While on vacation this week I saw 2012. It was a fairly predictable disaster movie specimen, with all the obligatory near misses and explosions, that, like Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings, always accompany such cinematic festivities.

Nevertheless, amidst the tsunamis, pyroclastic flows, and shifting of tectonic plates, and despite the best attempts of one small, struggling, dysfunctional, all-American family to divert our attention by their constant near obliteration, occassional ideas actually bobbed to the surface like a bit of flotsam from a rapidly sinking ship.

First off, there was the idea that the Mayan’s predicted the end of the world thousands of years ago (their calendar ends in 2012, apparently) and that all the major religions of the world have been saying the same thing- on this topic at least-from the get go. Now, at one level there is nothing objectionable about that, since many major religions do in fact predict some kind of final conflagration. There remains in many of the world’s religions echoes of the truth that one day soon God will judge the world and the present order will pass away. Common grace ensures that though we deny and distort the truth we cannot totally efface it from the memory of the race.

Nevertheless, what is more objectionable, though hardly surprising for Hollywood, is the pluralism that really underpins the worldview being promulgated. For example, at one point the President of the United States, played- rather woodenly if you ask me- by Danny Glover,  addresses the nation on the brink of annihilation and declares that we are ‘a family of religions’ but that all religions can unite around the sentiments expressed in the words of the 23rd Psalm, which he begins to read, before being cut off by the effects of global disaster.

What is being articulated here is a kind of pop-pluralism in which everyone is simply taken to mean the same thing so that no-one need face the nasty possibility of losing an argument, or even worse, of causing one.

True pluralism is a far more admirable thing, of course. True pluralism acknowledges that there are fundamental and irreconcilable differences between neighbours whose world views clash, yet agrees that within certain bounds (here the category of natural law is once again helpful), they have the right to be wrong. That it is an implicate of my religious freedom that you should be free to practise your religion too, even if it is stupid, wonky, and downright dumb is something we need to cling to, surely.

That is a much harder path to walk however, than the Hollywood schmaltz that seems actually to dominate the political and cultural landscape these days. Now, we are told, everyone really means the same thing. It is, we are asked to believe, only the dangerous and the fanatical who actually insist on their own convictions anymore.

All this in the interests of pluralism and tolerance. But if I were a Muslim or a Hindu, or a Zoroastrian or even, dare I say it, a Christian, I would be quite offended to hear the idea propounded that the distinctives of my religion, which have been bled for for thousands of years, are actually saying the very same thing that every other major religion has been saying all along, and that while the people who actually embrace those religions have never seen it that way, some politically correct screen writers, directors and actors in Hollywood know better.

Another interesting feature of the movie is the not so subtle critique that is offered of religion in general. When ‘President’ Glover offers his address to the nation and begins to recite Psalm 23, he is cut off after the first line. The message is not all that subtle: the Lord is clearly not your shepherd, Danny, so don’t get your hopes up!

Later, the White House chief of staff is reporting on the heads of state who’ve made it to the safety of the specially prepared ‘Arks’ that will save humanity from the world wide flood (the irony is killing me here!), and states that the Italian prime minster has elected to stay, and ‘trust in prayer’.  The camera cuts to the square outside St Peter’s Basilica in Rome where a vast crowd has joined the prime minster and his family, while the Pope, who didn’t make it onto the Ark it seems, leads in prayer. Inside the Sistine Chapel cardinals kneel in a circle to pray. As they look heavenward a crack appears across the ceiling of the chapel. It runs directly between the fingers of ‘Adam’ and ‘God’ in Michelangelo’s fresco, just before the ceiling collapses, killing the cardinals, and the Basilica falls on the praying crowds outside. High atop the Himalayas a monk is meditating. A wind beings to rush past him and he looks up to see a vast tsunami rising above the tops of the mountains before his temple is obliterated.  In India crowds flee to higher ground when the Tsunami reaches them and the camera zooms in on one man in the posture of prayer as the walls of water crashes down.

The message is clear. Religion is futile. Which is curiously contradictory since the opening idea with which white house officials struggle was that religion got it essentially correct in the first place.  As one character put it, ‘what really gets me is that the crazies with the cardboard signs (predicting the end of the world) had it right all along’.

The same goes for the plan adopted by G8 leaders to save humanity from extinction. Massive ‘Arks’ are built, complete with, you guessed it, helicoptered-in animals from- presumably all over the world (though the only ones we actually see are African animals- a giraffe, gorilla, rhino- which is ironic since the only major landmass that remains unaffected is Africa).

