Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Something to Use, Something to Risk

Douglas Wilson

October 27, 2014

Blog and Mablog

I have written critically in the past about James Davison Hunter’s approach to not really changing the world. In the last analysis, his tag phrase “faithful presence” ought to be a means to victory, not a goal in itself. If we make it a goal, it is as though the coach settles for getting his team to just show up for the games, and the end result of that approach is what theologians used to call a “losing season.”

But my purpose here is not to dig through those old bones. One of the points that Hunter made very well, and which I appreciated very much, concerned the role of elite institutions in accomplishing whatever transformation might occur. Quite properly he leans against the idea that reformation is necessarily a grass roots “proletariat” sort of thing.

I actually think that the necessity of this kind of grass roots reformation is a bit of propaganda from the other team that we have bought into, and which has been greatly debilitating. In Rodney Stark’s book, The Rise of Christianity, he has a powerful chapter that demonstrates the explosive growth of Christianity was actually centered in the middle and upper classes of Roman society. The idea that Christianity grew so rapidly because it appealed to the downtrodden, the disenfranchised, the outcasts, and so on, was an idea that was floated early on by Friedrich Engels, and yes, that one, the Communist Manifesto guy.

The problem is that the data just doesn’t back that idea up. Christianity was an urban movement, and it was dominated by the educated and literate. Paganus was a word that referred to country bumpkins, and became associated with attachment to the old ways — hence, pagan. The preaching of the gospel attracted not a few prominent women (Acts 17:4). Members of Caesar’s household believed (Phil 4:22). Erastus, an important city official at Corinth, was a believer (Rom. 16:23). Lydia and Philemon were good examples of wealthy householders who were attracted to the gospel. One of the leaders of the church in Antioch had graduated from Eton with Herod (Acts 13:1). Stark shows how 1 Cor. 1:26-28 has been over-interpreted, and besides, Paul there says “not many,” not “not any.”

The same kind of phenomenon occurred in the Reformation. As C.S. Lewis put it, “The fierce young don, the learned lady, the courtier with intellectual leanings, were likely to be Calvinists” (Eng. Lit. in the Sixteenth Century, p. 43).

But this brings us to the rub. Why does the idea that only the dispossessed would risk everything for Christ seem so compelling to us? Well, we think it is easy for them because they have nothing to lose. But while it is true they have no influence to lose, they also have none to use.

This is why, for well-placed Christians, there is resistance to overcome. We know for a fact that the world is sticky, like pine sap, and we do get attached to it. When we are attached to something valuable, we could use it, but only by risking it. Thus the well-connected are in a position actually to do something, but they are also a group of people who really do have something to lose. But once that resistance is overcome, and many of the well-connected believers start to push their chips to the middle of the table, reformation begins.

This is another way of saying that the work of reformation requires leadership, but there is no such thing as Christian leadership without sacrifice and risk.

What a Lovely World

When Evil Unmasks

One of the most strange, yet wonderful works of God occurs when He brings a culture to epistemological self-consciousness.  Cultures and civilisations develop to the stage where evil is unmasked and their latent demonic inspiration becomes overtly displayed.

Christians, through their knowledge of the Scriptures and the Christian faith, often see these things well in advance.  They know there is a logic in Unbelief.  They know that all Unbelieving cultures have a lust for power.  They know that tyranny lurks just below the surface of all Unbelieving political and social systems.

For a time, a culture can coast along on gratuitous assumptions about being grounded in “common sense” or the “wisdom of the Founding Fathers” or “right reason”.  Concepts like justice, rights, morality, the rule of law, and freedom are believed to be self-evident, forever beyond dispute, except to fools and horses.  “Common law” or the “Anglo-Saxon legal tradition” or “Western civilisation” seem like unassailable bulwarks against the void.  Yet these remain nothing more than empty notions without foundation or any grounding in ultimate principles.  Cultures not grounded in the law of God, the Creator of all things, are built upon shifting sand.  When peoples appeal to cultural or historical traditions for what they regard as self-evident it is a sure sign they are not epistemologically self-conscious.  They are sleep-walking.

