A Liberal Funeral

I was asked to play the pipes at the funeral of an ex-serviceman last Friday.  I piped the coffin into the church, played a traditional lament in the middle of the service, and piped the deceased out to the traditional return to Barracks tune, the Black Bear Hornpipe.

The message was the sort heard at almost every funeral that I have piped at, and there have been a few.  God loves everyone.  He couldn’t possibly love us more, and there is nothing we can do to make him love us more.  The deceased is in heaven, which is where we are going too.

The deceased was a very good man, loving, and loved by his family, and will be sorely missed.

What received no mention at all were the bodily resurrection of the dead, the judgement of our works, the separation of mankind into sheep and goats, and the rewards and punishments handed down from Christ’s throne of judgement.  The renewed earth was replaced by a present, ghostly, heavenly post-mortem disembodied bliss.

It was a Christian service without the Christian religion.

James Jordan on Obama

http://biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com

Read this.

Evangelical or Reformed?

It is increasingly clear to me that there is clear water between evangelicalism and reformationism.

If we define a religion by its practice as well as its belief system, the differences become more and more obvious.  The purpose of a Reformed Church service is to diligently make use of the ordained means of grace, namely, the sacraments, the word, and prayer.  

These three things working together are the means of communicating to Christians the saving benefits.

Ordinarily, then, partaking regularly of the bread and wine within the context of the proclaimed word and prayer, is the usual means of continuing to receive the blessings of justification, the Holy Spirit, regeneration, assurance of our election and salvation and so on.

Evangelicalism, whether of the older or modern types, refuses to allow a place for the sacraments as effectively communicating and transferring justification.  In an evangelical service communion is only an occasion to remember the cross and its benefits.

(Is this a new evangelical sola?)

This is without doubt an import from the Baptistic mentality, and it is biblically and historically speaking a heresy.  In evangelicalism the sole means of grace is the word read and preached, especially the word preached.  Hence the centrality of the sermon, and the emergence of the cult of the preacher.  Hence, also, the relative unimportance of prayer in an evangelical service.

To an evangelical a reformed service looks and sounds, to an extent, Roman Catholic.  The heretical Anabaptists said exactly the same thing back in the day.  Thus we must not give any weight to that objection.

Eating and drinking continued

There are a number of theories about how we truly eat and drink the body and blood.  The Reformed view is that Christ is not physically present here on earth, because he ascended to heaven, and there he will remain until he returns.  Nevertheless, the power of his resurrected immortality is truly communicated to us by the Holy Spirit, so that we truly eat and drink, albeit in a spiritual manner, not a gross corporeal manner.

When they (the Reformed) speak of the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper, they do not mean that they are present upon earth, except with respect to faith], that is, that our faith, reminded and excited by the visible signs, just as by the Word preached, elevates itself and ascends above all heavens, and receives and enjoys the body of Christ, which is there in heaven present, yea, Christ Himself, together with all His benefits, in a manner true and essential, but nevertheless spiritual only. For [they hold that] as the bread and wine are here upon earth and not in heaven, so the body of Christ is now in heaven and not upon earth, and consequently nothing else is received by the mouth in the Holy Supper than bread and wine. Formula of Concord.

Another explanation is that we are taken up to heaven, where Christ is, and in this way we truly eat and drink the body where it is present.  I don’t know what to think about that, because no-one I know has ever been transported away during the Supper.  I am a literal thinker, and if we are taken to heaven then it has to be in the body, or it is just another figure of speech that I cannot make head or tail of.

… our faith, reminded and excited by the visible signs, just as by the Word preached, elevates itself and ascends above all heavens, and receives and enjoys the body of Christ, which is there in heaven present, yea, Christ Himself, together with all His benefits, in a manner true and essential, but nevertheless spiritual only. 

Luther – good man – taught that the corporeal body and blood are present in the Supper, and are consumed physically by means of the mouth.  He had a very dim view of the Reformed doctrine, which he held to the end of his life.

… we confess that in the Lord’s Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and are truly tendered with the visible elements, bread and wine, to those who receive the Sacrament. For since Paul says: “The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ,” etc., it would follow, if the body of Christ were not, but only the Holy Ghost were truly present, that the bread is not a communion of the body, but of the Spirit of Christ.  Formula of Concord.

Luther’s argument boiled down to one point, that there are no indicators in the words of institution that they are to be taken figuratively, and that they must must therefore be taken literally.

