Calvinist Canards

canard. noun, plural canards. 1) a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor.

Ahhhhh, the canards that come from the tough guy internet Calvinists. Today I have a fun one.

Canard: John Calvin's face.

The fun Calvinist canard of the day is this: If God wants to save everyone, everyone would then be saved. Or, it seems that you are saying that God is trying to save these people who are not saved.

Don't fall for it. It's a canard. What they are implying is that we (meaning everyone who isn't a Calvinist) have a God that tries His best but is unable to do anything about the situation. What they are indirectly implying is that only they have an Almighty, Sovereign God, and we have a weak beggar who is impotent to accomplish His will. Hence, limited atonement and so on. They are trying to pigeonhole you into an Arminian, Pelagian, or Open Theistic conception of God. Don't fall for it. We actually have a concept of God that is closer to Calvinism than those other things just mentioned. Of course, in their limited theological mind, anything that is not Calvinism does fall into those categories. But it just is not true.

These are the categories in which the militant tough guy internet Calvinist operates. So, why should we reject this question and/or charge?

Well, first of all, it betrays the inability of this sort of Calvinist to think in terms outside of absolute predestination and autonomous free will. It fails to recognize that all theology does not fall into one of two categories - Calvinism/Determinism or Arminianism/Pelagianism/Libertarianism. In fact, those systems of thought (I am referring specifically to Calvinism and Arminianism here) are Johnny-come-latelies in the theological arena. Before the Reformed Church erupted into this dichotomy with the Remonstrants, hardly any theological system started and ended all discussion based on this paradigm. In fact, Calvinism as well as Arminianism are radical departures from catholic Christianity. They are not a Reforming of the church - they are a completely new branch. The modern internet Calvinist wants to relegate everything to the doctrine of election, thereby placing the Sacraments and other super-duper important things on a secondary status.

Second, it's a backwards question. It likewise betrays the willingness of the internet Calvinist to start and base his whole theology off of God's hidden will (election in eternity past) and not in God's revealed will (Christ Incarnate, crucified, and risen for us). This makes Christ crucified an outworking of election.

Third, it gets the internet Calvinist into some pretty deep water regarding the work of the Spirit in saving sinners. This is why Calvinism has distinguished between the inward call (regeneration) and the outward call (preaching of the Word). The inward call is a special call the elect alone receive whereby they are made partakers of Christ and born again. This happens when the Gospel is preached, but it is the Spirit alone who regenerates, and only in the elect. How then can they affirm that the preaching of the Gospel is pure grace when it is heard by the hearers? Well, they cannot, because the Spirit refuses to give the inward call to the non-elect. Hence, it traverses awfully close to the slippery slope of separation of the spiritual from the natural means of grace.

It is far simpler, and more biblical, to simply say that the Spirit is at work in the preaching of the Gospel 100% of the time to 100% of the hearers. If they reject it, it's because they rejected it, not because there was no inward call involved. If they receive it, it is because the Holy Spirit gave it. Thus, grace received is 100% a gift of God, plus nothing. Whereas, grace rejected is 100% the work of man, nothing of God.

This whole idea of God trying and getting what He wants with 100% certainty is the reason why these internet Calvinists have to come up with novel interpretations of numerous plain and clear passages in Scripture. To name a few, 1 Tim 2:4-6, 2 Pet 3:9, 1 Tim 4:10, 1 John 2:2, and 2 Pet 2:1.

Instead, we are far better off Scripturally starting with and sticking to - God's revealed will given to us in Christ Jesus alone, and not trying to cram the revealed will into the hidden will that ends up with doctrines like limited atonement and rejects doctrines like baptismal regeneration. Worse yet, they have to reject some clear Scriptures to hold to what they do.

This is a canard. Moreover, it's a bad case of philosophical systematics trumping the revealed Word of Christ.

+Pax+

JW/Watchtower. Christian or Not?

Are the Jehovah's Witnesses, or Watchtower, a Christian church? This is a topic worth looking into considering the Watchtower is getting to be a fairly big organization in the United States. And after all, they are awfully good at going door to door and pitching their church to people. They are also a very educated body in what they believe. Likewise, the Watchtower has produced their own translation of the Scriptures, replete with their theology written into it - but that is another topic for another day.

