Book Review: First Freedom

Jason Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm Yarnell III have compiled a series of essays from various contributors that collectively offer the reader an introductory and yet wide-ranging look at the subject of religious liberty. They have done a commendable job, and the result is a helpful introduction (even if disjointed in some places).

Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, eds., First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Second (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016).

Introduction

Jason Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm Yarnell III have compiled a series of essays from various contributors that collectively offer the reader an introductory and yet wide-ranging look at the subject of religious liberty. This volume is the second edition, published in 2016 (the first was published in 2007), and the opening acknowledgements celebrate the collaborative efforts of “three seminaries, one university, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission [of the Southern Baptist Convention], and a Baptist publishing house.”^{^[1]} Each author offers his particular expertise to “provide an introductory look at the biblical and historical beginnings of religious liberty” as well as some descriptions of “its contemporary expression and defense.”^[2] Throughout this volume there is also an emphasis on the historical “price that was paid” by “Baptist brothers and sisters” in the past “for the establishment and defense of religious liberty.”^[3]

The book is divided into three successive sections – a historical section, a pedagogical one, and a final one that promotes activity and strategies for the reader. Of course, there is an overlap of the subject matter and methodologies in each distinct section, and each chapter is written as an essay that may stand alone, but the editors have aimed at these categories for readability and logical progression. One of the weaknesses of a book like this, however – one that compiles essays from various authors – is that it is difficult to provide the reader with a consistent and coherent argument throughout the book. Duesing, White, and Yarnell have done a commendable job, and the result is a helpful introduction (even if disjointed in some places) to the concept of religious liberty from a Baptist perspective.

Book Summary

Part One

Part one of this volume offers a brief look at some versions of religious liberty as they appear in history. Both Paige Patterson (then president and professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Thomas White (president and professor of systematic theology at Cedarville University) highlighted the historic Anabaptist emphasis on a form of religious liberty that certainly was echoed among English and American Baptists. These two authors did not address whether there is a genuine historical connection between Swiss and German Anabaptists and later Baptists in England and America, but they did make note of the common Anabaptist theme of religious liberty. Patterson and White seem to imply that there is a strong theological and philosophical connection (and maybe even a historical one?) between Anabaptists and Baptists on the doctrine of religious liberty, and this deserves to be addressed more clearly than what we are offered in these chapters devoted to providing the historical background. And yet, while this historical ground is contentious and shaky, the point remains that Anabaptists were chronologically the forerunners of later religious liberty proponents.

In the third chapter, suppling yet more historical background, Malcolm Yarnell (then professor of systematic theology, directory of the Oxford study program, director of the Center for Theological Research, and chair of the systematic theology department at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) claimed that there are two traditions of early American political theology. The “major tradition” he called the “Virginia tradition,” and the “minor tradition” he called the “South Carolina tradition.”^[4] Both are prominent streams of Baptist thought and argumentation, so Yarnell himself admited that the “minor” and “major” labels are not to so easy to assign. And yet there does seem to be a clearly recognizable difference between the Virginia and the South Carolina traditions.

Yarnell said the Virginia tradition is “identified with the rhetoric of John Leland, the agitation of the Danbury Baptist Association, and the subsequent separation doctrine in the federal judiciary.”^[5] Roger Williams, Thomas Jefferson, and Hugo Black (though Jefferson and Black were not Baptists) all played their part in establishing and perpetuating the Virginia tradition of religious liberty, which is marked by an “emphasis on human and the separation of church and state.”^[6] William Screven, Oliver Hart, and Richard Furman (as well as other contemporaries and theological descendants of these men) played their part in promoting and institutionalizing the South Carolina tradition of religious liberty, which is perceived through the “lenses” of “divine Providence, human constitutionality, and social orderliness.”^[7]In the end, Yarnell, White, and Patterson all urged the reader to strive for a better imperfect system until the perfect comes at the arrival of King Jesus.

Part Two

Part two of this book is intended to be pedagogical. Three more authors seem focused on giving the reader a definition, an explanation, and a strategy to engage the world around with the doctrine of religious liberty. This section is important for obvious reasons, one might even say that it ought to be the core contribution of such a book, but it is quite disappointing in its delivery. Barrett Duke (then vice president for public policy and research at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) contributed the least helpful and most digressive chapter of this book. The title suggests that Duke will offer a definition of religious liberty (The Christian Doctrine of Religious Liberty), but he did not.^[8] What he advanced instead was an entirely new set of arguments (i.e., natural law, social, and theological) that are separated from the historical background we were given in the first three chapters. Even the theological arguments Duke presented are disconnected from the ones that were forwarded by historic Baptists (i.e., two kingdoms, jurisdictions of the church and state, etc.), and the reader is left wondering what doctrine of religious liberty Duke was arguing for.

The closest Duke came to providing a definition in his chapter was a list of “three useful categories of religious freedom,” which he borrowed from Philip Wogaman.^[9] These are (1) “absolute religious liberty” or “the internal freedom to believe and worship as one pleases,” (2) “qualified absolute religious liberty” or “the freedom to profess or to express one’s faith verbally,” and (3) “qualified religious liberty” or “the freedom to act in accordance with one’s religious insights and values.”^[10] But even here, Duke did not make it clear which (if any) of these he believed to be definitional of religious liberty, and he implied that any of the three might be warranted in various circumstances.^[11] In conclusion to Duke’s chapter, he simply cited Article XVII of the Baptist Faith and Message (on Religious Liberty) without explanation or comment. This article certainly is a definition of religious liberty, but Duke did not serve the reader well by neglecting to articulate how the article connects to the rest of his chapter, what the article means in practice, or why it is part of the confession of faith for Southern Baptists.

Evan Lenow (then assistant professor of ethics, Bobby L. and Janis Eklund Chair of Stewardship, director of the Richard Land Center for Cultural Engagement, director of the Center for Biblical Stewardship, and chair of the ethics department of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) contributed the second of these core chapters, and his is slightly better than Duke’s. Lenow took up his pen to explain why religious liberty is a means to an end. It is the freedom of believing citizens to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ without fear of state-sanctioned or state-allowed reprisals. Churches and their numerous members, and not the state or its citizens, are responsible to evangelize the world. And religious liberty provides a free platform from which to carry out this function. Lenow did, in fact, assert and defend this perspective, even though he did make a couple of minor historical errors.^[12]

Like Patterson and White (in Part One), Lenow also strongly implied that the Baptists in America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were directly influenced by the Anabaptists in sixteenth-century Europe. And what is more, Lenow presented a truncated selection of Baptist representatives from America – the first two perceived even by their contemporaries as idiosyncratic outliers among Baptists in America – Roger Williams, John Leland, and Edgar Mullins. There is no doubt that all three of these men have had a significant impact on the Baptist views of religious liberty, but they are hardly the only influential voices on the subject, and they all represent what Yarnell called the “Virginia tradition” of Baptists in his earlier chapter. The “South Carolina tradition” is absent in Lenow’s historical summary, and this is the sort of disjointedness that seems almost inevitable in a volume with multiple contributors with varying perspectives of their own.

The third chapter of this middle section was authored by Andrew Walker (then director of policy studies for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention), and his contribution is far better in both substance and form than the other two. Walker’s chapter is also lacking an explicit definition of religious liberty, though one assumes that Walker ought to have been able to depend upon Duke to provide such a thing in his own chapter. But the reader can piece together a functional definition from what Walker asserts near the end of his chapter. He says religious liberty is “like a lineman who clears the way for a running back,” it is “a small state and a large church,” and a kind of religious “pluralism.”^[13] With greater clarity, Walker says, “religion and politics must inexorably relate to one another. The exercise of religion requires nothing more and nothing less than a legal order that does not co-opt religion for state purposes nor impede the church’s mission.”^[14] Such a description of various features of religious liberty does indeed provide a functional definition.

Walker’s chapter is most concerned, however, not with defining religious liberty, but with exploring the relationship between religious liberty and the public square. For this purpose, Walker did provide a definition of the public square: “a matrix and amalgamation of cultural forces that provide a horizon of meaning for public life… In short, the public square is a function of our shared interaction within the institutions of culture.”^[15] And our shared interaction within the institutions of our present culture is changing dramatically, says Walker. Two specific features of the moral revolution that has taken place are (1) the “clash of orthodoxies” between the LGBTQ+ advocates and traditional Christians and (2) the presumption on the part of non-religious people in American culture that religious adherents have bad or nefarious motives for clinging to their ethical standards.^[16]

Walker provided arguments for a paradigm shift, for the adoption of various strategies, and for a comprehensive proposal. The paradigm shift he urged the reader to embrace is to view “religious liberty as hospitality and… as accommodation.”^[17] The sort of accommodation Walker promoted is one of religious pluralism, where all citizens seek understanding and give respect to those with whom they may disagree. The strategies Walker presented generally call for a return to the “ethos and intellectual milieu that birthed American principles, namely, natural rights.”^[18] Ultimately, the rights of citizens will be grounded in something that transcends government, or they will merely be decided and distributed by government itself. Walker claimed that the natural rights argument is a common-ground approach for Christians to contend for pre-political rights that are endowed by our Creator. And, finally, Walker’s proposal is an invitation (even an urging) for some Christians to commit themselves to political and public engagement for the sake of gospel and ecclesiastical advancement in American culture. Like missionary sponsors in the nineteenth century, public advocates today can “hold the ropes for those who labor to plant churches, evangelize, and equip the body of Christ.”^[19]

Andrew Walker’s chapter serves as a foundation and a pivot point for this book. As I mentioned earlier, Duke and Lenow contributed chapters that should have offered more substance, but they largely failed to provide anything significant or unique in their chapters or to meaningfully develop the theme of religious liberty in a cohesive way with the rest of the authors. Walker, on the other hand, did some of their work for them as well as his own. And his own work was to urge the reader to public engagement of some sort, even if only as an understanding and hospitable neighbor. Though Walker certainly hoped for more from some of his readers.

Part Three

The remaining section (Part three) and its four chapters provide the reader with a summary of several challenges to religious liberty, which have only become more apparent since the publication of this book. In chapter seven, Russell Moore (then president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) argued for a gospel and ecclesiastical emphasis in “the Baptist struggle for religious freedom.”^[20] American Evangelicals may indeed vote largely as a block, but they need not primarily think of themselves as a political interest group. The Baptist interest in religious liberty, from the beginning, is centered on the meaning of Christian salvation and the doctrine of the church. Therefore, says Moore, we must maintain a “firm grasp of the gospel,” and we must “protect the centrality of the church.”^[21]

Albert Mohler (president and Joseph Emerson Brown professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) contributed chapter eight, which offers yet more data and commentary on the clash between religious liberty and sexual freedom in American culture. Earlier in the book, Duke only touched this subject and Walker addressed it a bit more thoroughly, but Mohler here advanced his thesis: “we now face an inevitable conflict of liberties,”^[22] and “if we lose religious liberty, all other liberties will be lost, one by one.”^[23] According to Mohler, “Human rights and human dignity are temporary abstractions if they are severed from their reality as gifts of the Creator.”^[24] Thus, the state must recognize a moral standard above itself, or it will become a capricious enforcer of whatever moral regime may wield its authority. Mohler’s chapter did point to the horizon and help the reader see the gathering storm, but he did not offer much in the way of a call to specific action.

