admit that my tastes are a bit idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, we praise what we enjoy, and I enjoyed reading these works. They were bright spots in my year.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
Psalm 119
Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
To thee, before the dawning light
My gracious God, I pray;
I meditate thy name by night,
And keep thy law by day.
My spirit faints to see thy grace,
Thy promise bears me up;
And while salvation long delays,
Thy word supports my hope.
Seven times a day I lift my hands,
And pay my thanks to thee;
Thy righteous providence demands
Repeated praise from me.
When midnight darkness veils the skies,
I call thy works to mind;
My thoughts in warm devotion rise,
And sweet acceptance find.
Most Interesting Reading of 2022
About this time of year many writers will issue a “best books of the year” list. That’s not quite what I’m doing here. I’m not listing the most profound or most helpful reading I’ve done. Instead, I’m listing the twenty books that I found most interesting.
This list is based on my subjective perception. These books aren’t necessarily good because I found them interesting. A book can be instructive but annoying (for me, the classic example will always be Alan Beechik’s chirpy volume on The Pre Tribulation Rapture). Conversely, a book can be so bad that it becomes amusing (many defenses of King James Onlyism fit here). The fact that I found a book interesting is no guarantee that it is any good.
Furthermore, I find books interesting for a variety of reasons. Some are elegantly written. Some are highly instructive. Some provoke thought or introduce fresh but viable perspectives. Over the next two weeks, I shall list twenty books that I read during 2022 that most grabbed and held my attention. I’ll also include any caveats or disclaimers that may be necessary.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim’s Progress. Minneola, NY: Dover Publications, repr. 2003.
I can’t say how many times I’ve read Bunyan’s fantastic allegory of the Christian life. It gets better every time. This work belongs on the list of classics that every Christian ought to read. Enough said.
Callahan, Steven. Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea. New York: Harper, 2002.
The author was transiting the Atlantic in a sailing vessel he had built. He collided with something in a storm, severely damaging his craft. He lived on a little escape raft for over two months. The book is his story of survival and rescue. This account makes Robinson Crusoe look like a summer vacation.
Davis, Stephen T. and Erik T. Yang. Christian Philosophical Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020.
Philosophical theology and philosophy of religion are overlapping disciplines. This book straddles the divide, providing a general survey of the questions that philosophical theologians try to answer, of the methods that they employ to answer them, and of the principal answers that have been proposed. It is an introductory work, useful for the average seminary student or seminary-trained pastor.
Dorsett, Lyle. Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.
In life and death Billy Sunday was a controversial figure. He is hailed as a great evangelist for the number of people who professed Christ during his campaigns, but he is also vilified as a manipulative money grubber who sold his Christian patrimony for momentary numerical gains. Dorsett deals seriously with both sides of Sunday’s legacy. He is sympathetic to Sunday without overlooking his faults. He depicts Sunday as a man who genuinely loved the Lord but who could be distracted and who paid a heavy price both for his commitment and for the distractions.
English, E. Schuyler. Ordained of the Lord. Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux, 1976.
Harry Ironside was once among the best-known preachers in America. He is now largely forgotten, perhaps acknowledged as the author of a series of devotional commentaries that still grace a few pastors’ shelves. Schuyler English has written a biography of Ironside that does justice both to the man and to his ministry, telling of his conversion, his labors with the Salvation Army, and his eventual pastoring of Moody Church in Chicago.
Esolen, Anthony. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization. Washington DC: Regnery, 2008.
Regnery publishes a series of Politically Incorrect Guides; conservatives would do well to acquaint themselves with them. In a day when Western Civilization is being attacked for racism, patriarchy, and exploitation, it’s nice to see a competent rebuttal and defense. Esolen is a senior editor for Touchstone magazine (also good reading) and a Roman Catholic. His Catholicism does skew some elements of his interpretation, but those faults are easily overlooked. The book provides an overview of Western intellectual history that undermines the most common accusations.
Fraser, J. Cameron. Developments in Biblical Counseling. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2015.
While all biblical (as opposed to “integrationist”) counselors hold basic principles in common, they display a surprising amount of variation. Cameron Fraser traces the development of those differences. He begins with Jay Adams, the father of the biblical counseling movement. He follows the progress of thought within the second- and third-generation biblical counselors. He offers his own criticism of biblical counseling philosophy. He critiques it by comparing today’s biblical counseling with the Puritans’ approach. If there is a better survey or more thoughtful critique of the biblical counseling movement, I don’t know what it would be.
Gleick, James. Isaac Newton: Author of Genius and Chaos. New York: Vintage/Random House, 2003.
Isaac Newton is best known as a mathematician and physicist. He developed calculus and discovered so many principles of natural cause and effect that “Newtonian physics” is still the way to designate the pre-quantum, pre-relativity understanding of the world. Gleick explores these areas but also investigates Newton’s (not entirely orthodox) contributions to theology. The author does a good job of setting these intellectual pursuits against the backdrop of a very human individual.
Hazony, Yoram. Conservatism: A Rediscovery. Washington DC: Regnery, 2022.
Yoram Hazony is an orthodox Jew who came to conservative views while a student at Princeton University. In this book he sets forth a vision of conservatism that critiques William F. Buckley’s “fusionism” of conservative ideas with moderate libertarianism. Hazony rebukes Russell Kirk for his unwillingness to distance himself from defenders of slavery. He also distances himself from Friedrich von Hayek for what Hazony views as a capitulation to Enlightenment liberal thought. Like T. S. Eliot, Hazony argues that conservatism is inseparable from religious commitment. This is a remarkable book. Though not perfect, it is probably the best discussion of conservative ideals to appear during the 2020s.
Kruger, Michael J. The Question of Canon. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2020.
Anything that Michael Kruger writes on the subject of canonicity is worth reading. In this volume he addresses the hypothesis that the New Testament canon was a late development, and that it was designed to buttress only one version of the many competing Christianities that preceded Nicea—the version that became known as orthodoxy. The book is highly readable but also good, responsible scholarship.
Last, Jonathan V. What to Expect When No One’s Expecting. New York: Encounter, 2014.
I grew up in the era of Paul and Anne Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. For years in public school we were shown charts that depicted the world’s population exploding at such exponential rates as to render the planet uninhabitable in the near future. Jonathan Last, however, argues that the global population is nearing its peak, and that it has begun to decline in most places. He raises an equally alarming vision of world population decline, and he depicts the consequences of such a decline. If nothing else, this book makes an interesting counterpoint to the Malthusians.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
God of My Life, Look Gently Down
Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
God of my life, look gently down,
Behold the pains I feel;
But I am dumb before thy throne,
Nor dare dispute thy will.
Diseases are thy servants, Lord,
They come at thy command;
I’ll not attempt a murm’ring word
Against thy chast’ning hand.
Yet I may plead with humble cries,
Remove thy sharp rebukes:
My strength consumes, my spirit dies,
Through thy repeated strokes.
Crush’d as a moth beneath thy hand,
We moulder to the dust;
Our feeble pow’rs can ne’er withstand,
And all our beauty’s lost.
I’m but a stranger here below,
As all my fathers were;
May I be well prepar’d to go,
When I the summons hear!
But if my life be spar’d a while
Before my last remove,
Thy praise shall be my bus’ness still,
And I’ll declare thy love.
Doing All Things to the Glory of God
In 1 Corinthians 8–10 the apostle Paul addresses the question of whether Christians should eat meat that has been offered to idols. In chapter 8 his general answer is that an idol is nothing in the world. If an idol is nothing, then meat that has been offered to idols has literally been offered to nothing. To say that it has been offered to nothing is equivalent to saying that it has not been offered at all. Consequently, meat that has been offered to idols is just meat and may be safely eaten.
Nevertheless, Paul places an important caveat on implementing this conclusion. Even supposing that eating this meat is completely morally innocuous, some Christians still have qualms of conscience about it. Some people are keenly conscious of the idolatrous worship that provoked the offering of the meat. They may perceive eating the meat as idolatry-at-a-distance. For them to eat would be to transgress their consciences, and violating one’s conscience is not a good habit to form.
If it is not possible to eat this meat without transgressing the conscience, then one should not eat the meat. Furthermore, one should not eat the meat if eating would induce fellow believers to violate their consciences. We are responsible not only to protect our own consciences but also the consciences of our sisters and brothers. In view of this principle, Paul makes the radical assertion that if eating meat causes his brother to stumble, he will consume no flesh as long as the world stands.
We might think that this statement was intended as a hyperbole, a fantastic exaggeration to emphasize a point. If that is what we think, then we are wrong. The entire next chapter (1 Cor 9) is Paul’s extended explanation of how he is not hyperbolizing at all. Quite the contrary, he already practices similar disciplines in his ministry. As an example, Paul builds an extended case for why he, in ministering the gospel, has a right to expect compensation. He bases this case on Old Testament examples and principles, on the apostolic pattern, and even on common-sense natural law arguments. Then he makes it clear that, even though he has a right to expect compensation, he refuses to insist upon that right.
Paul’s example implies a principle that we should not insist upon rights and privileges when those rights and privileges get in the way of effective ministry. We should “become all things to all men” in the sense of exerting no privilege that would block our ministry by offending the people to whom we minister. Instead, we should discipline ourselves so as to accomplish the tasks that Christ has given us to do.
Parenthetically, it needs to be said that Paul is not telling us to surrender duties and obligations. There is a difference between a right and a duty, between a privilege and an obligation. Paul is not saying that we are permitted to lower our ethical standards for the sake of apparent effectiveness in ministry. Eating idol meat as an evangelistic outreach would be wrong. That much becomes clear in the next chapter.
1 Corinthians 10 starts in an odd place. Paul talks about Israel being identified with Moses during the Exodus, and he notes that this identification involved spiritual eating and drinking. This spiritual eating and drinking is then contrasted with the carnal and rebellious eating, drinking, and fornicating in which the Israelites indulged. These rebellious and carnal acts led to drastic judgments from God. Paul draws a clear lesson from this example: Christians, no less than Israelites, must flee idolatry.
Having established this imperative, Paul pivots to a discussion of the Lord’s Table. His point is that, just as spiritual eating and drinking identified the Israelites with Moses and God, and just as carnal, rebellious eating and drinking identified them with idolatry, in the same way eating and drinking identify Christians with the blood and body of Christ. Comparably, the Old Testament priests who ate the sacrifices in the tabernacle and temple were identified with (became partakers of) the altar. Clearly, eating and drinking are significant acts that have implications for Christian fellowship and worship. They are not merely the fulfillment of bodily needs. They are also acts that carry meaning.
The heart of Paul’s argument is 1 Corinthians 10:20. In chapter 8 he alleged that an idol is nothing in the world. Now he observes that whatever is offered to idols is really offered to demons. While the idol itself is lifeless (per Ps 135:15–18 its eyes do not see, its ears do not hear, it cannot utter words), behind the idol lurks a demon. Paul’s particular concern is that believers not be brought into fellowship with demons.