One of the clearest portents of growing epistemological self-awareness occurs when blatant evil begins to be trumpeted as good.
  When the ancient Jewish people executed the Son of God for the good of the nation, it was clear it was all over.  When Rome celebrated the glories of wild beasts tearing people apart in the arenas as a wondrous entertainment and a signal demonstration of the power and glory of the Imperium, it was clear the end was nigh.  Ordinary Romans became disgusted at themselves and their culture and what it had become.  Evil had shown its hand.  Satan was unmasking himself. At such times, more and more Unbelievers become epistemologically self-conscious and they find their own beliefs disgusting.  They finally comprehend where their Unbelief has led. 

We seem to be entering this stage in the West.  Here is an example of what we speaking about: the UN has been ramping up their promotion of abortion.  To do this, it has commenced arguing that those who oppose abortion are actually torturing children, abusing children, and so forth.  It is calling evil, good and good, evil.

According to some United Nations experts, opposing abortion would be a kind of torture, it would also be a violation of children’s rights. . . . Those accusations against the moral opposition to abortion is the last move of a long term strategy to impose on States, through International law and agencies, a “human right to abortion”, and making opposition to abortion a crime. The abortion lobbies are currently very active as they want access to abortion to be included in the “post-2015 development agenda”, under the pretext of improving maternal health worldwide. This post-2015 agenda, under negotiation at the UN, will determine the priority development goals for decades to come. It will be supported by billions of dollars, and governments will have to implement it. Therefore, the issue at stake is huge. [Emphasis, ours]

. . . . The ultimate goal of the abortion strategy is to win on the field of values: making pro-life immoral and pro-abortion moral, and to silence pro-life advocacy. This would be a complete inversion of values: indeed, in reality, abortion is torture and causes maternal mortality. Abortion, whether legal or not, not only kills a human being but also carries serious physical and psychological health risks and contributes to maternal mortality.

To recap: the one who kills the unborn child is a righteous man.  The critic of such acts is cast as the murderer, the criminal, the immoral degenerate. 

The more evil casts itself as morally good, the more it is unmasked.  Ordinary, epistemologically un-self-conscious  people become deeply disturbed, finding such monstrosities repellent.  The more evil unmasks, the more “ordinary” people long to return to their Creator, and seek for the Father of Lights, the Giver of every perfect and good gift. 

When Satan unmasks himself it is not a pretty sight.  Reformations and revivals begin at such times. 

Ex Post Conclusions

Would You Know a Revival If You Saw One?

Justin Taylor
August 02, 2013

The venerable theologian, teacher, and author J. I. Packer, expressed some thoughts on the matter:

Would we recognize a reviving of religion if we were part of one?

I ask myself that question. For more than half a century the need of such reviving in the places where I have lived, worshiped, and worked has weighed me down.

I have read of past revivals. I have learned, through a latter-day revival convert from Wales, that there is a tinc in the air, a kind of moral and spiritual electricity, when God’s close presence is enforcing his Word.

I have sat under the electrifying ministry of the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who as it were brought God into the pulpit with him and let him loose on the listeners. Lloyd-Jones’s ministry blessed many, but he never believed he was seeing the revival he sought.

I have witnessed remarkable evangelical advances, not only academic but also pastoral, with churches growing spectacularly through the gospel on both sides of the Atlantic and believers maturing in the life of repentance as well as in the life of joy.

Have I seen revival? I think not—but would I know? From a distance, the difference between the ordinary and extraordinary working of God’s Spirit looks like black and white, a difference of kind; to Edwards, however, at close range, it appeared a matter of degree, as his Narrative and his Brainerd volume (to look no further) make clear.

Some evangelicals need to be asked, Are you not expecting too little from God in the way of moral transformation?

