Stafford Carson : Presbyterian Pastor

I recently began a new series in our Midweek Fellowship on the Doctrines of Grace, sometimes known as the Five Points of Calvinism. The purpose of this series is to make explicit some of the key doctrines in our confessional standards, the Westminster Confession of Faith and its Catechisms, and to help members of the congregation have a greater zeal for the glory of God and for the task of mission.

Knowing and understanding these doctrines of grace is also crucial for knowing and understanding the gospel. The gospel stands or falls by grace, and the gospel is not really good news unless it is a gospel of grace. So it is crucial that we have a clear understanding of God’s grace.

The great Princeton theologian, B.B. Warfield said that evangelicialism stands or falls with Calvinism. Jim Boice and Philip Ryken in their excellent book, The Doctrines of Grace, point out that Warfield made that statement at a time when Calvinism still had a major influence on evangelicalism, helping to define its theology, shape its spirituality, and clarify its mission. This is no longer the case. Most evangelicals today are suspicious of Calvinism, and the result is that the gospel of grace has been diluted or lost.

A number of years ago, a group of evangelicals in North America expressed their concern at the changes they observed within the world of evangelicalism and summarised their views in The Cambridge Declaration. Part of that declaration states,

“Unwarranted confidence in human ability is a product of fallen human nature. This false confidence now fills the evangelical world; from the self-esteem gospel, to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners into consumers who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being true simply because it works. This silences the doctrine of justification regardless of the official commitments of our churches. God’s grace in Christ is not merely necessary but is the sole efficient cause of salvation.”

It is sometimes claimed that Calvinism reduces and restricts one’s passion and enthusiasm for evangelism. That view is mistaken both in its understanding of Calvinism and in its understanding of evangelism. In fact, properly understood, the doctrines of grace give the most solid foundation and greatest motivation for sharing the gospel. Only when we hold thoroughly biblical convictions about divine election, the atonement, and the irresistible grace of God can we have any confidence that the gospel has the power to accomplish God’s saving purposes. With their emphasis on the glory of God in salvation, the doctrines of grace can help evangelicalism grow and mature by restoring a proper view of God’s majesty, sovereignty and grace.

C.H. Spurgeon was a great evangelist and a staunch defender of the doctrines of grace.

“I have my own private opinion that there is no such thing as preaching Christ and him crucified unless we preach what is nowadays called Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism; Calvinism is the gospel and nothing else. I do not believe we can preach the gospel …. unless we preach the sovereignty of God in his dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable, conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can preach the Gospel unless we base it upon the special and particular redemption of his elect and chosen people which Christ wrought upon the cross; nor can I comprehend the Gospel which allows saints to fall away after they are called.” (quoted by J.I.Packer in his “Introductory Essay” to John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (London, Banner of Truth, 1959), 10.)

If Warfield and Spurgeon were right, then it is crucial that evangelicals understand and affirm the doctrines of grace. Quite simply, the doctrines of grace preserve the gospel of grace. More than that, understanding these doctrines enables us to be the humble worshippers that God calls us to be. As John Piper puts it about the doctrine of election,

“Unconditional election delivers the harshest and the sweetest judgments to my soul. That it is unconditional destroys all self-exaltation; and that it is election makes me his treasured possession. This is one of the beauties of the biblical doctrines of grace: their worst devastations prepare us for their greatest delights. What prigs we would become at the words, “The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6), if this election were in any way dependent on our will. But to protect us from pride, the Lord teaches us that we are unconditionally chosen (7:7-9). “He made a wretch his treasure,” as we so gladly sing. Only the devastating freeness and unconditionality of electing grace lets us take and taste such gifts for our very own without the exaltation of self.”

If you want a fuller statement on these doctrines then one place to start is here.

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As you plan your Christmas shopping, you may be interested to read this.

Christians are “evil” if they resist the redefinition of marriage to allow for same-sex marriage, the Head of Research and Development at Tesco.com has said.

The company has already faced criticism for dumping its support for the Cancer Research ‘Race for Life’ and sponsoring London’s gay pride festival.

If you won’t be shopping at Tesco this Christmas, tell them so on their Facebook page: facebook.com/tesco or email CEO Philip Clarke: philip.clarke@uk.tesco.com

The “evil Christians” comment was made by Nick Lansley, Head of Research and Development for the Tesco website.

