Category: Theological Thoughts

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I hear a train a’comin’

The resurrection of Jesus is like a train that arrived in history and changed everything. The arrival of this event in the center of history outlined narrative of creation into two eras: the first marked by death and a world marked by a decisive victory over death. We live in the age where the train of history has come in the empty tomb and is a’comin’ in history today. Everything that we will savor today is marked by the flavor of glory. Everything sour, sweet, salty is glorified because the resurrection tastes better than death. Death is ashes and dust. Resurrection is steak and champagne.

We are in this moving train headed to a consummative end. History is guided, directed, and orchestrated by the events of an empty tomb. The empty tomb is the engine that keeps the train moving from glory to glory and we are participants of this glory.

When we come into worship on this Easter morn, we are entering into a resurrected universe. Our thanksgiving this morning is on the other side of the empty tomb. We are no longer waiting for the train to arrive, but we have embarked in this magnificent travel. And on this day, we have the privilege of sitting, kneeling, rising, singing, and partaking of the sceneries. Come and worship the Risen King who invites us into his sacred journey. Come and enjoy the ride from call to commission.

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What is Maundy Thursday?

“Maundy” comes from the Latin Mandatum. The word comes from Jesus’ command on the Last Supper to love one another just as He loved them (Jn. 13). The message of love is central to the Gospel message. Some Evangelicals are all too quick to set the topic of love aside because it draws our attention away from the more important doctrinal disputes and discussions. Yet Paul and our blessed Lord keep bringing us back to this theme of love. God is love. No, love is not God, but it is very much a foundational aspect of all His actions toward us in Christ Jesus.

Maundy Thursday then becomes a special historical reminder that we are called to be a people of love. In I Corinthians 13, Paul said that if love is absent, our actions become like clanging cymbals. The very core of Paul’s exhortation to love occurred in the midst of a dying Church, namely the Corinthian Church. Paul’s application then is an ecclesiastical command. In the same manner, our blessed Lord on the night in which he was betrayed– by that unclean man called Judas– called us to a greater love ethic as a people. It was not an ethic foreign to our Lord. What Jesus commands is first and foremost something he has experienced and displayed already. To a greater extent, our Lord proves that love in a cross of hate. By sacrificing Himself on that cruel tree He turned the symbol of hate into one of the most beloved symbols in the Christian life.

It is then very appropriate that our Lord commands us to love as a response to the Last Supper. This is the case because in the Supper, we are being re-oriented in our affection for one another. The Supper is a meal of love and Jesus would transform that meal into His resurrection. He would glorify love for His new disciples. He would become Himself the manna from heaven that would bring joy to this newly created community.

Love is displayed and obeyed in this new fellowship of disciples we call the Church. This is why Maundy Thursday was a significant historical event. It was not just a didactic lesson for the disciples, it was also a meal that sealed the theme of love for this new community that would emerge from the darkness of the tomb.

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Transcending Loyalties

John Frame argues (ST, 27-29) that God’s covenant transcends “all other loyalties.” As Lord of the covenant, he forbids allowing someone else to be Lord. Examples of this principle of loyalty abound in the New Covenant, but in particular, Matthew 8 and 10 argue for the supremacy of discipleship even over familial claims.

The Lordship of Jesus forms, therefore, the principle inherent in Sola Scriptura. While parents may play a role in shaping our understanding of life, our supreme authority is still to the Lord (Acts 5:29). Sola Scriptura does not compete with anyone else for authority. She is the ultimate authority, as Christ is the ultimate Lord.

Since he controls all things, therefore, he has the right to demand all obedience from his own and his creation. Human obedience becomes the means through which we show forth our loyalty to God above all earthly loyalties.

Thus, God’s authority covers all areas of human existence (28):

God claims the authority to direct all our thinking and all our decisions. The Lord is totalitarian, as only he has the right to be (28).

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Ecclesiastical Dogma and Practice

brown wooden church bench near white painted wall

There is a distinction between what the Church taught dogmatically and what the Church did practically. The Church spoke clearly on matters of dogma, but the Church has not spoken definitively on matters of practice. In other words, her praxeology may differ externally, but her doctrine is always clear internally.