But others need to be asked, Are you not expecting too much from God in the way of situational drama?

Do we always know when we are in a revival situation?

—J. I. Packer, “The Glory of God and the Reviving of Religion: A Study in the Mind of Jonathan Edwards,” in A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004), 107-108.

Some scholars have argued that in most cases, revivals can usually only be identified ex post–after the event.  The outward, tangible fruits of widespread conversions become evident over time, as those Christians grow spiritually and mature.  Observers then tend to look and conclude, “What a remarkable work of grace God was doing ‘back then'” referring to the conversion of large numbers of people. 

Here is a good rule of thumb: if the media are claiming the occurrence of a revival or an awakening, it is almost certain to be untrue. 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Just Like Tomorrow Morning Is

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

 Douglas Wilson

With the Supreme Court doing its part today to advance the homosexual agenda, while trying not to provoke a major backlash, as happened with Roe v. Wade, I thought a little encouragement for the saints might be in order.

All this reminds us again that there is no political solution to what ails us. We are a nation with the staggers, and our prophets and judges all have paper bags over their heads. There is such a thing as political and legislative faithfulness, but there is no such thing as political and legislative salvation. God brings us to the end of our puny little abilities so that we may trust, not in ourselves, but in Him, the God who raises the dead.
So we remind one another — as we ought to — that there is no political solution. There will be political consequences when the solution arrives, but there is no political solution. This is true as far as it goes, but there might be an assumption buried in there that is not so true.

As the old joke has it: “Well, I guess we have to pray about it.” “Oh, has it come to that?”

Realizing that there is no political solution, and that only Jesus can save us from this, is quite true . . . but might be just a couple steps away from unbelief. It is like being in the bottom of the ninth, with two outs, and your weakest batter has two strikes on him and no balls, and he hurt both his wrists getting the bag of sunflower seeds open. Only God can pull this out now is often an introduction to the thought and He’s not going to.

But that is not where we are at all. The salvation that Jesus is bringing to us is not a possible salvation, or a probable one, or a likely salvation. It is an inexorable and necessary salvation. Reformation, revival, salvation, forgiveness, and a spirit of deep repentance is coming at America just like tomorrow morning is.
Because our only salvation is found in resurrection from the dead, and because resurrection from the dead is an inexorable fact of life now — ever since Jesus rose on the third day, He set resurrection power completely loose in the world — the deliverance we long for is a certainty.

In other words, it is not “there is no salvation except in the off chance . . .” Rather, it is “there is no salvation in any other name except the one that has been given to you forever.” That one name is the name of Jesus. Luther doesn’t say, but I suspect that name is the one little word in his hymn that fells the pandemonic captain, and it is the name that remains, no thanks to the jurisprudential scurrying of the black-robed strokers of chins.

If our way out were political, we can be (and have been) thwarted, out-spent, out-maneuvered, lied to, and betrayed. But if our way out is Jesus, not only do we have a sure and certain hope, but our adversaries have no hope at all.

And so what do we have to do? We simply have to stand still and watch (Ex. 14:13).

Chrestomathy

Capturing the Imagination

So the arrival of mere Christendom will therefore be convulsive — but it won’t be a legal revolution. It will be a great reformation and revival — it will happen the same way the early Christians conquered Rome. Their program of conquest consisted largely of two elements — gospel preaching and being eaten by lions — a strategy that has not yet captured the imagination of the the contemporary church.
Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

A Black Swan Revival 

Culture and Politics – Creative Control of the Reformation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 27 December 2012

Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the phrase black swan in the title of his fine book The Black Swan. A black swan event is a surprise, it has a major impact, and there will be those (after the fact) who claimed they saw it coming. But in actuality, virtually no one saw it coming because these things are extremely difficult to predict. But after they happen, they seem so obviously inevitable. Take a daily feature of everyone’s life now — the development of the Internet. There it is, a black swan.

In fact, any historical event, once it occurs, however unlikely, can be shown to be inevitable by any competent historian. But reading the clues before it all happens is a different matter.

Christians understand the resurrection of Jesus was the black swan of all history
— it was a surprise to everyone, it has transformed the world, and modern Christians like to tsk at the twelve disciples for hiding in the upper room instead of being out by the Lord’s grave, looking expectantly at their watches. Jesus had told them plainly beforehand what He was going to do, and then after the fact, He showed them again — going through all the Scriptures — how these things had to happen. It is so plain to us . . . now that it has happened.

But the resurrection was not a one-off event — it was more like a theme. And so, as Chesterton observed once, Christianity has died often, but it has not even slowed us down. This is because we serve a God who knows the way out of the grave.

But however many times it happens, the result is always the same — total surprise, a major impact, and then a short period of time where we all adjust, learning to take it all for granted. As any apt student of church history should be able to tell you, reformations and revivals are quintessential black swan events.

“But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9):

When it comes to revivals, the reason why it comes as such a surprise to us is simple. God — in order to keep the glory where it needs to be kept — makes sure that we are in such a bad way, in such a condition of death and hopelessness, that nobody expects a resurrection. Resurrections are a key ingredient in what might be called one of God’s favorite events — the surprise party.

In fact, this element of surprise is so key, I would be inclined to argue that if someone genuinely (and accurately) expects it to happen, this should be taken as evidence that it is already starting to happen. He may not see the valley flooded, but he does see cracks in the dam, and an abnormal amount of water coming through. Some people call it five minutes beforehand, just not five years.

Why does God let things get into a horrible condition before He rises up and acts? The text above tells us why He did that to the apostle Paul. It was so that they would not trust in themselves. Now if there is any group of Christians who need to be taught not to trust in themselves, but in God who raises the dead, that group would be American evangelicals. For us, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” is a Christian school slogan for our track teams’ t-shirts. Paul was talking there (Phil. 4:13) about this profound death and resurrection cycle in his life, while we tend to think it is about jumping higher, running faster, hanging with cute girls afterwards, and all with whiter teeth.

There are of course a number of situations where a “can do” spirit is admirable, but we don’t really need to be reminded of those occasions. There are other places — like the boneyard — where such a mentality is plainly demented. We need our preachers to stop telling the skeletons to develp a positive mental attitude.
So is this why our country is coming apart in our hands? Is this why popular entertainment is so corrupt? Is this why our justices despise the gift of life? Is this why our laws cannot make out the reason God gave us boys and girls? Is this why Congress does not understand the concept of red ink? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.

Is this why our fathers devise various means to run out on their families? Is this why wives are terminally disrespectful to them, doing what they can to chase them out early? Is this why our children are so sullen and unhappy? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.

Is this why our seminaries do their level best to train sexless capons for future ministry? Is this why pulpits are treated as bunkers to hide in, instead of cockpits to fight from? Is this why we call theologians conservative if they condescend to believe most of the Bible? Yes — so that we would stop trusting in ourselves.
All hope is lost? Good. That means the conditions for a black swan revival are improving by the day. The stone cold deader we get, the more God is hastening the day. Nothing is dying but what needs to die. Let it go, and let the black swan surprise you.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

Silver on Top, and Black on the Bottom 

Theology – Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, 27 May 2012

It is bad when a blogger gets in over his head, or when a theologian does, or when a pamphlateer does, or when a connector-of-the-dots does. But, with all necessary qualifications made, it not bad when a preacher does. It is a preacher’s calling to get in over his head (2 Cor. 2:16). But he needs to be careful to do it the right way — there is a way to be in over your head in the pulpit which is just ordinary confusion, and there is a way that is the work of the Spirit of God.

I wrote earlier about the reunion of Christendom, and how it was going to be glorious. But precisely because it is going to be glorious, it will not the result of careful negotiations hammered out by the canon lawyers. As Lloyd-Jones once memorably put it, getting all the ecclesiastical corpses into one graveyard will not bring about a resurrection.

As a pamphleteer, as a blogger, I do find it necessary to argue for the absolute necessity of the new birth, as I am doing here. But for a preacher, much more than this is involved. The preacher declares words calculated to raise the dead, which is quite different than flattering the living. When the Spirit is pleased to move, He will do so. But the Spirit, when He moves, will not be like a little zephyr, stirring the gauzy curtains of our theological library. It will be more like a massive thunderhead, silver on the top and utterly black on the bottom, coming in from the west, and looking to soak absolutely everybody.

I am an evangelical, the son of evangelicals, and so I do insist on the absolute necessity of the new birth. That’s our wineskin. There is nothing wrong with wineskins, because wine always has to go into something. But there is something wrong with empty wineskins, and there is something wrong with the idea that trafficking in the idea of wine is the same thing as wine, which it isn’t.

The glories that are coming will be the result of what we are talking about, and not the result of our talking about it. Elegant formulations are necessary in their way, but they are also as dead as an idiom about doornails. Reformation and revival consists of the reality of the Spirit moving, and we cannot whistle Him up — we can’t do it with sacraments, we can’t do it with church music, and we can’t do by rolling up our shirt sleeves in order to preach a hot gospel. Here, hold your mouth this way, and maybe that will make the Spirit fall.

But the Spirit will fall. The thunderhead will roll in. And when it happens, the work of regeneration will be a gully washer and lots of ecclesiastics will be pretty upset. But many more of them will be soaked through, and it will become increasingly harder to preach little floating dust cloud sermons.

And it will not be preaching that ushers this in, but rather the folly of preaching. But mark it well — the Spirit never moves in such a way as to leave things right where He found them. The detritus of religiosity — whether prohibited by Scripture or required by it — will be either washed away or washed clean. I speak of icons, candles, sermon manuscripts, choral anthems, lectionaries, processionals, and white eucharistic table cloths. If you want it all to be washed clean, and not washed away, then fasten it to the plain teaching of Scriptures with the nails of evangelical faith, and use as many as you have.

When God pleases, and He showers us with kindness, we will be given the wisdom found in the old song, God Don’t Never Change . . .

God in the pulpit,
God way back at the door,
God in the amen corner,
God all over the floor.

Living Under the Curse

Ineffectual Laws

In New Zealand the occurrence of adults seeing, yet ignoring, the abuse of children is not uncommon.  There are many, many children living in “blended families”–a pathetic euphemism for broken dysfunctional casual associations of adults where children are an unwanted, unwelcome, unloved appendage.   But children are inevitably demanding: they are dependent, they need help, and they are also sinful themselves.  The resulting dysfunctional household cocktail is to inflict terrible abuse, even torture, upon little ones. 

It is often the case that when children are beaten, even to the point of infanticide, the adults co-habiting or associating with the children become tight-lipped. They swear Faustian covenants with each other to hang tight, and not say a word.  Police investigations are stonewalled.  The abusers and murderers are thus not brought to justice.
 

Now the government has made it an offence not to report child abuse when adults see signs of it.  This amendment to the Crimes Act came about as a kneejerk response to the “tight five” Kahui extended family that refused to co-operate with police investigating the deaths of Chris and Cru Kahui.  The NZ Herald summarizes the Act:

From today, it will be an offence for anyone over the age of 18 to fail to report child abuse they are aware of occurring in the household they live in, or in a family they are closely connected to. The law also applies to hospital staff who know a child is being mistreated.  Those who do not report child abuse they are aware of could face up to 10 years in prison.

We understand the intent of the Act.  We also grant that it is fundamentally just, insofar as to see a crime being committed, and do nothing is to consent to it, and become complicit with the act to one degree or another.  One of the characteristics of being wicked, according to the Living God, is to “see” a thief and be pleased with him.  Another is to “keep company” with adulterers. (Psalm 50: 18)  To associate with wickedness and wicked people is to be indicted by God as being wicked oneself.  It implies support and consent to evil. 