Eating and drinking can establish that kind of fellowship. If eating and drinking gave the Levitical priests fellowship with the altar, and if eating and drinking bring Christians into fellowship with Christ’s blood and body, then eating and drinking can also institute fellowship with demons. Demonic fellowship would be a serious matter for God’s people, who should be careful about provoking the Lord to jealousy. He is, after all, stronger than we are.
Consequently, Christians should abstain from some things that are not necessarily wrong in themselves. If those things are not helpful and if they do not build up, then they should be avoided. Even if nothing is wrong in itself with eating idol meat, the greater significance of the eating must be taken into account. There may hypothetically be some circumstances under which this meat can be eaten with impunity. In an atmosphere charged with idolatry, however, it must be utterly rejected.
Paul closes his discussion with an exhortation to do all things—specifically, eating and drinking—to the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31). Paul is not here talking about motivations. He is not giving permission to indulge in idol meat or any other activity as long as you want God to be glorified by it. Rather, he is forcing us to evaluate the activities themselves. If an activity is of such a nature that it cannot be done to God’s glory, then we should not do it. When eating and drinking identify us with idols, for example, and thus bring us into fellowship with demons, then we should avoid that kind of eating and drinking. Doing all to the glory of God requires us not simply to examine our hearts (which we certainly should do) but more importantly to examine the implications of what we are doing. Often the activities that we are considering have meanings that go beyond the bare acts themselves.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
A Prayer From The Imitation of Christ
Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)
Let Your name, not mine, be praised. Let Your work, not mine, be magnified. Let Your holy name be blessed, but let no human praise be given to me. You are my glory. You are the joy of my heart. In You I will glory and rejoice all the day, and for myself I will glory in nothing but my infirmities.
Let the Jews seek the glory that comes from another. I will seek that which comes from God alone. All human glory, all temporal honor, all worldly position is truly vanity and foolishness compared to Your everlasting glory. O my Truth, my Mercy, my God, O Blessed Trinity, to You alone be praise and honor, power and glory, throughout all the endless ages of ages.
Incarnate Forevermore
As Christians, we believe that God exists as three eternal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In God’s plan of redemption, the Son humbled Himself to assume to His person a fully human nature. When through the Spirit Mary conceived and was carrying the yet-unborn Jesus, she was carrying One who was both fully human and fully divine in her womb.
Jesus’s human life was one of suffering. He was born among the animals and chased from His home by a murderous dictator. He grew up in obscurity in a town with a dubious reputation. His public ministry was mostly misunderstood, even by those who had the closest acquaintance with His teaching. His life culminates in His suffering in the garden, His betrayal, abandonment, beating, and crucifixion.
Three days later, Jesus is raised from the dead. At that point, His body is of a different kind than it was before. It seems that He can enter locked rooms. His identity is hidden and revealed at His will. After forty days, He ascends to the Father.
This raises an important question: is the Ascension of Jesus the end of the Incarnation? It would be easy to assume that Jesus, having accomplished everything the Father purposed in His humiliation, threw off His lowly human nature and returned to the same state He had before His birth in Bethlehem.
Is Jesus, born in Bethlehem now over 2,000 years ago, still a human today? The answer is, yes, Jesus is still human. He still fully bears our nature, including a body. This is the answer of traditional theology, although it might seem counterintuitive. Let’s see in Scripture why we should believe that Jesus is still human.
First, if Jesus abandoned His humanity, we have no mediator. The key proof text here is a familiar one, but it turns on a small and sometimes overlooked word: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). Unless Jesus remains fully God and fully human, He cannot be the mediator between God and man. This mediatorial ministry is most clearly seen in the priesthood of Jesus, a priesthood for which He is qualified (according to the author of Hebrews) because He is human: “For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” And a few verses later, he highlights the fullness of Jesus’s humanity: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Heb 5:1, 7).
And although it is of central importance that Christ’s sacrifice of Himself is once for all (Heb 7:27; 9:12, 26; 10:10), intercession is a priestly work of Christ that continues to this day: “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25). If intercession is a priestly work, if priesthood requires humanity, and if intercession continues now, we must conclude that Jesus retains His human nature.
Second, Christ’s continued humanity is essential to our hope of resurrection. If there is no resurrection of the dead, Christianity is worthless (1 Cor 15:19). My argument is that if Jesus does not retain His humanity forever, we have no expectation that we will be raised.
We must affirm that Jesus is raised bodily. Jesus insists on this to His incredulous disciples: “‘See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them” (Luke 24:39–43). In other words, we have already taken a bad turn if we think that Jesus is raised apart from His humanity. Jesus has not abandoned His body; His body has been raised. We reject all merely metaphorical understandings of Jesus’s own resurrection.
The Christian’s hope is not an escape from humanity. Creation is good—very good. Sin has broken it. The Bible’s story, then, is not about how we will escape this world, but how it will be redeemed. This is why the promise of salvation is resurrection, not disembodiment.
Our confidence in our future resurrection hangs on the security of Jesus’s resurrection. If you search your Bible, you will find that the New Testament almost never speaks of Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus is raised from the dead (1 Cor 15:13, 16, 20). The Father raises the Son. In other words, the resurrection is important not chiefly because it is something that Jesus does by virtue of His divinity, but because it is something done to Him as to His humanity. The Father has raised the Son, making the Son the firstfruits of the resurrection. This means that our own resurrection is part of the same harvest of redeemed humanity that begins with the Father’s raising of the Son.
Consider the connection that Paul makes explicit in Romans 8:11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”
If the resurrection of the humanity of Jesus is a temporary thing—if He is raised and then obliterates His human nature— our own eternal life is thrown into uncertainty (at best). If our resurrection is tied to His, the eternal blessing of our hope is utterly undermined if Christ no longer shares our nature. Indeed, our own future resurrection bodies are made like that of our Lord: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil 3:20–21). If the ascended Christ no longer has a body, into what likeness will our lowly bodies be transformed?
During the years in which Jesus was on earth, having assumed a human nature, the glory of His divine nature was veiled. This is the significance of the Transfiguration, in which Peter, James, and John see the incarnate Christ in His divine glory. Following the resurrection, Jesus remains human, but He is the first fully glorified human, with a human nature that is no longer subject to the curse of sin.
Jesus is born and remains our brother. We rejoice this Christmas because Jesus is born; He joined with us by assuming our nature. And He will never, forevermore, abandon us.
This essay is by Michael P. Riley, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church of Wakefield, Michigan. Since 2011, he has served Central Seminary as the publishing editor of In the Nick of Time. Not every one of the professors, students, or alumni of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.
Due Praises to th’ Incarnate Love
Martin Luther (1483-1546); tr. Johann Christian Jacobi (1670–1750)
Due Praises to th’ incarnate Love,
Manifested from above!
All Men and Angels now adore
What we, nor they have seen before.
Hallelujah.
The blessed Father’s only Son
Chose a Manger for his Throne:
In the mean Vest of Flesh and Blood,
Was clothed God, th’ eternal Good.
Hallelujah.
Who had the World at his Command,
Wants his Mother’s swaddling Band.
Th’ Almighty Word was pleas’d to come
A helpless Infant from the Womb.
Hallelujah.
Th’ eternal Splendor is in Sight;
Gives the World its saving Light;
And drives the Clouds of Sin away,
To make us Children of the Day.
Hallelujah.
God’s only Son, and equal God,
Took amongst us his Abode;
And open’d, through this World of Strife,
A Way to everlasting Life.
Hallelujah.
In Poverty he came on Earth,
To enrich us by his Birth,
And make us Heirs of endless Bliss,
With all the darling Saints of his.
Hallelujah.
This all he did that he might prove
Unknown Wonders of his Love;
Then let us All unite to sing
Praise to our New-born God and King.
Hallelujah.
Divine Nature, Divine Persons
God is so great and so high above us that we shall never wrap our understanding around Him. He has revealed Himself to us, and what He has said about Himself is true, but we shall never know the whole truth. We shall be learning about Him forever, and we shall always have more to learn. Furthermore, we should expect to find our understanding regularly challenged as our knowledge grows.
The Bible helps us to know God through analogy. The writers of Scripture compare God to things. They tell us that the Lord is a shepherd, a father, a rock, a king, a tower, a fortress, a shield, a man of war, a musician, a rider in the clouds, a potter, a husband, a judge, a military commander, an embroiderer, a shelter, a plot of land, a bird with wings, an inheritance. These are only a few of the word pictures that the Bible uses to help us imagine God rightly.
While these images aid our understanding, we must not push any of them too far. We must also make sure that we supplement each image with the others, or else our understanding of God will be deficient. We must learn to view God from multiple perspectives.
This principle applies especially to our thinking about the Trinity. We can view the Trinity from at least two distinct vantage points. On the one hand, we can think about the Trinity through the perspective of the divine nature, which is one. On the other hand, we can think about the Trinity from the standpoint of the divine persons, who are three.
Viewed from the standpoint of the divine nature, the Bible clearly teaches the existence of only one true and living God (Deut 6:4). Each of the divine persons is this God: the Father (Eph 4:6), the Son (John 1:1), and the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3–4). While these three are distinct from each other (2 Cor 13:14), they are not three Gods. Thus, each of them possesses the whole divine nature, for the One God is undivided.
A necessary consequence of the undivided Godhead is that each of the three persons is God in Himself. The Father is not God because He is Father. He is simply God. The Son is not promoted to God-ness by the Father. The Spirit is not made God by the Father or the Son. Each is fully God, equally uncreated, eternal, immeasurable, almighty, and glorious.
Some have reasoned that if the persons of the Godhead are equal in all these ways, then they must be interchangeable. Any distinction between them must exist purely for the plan of redemption. On this view, the Father becomes Father simply to send the Son. The Son becomes Son only to enter the world, assume human nature, and offer Himself. The Holy Spirit becomes the Holy Spirit only to take up the role of comforter to believers. In principle, any of the three could have chosen any of the other roles.
This understanding of the Trinity really dissolves the distinctiveness of the persons. If there is no difference within the eternal being of God, then there is no real distinction. Father, Son, and Spirit simply become three modes of manifestation—and that is a deadly heresy. We must find some way of differentiating the three persons within the divine life of the Trinity, and not merely within the plan of God.
In other words, we must look at God, not merely from the standpoint of the divine unity and nature, but of the three persons. Why are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit distinguishable? The answer lies in the relationships that they bear toward one another.
The Father generates (begets) the Son, and He bears the unique, personal mark of Paternity. The Son is begotten of the Father, and He bears the unique, personal mark of Filiation. The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and He bears the unique, personal mark of Spiration. The uniqueness of the persons consists exactly in these relations. Indeed, it is quite correct to say that the relations are the persons.