These arks save thousands of people, though the bleak humanism of the movie once again conflicts with its humane impulses.  Only the elite, the genetically selected, the uber rich, and the politically significant make it on board (there are no Asian political world leaders other than the Chinese and no Africans either- one wonders if the politically correct were were off work with swine flu the day they read those pages of the script). But one family sneak onto one boat and become the saviors of the entire ship and its precious cargo.

What is it with this movie? It is trying to be grim but can’t avoid the little-guy-triumphs-over-adversity-wins-back-the-gal-he-loves-and-saves-his-family-into-the-bargain-triumphalism that will bring in the bucks this thanksgiving. But why will it bring in the bucks? After all, in the few more serious moments the message this movie offers is starkly humanistic. God is not real. The world is going to destroy itself. Nature will, in the words of one lead character, self-select who should survive. All religions, though nonsense ultimately, are saying the same thing.

The reason the movie cannot sustain that message and must collapse into the schmaltzy world of family-guy-saves-kids-from-certain-death, and the reason why this movie will make lots and lots of money this Thanksgiving, is that, like all human beings in rebellion against God, it is helplessly haunted by the truth it tries so very hard to deny.

Leave aside worldwide floods, arks to save humanity, and the clear connection between the end of the world and ‘judgment day’, the constant pot-shots at religion, and at Christianity in particular, in the movie left me saying, ‘methinks this movie doth protest too much’.

We are ever so busy suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, and yet even our best efforts end up only highlight the truth we so desperately want to deny.

R Scott Clark helps people navigating their way through the hard question of when and how to leave a generically evangelical church, lacking the marks of a true church,  in favour of a confessionally Reformed congregation, here.

With fear and trembling I’ve begun to work through Romans at Main Street. You can listen to last Lord’s Day’s sermon dealing with, among other things, the subject of natural law here

Part One: Music Singing and the Protestant Reformation

Part Two: Martin Luther and Reformation Hymnody

Part Three: John Calvin and the Recovery of Psalm Singing

Part Four: Hymnody in a Post-hymnody World.

You can read more excellent thoughts from Paul Helm on ‘Natural Law’ here and here. 

The first of these deals with some biblical foundations for thinking about natural law. Helm insightfuly points out, for example, that during the period when sin reigned before the law was given (Romans 5:13-14), the period from Adam to Moses, there was nevertheless an awareness among both the covenantal (e.g. Abraham) and extra-covenantal (e.g. Abimelech) characters in the Genesis narrative of moral norms which do not rest on verbal revelation.

The second picks up where the first left off and seeks to demonstrate that there is really no great conflict between natural law and common grace, rightly understood.  Helm argues that Bavinck and Kuyper are responding to counter-reformation Roman Catholic treatments of natural law rather than to Aquinas and Calvin, which leads them to overstate the contrast between natural law and common grace. For Helm, the two are the same thing viewed from different angles, or at least that they overlap significantly.

As an aside, reading these its clear that Helm would not disagree with VanDrunen about natural law (he cites him again approvingly in the first article), which rather begs the question- which of them is misunderstanding Van Til, when Helm pits him against the natural law convictions both he and VanDrunen share, and VanDrunen embraces VanTilian presuppositionalism, which, apparently, Helm rejects?

De Young on why we do not ‘bring in God’s kingdom’, here

In a fascinating essay in which the ever insightful Paul Helm takes aim at the isolation of theology as a science from other sciences, along the way he fires a broadside at Van Tilian presuppositionalism. Now I am no Van Til expert, but I would anticipate that presups. would not recognize Van Til’s position in Helm’s critique, especially where he links Van Til’s position with Barth’s ‘Nein!’ to natural theology.  Given his dislike of presuppositionalism, it is interesting that Helm points to David VanDrunen and JV Fesko of Westminster Seminary, California, as representatives of a return to what he considers an older Reformed appreciation of natural theology that puts some fresh distance between the confessional Reformed community and presuppositional apologetics. I wonder if these men would agree…

I preached on Romans 1:18-32 last Sabbath morning. You can listen to it here.

Billy Sunday 'preaching'

I offer the following advice based on sometimes painful experience and the sanctifying process of still trying to live out these lessons once learned.

No reformation can come unless it is truth led. That is to say the force of your personality might sway the decision-making process- you might be able to shout down or persuade your elders to do things your way- but a deep-rooted and lasting reformation in a local congregation only takes place when hearts and minds (both inside and out with the Session) are persuaded by clear teaching showing that the reforms you advocate are important, helpful, and biblical.