To answer this question, we simply must look at what the Watchtower believes about the person and work of Jesus Christ. So, what do they believe? From their own site (http://www.jw.org) they state the following:

We follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ and honor him as our Savior and as the Son of God. (Matthew 20:28; Acts 5:31) Thus, we are Christians. (Acts 11:26) However, we have learned from the Bible that Jesus is not Almighty God and that there is no Scriptural basis for the Trinity doctrine.—John 14:28.

Thus, in their own words, the Watchtower believes that Jesus is not God but rather only the Son of God. They also reject the Trinity, claiming there is no Scriptural basis for the belief. They also claim to be Christians, as their own words indicate.

Thus, the Watchtower is a group worth looking at. It's also quite nice that the Watchtower clearly lays their beliefs on the table and are not sketchy about them. For that, we can be thankful.

The Watchtower has spilled tons of ink trying to point out that the Trinity is not a correct belief, and in fact is a lie. They state on their website: "Neither the word “Trinity” nor the concept is found in God’s Word." Then they proceed to defend this belief with some Scriptures such as Colossians 1:15.

The first part of this argument is a non-argument. Yes, we know the word Trinity is not in the Bible. So what? Does that falsify it? The word "eschatology" is not in the Bible either, but the Watchtower has a decided eschatology revolving the Kingdom of God, and so on. The second argument regarding the concept is their real argument. In short, they are simply arguing that the Trinity is not taught in the Holy Scriptures.

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason has given a rock solid answer to this and can be found here:

Jesus is God - The Trinity

In essence, Koukl points out that based on John 1:3, Jesus is either fully God or He is not God at all. He cannot be what the Watchtower wants Him to be.

The Witnesses' belief of course, is nothing more than a rehashing of the ancient heresy of Arianism. The bigger problem with the Witnesses' belief here is that it completely trashes the atonement of Christ and as such, turns the Watchtower into a religion of works.

The argument simply goes like this: If Christ is not God, the atonement is insufficient in itself, because only God can forgive sin. And since God forgives sin based on the work of Jesus Christ, Jesus must be fully God, since only God can make an atonement that is worthy of forgiveness of sin. In other words, the atonement must be absolutely perfect and only God is perfect. If it is anything less than perfect, it's worthless, since then God could not forgive sin on its basis. Hence, for the atonement to be the basis of our Christian faith, Jesus must be God.

I'm not going to get into all the texts that show the Deity of Christ or ones where Jesus Himself says He is God, or ones where the Apostle Paul or Thomas say He is God. The Witnesses' have snappy pat answers for those. Not good ones mind you - and they're all ripped from context, misinterpreted, or re-translated to fit their theology, but they do have answers.

In summary, the Watchtower has an atonement that is useless, leaving the individual Watchtower believer to simply do their best, and then maybe God will save them for their following of Jesus. But if God is perfect, and the atonement was made by someone other than Almighty God, the atonement is not perfect. Hence, based on Watchtower theology, nobody will be saved - if they flesh their theology out to its conclusion.

The Watchtower is not a Christian theology or a Christian Church. In fact, it is really not very different from all other World Religions that deny the Deity of Christ. Historically, it is a product of the Second Great Awakening in the United States. The Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, were founded in the same era. We see historically, that all of the major new branches of Christianity so-called that began in the Second Great Awakening have a decided tendency to elevate man to a level where the Bible does not put him. The Enlightenment and Rational Humanism are partly to blame here. When these things sneak in, humanist theology and the power of the human will and works are the end result. In this manner, the Watchtower fits the bill, right along with the Mormons and the adherents of the abhorrent doctrines of Charles G. Finney.

The Jehovah's Witnesses may be a religion and a church, but they are not a Christian one.

+Pax+

Crucifixes? Yes.

Popular Reformed Baptist pastor and blogger Tim Challies fired off an article that articulated the traditional Reformed interpretation regarding images in worship. More so, his article reflects the standard Reformed stance on the 2nd commandment (part of the first commandment in the Lutheran and Roman numbering) of the Decalogue. His blog post, titled Why You Should Not Wear a Crucifix, has been making the rounds in the online community quite a bit the last couple days.

