Month: November 2023

people gathered in front of toronto freestanding signage

Nations are not Eschatological

On November 21, 2023

While I first read the idea that in the New Heavens and New Earth we will enjoy a sort of fullness of our nationality with interest, I now find the idea somewhat silly. The idea goes something like this. I find deep meaning in my citizenship in the USA or in Canada, and the scriptures suggest that such a loyalty and affection for my land is a good thing. In the new heavens and the new earth, God will not destroy good things such as our bodies, our relationships, or the things our bodies enjoy such as food, drink, art, music, or study. It would make sense then, that we would enjoy a perfect form of the nations we are part of. We will retain our national identities, perhaps even enjoy a perfect form of the land we currently live in, while at the same time, praise God as citizens in the Empire of Christ.

I argue that such a view fails to understand the fundamental purposes of nations in the economy of God. Nations are good. It is good to be patriotic, to love one’s own nation and one’s own people, but this is a temporary good. We are moving toward a greater good. And to do so we must be transformed. I used to be a citizen of Toronto and that will always be a part of me. Following that I went to Niverville and sought to participate in the civic life there. I am now in Fort St. John and I seek the good of that city because it is my own. I do not completely leave behind my identity, but I am transformed through it to something better. I believe that that is what it means to be a member of Christ’s kingdom.

I don’t lose my identity as a Canadian as I enter the new heavens and new earth. I retain the goodness of that background, but I move beyond that identity to something bigger and fuller, which existing as a Canadian cannot fill.

But I do not merely seek to prove this through probabilities. There is stronger evidence to be found in an analogy to marriage. Marriage is good. God created marriage, but it is something temporary. When I die, I am not longer a married man. Death severs earthly relationships. Paul says so in Romans 7, “For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.” Marriage, even good marriages, have an end date.

And they are not resumed in heaven. When questioned about the possibility of a woman in marriage with more than one husband in heaven, because of the death of her husband here on earth, Jesus says, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.”

Marriage, one of the most unique bonds we experience here on earth is not renewed in heaven. This doesn’t mean your marriage was for nothing within God’s economy. Rather, it was a temporary good; a good to love and rejoice in for a time. Just as childhood and youth are temporary goods, something to rejoice in for a time, until you embrace a wife, at which time you you die to what you were before and you become something else. It is the same with entering heaven, you die marriage, and in that you are transformed from the glory of marriage to something greater than marriage, something we do not experience yet.

I can sum it up this way. Just as marriage will be transformed so that it no longer can properly be called marriage, so nation will be transformed that it is no longer properly referred to as nation.

If one of the greatest bonds we enjoy here on earth is ended in our death, how can we claim that weaker bonds like that of nation remain on us. There is a real sense, in which we already do that. My family is from a Dutch background, though we keep some of the uniquenesses of that Dutch identity, our calling is to embrace and participate in our new reality, Canada. Likewise, though we may question the wisdom of Immigration policy, the fact is that the Lord has willed to bring this about, and we must seek to create new bonds and build new bodies with those who come, and so the nation changes and transforms.

This is perhaps where the belief that nations are eschatological is at its most unhelpful. Nations are not permanent. Nations die. Who speaks of the Aztec nation anymore? What about the Vandal Nation? What about the Huns? The Assyrian Nation, the Babylonian nation? Israel, the one nation we know a lot about, died twice. She first died in the 7th century B.C. where. It was God who raised her up again: A shoot shall spring from Jesse.

She died again in the first century, but she was raised, renewed in the ressurection of Jesus Christ, and she was transformed into the church. It is only the power of God that raises up his people every time they are close to death. Other nations died.

The idea that nations are somehow permanent leads us to strange places where people try to preserve some idealized version of their nation, that for one, never existed, for another, cannot exist; certainly not anymore. So, for example the first nations here in Canada, often live according to the past, remembering what they once were, seeking to revive a culture that no longer exists and likely cannot exist. Now with the rise of things like Kinism and Nationalism, white people are enabled to do that too. It’s not going to do us any better than it does the first nations.

