Author: Uri Brito

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Every Real Things is a Joy

There is a wonderful line in Robert Capon’s The Marriage Supper of the Lamb where he writes that “Every real thing is a joy, if only you have eyes and ears to relish it, a nose and tongue to taste it.” One of the themes that emerges in Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes is that joy is the distinguishing feature of the Christian. Only the Christian argues Solomon, is able to take God’s gifts and use them with joy. Joy is the fruit of the Spirit; a gift of grace; a tasty sample of glory; a meal for the weak; an appetizer of kings. Joy is the outworking of a faith well-lived.

Joy is not laughing away problems; joy is looking at problems straight in the eyes and saying “My God has an answer!” Joy is our response to nihilism; our response to pietism; our response to bad food; our response to misery; joy at the end of the tether is a renewed trust in Jesus who makes us eat bread and wine and not spit it out, but to enjoy each sip and each bite as a gift from God, and his gifts are not to be despised.

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Free Book Offer at Kuyperian Commentary!

Over at Kuyperian Commentary, you have the opportunity to enter your name to win a copy of “The Church-Friendly Family.” CFF was endorsed by Douglas Wilson, Peter Leithart, and George Grant. In order to enter your name, you must do two of the following:
a) Subscribe to receive e-mail updates from KC on the website or subscribe to the KC Facebook page.
b) Add KC to your blogroll
c) E-mail us @ kuyperian.com@gmail.com and describe in one or two sentences how KC is helping to shape your worldview
d) Share a recent article on your FB page
*E-mail us at kuyperian.com@gmail.com to let us know you have fulfilled two of the requirements above.
Two winners will be announced on August 15th!

Summary of the book: “Of the making of books about marriage and the family, there is no end. The family is in trouble today―and has been since the sin of our first parents. But the rescue of the family requires more than just good advice, helpful as that can be. It requires more than just a focus on the family. It requires that the family be brought into the church of Jesus Christ. In The Church-Friendly Family, Randy Booth and Rich Lusk set marriage and family in the context of the church, showing how putting the church first enables the family to bear a rich harvest in culture, education, missions, and more.”

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The False Promises of the Early Church

Make no mistake: the early church was glorious! She was glorious like a child is glorious. She was but a babe. She breathed, moved, and had her being in God. She was a nursing infant. She had to trust in God from the beginning. But it has become almost a common practice to look to the early church as some paragon of perfection. “If only we could go back!’ The nostalgic sentiments echo through the corridors of sentimentalists. The truth is the early church was a relatively unstable body. Paul strives to offer detailed instructions. Sometimes these instructions are simple: love one another. Sometimes Paul bombards them with rebuke, as in I Corinthians. But if the early church was such a model, why then did Paul chastise and treat them as little children again and again? The answer couldn’t be simpler: because the early church was never meant to be an example to be followed in all ages. She was meant to be a foundational model. She was meant to give us the essential ingredients of life together (Acts 2:42), but not a detailed account for how the 21st century church ought to function.

James Montgomery Boice summarized well this sentiment:

Whole denominations are founded upon the idea that the prime duty of contemporary Christians is to be as much like those who lived in the age of the apostles as possible. But this is a false idealization; it is an attempt to make the early church into something it never was. It is an attempt to escape the problems of our day by looking back to something that exists only in the Christian imagination. a

This prevailing idea opposes strongly the maturational intention of biblical revelation. We were not meant to remain infants, but to grow into mature men, as Paul says. To be sure, Acts provides helpful themes of charity, mercy, communion, and more, but she was a seed, not the tree itself. The tree itself is what God is accomplishing through all ages: to form one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The Spirit of God, who has hovered over the church throughout the ages, continues to hover even today bringing the Church to greater glory and might; strengthening and building her to be that indestructible rock that will shatter the heads of the enemies.

We are not called to put faith in the Church of the past, but in the Head of the Church, Jesus Christ, who reigns over his Church now, world without end, Amen.

