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May 20, 2015

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Gentle Heresy-Hunting with Paul

correctopponentsHeresy-hunting gets a bad rap nowadays. If there’s one thing that nobody wants to be, it’s a “heresy-hunter.” And who can blame them? I mean, cruise around the Internet and you’ll find any number of “discernment” ministries dedicated to finding anybody who doesn’t line up with their particular, historically-contingent, possibly cultish understanding of Christianity and placing them on the “list” with a page dedicated to listing their dubious tweets.

Or again, there’s that guy (and it’s almost always a guy) who spends his time listening to local pastors’ sermons just so he can find that damning 2-second analogy he can email you five pages of footnotes about. Nobody wants to be him, so there’s an understandable recoil. And this is on top of our general cultural aversion to being doctrinaire about matters of religion (unless it’s a food religion, in which case we’re simply being “healthy,” and one can do no evil in the name of health).

All the same, one of the interesting fruits of reading G.K. Beale’s New Testament Biblical Theology a while back, was realizing that there’s a proper place for heresy-hunting in the church. In fact, we have a church office whose task is, in large part, to oversee, guide, and prevent against creeping false doctrine in the church: the Elder. According to Beale, Paul’s teaching on the office of elder in the Pastoral Epistles, is connected to the reality of false-teaching in the end times or “latter days” (p. 820).

Of course, in Beale’s telling, “the latter days” is a description of this time between the first and second coming of Christ. In other words, the many exhortations to guard against false teaching are a permanent and essential function of the elder in Christ’s church (Titus 1:5-16; 1 Tim 1:3-7, 19-20; 4:1-7; 2 Tim. 2:14-18; 23-26; 3:1-13). Shepherds keep sheep from wandering astray, and they guard the sheep against wolves who would ravage them with cunning and destructive teachings about Jesus that would rob them of comfort, joy, holiness, and peace.

I go into how to do that wisdom and gentleness like Paul does over in the rest of the article at For the Church. If you haven’t checked them out, I’d highly recommend it. It’s a great new resource site.

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March 17, 2015

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A Man’s Got To Know His Limitations

do ya punkFor some reason, theologians don’t often get associated with the Christian virtue of humility. It’s ironic that studying the infinite Creator of all things, when undertaken without prayer or community, can lead to a puffed up and inflated sense of self. The greater the subject, the greater the pride when you feel you’ve mastered it, I suppose. In any case, this is one of the reasons I so enjoy running across encouragements to humility in theological exploration.

Yesterday I ran across a particularly fantastic example in Augustine. In one section, he takes up the question of whether God’s sovereignty implies an eternal creation. In other words, if we say God is eternally sovereign, does that require him to have been eternally creating something alongside himself to be sovereign over? Wouldn’t that be another co-eternal? Or how does the fact that God created time itself affect the question? In other words, if God created time along with the world, there’s a way in which you could say there’s never been a time where he hasn’t been sovereign Creator, but that’s because there was no time “before” he made time.

Confused yet?

At the end of a couple pages of this, Augustine wraps up his discussion like this:

And so I return to what our Creator wished us to know. What he has allowed wiser heads to know in this life, or has reserved for the knowledge of those who have reached their fulfillment in the other life, that I confess to be beyond my powers. But I thought I should discuss this question, without reaching any positive conclusion, so that my readers may see what questions they should refrain from tackling, as dangerous, and to discourage them from thinking themselves capable of understanding everything. Instead they should realize that they ought to submit to the wholesome instruction of the Apostle, when he says, ‘In virtue of the authority given to me by God’s grace I say this to all your company: do not be wiser than you ought to be; but be wise in moderation, in proportion to the faith which God has allotted to each of you.’ For if a child’s upbringing is adjusted to his strength, he will grow, and become capable of further progress, but if he is strained beyond his capacity he will fade away before he has the chance to grow up. (City of God, BK. XII.16)

There’s so much I love about this passage.

First, the fact that he did all of that in order to sum up and say, “Don’t try this at home, kids.” Now, this can sound a bit arrogant. But what have to see here is a humble vulnerability in the theological process in which Augustine is exposing his own finite understanding in the process of stretching himself to the limits of his own powers. It’s not easy for a teacher to say, “I don’t know.” All too often, the temptation is the fake a certainty you don’t possess, or hastily land on a conclusion just to have an answer for those who look to you for insight. Augustine refuses to play the expert at the cost of the truth.

With a pastoral heart, he decides to engage the difficulty that he knows might trip up some of his more inquiring readers should they wander down certain paths. The flipside is that he still discusses the issue. It’s this odd movement of saying, “Alright, I’ll go here with you if only to show you that going here might lead to trouble.” It’s not the simple wave of the hand that dismisses such questions as foolish or entirely off-limits, but one that humbly acts as a guide to the theologically perplexed.

Finally, Augustine’s example at the end is one of both caution and invitation. If you press too deep beyond what it is given to you to know at this point, beyond your spiritual and intellectual powers, you might hurt yourself. But the point isn’t to warn against theological study, but about taking care so that you may continue to proceed at the pace of growth the Lord himself intends. There are times when, for the sake of growing in a healthy knowledge of God, it is okay to say, “I’ll put this question aside for now and return it at some future point. I trust that God will continue to reveal himself to me in ways that are appropriate to me in areas that I can handle right now.”

