The Once and Future Blog

This is a book of several essays on church life on topics ranging from the character of a minister to outreach to the sacraments.  Beyond containing several memorable quotes, the book is quite practical.  It deals directly with issues that come up again and again in the life of the church.  Wilson ably advances the reformed faith as a living and vibrant model for all churches to emulate rather than a museum piece of the frozen chosen.  Our friends at Canon Press have made this title available in its entirety here.   Grade: A

Peter Leithart preached at our church this past Sunday.  As I don’t believe he ordinarily records the sermons he preaches, this is a rare treat.  It can be found here.   While you’re at it, you can also catch the last time he preached at our church (before I was there) about Naboth’s vineyard.  Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.

“No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession, I’m a capitalist.”

-Miss Scarlet, Clue (1986)

If something is inherently capitalistic in nature does that make it inherently good?

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in characterizing Walter Block as a very persuasive debater in my introductory post about Defending the Undefendable.  Block’s first chapter “The Prostitute” was underwhelming at its best and highly offensive at its worst.  I do not believe that prostitution should be illegal.  I believe that good arguments can be made against outlawing prostitution.  I just don’t think Block made any of them.  Instead of attempting to show that prostitution should not be subject to criminal sanction, Block tries to show that this is a legitimate good and somehow beneficial to society.

Block’s first argument attempts to compare prostitution to a Norman Rockwell painting where a milkman and a pieman trade wares.  Both people have made the transaction voluntarily, without force or fraud, so this is in essence the same type of situation.  Here Block makes the same mistake that many Christians do in failing to distinguish between sins and crimes.  It’s almost a “libertarian positivist” type of thinking.  If no coercion or fraud is involved it must be good.  By what standard?  Good for whom?  Block also advances an essentially utopian view of prostitution where abusive pimps are the exception rather than the rule and the prostitute can voluntarily leave the trade at any time.  He implies that any correlation between abuse and prostitution is merely coincidental.

My disagreement with Block here is metaphysical.  He must believe that sex is somehow a neutral action just as the market is amoral.  Neither of these can be supported by Block’s arbitrary worldview.  The Bible tells another story.  Sex outside of marriage is inherently sinful.  It always leads to degradation rather than glorification in all circumstances.  Block fails to prove that if a trade is not coerced, it is necessarily a good thing.  Why can’t you have a situation where a trade takes place and yet both parties end up worse off than before?

Although no Christian should ever participate in prostitution as a buyer or a seller, the solution is not to make it illegal.  The women who brought the baby before Solomon to judge between them in the famous case (I Kings 3:16-28) were both prostitutes.  In this passage where Solomon is portrayed as the wisest of kings, he did not punish them criminally for being prostitutes.  He also did not remove the child from the custody of its mother because she was a harlot (much to the chagrin of contemporary social service types).  As is readily apparent, perverted people will still engage in prostitution regardless of whether it is legal or not.  Scripture should be our standard of whether prostitution ought to be criminal or not.  The prohibitionist is trying to be wiser than God.  As the gospel permeates the world and the nations are discipled, prostitution will pretty much disappear due to decline of both supply and demand.  This will be accomplished by the church and not the civil magistrate.

Block tries to show that not only should we not make prostitution illegal, but we should not criticize it either.  That’s kind of preachy for what I thought would be a defense of the “amoral” market, and he bites off more than he can chew.  Block presses his error of conflating sins and crimes by implying that because this “trade” shouldn’t be prohibited, it shouldn’t be considered wrong either.  This is well beyond the scope of the philosophy he presented in the introduction, but he doesn’t seem to care.  He argues that many dating patterns resemble prostitution.  Here I’d tend to agree with him, but as an argument against the dating patterns rather than for prostitution.

Then Block trashes marriage by trying to use the same argument.  All relationships are trades; therefore marriage is morally little different than prostitution.  “The marriages in which the husband provides the financial elements, and the wife the sexual and housekeeping functions, also conforms clearly enough to the model.  In fact, all voluntary human relationships, from love relationships to intellectual relationships, are trades. In the case of romantic love and marriage, the trade is in terms of affection, consideration, kindness, etc. The trade may be a happy one, and the partners may find joy in the giving. But it is still a trade. It is clear that unless affection, kindness, etc., or something is given, it will not be reciprocated (Block, 6).”  Block’s reductionism here is repugnant.  I did not vow to marry my wife only if affection and kindness were reciprocated.  I vowed to unite my life with hers in sickness and health, richness and poverty, for better or for worse.  I vowed to enter into a relationship that mysteriously images the relationship between Christ and the Church.  Even if (for the sake of argument which in no way corresponds to the most joyous reality of my actual marriage) my wife never reciprocated anything, I would still be compelled to love, protect, and cherish her.  My duty to be a faithful husband is in no way impacted by what I receive in return.

Block concludes “Several social commentators have correctly [sic] likened marriage to prostitution.  But all relationships where trade takes place, those which include sex as well as those which do not, are a form of prostitution.  Instead of condemning all such relationships because of their similarity to prostitution, prostitution should be viewed as just one kind of interaction in which all human beings participate. Objections should not be raised to any of them—not to marriage, not to friendship, not to prostitution (Block 6-7).”  This is as preachy as an Al Gore documentary.  How anything like “should” exists within Block’s worldview is still beyond me.  This first chapter was truly disappointing.  I expected better.