I think that much of Challies' reasoning is this post, mainly drawn from Anglican J.I. Packer and less so from Reformer John Calvin, is all wrong. Here is why.

Packer says, "But the very wording of the [second] commandment rules out such a limiting exposition. God says quite categorically, “you shall not make an idol in the form of anything” for use in worship."

This statement is misconstrued. Exodus 20:4-5a says the following: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them..."

The prohibition here is not against images in general, nor is it against images of Christ or other saints from the Scriptures. Or images of anything else for that matter. Nor is the prohibition against images in worship. Here is where Packer makes the passage say something that it doesn't say. The passage states that we should not *worship* images, not that we cannot have them *in worship.* That is quite a big difference.

He then proceeds to give two reasons as to why images are disallowed, building on his (faulty) interpretation of Exodus 20.

1. Images dishonour God, for they obscure His glory.

He quotes Calvin in support, "A true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence...His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form...Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is."

Ultimately, this objection is weak at best, nor is it supported by the Scriptures. As far as I can see, the Reformed theologians would have us believe that it would have been idolatry for anyone to draw a picture of Jesus, paint one, or snap a photograph of Him while He was alive on Earth during His thirty something years leading up to Calvary. Or perhaps that might be OK, because it might actually look like Jesus. I don't know, but either way, the prohibition on images of Christ on the cross is certainly nonsensical.

Packer continues, "The pathos of the crucifix obscures the glory of Christ, for it hides the fact of his deity, his victory on the cross, and his present kingdom. It displays his human weakness, but it conceals his divine strength; it depicts the reality of his pain, but keeps out of our sight the reality of his joy and his power. In both these cases, the symbol is unworthy most of all because of what it fails to display. And so are all other visible representations of deity."

This statement is confusing to me. Was it idolatry to look at Christ when He was on the cross because His deity was obscured? I'm not sure what Packer and Challies would have us believe here. Not to mention, the objections rooted within this statement don't fly.

First, it was precisely Christ on the cross that died for the sins of the world. And that same Christ on the cross was fully man as well as fully God. St. Luke records for us in Acts 20:28, Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

Notice what he says: God obtained the church of God with His own blood. What? God died on the cross? Yep, that is precisely what is being said here. In fact, I will go even further. Christ on the cross and His subsequent rising from the tomb is in fact God's greatest place of glory. And we should seek God nowhere else but on that cross and up from that grace.

To put it simply, the standard objection that boils down to "but Jesus got off that cross" is sloppy. It was that Christ on that cross that died for your sins. An empty cross is nothing more than a Roman instrument of death. Jesus on the cross is the event that saved the world.

Secondly, I have a hard time seeing how Packer is not guilty of separating the natures of Christ here to a level that is unbiblical. In other words, it's Nestorian. How in the world is it an obscuring of the glory of God to depict the human Christ? I mean, Christ is fully God, right? He says that an image of Christ is unworthy because of what it fails to display - the deity of God.

But Christ, even on the cross dying, is God. Period.

2. Images mislead us. They convey false ideas about God.

Granted. They can. I get this objection. On the other hand, how in the world does a crucifix do this? It reminds us of the single most important event (along with the resurrection) in human history. In fact, all history hinges on this event. Not to mention, a crucifix reminds us of the lengths God went to in order to save us, because we are sinners.

Secondly, a crucifix is to remind us of the event that took place that saved us, not to look precisely down to the last detail like Jesus when He was Incarnate. Nobody thinks that.

My conclusion is that the standard Reformed reading of this text is either legalistic or simply a drastic misinterpretation of the Scriptures on this topic.

Not to mention, after the commandment was given in Exodus 20, just a few chapters later, God tells the Israelites to put images on the Ark of the Covenant, in which the Law would be held.

Exodus 25:18-20: And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.

It just doesn't make sense that God would completely forbid images, then tell the Israelites to make them and put them on the Ark, the holiest of objects for the Israelites.