As Dirty Harry put it, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Soli Deo Gloria

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May 12, 2014

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Proof that PROOF Works: A Gracious Response From Jones And Montgomery

proofToday I had a review go up at the Gospel Coalition for the book PROOF by Timothy Paul Jones and Daniel Montgomery. It’s a good book that I think many will profit from. I said as much in my review. Still, I had one very big quibble with it:

…about a rather specific and unfortunate use of the phrase “camel-jockey” to refer to the patriarch Abraham (60). Maybe that’s just a colloquialism in some parts of the country, but as a Christian of Arab descent who’s been insulted with that term, I couldn’t help but flinch at the use of the slur. Given the authors’ robust defense of the racial universality of the gospel call, the offense was obviously unintended. Still, somebody in editing ought to have caught that phrase.

I wrote this with some trepidation because I didn’t want to sink or distract from the book. I had no ill-will towards Montgomery and Jones and I did think it was probably something careless or inadvertent.  Still, I felt that it needed to be said to maintain my integrity. This is why I was so pleased to read this near-immediate response in the comments on The Gospel Coalition review by Timothy Paul Jones:

First off, thanks to Derek for his review of PROOF. Both Daniel and I deeply appreciate the care and attention Derek has taken in his reading and review. Second, neither of us were aware that “camel jockey” functions as a derogatory epithet, and we apologize that we erred by including anything in the book that might be hurtful to any ethnic group.

No matter how unintended it may have been, the hurtfulness inherent in such an epithet runs counter to everything toward which we are working at Sojourn Community Church–to rejoice in the diversity of cultures and languages that God brings together through faith in Jesus Christ. We are thankful to Derek for calling us to account in this area so that we may share the grace of Jesus Christ more effectively with persons from every tribe, every language, and every ethnicity.

This morning, we have already taken every necessary step to have this error corrected. The first printing of the book has already shipped, but we have been assured by the editors at Zondervan that this section will be reworded prior to the second printing of the book.

Pastors and leaders, this is a godly response. As I said in my original review, I believe they didn’t know “camel-jockey” to be a slur or they wouldn’t have used it. And yet, Jones still owned up for the unintentional offense and even thanked me for the correction!

A humble, gracious, and quick response such as this is one that flows from a desire to not see anything stain or besmirch the name of Jesus or the Gospel. I’m so grateful for this demonstration of Christ-centered humility on the part of these leaders in the church. In an age of manufactured press releases and micro-managed spin, it’s rare to see an actual apology and swift movement to course-correct.

Leaders who are striving after Christ don’t reject the well-intended, or even not-so-well-intended, criticisms of others out of hand. Instead, they stop, listen, examine themselves and their sources to see if it’s true and if, and in what way, there is any opportunity for repentance or correction. They can do this because they know that ultimately their identity is found in Christ, where they are securely held by their Savior, no matter what (true or false) criticisms come their way. Leaders care far more about the name of Christ than feeling the need to prove they get it perfectly every time. Indeed, they know that at times a quick apology for whatever offense they might have provoked (that isn’t simply the offense of the gospel, that is) is more God-glorifying than getting it perfect the first time.

This is a wonderful testimony that Montgomery and Jones have truly imbibed deeply of the message of grace they write about so powerfully in their book. In other words, it’s a little more proof that PROOF works.

Soli Deo Gloria

Just as I went to hit ‘publish’, I saw on Twitter that Jones had posted a follow-up to this statement on his blog. You can go read it here.

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November 26, 2013

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‘Who has made man’s mouth?’ A Couple of Thoughts On Humility and Boldness in Theology

scyllaArrogant idolatry and cowardly silence are the Scylla and Charybdis of modern theology. While some prattle on, boastfully sure about the God who obviously fits their preconceived notions of deity and cultural expectations, others are too suspicious or scared to speak in more than a doubtful whisper about him.

John Webster speaks to the tension in this tight little passage (also, he gets more done in a hundred small pages than many modern theologians do in three-volumes of theologico-philosophic meandering):

‘You shall not profane my holy name, but I will be hallowed among the people of Israel; I am the Lord who sanctify you’ (Lev. 22.32). This requirement–that God be feared and his name hallowed–is in many respects the requirement of theological reason. Reason can only be holy if it resists its own capacity for idolatry, its natural drift towards the profaning of god’s name by making common currency of the things of God. A holy theology, therefore, will be properly mistrustful of its own command of its subject-matter; modest; aware that much of what it says and thinks is dust. God’s holiness means that theology stands under the prohibition: ‘Do not come near’ (Ex. 3.5). Accordingly, theology will be characterized less by fluency and authority, and much more by weakness, a sense of the inadequacy of its speeches to the high and holy matter to which it is called to bear testimony.

Nevertheless, this prohibition is not an absolute moment by which reason is entirely incapacitated. Alongside the prohibition stands with equal force an imperious command to speak: ‘Who has made man’s mouth?…Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be your mouth and teach you what you shall speak’ (Ex. 4:11-12). The command is also a promise–that God will make holy reason capable of that which sin makes it incapable; that because the speeches of reason are in the hands of God, they may also serve in the indication of the gospel’s truth. Idolatry is reproved, not by silence, but by speeches that set forth what God has taught. And in such speeches, holy reason gives voice to the fear of God.

–John Webster, Holiness, pp. 28-29

And, of course, my boy Vanhoozer says something along the same lines with a bit more style:

Those who would be honest to God must strive to avoid both pride and sloth in their God-talk. Theological pride overestimates the adequacy of human language and thought; theological sloth underestimates the importance of responding to the provocations of God’s self-revelation. The one goes before destruction; the other pre-empts instruction. Yet it is hard to miss the recurring biblical theme that God wills to communicate and make himself known: “The word of the Lord came to . . .”; “the Lord said . . .”. Theology is ultimately irresponsible if it fails either to attend to what God says or to think about the nature of the one who addresses us.

–Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology, pg. xvi

So how do we speak well of God? By proceeding with humble obedience, listening before we speak, and submitting every word to the Word for judgment and grace.

Soli Deo Gloria