I first heard of the book Defending the Undefendable by Dr. Walter Block in late 2007.  The book certainly piqued my curiosity, and I have wanted to read it for a while.  It turns out that this book is available online from the Mises Institute.  I imagine that my interaction with the book will be slower than my handful of readers might like, but I think an interaction with the work will prove profitable.

In DtU, Walter Block attempts to show that all non-coercive elements of a market economy have an economic value and benefit society.  He looks at the most extreme cases: the pimp, the drug addict, the blackmailer, the denier of academic freedom, the person who yells “fire” in a crowded theater, the (non-government) counterfeiter, the slumlord, and the stripminer among others.  These extreme cases can be used to make an a fortiori argument for the free market.  If even these “economic scapegoats” are beneficial to a free market economy, then less controversial professions would also be beneficial.  As Dr. Block states in the introduction, “This book is a defense of the marketplace. It singles out for special praise those participants in the free enterprise system who are the most reviled by its critics. It does so because if the price system can be shown to be mutually beneficial and productive in these extreme examples, then the case for markets in general is strengthened even the more [Block: xv].”

I read the foreword by Murray Rothbard, the commentary by F.A. Hayek, and Block’s own introduction to the book.  I can already see that this will be a thought-provoking and entertaining read, but I can also anticipate where I’m likely to disagree with Professor Block.

First, Block contends that the free enterprise system must be seen as amoral–neither moral nor immoral.  As a Van Tillian Calvinist, I cannot let this slide.  Block argues that the free market is an amoral tool just like a gun or a typewriter.  Even those instruments are only neutral until a man lays hold of them and uses them (either in obedience to God toward the end of glorification or in disobedience toward the end of degradation).  In the nature of the case, every action executed within a market has human involvement and consequent ethical ramifications.  If every particular action within an economic system is either moral or immoral, how can the system as a whole (which is the set of all these particulars) suddenly become amoral?  If Block wants to look at these things hypothetically, then my critique would be that his approach ends up becoming Utopian rather than grounded in reality.  Ironically, this critique of Utopianism can also be levied against Marx’s “scientific socialism” which is on the opposite extreme ideologically.

You will not have a free enterprise system if every action or person is immoral. What is going to stop immoral people from using coercion?  Isn’t the non-coercion principle arbitrary?  Why shouldn’t you use coercion [if there's no God who will judge all men at the last day]?  The fact of the matter is that you will only have anything resembling a free enterprise system if you have a foundation built upon the Triune God who revealed himself in the scriptures.  If we do not let the Word of God depart from our mouths and we are careful to obey it, then we will have the prosperity and success of what is essentially the free market economy which I anticipate Block will ably defend.  If we build our foundation upon a would-be autonomous system like libertarianism, then we’ll get something that essentially resembles what we see around us today.  The only reason why Block can make any of his arguments is because he is borrowing capital from the Christian worldview.

That being said, I think that mature Christians will benefit greatly from reading this book.  In many cases the things that Block defends here are sins (no associated penal sanction with the commandment) in the Bible rather than crimes (which have an associated penal sanction).  When we attempt to make things like prostitution and drugs illegal (in our own attempts to be autonomous), we almost always do more harm than good.  Many of these issues truly are problems, but the only true solution to them is the preaching of the Word, the diaconal ministry, and the faithful administration of the sacraments to convert souls.

In some cases (the inheritor, the advertiser, the denier of academic freedom, the scab, the employer of child labor, and especially the rate buster) there may be no sin at all, and I imagine I’ll agree with just about everything Block says.

If you are not well-grounded in a Scriptural Christian worldview, get well grounded in that worldview before reading this book.  Walter Block is a very intelligent man and a very persuasive debater.  If you aren’t steeped in Scripture, this book may have the same subtle influence (“hath God really said…”) as the serpent in the garden.  Libertarianism, like any philosophy that is explicitly anti-Christian, can only end in weeping and gnashing of teeth if applied consistently in the real world.  I would argue that libertarianism and consistent Christianity look very similar in a lot of the external particulars, but only Christianity can provide an intelligible foundation for them.  In most cases, libertarians want all the benefits they can get from living in a Christian society without actually bending the knee and confessing that Jesus Christ is Lord.

At least that’s my impression from reading the introduction.  I’ll issue any retractions as I am convinced I need to make them.