Scripture does not forbid images. Nor does Scripture forbid us to have images in worship. It forbids us to actually worship them as the real thing.

+Pax+

Liberals, Becker, and the LCMS

It's taken me awhile to chime in on the Matthew Becker situation, namely because as a layman, I don't think it is necessarily my spot to say much. My thoughts on the situation are really quite simple, and I plan to keep this pretty darn short. I'm going to keep it really short, in fact.

1. Matthew Becker needs to go. There are plenty of churches out there that agree with his stances on ordination, evolution, and sexuality. Why he insists on sticking around and attacking the LCMS is beyond me. I can only assume it is because he views himself as a modern day Reformer who is going to Reform the LCMS at all costs. That's an assumption, but it's probably valid. An honest man would simply step on out and head on over to the ELCA or another church like it. We do not believe like you on these things, Mr. Becker, and you will not change our church. Stop trying. Heresy has no place here.

2. If our Synod cannot oust false teachers like this, something is wrong with our bylaws. To put it even more direct, something is wrong with our church structure; our ecclesiology. If we do not have steps in place to remove false teachers from the Synod, we have a major problem on our hands. If this is the case, we either need to change it now or give ourselves over to the culture, as Becker and his liberal ilk would have us to do.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that somewhere along the line, the Synod has allowed a plethora of error to creep in unchecked. The Becker incident is the latest one; even to the point of a panel absolving him.

Our polity stinks. Somewhere along the line we have not adhered to the proper checks and balances in our ecclesiastical structure to keep the major influx of liberalism from entering the LCMS.

I am LCMS by choice. The pure truth in Word and Sacrament is here. The Confessions are here. But unless the LCMS cleans house, the LCMS is going to eventually look like a mish-mash of the ELCA and the LCMC. We don't want that, because neither of them are distinctly Lutheran. And by that I mean, neither of them are distinctly Confessional or mimic traditional and orthodox Christianity in any sense of the word.

My advice is to hear out what the men in the ACELC are saying.

 

It's time we revamp our polity. Ecclesiology and polity are not adiaphora. We can and must do better in this realm. We must have better ways of rooting our error and eliminating the leaven. We had best do it soon, lest we allow the festering to continue and get even more out of hand than it is.

Confession Matters

Or, what I should say is, what a person or congregation confesses about Christ matters. There are certain things that are within Christian Orthodoxy and certain things that are not.

Now I grant that it's pretty hotly debated as to what constitutes said Christian Orthodoxy. In days of yore, Christianity took a very hard line to this question. Orthodoxy was a very narrow way found in one place. What that one place was depended on who you were asking. Of course the Pope claimed primacy and Rome claimed infallibility in doctrine. They still do claim those things, despite softening somewhat at the Vatican II council; declaring the possibility of salvation outside of the Roman Church, even going as far as to call Protestants "separated brethren."

Of course, the East claims the same. They are the Church. So do other churches and sects.

Ultimately, I am proposing a very deep question here. It is one that I am not going to be able to answer perfectly, nor will I even bother trying to answer it perfectly. In fact, I am not sure I'll be able to give one. But I will offer a few suggestions at the conclusion of the post.

The main thrust of this post is to look at what 20th and 21st century Christianity believes about this situation and how we have handled it.

I assert that 20th and 21st century Christianity has handled this situation in a very lamentable manner. When faced with the question: Who is a Christian? Postmodern Christianity answers in a very minimalist manner.

Now days, your average 21st century American Christian is willing to affirm anyone to be a Christian so long as they love Jesus, nothing further needed. It doesn't matter what they believe about Jesus and what they confess. This is evidenced by the complete foolishness of much of American Christianity going gaga over Glenn Beck's rally about morals and values in Washington. For those of you who do not know, Glenn Beck is a Mormon. To affirm that Glenn Beck is a Christian or that he speaks for Christian values is pretty much to reject everything that Christians have always believed. To be clear, Mormonism is just as far from Christ as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, or Buddhism.

But we just seem to not care anymore. Heck, the JWs say they love Jesus, right? Glenn Beck says he does too, correct?

