Preach the Word!

26 August 2025

Do we preach in church? No.

But isn’t that what Paul tells Timothy to do? “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season….” No. The word translated “preach” there is kerusso. It means public announcement, not private commentary to an in-group. (Check the lexicon; do the word study in Scripture; expand the word study to the secular literature – all the evidence points the same way, as I’ve argued elsewhere.) It’s not something you do with an in-group in a home; it’s something you do in the marketplace at the top of your lungs for anybody in earshot. That’s just what the word means throughout the literature (notwithstanding our English misappropriation of it).

2 Timothy 4:2 is not an exception to the general usage of kerusso. Absent a compelling contextual reason to read the Sunday meeting into the passage — and it isn’t there — Timothy would have heard the word in its ordinary sense. The only reason we don’t hear it that way is because we’re imposing our usage of “preach” on the passage. Public proclamation was a mainstay of Paul’s ministry, and it’s not exactly a surprise that he charges Timothy to carry on this aspect of his work. The inclusio with “do the work of an evangelist” in v. 5 clinches it, if we needed additional evidence of its public-facing meaning.

Should we thunder the Word from the pulpit? Absolutely. Arguably, that falls under the biblical headings of teaching and prophecy, but in any case there’s not much exegetical case for calling it “preaching.”

But let’s look more closely at the context here. In chapter 1, Paul addresses Timothy’s qualifications and his inner life/personal prerequisites for ministry. He continues that theme in 2:1-13, challenging Timothy to endure hardship for the sake of God’s chosen people. 2:14 forward specifically addresses the way Timothy should minister to those people within the church community, and then (3:1ff) begins to address the hazardous people Timothy will face in that endeavor. Beginning in 3:10, Paul returns his focus to Timothy, contrasting him to the people in 3:1-9 and challenging him to continue in what he’s been taught, knowing that the God-breathed Scriptures themselves will fully equip him.

4:1 begins Paul’s final charge to Timothy, and here he begins with a command that specifically means public announcement and concludes in v.5 with “do the work of an evangelist.” As with his instructions for Timothy’s conduct within the church in 2:14-3:17, Paul leads off with the command (2:14//4:1-2), follows with a warning that it’s likely to be ill-received (3:1-9//4:3-4), and returns to Timothy with “But you…” (3:10ff//4:5). He follows the same pattern of instruction as when he was talking about Timothy’s ministry within the church, but this time, he’s talking about how Timothy faces the world.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Cessationism 101

1 June 2025

If you’re new to this discussion, the claim under consideration is that certain of the spiritual gifts (generally known to their foes under the heading “sign gifts,” e.g., tongues, healing, prophecy, etc.) ceased early on in the history of the church, around the close of the first century. Generally people will identify the cessation of these gifts with the fall of Jerusalem, the death of the apostles, the closure of the canon, or some such. This belief is known as cessationism. The belief that all the biblically attested gifts have continued is known as continuationism. Continuationists don’t typically see “the sign gifts” as a biblical classification; the gift of teaching in operation is just as much a sign of the Spirit at work as the gift of prophecy. (“Charismatic” implies some additional cultural markers that are beyond the scope of this discussion. For our purposes today, just know that anybody who describes themselves as “charismatic” will be a continuationist, but not all continuationists would call themselves charismatic.)

We’ve discussed this issue here before (and here), but I don’t know that I’ve ever summarized the defects of cessationism all in one place. To be clear, this is not my affirmative case for continuationism; that’s another conversation. This is my rebuttal to cessationism; the claim I’m making here is that the biblical case for cessationism makes Swiss cheese look substantial. In order to make my case, I need to clearly articulate the arguments I’m rebutting. To that end, here are the core biblical arguments cessationists will make (if I missed one, put it in the comments!):

  1. The gift of tongues was a temporary sign for (unbelieving) Israel, and is no longer relevant for today. This line of argument points out the connection between 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 and Isaiah 28:11-12, and argues that once Jerusalem was destroyed, the purpose for the sign had ended, and so the gift ceased to be given.
  2. The sign gifts were part of the historically unrepeatable foundation of the Christian faith, and now that the foundation is laid, there’s no further need for them. This argument will cite Ephesians 2:20, Hebrews 2:3-4, 2 Corinthians 12:12 and similar passages that describe the work of the apostles and New Testament prophets as foundational for our faith, and connect the signs to the apostles.
  3. Biblical tongues were discernible languages, not what we know today as ecstatic glossolalia. Here they’ll argue that every biblical occurrence of the gift of tongues was a known language, and argue that the gift of tongues was the ability to speak a language unknown to the speaker (as in Acts 2). They’ll point out (correctly) that Corinth was a busy port city with a ton of languages drifting through it, and argue that 1 Corinthians 14 is addressing how to handle a multilingual church body and the spiritual gifts God gave them to cope with their situation. Modern tongues, by contrast, are ecstatic glossolalia, a learned babbling that has no linguistic content, and also has no New Testament precedent.
  4. 1 Corinthians 13 says that the sign gifts ceased with the closure of the canon of Scripture. The claim here is that 13:8 says that certain gifts will fail/cease/vanish (which it does), and that “the perfect” in 13:10 is the canon of Scripture, so now that we have God’s full revelation, the partial revelation embodied in the sign gifts no longer continues.
  5. Continuing revelation would mean that Scripture is still being added to today. The line of argument here is that if you think modern-day prophecy is really a word from God, shouldn’t you be writing this down? And wouldn’t that be adding an additional book to the New Testament?