2. Reformation will not ordinarily come about in a year, or in two, but may be accomplished in ten or fifteen.  Plan on outliving, out serving, and out loving those who might otherwise be resistant to reform.

3. Connected to this, reformation is not the same as winning a fight. This is critical.

Too often we imagine that since reformation must be truth led, all we need to do is saddle up and win the debates every time. But we are wrong. Change is as emotional an issue as it is cerebral. People are comfortable with the status quo and change is often simply too hard to accept, no matter how persuasive your arguments.  The only solution to this is to both win the arguments and win their hearts. But understand that the latter must precede the former. You must love and serve them and they must see you doing it. They need to know they can trust you. And they need to see this before you begin to change structures or procedures.

4. A pastor who does not visit the flock will have a hard time convincing them that he cares about them, and his preaching will struggle to connect with the real lives of his hearers.

5. Preach all the theology you know. Expect opposition. Take it on the chin. Close your mouth. Examine yourself, your tone, your exegesis, repent where you must, rethink your presentation where you can and keep going.

6. Give special attention to the older members of the flock. This is important not simply because they often have needs that require more attention, but because they are often the guardians of ‘the way things have always been’. Love them well, win them, and you will stand a much better chance at accomplishing long-term reform without generating discontent.

7. Be a teaching elder.  A collegiate model of decision-making is critical. I am not the boss. I am an elder among elders. If we have no consensus we do not proceed, even if it means that my ideas get slapped down.  Now that means, of course, that I must give a great deal of attention to the training and educating of my Session. But it also means that I must work hard at adopting a humble and teachable spirit myself. If reformation is to come to the church it will be as the elders pastor and lead the flock well. I have much to learn from them.  They are crucial in accomplishing the work.

8.  Learn to live with the mess.  I say this especially to younger men and seminary grads. Very often we come into our first ministries flush with enthusiasm for the work and filled with idealistic notions about pastoring a reformed congregation. Nothing in our training has really prepared us to navigate the labyrinth of interpersonal politics and the stubborn refusal to change that we find in established congregations at times. Every hill we climb is one we are tempted  to die on. Not only must we learn to lose the argument often and with good grace, we must learn which arguments to have in the first place.

9. Have confidence in the ordinary means of grace. God will get the work done. Preach the Word, brothers. Administer the sacraments. Pray. Pastor the flock gently, lovingly, and patiently. What you could never do in the first year of ministry you may accomplish after five years as God wields his word in your own heart and in the hearts of his people.

10. Do not preach change, preach Christ. Beware of using the pulpit as a platform from which vent your spleen. Your pastoral care of the flock entrusted to you begins in the pulpit. As preachers we have access to a platform that is easily subverted to fulfil our own church-political ends, but that is to abuse our privileges in favour of our personal agendas. Try to remember that you have been called to preach Christ crucified and to pastor this flock with all its weaknesses and strengths. That is your job, first and foremost. You are not there to fix the organization, or grease the wheels of the committee structures. Of course you will want to work on areas that are not functioning well. But keep the main things the main things.  I must learn to live with almost anything if I might still preach Christ.

11. Who says you’re right? Study the Word. Speak where God speaks. Offer your best wisdom on issues of indifference with humility. Submit to your brothers. The vision the congregation or the Session  has may be ill-conceived in places, but so might yours be. Live with them first. Let the bonds of pastoral love grow between you. Let the means of God’s appointment work their sanctifying influence on your own heart, and on theirs. And out of the bonds of shared life will come an increasingly shared set of convictions, not just about ecclesiology or doctrine in the abstract, but about your congregation and its particular mission in its unique context, and about how best to get that mission done.

“On the day of reckoning, when the men of all nations and all ages shall stand around the judgment-seat, there is not one who will be pronounced an outcast of condemnation there, who will not feel an echo in his own conscience to the righteousness of the sentence under which he has fallen.”

Thomas Chalmers, Lectures on Romans, Works, Vol. II, New York, 1850

Check it out here

How do false teachers sneak into pulpits, even in otherwise generally orthodox denominations?

In light of the various controversies that have wracked sideline Reformed communions like my own in recent years, that is no longer a merely academic question to answer. It is a critical and urgent one.

And at least part of the answer surely has to do with our use or neglect of the Keys of the Kingdom.