And that is just it. Much of American Christianity has abandoned confession, abandoned THE confessions, abandoned the creeds, and heck, abandoned the Gospel. All this in favor of replacing the Gospel with...with...with...yep, you guessed it: The Law.

The 21st century Gospel is not Christ crucified for the forgiveness of your sins. It's not even Christ for you. It's me for God. The 21st century Gospel is: Love God and love others. (Mat 22:37 ff.) It doesn't matter what you believe about God. It doesn't matter what you think Christ did for us. It just matters that you love God and love your neighbor, no matter what your god happens to look like.

This is NOT good news! This is, in fact, really BAD news. Because, as we confess, we have not loved God with our whole hearts and have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

To be blunt: Much of 21st century Christianity, especially in America, is grounded in nothing. Well, unless you count our works as something. But it really doesn't matter what you believe most of the time.

What is the remedy? Who should be considered Christians? I have a few suggestions, but I'm certainly not claiming to have answered the question definitively.

The quick answer is, we need Confessional Christianity. We need to be catechized about the doctrines of the Christian faith. We need to know what constitutes orthodoxy, heterodoxy, and outright heresy. We needn't be afraid of offending someone by saying they are without reservation outside of the Christian faith, whether they be Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Pelagian, or Word of Faith.

The fact of the matter is that there are *many* heretical congregations out there that claim the Name of Christ, and most 21st century American Christians say: Praise God! There are my brothers and sisters in another building.

Nonsense.

So where do we begin? I suggest a few things. First, although we ought to confess Scripture alone as the only infallible authority, that does not mean that Scripture is the only authority. For instance, we have three ecumenical creeds (Apostles, Nicene, Athanasian) that properly summarize orthodox Christian teaching that is taught in the Holy Scriptures. Let's start there. Can a Mormon affirm those three ecumenical creeds? Heck no they can't. The Athanasian Creed in particular is completely wrong in their theology.

The Creeds are an excellent starting point, but they cannot be everything we confess, even though they certainly must be the core of what we confess. I suggest the next step is to check out the ecumenical councils of the early church. The councils tell us the orthodox positions on the person of Christ and give sharp definition to the doctrine of original sin, among other things.

Many people these days decry the church councils as well as the Creeds, and they do so with some really bad argumentation that betrays a functional Pelagian understanding of Christianity. They dismiss the Creeds and the councils in favor of sovereign individual interpretation of Scripture. Sorry Roman Catholics, this mindset is not a hallmark of Protestantism. It's a hallmark of people who have abandoned both Roman Catholicism as well as traditional Protestantism.

Me, my Bible, and the Holy Spirit is not at all what the Reformers meant by sola scriptura.

What we need to do is look to the entire history of the Christian church. Yes, Scripture is the only infallible authority (sorry Francis). But we are wise to look and see what Christianity has universally taught for 2000 years. Likewise, we are wise to look and see what Christianity has universally condemned as heresy for 2000 years.

And we're fools if we don't. We're fools if we think that we are the ones who have really arrived. We're fools if we think that we have nothing to learn from the great theological giants who have gone before us. We're fools if we think that we alone have the only proper interpretation of Scripture because after all, the Holy Spirit told us so in our own little personal reading of Scripture one night.

In other words, the Church must have authority too. Not on an infallible level like the inspired Holy Scriptures, of course. But the Church must have sway. After all, Jesus entrusted the Word and Sacraments to the Church, not as a bunch of individual interpreters, but as an institution that delivers a Kingdom through the means of grace.

I think that is a fair starting point. And I think if people would look into these things more, a lot of this "everyone is a Christian who says the words 'I love God' would disappear. You have to know who Christ is and what He has done for us.

After all, that is the Gospel.

Pax

This Is My Body - Response to Andrew Clover III

This will be the third and final installment of a response to Andrew Clover, who blogs over at Reformation 500. Mr. Clover wrote a three-part refutation of the Lutheran stance on the Lord's Supper. As I have asserted in my first two installments, his premise is a strawman and his argument is not only not what Lutheranism teaches, but is also illogical.

Part I

Part II

The first installment to Andrew's three-part blog is found here: (This Is My Body) There are links to the other two installments within his blog.

This final installment will address part 3 of his three-part series.