Thomas White made a second appearance, in chapter nine, having specific expertise as a Christian university president. His aim was to help the reader “prepare well to understand the coming challenges” and also to meet them with a faithful testimony.^[25] White listed several specific challenges for those connected with institutions of higher education, including the potential loss of tax-exemptions (and various hardships that might precipitate), legal penalties for Title VII and Title IX infractions, and the potential loss of accreditation. White also offered a handful of strategies for meeting these challenges. First, he said that every institution should get their documents in order. Next, he said that faculty and staff ought to be required to affirm those documents, including an explicit statement or confession of faith. Then, White said that universities would do well to lean into their distinctive Christian education, even making a biblical worldview part of the basic curriculum plan. Fourth, White said that schools ought to require chapel and emphasize the importance of spiritual growth and discipleship on campus. And last, he said that universities should require a personal profession of faith from prospective students. These strategies effectively double-down on the distinctly Christian character of Christian education, and White argued that this is the way forward in an increasingly antagonistic environment for religious liberty.

In chapter ten, Travis Wussow (then directory of international justice and religious liberty and general counsel for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention) explained and argued for a foreign policy effort to promote religious pluralism worldwide, especially in those countries that are Muslim-dominated and often antagonistic to this sort of religious liberty. Wussow acknowledged that international law cannot be enforced in such a way so as to require foreign states to grant their citizens the kind of religious liberty that is enjoyed by citizens of another state. However, he did argue that international law does have influence, and there are economic levers to pull in an effort to promote various foreign policy goals. Wussow did note two specific applications of religious liberty in modern Islamic countries: one, by aiming to remove criminal penalties for “apostasy,” and two, by encouraging Muslims to view religious conversion away from Islam as something other than “apostasy.”^[26] While Wussow pointed to some positive advancements, it seems highly unlikely that either of these applications is likely to gain much ground in the near future.

In the final chapter of this book, Jason Duesing (provost and associate professor of historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) ended much where he began. He summarized the books aims: “first, to show how Christians have defended religious liberty throughout history;” “second… to present the biblical and rational defense for the practice and protection of religious liberty;” and “third… [to] review the present and future threats to religious liberty.”^[27] Duesing invites the reader to consider the “end goal” of religious liberty by contemplating the humbling sacrifice and the glorious exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ described in Philippians 2. He said that there is both a warning and a hope, as well as an implied commission to use the time between the sacrificial cross and the judgment throne. Duesing concluded by saying, “Hope. Warning. Good news that Jesus is Lord shared while there still is time even at the risk of one’s security, safety, and rights – all for the glory of God. This is the true end of religious liberty.”^[28]

Conclusion

Like all books with various contributing authors, some are better contributors than others, and some parts are of greater value than the whole. This short introduction to the topic of religious liberty is also hindered by its cultural and political moment. The challenges to religious liberty (which comprise a good portion of the substance and interaction of this book) are somewhat dated after nearly ten years. In some ways, the challenges articulated have become greater and more clearly defined with time, but the challenges themselves and the proposed strategies to meet them are inevitably limited to the priorities and structures of the moment in which they were written.

No doubt, some of the proposals and truth-claims in this book are timeless, and these shall be applicable to any audience. Because this is true, and because this book does provide some good historical background for the concept of religious liberty among the Baptists, it seems that the reader may benefit from reading it. There are better books and other resources that will give readers a more comprehensive, consistent, and historically conversant exposure to religious liberty, but First Freedom can certainly be a decent introduction. It is easy to read, it has several quality chapters, and it is a hope-filled and thoughtful call for Christians to live today as ambassadors for Christ while King Jesus is still receiving new converts into His kingdom. One day religious liberty will be no more, but until then, let us seek its true end.

Marc Minter is husband to Cassie and father to Micah and Malachi. He is also the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Diana, TX. Website: fbcdiana.org. Email: marc@fbcdiana.org.

^[1] Jason G. Duesing, Thomas White, and Malcolm B. Yarnell III, eds., First Freedom: The Beginning and End of Religious Liberty, Second (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2016). xi.

^[2] First Freedom, 7.

^[3] First Freedom, 7.

^[4] First Freedom, 51.

^[5] First Freedom, 51.

^[6] First Freedom, 79.

^[7] First Freedom, 78.

^[8] In his introduction, Jason Duesing says that Duke provides “several definitions of religious liberty, including the entire article from the Baptist Faith and Message 2000” (First Freedom, 6). However, I am unable to find even a single definition of religious liberty in Duke’s chapter, other than the article from the Baptist Faith and Message that is tacked onto the end. And one wonders why Duke offered nearly no comment on the article from the BF&M. It is merely appended as something of an afterthought.

^[9] First Freedom, 107.

^[10] First Freedom, 107.

^[11] Duke said that “government must step in to protect its citizens” when “some people… abuse any liberty” (First Freedom, 107). But Duke did not explain what sort of religious liberty he wanted to promote or what sort of qualifications he would like to have marking off the parameters of religious liberty.

^[12] One example of a historical error is Lenow’s assertion that Christianity “became the official religion of the [Roman] empire under Constantine” (First Freedom, 112). Of course, Constantine did issue the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, but this was an edict of toleration and legalization, not conscription. It was Theodosius the Great who issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD which did officially mandate Nicene Christianity as the state religion.

^[13] First Freedom, 154-155.

^[14] First Freedom, 152.

^[15] First Freedom, 128-129.

^[16] First Freedom, 129.

^[17] First Freedom, 145.

^[18] First Freedom, 146.

^[19] First Freedom, 155.

^[20] First Freedom, 160.

^[21] First Freedom, 165.

^[22] First Freedom, 174.

^[23] First Freedom, 170.

^[24] First Freedom, 170.

^[25] First Freedom, 182.

^[26] First Freedom, 240-241.

^[27] First Freedom, 249.

^[28] First Freedom, 257.

Book Review: Separation of Church and State

Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State, First Harvard University Press paperback (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).

Introduction

Philip Hamburger is a graduate of Princeton University (1979) and Yale Law School (1982). He is the Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and he is the Chief Executive Officer of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. He has written several books over the last two decades, but this one (Separation of Church and State, originally published in 2002) is something of a bombshell on the field of conventional wisdom regarding the concept of separation between church and state. Hamburger not only diverges from the typical interpretation of church-state separation, but he also provides a great deal of evidence that the concept itself has transformed quite significantly over time and that the present application of it is nearly the opposite of its original intention.

On one of the opening pages, Hamburger cites three statements that form the pathway of perspectival development on this thoroughly American idea. The first is from the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” The second is from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association – “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.” And the third is from the Supreme Court judgment, written by Justice Hugo Black, in the case of Everson v. Board of Education – “In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’” Thus, Justice Hugo Black established a judicial (as well as social and political) precedent by interpreting the First Amendment through the prism of Thomas Jefferson’s pen, which Hamburger argues was a tool for atypical political and religious ideas in the early nineteenth century (and far more so in the eighteenth century) and intentionally innovative.

Book Summary

Hamburger provides a thesis statement in his introduction. He writes, “this book attempts to understand how Americans came to interpret the First Amendment in terms of separation of church and state, and through this inquiry it traces how Americans eventually transformed their religious liberty.”^[1] In summary, Hamburger argues that it is “misleading to understand either eighteenth-century religious liberty or the First Amendment in terms of separation of church and state.”^[2] Rather the sort of liberty sought by many of America’s founders and the various religious dissenters who argued for it was defined by a limitation upon governmental institutions and not religious ones. Specifically, Americans (including both religious and non-religious) wanted the freedom to believe and behave according to various religious traditions without civil penalty. The dominant religious worldview of eighteenth-century America was Protestant Christianity, and religious liberty was comprehended from this perspective. Thus, dissenters and non-religious Americans generally maintained that atheists, Roman Catholics, and Muslims were prohibited from participating in civil institutions. However, it was the civil institutions themselves that ought to be prohibited from exercising authority in Protestant ecclesiastical affairs.

Hamburger organized this book in four main parts, each focusing on theoretical and practical developments in the concept of religious liberty, which correspond to a basic chronological structure. Part I provides the eighteenth-century context for the religious liberty debate. Hamburger demonstrates that it was not the dissenters who argued for separation, but their establishment opponents who slandered them by making the accusation that separation was the real goal. In fact, dissenters not only denied the accusation, but many of them expressed a willingness to maintain a genuine connection between church and state.

In Part II, Hamburger explains how the Democratic Republicans (the opposing party to the Federalists) in the early nineteenth century shifted the entire religious liberty debate. Thomas Jefferson’s presidential bid was hotly contested by the Federalists, and many establishment preachers made public their opposition to Jefferson’s candidacy. Jefferson was not himself a religious man, and so his lack of ecclesiastical adherence was a major target of the Federalists. In an effort to reduce the heat of these attacks, Republicans argued for the removal of religion from politics. Thus, politics became a form of religion, and America’s perspective of religious liberty was pushed in the direction of separation. It is also important to note here that Hamburger provided evidence that Baptist dissenters did not embrace the Jeffersonian concept of separation any more than the establishmentarian Federalists did at that time.

Hamburger argues, in Part III, that it was really during the mid-nineteenth century that Americans more commonly began to embrace an increasingly radical view of separation. It was then that theological liberals and everyday Americans were animated by a shared public enemy – Roman Catholicism. It was Roman Catholics who then represented the sort of establishmentarianism from which Americans had broken free during the previous century. And Rome was inherently establishmentarian (so the argument went), unlike the various Protestant traditions which generally defined American culture and religion at that time. This anti-Catholic sentiment was coupled with another societal development that made a total separation between religion and politics seem not only possible but necessary. Americans became a society of all sorts of specializations and public-private distinctions. Educators, politicians, lawyers, judges, legislators, merchants, and even consumers all found a great deal of convenience in separating their religious beliefs from their professional work or their participation in the American economy. Some claimed private religious belief, and some felt an obligation to the general societal ethic which was influenced by the traditional religious beliefs of others, but Americans were largely desirous of professional and leisure activities that could be separated from any religious constraints. Thus, anti-Catholic sentiment and American pragmatism made separation seem like an American fundamental.

In Part IV, Hamburger moves to the crux of his argument – the legal establishment of a developed constitutional interpretation of the First Amendment. In the twentieth century what became an American fundamental or principle over the course of about one hundred years was given judicial authority by no less than the Supreme Court of the United States of America. And the interpretive grid that was employed in order to offer historic grounding for such an interpretation was the innovative and thoroughly secularist words of Thomas Jefferson, even though his concept of separation at the beginning of the nineteenth century was neither widely embraced by the public nor a desire of the strongest advocates for religious dissent.

Hamburger concludes, “In the transfiguring light of their fears, Americans saw religious liberty anew, no longer merely as a limitation on government, but also as a means of separating themselves and their government from threatening claims of ecclesiastical authority. Americans thereby gradually forgot the character of their older, antiestablishment religious liberty and eventually came to understand their religious freedom as a separation of church and state.”^[3]

Conclusion

Having read many of the primary sources from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Baptists (including nearly all of the published writings of Isaac Backus and John Leland), I can say that Hamburger’s argument from the first half of this book rings true. Hamburger is exactly right about Leland’s idiosyncrasies as a Baptist and his infatuation with Jeffersonian politics. And Hamburger is also accurate in his description of the anti-establishment arguments from most Baptists in colonial and early America. They were not interested in extended religious liberty to “papists” (i.e., Roman Catholics), “Turks” (i.e., Muslims), or atheists. And most of them not only tolerated a religious oath for civil office, but they also advocated for such a thing. Even religious dissenters believed that an ordered and prosperous civil society necessitated a prerequisite embrace of Christian (namely Protestant) doctrine and ethics.