Thus far the arguments for cessationism. How do they stand up on examination? Let’s take them in order:

1. “The gift of tongues was a temporary sign for (unbelieving) Israel, and is no longer relevant for today.”

in 1 Corinthians 14:21-22, Paul quotes Isaiah 28 in order to justify his claim that tongues are a sign to unbelievers. In the original context of Isaiah, the sign under discussion is for Israel specifically. We can see that sign play out, for example, in Acts 2, where where the Spirit is speaking through Gentile languages in the heart of Jerusalem. Getting from there to “tongues have ceased,” though, presents some problems. First, work through the logic: Holy Spirit-given Gentile tongues as a sign to unbelieving Jews doesn’t in itself mean the sign is no longer happening. Do we still got unbelieving Jews? Do we believe Israel has a future? Then how does it follow that the sign to them no longer has a purpose? 

Second, the fact that it’s a sign to Jews doesn’t mean it has no other purpose. Paul’s commentary doesn’t say that tongues are a sign to Jews only; he says they are a sign to unbelievers, and this in the context of the Gentile city of Corinth. Do we still got unbelievers? Well, tongues are a sign to them. That’s what this text tells us. Logically speaking, it could be the case that the sign ceased after the first century, but that’s something you bring to this text, not something you get from it. 

2. The sign gifts were part of the historically unrepeatable foundation of the Christian faith, and now that the foundation is laid, there’s no further need for them.

Ephesians 2:20 does indeed say that the apostles and prophets laid the foundation. It goes on to say that Christ Himself is the chief cornerstone of that foundation. We all believe that Christ both laid the foundation and has a continuing ministry. The two simply are not mutually exclusive; why should we believe that apostles and prophets have no continuing ministry just because they were part of laying the foundation? 

Certainly various miraculous signs were associated with the apostles; in 2 Cor. 12, for example, Paul calls the works he did “the signs of an apostle.” There are only two interpretive possibilities here: either he is, or he is not, referring to works done by other people (such as the works mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12-14). If he’s speaking of miracles only done by the apostles (and not to miraculous works done by others), well and good; that’s got nothing to do with what the rest of us do. If he does have in mind the sort of signs mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12-14, then we all agree that people other than the apostles did them. In that case, “signs of an apostle” means the kinds of things an apostle did, but doesn’t mean that only apostles did them. That being the case, there’s no obvious reason to believe that people today could not do the sort of thing an apostle did, even if you don’t believe in contemporary apostles.

3. Biblical tongues were discernible languages, not what we know today as ecstatic speech.

First of all, these two things are not mutually exclusive. Acts 2 tongues certainly are discernible languages, but that doesn’t mean it was not an ecstatic event – read the description. (About which more below.) Second, the context of 1 Corinthians 14:9 is precisely that the genuine gift of tongues is being used and people are not understanding the utterance; hence the exhortation! Paul is making the case that prophecy is superior, because it can be understood. For the public use of a tongue, he requires interpretation (14:5, 27-28) so that the rest of the Body might be built up. He also gives testimony that he has this gift “more than you all,” and that when he uses it, “my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful.” That certainly seems to leave the door open to ecstatic speech that he does not himself understand. (Other interpretations are possible, but I don’t think we can rule this one out.)

Tongues in Acts 2 are described as languages comprehensible by various people present, but whether this occasion would meet modern church criteria for “orderly” is very much in question. They spilled out into the street all talking at once. Some people thought they were drunk – how did that happen? The point is not to advocate for that kind of ruckus in every public meeting, but to point out that ruckus does not mean the gifts of the Spirit are not present.

In fact, the very occasion for Paul writing 1 Cor. 12-14 was that tongues were not being interpreted or used in an orderly manner; his (Holy Spirit-inspired) diagnosis is not “this is not real tongues,” but that the real gift is being abused. The abuse is real, is sin, and absolutely needs to be repented of and corrected. There are present-day churches that very much have the problems the passage describes. Paul offers a diagnosis; “this is not the real thing” ain’t it.

4. 1 Corinthians 13 says that the sign gifts ceased with the closure of the canon of Scripture.

Various theological and practical arguments get offered in support of cessationism – arguments from dispensational consistency and the like (which are beyond the scope of this post; we’re talking about biblical arguments here). But when we set all the theological constructions aside and just focus on what the text says – when I ask a cessationist “Okay, but where does the Bible actually say that these gifts are no longer in operation?” – this is invariably the passage they come to. At least among the cessationists I know, if they’re going to bring (what they think of as) a knock-down exegetical argument, this is it.

Which is really ironic, because the passage simply doesn’t say what it’s claimed to say. It certainly does say that prophecies will fail, tongues will cease, and [words of] knowledge will vanish away. The claim is that this happens with the completion of the canon of Scripture, but in fact Scripture is not mentioned anywhere in the passage. Rather, the point at which these gifts cease, according to the passage, is when our knowledge is complete rather than partial, when we are fully grown, when we see with complete clarity, and know as we are also known. Anybody think the Church has reached that point? Me neither. 

5. Continuing revelation would mean that Scripture is still being added to today.

This objection confuses prophecy with inscripturation. If we examine the biblical record, we see prophets who never wrote a word of Scripture, from the 100 prophets Obadiah saved, 50 to a cave (1 Kings 18:4), to Philip’s four virgin daughters who prophesied (Acts 21:8-9). We see prophets who were already known to be prophets before they ever said the thing they’re known for in Scripture (1 Kings 20:35-43, 2 Kings 22;14-20, Acts 11:28, 21:10). We see instructions for regulating the exercise of prophecy in the local church (1 Corinthians 12-14) with not a word about writing anything down. If “shouldn’t we be writing this down?” was not a major concern to anybody at times when we all agree that prophecy was active, then it’s not obvious why it should suddenly become a concern to us now.

