Theology Central

In 1970 American evangelicalism was divided into three main camps. A minority on the far right called for separation from all forms of apostasy, including the liberal denominations and the Roman Catholic Church: these were the separatist fundamentalists. A minority on the left believed that the Lord’s work could be furthered by tolerating religious liberals in their organizations, by cooperating with liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics in the Lord’s work, and by infiltrating ecumenical endeavors with evangelical influence. Adherents to this position called themselves neoevangelicals. In the middle was the broad sweep of evangelicalism, which both groups sought to influence and control.

Fundamentalists of the day were represented by figures such as Bob Jones, Jr., John R. Rice, Jack Hyles, and especially Carl McIntire. Leading organizations included the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, the Bible Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches, and the American Council of Christian Churches. Schools within the fundamentalist camp included two Baptist Bible Colleges (Springfield, MO and Clarks Summit, PA), Cedarville College, Grand Rapids Baptist College, and Bob Jones University.

Neoevangelicals followed the leadership of individuals like Harold John Ockenga, Carl F. H. Henry, Edward John Carnell, and especially Billy Graham. The leading neoevangelical organization was the National Association of Evangelicals, though many of its members were mainstream evangelicals rather than neoevangelicals. Billy Graham’s crusades were the most visible neoevangelical enterprise. The fountainhead of neoevangelicalism was Fuller Seminary in Pasedena, CA.

Most of evangelicalism lay in between these poles. The majority of evangelical leaders and institutions probably still thought of themselves as fundamentalist, though they may have been uncomfortable with the label. They were uneasy about cooperative evangelism as Billy Graham practiced it, but they were also impressed with Graham’s results and reluctant to distance themselves from him. Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee was one such individual. Schools like Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary fit into this position. Arguably, by the 1970s the bulk of the Independent Fundamental Churches of American stood just about here.

The most separatistic fundamentalists insisted that majority evangelicals must separate, not only from apostates, but also from neoevangelicals. For their part, neoevangelicals didn’t ask anybody to separate from anyone. The difference was disastrous for fundamentalists, who gradually lost influence within the evangelical world. Fundamentalist influence had been waning through the 1960s, but during the 1970s the fundamentalist movement began to see itself as increasingly distinct from the rest of the evangelical world.

This situation was worsened by other influences. The first was the success of the Charismatic Movement, which took hold during the 1960s but reached full stride during the 1970s. Unlike the older Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement operated within mainline denominations and even in the Catholic church, giving those apostate organizations a patina of spiritual vitality. Charismatics were genuinely interested in God, and most of them were even interested in the Bible. Nevertheless, the movement as a whole was deeply flawed.

Probably the best known Charismatic leader of the 1970s was the healing evangelist Oral Roberts. An old-time Pentecostal, Roberts made the transition into the Charismatic movement in 1968 when he joined the United Methodist Church. Besides personal campaigns of preaching and healing, Roberts hosted a widely-heard radio program and television broadcast. He shocked the nation in 1977 when he announced that a 900-foot-tall Jesus had told him to build a hospital. Roberts also lived in opulence, drawing upon the millions donated to his ministry. Fundamentalists were incredulous at his popularity.

In spite of antics like those of Roberts, Charismatics were generally welcomed within the broader evangelical world. Fundamentalists, however, believed that the Charismatic view of miraculous gifts was seriously deficient. Consequently, Charismatics began to swell the ranks of broader evangelicalism while simultaneously changing the doctrinal and practical atmosphere of the evangelical world, thus increasing the distance between fundamentalists and the rest of evangelicalism.

Hand in hand with the Charismatic movement came the Jesus Movement, which was almost exclusively Charismatic. The Jesus People were young adherents to the counterculture who responded to the gospel by professing Christ. They carried the energy of the counterculture into the evangelical world, but they also carried many of its social priorities as well. They became a hinge that turned parts of evangelicalism in a direction that would eventually become the Evangelical Left. In particular, Jesus People formed a large contingent of the crowd at Explo 72 in Dallas.

Within evangelicalism in general, Explo 72 was seen as a resounding success. It was followed immediately by Key 73, which was a nationwide, ecumenical evangelistic emphasis. Key 73 grew out of a meeting called by Carl F. H. Henry in 1967. Its stated purpose was “Calling the Continent to Christ,” but its ecumenism tended to water its message down to a vague religiosity. I can remember a liberal church in my community promoting Key 73 while simultaneously conducting seances in its basement.