Hamburger’s historical receipts are matched by his judicial acumen as he interacts with the more recent developments in “America’s principle” as interpreted from the First Amendment. He rightly and effectively shows how religious liberty has become far more a restraint on religion than a restraint on government. And he also makes a compelling case for the claim that politics and government have become a religion of their own. But in the absence of genuine religious influence – which establishes and reinforces moral standards and civil order – citizens will inevitably turn to government when chaos threatens, and they will demand civil coercion and penalties. What a different view of American society this would become from what was envisioned and established by our founders.

This book was accessible in its content, logical and forceful in its argument, and compelling with regard to the evidence provided. I believe Hamburger has successfully demonstrated that the concept of religious liberty deserves more than the misleading, intellectually unfair, and historically inaccurate phrase “separation of church and state.” If you are interested in participating in a thoughtful discussion about the American principle of religious liberty, then I highly recommend that you read this book in order to know what that principle actually is and from whence it has come.

^[1] Philip Hamburger, Separation of Church and State, First Harvard University Press paperback (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 3.

^[2] Hamburger, 9.

^[3] Hamburger, 492.

Theological Triage: A Call to Thoughtful Christianity

Theological Triage is a phrase coined by Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (see his original article HERE). The phrase joins two concepts: one, diagnosing a medical emergency, and the other, the field of theology. Theological Triage is the art of categorizing theological questions or topics in such a way so as to give priority to some doctrines over others.

In short, all doctrine is important because it is God’s truth articulated, but not all doctrine is equally important.

Some doctrines are essential to the Christian faith, some are essential to doing life together among a local church family, and some are not worth dividing over at all. Furthermore, some doctrines are worth dying for, but not all doctrines should kill or divide us.

I would like to offer 4 categories or “levels” for us to use in our Theological Triage, and my hope is that we will be able to discuss theology without either leaving our convictions or our friendships behind.

First-Level Doctrines

These doctrines divide Christians from non-Christians. Some First-Level doctrines are the authority of Scripture (Are the Scriptures the final court of arbitration when we have a difference of opinion?), the Triunity of God (Is God one or three or both?), the true divinity and true humanity of Christ (How do we understand Christ as the unique God-man?), the substitutionary atonement of Christ upon the cross (How did Christ substitute Himself under God’s penalty for sinners?), and the exclusivity of Christ as Savior (Is there any way for someone to be saved apart from personal trust in Jesus Christ?). Many of these First-Level doctrines are contained in the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicaean Creed.

These First-Level doctrines build a fence for us around things like cooperative evangelistic efforts (Will we participate in an “evangelistic” event with this other group or church? Will we endorse/recommend a parachurch ministry? Will we be associated with a person, group, or activity?). These doctrines also include or exclude certain guest preachers (Will we welcome this or that guest preacher on a Sunday? Will this or that preacher be affirmed as an officiant of a wedding or funeral service in our church building?).

Again, these First-Level doctrines divide Christians from non-Christians… These are the doctrines for which Christians must be willing to die.

Second-Level Doctrines

These doctrines divide one local church from another. Some Second-Level doctrines include believer’s baptism (What does baptism mean and who should be baptized?), church membership (What does membership mean and how is membership to be practiced?), and the Lord’s Supper (What does the Lord’s Supper mean and who should participate?).

These Second-Level doctrines build a fence for us around things like our local church pastors (Whose pastoral leadership will you follow?), our local church membership (What church will you join? And, who will you welcome into your church membership?), and our church planting partnerships (Will we offer our local church support for a denomination, or association, or particular church planting effort?).

Again, these Second-Level doctrines divide one local church from another… These are the doctrines over which Christians may join or leave a church.

Third-Level Doctrines

These doctrines vary among Christians (especially in their application) without necessarily dividing Christians or local churches. Some Third-Level doctrines include the details of our eschatology (When will Jesus return? What is the millennium? Who is the anti-Christ?), the intermediate state of the soul (What exactly is existence like between death and final resurrection?), and eternal rewards and punishments (Will there be any difference in the degree to which Christians are rewarded in glory and the lost are punished in judgment?).

These Third-Level doctrines do not have to build any fences or divide any Christian brotherhood, but they may provide areas of fruitful discussion and sanctifying application for Christians in fellowship together. If Christian brothers and sisters are willing and able to discuss these Third-Level doctrines in a loving and patient manner, then these discussions may produce spiritual growth and provide a marvelous occasion for exercising biblical exegesis, faithful living, and humble wisdom.

Again, these doctrines vary among Christians… and I (for one) welcome the kind of spiritual growth and sharpening that careful theological dialogue produces among Christian brothers and sisters. I also pray that Christians will become better able to benefit from dialogues over Third-Level doctrines and the applications thereof.

Fourth-Level Doctrines

These things have no clear imperative from Scripture; they are matters of Christian conscience. These matters are sometimes called “adiaphora,” which literally means “indifferent things” or spiritually neutral things. These Fourth-Level doctrines are the wise, biblically principled grounds from which we make decisions about where to go to school, what job we should take, what party we should attend, what coffee we should drink, or how long we should let our hair grow.

These Fourth-Level doctrines must not build fences, otherwise, we will be attempting to bind the consciences of fellow Christians on matters in which God has left freedom. In fact, dogmatic Fourth-Level doctrines are the very definition of legalism. We ought to give one another grace and charity where God gives us liberty.

I am convinced that we must learn the sensible art of theological triage.

A Call to Thoughtful Christianity

For the sake of our personal spiritual development and for the sake of our church families, we must learn to distinguish those things (those doctrines) that are essential from the non-essential. We must distinguish those vitally important doctrines from the essential ones and the lesser important ones.

For the sake of the gospel, Christians must be able to know the basis of their distinct relationships with other Christians generally, with fellow church members specifically, and with their non-Christian neighbors in the world around them.

Furthermore, we should remember that intellectual and spiritual growth is a process, and where we are now is not where we may always be. By God’s grace, we shall all grow in time.

Coalescing Churches and Missionaries

The Church – the universal body of Christ – is a unique institution made up of people rather than materials or mechanisms. Established and sustained by God Himself, the Church acts most like she should when she fulfills the role for which she has been created. The oft-quoted passage at the end of Matthew’s gospel contains the commission of the Church – her purposeful assignment and the promise of her providential Lord. In Matthew 28:18-20 Jesus says to His disciples,

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Mark Dever (commenting on this very passage) says, “Jesus’ command to go ‘to the ends of the earth’ [or ‘all nations’] reminds believers that Christ is Lord over all, that he loves all, and that he will call all to account on the great day. Therefore, Christians today have a responsibility to take the gospel around the world.” Dever also understands that congregations (local expressions of the universal Church) are bearers of this same responsibility, because congregations are made up of individual Christians. “Christians together can pool wisdom, experience, financial support, prayers, and callings and direct them all to the common purpose of making God’s name great among the nations…” Dever leaves no room for individual Christians or assembled groups of the same to remain unengaged from this Great Commission when he says, “Witnessing the glory of God proclaimed around the globe in the hearts of all his people should be an end and purpose for every local church.”[1]

Involvement in this intentional activity is no peripheral matter for any local church, and many congregations have been purposefully working at it for a long time. However, recent research and contemporary conversations are revealing that a disconnect may have developed over time between the two prongs that have formed the spearhead of this Christian commission. Local churches in America seem to have been allowed to understand missions as something that is done over there – anywhere but here – by someone called a missionary. Many local churches support “missions efforts” with their financial backing, giving a portion of their budget to some kind of cooperative program that distributes funds to local and international missionaries. Sometimes local churches may even call a special prayer meetings with a “missions” emphasis, but taking ownership of particular missional efforts appears to be lacking at best. In addition, the perceived distance between missions and local church ministry has permitted most American Christians to remain personally unengaged from the Great Commission. This is a tragedy.

What is worse is that missionaries, having such a strong commitment to go and tell, are continuing to do so without an essential and healthy attachment to a local church or churches. “The problem is that there are now missionaries all over the world with virtually no connection to local churches to love and care for them, shepherd them, and join them on mission.” To compound the loss, “there are also local churches full of laypeople talking about being ‘missional’ without the benefit of learning from those who are actively crossing cultures with the Gospel. They are talking about mission without the input of missionaries (emphasis added).”[2] If one is to understand what it is to be missional, it is imperative that one understands what it is to be a missionary.

Ed Stetzer helpfully defines the term “missional” in his standard-setting work on the subject of “missional churches.” He says, “Missional means actually doing mission… adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining biblically sound.”[3] With this definition in mind, it is helpful to consider that missional living may only realized in the local church context as missionaries and their efforts are appropriately known and celebrated in the local church.

The bringing together of missionaries and the local church is a combination that regains the benefits of the multi-membered body of Christ. If the missionary is the extended arm of the local church, then the local church is the core, which lends stability, resources, and strength to the missionary. Just as the arm needs the core to function properly, so the core needs the exercise, reach, and functionality of the arm in order to remain healthy. There are many more aspects of local church ministry that may not include a direct relationship to missionary efforts, but all of what the local church is and does should center around the idea of living missionally in light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ – both in the context of its own community and in the world at large. These two distinct branches of missional engagement (missionaries and the local church) are so intertwined that each compliments the other in multiple ways, particularly when they are both functioning healthily.

The pervading goal of the missionary is the same as the local church, namely the Great Commission – make disciples, baptize them, and teach submission to Christ to the glory of His great name. If this directive is embraced and acted upon, the result will inevitably be a plurality of baptized disciples who will be life-long learners who grow in their submission to Christ. This plurality of Christians, if the missionary is properly focused on the task, will be formed into a local church themselves. “The result of [the missionary’s] work should be biblical, local, independent churches that reflect the soil in which they are planted.”[4] Therefore, the missionary is most effective when he is planting local churches with those baptized disciples who have benefitted from his proclamation of the Gospel.

These locally planted churches will be better churches if they resemble the same kind of local church(es) that have cultivated a quality relationship with the missionary who facilitated their own rooting and grounding. If missionaries and local churches work in tandem (as it seems they were designed to do), then the cycle will simply continue. Aubrey Malphurs says of church planting and its ultimate goal,

“We are not to start just any kind of church; they should be Great Commission churches. These are churches that take most seriously Jesus’s command to make disciples! Making disciples begins with evangelism and continues with edification or the building up of the saints in the faith with the ultimate goal of their attaining spiritual maturity (Col. 1:28–29; Heb. 5:11–6:1).”[5]

Malphurs’ statement brings us back to the beginning; the Church acts most like she should when she fulfills the role for which she has been created. The goal of newly planted church is the same as the missionary, and it is the same as the established local church congregation. When the established local church is healthy, she will serve her role well as a support structure for the missionary and a model for the church plants that (by God’s grace) result from his efforts. When the missionary is healthy, he will serve his role well as an evangelist and facilitator for the eventual indigenous church plant(s) as well as a motivation and inspiration for the congregants who support him. When the indigenous church plant is healthy, she will repeat the cycle with new missionaries and fresh groups of newly converted Christians.

There are so many benefits to this relationship that a brief work such as this cannot explore them all. Suffice it to say that the coalescing of churches and missionaries is a recipe for enjoying vibrant, Great Commission assemblies of vigorous, missional disciples of Christ – both locally and globally.

[1]Dever, Mark. The Church: The Gospel Made Visible. Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2012.

[2]Crider, Caleb, Larry McCrary, Rodney Calfee, and Wade Stephens. Tradecraft: For the Church on Mission. Portland, OR: Urban Loft Publishers, 2013.

[3]Stetzer, Ed. Planting Missional Churches. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2006.