"At first blush, that rhetorical question (What would Jesus have said if He wanted His words to be taken literally?) appears to make a strong point; but I wish to head the argument off at the pass. I will do this by asking two rhetorical questions of my own. First let me acknowledge that if Jesus had meant to convey that the bread was literally his body, then he would definitely have said exactly what he said. He would have said “this is my body”. My first question though is this: What would Jesus have said in that situation if he were speaking metaphorically? Would “this is my body” not work equally as well as a metaphor? Such is the nature of a metaphor. It reads as a literal statement of fact, the context determining the reader’s understanding. Take the phrase “Teddy Roosevelt was a mountain”. What would I say if I wanted to convey the idea that Teddy Roosevelt was literally a naturally occurring pile of rock that stood over 2,000 feet tall? What if I wanted to convey the idea that Teddy Roosevelt was a really, really large human being? Would the phrase “Teddy Roosevelt was a mountain” not work just as well as a metaphor as it would a statement of literal fact as far as the grammar is concerned? Indeed it would."

I'm not sure Andrew's argument here is rock-solid, although I certain can concede that is how some metaphors function. Here is Mr. Clover's problem: He concedes (rightfully) that Jesus would have said exactly what He said if He meant for His words to be taken literally. Now I ask Mr. Clover: On what basis should we seek a metaphorical interpretation of this passage? What words in the Lord's Supper passages demand that we do so? As we will see later, Mr. Clover has to go elsewhere in Scripture to support his claim. Even more so, he has to go to other passages that are not about the Lord's Supper at all to support his claim.

"The second question is this: What statement could we not do that with? Is it not in fact rather silly to argue that a statement is not a metaphor simply because a state of being verb is present? To repeat my argument from above, doesn’t a metaphor require a state of being verb?"

This is true. But again, on what basis should we do this with the Lord's Supper passages? Are there Lord's Supper passages specifically that should lean us toward a metaphorical interpretation? Again, I would insist strongly that we draw our Eucharistic Theology from passages in Holy Scripture actually dealing with Eucharistic Theology.

Andrew quotes St. Luke 22:16-23 and then says the following:

"Christ said “this is my body which is given for you”. Was he being literal? Seems to me it would be good to establish some facts about the giving of Christ’s body before we try to answer that. So there are some questions that need to be asked. 1. What was the nature of this giving? 2. To whom was the body of Christ given? 3. Do the words of institution contain any information about the giving as it relates to those who were not the receivers of the giving?"

Here he tries to use passages outside of the Lord's Supper passages to show that the bread is not the Body of Christ. But he still has the same huge glaring problem. Namely, what did Christ give to His disciples and what did He say that it is? He broke bread. Then He said that the bread that He gave them is His body. Why all the shenanigans to say that's it's not?

Here are the statements and passages Mr. Clover uses in support of his position:

1. Christ’s giving up of his body was a propitiatory sacrifice (1 Jon 2:2). A propitiation is a sacrifice which removes the wrath of an offended party. 

2. The giving of Christ’s body was a giving toward God The Father, in sacrifice. Christ’s body was given to God. “It pleased Yahweh to crush him“. 

3. The words of institution make it clear that the giving of Christ’s body was for mankind. “Given for you”. I note that Christ did not say “This is my body, given to you”. Why not? I submit that it is because the disciples, and we, do not need Christ’s body in us. We need what his given body provided for us.

The first statement he makes is an either/or fallacy. In effect, He is implying that Christ's body is a propitiatory sacrifice given on the cross *only.* I know he would reject that line of thought. However, it is essentially what he is using as a defense. Christ is eternal God. Why can't Christ's body be given at Calvary as a propitiation for our sins...and the whole world (1Jo 2:2), as well as given for us in the Eucharist? Why can't Christ do that when Scripture is clear that He does? In fact, Christ Himself told us that "...And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Mt 28:20b) Why can't Christ be present with us in the Eucharist, especially when He says that it is His body and blood?

My point is, there are a lot of both/and situations in Scripture.

The second statement says absolutely nothing about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Of course the body of Christ was given to God. Who disputes that? But Scripture is also clear that the body of Christ is also given to us. Here we have another both/and situation. His second statement is a non-argument.