The essence of the Reformed position is that Christ is human, and that a human body cannot be in more than one place at a time.

Imputation of the Active Obedience of Christ

As an IAOC denier, (sic), what is denied is that the Lord’s obedience to the
Torah is
imputed to us together with the satisfaction of the cross. The obedience of
Christ,
exegetically and biblically, and without a doubt, is the cross alone.

Christ’s death is his active obedience, properly speaking. See Norman
Shepherd’s
outstanding exegesis of the relevant passages.

What we *get* from the Lord’s sinless life is a sacrificial lamb without spot or
blemish,
which is the condition for the obedience of the cross.

If the IAOC as doctrinally defined is correct, it means that we have to fulfill
the Mosaic Law
to be saved, albeit a mediated obedience.

I am a Gentile, and God has never commanded the Gentiles to obey Torah! I don’t
need to
have Torah imputed to me in any form. Neither I nor my fathers have ever been
under
the Law. Its application to me in any form is redundant, null, and void.

I need to have my sins forgiven, which is a different thing.

When God forgives my sins, he in so doing declares me to be righteous, because
that is
the only alternative to being guilty. No neutral middle status. If I am now
without sin I am
necessarily righteous.

In sum, the cross is the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, satisfaction,
and oblation, for
our full, perfect, and sufficient justification.

New Anglican Province and repentance

A new Anglican Province in North America came into being last week, consisting of various types and sizes of Anglicans who have a common objection to the ordination of homosexual priests and bishops.  

Listening to the inaugural sermon of the new body preached by Archbishop Duncan at Virtueonline, I was heartened to hear him insisting that we need to repent.  That is good theology, isn’t it?  

Those who identify with the English Reformation and its theology and practice must have a positive initial response to this development.

On the other hand the new Province ordains women, and has mechanisms in place safe-guarding it, but no mechanism for removing it, according to Robin Jordan.

What strikes me is that there is even a discussion about WO, and that a church that has removed itself from an apostate body would continue the practice.  It is so clearly forbidden in scripture that there is no doubt about the scriptural and biblical position.  Therefore, to ordain women, to allow them to preach to men and have authority over them, is a blatant and deliberate sin.  Repent indeed!

What repentance is this that obeys one clear command and deliberately disobeys another?  Is it serving the Lord with half a heart?  Giving with one hand and taking with the other?

The believing church is broken and weak because of sin.  Unless the Lord grants us collectively true repentance the downgrade will continue.

Sows and corn

One of the most strident voices raised against the Federal Vision is the Green Bagginses blog.  I eventually realized after months of engaging the folks there in biblical argument and debate that it was a waste of my time.

I also found myself in a near constant state of agitation at what was happening with the lynching of Steve Wilkins.  The Rev. Wilkins is one of the best Presbyterian exegetes living today, and he was being forced out of the PCA by Lane Keistner and his gang of exegetical illiterates.  His offence is reading the Bible through the lens of the historical covenants – the Federal Vision.

For a reason that I cannot explain I posted at the Bagginses site this week.  My intention was to remain pure by simply making a comment, and refusing to be drawn into another pointless discussion.  Instead, I found myself interacting on two threads.

I have put my finger on something that may explain the impossibility of an accord between the FV and its Reformed enemies – a crippled and malformed exegesis driven by rigidly systematic, not literary, considerations.

For example, in the parable of the sower, the Lord uses the picture of a plant that grows, but is strangled by weeds and thistles, so that is becomes fruitless.  I pointed out that a plant can only become fruitless if it was fruitful before.  Otherwise we have a meaningless statement.

Keistner’s brilliant reply was to point out that ginomai also means to be, to support his assertion that the plant always was fruitless.

It is true that ginomai san sometimes mean to be, BUT, it depends on the context and the way it is being used.  There was no acknowledgment of this elementary, pre-school, fact.

Keistner’s blanket drag and drop has the effect of turning the parable into a non sequitur: the plant was strangled and it was fruitless.  No link between being strangled and fruitlessness, just strangling of an already fruitless plant.  Why put these two things together if there is no link between them?

Do you see what I mean by crippled exegesis?  Strictly speaking it isn’t exegesis at all, but plain incompetence.

What drives this kind of response is the prior commitment to the doctrinal view that there is no such thing as true apostasy.  There are only two kinds of people in the world – the elect and the rest – and only the elect can ever be called true Christians.  It is impossible under any circumstances for one of the others to be regenerated and bear fruit, and then fall away.