[4]Crider, Caleb, Larry McCrary, Rodney Calfee, and Wade Stephens. Tradecraft: For the Church on Mission. Portland, OR: Urban Loft Publishers, 2013.

[5]Malphurs, Aubrey. The Nuts and Bolts of Church Planting: A Guide for Starting Any Kind of Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011.

The “Jesus” of Mormonism

What do Mormons believe about Jesus Christ?

As is true of Christian churches, those parishioners of the Mormon Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints may not be aware of or able to articulate every foundational belief of the institution. Like many naïve Christian church attendees, some Mormon temple members might be unable to state (and fewer are likely able to explain) the doctrinal stance of the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church pertaining to the person and work of Jesus Christ. However, a church’s statement of belief concerning Christ (biblically orthodox or not) is essential to understanding what the church believes about almost everything else.

So foundational is the biblical description of Jesus Christ that maintaining an inaccurate or lacking view of His person and work in the face of truth is destructive to the soul. In other words, belief or trust in the true Jesus of the bible ensures the salvation of one’s soul, but a belief or trust in someone with different or missing attributes accompanied by the same name leaves one condemned. Of particular importance is the acknowledgment of Christ’s full divinity and actual humanity. This unique and biblical description of Jesus Christ is at the heart of Christian belief and the message of the Gospel itself. God’s plan to redeem sinful humanity is only accomplished through the person and work of this singularly capable God-man – Jesus Christ.

Mormonism maintains a view of Christ that is extremely dangerous to those who are not deeply planted in the soil of biblical truth. One could read the statements about Christ on the official Mormon or LDS websites without noticing much in the way of distinguishing marks from Christianity. However, Mormons may use the same terms as Christians when they speak of Christ, but they have attempted to redefine His person and work – the terms have new definitions.

Brigham Young, a major Mormon Prophet who directly followed Joseph Smith, said, “He [Jesus] was the Son of our Heavenly Father, as we are the sons of our earthly fathers. […]Jesus is our elder brother spirit clothed upon with an earthly body begotten by the Father of our spirits.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 2, September 28, 1862 [emphasis mine]).

An Apostle of Mormonism stated, “We are brethren and sisters of Satan as well as of Jesus. It may be startling doctrine to many to say this; but Satan is our brother. Jesus is our brother. We are the children of God. God begot us in the spirit in the eternal worlds.” (Apostle George Q. Cannon, March 11th, 1894, Collected Discourses, compiled by Brian Stuy, vol. 4, p. 23 [emphasis mine]).

Not only do Mormons believe that Jesus was the literal offspring of Mary and a physical Heavenly Father, but it also claims that Jesus had many wives himself. “The grand reason of the burst of public sentiment in anathemas upon Christ and his disciples, causing his crucifixion, was evidently based on polygamy, […] a belief in the doctrine of a plurality of wives caused the persecution of Jesus and his followers. We might almost think they were ‘Mormons.'” (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 1:345-346 [emphasis mine]).

In conclusion, there could be many other citations and a more detailed description of the Mormon Jesus as he contrasts the biblical Jesus Christ. The words of authoritative Mormon Apostles and Prophets state it clearly as they proclaim, “It is true that many of the Christian churches worship a different Jesus Christ than is worshipped by the Mormons or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” (LDS Quorum of the Seventy member Bernard P. Brockbank, The Ensign, May 1977, p. 26 [emphasis mine]) In fact, Brigham Young makes it unambiguous when he says, “Brigham Young said that the “Christian God is the Mormon’s Devil…” (Journal of Discourses, Volume 5, page 331).

The Jesus of Christianity and of the bible is not the Jesus of Mormonism and, therefore, not the Jesus who saves.

The purpose of stating such a thing in dramatic contrast is not to personally ‘cast stones’ at those who willingly take upon themselves the label of “Mormon” or “LDS.” Rather, my purpose is to present the real and present divergence of these two religious systems. Christianity – the bible itself – offers salvation, the forgiveness of sins, through the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. This gift is to be received by faith, apart from any work, effort or will of man. Mormonism offers a version of salvation through one’s diligent effort and overwhelming obedience. This system is like many others with respect to its “path towards salvation.” According to the bible, the path is really no path at all – the path is a man, and only He can save sinners from God’s imminent wrath (John 14:6).

Strength to Strength in times of Suffering

In his devotional “Mornings and Evenings,” Charles Spurgeon wrote his own commentary on the passing of Christians from security and strength to further stability and power. This progression is contrary to much of our natural experience, and Spurgeon acknowledges the same. A runner, for instance, begins with full energy and ends with none; and the wrestler finishes his long match with much less vigor than he had at the start. But Christians are anchored and empowered by someone who is unnatural, and their advancement from strength to strength is observable as well as biblical.

The Bible speaks of a God who is not merely a passive all-observing eye. No, the biblical God is the creator and sustainer of every aspect of His creation; He is the ever-active, sovereign king of the universe (Acts 17:24-25).

This brings great comfort to the humble Christian. Spurgeon says, “Thou shalt never find a bundle of affliction which has not bound up in the midst of it sufficient grace.”[1] This means that there is no amount of suffering, no tumultuous season of life, no seemingly unrewarded effort expended that is completely in vain. The Bible never calls evil by the name of good, but all things are by God’s design and for the ultimate good of His children (Rom. 8:28; Lam. 3:37-38).

Much more could be said on this biblical assertion of God’s sovereign work to bring about the sanctification of His children, but Christians may be observed as having lived out this surprising experience as well. While not all churchgoers exhibit this same development, the mark of mature Christianity is finding secure refuge in Christ.

Consider the believer who receives a terrible diagnosis from the doctor. She may recoil and feel distress just as much as anyone, but her soul is eventually steadied and the Commander of the storm calms the gales of her mind.

Think also of the young Christian couple that rushes their newborn to the emergency room only to learn that their child’s mortal life has ended much too soon. Their pain and anguish is beyond words, but the light of life somehow invades their dark night of the soul.

Christ is their portion, and He is enough.

Once, Christians were commonly noticed as experiencing joy in the face of their own sorrow. In our day of commonplace denial and distraction, it is not so normal to see anyone bear the load of suffering well. Yet, when the Christian does it is a bittersweet site indeed.

What a peculiar beauty it is to see the Christian rejoice in the Lord while they are enduring significant pain. Others may even become irrationally envious of the agony of these exemplary saints when that agony is born steadily by the grace of God.

Spurgeon is also quoted as having said, I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages.

The counter-intuitive destination of a Christian’s suffering is safe in the arms of Christ. Isn’t it a wonder that Christians will often find themselves crawling out of Christ’s bosom and onto the floor of life until they encounter some strange pain or confusing fear? Upon such an encounter, they cry out for the embrace of the Father’s care and find Him worthy of their full trust and reliance.

Only in this light may we perceive suffering as a gift.

Oh, that you and I would know the strength of God’s abiding Spirit – with or without the common suffering of life under the curse of sin. May the Lord bless us with His caring allotment of energy and affliction, for His glory and for our greatest joy.

“[W]e rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”[2]

“God will give the strength of ripe manhood with the burden allotted to full-grown shoulders.”[3]

[1] http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/1214-am.html

[2] Romans 5:3-5, English Standard Version

[3] http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/1214-am.html

The Synoptic Problem

The so-called Synoptic Problem does not seem to be a problem at all, in the useful sense of the word. It seems to me that a better title for this issue would be the Synoptic Production or the Synoptic Compilation. Yet, the Synoptic Problem it remains, and Clements describes the matter by saying, “Even a quick reading of the four Gospels reveals that three of them (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are alike, especially when contrasted with John.“ He goes on to say that these similar three are called “synoptic” for the very reason that they share a common view of the life, ministry, sayings, works, death and resurrection of Christ. “A more detailed comparison, however,” says Clements, “reveals a wide variety of differences as well as similarities… From a literary point of view, these facts raise difficult questions. How did the Gospels originate? Did their authors use each other’s work, and did they have other materials available to them?”[1]

The problem, then, is in the mind of the form, source and redaction critics. This is not to say that the questions are not interesting or worthy of our time, but the questions themselves are not problems. However, some of the answers provided by the critics who ask these questions are problematic indeed.

In 1771 G. E. Lessing posited an explanation as to the similarities found among the Synoptic Gospels. He suggested that there was a single Hebrew or Aramaic gospel already in circulation, which the Synoptic Gospel authors used as a source for their own.[2] Later on, J. G. Herder, and later still J. K. L. Gieseler, theorized that the body of this original source was not written but “a relatively fixed oral summary of the life of Christ.”[3] Then a theologian by the name of F. Schleiermacher argued that Papias’s (an early Christian bishop Hierapolis, in the Phrygian part of the Roman province of Asia[4]) ‘logia’ (his collection of teachings and sayings of early Christian elders – possibly as many as two disciples) made reference to one of several progressively developing written fragments, small pieces of gospel tradition, that eventually were subsumed into the Synoptic Gospels.[5]

Finally, though chronologically the earliest postulated explanation of the similarities, there is also the theory of Interdependence. This solution to the synoptic problem asserts that two of the gospel writers used one or more of the other Synoptic Gospels in their own composition. Advocates of this view are not forced to deny the use of another source(s) now lost, and maintain, “only borrowing at the final literary level can explain the degree of similarity among the Synoptic Gospels.”[6] This interdependent view of the compilation of the Synoptic Gospels is nearly universally accepted among present-day New Testament scholars.

With a view toward the interdependence of the Synoptic Gospels there are three significant arrangements suggested as a pattern for production. The Augustinian Proposal gets its name from St. Augustine, the legendary North African theologian, who first maintained it. This patter begins with Matthew, then Mark borrowed from Matthew, and finally Luke borrowed from both Mark and Matthew. Not only did the early Church believe that Matthew had originally written his gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic (based on an obscure quote from Papias),[7] but until the nineteenth century the Augustinian Proposal “was the standard view of those who saw a literary relationship among the Synoptic Gospels.”[8]

The ‘Two-Gospel’ Hypothesis is another view towards a pattern of development. J. J. Griesbach held that Matthew was indeed written first, but that Luke was second and then Mark pulled much of his gospel from both Matthew and Luke.[9] This accounted for the vast similarities and almost verbatim quotes between Mark and Matthew, and Mark and Luke.

In contrast to the Two-Gospel Hypothesis, The ‘Two-Source’ Hypothesis flips this pattern on its head. This developmental system sees Mark as the pioneer gospel writer while Matthew and Luke drew from his work and another text independently from one another to pen their own gospels. This other conceivable text is known only as ‘Q’, and it is perhaps a lost collection of Jesus’ sayings.[10] The Two-Source Hypothesis perceives the similarities between Matthew and Luke, which are not shared by Mark, to be that material received from the mysterious ‘Q.’ Referring back to the earlier question of some possible written and/or oral gospel tradition, it is entirely plausible that ‘Q’ may be defined as some very early combination of both written and oral stories about and sayings from Jesus.

There is not unanimity concerning the theories above, but many do hold the Two-Source Hypothesis. The postulation of Mark being the first gospel written does seem appealing for several reasons.

