At Strict and Particular. One clarification: The reviewer asks whether I’m using the adjective “Reformed” in a denominational sense. The answer is quite decidedly “no.” It is used throughout the book to refer to a theology, piety, and practice that is found in several denominations and includes both the European Reformed and British or English-speaking Reformed and Presbyterian churches.

The most recent WHI is (another) not-to-miss episode. Shane has conducted more NRB interviews. Some of them are what we’ve come to expect but some are surprising. You should hear them. Along the way the fellows made three terrific points. 1. The heart of the gospel is not about us. The heart of the gospel is Christ for us (Christus pro nobis). This was the essence of Paul’s message: that Christ came for us, to do for us what we could not and would not do. He obeyed. He was crucified. He was raised. He is ascended. He is returning.  The medieval church turned the gospel into a message about what Christ is doing in us, by grace, in sanctification, and about what we must do to do our part in order to benefit: cooperate with grace. The good news is that we have no part, not in this story. We’re recipient. We’re beggars; we’re not contributors to the story. A second point they made this week is that, though it is a great sin to corrupt the gospel and it is apostasy to deny the gospel, we are not saved because we formulate the gospel rightly or because we understand the gospel better intellectually. We are justified by Christ’s righteousness for us and imputed to us and received through faith alone. There are some (perhaps many) who probably cannot formulate the gospel properly who, nevertheless, are trusting in Christ’s finished work for us—even if they give the wrong answers on a pop quiz. As Warfield said, On our knees, we’re all Calvinists. This is no excuse for being sloppy. Paul wasn’t kidding when said, (paraphrasing) “even if I or an angel comes to you to preach another gospel (not that there really is another gospel as he says elsewhere) don’t you believe them.” Paul was a stickler about getting the gospel right and getting it out. We don’t have to choose between them. We must have a true gospel to preach promiscuously (according to the Synod of Dort, 2nd Head of Doctrine).

Finally, in passing, Mike made a terrific point about sola Scriptura from Paul’s language in Galatians about the logical priority of the objective gospel message relative to Paul or even angels. Rome says that the church forms the canon. In Galatians, however, Paul has it that the gospel forms the messenger! If Rome were right, Paul should have said, “Well, if I come back to you with a different gospel, that’s okay because I’m an apostle and I have magisterial authority. I, as a vicar of  Christ on the earth, can change the gospel.” No. What Paul actually said is that the gospel is what it is. It cannot be changed. The gospel norms the apostle. The gospel norms (theoretical) angelic preachers. The gospel message is fixed, certain, and immutable. You must trust Christ and you can also trust that the gospel is what it is because it comes from Christ himself and its center is Christ for us.

The Calvin 500 planning committee has released the following revised schedule:

JULY 5, 2009 (SUNDAY)

11:30 Greetings for Opening Convocation of Calvin500 in St. Pierre Cathedral
Worship and Sermon by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, “In Christ Alone” Phil. 3:8-12.
6:00 PM Joint Worship, with Sermon by the Rt. Rev. Henry Orombi, Archbishop of Uganda

Psalm Sing and worship
Sermon by Dr. Bryan Chapell (President, Covenant Sem.): “In Praise of Predestination,” Eph. 1:3-6

JULY 6, 2009 (MONDAY)

Paper: Dr. Douglas Kelly (RTS): “The Catholicity of the Theology of John Calvin”
Paper: Dr. Richard Gamble (RPTS): “Recent Research in Calvin Studies”
Paper: Dr. Darryl Hart: “Calvin among Nineteenth-Century Reformed Protestants in the United States”

Keynote Address: Dr. John Witte (Emory), “Reading Calvin as a Lawyer,”
Sermon by Rev. Geoffrey Thomas (Wales, Alfred Place Baptist Church), “Election” Eph. 1:3-14
Sermon by Dr. Peter Lillback (Pres., Westminster Sem., “All the Glorious Offices of Christ,
“1 Cor. 1:29-31
Sermon Dr. Robert Godfrey (Pres., Westminster Sem California), “Calvin’s Cherished Text,” Jn 17:1- 5

JULY 7, 2009 (TUESDAY)

Paper: Dr. Richard Burnett (Erskine Theological Seminary): “Calvin on Secular and Sacred History”
Paper: Dr. William Edgar (Westminster Theological Seminary): “Calvin’s Impact on the Arts”
Paper: Dr. Anthony Lane (London School of Theology): “Calvin’s Doctrine of Assurance Revisited”

Keynote Address: Dr. Bruce McCormack (Princeton): “Union with Christ in Calvin’s Theology:
Grounds for a Divinisation Theory?”