The writer to the Hebrews illustrates the relationship between the Father and the Son by comparing the Son to the “brightness” (apaugasma) of the Father’s glory. In other words, the Son is to the Father as a light beam or ray is to the light source. If we imagine looking up at the sun in the sky, we could ask whether we are seeing the sun or whether we are seeing the light from the sun. The answer is that the sun, to be the sun, shines forth its light. When we are perceiving the light, we are perceiving the sun. The two have the closest possible relationship. Yet they are distinguishable, and the sun is primary while the light is derivative.
This illustration must not be applied to the Father and Son when they are viewed with respect to their deity. Each is God in Himself. But if they are viewed with respect to their personal relations, then we come to understand that the Father, to be the Father, must eternally generate the Son, and the Son, to be the Son, must be eternally begotten of the Father. They stand in the closest possible relationship, and yet the Paternity of the Father is primary and initiating, while the Filiation of the Son is secondary and responsive.
In other words, the three persons of the Trinity have an order (the Greek word is taxis) among them. They are not interchangeable. The Father really is the First Person of the Godhead. The Son is the Second Person, for He is begotten of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person, for He proceeds from the Father and the Son. The persons are not and could not be interchangeable. The Son could not possibly have sent the Father into the world to do His will.
The three persons assume specific administrative or economic relationships to carry out God’s plan. These economic relationships are not merely arbitrary. Such relationships are grounded in the eternal order or taxis of the Trinity. In other words, the Economic Trinity reflects and is grounded in the Immanent Trinity.
Thus, we rightly confess “one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” These words are not Scripture, but they summarize the biblical teaching about Jesus Christ. We find it impossible to improve upon them.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
Of the Father’s Love Begotten
Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (348-410); tr. John Mason Neale (1818–1866)
Of the Father’s love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega;
He the source, the ending He,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see
evermore and evermore!
O that birth forever blessed,
when a virgin, full of grace,
by the Holy Ghost conceiving,
bore the Savior of our race;
and the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
first revealed His sacred face,
evermore and evermore!
O ye heights of heav’n, adore Him,
angel hosts, His praises sing,
pow’rs, dominions, bow before Him,
and extol our God and King;
let no tongue on earth be silent,
ev’ery voice in concert ring,
evermore and evermore!
Christ, to Thee with God the Father,
and, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
hymn and chant and high thanksgiving
and unwearied praises be:
honor, glory, and dominion,
and eternal victory,
evermore and evermore!
Immanent and Economic
Christian orthodoxy affirms the deity of Christ as a fundamental of the faith. The first five verses of John 17 seem to challenge that commitment in several ways. They describe the Son (Jesus Christ) in ways that appear to mark Him as subordinate to the Father. These verses state that the Father has given authority to the Son (v 2), sent Him (v 3), and given Him a work to do (v 4). Rightly understood, however, these claims do not contradict other teaching that names the Son as God (John 1:1; 8:58). Instead, such claims open a window into the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.
From the time of Athanasius onward, theologians have commonly drawn a distinction between how the persons of the Trinity relate to each other in the eternal being of God versus how they relate to each other in carrying out God’s plan for the world. Athanasius called the former relationship kata theologia, or “according to divinity.” The latter he called kata oikonomia, or “according to arrangement.” Theologians continue to speak about the economic Trinity when they want to designate the relationship that the divine persons assume in creation, redemption, and consummation. What Athanasius called the Trinity kata theologia, more recent theologians call the immanent or ontological Trinity.
Every statement that humans can make about Jesus Christ has to be made from one or the other of these perspectives (and sometimes from both). In carrying out the divine plan He made all things (John 1:3; Col 1:16), assumed a human nature (John 1:14), died on the cross for our sins (John 19:23–30), arose from the dead (John 20:1–31), ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9–11), and intercedes for His saints (Heb 4:14-16). Yet the divine Son was also the Adonai and the Jehovah Tsabaoth who appeared to Isaiah, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up in the heavenly temple (Isa 6:1–4; see John 12:37–41).
This distinction between the ontological and economic Trinity provides a general rule that Christians have used for interpreting different passages that talk about the Son. Whenever the Bible presents the Son as somehow subordinate to the Father, it is talking about His economic role within God’s plan. When the Bible speaks of the Son in His deity and eternity, it is speaking about His ontological standing. Thus, when John 17 says that the Father has given authority to the Son (2), sent the Son (3), and given the Son a work to do (4), these activities occur within the administration that the divine persons have assumed for the execution of God’s plan. They do not make a statement about who Jesus is in Himself, but about who He is in the role that He has assumed for our creation and redemption.
So far, so good—but more needs to be said, and it needs to be said on both the ontological and the economic sides. Further distinctions must be drawn. On the economic side, the great distinction is between Christ’s humiliation and His glorification, both of which are stages within the divine administration. The key text for understanding this distinction is Philippians 2:5–11, sometimes called the kenosis passage.
In this passage, Paul first observes that, prior to His incarnation, Christ subsisted (huparchōn) in the form of God. This is a description of the eternal status of Christ as He is in Himself. Christ fully participated in the divine glory, as can be seen in the above reference to Isaiah 6. The glory was not merely the Father’s, but also the Son’s. That He was equal with the Father was visibly evident, yet He did not consider this visible equality with God to be a harpagmos—a thing to be selfishly grasped. In a word, He denied Himself the rightful privileges and honors that were His from eternity.
Instead of clinging to His visible equality with God, the Son took two additional steps in carrying out the plan of God. The first was to empty Himself, and the second was to humble Himself. These three concepts—that Christ denied Himself, emptied Himself, and humbled Himself—describe stages in the economic role He assumed for the execution of God’s plan.
These stages, and particularly the self-emptying, indicate a further distinction that must be drawn. One aspect of His self-emptying is that He took the form of a slave. In other words, He submitted Himself to His Father in abject obedience (see Heb 10:7). In doing so, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death on the cross.
Obviously, He has not remained dead. He is now risen and glorified. His relationship to the Father is no longer one of abject obedience. In other words, the humiliation of Christ, assumed as a stage in the outworking of the plan of redemption, was a temporary condition. The succeeding verses make this clear: God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name above every name. The humiliation was a stage of the Son’s economic relationship to the Father, but it was not the entirety of that relationship.
To say that God has exalted Him and given Him a name above every name is also a statement about the economic relationship. The exaltation that the Father now grants the Son is not the eternal glory that the Son has in Himself, but the glory of an exalted human nature. In His self-emptying, the Son (who already existed) also came to be in human likeness (Phil 2:7). He did not abandon His divine nature or His divine attributes, but He assumed a complete and genuine human nature. He became incarnate.
This incarnation will never be dissolved. The eternal Son is forevermore a human being, two natures united in one person. The two natures are distinct and must not be confounded, but the person is indivisible. In no sense does the incarnation lower or degrade the deity of the Son, but it does dignify the human.
The humiliation would have been impossible without the incarnation, but the two are not equivalent. The Son was humiliated and is now exalted. He became incarnate to endure humiliation, but He remains incarnate to enjoy exaltation. Though both are aspects of the Son’s economic relationship to the Father, one was a temporary condition while the other will endure forever.
The Second Person of the Godhead is eternally and ontologically God the Son. He is also economically the incarnate Son who was crucified. Some statements about Him pertain to His standing as God in Himself. Some pertain to His standing as a genuine human being, an enduring aspect of His economic role. Some pertain to His humiliation, a temporary aspect of His economic role. These are necessary distinctions.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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 Jesus Christ, Thy Manger Is
Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676); tr. composite
O Jesus Christ, Thy manger is
My paradise at which my soul reclineth.
For there, O Lord, doth lie the Word
Made flesh for us; herein Thy grace forthshineth.
He whom the sea and wind obey
Doth come to serve the sinner in great meekness.
Thou, God’s own Son, with us art one,
Dost join us and our children in our weakness.
Thy light and grace our guilt efface,
Thy heavenly riches all our loss retrieving.
Immanuel, Thy birth doth quell
The power of hell and Satan’s bold deceiving.
Thou Christian heart, whoe’er thou art,
Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move thee!
For God’s own Child, in mercy mild,
Joins thee to Him; how greatly God must love thee!
Remember thou what glory now
The Lord prepared thee for all earthly sadness.
The angel host can never boast
Of greater glory, greater bliss or gladness.
The world may hold her wealth and gold;
But thou, my heart, keep Christ as thy true Treasure.
To Him hold fast until at last
A crown be thine and honor in full measure.
Father and Son
Arians and Unitarians love the opening verses of John 17, a passage in which Jesus prays not only for His disciples but also for those who would believe through their word (v 20). Specifically, the first five verses make three sets of claims that are sometimes taken to contradict Trinitarianism. One is that the Father is the only true God (v 3). Another is that the Father has given authority to the Son (v 2), sent Him (v 3), and given Him a work to do (v 4). The third is that Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him (vv 1, 5). The supposed implications are that if the Father is the only true God, then the Son cannot be God. If the Son is given authority and sent by the Father to do a work, then He must be subordinate to the Father. If His glory comes from the Father, then He must be lesser than the Father.
These inferences, however, are neither necessary nor sound. Understood rightly, the three sets of claims are perfectly compatible with Jesus’ deity as declared earlier in the Gospel (1:1; 8:58). Furthermore, they should provide a better understanding of the relationship between the Father and the Son.
Jesus says that the Father is the only true God, but that is not the same thing as saying that only the Father is the true God. The point is not to contrast the Father with the Son or the Holy Spirit, but to contrast the only true and living God with all false gods. In the Old Testament, such false gods included the likes of Baal, Ashera, Milcom, Chemosh, Dagon, Rimmon, Molech, and Marduk. In Greek culture, they would have included the pantheon that Paul encountered on Mars hill—Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Aeres, Athena, Aphrodite, and others. In Roman religion, these Greek gods were given Latin names, and to them were added the gods of the mystery religions such as Mithra and Cybele. Eventually these false gods would come to include the emperor.
Such gods are false in the sense that they are not gods at all. According to Deuteronomy 6:4, only Jehovah is the true and living God. Jesus clearly recognizes that the Father is Jehovah. Therefore, the Father is not a false god. He is the only true God.
Since there is only one true God, there is only one way of being God. The only way to be God is to possess the divine essence—the entire divine essence—for oneself. The only true God is self-existent. If the Father is God at all, then He possesses the divine essence for Himself. In other words, He is autotheos.
There is only one true God, so there is only one divine essence. Consequently, if the Son is also God (as John elsewhere affirms), then He, too, must possess the entire divine essence, and He must possess it for Himself. Viewed from the perspective of deity, the Son derives neither His being nor His “Godness” from the Father. Yet He is not a different god. He is the same God, the only true God, and He, too, is autotheos.
The same may be said of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit is God at all (as other Scriptures indicate), then He, too, must possess the entire divine essence. He does not derive either His being or His deity from the Father and the Son. He is God in Himself. He is autotheos.
The Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct Persons (more on that later) but they are not three Gods. They are all one God, the one and only true God. They are of one substance, one being, one divine nature—yet the essence, being, and nature do not exist separately from the Persons.