First, Mark is shorter and more abrupt than Matthew and Luke. Mark’s brevity can have any number of causes, and shorter does not necessarily mean earlier. Yet, because Matthew and Luke both contain much of Mark, it seems hardly worth the time for Mark to write the gospel he did if he did so after the other two. Quoting G. M. Styler, “Given Mark, it is easy to see why Matthew was written; given Matthew, it is hard to see why Mark was needed.”[11]

Second, Matthew and Luke often agree with Mark when there are areas of similarity, but Matthew and Luke agree less frequently. This makes sense best if we see Mark as the available text to each of the other two authors as they wrote independent from one another.[12]

Third, Mark’s gospel has more of an awkward style and a greater number of Aramaic expressions than do Matthew or Luke. The reason that this is an argument for the earlier writing of Mark is that it would seem inconceivable that an author would take material from a smooth format and break it up. Rather, the opposite is what an author would do, and this plausible authorial process fits better with a view from Mark to the others instead of Mark from the others. Additionally, the Aramaic expressions in Mark are translated to the Greek culture or eliminated altogether in Matthew and Luke. It simply does not make sense that Mark would pull an expression back from its translated context or insert it in the material already well written. These three individually nudge one in the direction of accepting Mark’s earlier authorship than the other two Synoptic authors, but collectively they seem to unavoidably point to an earlier arrival of Mark.

I have already “tipped my hand,” as it were, in this last paragraph. My position is that of the Two-Source Hypothesis. It seem most plausible to me that Mark was written first, and that all three Synoptic Gospel authors were familiar with gospel traditions that were included in their works. These gospel traditions were certainly oral, and many of them were likely contained in some written form (possibly ‘Q’) as well.[13]

There are no doubt questions that this hypothesis does not answer, and there are men smarter than me who hold another view. However, ultimately the answers to these questions are that God superintended the development of these documents through His sovereignty and providence.

Divine inspiration of Scripture is not to be confused with automatic writing, dictation, or any other obliteration of human authorship. In fact, the beauty of God’s word is that it comes through the means of such common instrumentality. Historical developments, culture, personal research, education, life experiences, and a host of other influences came to bear on the gospel writers, but none of these stifled the divine revelation they conveyed as they themselves were being carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).

I agree wholeheartedly with Clements when he says, “Scholarly work on history and literature should therefore not be despised, since it often sheds light on the text. On the other hand, our confidence in the truth of Scripture does not rest on the ability of specialists to sort out literary problems, but on God’s power to fulfill His promises (Is. 55: 10,11; 2 Tim. 3: 16,17). “[14]

[1] Clements, Don K. New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament. Edited by R. C. Sproul. Narrows, VA: Metokos Press, 2006.

[2] Carson, D. A., Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992. 89.

[3] Ibid. 90.

[4] Lovell, Graham Davis. “Papias on Mark and Matthew.” Papias on Mark and Matthew. May 25, 2012. http://newtestamenthistory.blogspot.com/2012/05/papias-on-mark-and-matthew.html.

[5] Carson, D. A., Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992. 90-91.

[6] Carson, D. A., Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992. 91.

[7] Ibid. 143.

[8] Ibid. 93.

[9] Ibid. 93.

[10] Ibid. 94.

[11] Carson, D. A., Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris. An Introduction to the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992. 96.

[12] Ibid. 97.

[13] Ibid. 101.

[14] Clements, Don K. New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament. Edited by R. C. Sproul. Narrows, VA: Metokos Press, 2006.

To whom was the Letter to the ‘Galatians’ written?

Recently, I taught a bible study course through the Galatian epistle and began the first lesson by discussing only the first three words of the text, “Paul, an Apostle…”[1] ‘Who is Paul?’ and ‘What is an Apostle?’ seemed to be two questions that needed to be asked and answered before we could move on to anything else. There is another pressing question, however, that has been asked at the outset of this same letter.

Just after his own introduction, the Apostle Paul addresses his letter’s recipients, “To the churches of Galatia… (ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας).” Who were the Galatian Christians to whom the Apostle Paul wrote? This question may or may not have a similar bearing on interpretation and application to my previously recommended inquiries, but the question is an important one nonetheless. The perceived destination of this letter can have an impact on the interpretation of such a text, but an interest in a destination of the Galatian epistle certainly has a great deal to do with the dating of its authorship. Therefore, questions regarding the recipients and the destination of any biblical text are important for more than just critical scholars.

In the first century B.C. the province of Galatia, variable in size over the years, was under the rule of the Celtic king Amyntas. At its peak expanse, Galatia stretched from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and always covered the central land area that was home to many Celts, including three Celtic tribes – referenced later in the ‘North Galatia’ theory. Having been willed to Rome in 25 B.C. and modified at its frontiers, in the Apostle Paul’s day the province of Galatia still encompassed vast parts of Lycaonia, Pisidia, and Phrygia.[2] It is apparent that the term ‘Galatia’ certainly has the potential to be less than helpful in discovering the exact audience of Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

According to scholars, there are only two conceivable destinations for this letter. One possibility is that the letter was written to “three Celtic tribes akin to the Gauls,” which Cole says were known as Galatians, “who had invaded and subsequently occupied Asia Minor in the third century before Christ.”[3] This is the theory that the Apostle Paul used the term Galatia in what is described by Fung as the “enthnogeographical sense,”[4] referring to the ethnic group located in the northern part of the province of Galatia. This is known as the ‘North Galatian’ theory.

The other plausible option is that the epistle was written to a broader group defined by Cole as the “radically mixed inhabitants of the Roman province of Galatia, and the name ‘Galatians’ was simply used as a handy common term to cover them all.”[5] This is the theory that the Apostle Paul used the term Galatia to denote an expansive Roman province, referring to the general composition of churches he had established across the southern part of the Roman province of Galatia. This is known as the ‘South Galatia’ theory. Common geographical and ethnic labels (especially those used by the Apostle Paul), the varying composition of the Roman province of Galatia, the chronology of the Apostle Paul’s missionary journeys, and the correlation of many of the details of the Apostle Paul’s life experiences recorded in this letter as compared to other New Testament writings will all contribute to the discussion concerning which of these two theories best provides the most plausible destination.

North Galatia Theory

The ‘North Galatia’ theory maintains that the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the Celtic group of believers in Northern Galatia, the area of modern day Turkey. The ‘North Galatia’ theory was the position held by the early Church fathers, and was the dominant view of scholarship until the nineteenth century.[6] Tucker, an associate professor of New Testament at Moody Theological Seminary, said that there are more commentaries from the early Church fathers on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians than from than any other New Testament book.[7]

The endorsement of the patristics, however, is not a sure road to certainty on any New Testament matter; and Martin Luther did not seem to know of the theory when he wrote in the sixteenth century in his commentary on the epistle, “Paul had preached the Gospel throughout Galatia, founding many churches which after his departure were invaded by the false apostles.”[8] It appears that Luther understood Paul’s letter to have been destined for those churches about which he also read in Luke’s record of Paul’s journeys. He mentions no thought of unnamed churches in northern Galatia being the addressees of such an inspired communiqué.

At any rate, the Galatia of the early Church fathers’ day had already been significantly pruned from the expansive territory with the same name in the Apostle Paul’s lifetime. The Galatia that the patristics knew was virtually comprised only by the Celtic heartland, which is the home of three Celtic tribes – the claimed audience of the ‘North Galatia’ theory. This, it would seem, makes the position of the Church fathers a good assessment of their contemporary common viewpoint, but no real indicator as to the actual intended audience of the Apostle Paul.

J. B. Lightfoot, Fung declares, is the classical proponent of the ‘North Galatia’ argument, and James Moffatt as well as others joined him in the debate. This view remains widely held, “predominantly but not exclusively in Germany.”[9] The adherents to this view are not without warrant, and there are a number of reasons that one may find the ‘North Galatia’ theory appealing. In fact, Carson and Moo list as many as eight points of positive argument for the proposition. For the discussion here, several will surely suffice.

First, many ‘North Galatia’ proponents contend that the term Galatia carried the intended meaning of referring to the locale of the Gaul inhabitants of the north. Their point is that the term was simply acceptable shorthand for the audience they claim as most likely. Next, it is argued that Phrygians would not have found the label of Galatians very appealing as a designative term to include them. It is said that both Phrygians and Lycaonians would have perceived the term as an insult to them because it would remind them of their Roman rule.[10] Cole says that some ‘North Galatia’ theorists claim that calling someone a “Galatian” at that time would have been the equivalent of calling them a “country bumpkin.”[11]

Then there is the example of Luke’s denotations of geographical locations in Acts 13 and 14. In both of these chapters Luke uses specific designations for certain cities in relation to their geography. Antioch is called “Pisidian” (Acts 13:14), and Lystra and Derbe are referred to as “cities of Lycaonia” (Acts 14:6). These two citations are interesting when compared with Luke’s reference to “the region of Phrygia and Galatia” (Acts 16:6). The North Galatia theorist says, “we must understand him to mean geographic Phrygia and geographic Galatia – that is, North Galatia.”[12]

The Apostle Paul was a traveling evangelist if he was anything, and his missionary journeys are famous. While some would dismiss the ‘North Galatia’ theory on the grounds that the Apostle Paul simply could not have evangelized the area claimed by the theory, the arguments against such a possibility seem inconclusive. In fact, those who hold the ‘North Galatia’ view find tremendous evidence for a Pauline visit to north Galatia in the text of Acts 16 as it relates to the Apostle Paul’s physical disease (Galatians 4:13-14) and his resulting providential stay with the Galatians. It would be perfectly in keeping with what we know of the Apostle Paul to consider his interest in making the most of an opportunity provided him by God to proclaim the Gospel to the people of north Galatia. According to this view, the Galatian epistle is a follow up letter to Paul’s divinely orchestrated encounter with the northern Galatians.

Probably the most curious argument I found in favor of the ‘North Galatia’ theory was that of the potentially conflicting records concerning the Apostle Paul’s experience of opposition. The record we find in Acts of Paul’s missionary journeys includes one account after another of persecution and hardship concerning the response of the hearers and the reception of the Gospel. Yet, there is no mention of any opposition experienced by Paul in any Galatian city. It seems that a reasonable explanation for this confusion lack of persecution would be that the Apostle was writing not to several cities across the Roman province of Galatia, but to a particular people group – namely the Celtic tribes – in northern Galatia.

While the ‘North Galatia’ theory does have the benefit of longstanding adherence, and it poses some interesting arguments, this theory seems less than completely convincing. The reasons listed here are all, with the exception of the last one mentioned, provided with a retort and even dismissed as they are listed in most of the material investigated for this essay. The ‘North Galatia’ theory is accompanied by the postulation of a later date for the authorship of the letter as well, and this appears (at least to the present writer) to hurt rather than help its case. Far from providing a coherent chronology through the use of geographical sequence, the ‘North Galatia’ theory seems to ring its own death knell in its dating options.

South Galatia Theory

While the ‘South Galatia’ theory is fairly new, when compared with its antagonist, it has overtaken the place of majority scholarly adherence if at least in the English speaking world.[13] This transfer of dominance is due to many things, but it seems that one of the greatest evidences for the ‘South Galatia’ theory is the preponderance of familiarity that the New Testament has with the southern locale in the Roman province of Galatia. Carson muses, “We have information about people and places Paul knew and visited in the southern region, but none at all in the north (at best Acts 16:6 and 18:23 may indicate work in the north, but neither passage says that Paul founded churches there).” Carson concludes, “This is in striking contrast to his work in other areas.”[14] It is a noticeable dissimilarity indeed.