This also breeds peculiar beliefs such as those who seek to restore the solemn league and covenant, as if that did not die when Charles the Second came to the throne, perhaps even before that. And if not then, it definitely died when the Stuart line ended with the beginning of the reign of William and Mary.

This also tends to breed peculiar beliefs about the nation of Israel as if it is still alive today, as if that nation has some special place. Sure, they have resurrected a nation called Israel, but apart from Christ their is no continuity with that past.

Christ points us toward a future of eternal life. Let us enjoy the goods of the present without seeking to make them eternal. Nations are good. I enjoy being a Canadian. I like the Canadian flag. I have one on my house. I enjoy the cultural products of Canada, ice hockey, maple syrup, and poutine. I like it that Canadians are polite. I desire the good of Canada. I want them to recognize Christ. Let us love our nations and seek their good, without seeking to crystalize our experience into a perfect moment. Nations are no more eternal than marriage is eternal. We ought to delight in the blessings of our nation, even as we delight in the blessings of our marriages. But only God’s kingdom is eternal.

Man was made to mature and to grow, let us not go back to childhood by seeking to eternalize a given nation. Let us instead seek to grow into the kingdom of God, ever-increasing in our willingness to grow in our bond with every tongue, tribe and nation, and so find our future in the family of God, rather than human families.

The Problem with Federal Theology.

By James

On November 21, 2023

In Covenant, Genesis, Reformed Theology

Covenant is used in a particular way in scripture. It is used of God’s work of establishing a relationship with fallen man. The one possible reference to a Covenant with Adam is difficult to prove. And considering the use of covenant in scripture, it is difficult to say that Adam was in covenant with God, except by analogy to other covenants. So we argue that this is an implied covenant.

How is covenant used? I would begin with an analogy. Marriage is a covenant. While a mere relationship is not a covenant. So covenant involves a formalized relationship, that is, a relationship that did not exist, but through promises set out with obligations given, something new is formed that was not their before. That is not the relationship with God and Adam, where Adam’s relationship with God is established simply in being made by God and functions more as an analogy between father and son, rather than husband and wife. Later covenants are made in order to establish a relationship with God’s people (Abraham) or are made to restore God’s relationship with his people (God restores covenant with his people after the exile).

So why we can’t we simply extend the word covenant by analogy to other relationships? The problem is that the scriptures already use covenant in a certain way. We either then empty covenant of its content and context until it just means “relationship,” especially when it comes to the next step, an inter-Trinitarian covenant. In this case, succession of covenant is flattened. Or, the scriptural definition of covenant begins to leak into other administrations. The Adamic administration becomes a covenant of works by which Adam must merit eternal life. Or, a covenant between the persons of the Trinity, where the language moves more and more toward a social trinity, even a tri-theism.

The Spirit and the Magisterium

By James

On November 9, 2023

In Church, History, Traditionalistic exegesis

These are my half-formed thoughts as I seek to understand the Spirit’s authority in the church.

When Paul’s ministry and authority is questioned, he does not rely on the voice of the church or the Magisterium. Instead he appeals to the Spirit, ” The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”

Paul does appeal to tradition and to the voice of the church and to his apostolic authority, but passage above demonstrates that one of his main appeals is to a shared Spirit that testifies to his message. This is a spirit he shares with Apollos so that both are counted as servants of Christ and are not to be pitted against one another.

Similarly in 1st Thessalonians, Paul attributes the willingness of the Thessalonians to hear him to a shared Spirit. “Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.” Later he adds, “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of god, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”

As protestants we do hold to a Magisterium, a tradition that speaks authoritatively into our lives. Many protestants deny this and act as if tradition has no authority, but this comes from fools who have no thought. If we believe in One God and one Spirit, who speaks the truth, then when this Spirit speaks through men who also have the Spirit, we also ought to listen, especially, when many who also share the Spirit respect and love these men and repeat their words through the Spirit themselves. Perhaps it is has more fuzzy lines than the Eastern Orthodox or the Roman Catholic Magisterium, though it has a clear center, that being the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. I am not convinced that it has more fuzzy lines, however, because of the number of interpretations and just the amount of doctrine that counts as tradition in those two churches.