Indeed, the 1970s seemed to be a time for quirky evangelical innovations. For example, in 1976 people started to see billboards, bumper stickers, and buttons with the slogan “I FOUND IT” printed in big letters. These were the product of a campaign launched by Campus Crusade. Hypothetically, people were supposed to ask “What did you find?” and you were supposed to reply, “I found new life in Christ.” Instead, other bumper stickers started showing up: “I LOST IT,” or alternatively, “I NEVER LOST IT.” One even said, “I DONT GET IT.” In fact, most people didn’t.

For their part, fundamentalists tended to mock these campaigns as misguided, charging that they missed the real point of redemption. As one preacher said, “It wasn’t lost, I was.” Another commented, “I didn’t find anything. God found me and saved me.” At the time, nearly every fundamentalist organization was flourishing and growing. The best attended churches in the world were fundamentalist churches.

Much that was done by evangelicals during the 1970s was supposed to help promote the gospel. The overall effect, however, was to muddy the waters and to obscure the message of the gospel, secondarily creating confusion around the concept of evangelical. Were you an evangelical because you believed the gospel? Because you spoke in tongues? Because you put a bumper sticker on your car? By the end of the 1970s, it was no longer possible to say exactly what an evangelical was.

This vagueness or fuzziness was compounded by other events. The inerrancy debate looms large in that list, and it deserves separate discussion. So does the election of a putatively evangelical president of the United States. But those discussions are for another time.

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.

Hark, How the Watchmen Cry!

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

Hark, how the watchmen cry!
Attend the trumpet’s sound;
Stand to your arms, the foe is nigh,
The powers of hell surround.
Who bow to Christ’s command,
Your arms and hearts prepare,
The day of battle is at hand—
Go forth to glorious war.

See, on the mountain-top
The standard of your God;
In Jesus’ name ’tis lifted up,
All stained with hallowed blood.
His standard-bearers now
To all the nations call:
To Jesus’ cross, ye nations, bow;
He bore the cross for all.

Go up with Christ your Head;
Your Captain’s footsteps see;
Follow your Captain, and be led
To certain victory.
All power to him is given;
He ever reigns the same:
Salvation, happiness, and heaven
Are all in Jesus’ name.

Perhaps the greatest problem that American evangelicals—including fundamentalists—faced during the 1970s was the development of a new youth counterculture. Of course, countercultures had existed in the past, but the one that started to appear during the mid-1960s was unique in that it became wedded to a generation. Most baby-boomers adopted at least some of the emphases of the counterculture.

A few of those emphases were positive. One was environmentalism: the counterculture co-opted a nascent but growing reaction against rampant pollution. Another was a strong emphasis on racial equality. This emphasis, however, really came from the older Civil Rights Movement and was widely shared within mainstream culture. By the mid-1960s, civil rights had become an establishment issue.

The counterculture was anything but establishment; indeed, its leaders positioned and prided themselves on being anti-establishment, with the word establishment understood (at least initially) to include anyone over 30 years old. Probably the core value of the counterculture was an angry commitment to anti-authoritarianism. The counterculture was not simply anti-authority, it was defiant in the face of any authority.

This defiance of authority displayed itself across a range of issues. People involved in the counterculture were anti-police and anti-military. Their protests against the war in Viet Nam became a near-daily occurrence. Many within the counterculture pushed back against laws that restricted drug use, especially the use of hallucinogens (LSD was made illegal in 1966). Much of the counterculture rejected traditional sexual mores in favor of sexual promiscuity or “free love.” In other words, the counterculture was not merely “counter,” but transgressive—and deliberately so.

The counterculture adopted multiple symbols to display its transgressive ideals. These included the peace symbol (printed) and the peace sign (made with two fingers), both miniskirts and maxiskirts for women, long hair and beards for men, bell-bottomed pants, peasant shirts, wire-rimmed glasses, and love beads for both sexes. The counterculture retooled the English language for its own use, eventually bequeathing expressions such as turn on and freak out to future generations. The greatest single symbol of the counterculture, however, was its music.

This generation had a new musical idiom at its disposal, one that was already transgressive. That idiom was Rock and Roll. Of course, Rock was older than the counterculture. Buddy Holly had cracked open a door for Rock and Roll, and Elvis Presley pushed it open a bit further. But the doors of Rock and Roll were blown wide open when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones reached the United States in 1964. Rock was the ideal medium for communicating anger, sexual abandon, hallucinogenic ecstasy, and above all defiance. If the music of the Beatles now seems tame after half a century, it is only because the culture as a whole has plunged even more deeply into the transgressive values that they communicated. These values were communicated with increasing bluntness: nobody really believed in 1963 that the Beatles only wanted to hold your hand, but by their “White Album” in 1968 they were making it clear that they really wanted to “do it in the road.”

At the time, most evangelicals were overwhelmingly politically and socially conservative, and the counterculture shocked them. They were stunned by its fury, coarseness, defiance, and arrogance. They instantly reacted against it, sometimes condemning it in harsh terms. Many churches and schools adopted regulations, whether officially or not, to prevent their students from displaying symbols of the counterculture.

What they overlooked, however, was that the counterculture was the relational air that teenagers were breathing. It had its effect even in the most conservative churches. Girls’ hemlines began to creep up as boys’ hairlines crept down. Bellbottoms (or the slightly less radical flares) were worn everywhere. For perhaps the first time, teenagers were told that, if they were going to be good Christians, they had to look different from their peers.

Some of the most severe reaction in the evangelical world was against Rock and Roll music. In about 1970 I was taken to hear Frank Garlock deliver an hour-long lecture condemning Rock music. Bob Larson, a converted Rock musician, began to build a ministry preaching and writing against the music. Evangelical panic over Rock was inflamed when bands like the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath began to incorporate Satanic elements into their performances.

Meanwhile, American commercialism was co-opting the counterculture and turning it into a marketing phenomenon. As some of the sillier expressions of the counterculture dropped away, others became mainstream. Even the leaders of fundamentalist colleges were showing on chapel platforms wearing suits with flared pants. The result was not so much that the counterculture died out as that it was simply absorbed.

That was true of the music as well. What was radical in the mid-1960s had become mainstream by 1970, and even some evangelicals were quick to understand the marketing implications (American evangelicalism—including fundamentalism—is nothing if not a marketing phenomenon). Through the late 1960s Ralph Carmichael and Kurt Kaiser were messing around with the new musical idiom, eventually hashing out a musical called Tell It Like It Is. Carmichael’s song, He’s Everything to Me, dramatically shifted Christian youth music away from Singspiration-style choruses like Christ for Me and Safe Am I, or the timeless Teenager, Are You Lonely?

The problem with the Carmichael and Kaiser stuff was that it was schmaltzy and soft. They were two old guys (Carmichael in his 40s and Kaiser in his 30s) playing with the sound. In 1972, however, Larry Norman released the album, Only Visiting This Planet, including the protest song, Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music. The album was a masterstroke. It was loud and angry, but it turned the transgressiveness of the counterculture back on itself. Norman’s lyrics mocked drug use and illicit sexuality and even the Beatles. But all the defiance was still there, all the distrust of authority, all the resentment toward traditional social norms. The album also featured the song I Wish We’d All Been Ready, which may have been the first blockbuster evangelical hit. The song had also been included on Norman’s earlier album, Upon This Rock, and it became the theme of Mark IV Production’s 1972 Rapture movie, A Thief in the Night.

A defining moment arrived with Explo 72, a huge evangelism conference and Christian music festival held at the Cotton Bowl and on open land under what is now the Woodall Rodgers Freeway in Dallas. Larry Norman appeared, as did secular stars like Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash. The event organizers explicitly sought cooperation from non-evangelical groups like the Seventh Day Adventists. The event became a watershed when even some previously-fundamentalist organizations like Dallas Seminary chose to participate.

By the middle of the 1970s a large percentage of the evangelical world had begun to adopt the symbols and music of the counterculture. Some figures (for example, Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield) also adopted its political and social commitments. Most fundamentalists were still holding out, accepting only the most attenuated versions of countercultural dress and behavior. In the end, however, nobody escaped unscathed. The confrontation with the counterculture changed everyone.