Chapter reviews:

Chapter 1: The Prostitute

My first Christus Rex Study Center (CRSC) book.  Jordan attempts to develop a Biblical worldview based on the symbolism of the Bible.  He looks at stars, trees, rocks, animals, etc., in terms of their symbolic significance in the Bible and then looks at the different “worlds” of Noah, the Patriarchs, the Mosaic establishment, the Davidic establishment, the worlds of exile and restoration, and the New Creation showing how these symbols are transformed from glory to glory.  There is a lot to mine out of this book and could stand to be read several times.  In a sense, Jordan’s book is Van Tilianism applied at a “rhetoric” or “poetic” level.  Jordan makes and cites many of the Old Testament observations that Meredith G. Kline makes, but without falling into the trap of believing that because these things are types, symbols, and poetry they don’t apply to us today.  It also has an interesting footnote trail and a brief bibliography that I would like to have  followed if I didn’t have to get on to my next book.  You can tell that Jordan has done his homework (and then some), but the presentation of the book is quite readable and accessible to the layman.  The brilliant connections and keen observations Jordan makes left me wishing the book would never end.  Grade: A+

As Christians, we have been baptized into the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord. The old order was nailed to the cross with Jesus. The Law of Moses was nailed to the cross with Jesus. But on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead according to the Scriptures. For those in Christ (including the faithful saints of old that looked forward to his coming), God’s commandments are not written on tablets of stone as a testimony of guilt and condemnation. Rather they are written on our hearts that we may obey the Lord out of gratitude. We have been brought from death to life. We are no longer slaves to sin and death, but neither are we set free to a life of autonomy. We are bondservants to Christ. To quote a particularly keen insight from the pop-theologian Bob Dylan, “you gotta serve somebody.” As such, Christian liberty must always be understood in the context of our standing in Christ.

In our day-to-day lives, we frequently encounter circumstances where we can’t simply go to a single verse of scripture to obtain guidance. For example, if you look up “birth control” in your concordance, you will not find anything. Does this mean that the question of “family planning” is somehow outside of realm of Christ’s Lordship? God forbid! The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, and all scripture is profitable for instruction in righteousness. How should we respond to circumstances where we can’t locate a tidy chapter-and-verse citation. What should our mindset be?

In exercising Christian liberty, there are two deep ditches on either side of the road. One ditch is occupied by those who see fit to bind others’ consciences with a list of dogmatically-held, extra-scriptural scruples. (This is not to be confused with genuine Christian wisdom, even though the external conclusions arrived at may sometimes be similar.) Here you will find gnat-strangling and camel swallowing in abundance. People in this ditch assume that everybody who does not conform to their external scruples is mired in libertine debauchery. The other ditch is occupied by those who believe that unless you can show them a chapter-and-verse citation, they will do whatever they want. They have a tin ear to the scriptural concepts of wisdom and folly, glorification and degradation. They seek to discover how close they can come to violating God’s commandments without actually doing so (often crossing that line in the process). Both of these ditches share things in common. They are both constantly on guard against the temptations of the people in the other ditch, they both accuse true practitioners of Christian liberty of being in the opposite ditch, and they both fail to esteem others as more important than themselves. I recognize that there are some issues where I am tempted toward and have at times fallen into one ditch and other issues where I have the same experience with the opposite ditch. I pray that the Lord will continue to help me to see these abuses of Christian liberty when they may occur and repent of them.

The focus of our exercise of Christian liberty should be to honor the Lord and edify others, rather than to serve ourselves and tear others down. One goal in this regard should be to generally mind our own business rather than concerning ourselves with others’ stewardship of their own Christian liberty. This is especially true for people we don’t have a close friendship or covenantal shepherding relationship with. Eagerly confronting acquaintances in the church about the homeschooling curricula they are using or their nursing schedules for their children is generally not advisable. This does not preclude giving your counsel on a particular subject if it is requested, or pointing out “big E on the eye chart” sins to others.

With respect to our own application of Christian liberty, we should seek wisdom. We should meditate on the Word of God day and night and actively seek the counsel and perspective of older men in the church. We need to search our own motives and see if they are grounded in a desire for Christ-likeness or in selfish ambition and vain deceit. Moreover we need to be sensitive to the particular circumstances of each situation. It may be appropriate to exercise your Christian liberty one way in one situation and another way in a different situation. You can behave one way out at a ballgame and another way at a funeral without being guilty of relativism or liberal situational ethics. Below, I will provide brief treatments of my personal application of Christian liberty to the subjects of drinking and smoking. There are some Christians who believe that both of these are inherently sinful, and I will address each of those claims as well.

I currently drink alcohol occasionally. If expense was not an issue, I would probably have a beer or a glass of wine every night with supper. Very rarely, I have had more than one drink within the course of an evening. I have never been drunk, nor do I ever wish to attain a state of drunkenness. I believe that my use of alcohol is well within the bounds of Scripture. More importantly, I see wine as a blessing from the Lord and partake of it in thanksgiving. I believe that the Lord’s Supper should be administered with wine rather than grape juice because it is the practice of the church dating back to its institution, and because wine better reflects the potency of the gospel. As such, I believe that all Christians should drink at least some alcohol. While recognizing that many people have been severely affected and traumatized by chronic drunkenness and the sins frequently associated with it, I believe that the prohibitionist and proselytizing strict teetotaler cannot make a scriptural case against responsible alcohol use. If they attempt to make the case unscripturally, they must, by necessity believe that they are holier than Jesus, who himself not only drank alcohol but transformed water into large quantities of wine.

I do not smoke and never have, but I do not believe smoking is sinful. There may be practical reasons for or against tobacco use, but I have seen too many people over eighty years old smoking like chimneys to conclude that smoking is somehow a clear prima facie violation of the sixth commandment. I also don’t believe the apparent addictiveness of nicotine is a reason to avoid smoking. I intentionally started drinking coffee regularly within the past six months, knowing full well that caffeine can be addictive. My primary reason for not smoking is that my wife dislikes the smell of tobacco smoke, which is particularly difficult to mask or eradicate. Considering her comfort and well-being more important than my own, I gladly refrain from something that is otherwise permissible. I believe that Christians should have no part in the current prohibitionist civic crusade against smoking (which can border on idolatry), whether or not they personally like smoking.