He wrote: “I’m also campaigning against evil Christians (that’s not all Christians, just bad ones) who think that gay people should not lead happy lives and get married to their same-sex partners.”

The comments appeared on Mr Lansley’s profile page on the photo-sharing website, Flickr.com, where he lists his employment as “Head of R&D at Tesco.com”. But following complaints to Tesco the remarks have now been removed.

Postscript:

The Daily Telegraph carried an apology from Tesco on Tues 20 December 2011 over the “evil Christians” outburst. The report said that faced with the prospect of a Christmas boycott, the supermarket chain distanced itself from Nick Lansley, the head of research and development at tesco.com. A Tesco spokesman said Mr Lansley’s remarks “in no way reflect the views of Tesco. We are very sorry that anyone might have thought there was any blurring of the boundary between his personal comments and work for Tesco”.

PPS:

This is a reply to my email to the Chief Executive of Tesco which I received on December 22. I appreciate the spirit and content of this response, and am happy to withdraw the final sentence of my original posting.

Thank you for your e mail addressed to Philip Clarke, our Chief Executive, regarding the on-line activities of one of our staff.

I can appreciate your concern that comments made on the internet by a Tesco member of staff, Nick Lansley, might represent the views of Tesco itself.  I want to reassure you in the clearest possible terms that Mr Lansley’s comments and postings, made in a personal capacity, in no way reflect the views of Tesco.  Our values as a company are such that we abhor criticism of any religion, and we knew nothing about Mr Lansley’s comments and postings until they were brought to our attention.  It is not for us to dictate or limit those private views but we do not tolerate statements that insult others or their beliefs.  For that reason, when Mr Lansley was found to have posted material on his blog which insulted the religious beliefs of others, he was reminded of Tesco’s policy and the material was removed forthwith.

We know that being the UK’s leading retailer carries unique responsibilities.  We have a responsibility to show leadership, as we do on issues like climate change and helping to develop our people’s skills.  We also have a responsibility to listen carefully to our many and diverse customers and stakeholders, respect their views and seek to balance their opinions in the decisions we make.  This is not always easy, particularly on issues where opinions can differ markedly.  Whatever the issue, it is never our intention deliberately to inflame or polarise opinion or to make an already contentious debate more contentious.

We very much accept that, however well-intentioned we are, we do not always get everything right for everyone.  I do hope, however, that the explanation gives you some reassurance about how seriously we take the views of all our stakeholders, and the value we attach to tolerance and inclusion. I hope also that it begins to restore your confidence that Tesco does try to do the right thing and does indeed listen to your feedback.

Kind regards

Modupeola Ogutuga

Customer Service Executive

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In recent months, the First Minister has opened up the debate on the future of education in Northern Ireland by stating a clear intention to bring the current segregated situation to an end. He made his wishes clear in a speech in October, and in his speech at the DUP conference he reiterated his desire to bring the “them and us” division in our society to an end. Other senior members of the DUP team have spoken about ending the “educational apartheid” that currently exists. This will, and ought to, stimulate a good debate on the nature and fundamental principles of education.

All kinds of questions arise: What kind of system of education does the First Minister envisage? Will it be a religiously “neutral” system where all religion and spirituality will be excised and everything will be unashamedly secular? Will it be spiritually sanitised to remove all Christian values from the curriculum?  Or will there be an attempt to work creatively towards an agreed Christian ethos for all our schools that garners the support of believing people from all traditions?

At the heart of that debate will be the issue of the rights of parents to determine how their children will be educated. Catholic parents have consistently argued that they have a basic human right to educate their children according to their beliefs and convictions. They have fought hard, and have put in place a system of education that has delivered benefits for its pupils. Protestant parents should also be ready to argue for the same rights.

One Reformed theologian who gives good expression to that right is Nicholas Wolterstorff, Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. Wolterstorff correctly places the issue of rights in the context of moral responsibilities, since moral rights are never free-floating entities. They come as correlatives of our responsibilities. Since parents have the primary responsibility for determining the character of their child’s education, they also have the primary moral right to do so.

