Calling for a Return to the Doctrinal Ideals and Kingdom Ethics of the First Reformation
We've considered various Sola Scriptura camps that are found wanting in their claims as well as briefly touching on some of the groups that esteem Scripture down to those who functionally despise it.
We must weigh all of these versus a genuine Biblicist rendering of Sola Scriptura. For some this is an impossibility, for others Pandora's Box that can only lead to chaos.
Author Brian Godawa appeared on my radar back in the early 2000's when Christian publications called attention to his participation in the 2001 film To End All Wars. For my part, I didn't really care for the film - all the more as I refuse to accept some of the assumptions at work in the Anglo-centric narrative.
Godawa was an open Theonomist and was pointed to as an example of positive Christian cultural engagement. He seemed to be something of a rising star in those circles but then I didn't really hear about him again for the next decade or so. Then in the mid-2010's he popped up on my radar again in connection with his fictional works on the Antediluvian world and the Nephilim. I listened to and read some of his material in connection to these themes and found it palatable, interesting, and sometimes refreshing.
Recently I was in a used book store and stumbled across Christianity and Neo-Liberalism by Paul Elliott (published by the Trinity Foundation in 2005). Some will immediately know this is a book connected to the followers of Gordon Clark (1902-1985), a controversial figure within Reformed circles in general and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in particular.
https://reformedforum.org/vos-and-neo-calvinism-rethinking-a-transatlantic-identity/
Bucey provides some helpful analysis regarding this rather pivotal episode in the life of Geerhardus Vos (1862-1949) and his 1886 refusal to join Abraham Kuyper at the Free University in Amsterdam. The young Vos instead made his way to Grand Rapids to teach at what would become Calvin College and Seminary.
Chad Lawrence is keen to warn his audience against forms of Pietism and thinks he's found it hiding in the works of New Calvinist author David Platt.
Platt's 'Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream' was released in 2010 and made a splash in Evangelical circles. Platt's work has some problems to be sure - he rightly wants to counter American consumerist norms but equates the rejection with a model of piety which is expressed by means of the highly flawed and corrupt 'missions'-ministry approach common in modern Evangelicalism and a kind of missional approach which tends toward an agenda of social transformation. And for the record, a mega-church is hardly the venue for Pietism to sink roots.
There are few books out there that I would fully endorse, but Joshua Immanuel's 2024 work - My Kingdom is Not of This World is one of them. A friend of this website, Immanuel excels at laying out some of the basic ideas surrounding the nature of the Kingdom and the ethics that flow from it.
So if the Rich Young Ruler had (in faith) obeyed the commands of God, his works would mean something. This does not suggest he could earn his salvation but rather it would be a testimony to the Holy Spirit working within him. Instead, he was an idolater and his understanding of the law was of the letter not the spirit. He had no real faith to speak of and when standing before Christ and receiving a face to face invitation from Him - he turned away. He wasn't interested.
Not long ago I listened to a sermon on the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19 and I was struck by the difficulty the preacher seemed to have in dealing with the passage. I agree, there are some interpretive challenges but I think that often these difficulties are the result of theological baggage that's brought to the text.
Recently I was re-reading a book of essays on Klaas Schilder and on the question of Christ and Culture, NH Gootjes asks if the cultural mandate changed radically after the Fall? Psalm 8 show the opposite, he asserts. 'Man has been given dominion over the works of God's hands (v.6). Man can rule over God's creation as Joseph ruled over Egypt (Gen. 45:8, 26). The psalm reminds us of Genesis 1. Man still has the position in creation as he had in the beginning, sin notwithstanding.'*
https://www.crossway.org/articles/is-the-lords-supper-jesuss-actual-body-and-blood-1-corinthians/
On one level this article had moments in which it was a blessing to read. And yet another part of me wanted to crumple up the paper and throw it across the room.