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

The Lord Jehovah Reigns

Isaac Watts (1674–1748)

The Lord Jehovah reigns,
his throne is built on high;
the garments he assumes
are light and majesty:
his glories shine with beams so bright
no mortal eye can bear the sight.

The thunders of his hand
keep the wide world in awe;
his wrath and justice stand
to guard his holy law;
and where his love resolves to bless
his truth confirms and seals his grace.

Through all his ancient works
amazing wisdom shines,
confounds the powers of hell
and breaks their cursed designs;
strong is his arm, and shall fulfil
his great decrees, his sovereign will.

And can this mighty King
of Glory condescend?
And will he write his name
My Father and my Friend?
I love his name, I love his word;
join, all my powers, and praise the Lord.

The 1970s are widely recognized as a period of American social and economic unrest. Economically, the decade opened with high inflation. Richard Nixon responded to this problem in 1971 with a freeze on wages and prices, among other measures. His interference in the economy led directly to the recession of 1973, which combined high unemployment with even higher inflation (the so-called “stagflation”). Socially, the nation was mired in the Viet Nam conflict, leading to widespread protests. Thirteen protesting students were shot by National Guardsmen on the campus of Kent State University in May of 1970. Three months later, protestors upped the ante by bombing Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin. Woodstock, bastion of peace, joy, and love, was a recent memory, but so was Altamont with its violence. The hippie and yippie movements were in full swing. For those who don’t understand the difference, hippies were about love, peace, and nature, while yippies were politicized, radicalized, and more prone to violence (though the distinction was often blurred). As if the foregoing weren’t enough, the Manson murders were fresh in everybody’s memory, and Charles Manson would finally be convicted in 1971.

These were the years during which I came of age. During this decade I received my high school diploma, married, learned what my vocation would be, took my bachelor’s degree, entered seminary, and held my first pastoral positions. As I remember the 1970s, the decade was as turbulent for American evangelicals and fundamentalists as it was for the rest of the nation. Here are some of the events as I remember them.

I was still in high school when, in 1970, Carl McIntire attempted a takeover of the American Council of Christian Churches during its Pasadena convention. He simply stepped to the podium during a break and had himself “elected” president by his followers, whom he had stationed throughout the room. This act of organizational piracy provided my earliest impression of institutional fundamentalism.

Further impressions arrived the next year when Bob Jones, Jr. had a very public falling out with John R. Rice over the issue of secondary separation (though Jones would not have used the word secondary). The conflict began because Rice wanted to include two conservative Southern Baptists in a national conference on evangelism. Jones objected, partly because one of the conservatives (W. A. Criswell) had spoken rather derisively about Bob Jones, Sr. As the conflict grew more acrimonious, Rice removed Bob Jones, Jr. and Bob Jones III from the board of his paper, The Sword of the Lord, and replaced them with Jerry Falwell and Curtis Hutson. In 1978 Hutson would become associate editor of the Sword, and would take over full editorship when Rice died in 1980.

The whole decade of the 1970s was a period of unparalleled growth for Christian Day Schools. Christian elementary and secondary schools were nothing new, but alarm over “secular humanism” (a term that evangelicals popularized during the 1970s) turned these individual schools into a movement and propelled huge growth, both in the number of schools and in the number of students enrolled in them. I’ve looked up a few statistics here to verify my recollections. In 1968 the Association of Christian Schools International had 102 schools with fewer than 15,000 students. By 1973 it had 308 member schools enrolling nearly 40,000 students. Besides these, an entirely new coordinating agency was founded in 1972: the American Association of Christian Schools. Over the next decade it would gain a membership of 1,000 schools and a total enrollment of around 160,000. It is no exaggeration to suggest that the 1970s swept hundreds of thousands of students out of public schools and into private, Christian institutions.

The 1970s was also a decade of Bible translation and publication. Many evangelicals had reacted strongly against the Revised Standard Version, which was completed in 1952. Over nearly two decades of labor they completed an alternative translation of Scripture, the New American Standard Bible, which was published in 1971. The NASB was welcomed by most fundamentalists at the time. It not only updated many of the archaisms of the King James Version, but it was also considerably more precise in its representation of the original languages. I grew to love this version, and I still consider it to be without peer as an English Bible for study and reading.