For example, for centuries, churches met divided between men and women. Men sat on one side and women on the other. The seating arrangement preserved sexual distinctions. The Catholic church ceased such practice in the 20th century.

Women also covered their heads with some cloth/veil, though there were distinctions on how and when they were worn. In fact, the practice among Roman Catholics was not required until 1917.a The indication is that it was not in any way made law, and when it was, it was quickly removed a few decades later. Many traditions, even those devout to such practices, have ceased these practices individually and corporately in the last 120 years.

These are practices that go through various stages of evolution within the Church. Nevertheless, dogma refers to sound doctrine taught, believed, articulated, and defended in Councils. They should not be treated as mere practices to be renewed at the latest ecclesiastical gathering or to be sources of public dispute in the social media cosmos.

Dogma is settled business! The deity of Jesus is exegetically irrefutable and ought not to be trifled with at any level. There may be textual discussions about which text most clearly testifies to its truth, but the doctrine is dogmatically sound and must be affirmed and confessed when the Church gathers.

The Church may differ in practices, but she cannot be tossed by every wind of doctrine. She must be a refuge in an age of relativism and doctrinal lego-building. She must be the steady voice in a sea of confusion.

  1. It seems that “For the first time in history, the Catholic Church required head covering for Catholic women in their 1917 Code of Canon Law.”  (back)
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Douglas Wilson Responds to Full Preterism

Wilson does a fine job dismantling the Full Preterist paradigm. He offers ten reasons to reject it, and among them, he points to my podcast episodes to argue for the ecclesiastical consequences of abandoning orthodoxy:

As Uri Brito pointed out in a couple of his podcasts (here and here), the implications of this issue are massive. It is not a matter of abandoning congregational polity for presbyterian polity, or deciding to baptize with heads upstream from now on.

I could not embrace full preterism without that undoing the entire architecture and fabric of my mind. And I say this as someone who knows what it is like to go through theological paradigm shifts—I have been to the fair, and ridden on all the rides. Got sick on some of them. I have transitioned from Arminianism to Calvinism, from credo to paedo, from premillennial to postmillennial, and you know. One of those guys. If any one of those transitions was like bumping into the table and spilling a glass of water, full preterism would be like the Great 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

I am telling you all that all Reformed theology hangs together, and this is a theological jenga game—and full preterism is like trying to pull out a long block second from the bottom. It is not possible to talk about this issue all by itself.

Futurists and partial preterists disagree with one another about numerous passages of Scripture. But we don’t disagree with one another about the structure and framework of human history. We line the books up differently, and sometimes have fierce debates about that, but we both use the same bookends—creation and the eschaton.

What this means is that my difference with the full preterist does not fall in the same category, not at all. It is actually a difference about the meaning and teleology of all human history in its entirety. This is not a trifle, in other words. The ramifications are massive.

I like living where I do, and have no desire to move to an Arminian dispensational neighborhood. Let us be frank, I would have trouble adapting. But if an angel told me to move there, and to grow some five-point tulips in my backyard as a testimony to them, I think I could do it. Moreover I think I could do it without quarreling with the neighbors. But moving to a full preterist neighborhood would be like moving to an alien world. If an angel told me to move to Jupiter in order to grow giant cabbages, I confess that I would not even know where to start. I would be at an utter nonplus. And not only would I have difficulty not quarreling with the neighbors, I think I would have difficulty not quarreling with the angel.

Some of you might be saying aha! “He wouldn’t change his mind even if an angel told him to.” Yeah, well (Gal. 1:8).

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The Authority of Jesus

John Frame makes the case that the authority of Jesus far transcends earthly authorities. The Roman Centurion goes so far as to compare Jesus’ authority to heal from a distance to the military’s might (Matt.8:5-13).

Everything submits to Jesus. His authority “cannot be questioned” (26). Even though there are cases when God enters into dialogue with his people and changes his disposition towards certain nations or judgments, we know that this is still God’s means to manifest his authority. Man must come to him, petition him, and enter his universe. God is still the source of all human engagement. It cannot occur without man coming to him.

Further, this authority is unquestioned throughout biblical history. Abraham, for example, trusted in “God’s promise without reservation” (27). The Word was to be trusted more so than their current circumstance–namely their age. We trust God precisely because the data tells us otherwise.