As mentioned earlier, Galatia was a large Roman province that included a much greater expanse than the Celtic tribal loci. In fact, the cities of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe were all included in the southern region of Galatia. The significance of these cities and their general collective location lends great weight to the ‘South Galatia’ theory because they are all included in the list of recorded cities visited by the Apostle Paul, and the New Testament has great familiarity with them. Luke writes of these named cities as places where the Apostle Paul founded churches on his first missionary journey, which is documented in Acts 13:13 through Acts 14:28.[15]

In a telling statement, Carson quotes the ‘North Galatia’ theory’s spearhead, Lightfoot, who said, “It is strange that while we have more or less acquaintance with all the other important Churches of St. Paul’s founding, with Corinth and Ephesus, with Philippi and Thessalonica, not a single name of a person or place, scarcely be preserved in either the history or the epistle.”[16] With these words, Lightfoot acknowledges the inconceivability of his own theory in light of the total absence of any explicit Pauline visit, much less any record of the Apostle planting a local church among the northern Galatian Celts. This ground of the debate is so vital that it hardly needs stressing, and one might think there be no reason to continue the discussion in terms of uncertainty regarding the destination of the letter to the Galatians. Yet, there is more.

Fung suggests the ‘South Galatia’ theory is correct for at least three reasons, which he says are particularly cogent.

First, “what is known of the geographical situation at the time: none of the main roads in Asia Minor even passed through North Galatia, so that had Paul wanted to go to preach the gospel there he would not have set our from Lystra (cf. Acts 16:1, 6).”[17] This argument is from practical travel ability; Paul simply could not have gone the route postulated by those of the ‘North Galatia’ theory. If the Apostle Paul would have actually made the trek north to the Celtic tribes located there, he would have started at another beginning point. Yet, Lystra being the doubtful starting point of a trip north, the ‘North Galatia’ theory has no other textual springboard to which it may point.

Second, “Paul’s evangelistic strategy: it is obvious from Acts that Paul consistently concentrated his efforts on the main roads and centers of communication in the Roman Empire, and until the end of the third century South Galatia was more important than North Galatia and correspondingly more developed.”[18] Again, Fung appeals to all that we know to be true about the Apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:7-8). Paul was repeatedly traveling to the cities and along the routes that would provide him the greatest numerical audience and farthest possible reach for his message. Southern Galatia’s cities simply enjoyed higher population numbers and greater influence that did those of Northern Galatia. Paul would most certainly have gone anywhere and preached to anyone, but he was a masterful tactical evangelist.

Third, “the silence of Acts regarding the establishment of churches in North Galatia: this silence, over against the author’s explicit mention of churches in South Galatia, would be extremely difficult to explain if the controversy reflected in Galatians had been a controversy with the churches in North Galatia.”[19] This is similar to the argument already encountered, but it is noteworthy to mention not only the general lack of evidence for any Pauline visit, but also the specific lack of evidence regarding a Pauline planted church in north Galatia. Paul’s letter to the churches of Galatia is directed at a plurality of churches, and it is tremendously personal as well as relational.

The churches of North Galatia seem less likely to go unnoticed by the New Testament text than does a single church in northern Galatia. While it is possible, it is all the more unlikely that the audience is multiple unknown churches northern Galatia. Additionally, the experiences of the Apostle Paul among the churches of Galatia recounted in the letter that bears the name are personal and seemingly extended over time. Lastly, the churches of Galatia can hardly be thought to have gone completely unnamed while seemingly enjoying such broad knowledge and even guests from other places. These churches of Galatia knew (or at least knew of) Peter, James, John, Barnabas, and Titus (Galatians 2:1-9). They were even significant enough as to have received the same message as was carried by the “men from James or Jerusalem” (Galatians 2:12), namely that Christians were only true Christians if they lived according to Jewish laws and customs.

Dating the Epistle to the Galatians

One can hardly attempt an address of the potential destination of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians without recognizing that the date of its authorship has a direct correlation. One commentary says, “The question of the letter’s date is intertwined with the problem of its destination.”[20] The two questions are linked, and how one answers the question of one will affect the options he has in answering the other. The writer goes on to draw out the dating dilemma,

“When we follow the course of Paul’s first and second missionary journeys (Acts 13; 14; 15: 36-18: 22) we discover that this question has implications for the epistle’s date and for its relationship to Paul’s other letters. Paul visited Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe (all cities in south Galatia) on his first and second missionary journeys. If Paul wrote to southern Galatia, he probably wrote to those churches early in his career, shortly after the first missionary journey, or about the time of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15; cf. Gal. 2: 11-14). The date most often given by those who hold this view is A.D. 49. If this is correct, Galatians may be Paul’s earliest epistle in existence today.”[21]

Indeed, this would prove to be incredibly noteworthy. If the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the churches of Galatia in or about 49 A.D., that would have a tremendous impact on the discussion concerning an early construction of Christian theology, early ecclesiastical interaction (see especially Galatians chapters 5 and 6), and an amazingly fast spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ from the time of His death, resurrection and ascension. Christians would have good reason to see the foundational structure of the faith once and for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3) delivered specifically to the saints of Galatia very early on (Galatians 1:6). Not only would this put Paul in the midst of church planting about 15 years after the death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ; it would move that date even further in the past. We would not expect that Paul means only a few weeks when he admits his astonishment at the seemingly speedy desertion of the Gospel by his letter’s recipients. It would be prudent to understand Paul’s church planting work and coherent Gospel presentations to have been prevalent and effective some significant amount of time before this epistle was written.

The same commentary already referenced goes on to explain the dating options for the opposing view of intentional destination.

“Many scholars think that Galatians was written to the ethnic Galatians in the north. If this view is correct, Paul probably wrote the letter after passing through “Galatia and Phrygia” (Acts 18: 23) on his third missionary Journey. Many who follow the “north Galatian theory” believe that Paul wrote the letter either during his two-year stay in Ephesus (Acts 19) or as he was traveling through Macedonia on his way to Greece at the end of his third missionary journey (Acts 20: 1-6; cf. 2 Cor. 2: 13). If this is correct, Galatians was probably written in A.D. 54 or 55.”[22]

Rather than placing this letter between the Apostle’s first and second missionary journeys, the later proposed time of composition would date it near the end of Paul’s third missionary journey. The two date options are not significantly different regarding the passing of time; 5 years is certainly not an extremely long time. However, the significance of the timely arrival of the material in the letter is diminished at this later date. Again, the dating of this letter may be weightier because of the possibility that it is the first and earliest of all New Testament texts. At any rate, the ‘North Galatia’ theory seems less likely on the scale of geography and the recorded church planting activity of the Apostle Paul. Therefore, the later dating may not have any feet on which to stand before it even attempts the act. However, there is also good reason to accept the earlier date on its own terms.

Carson lists four reasons that the earlier date is better supported. One, “In protesting that he had a divine commission and not one derived ‘from any human source’ (1:12), Paul lists his contacts with the Jerusalem apostles.”[23] These contacts include two visits to Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1-2), which seem to correspond to the visits recorded in Acts 9:26 and Acts 11:28-30. After he lists these encounters, he resolves “I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie” (Galatians 1:20). This line of reasoning goes on then, “Paul’s list must be complete, else his argument would be vitiated (see 1:20).”[24] Therefore, he cannot have left out the Acts 15 visit, unless that visit had not yet occurred, and remain true to his word.

Two, “Paul does not mention the decree of the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), which would have been very suitable for his purpose. This suggests a visit [that is a visit to the letter’s recipients in Galatia] before the council.”[25] The suggestion of a visit before the council on the ground that Paul does not mention the decree of it alone is not sufficient, because Paul does not mention the decree in other of his writings that were authored demonstrably later. However, the point is notable nonetheless as it would have been significant to mention it and beneficial to his argument.

Carson’s third point is that “Peter’s withdrawal from table fellowship with the Gentiles (2:12) is more likely to have been before rather than after the council.”[26] While the Apostle to the Jews, Peter (Galatians 2:7-8), was certainly not a beacon of tact and propriety in some notable moments of New Testament history, it still does not make sense that he would make the statements that he does at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:7-11) and then later act in such a contradictory way (Galatians 2:12). It would make more sense to understand Peter’s vacillation on table fellowship with Gentiles to have occurred prior to his bold and courageous statements in front of the most notable Jewish leaders of his own day.

Fourth and finally, Carson asserts, “The early date is not invalidated by Paul’s words ‘I first preached the gospel to you’ (4:13), which some suggest means ‘on the first of my two visits’ (NEB) and points to a date later than Paul’s second missionary journey.”[27] This point is a bit more academic than the previous three, but a great one to add at this juncture. Some would argue that Paul’s expression cited above indicates that he visited the Galatian churches more than once, and this is simply not the case with the southern Galatian churches who would have been the recipients of the letter according to the ‘South Galatia’ theory. However, Carson defends his statement with some linguistic instruction of his own.

“In classical Greek the expression means on the former of two occasions, but in Hellenistic Greek it signifies ‘formerly, in the past’ (as in John 6:62; 9:8; Heb. 4:6, etc.). In any case, Paul visited his South Galatian churches twice during his first expedition (see Acts 14:21), so that even if the Greek expression is taken to mean ‘on the first of my two visits,’ the second visit may have been the return swing on the first missionary journey (Acts 12:21-26), rather than something later.”[28]

Therefore, it is possible that Paul was writing to the same churches posited as the recipients in the ‘South Galatia’ theory. Moreover, the preponderance of evidence demonstrates that it is not only possible, but also incredibly likely that this was the case. It is the view of the present writer that the ‘North Galatia’ theory is not tenable, and the ‘South Galatia’ theory is reasonable.

Additionally, the earlier dating (circa 49 A.D.) of the letter makes it a fascinating study as the earliest New Testament document. This has huge implications for both textual criticism dialogues and apologetic exchanges. The interpretation of the Galatian epistle does not seem to be impacted by the implications of a northern or southern destination, and this also points to the significance in the early dating. The letter addresses universal truths concerning law, grace, gospel, faith, sin, true freedom, and God’s steadfast commitment to all those He chooses to call His own. These theological articulations at such an early point of Christianity’s chronology is very interesting to say the least.

Bibliography

Carson, D. A., and Douglas J. Moo. An Introduction to the New Testament. Second ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.

Clements, Don K., comp. New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament. Edited by R. C. Sproul. Narrows, VA: Metokos Press, 2006.

Cole, R. A. Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary. Edited by Leon Morris. Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008.

Fung, Ronald Y. K. NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians. Edited by Gordon D. Fee. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 1988.

Hendriksen, William. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002.

Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2001.

Keller, Timothy J. Galatians for You. [Purcellville, VA]: Good Book Company, 2013.

Lightfoot, Joseph Barber. Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians. A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes and Dissertations. London: Macmillan and, 1890.

Luther, Martin. Commentary on Galatians. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1979.

Tucker, Brian J. “Galatians and Ephesians.” Galatians and Ephesians. http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/380085/Galatians-and-Ephesians.

[1] Galatians 1:1a. All Biblical citations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise indicated.

[2] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 458.

[3] Cole, Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, 21.

[4] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 1.

[5] Cole, Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, 21.

[6] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 1.

[7] Tucker, Galatians and Ephesians.

[8] Luther, Galatians 1:2b

[9] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 1.

[10] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 460.

[11] Cole, Galatians: An Introduction and Commentary, 24.

[12] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 460.

[13] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 2.

[14] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 458.

[15] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 1.

[16] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 458.

[17] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 3.

[18] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 3.

[19] Fung, NICNT: The Epistle to the Galatians, 3.

[20] Clements, New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament.

[21] Clements, New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament.

[22] Clements, New Geneva Introduction to the New Testament.

[23] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

[24] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

[25] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

[26] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

[27] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

[28] Carson, An Introduction to the New Testament, 462.

What does it mean to be ‘Lost’?