The same year—1971—also brought another version of the Bible, this one a paraphrase rather than a translation. It was Ken Taylor’s The Living Bible, which built on his earlier, published paraphrases such as Living Letters. The Living Bible became wildly popular because of its readability and its hip, green leatherette cover. Unfortunately, some of Taylor’s paraphrases were wildly inappropriate. In any event, most conservative pastors objected to using a paraphrase as if it were the Bible, so the popularity of The Living Bible sparked controversy among their churches.

One pastor whose church had used Taylor’s earlier volumes in its ministry was David Otis Fuller. By the beginning of the 1970s, however, Fuller had reached the conclusion that the King James Version was the only English translation that could rightly be called the Word of God. He articulated this position in a series of three volumes: Which Bible? (1970), True or False? (1973), and Counterfeit or Genuine? (1978). The first volume was essentially a regurgitation of the thought (and perhaps language) of Seventh-Day Adventist Benjamin G. Wilkinson. Where Wilkinson was a cultist, however, Fuller was a popular evangelical preacher who served on the board of Wheaton College and the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. The publication of Fuller’s books launched the King James Only movement in American evangelicalism. (It is worth noting that an earlier and more responsible figure, Orthodox Presbyterian Edward F. Hills, had written much that would eventually contribute to the KJO movement, but he was not widely read until after Fuller’s works were published, and cannot be credited with beginning a movement.)

These are a few of my memories of fundamentalism and evangelicalism during the 1970s. I’ll continue this narrative next week. In the meanwhile, I’m curious. You older guys: what are your most vivid memories of American fundamentalism and evangelicalism during this decade?

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.

Ho! Ye That Thirst

Scottish Psalter, 1880

Ho! ye that thirst, approach the spring
where living waters flow;
free to that sacred fountain all
without a price may go.
How long to streams of false delight
will ye in crowds repair?
How long your strength and substance waste
on trifles light as air?

My stores afford those rich supplies
that health and pleasure give;
incline your ear, and come to Me;
the soul that hears shall live.
With you a cov’nant I will make
that ever shall endure;
the hope which gladdened David’s heart
My mercy hath made sure.

Behold He comes! your Leader comes,
with might and honor crowned;
a Witness who shall spread My Name
to earth’s remotest bound.
See! nations hasten to His call
from ev’ry distant shore;
isles, yet unknown, shall bow to Him,
and Israel’s God adore.

Seek ye the LORD while yet His ear
is open to your call;
while offered mercy still is near,
before His footstool fall.
Let sinners quit their evil ways,
their evil thoughts forego,
and God, when they to Him return,
returning grace will show.

With joy and peace shall then be led
the glad converted lands;
the lofty mountains then shall sing,
the forests clap their hands.
Where briers grew ‘midst barren wilds,
shall firs and myrtles spring;
and nature, through its utmost bounds,
eternal praises sing.

The story that I’m about to tell is not about me, but to understand it you need to know that I am a chaplain in the Civil Air Patrol (the USAF Auxiliary).  You also need to know that one of the three missions of Civil Air Patrol is cadet programs. Cadets are like the youth group of CAP. Young people ages 12 through 21 learn about aerospace, train to assist with emergency services, and learn military customs and courtesies.

On July 2, I received a communication from the Wing Chaplain that one of our cadets had been killed. The death was not connected with any CAP activity: the cadet was riding his bicycle when he was struck by a driver who (according to reports) had been drinking. The driver was subsequently charged with criminal vehicular homicide.

Even though the death was not connected with any CAP activity, all cadets are important members of the CAP program. Chaplains have a particular concern for their wellbeing. Consequently, the Wing Chaplain was requesting that all chaplains make themselves available for a ministry of presence at the deceased cadet’s squadron that Tuesday evening. About five chaplains were able to attend, myself included.

Until that point, no information about the cadet himself had been released. At the squadron meeting I learned his name (which I will not publish) and his age (15). I also learned that a visitation had been scheduled for a week from that Wednesday, with the funeral to follow on the next day. One thing that interested me was that the visitation and funeral were to be held at Prior Lake Baptist Church, a congregation that is known for its proclamation of the gospel and its commitment to the truth of God’s Word.