Rather, the biblical picture of prophecy is that the vast majority of it seems to have been timely words given to God’s people for their moment. Only a tiny fraction of it was ever recorded in Scripture; there’s no reason to expect that finishing the process of inscripturation would automatically end all prophetic revelation forever. Practically speaking, ongoing divine guidance speaks to our lives in ways Scripture can’t and wasn’t intended to: Scripture tells us to do good and to share, but the nudge to take time out to buy lunch for this particular homeless guy at this particular intersection and tell him God hasn’t forgotten him – you can’t get that from Scripture. Or the nudge to text that long-lost friend right now. Or a sudden impulse to deliver the groceries you just bought to a family you happen to know in the neighborhood. Or…but the daily life of Our People is full of such things. All the examples I just gave came from my experience (the first led to a friendship that seems to have gotten a homeless man of the street; the second to a comforting text that “just happened” to arrive in a moment of extreme grief; the third fed my family when we had no grocery money). I expect you can supply more examples of your own.

Conclusion

In summary, the biblical case for cessationism simply doesn’t stand up to close examination. The passages either don’t say what they are claimed to say, or there’s a huge leap in logic between what the passage says and the conclusion it’s supposed to justify.

That said, I recognize that my summary of the biblical arguments for cessationism is my summary. While a summary will never express every nuance or variation, it’s a position I used to hold, and I do understand the arguments. I hope I’ve summarized them fairly. How about it? If you’re a cessationist and you think I’ve left out a passage or mischaracterized an argument, add it in the comments! Let’s talk!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

A Fuller Fulfillment

11 February 2025

When we talk about “fulfilled prophecy,” what we usually mean is a straightforward prediction along the lines of Micah 5:2, which says that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Matthew shows how the prophecy was fulfilled. But that’s not the only thing that “fulfilled” can mean.

“Fulfill” has a fuller sense (if you’ll pardon the expression) than just the Micah 5:2 predictive prophecy meaning. In the Hosea 11//Matthew 2 usage, the original sense in Hosea is critical to Matthew’s meaning. Knowing that Israel is God’s son is necessary to understanding the points that Matthew is making: first, that Jesus is Israel (in exactly what sense is a question Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt.

Don’t miss that latter point. Matthew invokes “out of Egypt I called My Son” not when Jesus leaves literal Egypt, but when Jesus flees Judea. Judea is the “Egypt” Jesus is fleeing, and Herod is the baby-boy-slaughtering “Pharaoh.” John the Baptist will later reinforce this same point by calling repentant Israelites to come out into the desert to pass through water, a new Exodus forming a new people of God (Jesus joins the new people of God “to fulfill all righteousness”). John the evangelist will much later make the point explicit in Revelation 11:8.

We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there, but neither do we want to miss something that is there—and the NT shows us repeatedly that there’s a LOT more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis (Matt. 22:32) to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the NT shows us a way of reading the OT that we perhaps wouldn’t have come up with on our own, but that’s ok. God is revealing it to us in the way He handles His own revelation.

In conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But if that’s all we have, then our hermeneutic will force us to condemn the Holy Spirit’s exegesis of His own work. There has to be something wrong with that picture. What is it? Easy: the Book of Nature isn’t all we have. The Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read.

5 Comments | Exegesis, Hermeneutics, Speaking as God Speaks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Can We Afford It?

20 November 2024

Treating someone graciously is a form of generosity. As with all forms of generosity, graciousness is greatly cramped when we don’t think we can afford it. This is true whether we can actually afford it or not.

Say we have a single mother in the church who asks one of the men in the church to come look at her tires. It seems to her that something’s wrong, she says. He goes out into the parking lot, and the tire has a great big bulge in the sidewall.

“I don’t get paid until Friday,” she says, “and I have to pay rent out of that. Do you think it can wait until I get paid again in two weeks?”

No, it cannot. Now suppose as they’re talking about how she really shouldn’t delay replacing the tire, another fellow walks over and also takes a look. He agrees with the first guy that the tire should be replaced immediately.

Now suppose that one of these guys has $30,000 in the bank and no pressing need for it, while the other has $700 to his name, and his own rent payment looming at the end of the week. Which one of these guys is going to help this lady pay for tires?

You’d be tempted to say that of course the first guy will do it, but if you’ve been around people a little, you know better than to be so sure. We’ve all known people with tens of thousands of dollars who didn’t think they could afford to part with ten bucks, and we’ve all known people with only a few hundred who would buy you lunch if you looked hungry. Generosity does not depend only on some objective measure of what you can afford. Generosity depends on what you believe you can afford.

The guy with a few hundred bucks to his name, who goes and buys the lady’s tires? He believes that God has been good to him. He believes that God has given him everything he has, and everything he has is therefore at God’s disposal. He believes that God put him here to help take care of the tires, and that God knows the rent is due at the end of the week, and He will take care of it. He knows himself to be living in the lap of God’s largesse; why would he struggle to share? “You can’t outgive God!” he’ll say. Or “I shovel it out, and God shovels it in, and He’s got the bigger shovel.”