  1. An Expositional Commentary, Boice, 56  (back)
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Not a Collection of Isolated Individuals

“The church isn’t simply a collection of isolated individuals … we need to learn again the lesson that a hand is no less a hand for being part of a larger whole, an entire body. The foot is not diminished in its freedom to be a foot by being part of a body which also contains eyes and ears. In fact, hands and feet are most free to be themselves when they coordinate properly with eyes, ears, and everything else. Cutting them off in an effort to make them truly free, truly themselves, would be truly disastrous.”
― N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

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Whatever Happened to Christian Salutations?

I have always been intrigued by the lack of formalized salutations in the Christian world. Christians greet one another with no distinct language. Muslims, Jews, and others each have greetings that communicates their vision for the world. But whatever happened to a distinctly Christian salutation? I am not asking to restore King James English to letter writing; those days are behind us. But I am asking for some type of formality in exchanges and greetings. Christians can replace “bye” with “The Lord bless you.” They can greet each other with “The Lord be with you” instead of “How are you?”

The type of salutation we use in our worship service is actually a reflection of the common greeting of the Church in their day-to-day activities. It is taken from Ruth four where Boaz greets his workers with “The Lord be with you.” It is not merely reserved for the formal gathering. We use it also in our “passing of the peace” during the Eucharistic meal. But why can we not take it a step further and use it in e-mail exchanges or personal greetings? You can set up your signature on Gmail with something like “The Lord be with you” at the end of every e-mail. Rosenstack-Huessy says that greetings orient the speaker and hearer to the same environment. Christians need to be oriented to the same peace often.

This may seem trivial to some, but I argue that for Christendom to succeed we need to restore a Christian grammar to our day-to-day conversation and interactions. Colossians says that our speech needs to be seasoned with salt. Part of this saltiness means re-orienting ourselves with a distinct vocabulary. The apostle Paul was naturally fond of this type of interaction. He began most of his letters with a salutation. For Paul, when Christians meet or engage one another they are not meeting on neutral territory, they are meeting on holy ground. They are image-bearers engaging one another in common discourse; common, but also sacred. Everything we say and do as Christians carry a sacredness to it. This sacredness, I believe, needs to be translated into our day to day greetings and interactions.

Parents can begin very early to cultivate these practices with their little ones. They can greet them in the morning with peace and put them in bed with God’s peace.

We need to consider carefully the implications of what we say and how we say it. God has given us some principles on how our speech is to be carried out. As ambassadors, we have an opportunity to greet one another in a love that binds us together and in a union that cannot be severed. Peace be with you.

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The Eucharist

I have been reading through Alexander Schmemann’s The Eucharist. The book is just a delightful read through the lens of Schmemann’s “unorthodox” view of Eastern Orthodoxy. At one time he takes to task the Orthodox Church for having separated the priest from the people. He argues that certain priests have become like soldiers keeping the people from participating in the assembly. At another time he argues that the Church serves to unite the people of God, not divide; a concern Schmemann has with the prevailing “clericalism.”

Schmemann writes with a somewhat evangelical zeal against his own, which is reason for the intense distaste “pure” orthodox converts have for him. But the most delightful part is when he delves into the nature of the Church. He observes that we come to worship not for individual prayer, but to “assemble together as the Church.” The assembly itself is a holy constitution, and in that the first liturgical act.

In his chapter on The Sacrament of the Assembly, Schmemann deals with the holy office of the minister (priest). He observes that the minister wears white because it is the garment of the baptized. By wearing white he is representing all the baptized in the community. When we enter into the house of God we are entering “clothed in the garments of new creation.”