On the following Wednesday I attended the first hour of the visitation (pastoral commitments kept me from staying through the whole four hours). There I met the cadet’s family, who are members at Prior Lake Baptist Church. They had received permission from CAP to bury their son in his uniform. An honor guard consisting of other CAP cadets was posted at his casket. Around twenty cadets were participating in this responsibility. These young people stood proudly in the uniform of the United States Air Force. In many cases, however, tears were clearly visible on their cheeks.

The following day the honor guard was again posted. Around three hundred people attended the funeral, of whom about fifty were CAP personnel. Both cadets and senior members were present, including members of the cadet’s own squadron, members from other squadrons, high-ranking individuals from the Minnesota Wing and even some from the North Central Region. Again, multiple chaplains were present, and even though CAP chaplains come from diverse religious backgrounds, in this case every chaplain who attended understood and was prepared to share the gospel.

What does one say at the funeral of a teenager who is suddenly taken through no fault of his own? In this case, the clear focus of the service from beginning to end was on the way of salvation and on the assurance that this cadet was in the presence of his Lord. One of the cadet’s grade-school teachers talked for several minutes about leading him to the Lord after class one day, and about how he had subsequently begun to live out his Christianity.

Then the cadet’s mother stood to address the assembly. I confess that I cringed inwardly: I am not a believer in family members doing memorials at funeral services. In this case, however, I was touched by her grace and poise. She had something important to say, and she refused to allow her emotions to get in the way of her saying it.

She told the story of how her son had been the first member of their family to trust Christ as Savior. She and her husband had seen the genuineness of his faith, and it was this witness of his that eventually led to their trusting Christ. She explained what salvation meant, why people needed to be saved, what Christ had done so that they could be saved, and how they could receive the salvation that Christ offered. She expressed confidence at her son’s destiny, and she told of a recent episode in which he had reminded her that death simply meant going to be with the Lord.

This mother was in the middle of a shattering experience—perhaps the worst experience that any parent can endure. When her son failed to return from his bicycle ride, she went looking for him. According to published reports, she came on the crash scene herself. From an earthbound, human perspective, she had plenty of reason to be overwhelmed with the circumstances and to feel bitterness and resentment.

Yet the message that she delivered was overwhelmingly one of hope—not the kind of hope that babbles about sentimental vacuities, but the kind of hope that is grounded in the work and character of God. This hope is an expectation that grows out the substitutionary death and bodily resurrection of Jesus. It is more than wishful thinking. It is anticipation, and this biblical anticipation bases itself upon the certainty of Jesus’ return and the resurrection of the body.

This message of good news was elaborated later in the service by Pastor Sam Choi. Pastor Choi did an exceptional job of articulating the qualifications of Christ as Savior. Pastor Choi invited people to faith in Christ—an invitation that he later repeated at the committal. He provided clarity and specificity for the invitation to believe. Nevertheless, the moral weight behind that message came from the calm words, deliberately chosen, spoken by a sorrowing mother who, in the midst of deep grief, found hope in the gospel.

There is nothing Pollyannish about this hope. It acknowledges that Providence sometimes puts on a dark face. It fully recognizes that life in a world under sin will bring moments of utter blackness. In the middle of those moments, however, it clings to the teaching of Scripture, the promise of God, the work of Christ, and the truth of the gospel. When circumstances change for the very worst, it lays ahold of the promise that cannot change, and it refuses to let go.

Paul teaches that trials like this one produce endurance, which in turn produces experience, which in its turn produces hope (Rom 5:3–5). The trials can be hard—and a hardship like this one does not end when everybody walks away from the funeral. Yet the hope that comes from the trial will certainly be fulfilled. In the meanwhile, we can glory in the trial itself, knowing that God is using it to produce something in us that we could never gain in any other way.

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

Jesus, My Strength, My Hope

Charles Wesley (1707–1788)

Jesus, my strength, my hope,
On thee I cast my care,
With humble confidence look up,
And know thou hearest prayer.
Give me on thee to wait,
Till I can all things do,
On thee, almighty to create,
Almighty to renew.

I want a sober mind,
A self-renouncing will,
That tramples down and casts behind
The baits of pleasing ill;
A soul inured to pain,
To hardship, grief and loss,
Bold to take up, firm to sustain,
The consecrated cross.