The Father is uncreated. The Son is uncreated. The Spirit is uncreated. The Father is eternal. The Son is eternal. The Spirit is eternal. The Father is almighty. The Son is almighty. The Spirit is almighty. The Father is the only true God. The Son is the only true God. The Spirit is the only true God. And yet these are not three gods, but the one and only true God.
There is only one true God. If the Father is really God, then He must be the only true God. There is no other God for Him to be. Likewise, if the Son is God, then He must be the only true God, for there is no other God for Him to be. Furthermore, if the Spirit is God, then He must be the only true God, for there is no other God for Him to be. And yet the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father.
To say that the Father is the only true God does not exclude either the Son or the Spirit from being the only true God. The biblical God is all three: Father, Son, and Spirit, and yet He is only one God. In no way does John 17:3 contradict this teaching.
But what about the Father giving authority to the Son, sending Him, and assigning Him a task? What about the Son’s request that the Father glorify Him? To these matters we must turn in subsequent discussions.
This essay is by Kevin T. Bauder, Research Professor of Historical and 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.
All Hail, Adorèd Trinity
John David Chambers (1805–1893)
All hail, adorèd Trinity;
All hail, eternal Unity;
O God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, ever One.
Behold to Thee, this festal day,
We meekly pour our thankful lay;
O let our work accepted be,
That sweetest work of praising Thee.
Three Persons praise we evermore,
One only God our hearts adore;
In Thy sure mercy ever kind
May we our true protection find.
O Trinity! O Unity!
Be present as we worship Thee;
And with the songs that angels sing
Unite the hymns of praise we bring.
How to Speak at a “Questionable” Funeral
Have you ever had occasion to speak at the funeral of someone whose faith in Christ is uncertain? While we never can truly know whether a decedent has trusted the Lord for salvation—only God is qualified to judge the hearts of mankind—we have all attended a “questionable” funeral. This is one in which the decedent’s life was marked by little to no observable fruits of righteousness.
I recently attended such a funeral for a 36-year-old man I’ll call Bradley (I’ve changed the names of all individuals referred to here in order to protect their privacy). Bradley grew up attending independent Baptist churches with his family where he actively participated in all the church and youth group functions. After graduating from high school, he attended a Bible college for one semester. But Bradley struggled with ongoing bouts of depression and same-sex attraction. By the time he reached his 30th birthday he decided to pursue what would make him happy (in his words), so Bradley and Clarke were officially joined together in a civil union.
Bradley’s remaining years were filled with much despair and turmoil as he spiraled downward in the throes of depression exacerbated by addiction to prescription drugs, which culminated in a fateful decision to take his own life.
A good number of Bradley’s relatives and friends attended his funeral, many of whom were believers in Jesus. I’m quite sure that Bradley’s family would have preferred to have his uncle, who is a gospel-preaching pastor, officiate the service. But Clarke made the decision to ask the pastor who oversaw Bradley’s and Clarke’s civil union to give the main address at the service. Her talk, based on Revelation 12, included a message about fighting the “dragons” of homophobia and exclusion—a rather strange text to use at a funeral.
Providentially, some other family members were given the opportunity to speak, and I was particularly impressed by the words of Bradley’s younger brother, Sam. I would describe Sam as a mature, Bible-saturated Christian, who loved his brother deeply even as he disagreed completely and was grieved with the path Bradley chose to follow.
During his four-minute address Sam shared some happy memories of Bradley and then proceeded with these words:
I don’t know the final thoughts that Bradley might have had on this earth. I don’t know what his death and transition from this mortal coil was like, but I do believe with all of my heart what the Bible says in Romans 14:11: “It is written: ‘As Surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’” I believe that as Bradley faces his Creator, his knee will bow and his tongue will acknowledge God. And though I wish Bradley could come back here to tell all of us the truth that I believe he now fully sees, God has spoken truth and given it to us in His holy Word. I would like to leave you today with what the Bible says to all of us: I pray you will seek the Lord while He may be found and call on Him while He is near. And that you find true comfort in these words as I do.”
Sam then quoted each of these verses without comment: Mark 10:45; Romans 5:8; 6:23; 8:1, 32; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 8:9; 1 Timothy 1:15; and 1 John 4:10.
Though Sam did not give the main address in that service, he presented some clear truths that every gospel preacher should present at a funeral, whether the decedent is “questionable” or not. First, every human being will bow the knee to God; believers will do so willingly and unbelievers begrudgingly, but all will bow before the Judge of all the earth.
Second, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim 1:15) as our ransom and propitiation and to show His love and grace in order that those who believe in Him will have eternal life. Third, Sam implied another truth that we should proclaim at a funeral when he said, “I wish Bradley could come back here to tell all of us the truth…he now fully sees.”
I would like to expand on this third point which speaks to the truth of what the physically dead would say to those still living if they could return to their own funeral and address the audience. If the deceased person did believe in Jesus during his or her time on earth, he or she is presently “with Christ.” This is the language Paul uses (2 Cor 5:8; Phil 1:23), and this is the hope all true believers have. We can be sure that someone who is with Christ would desire that all their friends and loved ones could join them to be in His presence forever. This would be their message at their funeral: “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved!”
But what of the one who has died without Christ? What would he say at his funeral? The Bible does not leave us in doubt in regard to these questions. Luke 16:19–31 provides us with a window into the experience of life after death for the rich man who did not believe Moses and the Prophets, a phrase Luke and John understand to refer to the gospel message about Jesus (Lk 24:44–47; Jn 5:39–46). Two aspects of the rich man’s abode should be noted from this passage: 1) it is a place of torment and 2) it is completely separated from the place of blessing where Lazarus resides. And what is the rich man’s message from this horrible place? “Please warn my five brothers to believe the gospel so they don’t end up here!” Put in modern terms, a person in hell would say to his loved ones and friends, “Please trust in Christ so that you can have eternal life!”
Speaking at a “questionable” funeral presents us with a difficult challenge, but God’s Word provides at least three truths we can share with confidence: 1) every human being will one day bow the knee to God; 2) Christ came into the world to save all who trust in Him; and 3) every decedent, if given the opportunity, would plead with the attenders, “Seek the Lord while He may be found!”
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.
Stoop Down, My Thoughts
Isaac Watts (1674–1748)
Stoop down, my thoughts, which use to rise,
Converse a while with death;
Think how a gasping mortal lies,
And pants away his breath.
His quivering lip hangs feebly down,
His pulses faint and few;
Then speechless, with a doleful groan,
He bids the world adieu.
But Oh, the soul, which never dies!
At once it leaves the clay!
Ye thoughts, pursue it where it flies,
And trace its wondrous way.
Up to the courts where angels dwell,
It mounts triumphing there;
Or devils plunge it down to hell,
In terror and despair!
And must my body faint and die!
And must this soul remove?
Oh, for some guardian angel nigh,
To bear it safe above.
Almighty Saviour, to thy hand
My naked soul I trust;
My flesh shall wait thy kind command,
To mingle with the dust.
Give to the Max 2022
“Give to the Max” has arrived! It began November 1 and it will end on November 17. Many years ago, Central Baptist Theological Seminary began to participate in “Give to the Max Day” every November. The event is sponsored by GiveMN, a coordinating organization for charitable institutions. It is intended to encourage giving to Minnesota-based charities, including Central Seminary.
The event is no longer just a day. “Give to the Max” now takes nearly three weeks. From now until November 17 every gift will be doubled until we reach a total of $100,000. More on that in a moment. First, here’s why you should consider donating to Central Seminary during the Give to the Max event.
Think for a moment about the church at Philippi. When the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians, that church was experiencing the double affliction of persecution and poverty. The members heard that Paul was in prison, and they wanted to help him. They gathered as much money as they could, and they sent one of their fellow members to carry it as a gift to Paul. Though the gift came from their poverty, it touched Paul deeply. They had given him their money, and they had taken his need upon themselves. He praised them and reassured them that God would supply the need that they now experienced. Just as importantly, he promised that their gift would result in fruit that would be credited lavishly to their account (Phil 4:18–19).
The principle that Paul articulated remains both true and important. When we give financial help to others who are doing God’s work, God reckons their work as our work. What they accomplish is credited to us. God rewards us for the work that He does through those whom we support.
This principle still applies today. I may never be able to go to Madagascar or Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, if I support those who do the Lord’s work in those places, then I have a real stake in God’s work there. As souls are reached and discipled, and as churches are planted and grow to maturity, then God credits me with a part of that work. I become a full partner in God’s work wherever I give it my support.
This principle is relevant to our situation. Central Baptist Theological Seminary is training students all over the world. We have students in Kenya, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We have students in Brazil and Bolivia. We have students in India and Russia. Of course, we also have students in the United States and Canada. Central Seminary is training many Christian leaders around the world through its global outreach. Our student population continues to increase around the globe.
We are investing in the education of these students because they are, or promise to be, key leaders of churches, colleges, seminaries, mission agencies, and other ministries in the countries where they live. Through our Zoom technology we can bring advanced levels of biblical and theological training to serious students, whether they live across the street or across the ocean. We are doing the Lord’s work in places that we’ll probably never go.
By giving to Central Seminary you gain a stake in this great work. You too can minister in Africa, Europe, Asia, and South America. In the same way that the Philippians helped Paul through their gifts, you can help to train Christian leaders in many places through your gifts. Just as the Philippians gained a share in the rewards of Paul’s work, you can gain a share in the work that Central Seminary does.
We promise you that Central Seminary will spend every dollar of your gift carefully. We aren’t lining anybody’s pockets. We’re doing ministry, just as we have been for sixty-five years. Our founder and first president, R. V. Clearwaters, often said that a call to minister is also a call to prepare. He established Central Baptist Theological Seminary to prepare Christian leaders. We still hold that vision, only now it spans the globe. Central Baptist Theological Seminary exists to assist local churches in equipping spiritual leaders for Christ-exalting biblical ministry.
Do you want a piece of that action? Then we invite you to give! Generous donors think that what we do is important enough that they have agreed to match every gift up to $50,000. Whatever you give before November 17 will double in value, until we reach a total of $100,000. Since WCTS is a subsidiary of Central Seminary, gifts to AM 1030 will count toward this total.
You can give on our website at www.centralseminary.edu/give or www.wctsradio.com/donate. Or you can phone us from 8:00 AM through 3:00 PM Monday through Friday at 763.417.8250. We’ll be happy to assist you. If you wish, you can mail your gift to Central Baptist Theological Seminary at 900 Forestview Ln. N., Plymouth, MN 55441.
Your support allows us to equip pastors and missionaries in the United States. It enables us to train pastors and teachers around the world. It empowers us to broadcast the gospel twenty-four hours a day. Thank you for your help in furthering the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care
Richard Baxter (1615–1691)
Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I die or live;
To love and serve thee is my share,
And this thy grace must give.
If life be long, I will be glad
That I may long obey;
If short, yet why should I be sad
To soar to endless day?
Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than he went through before;
No one into his kingdom comes,
But through his opened door.
Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be?
Then shall I end my sad complaints,
And weary, sinful days,
And join with all triumphant saints
Who sing Jehovah’s praise.
My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim;
But ‘tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.
Jesus and the Bible: Old Testament Miracles
Some people talk as if they wish to believe in the inspiration of the Bible, but they stumble over its miraculous stories. To them, accounts like Lot’s wife becoming a pillar of salt or Jonah being swallowed by a whale or great fish seem mythological, not historical. Such people either reject inspiration outright, or else they redefine it so that these stories do not have to be taken as true.
This unwillingness to trust the plain text of Scripture was not shared by Jesus. He regularly drew upon the Old Testament as a source of authority, and He did not shy away from the miraculous accounts. Indeed, Jesus references these miracles so often that it almost seems as if He went looking for them.
For example, when Jesus was quizzed about marriage and divorce, He appealed directly to the original creation account in Genesis 1–2. He flatly stated that the creator made humans as male and female, implying belief in the historical Adam and Eve. He further taught that God Himself instituted marriage (Matt 19:4–5). In the process of this discussion, Jesus quoted directly from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.
Jesus also spoke of Noah’s flood as if it were an actual event in the past (Luke 17:26–27). He stated that people were living normal lives (eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage) right up to the moment that the flood came. In other words, Jesus believed that the flood was not anticipated by its victims. He also emphasized the worldwide scope of the flood in decimating humanity: the flood destroyed them all.
In a parallel example Jesus referenced the miraculous destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as an event where fire and brimstone rained from heaven (Luke 17:28–33). He stated that a comparable judgment would occur before His return, and He warned people against failing to take that judgment seriously. To emphasize His warning, He told his listeners to “remember Lot’s wife.” Evidently Jesus had no difficulty accepting this account as true.
The same can be said of Moses at the burning bush. In Luke 20:37, Jesus corrected the Sadducees’ mistaken denial of a future resurrection by appealing to Exodus 3:7, where God identifies Himself as “the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus’ punch line was that God is not the God of the dead (the patriarchs had died centuries earlier) but the God of the living. Along the way, however, Jesus makes it clear that He is referencing the episode of Moses at the burning bush. Jesus not only makes His theological point but incidentally endorses belief in the miracle.
Another episode occurs near the end of Matthew 12, which is a turning point in Matthew’s narrative. In this chapter the Jewish leadership clearly rejects Jesus as the Messiah, with the result that the nation forfeits the opportunity to receive an imminent kingdom. In the wake of this rejection the crowd cynically demands a sign. In fact, they have already had more signs than they need, and their demand for another is equivalent to a further rejection. Speaking a word of judgment against Israel, Jesus calls the nation “evil and adulterous,” and says that the only remaining sign they will receive is the sign of Jonah the prophet: “For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:40). Jesus even adds that the men of Nineveh will rise in judgment against Israel, because the Ninevites repented at Jonah’s preaching.
These examples are only illustrative. For example, Jesus referenced miracles by Elijah and Elisha. He also discussed the manna in the wilderness. The present listing is not meant to be exhaustive, but it clearly shows how Jesus endorsed even those parts of the Old Testament that seem hardest for modern people to believe.
Some suggest that Jesus did not really believe in these miracles, but that He was merely accommodating His teachings to the sensibilities and understanding of His crowd. That suggestion flies in the face of everything we know about Jesus’ method of teaching. While He was compassionate and while He readily forgave sins, He simply never countenanced error. Whoever was wrong—scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, even ordinary people—could expect correction from Jesus.
Other have suggested that Jesus so emptied Himself of His omniscience in the incarnation that He could and did believe errors. The kernel of truth in this argument is that the person of Jesus is limited in knowledge according to His human nature. While He remains omniscient according to His divine nature, during His humiliation He did not have conscious and unmediated access to all of His divine knowledge. For instance, He had to ask who touched Him. He acknowledged before His crucifixion that He did not know the day or hour of His return.
Not knowing something, however, is not the same as believing an error. A working definition of knowledge is that it is justified, true belief. Not all beliefs are true; not all beliefs are justified. Therefore, not all beliefs constitute knowledge. During His humiliation, Jesus lacked information about some things according to His human nature. Concerning those things He expressed no beliefs. When He did express beliefs, however, they were both true and justified. To put it in other words, Jesus knew what He knew, and He also knew what He did not know, but He never thought He knew something that turned out to be mistaken.
Suppose the opposite were true. Suppose that Jesus actually were mistaken about, say, the burning bush or Lot’s wife. We could no longer trust His use of the miracle story, which means that we could no longer accept the argument that He based upon the story. Those arguments, however, touch upon the core of who Jesus is, what He came to do, and what His rule will be like. If we cannot take Jesus’ word for the burning bush, for example, then we cannot take His word for the resurrection from the dead. By the time we dismiss everything that Jesus inferred from those miracle stories, our Christianity will be gone.
There is no escaping Jesus’ perception of the Old Testament. During His ministry He singled out several of the most controversial accounts of miracles to be found in the text. In every case, He spoke of those accounts as if they were completely true. Clearly Jesus believed them to be true, and He was willing to base His teachings upon them.
We should be able to accept Jesus’ evaluation of the text. If we do, we shall experience no difficulty placing our full confidence both in what it says and in what Jesus infers from what it says. The fact is that Jesus never used the Old Testament text as if it were anything but infallible and inerrant. Neither should we.
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.
Him Dead and Buried We Confess
Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
Him dead and buried we confess,
The storm our sins had raised t’appease,
Three days and nights for us confined;
But lo, emerging from the grave,
He comes, a ransomed world to save,
He preaches life to all mankind!
O that we all His words might hear,
A greater far than Jonah fear,
And live and die, at His command!
Then shall the grave its prey restore,
Raised by His resurrection’s power,
And cast us on the heavenly land.
Jesus and the Bible: His Temptation
How should we view the Bible? How should we use it? One of the ways we can answer these questions is to see how Jesus viewed and employed the Bible. When we do, we discover that Jesus both saw and used the Bible as the authoritative word of God.
The first glimpse that the Gospels give of Jesus using the Bible is during His temptation. The story is recorded in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Mark’s version of the story is very brief, but each of the three includes details that the others leave out.
The story opens when the Holy Spirit leads (Matthew and Luke) or drives (Mark) Jesus into the wilderness. There He fasts for forty days and nights, after which He experiences hunger. This would not have been the hunger that comes from missing a meal or two, but the pangs a starving person feels when the body begins to consume itself.
At this point, the devil tempts Jesus by suggesting that He command or tell stones to become bread. Why would this action have been wrong? The reason is that during His self-emptying, Jesus took the form of a slave (Phil 2:7), subjecting Himself to the will of the Father and the leading of the Spirit. The Spirit had led Jesus into the wilderness for a purpose. If Jesus were simply to act on His own initiative to satisfy His hunger, He would be defeating the purpose to which the Spirit had led Him. Jesus was not free to exercise His powers simply to gratify His appetite.
Jesus’ reply is precisely to the point. Stating, “It is written,” He quotes a fragment of Deuteronomy 8:3. The point of the verse is that God led the Israelites into hunger such that they had no choice but to trust Him for provision, and then He provided manna. God put Israel in this position so that He “might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.” Jesus, who now occupied an analogous position, applied these words directly to His situation. As Israel trusted God for manna in the wilderness, Jesus would trust God for food in the present.
After the first temptation, Matthew and Luke diverge in their presentations of the order of the temptations. The exact order of the events is not the main point for either writer. Luke in particular will make a point about Jesus’ use of Scripture, and his ordering of events is necessary to that point.
In Luke’s account, the devil next leads Jesus up into a high mountain and shows Him the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil claims that he has been given these kingdoms, and he offers to give them to Jesus in exchange for His worship. Interestingly, Jesus does not challenge the devil’s claim to authority, and Scripture elsewhere teaches that the devil does exercise some level of authority within this world. He is the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). He is the god of this age (2 Cor 4:4). He is the one who held the power of death (Heb 2:14). If the devil had spoken falsely, Jesus would surely have pointed out the lie. Apparently, however, the devil’s offer was genuine.
It was also poisoned. By offering Jesus direct access to earthly rule, the devil was attempting to subvert the whole work of redemption. Had Jesus accepted the devil’s offer, He would have found Himself a king over people who could never be saved from condemnation. Indeed, Jesus Himself would have fallen under condemnation for worshipping the devil.
Once again Jesus’ reply is exactly to the point. “It is written,” He says, and then paraphrases a pair of texts from Deuteronomy (6:13; 10:20). Both these texts teach that only Jehovah deserves to be treated as God, so the worship of all other gods is forbidden. The point of Jesus citing these verses is that He is submitting Himself to them. Jesus placed Himself under the authority of God’s word, and that submission silenced the tempter.
Twice Jesus has ended a temptation with the words, “It is written.” In the remaining temptation, however, the devil himself parrots these words. He takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple and urges Him to cast Himself down, citing Psalm 91:11–12. The devil knows the Bible, and in this case he selects a text that appears superficially to be relevant. What he is doing, however, is quoting Scripture in a misleading way.
In His reply, Jesus goes to the heart of the issue. Rather than responding with, “It is written,” which would merely have pitted Scripture against Scripture, Jesus states, “It is said.” Jesus means that, to be used authoritatively, the words of Scripture must be understood and applied correctly. For Jesus to obey the devil and cast Himself down from the temple would be to claim God’s promise in a way that God never intended. It would put God to the test and trivialize His word. As Jesus points out, “You shall not tempt [put to the test] the Lord thy God.”
This saying is a citation from Deuteronomy 6:16. By quoting this text, Jesus makes it clear that He is submitting Himself to God’s word. Rather than presuming upon God’s promise, misapplying it, and thereby trivializing it, Jesus places Himself under its authority as rightly understood.
In every case, Jesus faces temptation by quoting Scripture—but that is not the only point. The main point is that Jesus’ quotation of Scripture exhibits His submission to it, not merely as read but as rightly understood. This episode provides a clear glimpse into Jesus’ attitude toward Scripture. He knew the Scriptures. He understood them. He used them. He submitted to them. This is a model that we should do well to follow.
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 Love, How Deep, How Broad, How High
attr. to Thomas á Kempis (1380–1471); tr. Benjamin Webb (1819–1885)
O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
how passing thought and fantasy,
that God, the Son of God, should take
our mortal form for mortals’ sake!
He sent no angel to our race,
of higher or of lower place,
but wore the robe of human frame,
and He Himself to this world came.
For us baptized, for us He bore
His holy fast, and hungered sore;
for us temptations sharp He knew,
for us the tempter overthrew.
For us to wicked men betrayed,
scourged, mocked, in crown of thorns arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death
for us at length gave up His breath.