I’ve known a bunch of guys like that over the years; had occasion to be one now and again. Let me tell ya: it’s a lot of fun giving God’s money to people who need it! You maybe feel a little dumb come Friday afternoon and you’re still not sure how the rent gets paid, but you know what? I’ve seen God come through over and over and over again. (Standard disclaimer: It’s possible to overdo giving just like it’s possible to overdo anything else. I’m not saying you should just be a moron with your money; I’m saying you should be generally wise, and also know that at any given moment, God might call you to do something that looks really foolish. He gets to do that; everything you have is His. When He does, know that He’s got your back, and He’s good for it.)

To return to the observation I began this post with, it’s not just money. I digressed into money because money is easy to talk about, but you can be generous (or not) with any resource you have. It might be your time, your effort, your expertise. It might be a little space on your web server, or a little space in your garage for someone to store a couple boxes. It might be a late-night run out to the airport to pick up an old friend’s stranded kid, and another run back out there in the morning to get the kid on the next flight out. It might be your sympathy. It might mean showing grace to someone who–this being the meaning of grace–doesn’t deserve a bit of it.

In any of these cases, the key to generosity is the belief that you can afford it, and that, in turn, depends on your gratitude for what God has given you. This is particularly the case with showing sympathy, moral grace.

People who feel a need to signal virtue, people whose virtue is brittle, shallow, only skin-deep, can’t afford to be generous. It would endanger their fragile bona fides. They need to be hard on others, critical, scathing even, lest somebody begin to wonder if they themselves are somehow soft on that particular sin. When you’re about the impossible task of establishing your own righteousness, there’s no audience too small or occasion too petty.

Go thou, and do un-likewise. But this is not something you’re likely to be able to fake, or to muscle through as a raw exercise in self-control. You should be a deep and genuine conduit of God’s grace, and that means you need to become grateful for God’s grace to you. So begin to meditate on God’s grace to you. If you need a place to start, you could do worse than Ephesians 2:1-10. Let’s get about it.

Comments Off on Can We Afford It? | Kingdom of God, Love of Generous Fruitfulness, New Fundamentals, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Retraining the Hair on the Back of the Deacon’s Neck, Part 2

16 August 2009

As I concluded my previous post, I could fairly hear the deacons in the audience shouting, “Just because the hair on the back of your neck stands up, how do you know it’s right?”

That’s a good question.  There has to be some norm, some standard by which to measure.

There is.  It’s called the Bible, and one of the things it teaches us is this: who the hearer is will determine what he hears.  If this sounds subjective to you, that’s because in a sense, it is.  But it’s entirely biblical: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” as Jesus often said.  This saying teaches us that there is such a thing as having ears to hear, and such a thing as not having ears to hear.  The person with ears and the person without ears are both standing in front of Jesus, and both hear the same parable…but only the one with ears to hear really hears it, after all. The same propositional content for both, but one understands and the other does not.

Nor is understanding, or failing to, the full range of outcomes.  The same content can convey two opposite messages to two different people, as Paul tells us:

Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.  For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.  To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?

We carry the gospel on our lips and in our lives, and this bespeaks death to those who are perishing, but life to those who are being saved.  It’s the same content, but different messages are received because the hearers are different.  This is obvious with a little reflection: “Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion” is gospel to God’s people, but chains and a rod of iron to those who will not kiss the Son.

This is to say that there is no substitute for walking with God and being conformed to the image of His Son.  As we do this, we will find that He makes us able to see and hear what would otherwise be invisible and inaudible to us.  All of which returns us to the question: how will we know when this is happening?

Two blind men are standing on a hill, looking out at a sunset.  Suddenly, one of the blind men is healed entirely, and the sunset bursts in on him.  “I can see!  I can see!” he shouts.

“How do you know?” asks his still blind companion.

4 Comments | Meditations, Person/Proposition | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Skeletal Evangelism

5 July 2009

Having recently become acquainted with Duane Garner through his Church Music Through History series, I have been listening to some of the other things he’s done, most recently a couple of lectures from a series titled “The Christian Imagination: Creativity, Fiction & Poetry.” The following quote comes from the second lecture, starting at 41:55:

So, trying to do theology and to read the Bible, and to live without engaging the imagination — it leaves us without an image of the future, it leaves us with very little in the Bible that we can actually benefit from.  Take out the stories, take out the poetry, and what are you left with?  It’s difficult for me to relate to the sort of mindset that’s only content with the barest and weakest and most anemic expressions of faith : “If we could just boil this down to the essentials, then we’ve got it.”  Wouldn’t we much rather become a people who are enraptured with the stories and the songs that the Bible gives us, even if we don’t understand them all, even if there’s some mystery there, and then bust out with a creativity of spirit that says, “How can we celebrate this; how can we sing that; how can we recognize this; how can we mark that?”
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
It’s the very nature of our five senses to pull us into whatever is there: scent, rhythm, texture, vision.  This is the way God’s word pulls us in.  It draws us in with its beauty to participate in it.  And so the mature Christian imagination is concerned with story, and poetry, and creativity.  We hear the stories, we know the stories, we see their beauty, and we see our own part in the story, and the continuation of the story.  The Christian imagination understands life as meaningful history, the structure of which is revealed in Jesus.

Indeed.  And nowhere is this observation more applicable than in evangelism.

We try to make evangelism easier, less intimidating, and we generally do this by boiling it down to seven key statements, or four laws, or three points, or a saving proposition, or whatever.  We want to be able to tell people that they can be confident they’ve “given someone the gospel” when they have said X — whatever X is.