I want a godly fear,
A quick-discerning eye,
That looks to thee when sin is near,
And sees the tempter fly;
A spirit still prepared
And armed with jealous care,
For ever standing on its guard,
And watching unto prayer.

I rest upon thy word;
The promise is for me;
My succour and salvation, Lord,
Shall surely come from thee.
But let me still abide,
Nor from my hope remove,
Till thou my patient spirit guide
Into thy perfect love.

[This essay was originally published on June 29, 2012.]

When you ask people, “Who are you?” they usually answer first by giving you their name. A name, however, is only a label. It does not reveal the identity of the person to whom it is attached.

If you persist, “Yes, that is your name, but who are you,” then people invariably begin to give you answers grounded in their relationships to individuals, objects, and activities. They will identify themselves as the son or daughter of a particular person, or perhaps as the spouse of another. They will tell you about their job and their hobbies. They may identify themselves as fans of a particular sports team, followers of a particular author, or as devotees of a particular kind of music.

What all of these identifiers have in common is that they are external to the individual. People can say who they are only by pointing to things outside themselves. We know who we are only in terms of our relationships to other things, be they persons, activities, or objects.

In other words, our identity is not in ourselves. In order to know who we are, we must look outward. Our identity is formed by the persons, objects, and activities with which we bring ourselves into relationship.

God is not like that. God knows who He is, not by looking outward, but by looking inward. Nevertheless, God’s identity is still relational. He knows who He is, not by His relationship to persons, objects, and activities within the created order, but by His relationship to Himself.

Properly speaking, God is not a person. While He subsists as one God in perfect unity, He is nevertheless three persons. It is by the perichoresis of these persons that God knows who He is. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is Father because He begets the Son. The Son is Son because He is generated by the Father. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit because He proceeds from the Father and the Son. If God were not eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then He would in some sense be dependent upon the world for His identity. The world would be essential to the personhood of God. Because He is eternally Father, Son, and Spirit, however, God depends upon nothing outside Himself. He is one God who subsists eternally in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of these three has a proper position with respect to the other two, and as God relates to Himself within the eternal fellowship of the Trinity, He simply is all that He is. As He said to Moses, “I am who I am.

We are not like that. Both our being and our identity are derived. We do not exist in ourselves and we have no identity or meaning in ourselves. We are who we are only in relation to other things. Ultimately, we are who we are only in relation to God. Secondarily, our identity is defined by the relationships that God has ordained in our lives and that exist under our identity in Him. Consequently, my family, vocation, avocations, and interests do shape my identity, but only in a secondary and derivative way. For these factors to work rightly, they must always remain subject to the identity that I know by my relationship to God.

When people reject God, however, these secondary factors are used to form their primary identity. Things that are merely derivative are treated as if they are ultimate. We seek to know who we are in relationship to created things.

By themselves, however, those things are utterly incapable of telling us who we are. They cannot support our identity. The more we rely upon them, the more hollow we find them to be. We cannot really live as if we are simply our country, our family, our job, or any combination of such finite elements. We cannot live as if such things were ultimate. The attempt to do so leads us ineluctably into frustration, contradiction, and despair. Our existence becomes inauthentic.

This situation is much like trying to live under an alias. We assume an identity that is not our own. We find that aspects of our identity simply do not fit us. We cannot actually live by them. We have no integrating point for the various factors by which we try to tell ourselves who we are. Furthermore, those factors are not solid enough to support the weight of our intuitions and aspirations. They collapse under the yearnings of our souls.

The things that we treat as ultimate—the things by which we define ourselves—these things are gods. Those who reject the true and living God are doomed to pursue other gods. They can discover who they really are only in a right relationship with the true and living God. Barring that, they must seek their identity among the plethora of created things. None of those things, however, can finally tell us who we are. If we wander from the God in whose image we are made, then the first thing that we lose is ourselves.

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.

Glory to God the Trinity

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Glory to God the Trinity,
Whose name has mysteries unknown;
In essence One, in persons Three,
A social nature, yet alone.

When all our noblest powers are joined
The honors of thy name to raise,
Thy glories overmatch our mind,
And angels faint beneath the praise.