The argument runs like this. Children come into the world as the result of the physical union of their parents, and as the product of their physical substance. “Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” is how the ancient biblical writer described it. The result of this relationship is natural affection, in fact, the deepest of all natural affections, so wonderful and mysterious that there is no adequate scientific explanation. It is the delight and joy of parents to love and provide for their children, and they have a right and a responsibility to do so. Prominent within that love and nurture of their child is the desire to see their child mature into a person who acts responsibly and who finds joy and fulfilment in his or her life. That right and responsibility of parents therefore inevitably involves education.

Wolterstorff says that if we were all agreed on what constitutes responsible action and what is necessary for joy and fulfilment in life, then there would be no debate about the character and nature of education. But one of the most fundamental features of our situation is that we do not agree on those things. We have differences on what constitutes responsible action and on what is required if we are to live full and happy lives. Many of us believe that life cannot be enjoyed, and that we cannot function as fully mature human beings, unless we understand that our “chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever”. Without that spiritual dimension, we fail to live as fully as we ought. That is why it is the right and responsibility of parents to determine the character of their child’s education. As a parent, my rights and responsibilities extend into the classroom and do not stop at the classroom door. Any system of education that fails to provide for my child’s spiritual needs, as well as his intellectual and physical needs, is inadequate.

Politicians and others will argue that while parents have rights and responsibilities, theirs is not a primary or exclusive right. It will be claimed that, given the sad and tragic history of our community, the welfare of the wider community must take precedence over the rights and wishes of parents. Wolterstorff notes that totalitarian regimes have always claimed that when left to their own devices, parents will often give a character to their child’s education that is injurious to the wider society. To prevent that from happening, those who are responsible for the welfare of the state or community, namely the officers of the state, must have primary responsibility for determining the character of education within that state. Whatever may be said in praise of the beauty and goodness of parents’ love, it is argued that that love must be sacrificed on the altar of a higher good.

There is indeed the good of the wider society and community that must be acknowledged, and we in Northern Ireland must recognise the particular challenges that we face as we try to move forward. But whatever plan or programme we adopt, we must see the exercise of parental love and affection as an indispensable ingredient within it. To preserve that love and affection, we must preserve the primary right of parents to determine the character of their child’s education.

As an orthodox Christian parent who desires that my children mature into responsible adults who find joy and fulfilment in their lives, I cannot jettison my Christian principles and fail to see them reflected in the character of my children’s education. I love them too much to allow that to happen. If I were not to educate my children to become responsible agents who enjoy life, which is the Christian vision, I would be failing at a most fundamental point of my parental rights and responsibilities. A successful educational system requires the full support of the parents of the children it seeks to serve, and it must reflect the basic commitments which those parents hold.

If we are to move towards the shared future that the First Minister desires, and for which we all long, then he is right to pinpoint education as an important element in its development. But if the educational model that emerges denies parents their rights and responsibilities to determine the character of that education, and especially the Christian character of that education, then our hope for a new future will never be realised. A totally secularised educational system will not get us to our goal.

What could get us there, given the right conversations and context, and the commitment of parents, is a new system of education which is unambiguously Christian but which stretches across the ancient divisions and is thoroughly inclusive. That would be a goal worth striving for.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Life (Grand Rapids, Baker, 2002) Chapter 12, Human Rights in Education

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I see that this year’s Gay Pride celebrations in Belfast includes a service in All Souls’ Church, Elmwood Avenue, where the preacher, Andrew McFarland will look at “compelling reasons” to believe that David and Jonathan were in a same-sex relationship. The spurious arguments used to arrive at this conclusion are well-known and have been answered convincingly by scholars like Robert Gagnon, Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburg Theological Seminary.

In an article published a few years ago, Gagnon successfully answers the various attempts to make the Bible say the opposite of what the plain reading of Scripture teaches with regard to homosexual practices. The whole article is worth a read, but here is the section on the relationship between David and Jonathan.

Homosexualist interpretations of David and Jonathan mistake non-erotic covenant/kinship language for erotic intimacy. For example:

The statement that “the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (1 Samuel 18:1) can be compared to the non-erotic kinship language in Genesis 44:31 (“[Jacob’s] soul is bound up with [his son Benjamin’s] soul”) and Leviticus 19:18 (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”). It can also be compared to formulaic treaty language in the ancient Near East, such as the address of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal to his vassals (“You must love [me] as yourselves”) and the reference in 1 Kings 5:1 to King Hiram of Tyre as David’s “lover.”