We do this to equip our fellow believers, to build them up so that they can evangelize confidently, and that’s a commendable goal.  But the way we’re going about it has a heavy cost: we lose sight of what actually happens in evangelism.

In evangelism we introduce people to Someone we love.  Relaying a couple of key facts is, at best, only a decent start.

When I try to describe my wife to someone who’s never met her, I may search my memory for that one story or factoid that perfectly captures Kimberly’s quirky sense of humor, or her wit, or her boldness.  But once I’ve relayed that one thing, I don’t sit back and think to myself, “That’s it.  That’s all anyone needs to know.”  No single fact or story could possibly capture the richness or depth of the delightful woman that I married, and when I want someone to know Kimberly, to see her as I do, the stories and facts pour forth without effort.  I’m not concerned to tell them the least they need to know; I want them to know far more than that.

How much deeper and richer is Jesus?

Jesus promises us the life we were always meant to live: harmony with God forever as His image in the creation.  He is able to make that promise because He died for our sins and rose the third day, the firstfruits of the resurrection in which we will all one day partake.  And He does all this for us while we are His enemies. You wouldn’t want to try to convey what Jesus is like without that part of the story.

But there’s so much more.  He’s the kind of guy who tells homespun fables that make us see respectable, self-satisfied leaders as disobedient children, or murderous tenants, or inhospitable soil.  Aesop’s got nothing on Him.  When they ask Him what kind of holy teacher hangs out with hookers and drunks, He asks them what kind of doctor spends all his time with sick people.  When He walks into the temple and sees a house of worship turned into a continuing criminal enterprise, He calls it like He sees it — and starts flipping over tables to clean the place out. When the wedding party runs out of wine, He supplies more than a hundred gallons of the very best.  In His presence, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them — and God blesses those who do not shy away from all that Jesus is.

Jesus did not live a minimalist life; the Bible does not give us bare-bones accounts of it.    Why are we so desperate to know how much we can hold out on our unbelieving friends?

3 Comments | Bare Minimum Gospel Foolishness, Controversies, Meditations, Person/Proposition, Speaking as God Speaks, The Free Grace Food Fight | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

A Few Points on the Ethics of Theological Conflict

3 May 2009

I had occasion to recently come upon an article in Credenda/Agenda, the focus of which was an entirely different theological controversy than the one in which the free grace community finds itself presently embroiled. I’ve been following that controversy for some time, and I have a few opinions on it, but for the moment I’m going to keep them to myself, because I want to talk about something else: how God’s people conduct themselves in theological controversy.

The article devoted two of its eight subpoints to that very issue.  Now, I’ve had a lot to say about this over the past few years, but nothing I’ve produced has been as comprehensive as this article, and certainly nothing I’ve produced has been as well said.  Since I can do no better than to quote the article, I am going to do just that, by the kind permission of the folks at Credenda/Agenda and Christ Church of Moscow, Idaho.

You will want to know that since the particular doctrinal context of the article is largely an intra-Presbyterian conflict, there are several references to the Westminster Standards, which are (theoretically, at least) the doctrinal confession of the Presbyterian churches.  For our conflict, substitute something similarly authoritative.  You’ll be surprised how uncannily a propos this is, with that single substitution.

For your edification and reading pleasure, I give you an excerpt of “Credos” by Douglas Wilson, Credenda/Agenda 15 number 5, 2007:

On Heresy

1. I believe that any minister who brings or circulates charges of heresy, particularly when the charges concern a right understanding of the covenant, should have a household that is in harmony with the Scriptures (1 Tim. 3:4-5; Tit. 1:6), with children who all love and honor the Lord Jesus Christ. Who is the false teacher, and who is the true minister of the covenant? By their fruit you will know them (Matt. 7:15-20).

2. I believe that such qualifications are relevant in the current dispute because covenants are understood incarnationally. This statement is a broadside directed at heresy hunters who are doctrine machines, zealous for covenant theology, but whose covenantal lives in their own homes [are] in disarray. This is a widespread problem, and is not a veiled reference to any particular person or family.

3. I believe that the ignorance of the Westminster Standards displayed by some of her zealous defenders is astounding and inexcusable. I believe some people who bring charges of heresy should read a book sometime.

4. I believe that those who bring heresy charges need to take special care that their confidence in creedal advance has not been practically vitiated by other factors. Such factors could include pessimistic eschatology, extreme law/gospel dichotomies, ecclesiastical turf war envy, unhelpful two kingdom distinctions, or personal familial tragedies.

5. I believe that when heresy charges are confused, blurry and distorted enough to include in their charges very different and contradictory heresies, this is evidence, not that the heretics are broadly wicked enough to encompass any error, but rather that any stick is good enough to beat them with.

6. I believe that when lies and slanders are circulated under the cover of heresy charges, those so charged should not lament but should rather obey the Lord Jesus, and rejoice and be exceedingly glad (Matt. 5:11-12). The truth is vindicated, not only when faithful ministers proclaim and defend the truth, but also by those who cannot argue against it without resorting to distortion and misrepresentation.

7. I believe that bringing heresy charges in grief or sadness or with heaviness of heart is not to be thought of as an all-purpose moral disinfectant, allowing one to therefore get the facts wrong, charge individuals falsely, and then claim that the cause of all the trouble was lack of clarity on the part of those misrepresented.

8. I believe that the task of rooting out heresy was not committed to jitney theologians and hedge preachers on the Internet, furiously typing, as busy as the devil in a high wind.