What does it mean to be Lost? Usually, in the context of Christianity, one is not speaking of location confusion when using the term lost. To say, “he is lost,” is to say something other than, “he does not know how to make his way from his home to the church building.” The term lost is commonly used in the salvific sense, or regarding a person’s present spiritual condition and eternal destination. Much like a traveler needs to know his or her locale, destination and route in order to make a successful journey, every spiritual pilgrim needs to know his or her spiritual whereabouts, objective and way in order to enjoy the benefits of spiritual triumph.

This question concerning ‘lostness’ may be one of the most important in order to have a better understanding of what it means to be ‘found’ or ‘saved’ in the spiritual sense (i.e. what it means to be a Christian). Essentially, this question is seeking to understand a major difference between those who are Christians and those who are not. There are real distinctions between those who are lost and those who are found, but it is vitally important to know what the actual distinctions are in order to have an appropriate posture towards those in each group.

In an answer to this main question, the following structure will be provided. First, we will attempt to understand the basic nature of humanity, and subsequently try to grasp the chief end or ultimate purpose of humanity. Next, we will delve into some of the effects of sin upon human nature and how they relate to human purpose. Then we will look at the significance of using the term lost to describe every human sinner apart from or without Christ. Last, we will continue our search of the Scriptures to discover how one who is lost may become found. After all, one’s ‘lostness’ or ‘foundness’ is not merely of temporal interest. These categories, and one’s placement underneath each heading, are of supreme significance both in this life and in the eons to come.

What is the nature of humanity? There seems no better place to begin a study of human nature than at the beginning – the act of God’s creating work. At the creation of humanity, God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”[1] This phrase, though, has been at the center of much confusing talk concerning the nature of humanity. From misconceptions about God to misappropriating the ‘likeness’ of God in man, many have taken this phrase and run in strange and unhelpful directions. There is much that one may learn from this phrase, and a closer and wider look at the Scriptures is always beneficial, but we may at least gather that ‘man’ or humanity is a special or unique creation among all else that God has made.

On an aside, I quite agree with Wayne Grudem (a systematic theologian) concerning usage of the term ‘man’ as a reference to the entire human race.[2] One must refrain from postulating the unsuitable use of the masculine term to entitle all humanity unless he or she is willing to oppose God’s own use of the term. It is plain from the context of the previous verse cited that God described His own creation of humanity with the use of the masculine term in reference to the totality of male and female human beings. The Scripture also says, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (emphasis added).[3] There is no mistaking the interchangeable use of ‘them’ – both male and female – and ‘him’ or ‘man.’

Grudem adds that some may find objection still and claim that the use of word ‘man’ as a suitable expression of the concept ‘all humankind’ is merely a Hebrew language feature and not to be continued in our own day. However, such an argument is unconvincing when one reads the opening sentences of Genesis chapter 5 (just a few chapters after the previous citations). “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created” (emphasis added).[4] It appears therefore that God not only uses the term ‘man’ in reference to the entire human race, but God has chosen to label or ‘name’ humankind with the same masculine term. This is not to say that ‘man’ is the only satisfactory term, but it must at the very least be considered appropriate.

At any rate, the nature of man is directly tied to the creation of man. For God is not merely the organizer of molecules; He is the special and intentional designer of all that He has created, including humankind. In other words, if one wants to know what humankind really is, one would do well to ask the God who drew man into existence and brought humans into being.

Referring to the original passage cited above, man is the unique creation of God. Man was created in the ‘likeness’ of God, and this is no easily articulated semblance. Grudem says, “as we read the rest of Scripture, we realize that a full understanding of man’s likeness to God would require a full understanding of who God is in his being and in his actions and a full understanding of who man is and what he does.”[5] Alas, a full comprehensive knowledge of God and man is something that no sensible person can claim; therefore, an attempt to communicate completely what likeness man has or is of God will result in an inadequate sketch. Yet, there is great value in the sketch.

In every way that man is like God, man carries the divine likeness or bears the image of God. The image of God is the basis for essential human value and dignity. God’s image upon humankind is the reason that man is of pronounced value and the reason that man’s degradation is not only vexing but also immoral and wicked.

It may be said, then, the nature of man or the intended essence of every human is to be like God – to bear God’s image and reflect that image to all others.

What is the chief end of man? This question is found at the opening of both the shorter and the longer Westminster Catechisms.[6] It is the starting place of any real and meaningful approach to understanding not only the nature of man, but also the supreme and universal purpose thereof. For what purpose has man – every man, woman and child – been created? Essentially, this is a ‘meaning of life’ question. Arguably, this is one of the weightiest questions of all time. Far from being unanswerable or even complicated, the Catechism answers the question with the clear and concise statement. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” That’s it! This is no small or easy thing, but its simplicity is amazingly refreshing. Indeed, the purpose for which all things have been created is to bring glory to God and enjoy the benefits of His glory upon creation (Romans 11:36; Revelation 4:11).

Because of the common misunderstanding it is important to note – submission, loving obedience, and a generally selfless posture towards God are not tyrannical and malevolent requirements upon humanity from an uncaring deity. Quite the opposite is actually true. In fact, the greater obedience and loving submission that one experiences towards their Creator, the greater joy and fulfillment he or she experiences as well (Psalm 51:12).

It is a myth that a man must put away all of his good desires and any hope for genuine self-gratification and contentment in order to love God (Galatians 5:1).

If this chief end or highest purpose seems foreign to us, it is not for some lack of truth in the claim. Instead, there is great likelihood that the truth of it sounds bizarre because of our own sinful corruption. Our failure to arrive at our chief end, our inability to achieve our highest purpose, is a universal characteristic of the sinful human race. What may be even more sobering is the cause for such devilish disorientation.

What are the effects of sin upon human nature? Because humankind was created in the likeness and image of God, and because man’s highest purpose and greatest joy is found in the glory of God and enjoyment of Him, then every human should be marked by a fervent and passionate pursuit of godliness and participation in genuine worship of the one true God. However, the least observant among us will note that this is not the case. In fact, the exact opposite characteristics are what we find to be most ubiquitous.

Sin is any lack of conformity to or transgression of God’s law – the clear revelation of God’s own character and nature. Therefore, sin is man being less than or other than he ought; and this is to his own detriment.

Many have suggested solutions to the problem of sin, this failure to live up to or fulfill humanity’s intended design. Secularly, most would recognize a general selfishness exhibited in barbarism that is measured by degree rather than occurrence in humankind. Lying, stealing, murder, adultery, covetousness, and an unwillingness to submit to virtually any authority are all sinful expressions with which humans have become acquainted – and even comfortable in most cases.

If one thinks this assessment too harsh, he or she ought to consider the spirit and not merely the letter of God’s law. For example, if one is thinks himself successful at avoiding any transgression of the law concerning adultery because he has not had intercourse with another man’s wife, he has done well as far as he believes the law to extend. However, when he is exposed to the spirit of the law or what underlies the concise imperative – namely that everyone is to make strong efforts to preserve both their own chastity as well as others, together in thought, word and deed – then he may realize that he is utterly blameworthy.

A wise person would know that only an individual unaware of the range and depth of God’s law, or one unwilling to acknowledge it, would even hesitate to admit he and all others are completely guilty before God and exceedingly sinful.

The general posture of sinfulness rather than godly pursuit, and the pervasiveness of such offensive insolence, begs the question – WHY? From whence has this total distortion of purpose and joy come? The corruption of human nature is an inheritance from our forefather – Adam, the first man. Charles Hodge describes the grave situation by saying, “the sin of Adam injured not himself only but also all descending from him by ordinary generation.”[7] Hodge goes on to say that there are three things that may be considered subsequent results of the first sin, which was committed by humanity’s first parents. These effects include the personal and universal guilt of all humankind, the corruption of every aspect of human nature derived from our ancient ancestor, and the inability of natural man to do anything of genuine spiritual good.[8] While these consequences are biblically sound and overwhelmingly applicable, it is not expedient to address these stated results in their entirety here. Therefore, the remainder of this section will focus upon the specific effects of sin upon human nature, especially those contributing to lostness, rather than defending the validity of these stated consequences.

If the citations above seem too far above the average person’s ability to grasp, then it might be helpful to simply describe how Adam’s sinful fall has impacted all humankind. The three consequences above may be explained in the following way. First, every human is counted by God as though they sinned just as Adam did from the time Adam sinned (Romans 5:12). This may seem unfair or unwarranted, but rest assured that all humans were represented well in Adam, and any guilt that he procured for other humans has been multiplied a thousand times over by the daily sin of those who may claim the lack of accurate representation. Second, every aspect of human nature – mind, body, will, etc. – has been negatively affected by the curse of God upon sin (Ephesians 2:3). This result begins to place our fingers on the pulse of lostness. Because of Adam’s sin, God cursed all creation and human nature has been marred and distorted so much so that man perceives the Object of his highest purpose and greatest joy as the most antagonistic rival to such things.

Third, man in his natural state is opposed to genuine spiritual good and godliness (Galatians 5:17-21). This truth is one of the bitterest pills to swallow, but it is also one of the simplest and most easily proven doctrines or principles of Scripture. We use the word good to describe all kinds of things. I have a good dog. I wear a good pair of shoes. I like a good cheesecake. However, we do not understand the term ‘good’ in these sentences to be expressing any moral worthiness or righteous disposition. There is no such thing as a morally worthy or righteous cheesecake (as awesome as some cheesecake might be). Good in the spiritual sense, in the sense about which God is concerned, is an attribute that no descendant of Adam can claim (Romans 3:10-18). In fact, the Bible says it explicitly, “All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”[9]

The effects of sin upon the nature of humanity are farther-reaching and more deeply entrenched than any earthly human can know. The Scriptures speak of the wicked heart of man as being not only corrupt but also deceptively so (Jeremiah 17:9). In other words, no earthly man knows the depth of his own depravity because his best attempts to know his own wickedness are efforts from a mind and will that naturally and frequently deceive him.

This kind of man, a naturally sinful man – incapable of seeking his highest joy and unwilling to fulfill his greatest purpose – is lost indeed.

He knows not himself, he knows no authentic way to restore his own joy, and he is both unwilling and unable to lay down his upraised weapons against the only God who might bring him true peace, joy, stability, security, purpose, community, and freedom. God’s first words recorded after the initial sin of man were “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Truly, lost is a just description of one in such a hopeless condition.

What does the term lost indicate? One may think it a bit odd to begin a discussion about lostness at creation, but setting the proper stage will hopefully prove worthwhile by this point in the investigation. A good and working knowledge of the intended purpose of humankind will be of benefit in understanding the overwhelming lostness that has come upon sinful humanity. The sinful natural man (every man, woman, and child descending from Adam) is lost in relation to himself, in relation to other humans, and most significantly he is lost in relation to his God.

The natural man, that man so catastrophically affected by his own sin and that of others, has lost himself.

He may try to know himself – who he truly is, or what fetches him real joy – but he cannot. When one person wants to know another, it is common to ask questions, which one perceives will reveal something about the true nature of the other. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “What do you like?” “What is your fondest memory?” How cruel it would be to merrily ask these questions of a man who was born into slavery. How much would one hope to learn from a man still trapped in the chains of captivity, if he poses the question “What do you do?” Will the slave disclose his true self in some answer that he might muster? What would his fondest memory be? Would this reveal any genuinely enjoyable experience or merely some temporary illusion of relief from his miserable reality?

Additionally, the natural man may ask himself a thousand questions and each one would be answered with some measure of deception. He often is unwilling to acknowledge his own bondage to sin or the incarceration of its consequences. His own desires deceive him, as he passionately chases all those things that inevitably harm him and steal his joy. Each time he thinks he has found himself, he learns ever so quickly that he was never truly found. He may be here or there, but he is always lost to himself.