The third statement is nothing more than philosophical nitpicking. When Christ gives the bread, He gives us something tangible and objective and says it is "for you." The absence of the word "to" is really a weak argument, since Christ is also giving the bread and wine to His disciples. And by the way, He says it is His body and blood.

Clover continues,

"The words of institution do not in any way demand a woodenly literal understanding of the phrases “this is my body” and “this is my blood”. To insist on such a thing is to fail to take into account the very nature of Christ’s sacrifice, the internal logic of the atonement, if you will."

Unless you can find good reason to take them metaphorically within the Words of Institution themselves, yeah, they do need to be taken at face value. And likewise, it certainly does not fail to take into account the nature of Christ's sacrifice for all humanity. Why can't Christ make that sacrifice present for us in the Eucharist by giving us His body and blood? Christ is God. Why can't He do that again? Can we have a both/and here? If not, why not?

"One last point needs to be addressed. Often Baptists are chided for believing that Christ’s Supper is a memorial meal and not a consuming of Christ’s *real* body and blood. However it often goes overlooked that the only reason Jesus actually gives the disciples for the church’s observing the ritual in perpetuity is “in remembrance of me”. He never says “do this for the forgiveness of sins” or “do this” for any reason other than “in remembrance of me”. Why do you suppose that is? Could it be that the supper is primarily a “perpetual remembrance, and shewing forth the sacrifice of himself in his death” as the London Baptist Confession states?"

The "in remembrance of me" clause in no way speaks to either stance really. It actually doesn't say anything about His presence in one way or the other. Is it to be done in remembrance of Christ as a bare memorial? Or is it a Real Presence where He comes to us to be done in remembrance? Either way is completely possible.

And actually, Christ does link the Holy Eucharist with the forgiveness of sins.

St. Matthew 26:27-28: And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Christ says directly that the cup is the blood of the new covenant. The cup which He gave them, containing wine, is the blood of the new covenant. And it is poured out (the blood of the new covenant, the wine in the Eucharist) for many for the forgiveness of sins.

The cup which He gives them is the blood of Christ and is for the forgiveness of sins. That is what the text says.

"To conclude, the words of institution do not demand a literal understanding as is so often claimed. This is seen to be so in light of the facts concerning the nature of metaphors, the internal logic of the atonement, the grammar of the entire account of Christ’s words at the supper, and Christ’s own stated purpose for the observing of the ceremony. Surely, given all of this, the case is in reality such that a symbolic understanding of Christ’s words is the only really tenable understanding of the words; and the sacramentally literal understanding of Lutherans and others is in fact the one foreign to the text itself."

And hopefully I have shown that Mr. Clover's conclusion is faulty and that his critiques of the Lutheran stance of the Eucharist are based on faulty premises, are strawmen, and are illogical.

+Grace and Peace+ 

This Is My Body - Response To Andrew Clover II

I decided to take up responding to Andrew Clover's articles over at Reformation 500 that argue against the Lutheran stance on the Lord's Supper. I'll pick up the argument more in this blog, but to be honest, I might sound a little like a broken record, since I am convinced his argumentation lies firmly on faulty conflations.

My first installment is found here: Response Part I

Mr. Clover continues,

"Upon reading the article a couple of my Lutheran friends suggested that my source for dogmatic definitions concerning the Lord’s supper was not a great one. I quoted two or three times from Mueller’s Christian Dogmatics, which I understood to be a standard Lutheran work. But I must have missed something because my Lutheran friends seem to view Mueller as somewhat rationalistic and too Reformed sounding(rationalistic and Reformed are almost synonymous to many Lutherans). So I decided, given the general lukewarmness of my Lutheran friends for Mueller, that it would only be fair to examine The Book of Concord (BoC hereafter) and see from the source whether my observations have any merit. For the purposes of this article I will be referencing The Formula of Concord, Epitome, section VII."