Yet alongside this we hold to the work of the Spirit. Christ has promised to be with us by his Spirit. Christ has promised that Christ will guide us in all truth. A Magisterium without the Spirit and Word as a norming norm will eventually quench the Spirit’s work of unity. Any church that simply appeals to the authority of the church without also appealing to a shared Spirit that illuminates that word in each one of us and is the ultimate judge of each heart is obscuring that important work and is itself undermining the Magisterium of the church. They too become fools without thought.

Further, if we fail to receive those who share in the Spirit, becoming judges that go beyond what is clear in the word of God, we also undermine the work of the Spirit.

“And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.”

two people reading bible while sitting on a sofa

CREC and the Reformed Baptist

By James

On November 4, 2023

In Church, Covenant

The Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches holds the unique distinctive of allowing for paedobaptist and credobaptist churches within the denomination. A church may hold to the Three Forms of Unity or the Westminister Standards, among other reformed standards, or it may hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith. This means that the elders of that particular church may refrain from any requests to baptize a baby, whereas their fellow elders or ministers in another church would happily baptize that same baby.

The Logic of our Communion

How on earth does that work? Can it work? Some have told me that it can’t work, but there is a certain logic to how we, as members of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, work together in this way. The reasoning is in understanding what reformed Catholicity should be like and then applying that understanding to a mutual agreement to receive each other in the Lord. Throughout, we seek to respect the conscience as much as possible.

Whether it practically works in our world is a different matter. It remains to be seen whether a credobaptist church can have a long and multi-generational partnership with the CREC, for our communion remains overwhelmingly paedobaptist and paedocommunion. Yet, we are attractive to many from the Baptist world because of our faithfulness in the culture wars. Perhaps we are also attractive because we have many shared cultural values with the Baptist world, for many of our best ministers and leaders are from that world.

However, there is a certain sense to it. We desire to be as small-c catholic as possible, recognizing all our brothers and sisters in Christ who share the same Lord. We are willing to do what we can to accommodate those, even in leadership, who might differ from us. Within our communion, we allow a breadth of doctrine within the bounds of the various historic reformed confessions we recognize. A given church must hold to one of several reformed confessions to become a member of our communion, and its leadership must hold to that confession (generally membership in local churches has a much lower bar, for we wish to recognize all those who confess Christ). Technically, this is quite broad, even if it doesn’t always appear so. For example, our communion is associated with postmillennialism. Still, there is no formal expression of a millenarian position in the CREC.

Fundamentally, we seek to practice reformed catholicity. We believe that our reformed catholicity ought to extend to our Reformed Baptist brothers and sisters. Therefore, among the reformed confessions that a church may hold, we also have the 1689 London Baptist Confession. The culture of our communion allows anything from a Reformed Baptist on the one end to a Lutheran-inflected reformed thinking on the other end.

This broadness doesn’t take away from our calling to a depth in our knowledge and love of scripture. Only through deep study of scripture can we move toward sharing in the mind of Christ. That is why we expect our ministers to at least adhere to the fundamental reformed doctrines in our various historical confessions. This adherence gives us boundaries as we dig into the scriptures and seek to grow more and more united in the mind of Christ.

Reformed Catholicity

What do I mean by reformed catholicity? It is two things: guarding the deposit of sound words that the church has always held to and recognizing all who serve Christ as Lord.

I first mean a desire to uphold the central teachings, always taught by the church of Christ as Messiah and Son of God and his historical resurrection for the redemption of our sins. The doctrine of the Trinity defends the first, and the doctrine of the inspiration of the scriptures protects the second. All church doctrine defends either the reality of these truths or refutes false doctrines that obscure or distract from the effect of these realities for the average Christian. We all (in any denomination, federation, or communion) practice a form of theological triage in prioritizing certain doctrines as first, second, and third importance.

Reformed Catholicity is also about recognizing all those who serve Christ as Lord. “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.” I must offer the ministry of reconciliation to all men. That means I must receive into the church all those whom God defines as church. God defines the (social) boundaries church through his gift of baptism. Therefore, I will receive as brothers all who have been baptized into the name of the Trinity so far as they do not deny him in confession or life. I must recognize the church as God constitutes it, not as I would constitute it.