The natural man is lost to everyone by whom he longs to be known.

People seek all kinds of relationships and so frequently fancy themselves to have found genuine community with another. Yet, where have they ever truly been known? When has the sinner ever been utterly exposed and without shame?[10] Even in the most intimate relationship of humanity – the committed marriage of one man and one woman – both males and females are disappointed in the lack of intimacy. Where one marriage relationship performs well in the area of physical experience, that same marriage may severely lack intellectual or emotional understanding. It is extremely common for males and females to perceive the greatest marital disunity in areas seemingly unrelated to each other, but every marriage suffers from the same root cause – neither sinner is fully known by the other and therefore neither can experience full rest and genuine community in the relationship.

What of the sinner’s friends? Which one knows him best, and knows everything about him? Does any friend know that his silence regarding serious matters is to the sinner’s detriment? Even a friend who knows the pain that sinful pursuit causes is unwilling or unable to engage the sinner on such ground. The friend does not know his sinful companion well enough to address him admirably and productively. What friend knows of the deepest struggles in the sinner’s heart and selflessly speaks wisdom to his sinful friend? Does he do this while receiving no benefit of his own and conveying no pretense in regards to his own struggles?

The natural man has no true friend. Not one of his dearest allies knows him fully and loves him unconditionally. He does not share complete and unreserved love with any of his peers. He has no hope of ever experiencing such loving relationship with full disclosure and cherished communion. He may be in this relationship or that group of friends, but he is always lost to others.

Most painfully of all, the natural man is lost in relationship to his God.

God is not merely the title or name that we have ascribed to some divine impersonal force that itself is guided by higher laws of so-called nature. No, God is that being which is the origin of all life, exceedingly great joy, sinless passion, righteous vigor, true goodness, pure beauty, genuine truth, unconditional love, caring benevolence, wise providence, and awesome sovereignty. For a man to lose his God is tantamount to the loss of himself and everything else. God is the one to whom he looks for guidance and affirmation; God is his foundation and stability; God is his hope and the object of his faith. Natural man has not only willingly lost his God, but he refuses to be known by the God of his longing.

The natural man will not have the only God capable of being his great joy. No, the natural man seeks to name his own god and create such an abomination in the image of his sinful desires. Sinful humanity will concoct a god whose aim is their sexual, material, or experiential pleasure. What indulgence is your craving today? There is a god made by human invention that will find its fulfillment in feeding that appetite. There is no rule except that of desire; the desire of the moment rules the natural man’s day.

It is not, however, that every natural man is easily observed as having such a curious and decadent idol as his god. On the contrary, the natural man is keenly able to deceive himself and others as to the true measure of his scandalous god. Many natural men bring their idolatrous god with them to a church building and think that this false god is the same as the Object of all other’s worship. Sinful men may even allow their imaginary god to acquire some distorted attribute of the one true God, but they will not humble themselves before the King of Glory and admit their lostness before Him. No, the natural man is convinced of his own sufficiency and does not think himself in need of an all-sufficient God. He may seek a god, an idol of his own creation, but he is always lost and away from his God who created him.

The natural man’s lostness is totally consuming. He is lost to himself, he is lost in relationship to others, and he is lost in relation to his God.

Augustine wrote of this lostness in the heart of a natural man when he said as to God, “Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.”[11] Augustine articulates the matter of this discussion well. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, but the natural man is eternally and completely lost, and he is hopelessly restless in his natural state. Augustine gives room for hope, however, when he says, “until it repose in Thee.” Where can this restful tranquility be found, and how may the lost natural man gain such peace?

How may one who is lost become found? As already discussed, the natural man is not merely lost for lack of knowledge or natural experience; he is lost because he does not want to be found. When the first man sinned he did not seek refuge in the bosom of his Creator, nor did he find relief in any admission of guilt or honest community with his Lord. No, he hid from the One with whom he had previously experienced real love and intimacy (Genesis 3:8, 10). This fallen sinner denied his own guilt and deceived himself as to his true culpability (Genesis 3:12-13).

The Bible is clear; the natural man is hostile to the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:14; Galatians 5:17). How then can any willfully lost sinner be found? In John 3:1-8 Jesus speaks in what may seem to be obscure terms, but He clarifies what must take place in order to produce such a conversion.

“Now there was a man … named Nicodemus… This man came to Jesus and said, ‘… We know that you are a teacher come from God …’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? …’ Jesus answered, ‘… That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit’” (abbreviated).[12]

Jesus essentially answers the question asked earlier (How can the lost become found?) with the statement, “You must be born again.” The Bible uses other terms to speak of the experience of being “born again.” God uses the term regenerate through the prophet Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37:6), the Apostle Paul uses the analogies of life from death (Ephesians 2:5) and divine re-creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and the Apostle Peter uses the same verbiage as Jesus from John 3 (1 Peter 1:3, 23). The Greek word Peter uses in these two instances is ἀναγεννήσας (anagennēsas), which means to thoroughly change the mind of one, so that he lives a new life and one conformed to the will of God.[13] This is the change necessary in one who is lost – namely his passionate hostility towards all things godly and genuinely good is exchanged for a new love of God and desire to glorify and enjoy Him.

The hope for the lost and natural man is not that he is able to find himself, but that the God of the universe invades his unholy ground with life from above.

Luke chapter 15 is rich with the concept of lostness and foundness. Jesus tells three stories that all illustrate something lost being found. A shepherd lost and found a sheep (verses 3-7), a woman lost and found a coin (verses 8-10), and a father lost and found a son (verses 11-32). The wonder of these three analogies is that the object found in all three is not of great value. The shepherd who lost a single sheep had ninety-nine others and would not likely have experienced tremendous pain at the loss of only one. The woman who lost a single coin had nine others, which would have been of greater monetary value than many of her peers possessed. Her remaining possessions were significant enough to keep her from panic. The son lost was a burdensome and defiant son. The father who lost this kind of son would have been reasonably understood to experience some relief from the loss.

In all three stories, however, Jesus explains that the shepherd, the woman, and the father rejoice at the rewards of their seeking efforts. These stories are not about a lost sheep, a lost coin, or a lost son; they are about the effective pursuit of the finders. The point Jesus conveyed is related to the objection He confronted with these stories. He was being accused of ‘receiving’ sinners (Luke 15:2). The sinners were rightly perceived as less than worthy of the reception, but that is exactly the point! He receives, He seeks, He loves, He knows, and He finds the sinners who are lost.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s promise to find lost sinners. The Gospel according to John (the 4^th book of the New Testament) opens with a profound statement of Jesus’ nature and purpose. The author speaks of Jesus Christ as the union of God and man. God the Son was before all things and is Himself God (John 1:1-3); and this same God became a man, making Himself known in the person and work of Jesus Christ to sinful humanity (John 1:14, 18).

God’s truly unconditional love is demonstrated towards sinful humankind in His steadfast commitment to know and to find those who were once lost. The Apostle Paul speaks of God’s loving before the foundation of the world those whom God would ordain to be the adopted and loved children of God through the person and work of Christ (Romans 8:29). The natural man becomes known by the God he would not have known, loved by the Father he did not love, and found by the Friend he refused to acknowledge he lost when he is born from above and made spiritually anew.

The natural man is truly lost and restless, but the effective God of salvation finds lost sinners and gives them the repose they refused to enjoy until they were truly found.

Bibliography

Augustine, A. The Confessions of Saint Augustine,. New York: Modern Library, 1949. Print.

Grudem, Wayne A. Making Sense of Series: One of Seven Parts from Grudem’s Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994. Print.

Hodge, Charles. Systematic Theology / Volume 2: Anthropology. [Peabody, Mass.]: Hendrickson, 1999. Print.

Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Bibles, 2001. N. pag. Print.

Sproul, R. C. What Does It Mean to Be Born Again? Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust Pub., 2010. Print.

Thayer, Joseph Henry, Carl Ludwig Wilibald Grimm, and Christian Gottlob Wilke. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Coded with the Numbering System from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996. Print.

The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms: As Adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church : With Proof Texts. Lawrenceville, GA: Christian Education & Publications Committee of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2007. Print.

[1] Genesis 1:26; All biblical citations are from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

[2] Grudem. 439-440.

[3] Genesis 1:27

[4] Genesis 5:1-2

[5] Grudem. 443-444.

[6] Westminster Catechisms are based on the Confession of Faith authored and labeled at the same Westminster assembly (1643-1652).

[7] Hodge. 192.

[8] Hodge. 192

[9] Romans 3:12

[10] Genesis 2:25 speaks of human nakedness without shame. This is not merely intended to tell the reader of the physical appearance of the first humans in the Garden of Eden before sin entered into creation. They were physically naked, but they were naked in every way. They were utterly exposed to one another and yet unashamed to be so. Each was fully known and completely loved by the other.

[11] Augustine. 2.

[12] John 3:1-8

[13] Thayer. Strong’s number 313

Right Thinking…

What do Murder, Marriage, and Monarchy have in common?

They all begin with the letter “M” of course…

Another thing that they have in common is that they each have captured the attention of millions of people in recent days. The death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of George Zimmerman, the Supreme Court ruling that legitimized and validated homosexual relationships, and the birth of a nominal prince has each drawn the intense interest of many.

It is often very easy to be swept away by the floodwaters of common concern, and all of these issues are not necessarily unimportant, relatively speaking. However, these three are examples of issues that can effortlessly blur our lenses.

From the numerous “talking heads” on television and the millions of want-to-be psychologists, theorists, sociologists, theologians and logicians that find their way to a social media platform, we constantly drink in the worldview of those around us. Most times this happens without our being aware of it at all.

Because of the regularity with which we experience unbiblical – untrue and unhelpful – thoughts, words and deeds, it is vital that you and I spend significant effort on “Right Thinking.”

Right Thinking is the kind of thinking that makes us say right things and do right things. If you know that a cup contains a clear poisonous liquid – you will not likely drink it as water, and you certainly would not encourage others to quench their thirst with it.

Right Thinking is produced when right or truthful information is understood, admitted and trusted. If you are going to successfully avoid driving off of the road because of a fallen bridge, then you are going to need to understand that there is danger ahead, admit that the danger is a real danger, and trust that the danger applies to you. Any of these three may be removed and Right Thinking will fail.

With an embracing frequency, people will claim “faith,” but they will have no understanding of the substance thereof. In other words, the idea is to believe… but believe what? As nicely as I might say it, if “trust” is not placed in an understood and admittedly real object, then it is not trust… It is credulity.

Credulity is an attribute of a person who would be willing to buy oceanfront property in Oklahoma (as if anyone actually wanted to live there). Credulous people are those who will believe anything you tell them; they are gullible.

As Christians, we have the benefit of an objective reality that has been communicated to humanity in understandable terms, so that it might be acknowledged as true and believed or trusted with certainty. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news that God saves. It is a historical, factual story that took place in real human experience. The content and implications of that message are HUGE and more important than anything else – ever.

Take some time today to refocus your lenses on the most important information, concepts and message. Invest some effort in “Right Thinking.” You are likely to find that there is incredible benefit to be enjoyed from such a change.

The Bible talks about Right Thinking…

“[W]hatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Philippians 4:8-9

Introduction

Book Summary

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Conclusion

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Introduction

Book Summary

Conclusion

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First-Level Doctrines

Second-Level Doctrines

Third-Level Doctrines

Fourth-Level Doctrines

A Call to Thoughtful Christianity

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