In conclusion, our goal in our exercise of Christian liberty should be to imitate Christ, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. We should love those within the body of Christ, esteeming them more important than ourselves. Above all, we should acknowledge that true Christian liberty is the power to keep the Lord’s commandments out of love for him, cheerfully submitting every fiber of our being to the Lordship of Christ to the glory of God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Note: As part of my application to Christus Rex Study Center, I was required to include a statement of my Christian faith.  I figured I’d also post it here on my blog.  Enjoy.

The request that applicants to Christus Rex Study Center provide “a written statement of [our] Christian faith” is delightfully ambiguous. How somebody responds to this request reveals quite a bit about how they view God and themselves. For this reason, I will explore some of the ways that this request can be addressed before answering the question for myself.

For many Christians, a statement of their Christian faith would almost exclusively entail autobiographic testimony. While certainly not mal in se, the emphasis of such a statement is almost universally on the subjective experiences of the individual rather than on the Triune God. This mindset generally encourages dramatic “Damascus road” conversion experiences and regularly looks down upon the “boring” testimonies of faithful covenant succession with suspicion. If one is to make a narrative statement of Christian faith, it would be far better to do so in terms of “we” than “I.” Such a statement of faith shouldn’t start with the individual, his parents, or even his grandparents, but rather in a garden a little over six thousand years ago. Adam’s story is our story, and our testimonies are bound to miss the mark if they are not set within the context God’s faithfulness throughout history. Indeed a proper statement of Christian faith ought to contain an element of historical narrative. All three creeds that Christ Church confesses contain statements of God’s actions in history, so it is entirely appropriate for my statement of Christian faith to do so as well.

Another way to respond to the request, which has taken root especially among some of within the reformed tradition is to wax poetic about faith itself in such a way that downplays the object of Christian faith. To borrow an illustration from Douglas Wilson, there are some today who treat faith as if it were a mural to look at itself rather than a window that we look through to see the Triune God. This is the type of error exhibited by those within reformed circles who would criticize the Apostles’ Creed as inferior because it doesn’t contain a statement about justification by faith. Such a criticism is blind to the fact that confessing Apostles’ Creed is an active example of doing justification by faith rather than mere propositions about it. The faith is clearly there in the Apostles’ Creed, but it’s a “window” faith rather than a “mural” faith. Faith in justification by faith alone will not save us. Faith in Jesus Christ will.

After qualifying what I’m trying not to do in making a statement of my Christian faith, I will provide such a statement. I would have been glad to merely copy and paste the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed verbatim as my statement of Christian faith with a hearty “amen” and no explanation at all. As it is, it makes me a little nervous to combine portions of the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds with the Definition of Chalcedon as I’m about to. However, I’m confident that if a portion of my statement of Christian faith is in error, I will immediately repent when shown my error. My statement of Christian faith is as follows:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,

Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin;

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost,

born of the virgin Mary, and was made man;

suffered also for us under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried;

He descended into Hades.

On the third day He arose again from the dead, according to the Scriptures;

He ascended into heaven,

and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets;

One God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;

And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church;

the communion of saints;

the forgiveness of sins;

the resurrection of the body (over against the Hellenistic concept of the “immortality of the soul”);

and the life everlasting of the world to come.

After reading this title, many of you might be thinking, “We’ve lost Mike. He’s gone off the deep end. We always knew he was one quirk away from dementia, and well…it’s Leviticus.”

My current Bible reading has me in Leviticus. Let’s face it: among contemporary evangelicals, Leviticus is not likely to win the “book we’re most eager to read” award. Even for those of us who have a relatively high view of Scripture, Leviticus is often seen as one of those “suck it up and deal with it” ordeals to persevere through on our journey of Christian piety. Rarely preached on or read from in church, this book is exiled to the private Bible reading of individual believers (and probably skipped whenever possible).

I went into Leviticus this time after having just finished Jeffrey Meyers’ fantastic book The Lord’s Service, so I was much more excited about reading through Leviticus with an eye toward the “covenant renewal” pattern of worship. I have also been listening to several lectures by James B. Jordan, in which he lectures on Biblical symbolism.

So I’m reading along and I hit Leviticus 14:1-32, which is about cleansing from leprosy, when I’m simply taken aback by the glory of God. A little background (heavily borrowing from Jordan):

1. Ceremonial uncleanness is symbolic death. Leprosy was the most extreme example of this. A leper was cut off from the people and exiled to the outside of the camp.

2. When a descendant of Aaron is ordained as a priest, blood is placed on his right ear, his right thumb, and his right big toe. This represents the four horns of the altar. (Circumcision symbolically being the fourth horn.) He is also anointed with oil.

So what do we see when a leper is cleansed? Blood is placed on his right ear, his right thumb, and his right big toe, and he is anointed with oil. This is priestly language, and is almost exactly parallel to the account of Exodus 29 and is not used in any other ritual. What do we learn from this? The leper is brought from the most stark ceremonial death and raised in glory on the eighth day as a symbolic priest. This ritual was not performed on kings or even the Levites that weren’t priests.

My mind is immediately drawn to the parable of the prodigal son. Kill the fatted calf! My son was dead but now he is alive! God does not merely take us back to where we were in the resurrection. This is no crude medical resuscitation. Nay, we are transfigured and brought to a more glorious state of being. This is the Triune God we worship; the God of death and resurrection. We also experience this death and resurrection to a degree every Lord’s Day as we worship and offer ourselves as living sacrifices to the Lord Most High!

Glory to God in the highest!

I was recently involved in a scrum in the comments section of a post on Doug Wilson’s “Blog and Mablog” where I was arguing with a couple of other readers  about foreign policy.  I confess that I was not as sober-minded as I should have been and didn’t guard my electronic tongue as well as I should have, especially in the beginning of the discussion.

Anyway, my conversation on that post gave me an idea.  I believe that there are many cases where we as Christians assume we’re right when we’re not being faithful to the teaching of scripture.  Often this happens when we accept the presuppositions of the world around us.  Rather than thinking Biblically about a topic, we think Victorianly, or Americanly, or conservatively, or gnostically, legalistically, or Hellenistically.  The Pharisees thought that they had it all together in terms of virtue and righteousness.  They were the religious conservatives of their day.  They were the moral values crowd of the most impressive pedigree.  But when they encountered God incarnate, Jesus showed that they had invented many of their “virtues” as a way of circumventing the Word.

While this problem plagues both religious liberals and religious conservatives, I will focus on the “virtues” of religious conservatives, since I am one, and one of the “virtues” that we as conservatives need to confess at the outset is the that we are really good at preaching against that sin “out there” while being suspiciously quiet about our own sins and temptations.  Nothing seems to mobilize religious conservatives more than preaching about the sins of religious liberals and unbelievers.  Of course, if you’re a liberal of any kind (except for possibly “classical”) don’t worry–you’re bound to be offended by my commitment to the authority of Scripture in spite of inconsistencies or blind spots I’m bound to have.  During this series, I plan to stick to “virtues” I have personally held at some point in my life.

Assuming somebody reads these blog posts, I’m bound to offend just about everybody at some point during this series.  If I give offense because I am being unbiblical, unfaithful, crass, or arrogant, I apologize in advance and hope that I will repent.  If I give offense because I am making a biblical argument and I strike a nerve, well… to quote Adrian Monk: “You’ll thank me later.”

In the life of religion, there are always ditches on both sides of the proverbial road of faithfulness and obedience.

On the right we have superstition.  This ditch is characterized by  adding to the word of God.  The superstitious are often seen as being more “religious” than the faithful, and are proud of it.  The superstitious bind the consciences of others with all kinds of scruples.  They judge others for not tithing from their spice racks while they devour widows’ houses.   Fundamentalism often  ends up in this ditch, and this ditch contains the devout adherents of false religions.  Your classic poster boys for superstition are the Pharisees, the Judaizers and some of the late medieval scholastics.  A lot of monasticism ends up in this ditch as well.  Superstition is legalistic.

On the left we have what I will call “substition”.  This ditch is characterized by an outright rejection of God’s standards.  It is also the home of the self-conscious unbelievers.  All of your self-conscious agnostics and atheists are deeply entrenched in this ditch.  The substitious person overtly rejects the Word of God.  “Higher criticism,” theological liberalism, and overt atheism are all examples of high-handed substition, but you also see substition within Christianity.  The Christian who is quick to respond “we’re not under law but under grace,” and “judge not lest ye be judged” whenever their sin is confronted by the Bible, is also substitious.  The Sadducees, Sodom and Gomorrah, transcendentalism, Epicureanism, and civil religions like the “social gospel” are examples of substition.  Substition is antinomian.

Our third option is simply “stition”, that is to obey the Word of the Lord cheerfully and thankfully.  God’s word is a lamp to our feet and a light for our path.  It is the only way to avoid falling into either ditch.  Those who do not follow this light grope about in darkness.  If they get out of their own ditch, they will always overreact and land in the other ditch.

There are degrees to this.  There is a difference between tripping on a divot at the edge of the path and being at the bottom of a ravine.  There is a sense in which the genuinely saved still fall into both of these ditches after they are regenerated, as we are not perfected on this side of the resurrection.  We can also be inconsistent.  There are some issues where my greater temptation is superstition and other issues where my greater temptation is substition.  Thanks be to God that he has made a covenant with us.  We have a Good Shepherd whose rod and staff are a comfort to us.  He keeps us from falling into the ditches we otherwise would and leaves the ninety-nine sheep to rescue the stray.  God uses ordinary means to strengthen and encourage us.  This is another reason why it is so important to go to church to hear the Word preached and partake of the Lord’s Supper every week.

I had 22 spam comments to moderate this afternoon.  As a result, I have changed the settings such that in order to comment, you must be a registered user.  I apologize for the inconvenience.

It’s interesting how God works things together some times. If any of the following recent events did not happen to me, I probably would not have ended up writing a hymn.