Similarly, the remark in 1 Samuel 19:1 that Jonathan “delighted very much” in David can be compared to the non-erotic references in 1 Samuel 18:22 (“The king [Saul] is delighted with you [David], and all his servants love you; now then, become the king’s son-in-law”) and 2 Samuel 20:11 (“Whoever delights in Joab, and whoever is for David, [let him follow] after Joab”).

When David had to flee from Saul, David and Jonathan had a farewell meeting, in which David “bowed three times [to Jonathan], and they kissed each other, and wept with each other” (1 Sam 20:41-42). The bowing suggests political, rather than sexual, overtones. As for the kissing, only three out of twenty-seven occurrences of the Hebrew verb “to kiss” have an erotic dimension; most refer to kissing between father and son or between brothers.

In 1 Samuel 20:30-34, Saul screams at Jonathan: “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse [David] to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?” Here Saul is not accusing his son of playing the passive-receptive role in man-male intercourse with David (cf. 2 Sam 19:5-6). Rather, he charges Jonathan with bringing shame on the mother who bore him by acquiescing to David’s claim on Saul’s throne.

When David learns of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan he states of Jonathan “you were very dear to me; your love to me was more wonderful to me than the love of women” (2 Sam 1:26). The Hebrew verb for “were very dear to” is used in a sexual sense in the Old Testament only two out of twenty-six occurrences and a related form is used just three verses earlier when David refers to Saul as “lovely,” obviously in a non-erotic sense. Jonathan’s giving up his place as royal heir and risking his life for David surpassed anything David had known from a committed erotic relationship with a woman; but there was nothing sexual in the act. As Proverbs 18:24 notes (in a non-sexual context): “There is a lover/friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

The narrator’s (narrators’) willingness to speak of David’s vigorous heterosexual life (compare the relationship with Bathsheba) puts in stark relief his (their) complete silence about any sexual activity between David and Jonathan. Put simply, homosexualist interpretations of the relationship between David and Jonathan misunderstand the political overtones of the Succession Narrative in 1 Samuel 16:14 – 2 Samuel 5:10. Jonathan’s handing over his robe, armor, sword, bow, and belt were acts of political investiture, transferring the office of heir apparent to David (1 Samuel 18:4). The point of emphasizing the close relationship between David and Jonathan was to stress the view that David was not a rogue usurper to Saul’s throne. Rather, he was adopted by Jonathan into his father’s “house” (family, dynasty) as though he were Jonathan’s older brother. Neither the narrator(s) of the Succession Narrative nor the author(s) of the Deuteronomistic History show any concern about homosexual scandal, because, in the context of ancient Near Eastern conventions, nothing in the narrative raised suspicions about a homosexual relationship. (For further discussion, see Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice, 146-54; Markus Zehnder,“Observations on the Relationship between David and Jonathan and the Debate on Homosexuality,” Westminster Theological Journal 69.1 [2007]: 127-74).

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Harold Camping

The news media have reported extensively on the failed predictions of Harold Camping that the world would end on May 21st. Apparently he has revised his prophecy and told us that we should now circle October 21st as “Judgment Day”.

My former church history professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, Dr Robert Godfrey, who is now president of Westminster Seminary in California, has personal knowledge of Harold Camping, the failed prophet. Bob’s blog-posts are a helpful commentary on this man and his crazy theology. Here’s a sample of what Bob has written:

Harold Camping has not only deserted the church, he seems also to have deserted Christ and his Gospel. In his online book The End of the Church…and After, he began to reject a number of teachings on salvation common in Reformed churches. Consider this strange amalgam of biblical truths and errors all of which Camping rejects as errors so serious that Christ has ended the church age because of them: “Such conclusions that there can be divorce for fornication, baptismal regeneration, our faith is an instrument that God uses to bring us to salvation, a future millennium, women can pastor a church, universal atonement, our acceptance of Christ as a requirement for salvation, are typical of many doctrines solemnly adopted by churches.” In this statement are indications of serious confusion on the doctrine of salvation. Read more…

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