Have we been in such a rush to be ‘incarnational’ that we have left the Keys lying around unused and nelgected?  Have we become so enamoured with being ‘missional’, with having a great band, and the right look, with ethnographic study and ‘cultural engagement’ and the heady task of changing the world, that we have neglected or disdained altogether doctrinal precision, careful expositional preaching, the faithful administration of the sacraments and the concomittant excercise of church discipline?

Is there any wonder that squatters have come to occupy the Master’s house when we have left the Key’s lying around so carelessly, undervalued and underused?

I’m just asking.

This report illustrates the growing problem of definition in the Anglican Communion: ‘What exactly is an Anglican evangelical?’ Of course, that debate is simply another piece of evidence that the word ‘evangelical’,  without any additional qualifier, has long since passed its use by date.

Over at Against Heresies, Martin Downes has been reflecting on Martin Lloyd Jones and the split with evangelical Anglicanism (Stott in 1966 and Packer in ‘70) that had, and continues to have, such profound consequences for British evangelicalism. Martin has done us a particular service in reproducing Lloyd Jones’ momentous address at the 1966 Evangelical Alliance meeting which precipitated the division.

Re-reading that address, there is much with which to agree. Having trained for the ministry in the theologically mixed Church of Scotland, but eventually ministering in the conservative Free Church of Scotland, and now Presbyterian Church in America, I agree with Lloyd Jones that on-paper-affirmations of doctrinal points left deliberately ambiguous to allow widely differing interpretations, is no basis for church unity.

Evangelicals ought not to tolerate visible unity with those who reject the gospel.  Agreed.

But from a confessional presbyterian vantage point, Lloyd Jones’ alternative does not satisfy. From where I stand, the diagnosis of the problem is better than the suggested treatment of the disease. Lloyd Jones’ alternative to compromised mainline denominations was to call  evangelicals in Britain to visible church unity among themselves. But it was not, notice carefully, a call for denominational connection among churches. He wanted evangelicals to set aside secondary distinctives and unite together…

“And who knows but that the ecumenical movement may be something for which, in years to come, we shall thank God because it made us face our problems on the church level instead of on the level of movements, and really brought us together as a fellowship, or an association, of evangelical churches. May God speed the day.”

He wants a ‘fellowship and association of evangelical churches’ to replace both mixed denominations on the one hand and a casual co-operation of churches across denominational lines on the other.

What has always bothered me about that call however, as pious as it sounds, is that it requires the rejection of a connectional ecclesiology.  It is a call to Congregationalism by default.  

Lloyd Jones’ rhetoric makes it seem overly narrow,  ungodly even, to insist on certain ’secondary’ distinctives. Paedo-baptism involves a doctrine of the church that is incompatible with credo-baptist ecclesiology.  Presbyterian polity is incompatible with independency. Elder-led churches are incompatible with popular vote congregationalists. This is not to make minor things major and needlessly divide the Body over secondary issues. This is rather to insist that the Bible teaches an ecclesiology as well as a soteriology.

Ironically one of the common features of both Lloyd Jones and the evangelical Anglican brethren with whom he parted ways was the absence of a robust doctrine of the church. British evangelicalism has never recovered from the marginalizing of ecclesiology that took place in that era.

What is fascinating as one observes the spread of the Gospel Coalition/Together for the Gospel movements in the States, and the Gospel Partnership movement in the United Kingdom is that it appears to be the triumph of a Lloyd Jonesian solution to challenges facing evangelicalism.

While I do not wish to minimize the value of those conferences and movements among brethren of like mind for gospel ends, I do want to insist that the church is the institution Christ has appointed for the advancement of his Kingdom. If we really take that seriously we will immediately ask, “What ought that church to look like? How ought it to be governed? How do we ‘do church’ faithfully?”

While I recognize that those questions have been answered differently by different streams of the evangelical movement I would much rather have a Baptist be a robust and consistent Baptist about baptism and membership and church government, and then be able to have open and loving dialogue about our real differences, than sweep those differences under the carpet and ‘just get along’.

I simply cannot see how else to say that we love the local church without also saying that we believe the local church should function this way and not that way. Let’s love the church enough to have a clear ecclesiology!

The one thing that is so urgently needed now is not another conference or another movement across denominational lines. What is really needed is a clear and unashamed articulation of robust, catholic, Reformed, ecclesiology.

Derek Thomas asked me to explain in an article for Reformation 21 why I chose to preach a series of sermons on the book of Job. You can listen to the sermons here.

Also not to be missed is a great article on the atonement in the passion narrative of Mark’s gospel by my good friend Martin Downes.