1.) I recently purchased the Academic/Theological edition of Finale 2009, a music notation program from Make Music, Inc., which I wouldn’t have done unless I was made choir director of Christ Church of NC in January.

2.) I listened to the 1999 Christ Church Ministry Conference on “Poetic Knowledge” which is available from WordMP3.com.  I wouldn’t have done this unless my father in law, Marshall Joiner, hadn’t given me his old edition of the entire WordMP3 library.

3.) I then listened to several years of ACCS conferences in which Matt Whitling talked about the basics of poetry.

4.) One of the members of my church, David Stambaugh went out of town on the weekend of 03/15/09 and asked me to switch prayers with him.  (He was scheduled for the prayer of praise on 03/15 and I was scheduled for the prayer of thanksgiving on 03/29.)

When I received the request to take over the Prayer of Praise on 03/13, I decided to arrange my prayer in verse.  Most of the prayers you see in the Bible are poetry rather than prose, so I decided to take a stab at it.  To quote Adrian Monk, “Here’s what happened:”

Poetry: The discussion of poetry should begin with a disclaimer.  I have little experience writing and studying poetry, so I’m splashing around in the shallow end of the pool here.  I hope that it’s at least marginally better than Vogon poetry.  I set the poem in “Common Meter Doubled”  (8 lines per stanza of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter).     There are 6 stanzas in the poem, eight lines each.  The first two lines of trimeter rhyme with each other and the last 2 lines of trimeter rhyme with each other.

The stanzas have a chiastic structure.  The first and last stanzas contain Jesus-as-bridegroom imagery. The first stanza dealing more with the establishment of the covenant; the last dealing with the consummation of the covenant.  The second and fifth stanzas are dominated by nature metaphors.  The second stanza dealing more with the attributes of God, the fifth dealing with the nature of the kingdom.  The third and fourth stanzas contrast the wicked and the righteous.  The cross is at the very center of the chiasm, being that which distinguishes the wicked from the righteous.  So without further ado, here’s the text:

Jehovah’s covenant is sure
His name is lifted high
By his own name he swore an oath
To Abram’s seed draw nigh
Those purchased by the blood of Christ
On whom thy favor rests
Predestined ere the dawn of time
The bridegroom’s prized bequest.

Transcendent yet incarnate Lord
Sublime in mystery
For who can know the ways of God
Unless revealed they be?
Unchanging as a mountain high
Or like a cedar tall
Yet like a river giving life
And hearing when we call.

Our enemies and yours decry
Your righteous name in vain
They blasphemously gnash their teeth
And mock you in disdain
They shriek, connive, conspire, and howl
In evil schemes they plot
Your cross, O Lord, has cast them down
And brought their plans to naught.

You save the wicked from the pit
You raise the dead to life
You vanquish sin and Satan to
Secure the Son a wife
The proud don’t understand thy pow’r
In weakness made complete
While elders take their crowns of gold
And lay them at your feet.

Your kingdom like the mustard seed
Grows slowly by design
As fam’lies, nations, tongues, and tribes
Are grafted to thy vine
While principalities and pow’rs
Against your saints inveigh
The order of Melchizedek
Grows stronger day by day.

Lord hasten consummation’s hour
When bridegroom shall return
To claim his chaste, unblemished bride
And make the serpent burn
The goats shall separated be
Expelled by thee for aye.
Thy sheep shall in thy fold abide
And death shall pass away.

Music: Early on in the process of composing the poem, I considered the idea of setting it as a hymn.  I think I started out in G major, but abandoned it pretty quickly to D major, primarily for range considerations based on how I wanted to write the tune.  Since the poem was iambic, I began the hymn with a pick-up note.  I did a little bit of tone painting (“name is lifted high“), but that’s hard to do when you’re setting six verses.

I tried to look at what the verses had in common.  I noticed that lines 5 and 6 of the vast majority of the verses were darker in content, so I dabbled in the relative minor (b minor) there.

I also needed to think of a name for the hymn tune.  This kind of stumped me, so I decided to name the tune “Stambaugh,” since this wouldn’t have happened unless David swapped prayer assignments with me.

The .PDF of the music can be found here.  I was also able to export audio files from Finale.  I saved the hymn as piano, string quartet, pipe organ, and choir (midi).  I also saved one track where each of the four voice parts (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) is isolated in the left channel so people can learn their part easier by adjusting the balance setting on the playback device (or removing the right earphone).  Enjoy!

Legal note: Permission is hereby granted to make photocopies of the sheet music for the following purposes: worship in any Christian Church, family devotional worship, educational purposes, psalm/hymn singing  gettogethers (best accompanied by good, dark beer), and just about anything else that won’t make you money.  If you come up with a way to make money with the hymn, I’m all ears, but I still reserve all rights.  You can contact me about it.