For us He rose from death again,
for us He went on high to reign,
for us He sent His Spirit here
to guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.
All glory to our Lord and God
for love so deep, so high, so broad—
the Trinity whom we adore
forever and forevermore.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 5: Pilgrim’s Progress as Fantasy
Discussions of Pilgrim’s Progress tend to focus upon either its literary value or its theological interpretation. Not many interpreters speak of its value as a work of fantasy. Yet Bunyan chose to incorporate multiple fantastic elements, and those fantastic elements become some of the most important features of the story. This is not surprising. Bunyan presents his narrative as a dream, and the literary world that he creates has a dream-like quality. In one sense, even the ordinary elements in the story (a city, a slough, a wicket gate, a road) take on a kind of fantastic quality.
Several of the scenes in the Interpreter’s House rely on fantastic images: an unquenchable fire, a stately palace peopled by golden-robed figures, a man in an inescapable iron cage. Once Christian leaves the Interpreter’s House, fantastic elements appear more frequently. These are sometimes purely allegorical. Other times they are properly occult, in that they represent Bunyan’s interpretation of the unseen world. In either case, they offer an experience within the story that goes beyond the ordinary, everyday experience of the reader.
Christian has only just lost his burden when he comes upon three men—Simple, Sloth, and Presumption—lying asleep and chained with fetters. In spite of his best efforts he cannot awaken them or alert them to their danger. After climbing the Hill Difficulty, he arrives at the Palace Beautiful, which is guarded by chained lions. This palace houses the relics of many Old Testament adventures: Moses’s rod, Jael’s hammer and nail, Gideon’s pitchers and trumpets, Shamgar’s oxgoad, and David’s sling. It also houses the sword with which Christ will kill the Man of Sin.
Leaving the Palace Beautiful, Christian must pass through the Valley of Humiliation. There he encounters Apollyon. Bunyan describes Apollyon as a fire-breathing monster covered in scales like those of a fish, with the wings of a dragon, the feet of a bear, and the mouth of a lion. Christian fights a battle with Apollyon and wins, but he is sorely wounded. After his victory a hand appears to him holding leaves of the tree of life. When he applies the leaves to his wounds he is healed immediately.
After the Valley of Humiliation, Christian must go through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Here he passes by the Mouth of Hell, which threatens him with flame and smoke, and from which he hears sorrowful voices. He becomes so disoriented that he mistakes the voices of fiends whispering blasphemies for the thoughts of his own mind. Halfway through the valley he emerges into daylight, and Christian looks back to see that the valley behind him is filled with satyrs, hobgoblins, and dragons of the pit. The valley before him is filled with snares and traps, which Christian manages to avoid. Near the end of the valley he encounters his first giants, Pope and Pagan. They were once fearsome enemies of pilgrims, but they have now been rendered nearly powerless.
Pilgrim’s Progress exhibits a particular fondness for giants. After Pope and Pagan, Christian goes on to be imprisoned by the Giant Despair. In the second part of Pilgrim’s Progress, Christiana and her companions also encounter the Giant Despair, and they face the Giant Grim (also called Giant Bloody-man), the Giant Maul, and the Giant Slay-good. Indeed, slaying giants becomes one of the principal activities of Great-heart, guide to Christiana and her company.
Among the other fantastic elements, Bunyan includes some rudimentary magic. For example, he has Christian and Hopeful cross the Enchanted Ground—and what is enchantment but another word for magic? This ground has the supernatural power to make people drowsy and even to put the unwary to sleep. Only by exerting the will and remaining active can this enchantment be resisted.
Other fantastic elements could be cited, but this description gives a taste of Bunyan’s work. While Bunyan never uses fantasy for gratuitous affect, he clearly intends it to add interest. These elements increase his readers’ attention and draw them through the story.
Bunyan also uses the fantasy to emphasize whatever point that he is making at the moment. For example, how could despair be better personified than as a giant: cruel, looming, powerful, unassailable? Or what better depiction of the now-enfeebled powers of paganism and papacy than as decrepit giants?
In the case of Apollyon, several of the constituent parts in Bunyan’s description evoke the imagery of biblical apocalypses. This enemy of pilgrims is depicted with the feet of a bear, the wings of a dragon, the mouth of a lion. While the descriptions do not exactly match anything in Scripture, the dragon, bear, and lion are drawn from imagery that, in Daniel and Revelation, depicts powers opposed to God.
In short, Pilgrim’s Progress is not merely a great work of literature. It is not merely a great work of devotion and theology. It is also a great work of fantasy, and therein lies much of the enjoyment that its readers experience.
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.
from The Author’s Apology for His Work
John Bunyan (1628–1688)
Art thou for something rare and profitable?
Or would’st thou see a truth within a fable?
Art thou forgetful? Wouldest thou remember
From New-Year’s day to the last of December?
Then read my fancies; they will stick like burs,
And may be, to the helpless, comforters.
This book is writ in such a dialect
As may the minds of listless men affect:
It seems a novelty, and yet contains
Nothing but sound and honest gospel strains.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 4: The Interpreter’s House
After he passes through the Wicket Gate (salvation), but before he reaches the cross and the sepulcher (assurance), Christian stops to visit the Interpreter’s House. Guided by the Interpreter, he is confronted with a series of unusual, vision-like scenes. Each scene is an allegory. The earliest allegories are explained for Christian by the Interpreter. By the time he completes the series, he is understanding the allegories for himself. Each allegory has a valuable lesson of its own, but each also trains the reader to understand Pilgrim’s Progress.
In the first allegory Christian sees a painting of a grave person, eyes lifted up to heaven, the “Best of books” in his hand, the law of truth upon his lips, his back to the world, and a crown of gold suspended above his head. The man in the painting stands as if pleading. The Interpreter explains that this man represents the preacher of the gospel. He encourages Christian to study the man’s features so that he will be able to recognize such individuals when he meets them. As a Puritan, Bunyan believed that believers would confront many false preachers, and he has the Interpreter warn Christian against them.
For the second allegory, the Interpreter shows Christian a large parlor filled with dust. Whenever someone tries to sweep the dust, it rises in great clouds and chokes those in the room; it cannot be swept up. Then a girl sprinkles the room with water, after which the dust can be swept out and the room cleaned. In answer to Christian’s question, the Interpreter explains that the parlor is like the human heart apart from the grace of God. The dust is original sin and inward corruption. The sweeper is God’s law. As a Puritan, Bunyan was far from despising the law, which (as Paul declares) is holy, and just, and good. Yet the effect of the law upon the graceless heart is to stir up sin (Rom 7:8–13). The water, therefore, must represent the gospel, which is the only way that sin can be forgiven and eventually removed.
The third allegory features two small children named Passion and Patience. As they sit in their chairs, Passion is discontented but Patience remains calm. A bag of treasure is poured out in front of Passion, who delights in it while scorning Patience. His treasure is soon gone, however, leaving him with only rags. According to the Interpreter, Passion is like people who live for the things of this world, which they enjoy for a moment and then lose. Patience, however, is like those who live for the world to come. These people will receive better things, the sort of things that they will never lose. Christian observes, “Then I perceive it is not best to covet things that are now, but to wait for things to come.”
In the fourth allegory, the Interpreter shows Christian a fire burning against a wall. A person stands there pouring water on it, but in spite of the water the flames rise higher and higher. The Interpreter explains that the fire represents the work of grace in the believer’s heart, which the Devil is constantly trying to quench. Then he leads Christian to the other side of the wall, where Christian sees another person constantly pouring oil on the fire, causing it to burn hotter. This individual pictures Christ, who “continually with the Oil of His Grace maintains the work already begun in the heart.” Even though the grace of Christ may be hidden, it is being constantly ministered to believers when they are tempted.
As the fifth allegory opens, the Interpreter leads Christian to a stately palace inhabited by people in golden robes. He wishes to go into the palace but discovers that a spy is stationed at the door to note the names of all who try to enter. Furthermore, soldiers in armor stand ready to assault any who attempt to go in. Nevertheless, one brave man dons a helmet and fights his way through the crowd to enter the palace.
This is the first allegory for which the Interpreter offers no explanation. Instead, Christian simply smiles and says, “I think verily I know the meaning of this.” And indeed, its meaning would have been plain in Bunyan’s time. Those who, during the reign of Charles II and James II, attempted to enter heaven through the true door of salvation, rejecting what they saw as the idolatries of Anglicanism, would meet direct opposition from the legal authorities. Records were kept of nonconformists, and the power of the sword was used against them.
Having discerned this meaning, Christian wishes to continue his journey to the Celestial City. The Interpreter, however, prevails upon him to wait for two more allegories. Both allegories stand as warnings for pilgrims.
In the sixth allegory, Christian sees a man sitting in the dark in an iron cage. The man explains that he once professed the gospel but turned aside into sin. Now he is gripped with despair, believing that he has so provoked God and hardened himself that he can no longer repent. The man is convinced that God Himself has shut him up in the cage. Whether Bunyan endorsed that man’s opinion is not clear. What is clear is that sin has led the man to despair, and as long as he remains in despair he will not repent. Whether this man was never saved, or whether he is saved and has utterly lost his assurance, his condition stands as a solemn warning.
The seventh allegory features a man rising, terrified, from bed. What has terrified him is a vivid dream of the last judgment. In his dream he witnessed the final salvation of the just and the final condemnation of the damned, and he felt the judge’s indignant eye upon him. Then in the dream the man pondered his sins and found himself abandoned by the angels as the pit of hell opened its mouth beside him.
As Bunyan’s narrative leaves this terrible dream the Interpreter asks, “Have you considered all these things?”
Christian replies, “Yes, and they put me in hope and fear.”
The Interpreter encourages Christian to remember what he has seen, and Christian departs to continue his journey. These allegories are a preparation for events that he will encounter on the road ahead. But how?
Their main value is that they depict perseverance in the faith. Some are helps to perseverance. Others are warnings against specific obstacles to perseverance. The last two are stern admonitions against failing to persevere. There will be times on the road when Christian is tempted toward slumber, pride, and even despair. These allegories will serve him well on the way ahead.
Furthermore, by this point in his narrative, Bunyan is introducing fantastic elements into his narrative. The fire that cannot be quenched and the man in the iron cage are examples. His employment of fantasy will increase during the subsequent narrative. Perhaps, then, a word about Bunyan’s use of fantasy is in order.
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.
Thus Far I Did Come
John Bunyan (1628–1688)
Thus far I did come laden with my sin;
Nor could aught ease the grief that I was in
Till I came hither: What a place is this!
Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the burden fall from off my back?
Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?
Blest cross! blest sepulchre! blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me!
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 3: The Beginning of the Story
John Bunyan was a Puritan, but Puritans came in different sorts. They held differing views of church polity. They also applied their Calvinism in various ways. For example, even though they affirmed justification through faith alone, they also recognized the possibility of a false faith, and this recognition led them into different understandings of assurance.