Texts mean nothing, the doctrine is everything.

The result is the pitiful handling of the sacred text that we have seen.  They treat the word of God the way a sow treats a bag of corn, in Martin Luther’s memorable phrase.

Truly eating and drinking

My view till recently was that in the Supper we receive the benefits of the Lord’s passion and resurrection, namely, justification, the Holy Spirit, and so on.  But the text does not say that we receive the virtue (power) and benefits of the Lord’s passion and glorification, but the Lord himself.

Turns out this is the traditional Reformed position!

Say what?

No, really.  This from Calvin’s eucharistic rite:

that we may with a constante and assured fayth, receave bothe hys bodye and bloude, yea, verelye CHRIST himself wholye.  (William Huycke’s English translation, 1550).

Dudley Fenner, one of the Westminster Divines, expalined the sacrament as :

.. an instrument whereby truly is communicated by the work of the Holy Ghost to our faith, the very body and blood of Christ. (The Whole Doctrine of the Sacramentes).

This is of course the doctrine of the Book of Common Prayer 1662, and was the view of Thomas Cranmer its author, who teaches us that Christ’s body and blood are truly communicated to us in the Supper, not just the sign of them.

The Reformed doctrine differs from Rome’s in denying the transubstantiation of the elements and the sacrifice of the Mass.  But it agrees with it in teaching that Christ’s body and blood is truly and really communicated to the believer.

This is done by the Holy Spirit.  There is a deep mystery here, since Christ is absent from us on earth, because he is in heaven, and not omnipresent in his humanity, being truly man.  Christ may be present in his deity, but certainly not in his incarnation.  

Nevertheless the Holy Spirit achieves this mystery, and we believe it, because the Bible teaches a true feeding upon the actual human body and blood of Christ.

This is the Reformed doctrine of the Real Presence.

Now pick up your jaws from the floor and think about it.

The Church of England in South Africa

This is a denomination that began as an Evangelical Anglican protest against Anglo-Catholicism, with a proper Prayer Book and Articles, and has since deliberately moved away from the Anglican Faith into the wonderful world of modern evangelicalism.

The standards of official Anglicanism, namely, the BCP 1662, the 39 Articles, and the Ordinal, while mentioned in the constitution as the faith that they profess, are detested and rejected by the clergy with few, if any, exceptions.

At their seminary, George Whitefield College, excerpts of a modern liturgy are occasionally used, and then grudgingly.  In my four years there I was the only man to ever use the BCP 1662 when leading Chapel, much to the amusement and scorn of my fellow students.

Vestments, of course, are completely out, a relic of another time.  Ultra casual clothing, even Superman t-shirts, have been worn in the pulpit.  Their bishops can occasionally be seen in their robes, But in over ten years in that church I saw them used twice.

As for the 39 Articles, well, what can I say?  I sat in class at GWC listening to the Administrator, Alan Beckman, telling us that we have problems with them as they stand, and that we do not agree to their plain and grammatical sense.  Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are two obvious examples, not mentioning the article on predestination, the great unmentionable doctrine.

What are we to think then, when we discover that candidates for ordination swear before God and man that they believe and uphold the BCP 1662 and everything in it as being agreeable to scripture, knowing that they do not?  Is there a single clergyman in that church whose conscience bothers him, even a little, when he remembers how he lied to God and man?

The facts are that the bishops have led the denomination in a headlong flight from the Anglican Faith into a version of broad American evangelicalism.  They are Baptists with Bishops, plain and simple.  

You can imagine my thoughts, then, when I read recently that this ex-Anglican church had been to GAFCON, and that they had agreed to the historical formularies of the Faith.

Either they are cynical liars, or they have had a change of heart.  Perhaps the GAFCON thing will be the catalyst that brings them back into the fold.  The present Presiding Bishop, Frank Retief, recently actually used the swear-word word, Anglican, to describe the CESA.

Knowing them from the inside as I do, I believe that their Baptistic and Arminian mindset is set in stone.  For them to turn from the path that they have set their feet upon will require a rejection of all that they hold dear, and a return to a faith and worship they have long since thrown out as not worth retaining.

Gloria Patri in Excelsis

It means glory to the Father in the highest, and it is sung after the reception of the bread and wine.  Last week we began learning it, and will sing it this coming Sunday.  We have also added the Kyrie to our repertoire.