Jehovah’s covenant is sure
His name is lifted high
By his own name he swore an oath
To Abram’s seed draw nigh
Those purchased by the blood of Christ
On whom thy favor rests
Predestined ere the dawn of time
The bridegroom’s prized bequest

Transcendent yet incarnate Lord
Sublime in mystery
For who can know the ways of God
Unless revealed they be?
Unchanging as a mountain high
Or like a cedar tall
Yet like a river giving life
And hearing when we call

Our enemies and yours decry
Your righteous name in vain
They blasphemously gnash their teeth
And mock you in disdain
They shriek, connive, conspire, and howl
In evil schemes they plot
Your cross, O Lord, has cast them down
And brought their plans to naught

You save the wicked from the pit
You raise the dead to life
You vanquish sin and Satan to
Secure the Son a wife
The proud don’t understand thy pow’r
In weakness made complete
While elders take their crowns of gold
And lay them at your feet

Your kingdom like the mustard seed
Grows slowly by design
As fam’lies, nations, tongues, and tribes
Are grafted to thy vine
While principalities and pow’rs
Against your saints inveigh
The order of Melchizedek
Grows stronger day by day

Lord hasten consummation’s hour
When bridegroom shall return
To claim his chaste, unblemished bride
And make the serpent burn
The goats shall separated be
Expelled by thee for aye.
Thy sheep shall in thy fold abide
And on them death shan’t prey

To Father, Son and Holy Ghost
One God, world without end
Be glory, honor, laud, and praise
In Jesus’ name, Amen
(The previous two lines are part of the Sunday prayer but not of the poem/hymn)

I might compose music to go along with this. I’ll edit this post and supply the tune if/when I do.

Just thinking out loud, which is part of the purpose of my blog.  I’ve had some stuff percolating around in my mind after listening to the 2004 Credenda/Agenda History Conference about Revolution and Modernity.  I had also recently finished Angels in the Architecture by Doug Jones and Doug Wilson.

When people choose to leave the membership of a church for “doctrinal reasons,” I fear that, more often than not, they do so within a revolutionary framework rather than a reformational framework.  In particular, I think of the Baptist who becomes a Calvinist and then jumps ship to a Presbyterian church at his first opportunity.  To generalize, the reformed churches have, by-and-large, been populated by people who have left their churches as revolutionaries rather than reformers.  (Luther didn’t wish to leave the Roman church -  he was thrown out by enemies of the gospel who had positions of power in that church.)  If we are to use the metaphor of the church as a body with many parts, the reformed camp at large is disproportionately represented by gallbladders.

In days when there was only one church in a town and there weren’t automobiles, there was a lot more of an impetus to stick things out and try to work with your borthers in Christ for unity.  There are complexities involved, especially if you have children (since their spiritual welfare is at stake), but what would it look like within a generation if the Baptists who became Calvinists had stayed in their churches (until the church either reformed itself or threw them out)?  We are children of modernity more than we realize, and as such we want instant results.  Our expectations for the Kingdom of God are more like an Air Force flyover than a mustard seed sprouting.  I know it’s easier to leave, but is it better in the long term?  It’s interesting to think of what might have been and what might still be if we do things better from here on out.

It appears that my blog has a reader.  This is a banner moment in the history of my blog.  ;) This reader, whose handle is “pcamper” has posted a couple of comments on my post “Something from nothing?” from last October.  I have reproduced his most recent comment verbatim below:

Thank you for your response. What I actually have a problem with is belief in the supernatural. I do not live by faith now, but by reason and hope. The main reason I do not believe any more is the atrocities attributed to your “god” in the bible against innocent babies and children. He actually murdered babies (See 2nd Samuel, the baby of David and Bathsheba) as well as the firstborn males and the flood (if it happened) must have caused many babies and children to perish. My question to you then is: Do you ENJOY believing and praising a being who did these things to babies and children and who would send someone to be tortured just because they exercise their right to think for themselves? Also, I have a problem wth the concept of “hell”. There are christians who believe that even good people will be tortured if they do not believe. This is riduculous. Why would anyone deserve that kind of punishment? This is a being worse than Hitler. However, there are christians who do not believe in hell. So, my question to them is: If you do not believe that part of the bible is true regarding hell, then isn’t it just common sense that the rest of the bible is not true either.

As far as evolution, it makes more sense than some invisible being in the sky judging us. I don’t believe in sin anymore, I believe in right and wrong and always striving to do what is right.

I also believe in evidence. If you are an intelligent person, I cannot believe you think the earth is only 6000 years old. To me, science equals evidence without certainty and religion equals certainty without evidence. I will stick with the evidence without certainty.

As far as faith, I believe that blind faith equals blind obedience.

As far as the trinity, no one can explain that. It was decided upon at the council of nicea.

On the bible: I will quote Mark Twain who said that “most people are bothered by passages of scripture that do not understand, but I am bothered by the passages of scripture that I do understand.

Yes, it takes an incredible amount of faith to believe superstitious things, so I will stick with reason and hope instead of christianity.

In response, I have some comments and some questions:

1. pcamper’s claim that he doesn’t live by faith is epistemologically naïve to say the least.  Everybody lives by faith.  Faith is required to believe in anything, including evidence.  (In order to accept visual evidence, you need to have faith that your eyes are more-or-less representing reality accurately.)  The use of natural science requires faith that nature behaves in a law-like manner and that the laws don’t change willy-nilly from place to place or moment to moment.  The fact that he then goes on to say that he lives by reason and hope is especially delicious.  How can you have hope in something while not having faith in anything, unless you’ve got a really odd and arbitrary defininition of faith?

2.) Is it wrong to murder babies?  If so, how is that supportable on an evolutionist basis?  If evolution is true, then it’s survival of the fittest, and killing babies (who aren’t particularly fit) can’t be wrong.  In fact if your definition of the fittest is the one who leaves the most offspring (not uncommon), then it seems almost required by evolution that you kill other people’s babies whenever possible.  

3.) I also need to address the blasphemous accusation that God is a somehow a murderer.  God gives life and God takes it away according to his eternal decree.  The reason why men can’t do this (why it’s murder for men to do so) is that they don’t have the authority to take lives, including their own.  When one human being unlawfully takes the life of another, he is attempting to usurp God’s authority.  The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.  

In the case of II Samuel 12, the Lord’s causing the death of David’s son was not a bad thing for the son.  He went to heaven.  (See 12:23 “I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”)  Even if we didn’t have that verse to indicate this, it would be reasonable to believe this because he was a covenant child.   

In the other cases pcamper mentioned, these people were enemies of God as were their children.  In Adam, all rebelled against God and are deserving of Hell.  Refusing to submit to God of heaven is certainly worthy of the punishment of Hell.  It is worthy of immediate death, but God in his common grace continues to provide unbelievers with sunshine, rain, and crops.  The reprobate does not honor God as God, nor does he give thanks for these things.  There are no innocent or good people who die or go to hell.  No one is righteous, not even one.  I am therefore not one of those Christians who believe that good people are tortured in Hell.  There are no good people, and apart from the saving grace in Jesus Christ for His church, everybody would go to Hell.  God is perfectly just and the standard by which humans ought to define justice.  I believe that every jot and tittle of the Bible is true, including the verses about Hell, to answer pcamper’s question.

4.  I find it amusing that the only defense of evolution yet offered is that “it makes more sense than some invisible being in the sky judging us.”  If this is living by reason, I’d hate to see living irrationally.  pcamper has no answer to the something- from-nothing argument.  This is clearly self-contradictory.  Either you have evolution or you have the conservation of matter.  You can’t keep both of them and remain consistent.  Belief in evolution must necessarily overthrow the validity of natural science.

5. As alluded to in point 2, pcamper has no basis for believing in right in wrong.  I’m not denying that he does actually believe in right and wrong; I’m just saying that he has no philosophical warrant for doing so.  On an evolutionary foundation, there cannot be any such thing as right and wrong.  If everything is just matter in motion, how can anything be right and wrong?  Stalin understood this better than pcamper does.  Stalin was a consistent materialist.  He believed that killing 20 million of his own people was no different than mowing a lawn.  In order for pcamper to believe in right and wrong, he needs to be a hypocrite (saying he believes one way and acting in another) and borrow from the Christian worldview.

6.  pcamper states that he believes in evidence, but ironically offers none.  He doesn’t even offer an appeal to evidence, because evidence is damning to the evolutionist.  Evidence must always be suppressed or else the whole theory will unravel.  This is, of course, because all of the evidence indicates creation by the Triune God of the Bible.  This isn’t a tradeoff between evidence and certainty.  I have both on my side, and he has neither.

 7. “As far as faith, I believe that blind faith equals blind obedience.”  This is a complete non-sequitur.  Where have I advocated blind faith anywhere?  The evolutionist is the only one here with blind faith.  I have the revealed Word of God which provides the basis for my faith and the created order that corroborates this.  pcamper wants people to believe that something came from nothing, life came from non-life, intelligent from non-intelligent, and moral from amoral–all without shred of evidence to back it up.  I’m sorry, I just can’t take a blind leap of faith like that.

8.  ”As far as the trinity, no one can explain that. It was decided upon at the council of nicea.”  I’m not sure exactly what pcamper is trying to argue here, so I’ll have to give it my best guess.  I will readily grant that the Trinity cannot be understood exhaustively by any creature.  What I fail to see is why I must exhaustively understand something in order to believe in it.  Neither pcamper nor I understand anything exhaustively.  We don’t even understand ourselves exhaustively.  A common problem with unbelieving epistemology is that you must know everything in order to know anything.  Christians don’t have that problem.  I deny that you can’t explain the Trinity at all, and so does Nicea.    

Conclusion: pcamper’s main objection to Christianity is that he believes God is evil.  He accuses God of all these things but has no philosophical basis for making these accusations.  In order for him to argue against Christianity, he must implicitly concede that his evolutionary worldview is not true and that Christianity is true.  In order to object against God, he must borrow from the Christian worldview and adopt the Christian concept of ethical absolutes (albeit in a distorted manner).  pcamper has no leg to stand on here.

 pcamper, you have no reason for hope at all, even though you claim to live by hope.  What do you have hope in?  Objecting to the concept of Hell won’t keep you from going there, no matter how loudly you complain.  You are dead, but I believe in a God that can raise the dead.  God is calling men everywhere to repent and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  God has been in the business of saving hopelessly wicked men since the Fall.  He saved Saul of Tarsus (who was on his way to kill Chrisitians) and turned him into the apostle Paul.  Obviously this is all of grace and all of God–not of man’s autonomous free will.  Nobody chooses to repent and believe unless the Holy Spirit regenerates their heart.  Jesus is reigning now.  You can either bend the knee and be adopted as a son in His church, or you can perish.  I’d personally much rather see the former than the latter.