On Giving Offense

1. I believe that few subjects are as badly neglected in the modern Church as the applied field of biblical polemics.

2. I believe that when controversy breaks out in the modern Church, it is therefore likely that all parties to the controversy share certain assumptions about what is appropriate in conflict and what is not, and these hidden assumptions tend to govern their discourse instead of the example and pattern of Scripture.

3. I believe that this hidden compromise of method vitiates the attempts of those believers who attempt to be faithful to the content of Scripture, as well as to the content of their confessional heritage.

4. I believe that in a particular kind of religious controversy the central point is to accomplish reconciliation, and that to fail in this task is to fail in maintaining the spirit of unity in the bond of peace (Eph. 4:2-6). We are to receive one another but not into disputes about debatable things.

5. I believe that in another kind of religious controversy the central point is to give offense, and that failure in such controversy is a failure to give offense in the way Scripture requires. And Scripture demands that we seek to offend willful obstinacy of opinion by ecclesiastical officials in the face of the grace of God.

6. I believe that failure to distinguish these two kinds of controversy, or a flat denial that there is ever a time when giving offense is a spiritual obligation, means in effect, that in the great basketball game between obedience and disobedience, the referees are always on the take.

7. I believe that our Lord Jesus, when confronted with ecclesiastical obstinacy, showed us this godly pattern for giving offense. Did you know the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?(Matt. 15:12). Yes, I did, He replied in effect. Mission accomplished (v. 13). The Lord attacked the scribes and Pharisees for their long robes, sanctimonious geegaws, prayer habits, tithing practices, their ways of greeting, their seating arrangements, their hypocrisies, and so on. After one such exchange (Luke 11:43-44), one of the lawyers said that Jesus was insulting them in His indictment too (v. 45). And in effect Jesus said, Oh, yes, thanks for that reminder. You lawyers . . .(v. 46). In short, Jesus was seeking to offend.

8. I believe that in a sinful world giving offense is one of the central tasks of preaching. When the offending word is brought to bear against those who have shown themselves to be unteachable, they are written off by that offending word. Employing a scriptural satiric bite is therefore not rejoicing in iniquity, but rather testifying against hardness of heart.

9. I believe therefore that in every controversy, godliness and wisdom (or the lack of them) are to be determined by careful appeal to the Scriptures, and not to the fact of someone having taken offense. Perhaps they ought to have taken offense, and perhaps someone ought to have endeavored to give it.

10. I believe that sometimes a fool is not to be answered according to his folly (Prov. 26:4), and those who contradict are to be answered in all gentleness (2 Tim. 2:24-25). In other situations a fool must be answered according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceits (Prov. 26:5), and those who oppose the truth are to be rebuked sharply (Tit. 1:12-14; 2:15). Examples in Scripture and church history of men who can do both are not to be thought of as conflicted personalities, but rather as examples of obedience and balance.

11. I believe that true biblical balance in such things is the fruit of wisdom, and that such balance is not usually found in hot-headed young men, who do not know what spirit they are of (Luke 9:55). Consequently, prophetic rebukes should come from seasoned prophets, from men called to the ministry of guarding the Church of God. The work should be done by men of some age and wisdom, and not by novices, firebrands, and zealots.

12. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is always to be our example in dealing with certain kinds of religious leaders, and that where He has set an example, we must strive to follow Him. Part of this means we must be careful not to be hasty in imitating Him, since His wisdom was perfect and ours is not. It is therefore good to take counsel with others.

13. I believe that sharp rebukes and the ridiculing of evil practices should seldom be the first approach one should make, but usually should follow only after the rejection of a soft word of reproach, or when dealing with hard-hearted obstinacy displayed over an extended period of time. If this is not remembered, the satirist will find himself killing ants with a baseball bat.

14. I believe we must be careful not to let strong language and supposedly-righteous anger be a substitute for good arguments, to be employed when we feel threatened. Strong language must be weighed and measured, and must always have a point. Special thanks to Jim Jordan for his comments on the above.

The rest of the article focuses on the doctrinal content of the controversy, and depending on your background, may induce hyperventilation, redness of face, and blog posts.  If you want to read the whole thing, you can link directly to it here or have a look at the whole issue on the page for volume 15, number 5 of Credenda/Agenda.

Comments Off on A Few Points on the Ethics of Theological Conflict | Controversies, Speaking as God Speaks | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Church Music Through History

26 April 2009

For many people caught up in the worship wars, the history of church music is presumed to look like this: Generation A comes to faith, grows up, and introduces its music into the worship of the church, bringing fresh vigor and new life to the tired and outdated tunes that preceded them.  Then Generation B comes to faith, grows up, and introduces its music into the worship of the church, bringing fresh vigor and new life to the tired and outdated tunes of Generation A, who have in the meantime become a bunch of obstructionist old geezers.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

It is assumed that each generation’s music is the popular music of its youth, and it is assumed that this pattern has gone on since living memory, or at least since Pentecost.

Both of these assumptions are wrong.

In truth, the pattern is only about 200 years old.  For the preceding 1800 years, the church drew on a rich heritage of singing that was consciously shaped, not by the Top 40, but by the needs and demands of worship, and was made consciously different from the music outside the church.

Now, I’m not saying the early church had the whole thing knocked, and if only we’d forget the last couple of centuries everything would be fine.  Maybe our fathers were right, and maybe they were wrong.  But it seems telling to me that we’ve so thoroughly managed to forget what they did that we just assume the way it’s happened since the 1970s is the way that it has always been.  We’ve forgotten 1800 years of the music that nurtured our fathers, and it seems likely that they knew a few things that might benefit us.