We can agree that the Lord's Supper is not a repeated sacrifice as understood in the Roman Catholic Mass and while some of the Lutheran hair-splitting and insistence on ubiquity is not always helpful, Naselli's rendering of the Supper as merely symbolic does not account for the Scriptural data.
https://theaquilareport.com/second-thoughts-about-the-proposed-witness-overtures/
We've just passed General Assembly season in the Presbyterian
world and thus there's a lot of talk about polity, discipline, and procedure
and yet as this article demonstrates, most of it is off-base and has little if
anything to do with actual New Testament polity, but is instead rooted in
tradition and what amounts to a functional rejection of Scriptural Sufficiency.
The New Testament teaches that the Mosaic order has been disannulled – hence the harsh words in the epistles of Galatians and Hebrews, the errors of these groups being close cousin to what contemporary Theonomy advocates. Exodus 20 cannot be appealed to in the way DiGiacomo would use it. There is no Theocratic order in the New Testament apart from the Church, the earthly manifestation of Christ's Kingdom which is not located on Earth in terms of a political, cultural, or geographic order, but in Heaven itself. Exodus 20 is Scripture, but fulfilled Scripture and must be read through the Christocentric lens of the New Testament. To do otherwise is to invert the Scriptures and read them unfaithfully in a Judaized manner.
I was asked concerning Romans 9 and Paul's affection for the Jewish people. Apparently this passage is used by some Dominionists to justify ethno-nationalist agendas or forms of patriotism, suggesting that Paul effectively endorsed such thinking by his expressions for the Jewish people.
Over the years I have heard various appeals to the Book of Revelation as some kind of guide or normative template for New Testament worship. Usually those who appeal to this line of reasoning wish to move their particular congregation (or perhaps denomination) in a High Church direction. Revelation's liturgical imagery is certainly lavish and one can easily make a case for vestments, incense, candles and the like.
That the Old Testament was harder to understand did not minimise the onus placed on the saints of that era. And yet, New Testament believers are called to a higher ethical standard. We have so much more revealed and we are called to live as citizens not of the typological kingdom comprised of sword-conquests, land boundaries, stone buildings, and blood sacrifices. Rather, we are called to live as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven and as such we are strangers and pilgrims on the Earth in a way the saints living under the Mosaic order were not. We do not live by the sword, we have the completed perfect sacrifice which grants us access to the Kingdom of Heaven. Our Kingdom is eternal and yet hidden to the unregenerate. Our Temple and sacrifices are spiritual. Our High Priest is in Heaven. Our battles are not against flesh and blood. Our ethics are born of a higher eternal order.
Hebrews for its part is Redemptive-Historical theology par excellence as it elaborates the nature of the prophetic word, the Sabbath, priesthood and Mosaic order, and the New Covenant, along with questions of faith and its resulting ethics and imperatives.
It is with fondness that I often reflect upon friendships I formed in the 1990's with some fellow Christians. We always marvel that in terms of day to day life we had (and perhaps still have) little in common but what brought us together was Christ and a love for the Scriptures.
Recovering the First Reformation - Toward a Proto-Protestant Narrative of Church History (XX)
The dominant monism of today is a result of the Constantinian
synthesis that birthed Christendom and the Scholastic impulse. Though a
minority movement within the larger fold of Evangelicalism, Calvinism has also
exercised considerable influence in terms of monistic thought and tendency.
I have paraphrased the question(s) below:
If the Decalogue is
technically defunct in the New Covenant era and yet still expresses the Eternal
Law of God albeit in its specific Mosaic and Pre-Christ form - can it nevertheless
be utilised by Christians to point out and expose sin?
Moreover I also gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between them and Me, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.(Ezekiel 20.12)
The Sabbath was a covenantal sign that was to 'mark out' the
people of God as distinct from the Gentile nations. The Sabbath therefore was
not universal, it was not a law that was to be applied in all places and at all
times. This is actually fairly clear when one reads the Old Testament and it is
even explicit in places like Ezekiel 20.12. It was a covenantal sign and as
such was only binding upon those in union with Jehovah.
But this presents a real dilemma for some Christian groups
today.