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John Knox on Baptism

The Reformed world spins in all sorts of un-sacramental circles. In a recent post dealing with the Federal Vision, one writer observed that baptism does nothing to the recipient, but to point him to something greater. A well-known Reformed thinker has begun to use the phrase “baptism brings an individual into the shadow of the covenant.” All of this language serves to stay away from what many in the Reformed tradition, even the majority of reformational confessions have stated all along, namely that baptism accomplishes something. It is effectual. Baptism effectually brings an individual into a corporate reality. That reality brings then various benefits and blessings to the recipient. a

There are particular branches within the Reformed world that de-stresses the effectual nature of baptism. But one must also affirm without a shadow of a doubt that the Reformational expression has by and large emphasized the profound union that exists between baptism and covenant blessings. Baptism is not simply the exposure to blessings, but the experience of blessings.

John Knox, considered one of the fathers of Presbyterianism expresses this most powerfully in the Scots Confession of 1560:

We utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food for our souls.

If Knox is to be used as a paragon of Presbyterian orthodoxy, then this statement will certainly appear frightening to those who have become accustomed to de-emphasizing the efficacy of the sacraments. ((Steve Wilkins offers some of these quotes here)) But yet these quotes can be multiplied.

If we are Reformed, then we need to come to terms with the high view of the sacraments that are prevalent in the historical Reformed faith. To act as if the early reformers imbibed some form of middle-of-the-road covenantalism is dishonest to history, and particularly to our Reformed forefathers.

  1. We could discuss paedocommunion here, but my point is a more general one  (back)
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John Frame and the Definition of Theology

One of my most cherished moments in seminary was to be exposed to John Frame’s definition of theology. For Frame, theology was defined as “the application of the Word of God by persons to all areas of life.” a This definition is helpful because “Theology is thus freed from any false intellectualism or academicism. It is able to use scientific methods and academic knowledge where they are helpful, but it can also speak in nonacademic ways, as Scripture itself does – exhorting, questioning, telling parables, fashioning allegories and poems and proverbs and songs, expressing love, joy, patience . . . the list is without limit.”

I have since used this definition again and again and have learned to appreciate it even more as a pastor. Contrary to pietism, the Spirit does not implant in us an application, rather theology is applicable and needs to be made applicable by pastors and parishioners. It is also freeing to consider this definition in light of the theological illiteracy in our day. Certainly we wish to see the church grow in biblical knowledge, but this definition means that a pastor can instruct even the newest convert in the way he ought to live.

Frame’s definition accentuates the pastoral task in that it calls pastors to ask consistently How Now Shall We Then Live? In this sense, as Frame has argued elsewhere, unless theology is practically applied it has not become true theology. On the other hand, the one doing theology must first understand it before applying it. We have seen our share of faulty applications in the realm of the home and the church. Therefore, to properly grasp this definition one needs to be familiar with theology. David’s battle with Goliath was more than a remarkable example for how we can overcome difficulties in our lives, but also how God can use the weak to defeat the strong, and how a nation needs to put their trust in God, rather than chariots. There are individual and corporate obligations involved in that simple narrative.

Theology prepares us to ascend with our Lord, and in that reign we can learn to apply this rulership in all areas of life.

Another dimension to this conversation is that in applying our theology we become ambassadors for our theology. When our lives are poorly lived out we do shame to our theology. When sins are left un-confessed we are asserting that our theology does not have an answer for sin, or that it is flexible toward certain sins.  Theology needs to be lived out consistently, and when it is not, we need to confess that is has not been consistent.

Theology is life and life is theological.

  1. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 81.  (back)
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Eucharistic Meditation on Chaos and Order

We live in a day of chaos. Paul never intended for the Christian to live in this way. For Paul, thanksgiving was central to the Christian expectation. Thanksgiving arranged the world in an orderly fashion. The good life was a life of gratitude. And such opportunity for thanksgiving is given to us in this meal. As Irenaeus once wrote: “where the Church is, there is the Holy Spirit and the fullness of grace.” a In this gathering, we taste of the fullness of grace as we commune with one another and give thanks to the God from whom all blessings flow.

  1. Quoted in The Eucharist by Alexader Schmemann, 10.  (back)
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