I’d love to go off on this subject at great length.  I am preparing to do so.  But I am still in the midst of the preparations.  In the meantime, I would like to recommend a little audio set you’ve probably never heard of.

Some while ago, Duane Garner did a little four-lecture series titled “Church Music Through History.”  The lectures were delivered as part of a ministry training program run by a church down in Louisiana, and but for the miracle of the internet, very few people would ever have heard them.  I would certainly never have heard them.

Thank God for Christendom 1.0, which gave us modern science, a ridiculous degree of wealth, and, in its death throes, the internet.

Garner walks through the history of the church’s music from the beginning right on down to today.  Of course, four lectures is barely enough to give the big picture — we’re talking about millennia here — but he does a masterful job of synthesizing.  These lectures are designed for musical laymen, so don’t worry about getting lost in a tangle of clefs, modes, and dotted sixteenth notes. By the same token, if you want to go further, Garner mentions a number of other resources in the course of his lectures.

Prepare, by the way, to be offended.  As Garner turns the spotlight on poor worship music from the last couple of centuries, it’s highly likely that he’ll be criticizing something you like, something you grew up with.  (His analysis of “There’s Just Something About That Name” was sobering, but hilarious nonetheless.) Don’t feel bad; he did it to me, too.  I was irritated to hear him picking on a song I used to sing when I was a worship team member…for about two seconds.  Then I realized that he was rather clearly right.  I would have wanted to argue more strenuously, but when the weak stuff was being presented cheek-by-jowl with the strong stuff, the comparison was so revealing that I didn’t have the heart to try.

That’s the value of big-picture historical survey.  In C. S. Lewis’ words, “Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds… by reading old books.”

And listening to old music.  As another friend put it to me a few years ago: “Musicians that aren’t conservatory-trained are pretty much trapped in their own century.”  We are Christians; the pilgrim citizens of the New Jerusalem.  Our culture spans the millennia, and we are a singing priesthood.  We, of all people, should not be trapped in our own century, musically or in any other way.

These four lectures are not a conservatory-in-an-ipod.  Not close.  But they’re a good, good place to start.

So get on over to Auburn Avenue Media Center and buy them.  They’re about a third of the way down the page, and at $1.99 a lecture, you’ll get the whole set for less than $8.

Not bad for a ticket out of your own century.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Easter and Eschatology: Is Premillennialism Different from Amillennialism?

12 April 2009

In the last post, I quoted Jim Jordan to the effect that amillennialism is racist, and pre- and postmillennialism have more in common with each other than they do with amillennialism.  I then noted that the ecclesiastical, organizational and confessional lines tend to be drawn the other way, lumping amillennialism and postmillennialism together on one side of the fence, with premillenniallism on the other.

Some people — I know a number — have fled to the premillennial side of the fence precisely because they were unable to make their peace with amillennialism.  Usually the point of serious discontent is the way amillennialism spiritualizes away the promise of kingdom victory over the evils of this world.

However, it has to be said that a great number have fled the other way, from premillennialism to postmillennialism, for very similar reasons.

Premillennial thought understands that Messiah’s kingdom only comes about when Messiah Himself is personally present to set it up.  Until then, human sinfulness presents an upper boundary to the world’s maturation.  That thought, taken by itself, lends itself to a story in which the world descends into the abyss until Messiah appears to save the day and set up His kingdom, and thence to a lifestyle not unlike the amillennial mentality Jordan skewered in last week’s post.  Hence the great number of dispensational premil folks who are “just hanging on until the Rapture.”  They don’t get involved in cultural endeavor because that’s “polishing the brass on a sinking ship.”

This breeds a defeatism, a sense that the gospel cannot have meaningful impact on a whole culture.  The depressive Christianity that comes of this drives people from the premillennial camp to postmillennialism, because they can’t believe that the gospel could be so ineffective.

They’re right to be repulsed; defeatist Christianity is biblically false, historically unsustainable, intellectually stultifying, morally bankrupt, and just plain nauseating.  You’d have to be a gnostic to find any encouragement in it at all…and hey! Guess what?  Most conservative American Protestants are closet gnostics, so there you go.

If the only choices were culturally vibrant postmillennial Christianity and defeatist premillennial gnosticism, I’d be a postmillennialist too.

But these are not the only choices.

Consider the mentality that gives rise to premillennial defeatism: “We’re not going to bring about the kingdom in any case, and Jesus will do it when He comes no matter what, so why invest in culture now?”  Suppose a Christian were to approach his personal sanctification the same way: “I’m not going to become perfect in this life anyway, and Jesus will make me perfect in the next in any case, so why struggle against sin now?”  The biblical answer, of course, is that we are supposed to anticipate and image the life to come in our lives now — and that answer applies at a cultural level as well as an individual level.

But is that compatible with premillennialism?

Sure — just as a sanctified life is.  Premillennial eschatology sees that Jesus’ presence on earth as king is necessary to setting up His earthly kingdom, and nothing less will suffice.  But it’s a far cry from that to saying that obedience to the dominion mandate now is worthless.  Jesus is Lord, and He knows far better than I what value my cultural contributions may have, so simple obedience is sufficient as a motive.  But beyond that, consider: what has been the impact of Christianity on Western culture?  Is Western culture measurably better than those cultures that have never had the benefit of 1500 years of Christian cultural hegemony?

It is.