The new Act has been criticised because it will be ineffectual: the critics are probably right.  It will cause people living in dysfunctional, lose confederations of adults to be more secretive, more unco-operative, more underground.   The law cannot redeem people.  It cannot change them into new people.  Condemning them further, it will drive them into outer darkness. 

Should the law, then, not have been passed?  No.  It is a just and righteous piece of legislation.  But it will not stop child abuse.  Nor will it make it any easier to detect.  It may give leverage to police when investigating other “tight fives”.  They will be able to argue that it would be better for the associate to “confess” now to seeing and witnessing child abuse, lest they be subsequently charged.  But as Lorraine Smith has argued, this may have little effect:

“Some people who do see or suspect abuse, these people do report it,” she said. “The very people to whom [the legislation] is directed are often too damaged to have the capacity to report the abuse, because they know there are consequences if they do report it, and they know that the police won’t be able to protect them. This is the atmosphere that the abuse of children and vulnerable people happen.”  Ms Smith said those within the household where abuse occurs are often victims of the circumstances themselves.

“How is it going to help? How is it going to encourage people who are in a situation where they are living in a dysfunctional household and who themselves are often fractured and damaged and paralysed with fear about the consequences of reporting abuse?”

The brutal reality is that there is no silver bullet or magic key to “solving” the huge social and moral problems found in the underclass, which has now become multi-generational and is self-perpetuating.  All society can now do is mitigate the problems as best it can. 

The recent law change is nothing more than a mitigation–likely slight at best, comprehensively ineffectual at worst.  But it is a just law, nonetheless. 

The only effectual solution–our only hope–is the transforming Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It has occurred in our past: a sovereign transformation of an underclass through the irresistible power of the Gospel preached to the poor.  It characteristically pleases our Lord to look with favour on those Unbelief despises.  Even so, Maranatha: come quickly, Lord.  

Light Shining Amongst the Gentiles

Globalization of the Faith

The West is falling under the curses of the Covenant due to its rebellion against the Living God.  Once it feared and reverenced the God of the heavens and the earth, and His Only Begotten Son.  Now it murders millions of its children in a Molech-like sacrifice to the Rights of Man.  But, as is indicated in the Scriptures, when those who were the people of God come to consider themselves unworthy of eternal life, God turns to the Gentiles.

Thus, in our time the Gospel is being heard and welcomed amongst those who have grown up in lands which have not heard of Christ.  One sign of this is how churches in the West are now increasingly filled with non-Caucasians.  This from Timothy Tennent:

The Quiet Revival

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Christianity Today reported a few years ago that eighty-five percent of the members of Yale University’s Campus Crusade for Christ chapter are Asian, whereas “the university’s Buddhist meditation meetings are almost exclusively attended by whites.”¹  There is an important lesson in this. It is often stated that Christianity in the Western world is in decline. It is true that, on average, every day there are approximately 7,000 fewer Christians in the West. Statistically, it has been as high as 11,000 fewer per day. However, this is only part of the story. While we are witnessing the dramatic decline in Christianity among Caucasians, the Western world is, at the same time, witnessing the dramatic growth of newly emerging ethnic congregations. The Chinese, Hispanic, African and Korean congregations, in particular, are experiencing unprecedented growth.

This weekend, for example, I had the privilege of speaking at the Rutgers Christian Community Church. It was planted only thirty years ago by a handful of Chinese students from Rutgers University. Today, it is a thriving Christian community with several thousand members. They have English, Mandarin, and Cantonese congregations and are in the middle of a major building program to build a new sanctuary.

Prior to my coming to Asbury I lived in the Boston area. Boston is the home of a major spiritual awakening. More people have come to Christ in Boston in the last three decades than during the Great Awakening, but it has largely gone unnoticed, because it is occurring primarily among African, Chinese, Korean, and Hispanic peoples. There are over 50 different African congregations in Boston and, indeed, on any given Sunday in Cambridge, Massachusetts, more people worship Christ in a language other than English than in English. It has been called the “quiet revival.”

I am convinced that the greatest source of renewal in the North American church will be found in these emerging ethnic churches. Pastors across this country should begin planting ethnic congregations in their facilities and nurturing their growth. Boston already has more shared-facility churches than any other city in the country. May this trend continue.

Last night I worshiped in a sanctuary packed with Chinese Christians. The congregation sang, in Mandarin, Chris Tomlin’s excellent hymn, We Fall Down.  I don’t know if Chris Tomlin realized when he wrote this hymn, among others that he has written, that he is playing a significant role in stimulating the global Christian community. Indeed, when we fall down and worship Christ today and look to our left and to our right, we will increasingly be worshiping with Christians from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The globalization of the Christian faith is no longer a theoretical point we affirm, rather it will be, increasingly, the living experience of Christians in the West. So, whenever I am prone to discouragement about the state of Christianity in the West, I think about Rutgers Community Christian Church, and a thousand like it. They are the living demonstration that Christ is building his Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!

“Go Figure,” Christianity Today 47, no. 7 (June 2003): 13.

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

He Will Come

Liturgy and Worship – Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, July 18, 2011

Because we present arguments in the presentation of the gospel, we sometimes come to think that the outcome of matter rests upon those arguments. But God uses arguments — He doesn’t depend upon them. He doesn’t lean on them.

The reason people resist and reject the gospel is because of wilfulness, not because we have not yet assembled the perfect, knock-down argument. I am not arguing against arguments here — Paul reasoned in the synagogues, and so should we. But it is the same with all the external things we may do — pray, preach, send, ordain, plant, or reason. Unless God anoints it, you are praying to the ceiling, preaching to the air, sending a schlub, ordaining his brother, planting a religious club, and reasoning with a two-year-old. You are sweeping water uphill.

You are, in short, entirely dependent upon the Holy Spirit, who is a sovereign wind who blows where He pleases. And this means that when the reformation arrives, it will not be because we whistled Him up. That’s the first thing to be settled in our minds. The second thing is that He will come. He promised.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Not the Clerk of Session 

Theology – Ecclesiology
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, November 04, 2010 1:31 pm

I am currently teaching an elective on Jonathan Edwards at New St. Andrews, and something we recently covered made me realize the ways in which historic evangelicals need to speak and be heard, and need at the same time to listen carefully.

The Reformation was a revival of true gospel preaching, and such gospel preaching always comes down to the point of decision. Good preaching is aimed at the will; all good preaching aims at conversion. If the people are not converted, they need to be. If they are, then a message aiming at true conversion will encourage them, not beat them up. As Luther put it, we are called to a lifetime of repentance.

Good preaching reminds every Christian soul that we live before the God who sees and knows the heart, and who will sift those hearts in the great day of judgment. The problem arises when the need for true conversion is moved from the declaration of the gospel to the membership interview. The former declares the truth with the understanding that only God can see the heart. The latter, in the name of God seeing the heart, pretends that the minister and elders can see the heart.

If it is true that not every member of the visible church will be in glory, and it is true, then there must be a demarcation between those covenant members who are going to Heaven and those who are not. That demarcation is called heart conversion, or regeneration. All genuinely Reformed believers acknowledge the reality of this. The practical, pastoral issue concerns whether that true heart conversion is measurable by human beings. Can we detect it in a certain enough way to be confident that we are letting only the regenerate come to the Table (or, in baptistic churches, to baptism), and are successfully keeping the “not known to be regenerate” away from the Table? 

These questions go back to the Halfway Covenant, in the years before the time of Edwards. Now in the popular understanding, the Halfway Covenant was a downgrade of spiritual standards. In reality, it was an attempted upgrade, an upgrade that failed, one that backfired. This is how.

