“Come let us reason together,” Isaiah says. An exhortation to logical deduction with the help of syllogism?
Certainly, logic and syllogisms are involved, but the verb “reason” (yakach) is commonly translated as “argue” (Job 13:15) or “dispute” (Job 13:3; 22:4) or “judge” (Isaiah 11:3) or “reprove” (Job 6:25)) even “punish” (Job 5:17). Reasoning for Isaiah is reasoning together; it is a personal, social activity, not synapses firing in an individual’s isolated brain.
Calvin the Arian?
Leithart writes:
Clarke’s account of the Reformed tradition is hardly fair; as Richard Muller has shown (Christ and the Decree), the Reformed tradition has always affirmed that election is “in Christ.” Yet, Clarke may be right to wonder if, when the doctrine gets translated into preaching and popular teaching, that in Christ gets communicated just as strongly as the sovereignty of God’s will. Popular Reformed theology could certainly take a cue from Athanasius, who declares that Christ the eternal Son is the “living will” of the Father, and as such His Advent is the advent of the decree, God’s choice, in human flesh.
Infant Faith
In my sermon this past week I argued that John’s leaping in the womb (Luke 1) is a sure sign that God does not need a certain IQ before He can grant faith. He works even in the unborn (brethos). This also proves that God recognizes those in utero as persons. So yes, baptized infants do have faith; a faith given from above. Leithart observes in his book Baptized Body that infants learn to respond to their mother’s voice even before birth. They are able to quickly distinguish between strangers and members of the family. Leithart asks: “If infants trust and distrust human persons, why can’t they trust in God?” Behind certain assumptions about infant faith is the idea that infants must express their faith through certain theological truths, implying that only those of a certain age of maturity can do this, but the Scriptures never require that all faith is expressed in the same manner. The faith of a down syndrome child is differently expressed than the faith of a healthy adult. Leithart also adds that another assumption is that God is less available to an infant than to other humans. But God’s work of grace is not dependent on intellect or certain verbal abilities. Covenant infants mature in their faith just as new adult converts mature in their new faith.
Postmillennialism and the Long View
Leithart writes:
The church will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever transcend the cross. Whatever we say about “latter day glory,” we can’t forget that we follow a crucified and risen Savior to the end.
Peter Leithart and Wendell Berry
Leithart concludes:
Berry is right that the Bible contains no “contempt or hatred for nature,” and he is right that the Bible instructs us to care for a world that is a gift. Contact with untouched creation is a good as well, but in the biblical story it is not the ultimate good. There are trees and rivers – clean ones – in the new heavens and new earth, but there are also gates of pearl and streets of gold. It is, after all, a city. As our life is in the Last Adam not the first, so our hopes are directed toward the descent of a new Jerusalem not toward a return to old Eden.
Religion and Society
Some in the Reformed world insist in divorcing religion from society. This view of the world minimizes the importance of baptism in the life of the Church. Baptism not only marks entrance into the Body, but it is also a political declaration. It says that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our God. Accepting membership in the Church means accepting God’s claims for the world and how we are called to live in the world. As Leithart observes: “Christians who baptize babies implictly confess that religion and society are inseparable.”
New Identity
Baptism gives us a new identity. Leithart observes that “a non-priest becomes a priest through the rite of ordination, a single man becomes a husband through the wedding ceremony, a public citizen gains public authority by inauguration,” so too the rite of baptism makes an individual a new person. Having received a new name and a new identity, he is called to a new future.
Inner vs. Outer Man
The point, as Leithart observes, is not that there is no distinction between “inner and outer.” The idea is that there is no “impermeable membrane between my inner life and outer life.” What happens within us come to outer expression and what happens on the outside “affects my inner man.” Leithart concludes: “These are two dimensions of one united human life.”
Liturgical Protestantism
Leithart concludes:
I have a dream: My dream is that Confessional Protestants, having devoted themselves to their rites and hymnals, having assembled for Eucharist and common prayer, having studied to be irrelevant, will find that their trumpets have brought down the walls of a city, and, standing stupefied before the rubble of Jericho, they will stare at the evangelical hoards that surround them, and ask, What next?
Repenting of our Questions
Leithart is one of those who dares reconsider in light of Scriptures the traditional Westminsterian understanding of baptism and its efficacy. For Leithart, there is much work to be done, especially when it comes to the questions we ask concerning baptism. He writes that “before we can progress in providing answers to our questions on baptism, we have to repent of our questions.”
Where do these bad questions come from? Leithart concludes that it is “largely a product of modern individualism.”