Cultural endeavor is not polishing brass on a sinking ship after all; it’s continuing repair and improvement of a ship that will always need bilge pumps until the Lord returns.  Sometimes she floats pretty well; other times, she’s listing to starboard and the water line is two feet above the deck.

Presently, the ship of Western Christendom is a shattered ruin, and even what remains is slowly falling apart.  But Christendom gave us the neonatal respiratory ventilator, modern science, and an outpouring of philanthropy unparalleled in the history of the world.  God is pleased when those made in His image snatch the helpless from the jaws of death.  God is pleased when we cultivate the earth as He commanded.  God is pleased when we care for the poor, the weak, and the downtrodden.

But what if it all disappears?  What if the whole culture sinks beneath the chaotic sea as if it had never been? I mean, isn’t that what premillennial eschatology tells us?  I’m not certain that it is, necessarily, but let’s consider it as a worst-case scenario: Christendom 1.0 disappears as if it had never been, and “round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”  Then what?  What was the point?

Then we will know that the words Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes are true, that all our labor under the sun really is shepherding wind.

By the same token, we will know that to fear God and keep His commandments is man’s all, and we will be glad to have done it.

So let us labor as Solomon labored to build the temple, now long destroyed.  If it was worth doing then, it’s worth doing now.  We are the church of Jesus Christ; we believe in resurrection from the dead.  We live in light of eternity, and can afford to wait and see how God will resurrect all that has died to a brighter and yet more glorious future.

He is Risen!

2 Comments | Doctrinal Inconsistencies, Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Is Amillennialism Racist?

5 April 2009

In the preceding post, I addressed the accusations of racism that often attach to premillennialism.  In this post, I’d like to discuss another accusation of racism, this one leveled by Jim Jordan against amillennialism at this year’s Auburn Avenue Pastor’s Conference.

…which brings me to amillennialism, more evil than you can imagine.  The Great Commission is a postmillennial and a theocratic command.  Let’s go over it, in case there’s somebody here who doesn’t know that.  Jesus said “All power has been given to Me.”  How much power?  I can’t hear you.  All power?  All of it?  Where?  In heaven and on earth.  Any other place besides that, that counts?  Go therefore and disciple all nations.  Which nations?  All nations.  Do what to them?  Make converts in all nations?  No, disciple all nations.  Now what do the Jews understand by “disciple all the nations?”…They’re living in [a discipled nation].

………………………………………………….

They understand that this is a theocratic command to disciple all nations.  Is Jesus going to fail?  I can see it now…”Jesus… can come back tomorrow, He can come back any day.”  And what’s Satan going to say?  “All power, huh?  All authority in heaven and on earth, and you just couldn’t pull it off, could you, boy?”  Do you think that’s gonna happen?

I don’t.

And I think it borders on blasphemy to suggest that that’s gonna happen….Gentlemen, I don’t think we should be be very tolerant.  Premils understand that Jesus’ kingdom is going to conquer all the nations and it’s going to fulfill the purposes of this creation.  I can get along with premils.  Amils say, “God is going to toss this world; Jesus is going to fail; the nations are not going to be discipled.”  I don’t think that we can afford to be very respectful to that.

The amillennial outlook is racist. It says that because white, European civilization is falling apart, Jesus is coming soon.  Jesus isn’t really going to bring much Christianity to the black and brown and yellow people in the world.

It’s arrogant to assume that God’s center of history is on the white, European race, and because the whites are falling apart, God has got to end history.  That is arrogant.  It’s racist.  And it ends history, and this is where the problem comes in the church.  The amillennial attitude says there’s nothing new, there’s nothing more to be learned, there’s no need to have a continuing conversation….Guys who look forward to the day, a thousand years from now, when theologians in Sri Lanka bring new insights out of the book of Nehemiah — that’s not going to happen.  We don’t need new insights.  We’ve got it all written down in our confessions and catechisms and in a few of our commentaries.  Don’t tell us there’s anything new that’s going to come.  Don’t tell us that vast new insights are going to come from Africans and Asians and Polynesians, when those people, with their gifts, convert to the Lord.  No, there’s no need for any new insights.

The Eastern church stopped everything with the seventh ecumenical council.  Our amillennial brethren have stopped everything three hundred years ago.  And that’s deadly.  And it’s intolerable….It cripples the Reformed faith.  In all our Presbyterian and Reformed denominations and seminaries, we have to pretend that this is a perfectly okay way to think, and what winds up being the case is, that view dominates.  Sorry, I just don’t think we can have that.

…There’s no longer any time left to be tolerant of people who have that idea of what it means for Jesus to have all authority that He, by His Spirit and through His church, is going to disciple all nations.

Jordan says a lot of highly charged things here, as of course he is well aware.  I’m not sure he expects anyone to agree with them all.  But he does point out an important dividing line in eschatology.  Pre-, post- or amil view is less important than believing that there will be a real victory, and that God will win it, taking seriously the promise that the God will win the nations to Himself.  A premil view that takes the dominion mandate and the great commission seriously — a combination I am presently calling dominon premillennialism, for lack of a better term — is every bit as committed to this as a postmil view; we just quibble a little about the timeline.

And yet, as Jordan points out, the organizational and denominational lines are repeatedly drawn in a way that lumps postmil and amil folks together on one side of the fence, with premil folks on the other.  Why is that?

And given those choices, can anyone blame people for fleeing to the premil side of the fence, where there’s generally no need to tolerate amillennialism?

2 Comments | Meditations | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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