For most Puritans, eventual assurance of salvation rested upon two elements. The first was a deep struggle with conviction over the guilt of sin. They thought that true Christians would begin by developing a profound sense of how very guilty they were, of how odious God must find them, and of how utterly deserving they were of God’s wrath. Puritans who had not passed through such torment of soul could have no assurance that they were truly trusting God and not self.
The second element in assurance of salvation was perseverance. Those who were truly saved would continue in their faith. This meant not only that they would go on trusting Christ, but also that they would grow in godliness. Consequently, most Puritans subjected themselves to scrupulous self-examination, searching for evidence that sin was being mortified in their members and that holiness was increasing.
The result was what some have called a “Calvinistic Arminianism.” It was Calvinistic insofar as it recognized that salvation is entirely the work of God and rests utterly upon the merits of Christ. It resembled Arminianism, however, in that it robbed many Puritans of the assurance of salvation, for some of them were never quite sure that they were among God’s elect.
Could a Christian experience assurance of salvation? This is the dominant problem that John Bunyan addresses in the beginning of Pilgrim’s Progress. While still living in the City of Destruction, the protagonist Christian has come under the influence of a book (the Bible) that has made him aware that he bears a great burden. This burden symbolizes his conviction of the guilt of sin. He weeps, trembles, and cries out, convinced that destruction is soon to overtake him.
In his distress, Christian is met by Evangelist, who points him to the Wicket Gate. A wicket gate was a small entrance set in a larger one so that individuals could enter without having to open the large gate. Bunyan uses the narrowness of the Wicket Gate as a symbol or emblem for the way of salvation. As a Puritan, Bunyan did not recognize multiple approaches to salvation. He saw only one way, and only those who entered by that way would be saved. In Pilgrim’s Progress, one can only reach the Celestial City by way of the Wicket Gate, so at the advice of Evangelist, Christian sets off toward it.
Along the way he meets Obstinate, who tries to lure him back to the City of Destruction, and Pliable, who agrees to accompany him. Before long, however, Christian and Pliable fall into the Slough of Despond, which represents a moral paralysis that besets those who lose heart under the conviction of sin. Once extricated from the slough, Pliable abandons Christian and returns to the City of Destruction. He symbolizes people who refuse salvation because of difficulty or stigma.
Christian is assisted out of the slough by Help. As he sets off again, he meets Mr. Worldly-wiseman, who tells him of an easier way to get rid of his burden. Worldly-wiseman directs Christian to the town of Morality, to a gentleman named Legality. On the way, however, Christian must pass beneath Mt. Sinai, with all its threatening fire and thunder. Christian cowers there until he is found by Evangelist, who reproves him and sets him back on his way. Through this episode Christian learns that morality and legality only increase one’s condemnation under God’s law.
Eventually Christian comes to the Wicket Gate. There he is admitted by Good-will, who sets him on the way to the Celestial City. The way, he explains, is straight and narrow. Any path that turns away from it will lead him astray.
The Wicket Gate represents salvation. Anyone may knock at this gate, and none are turned away. Later in the story it becomes clear that one must enter the way to the Celestial City only by the Wicket Gate: others who come in from by-paths are still condemned. Passing through the gate represents Christian’s justification.
Nevertheless, his burden is not removed at the gate. Good-will tells Christian, “as to thy burden, be content to bear it, until thou comest to the place of deliverance; for there it will fall from thy back of itself.” So Christian presses forward, stopping for instruction at the Interpreter’s house (of which more anon). From the Interpreter’s house his road, protected on either side by a high wall of Salvation, leads him to a place where stands a cross and a sepulcher. As Christian comes up to the cross, his burden is loosed from his back. It tumbles into the sepulcher and it is never seen again. Then three shining ones appear. One proclaims that Christian’s sins are forgiven, one changes his raiment, and one gives him a roll or scroll (also called a certificate) from which he is supposed to read.
The order of these events indicates Bunyan’s reaction to Puritan views on assurance of salvation. Following the typical Puritan pattern, Christian feels the weight of his sins as an overwhelming burden. His conviction of sin leads him into despondency, and he discovered that morality and legality will deepen his condemnation. All of this was standard Puritan fare: one could not experience assurance until he felt overwhelmed with guilt.
Christian does not receive assurance when he passes through the Wicket Gate. If indeed the gate represents the moment of conversion and justification, Bunyan is still following the usual Puritan pattern. One might be among the elect and yet feel no assurance of that fact. Like Christian, many Puritans continued to feel the burden of their sins after they had trusted Christ for salvation.
Where Bunyan departs from the typical Puritan pattern is in the way that Christian is eventually relieved of his burden. He does not receive assurance by examining his life for perseverance. He receives assurance by coming to the cross. For Bunyan, the finished work of Christ, and not individual spiritual success, was the ground of assurance. Bunyan is taking sides here in a Puritan controversy, aligning himself more closely with the position of Edward Fisher (The Marrow of Modern Divinity) than with mainstream Puritanism.
Subsequently, Christian continues his journey with full assurance of salvation, bolstered by readings from his roll or certificate. Only on one occasion does he lose the roll, and then his progress is blocked until he retraces his steps to recover it. For Bunyan, assurance of salvation was readily available to all believers. It rested upon the objective ground of the cross of Christ. It could be sustained by reading God’s promises in a personal way. Here, Bunyan departed from typical Puritanism.
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 the Most Blessed By My Guide
John Bunyan (1628–1688)
Let the Most Blessed be my guide,
If it be his blessed will,
Unto his gate, into his fold,
Up to his holy hill.
And let him never suffer me
To swerve, or turn aside
From his free-grace and holy ways,
Whate’er shall me betide.
And let him gather them of mine
That I have left behind;
Lord, make them pray they may be thine,
With all their heart and mind.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 2: A Literary Masterpiece
What manner of thing is Pilgrim’s Progress? Clearly it is a work of literature—indeed, a powerful one—but what kind of literature is it? The book is surprisingly difficult to classify, but several observations are in order.
To begin with, Pilgrim’s Progress is a narrative. It tells a story. It is written mainly in prose, though it has bits of verse scattered here and there. One might be tempted to think of it as a novel, but it precedes the development of the modern novel in English. It is more closely related to Medieval romances such as Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
Like those romances, Pilgrim’s Progress focuses upon a heroic figure (actually multiple figures, since the work is in two parts). Instead of aiming for realism and verisimilitude, the tale incorporates fantastic elements. Furthermore, it is not a work of fiction, but a moral allegory.
Moral allegories were not new when Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. Middle English allegories include an anonymous poem entitled The Pearl (probably from the same author as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Romaunt of the Rose (a partial translation of an older French work), and Piers Plowman by William Langland. Not forty years before Bunyan’s birth, English poet Edmund Spenser published The Faerie Queene, also a moral allegory in Early Modern English.
An allegory is a work of analogy that functions more-or-less as an extended metaphor. Persons, events, and objects in the story are intended to correspond to and represent persons, objects, and events in the real world. Some authors may provide a key that identifies these correspondences, but most do not. Trying to figure out what the specific items represent is half the fun of reading allegory. Discovering these correspondences opens up the deeper meaning of the work. Of course, a reader always faces the danger of trying to find resemblances and deeper meanings that were never intended by the author. Some readers even think that they discover correspondences in literature that was never meant to be read allegorically. Interpreters have known to read the Bible (unsuccessfully) this way.
In the case of Pilgrim’s Progress, however, Bunyan makes the allegory plain to the reader. For example, he provides a key to his meaning by the names he uses. His protagonist is Christian, who leaves the City of Destruction for the Celestial City. Christian encounters such characters as Evangelist, Obstinate, Pliable, Talkative, Worldly Wiseman, Lord Hategood, and the Giant Despair. He falls into the Slough of Despond, must climb the Hill Difficulty, pass through the Valley of Humiliation, and is imprisoned in Doubting Castle. Bunyan removes most of the guesswork from interpreting his allegory.
Besides being a narrative and a moral allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress is written as if it were a dream. This device was well known in previous English writing. Examples of such dream literature include The Dream of the Rood (in which a cross becomes a guide to the narrator), The Pearl, Langland’s Piers Plowman, and John Clanvowe’s The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. By presenting his moral allegory as a dream, Bunyan was following good literary precedent.
Pilgrim’s Progress is a narrative, that is, a story, and Bunyan is the storyteller. The story that he tells is essentially a quest, though it begins as more of an anti-quest. A quest is a story in which the hero must leave home to gain something, and that’s really the big story of Pilgrim’s Progress. In the first part, Christian leaves the City of Destruction to gain the Celestial City. In the second part, Christiana and her children embark on the same quest, and they are aided by the hero, Mr. Great-heart.
The story, however, does not begin as a quest to gain something, but to lose something, much as Frodo sets out not to find a magic ring but to destroy one. Christian bears a great burden, and he is desperate to be rid of it. He sets out initially to seek relief from this crushing weight, but he shifts his attention to the goal of reaching the Celestial City. The fact that he is seeking to lose something—to get rid of it—is what makes Pilgrim’s Progress initially an anti-quest.
In sum, Bunyan’s work sits at the junction of several literary elements. It combines moral allegory and dream literature in a narrative that has a quest (and anti-quest) for its plot. In none of these elements was Bunyan a pioneer. All had been done, and done well, in English literature before him. Bunyan’s main contribution lay in applying these devices to an Evangelical, Protestant, and uniquely Puritan vision of the life of faith.
What exactly is the shape of the spiritual quest that Bunyan envisages? Answering that question is essential to understanding Pilgrim’s Progress, and getting an answer depends upon grasping the story as a whole. Consequently, what I propose to do next is to provide a summary of the overall narrative with at least its principal characters. That summary will allow readers to see the shape of the life of faith as Bunyan imagined it to be.
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.
Upon the Vine-tree
John Bunyan (1628–1688)
What is the Vine, more than another Tree,
Nay most, than it, more tall, more comly be?
What Work-man thence will take a Beam or Pin,
To make ought which may be delighted in?
It’s Excellency in it’s Fruit doth lie.
A fruitless Vine! It is not worth a Fly.
Comparison.
What are Professors more than other men?
Nothing at all. Nay, there’s not one in ten,
Either for Wealth, or Wit, that may compare,
In many things, with some that Carnal are.
Good are they, if they mortifie their Sin;
But without that they are not worth a Pin.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 1: Context and Concerns
Charles II returned from exile to assume the English throne in 1660. He faced both ecclesiastical and political opposition from the Puritan party that had executed his father. Neither side could distinguish the political aspects of the struggle from the religious aspects. The king was head of the established (Anglican) church, and he acted quickly to eject Puritans from recognized pulpits.
Soon labeled as nonconformists, ministers and other individuals began to form their own gatherings outside the Anglican structure. Nonconformist congregations had no legal standing as churches: they were seen as mere conventicles that rejected royal authority. The king’s party soon moved to break up these conventicles, threatening draconian punishments for those who either failed to attend Anglican services or who met in nonconformist gatherings.