Reformed Catholicity in the local church.

How does this apply in a local CREC? I can only speak to the Presbyterian-minded CRECs. While it is not a rule in the CREC, the vast majority of churches allow families to join that do not hold to infant baptism. They are not required to baptize their children. Within Presbyterian-minded churches we allow for this because we understand the cultural significance of changing from one mindset to another. It is not a matter of showing someone a verse. We desire to respect the conscience of these families. Interestingly, it can create interesting scenarios in which some of the children in the church take communion, and some do not, but this is how we bear with one another.

In my understanding, it is within the authority of the minister and the elders to call a member to account who fails to recognize the status of their children and present them for baptism, but I believe it is better not to use this authority in this case lest we break something. If you exercise this authority, it is unlikely that the family will remain in which case the status of their children will not be recognized anyway, or you may push them into making a decision they regret, and they will resent you for it, causing division in the church. It is not always right to exercise a given power. So, we seek to follow the example of the gentleness and humility of Christ. In a different scenario, we could use this authority if a Baptist-minded member were to keep his grown son from baptism when that son desires to be baptized and also presents the evidences of a faithful Christian life. This, of course, is an extreme scenario. It also represents a scenario in which the Baptist goes against his own beliefs. However, in most cases, Baptist-minded members who participate in our churches tend to present their children for baptism at a younger age.

Baptist churches within the CREC are expected to have a similar approach albeit from a Baptist perspective.

Reformed Catholicity Across our Communion

So how does that work out in the relationship with the Presbyterian-minded and the Reformed Baptist-minded in the CREC? Presbyterians would argue that the Baptist denies that reformed catholicity, while the Baptist would see the Presbyterian as improperly washed. They both have to give something. For this it’s helpful to go through the fundamental commitments that Council 2023 adopted for the preamble to the CREC constitution.

It means that we receive each other’s ordination. God has given the church the keys of the kingdom. The pastor is entrusted with these keys for the sake of the church. These keys open up the kingdom of heaven and close it through the preaching of the word and through discipline. The ordained pastor recognizes and receives the one who belongs to the kingdom of heaven and refuses the one who does not belong to the kingdom of heaven, as evidenced by that person’s life. At its most basic, a communion, if it to be meaningful, however much they might disagree on various issues, must receive and recognize that their colleagues legitimately exercise the keys of the kingdom of heaven. They do their basic job well.

That means within the CREC, we must receive one another’s baptismal status. The Presbyterian must receive that the son in a Baptist family is not baptized and bear with the fact that he receives this family even though they hold back their children from this gift of God. He can rest knowing that he is not the one who refuses them. The Baptist must receive the Presbyterian son as baptized, even though he is not appropriately baptized. Joe Rigney, in his studies on the London Baptist Confession of Faith has discovered that there has always been a group of Baptists that received infant baptism as “valid but improper.” It is not merely a new teaching among Baptists today. So, there has historically been room within the Baptist understanding to receive an infant baptism.

Accepting the ordination of the ministers in the CREC means that we also receive the communicant status that the elders of a given church confer. If one minister opens the door, the other church cannot close the door unless the man or woman is living in rebellion against God and his church. Again, this is derived from recognizing the ordination of the other ministers and elders in the church of Christ.

While there are difficulties in working this all out in a practical way, I believe this is a good step forward in recognizing that the boundaries of the church and the church’s ministry are God’s to decide, not ours. I don’t know if this system can work. I can still spot tensions within it. However, we are trying to be objective about the church’s current situation while remaining principled in our approach to our ancient and catholic faith.

close up photography of concrete tombstones

How to be Lords of the Universe, Part II

By James

On November 4, 2023

In Church, Witness

Here I seek to apply the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 to the church today. Do we live as if “all things are ours?”

I must recognize James Wood’s work on Hoedemaker here, as well. He pointed out the importance place of several of the slogans that I use from Hoedemaker and further contrast them with Kuyper. You can find his article here.

Here is the video: