By Farther Steps

Reformed and Reforming, semper reformanda to Christ's glory.

Posts Tagged ‘Reformed Theology’

The Good Kind of Inconsistent

How’s this for an odd chain of thoughts. Carl Trueman asked why The Gospel Coalition takes a stance on complementarianism. I commented on that. Doug Wilson commented not so much on Carl’s question but on an illustration Carl used to make his point. Now I’m about to comment on a throwaway statement Doug made in his post. Confused? Don’t worry about it, here’s what Doug said,

I preached from a psalm of David this morning (68), called it the word of God, but freely acknowledge that it was penned by a man who couldn’t be an elder in our church, adultery and murder being the initial reasons that might be given. How’s that for weird? Life is funny that way.

Doug said that King David, the man after God’s own heart “couldn’t be an elder in our church” primarily because he slept with Bathsheba and killed Uriah to cover that up. He did do that and Doug hints that there might be other reasons.

So why is this worth commenting on? To get to the reason and then on to my point, I need to do some Venn VU meters, if such a thing existed. Here goes.

Doug and Carl and I are all of the Protestant, Reformed tradition. That does not mean we agree on every point of doctrine. I’m baptistic whereas Doug and Carl are Presbyterian. Where we agree is on some principles of the unity of scripture and redemptive history. Where I differ from them is that I don’t believe that circumcision is replaced by baptism and so I don’t think that the children of believers should be baptized. Carl and Doug differ in how far they go with that. Doug believes that since baptized babies are part of the New Covenant they should be given communion. And there are people who are even farther and say that “covenant children” are regenerate and saved but may grow to reject those gifts of the covenant and become apostate.

The reason all this can be represented by Venn VU meters instead of a 0 to 10 scale is because there are boundaries between these different clumps of theology but within each there are varying degrees. If we were to put them on a 0 to 10 scale, the scale would be the degree of continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. None of us would be zero but you get the idea. If I’m a 5 and the last group I mentioned are 10, then Carl would be a 7 and Doug would be an 8.

Before I proceed, I hope I’m being fair here. I don’t want to misrepresent anyone and I don’t mean to be insulting to Carl or Doug, I’m simply trying to paint a picture of where the various folks are. If anyone is offended by this illustration or thinks it is unfair, I totally apologize.

All of that to say that Doug believes in a good degree of continuity between the old and new covenants. And that’s where I have a problem with him saying that David could not be an elder in his church, especially for the reasons he cited. What I’m going to try to do now is explain my problem with his statement from within his perspective. Wish me luck.

Israel’s kings and priests are referred to as Israel’s shepherds, see Jeremiah 2:8 and Ezekiel 34:23 for example. David was a shepherd when he was called to be the king and as a king he was to be a shepherd of Israel. Same thing with Moses. Of course the fulfillment of David and Moses was Jesus and elders are not kings and prophets the way they were. However, they are charged to shepherd the flock of God under the authority of the Great Shepherd Jesus (1 Pet 5:1-4) so in that way, elders are shepherds.

So in the old covenant, David was qualified to be an elder/shepherd and God didn’t remove him from that office even after the Bathsheba/Uriah failure. If in the old economy David was fit to lead, why is he not in the new? David did commit adultery and murder but he also showed the fruits of repentance in 2 Samuel 12 and Psalm 51. Apparently God forgave him for it too. His child died but that is the last mention of it. As a matter of fact, when David sinned and counted a census in 2 Samuel 24 the punishment was worse.

So if God did not remove David from the office of elder/shepherd in the church/state of Israel, why should we deny him that role? Well, Doug did indicate that there might be other issues that would bar David from being an elder. The one that comes to mind is that an elder must be “the husband of one wife” and David had many (1 Chron 3:1-9). In my book that would disqualify him right away but there is more to be considered. Since we’re seeking to make David an elder in Doug’s church and David is dead, we might assume that David is resurrected. If that’s the case, he is no longer married (Matt 22:30) so perhaps he’s still eligible.

Alright, I’ve picked enough nits here. My point is that Doug sees a strong connection between old and new and so excluding David from church leadership in the new when he was the head of the church in the old seems inconsistent. It is a good kind of inconsistent since we’re letting the New Testament have the final word on church leadership.

Reformed Baptist Hermeneutics III: Our Confession

One of the defining principles of being a Reformed Baptist is that we 1Added 3/18/2020: I agree with the theology of Reformed Baptists but I don’t consider myself part of their tribe. I am an evangelical with Reformed theology and a baptistic approach to the sacraments. So when I say “we” I mean those who hold to that theology. have a confession of faith that is in the theological stream of the Reformers. 2Actually, we have two, the 1644 and the 1677/1689 confessions. The reason we focus on the second is not an abandonment of the first but that the second fleshes out the theology in the first. Therefore, I would be remiss if I ignored the Confession in this discussion so I’m going spend some time in this post looking at the confession and highlighting some of the hermeneutical principles found there. There isn’t a chapter specifically on hermeneutics so I’m going to have to do some reading between the lines to try to detect the principle used.

This is but a humble blog entry and the Confession covers a lot of territory so I’m going to focus on two chapters that I know well and that should illustrate our hermeneutic approach: Chapter 7 ‘Of God’s Covenant’ and Chapter 22 ‘Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day.’ I think these two chapters will serve us best in trying to address this subject in small scope of a blog post. Chapter 22 should highlight the Reformed aspect of our hermeneutic and chapter 7 the Baptist portion.

Chapter 22 addresses more than the Sabbath but I’m going to confine my comments to only the Sabbath portions. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some interesting things in the other portions of that chapter but I had to pick one. So let’s start with the first part of paragraph 7:

As it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time, by God’s appointment, be set apart for the worship of God, so by his Word, in a positive moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a sabbath to be kept holy unto him…

Notice that the Sabbath is spoken of as being part of “the law of nature”. What are the hermeneutics behind this conception of the Sabbath? 3I’m fighting the impulse to allow this to turn into a defense of the idea of a Christian Sunday Sabbath. There are Reformed Baptist explanations elsewhere (20kb PDF). Richard Barcellos has an interesting series on the subject as well. I’m trying to stick to the hermeneutic that includes that principle. The Sabbath is what is called a “creation ordinance”, that is, a rule or principle that was established in and at creation. Since it is rooted in creation, it transcends any of the specific covenants just as marriage or work do. That isn’t to say that the covenants don’t add to things it, simply that the principle transcends them. So in the Mosaic Covenant, God appends rules to the covenant that pass away with that covenant, but the Sabbath itself abides. Time set aside from work to be used to worship God in is a creation ordinance and is called a Sabbath in scripture.

This is the Reformed understanding of how the covenants relate. Hermeneutically, we presume continunity from one covenant era to the next. We needn’t see God reestablish his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Mosaic Covenant to know that that covenant is in effect in the Mosaic. The continuity is presumed and, in the case I mentioned, it is affirmed in Scripture also (Ex 33:1).

Next we’ll consider chapter 7 on the covenants. This is where we will differ from our other Reformed brothers. The part I want to focus on is in paragraph 3:

This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament

What is unique and Baptist here may not be obvious at first glance but it is important. Our confession handles redemptive history in a more inclusive fashion than our paedobaptist brothers’ confession does. See if you can spot the difference. Here is a similar paragraph from the Westminster Confession of Faith:

This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances (WFC 7.5)

Did you catch it? What about the time from Adam to Abraham? In the Westminster it is unintentionally excluded whereas in the Baptist Confession it is gathered into the consideration. Though I don’t want this to turn into a criticism of paedobaptism, I need to highlight this point. From Adam to Abraham there was not an external, objective sign of the covenant. People were brought into the Covenant of Grace only by faith (see Hebrews 11 on Abel, Enoch and Noah.) As we Baptists consider the nature of God’s covenants, we incorporate this time period and acknowledge that for a significant portion of redemptive history children of covenant members were not automatically covenant members. That the sign of the covenant was not automatically applied to them.

The hermeneutic principle I detect here is that we will incorporate all periods of redemptive history when considering the relationship between the covenants. Because there was a long period of time when the covenant was not made with those without faith we must admit that it is possible in the New Covenant that this situation could apply once more. When we consider the nature of the New Covenant, the blessings of the New Covenant and the example of our Apostle’s in propagating the New Covenant, we see that it is not beyond what God has done in the past to establish his covenant only with those whom he has given the gift of faith. Our formulation of the New Covenant comes not from only the New Testament (the Dispensationalist error) and not from only redemptive history since Abraham (the paedobaptist error). Instead we consider all of the eras of God’s work in redeeming a people unto himself.

↩1 Added 3/18/2020: I agree with the theology of Reformed Baptists but I don’t consider myself part of their tribe. I am an evangelical with Reformed theology and a baptistic approach to the sacraments. So when I say “we” I mean those who hold to that theology.
↩2 Actually, we have two, the 1644 and the 1677/1689 confessions. The reason we focus on the second is not an abandonment of the first but that the second fleshes out the theology in the first.
↩3 I’m fighting the impulse to allow this to turn into a defense of the idea of a Christian Sunday Sabbath. There are Reformed Baptist explanations elsewhere (20kb PDF). Richard Barcellos has an interesting series on the subject as well. I’m trying to stick to the hermeneutic that includes that principle.

For the Sake of the Elect

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

2 Timothy 2:10

Long ago when I was doing a local radio program, I had an Arminian caller gently point out that the term “elect” in Ephesians 1 could be describing the position of being “in Christ” and not particular individuals. We had a pleasant exchange and when we were done, he hung up. Since it was my show, I got to continue to discuss it. :)

I was not convinced that elect is a position and not a people. This verse from 2 Timothy seems to reinforce that point (wish I’d have had it handy back then). How can a position of being in Christ “obtain salvation”? Isn’t that what being in Christ means? To maintain the Arminian position, I guess you’d have to say that God had no one in particular in mind when he elected ‘them’ to salvation.

Another potential interpretation is that “the elect” is referring to ethnic Israel. After all, Paul says, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Rom. 9:3) so he had genuine concern for the Jews. In 2 Timothy 2:13 he says “if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.” God remains faithful to Israel even though the rejected the Messiah, right? To get that from those verses, you have to import a bunch of presuppositions that just aren’t present in 2 Timothy. Also, right after that, Paul tells Timothy to “remind them of these things.” Timothy was in Ephesus, a largely gentile city, so God’s faithfulness to apostate Israel probably wasn’t their major concern. It just doesn’t fit.

What seems to make more sense is that Paul is pursuing those God has chosen from the foundation of the world. He preaches the gospel so that they may come to faith and be saved. He preached it indiscriminately because we don’t know who the elect are till they believe and persevere to the end.