Before the Restoration, the nonconformist congregation in Bedford had met in and shared the Anglican church’s building. Now, however, the congregation had to seek other places of meeting. For several years the congregation’s preacher had been John Bunyan, who also preached to other groups in the area. Within a year of Charles’s accession, Bunyan was arrested and jailed. When he was tried in January of 1661, he admitted to preaching in the nonconformist gatherings. His penalty was imprisonment in Bedford Gaol, and there he spent the next twelve years.
During his imprisonment Bunyan occupied his time partly by writing. He first published a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in 1666. By that date of publication, he had already begun another work, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come. That work, however, was not published until 1678, after Bunyan had been released. He would later author other books: The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), The Holy War (1682), and a second part to The Pilgrim’s Progress (1684).
Of these volumes, Pilgrim’s Progress in its two parts is by far the most read. More than 100,000 copies had been printed in England before Bunyan’s death and the book had been translated into several other languages. Since then, Pilgrim’s Progress has gone through hundreds and perhaps thousands of editions. Though its popularity has waned in recent decades, for centuries it was one of the most widely read devotional works in the English language. Indeed, it was one of the most widely read works of literature of any sort. In 1951 it was even adapted into an opera by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
In his religious views, John Bunyan was certainly a Puritan. The Puritans began as a party within the Church of England during the English Reformation. Influenced primarily by John Calvin’s Reformation in Geneva, they believed that the English church had retained too many Roman Catholic traditions and practices. As their name implies, the Puritans required further purifying of the Church of England. They intended to bring it into line with the Regulative Principle, which would require them to expunge all doctrines and church practices not explicitly authorized by the Bible.
One branch of Puritanism became convinced that the Church of England was beyond purifying and was now a false church. These Separatists believed that the time had come to leave the established church structures and to organize their own congregations. Separatist churches would be characterized by their use of voluntary covenants as an organizing principle. This was the branch of Puritanism with which John Bunyan was identified.
Bunyan’s writings reflect his theology, which was decidedly Calvinistic. Certainly his Calvinism is embedded deeply in Pilgrim’s Progress. This influence shows up in multiple ways.
For one thing, Pilgrim’s Progress is strongly evangelical. At its core is the message that justification comes only by the blood and righteousness of Christ. Bunyan clearly presents the doctrine of vicarious atonement in which human guilt is imputed to Christ, who suffers in the place of sinners. He also presents justification as resting upon the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to those who believe on Him. Bunyan is death on the notion that law-keeping, religious ritual, or good works could lead to eternal life. Salvation in Pilgrim’s Progress is by grace alone and through faith alone.
Along with his evangelical emphasis, Bunyan also holds a Reformed view of the Christian life and a strong doctrine of perseverance. He sees holiness of life as a worthwhile and necessary goal of the believer. He also clearly perceives that this goal will not be reached during the present, earthly life. Rather, believers must progress in sanctification, and their progress will take them through dangers, trials, temptations, setbacks, and opposition. Indeed, the notion of progress is so important to the story that it shows up in the title of the work.
Bunyan is also keenly aware of the possibility of false faith, that is, of a faith that does not rest fully upon the finished work of Christ. He understands the difference between faith and presumption, between trust and intellectual affirmation. Part of his work in Pilgrim’s Progress is to warn against the substitutes for genuine faith—substitutes that can take a presumptuous man or woman to hell. Because of this danger, Christians must remain constantly awake and watchful.
Yet Bunyan also has a doctrine of assurance. Pilgrims can enjoy assurance that they are right with God, and they can gain this assurance in a way that does not presume upon God’s grace. So equipped, they can enjoy periods of rest, walking in pleasant meadows beside the River of the Water of Life, and they can even come to dwell in Beulah Land—all before crossing the River of Death.
Theologically, then, Pilgrim’s Progress is a description of conversion followed by progress in the life of faith. In this respect, it hardly differs from countless other volumes of Puritan devotion. What sets the work apart is its literary value, and to a discussion of its literary features we shall turn next.
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.
Of Man By Nature
John Bunyan (1628–1688)
From God he’s a Back slider,
Of Ways, he loves the wider;
With Wickedness a Sider,
More Venom than a Spider.
In Sin he’s a Confider,
A Make-bate, and Divider;
Blind Reason is his Guider,
The Devil is his Rider.
The Seventies: The Final Chapter
The neoevangelical movement arose primarily after the end of the Second World War. Of course, the movement had antecedents. For example, when the National Association of Evangelicals was formed in 1942, it explicitly rejected fundamentalist ideas about separation from apostates. Furthermore, one of the leaders in founding the NAE, Harold John Ockenga, was also the leading figure in launching neoevangelicalism.
The most pivotal year for the movement was probably 1947. That was the year that Ockenga helped to establish Fuller Theological Seminary, which became the flagship institution of neoevangelicalism. It was the year in which L. Nelson Bell launched Christianity Today, the journal of the neoevangelical movement. It was also the year that the Conservative Baptist Association was organized. Like the NAE, the CBA refused to require separation from apostates.
The original neoevangelicals were a cadre of relatively young intellectuals who had earned doctorates from places like Pitt, Harvard, NYU, and Boston University. This cadre included names like Carl F. H. Henry, Edward John Carnell, and Harold Lindsell, as well as Ockenga and others. In 1948 Ockenga coined the label neoevangelical while delivering an address at a Fuller Seminary faculty convocation.
The engine that drove the neoevangelical movement was a widespread sense that Western civilization was teetering. Millions had died in a world war—the second within living memory. The world’s most ostensibly civilized nation (Germany) had both begun the war and perpetrated the Holocaust. The war had ended with a literal bang as the world witnessed the power of atomic destruction. Many feared that the USSR would soon master the secrets of nuclear warfare, and the result was a profound anxiety. Most of Europe and much of Asia lay in ruins. Many wondered whether civilization could weather the storm.
The neoevangelicals were convinced that they had the solution. It lay, they thought, in orthodox Christianity, if only they could gain enough of a hearing to restore Christian ideals to dominance within civilized life. To do that they would need to establish themselves within the centers of cultural influence, and especially in the academy. They were encouraged by the collapse of old-line liberalism and the rise of a neoorthodoxy that superficially seemed much closer to biblical Christianity. They aimed to earn control of the culture by mounting an effective apologetic for orthodoxy. To gain a hearing, however, they would also need recognition and respectability. Thus, academic respectability became a primary goal.
Neoevangelicals exhibited disdain for their fundamentalist heritage—especially its ecclesiastical separatism. They intended to build a bridge movement, believing that many erstwhile liberals would come over into the evangelical camp if presented with a credible apologetic and a crossable ecclesiastical bridge. They did manage to build the bridge, but almost all the crossing over went in the other direction.
The problem was that the neovangelicals’ goals conflicted. Neoevangelicalism was a fusion of commitments, and in the long run, the commitment to orthodoxy and apologetics could not be reconciled with the yearning for intellectual respectability. Orthodoxy was never going to be respectable, no matter how sound their apologetic might be. The question was whether respectability or orthodoxy would prove the stronger commitment.
The test case became biblical inerrancy. In 1947, all the neoevangelicals were inerrantists. Inerrancy was a part of the orthodoxy that they were sworn to defend. By 1970, however, Fuller Seminary had capitulated on this issue, choosing respectability over orthodoxy. Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible was the equal and opposite reaction, opting for orthodoxy over respectability (though not abandoning hope of the latter). Both Fuller and Lindsell maintained half the neoevangelical fusion, and each was willing to surrender the other half.
Lindsell and others made the case that inerrancy was a watershed doctrine for evangelicalism. Their goal was to drive those who denied inerrancy out of the evangelical fold. They largely succeeded in doing that. The cost that they paid, however, was to lose much of the former neoevangelical movement and to surrender several degrees of respectability within the academic world. After all, one of the canons of academic life is collegiality, and Lindsell’s attitude toward Fuller was now anything but collegial.
In other words, the neoevangelical project came to an end during the 1970s. From about 1975 onwards it became impossible for anyone to hold the entire synthesis of ideas that had characterized the original movement. Neoevangelicalism, whether viewed as a movement or a fusion of ideas, collapsed. To call anyone a neoevangelical after about 1980 is simply anachronistic.
The problem is that the heirs of neoevangelicalism on the Fuller side (i.e., the Evangelical Left) found new bases of support. They managed to establish themselves as a permanent halfway house between orthodoxy and whatever the real theological Left happened to be doing. In the process, they managed to gain at least some of the respectability that they had coveted. The effect was to set up the Evangelical Left as a huge theological magnet that would continue to exert a powerful pull on the rest of the evangelical world. It still does.
For a while, the neoevangelicals who prioritized inerrancy gave a rightward bump to the mainstream evangelical world. In some ways that bump was only temporary as, under the influence of an increasingly magnetic Evangelical Left, much of the evangelical spectrum was eventually pulled leftward. Nevertheless, the rightward bump was adequate to crystalize a conservative evangelical movement that would, for example, aggressively reclaim the Southern Baptist Convention and would eventuate in the large, gospel-centered alliances of the 21st Century.
Meanwhile, challenges have proliferated within the evangelical world. Inerrancy is now merely one of many theological and practical challenges to orthodoxy. Others include Open Theism, the Prosperity Gospel, certain versions of gender egalitarianism, openness toward and acceptance of same-sex sexual relationships, redefinitions of justification, person-relative theories of meaning and truth, and the increasing influence of a recrudescent Marxism appearing under the guise of Social Justice, Critical Theory, Intersectionality, and Wokeness. Even among many whose theology (or what is left of it) is still formally orthodox, pastors have become impresarios or CEOs, churches have become centers of amusement, biblical admonition has been displaced by popular psychology, worship has been converted into self-affirmation, biblical thinking about missions has been replaced by cultural anthropology, and friendship with the world has become de riguer.
To those of us who were alive and awake during the 1970s, evangelicalism seemed like nothing so much as a rambunctious free-for-all. From today’s perspective, however, the evangelical world of the 1970s appears amazingly homogeneous and sedate. Furthermore, for all the campaigns that it has waged and all the issues on which it has capitulated, evangelicalism (including fundamentalism) is smaller now than it was then, and it exerts only a fraction of the social and cultural influence that it did at that time. And that is something that nobody in the 1970s would have guessed.
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.
I Want a Principle Within
Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
I want a principle within
Of jealous godly fear,
A sensibility of sin,
A pain to feel it near.
That I from thee no more may part,
No more thy goodness grieve,
The filial awe, the fleshly heart,
The tender conscience give.
Quick as the apple of an eye,
O God, my conscience make;
Awake my soul, when sin is nigh,
And keep it still awake.
If to the right or left I stray,
That moment, Lord, reprove;
And let me weep my life away,
For having griev’d thy love.
O may the least omission pain
My well-instructed soul,
And drive me to the blood again,
Which makes the wounded whole.
APPLICATION & AID