Address: Dr. Henry Krabbendam: “Reformation and Revival”
Dr. Steven Lawson (Christ Fellowship Baptist, Mobile, AL): “Calvin, the Expository Preacher”
Dr. Iain D. Campbell (Back Free Church, Scotland) “Three Great Intercessions” (Romans 8:26, 34).
Sermon by Dr. J. Ligon Duncan

JULY 8, 2009 (WEDNESDAY)

Paper: Dr. R. Scott Clark (Westminster Sem California): “Calvin’s Principle of Worship”
Paper: Dr. Hughes Old/Dr. Terry Johnson (Erskine): “Calvin’s Worship Reforms”
Paper: Dr. Henri Blocher, “Calvin, the Frenchman”

Keynote Address: Dr. William McComish, Emeritus Dean, St. Pierre Cathedral, “Calvin’s Children”
Afternoon: Young Calvin Scholars Symposium
Paper: Dr. Jae Sung Kim: “Calvinism in Asia”
Sermon by Dr. Philip Ryken (Tenth Pres, Philadelphia): “A Wide Door for Spreading the Gospel,” 1Cor. 16:5-11
Sermon by Dr. Joel Beeke (President, Puritan Ref Theo Sem): “Cherishing the Church,” Mt. 16:18b
Dr. Martin Holdt, “Psalm 100 Then and Now,” Psalm 110

JULY 9, 2009 (THURSDAY)

Paper: Dr. James McGoldrick (GPTS): “Calvin and Luther: Comrades in Christ”
Paper: Dr. Michael Horton (Westminster Seminary California): “Union and Communion:Rediscovering Calvin’s Eucharistic Theology.”
Paper: Dr. Andrew McGowan (Scotland): “John Calvin’s Doctrine of Scripture”

Keynote Address: Dr. Herman Selderhuis:
Paper: Dr. George Knight: “Calvin as New Testament Exegete”
Dr. Henri Blocher: “Calvin on Divine Election”
Sermon: Rev. Ted Donnelly (Principal, Reformed Theological College, Belfast): “More Than Conquerors,” Rom. 8:37

Dr. Hywel Jones (Wales/USA): “One of a Thousand,” Job 36:1-4
Dr. Derek Thomas (RTS) “Adoring the Majesty of God,”Rom. 11:33-36

At GB. You can order your copy of William Ames on the Heidelberg Catechism at The Bookstore at WSC.

At Feeding on Christ (HT: Nick Batzig)

The United States has a trade gap but one product we shouldn’t be importing is schlocky “evangelical” piety and practice.

From left to right: Mark VanderPol, Christ URC elder Roy Lopez, Rev. Mike Brown, and Brad Lenzner.

Congratulations to Mark and Brad (and their patient wives) who sustained rigorous examinations as candidates for the pastoral ministry in Classis Southwest of the United Reformed Churches. Brad and Mark are both interns at Christ URC in Santee, CA. Brad has also been in Oceanside URC (Carlsbad, CA) and Mark was raised in the Escondido URC. They are now eligible to receive a pastoral call in the URCs. Mark has already begun work on a possible church plant in Gig Harbor, WA. Interested consistories and others may contact them through their consistory at Christ URC. Yesterday was day 1 of a two-day classis meeting and today we have two more WSC grads to examine as candidates for pastoral ministry. Please pray that they sustain their exams and are able to enter into ministry quickly. The harvest is great but laborers are few.

At Helm’s Deep

UPDATE 29 June 2009
Madoff received a sentence of 150 years in prison today.

Original story 8 May 2009
The investors in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme received higher than average returns. Most of those who invested with Madoff had no idea how he was able to do it. It looked like magic. A recent episode on This American Life told the story of one father-in-law who warned his son-in-law that it was dangerous to invest so heavily with Madoff.

It wasn’t that the father-in-law had any special insight into Madoff’s formula or fraud. Rather the advice came on the common sense principle that it’s safer to diversify one’s investments so that if one sector goes bad there are other sources of wealth or revenue. The son-in-law obeyed dutifully but quite unhappily. For sixteen years the advice appeared to be very bad advice indeed. All the evidence seemed to be that Madoff had a magic formula and the son-in-law’s relatives were making a killing and pleading with him to defy his father-in-law and to re-invest in Madoff’s hedge fund.

The father-in-law’s advice seemed wrong up to the very  moment that Madoff’s Ponzi scheme collapsed and Madoff was indicted.

This isn’t really about investing at all. It’s about faith. People invested in Madoff’s scheme because they believed in him and they believed in his magic. They didn’t (and don’t) know what that formula is but they believe that there was one. So they trusted—blindly.

That’s not faith. It’s what Stevie Wonder called superstition. For sixteen years all the evidence, all the pressure said “re-invest in Madoff.” Superstition said, “We don’t know how he’s doing it but he’s producing terrific returns. Look at the check he just sent me.”

The son-in-law, however, submitted to an authority and trusted that authority even when all the evidence seemed to be against it. Eventually the authority was vindicated and those who trusted in magic were decimated and those who believed a wise and good authority were, as it were, saved.

If the son-in-law was right to trust his father-in-law, how much wiser is it to trust in Jesus? Common sense is one thing, and it has the power to deliver us from perils in this life, but no common sense can deliver sinners from the wrath to come. Only Jesus, the wisdom of God, can do that.

Faith is only as good as its object. The Christian faith has a worthy object: Jesus the Christ. He was obedient. He was innocent and righteous. He was crucified, dead, and raised on the third day. He was seen by eye witnesses. He was seen ascending to glory. We have first-hand testimony of these things.

Magic and superstition come in many forms but they always disappoint, even if the illusion lasts for a time. Christ, the true object of true faith was there before Bernie Madoff and he will be there when the next wizard comes along peddling magic.

The Christian faith isn’t magic and it doesn’t ask for blind faith.

Have I not over-emphasised the social and national dynamic behind Paul’s language and seriously underplayed Paul’s analysis of the radical helplessness of the human situation and his concern for the salvation of the individual?” For my part, I have no desire to diminish the seriousness of the charges which Paul levels against humankind, particularly in the devastating analysis of Rom. 1.18-3.20 as I hope my earlier work has made clear. (pp. 29-30, James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul, Rev. edn (GRand Rapids: Eermdmans, 2007).

This is from a remarkable opening chapter wherein Dunn provides a fascinating biography, narrative of his career and of the career of an idea. To hear Dunn tell it, all that he has tried to do over the last few decades is to broaden our conception of what the expression “works of the law” might entail. He has only tried, he says, to get us to take more seriously the racial and social implications entailed in Paul’s teaching concerning “the works of the law.” He never meant to reduce them to mere boundary markers or badges of identity (though the do have that function) nor did he intend to revise fundamentally the Reformed understanding of the doctrine of justification. His detractors have quite misunderstood him—he lists a number of such allegedly confused detractors including Carl Trueman, Guy Waters, and Seyoon Kim.

He also discusses the NPP as a “de-Lutheranising” of Paul and confesses that his study of Luther consists of a very limited reading in Luther and an elementary (literally) reading of the secondary literature (pp. 18-19). He seems to wish us, as the say, “to give him a pass” on the basis that he is a NT scholar and not a historian. To be sure, that’s implied, not stated.

I wonder if historians could get away with dipping into NT studies in the way NT folk (including N. T. Wright) make amateur plunges into historical work and claims and get away with it? I guess not. Still, Dunn and Wright and others of their tribe do this on a regular basis and then complain then that they are criticized for it. The study of Luther is certainly as vast as most NT topics. The primary literature in the study of Luther is massive — much more massive than the Pauline corpus (including Ephesians, which many NT scholars omit, thereby limiting their field even further) and the secondary literature is virtually unmanageable. What on earth gives some NT the hubris to think they can read 50-year old secondary works on Luther and then make pronouncements about his reading of the NT when others make a lifelong study of the same and struggle to collate their research and to describe their findings?

Nevertheless, even though I am not a professional NT scholar, I was reading St Paul this morning and I noticed the expression εργον του νομου (work of the law; Rom 2:15). I noticed that it occurs first with reference to εθνη τα (the gentiles) and not directly relative to Jews. I take it that the expression “εθνη τα” refers to those who are not ethnically, nationally Jewish, to those considered outside the Israelite covenant community descended from Abraham (hence Paul’s expression”φυσις”) and constituted a national people under Moses.

Since Paul predicates εργον του νομου of the gentiles it seems unlikely that it refers here, in this instance, to badges of ethnicity or to ethnic boundary markers. Since this is the first use of the expression in Romans it would seem reasonable to take this usage as indicating the baseline notion embedded in the phrase. In other words, whatever “εργον του νομου” (whether expressed in the singular or the plural) means elsewhere in Romans or in Paul—it can’t be ruled out a priori that they might elsewhere entail the notion of boundary markers or badges—the baseline sense isn’t “badges of ethnicity” or “ethnic or religious boundary markers.”

Further, unless one wants to predicate a fundamental difference between “εργον” (work) and “εργα” (works) which seems unlikely and even unreasonable, then it seems most reasonable and most likely to take them as having the same basic idea embedded in them.

I was also struck this morning by the connection between the phrase “εργον του νομου” and “ποιωσιν” (they do) “τα του νομου” (the things of the law). The gentiles, “μη νομον εχοντα” (not having the [Mosaic] law) nevertheless “they do the things of the law.” I take it that “τα του νομου” (the things of the law) is substantially identical to “εργον του νομου” (the work of the law). The Gentiles do the work of the law and the things of the law, even though they lack the formal publication of the law. How is that? Paul says that ” ουτοι νομον μη εχοντες” (these not having the law) nevertheless “εατοις εισιν νομος” (these are a law to themselves). Paul isn’t saying that they are lawless but quite the opposition. They are a law unto themselves because the the “εργον του νομου” is “γραπτον εν ταις καις αυτων” (written on their hearts).

In other words, the gentiles do what they know. They “do the things of the law” or “the works of the law” because they know the law and they know the law because it is written on their hearts. This is my response to the too clever claim by some that Paul does not teach “natural law” because he says that the gentiles have the “work of the law” and not the law of nature or natural law written on their hearts. Such an interpretation is too clever because though formally correct, Paul doesn’t use the expression “natural law,” it substantially wrong because Paul implies that the gentiles actually know the law. They aren’t doing the law unreflectively or on the basis of mere beastly, animal instinct . They know something and that something is the substance of what Christians call “the moral law.” We know the possession of “the law” is cognitive since Paul goes on to say that their “συνειδησις” (conscience) testifies against them. The human conscience, even in the reprobate and in those outside the covenant community, involves the intellective faculty.

This writing of the law on gentile hearts is obviously a reference to the writing of the law on tablets of stone at Sinai. Those who are Jews “by nature” had the Sinaitic revelation of the law and the gentiles have substantially the same law written on their hearts. There is no evidence here that Paul is considering gentile Christians. Nor does this, in context (beginning with 1:18), seem to be any reference to the benefits of the new covenant, e.g., the outpouring of the Spirit and the interior knowledge of God and his moral will. The gentiles in view (2;12) are considered as “ανομως” (lawlesslessly or outside the law). If the gentiles being considered actually, substantially have the law and do it to some degree, then their lawlessness is relative, not absolute. The contrast here is between two ethnic and even religious groups: Jews and non-Jews or gentiles. They both know and do, or fail to do perfectly as the case is, the law. Despite the external differences created by the Mosaic law and the national covenant with Israel, the Jews and gentiles in this passage have substantially the same law in different ways. Despite their extrinsic differences, they are bound together by their common liability to the demand by that one law for perfect and perpetual obedience (αλλ’ οι ποηται; v. 13). They are both obligated to be “doers” of the law since only “doers” of the law are actually righteous before God.

A final point here is that Dunn’s juxaposition of the social-corporate element in Paul is not properly contrasted with the “individual” element but with the forensic or legal. Paul’s concern here, in this passage, is evidently both corporate (Jews and gentiles) AND legal (standing before God). If some evangelicals have sometimes missed the corporate and sociological element in Paul’s doctrine of justification (and no one denies that we have—but as Dunn himself suggests the fascination with the private and personal may have more to do with Bill Graham and Rudolph Bultmann than it does with Paul, Luther, or Calvin) one cannot help but be impressed by the way that Paul’s first concern is with God, his law, his standard, and with eschatological judgment (to which he turns in v. 16) and that, as important as they are for understanding Paul, questions of boundary markers and badges are a consequence of his judicial, legal, and eschatological concerns.