In Calvinist churches on the Continent, membership was based on 1. a profession of faith in Christ and 2. an outwardly obedient life. For the first, you told everyone you believed in Jesus. For the second, you didn’t spend all your time in saloons and shooting out street lights. Here is John Calvin: “we recognize as members of the church those who, by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us” (Institutes, Vol. 2, pp. 1022-23).

But by about 1636, some American churches had begun requiring some more than this (not something less). They wanted a testimony from each prospective member, a testimony relating their personal experience of salvation. The same would go for someone wanting to be a “full” member, in the sense of coming to the Table. Without that personal testimony, they were denied. But they had been baptized. And so what happened when they grew up (which happens more quickly than you might think) and married, and wanted their children to be baptized? What do you do? You have a baptized man and woman, professing faith in Jesus and in the truth of the Christian religion, who are living sober and decent lives, and who could join any Calvinistic church in Europe. They want to have their child baptized. What do you do? The Halfway Covenant said okay, all right already.

Church members who were admitted in minority, understanding the Doctrine of Faith, and publickly professing their assent thereto; not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the Covenant before the Church, where they give up themselves and their children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the Government of Christ in the Church, their Children are to be baptized (Halfway Covenant, 1662).

The minister before Edwards was his maternal grandfather, Rev. Stoddard. Now Stoddard was in some respects a proto-liberal. Don’t make too much of that, but it should be noted. He was right about some things. He said, for example, “No man can look into the heart of another, and see the workings of a gracious spirit.” He leaned against the Halfway Covenant, adopting open communion in 1677. He believed that communion was a converting ordinance, and he was opposed to the idea of church covenants as being judicial in nature. He was therefore against church discipline generally. There he was wrong, and Edwards was right.

Edwards was right that church membership brought with it certain judicial responsibilities, and he was very cautious in how he tried to bring the Northampton church back to a tighter line. But he was at heart a revivalist, which meant that the tighter line was still drawn in the wrong place, at the point of membership interview.

A distinction should therefore be kept sharp between the preaching of the Word, and the shepherding of souls. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, but this does not mean that a minister can see hearts. When it comes to the division of soul and spirit, the Scriptures are sharper than a sword. But at the same point, fallible ministers can be as sharp as a pound of wet liver. But the fact that he cannot see this or that heart exhaustively should not prevent him from preaching the Word searchingly.

We lean the opposite direction, to protect ourselves against the errors of that other guy, who is leaning the other way. Some men see tyrannical pronouncements over the hearts of others in membership interviews, and so they refuse to declare the authoritative word of God from the pulpit — unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Other men know that they should declare this searching word from the pulpit, and they therefore assume to themselves the same prerogatives in the pastor’s study. Oh, the vanity of man! When Scripture says that “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” the “him” there does not refer to the clerk of session.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>That Old Conveyor Belt of Time 

Liturgy and Worship – Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, August 28, 2010

In our prayers for reformation and revival over the years, we have asked God to move in remarkable ways, and He has been pleased to grant many aspects of our requests. But as God has done wonderful things in our midst, He has been pleased to do it over time, over the course of years. And again, we are enormously grateful.

But if we study previous periods of revival and subsequent declension, we can see a feature at work there that we must also take account of. A good example of this would be the periods of revival during Jonathan Edwards’ ministry there. The problem is the problem of time, generations, and young people. God does a remarkable thing, and those who experience it know the significance of what God has done. But that old conveyor belt of time is constantly moving, and cannot be slowed down for anything, and the young people growing up in the aftermath of this work are easily disposed to take it all for granted, or to ignore what has happened, or to assume that they can just coast on the strength of what has happened, and get really serious about Jesus later on.

And so this exhortation is directed at the young people in our midst, those in high school and college. Do not mistake how God reckons these things. The place which you occupy means that more is expected of you, not less. The place you occupy means that double the labor will get the same results, and so contributing just half the labor means the results will be a spiritual disaster. The place you occupy means that you all need to learn a lot more about how we got here than you currently know.