Kudos to Andrew for heading to the Lutheran Confessions. If you are going to get a feel for the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper, the Book of Concord is definitely where you should go. He continues by quoting some of the statements made in the Epitome of the Formula of Concord, Section VII. If you want to read it, here is the Epitome on the Lord's Supper: Epitome VII: The Lord's Supper

Specifically, he quotes theses 1, 2, and 6. They read,

“We believe, teach, and confess that in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present, and are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine.” (Ep. VII, 6)

“We believe, teach, and confess that the words of the testament of Christ are not to be understood otherwise than as they read, according to the letter, so that the bread does not signify the absent body and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that, on account of the sacramental union, they [the bread and wine] are truly the body and blood of Christ.” (Ep. VII, 7)

“We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are received with the bread and wine, not only spiritually by faith, but also orally; yet not in a Capernaitic, but in a supernatural, heavenly mode, because of the sacramental union; as the words of Christ clearly show, when Christ gives direction to take, eat, and drink, as was also done by the apostles; for it is written Mark 14:23: And they all drank of it. St. Paul likewise says, 1 Cor. 10:16: The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? that is: He who eats this bread eats the body of Christ, which also the chief ancient teachers of the Church, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Leo I, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, unanimously testify.” (Ep. VII, 15)

After quoting the Epitome, Mr. Clover continues,

"So do the Lutheran confessions give us a doctrine of the Lord’s supper that simply takes Jesus’ words at face value? I suggest that they do not. I do not see an essential difference between what Mueller had to say about the Lord’s supper and the confessional definition found in the Formula of Concord. How is “this is my body” in any way propositionally equative with “the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present, and are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine“? Jesus did not say “my body is truly and essentially present with this bread and wine“. He said “this is my body”. So how can a Lutheran claim to just take Jesus’ words at face value all the while chiding other Christians for not doing so? I am afraid my critique on this point stands. The Lutheran position and the attendant polemical argumentation fails to bear the weight of its own demand."

I know it's an overused term, especially in polemical circles, but Mr. Clover here is intent on banging down the same old strawman. He is conflating two things. The first thing is the question: What is it? And we answer: This is My Body. The true Body of Christ, per Scripture. He then proceeds to answer the question: How is it present? (Sacramental Union) The problem is, he takes the "how is it present?" question and says we're not taking "this is My body" literally because we say is answers the question of how it is present.

Thus, the only way Mr. Clover's point stands is if we allow his strawman to stand. I however, will not concede a strawman as a valid argument. He continues with more of the same:

"But again I ask, is this explanation arrived at simply by taking Christ’s words at face value? Or is the “sacramental union” marshaled as a philosophical rescue device? When the confessional document quoted above designates the nature of the eating of Christ’s body and drinking of His blood as not done in a Capernaitic manner, ie not cannibalism, but rather in a supernatural, heavenly way, does this not go well beyond the simple statement that “this is my body”?"

And again I answer in the negative. It's not a philosophical rescue device at all. It's actually the opposite. The Sacramental Union is a way of saying that in some mysterious way, the bread truly is Christ's body. We're not trying to rationalize or philosophize the Eucharist. We're actually saying that it truly is the body and blood, and we don't know exactly how God does that; but He certainly does do that in the Sacrament. Hence, Sacramental Union.

"If the bread is the body of Christ, then it is. If it is present with His body, then it isn’t His body. He did not say “this accompanies my body”. Nor did He say “take, eat, but not in a Capernaitic way, in a supernatural, heavenly way. My body is present with this bread through the sacramental union”. No, my Lutheran friends, yours is not an understanding of Christ’s words “as the read, according to the letter”. You could never pull these dogmatic definitions out of that simple phrase “this is my body”. The question then as it pertains to Lutherans and the rest of Protestantism is not the question of who takes Christ’s words of institution literally, or according to the letter. The question is rather which non-literal understanding is correct?"

And again Mr. Clover fires off more of the same. Ultimately Mr. Clover's problem regarding his argumentation here is that every single argument he makes and every single direction he comes at us from are based on the same faulty premise which does not hold up in light of Scripture or in light of Philosophy and Logic, two things the Reformed are big on.

Thus, I would argue that by his own Reformed hermeneutic and manner of argumentation, his argument fails since it is illogical. It's a conflation of two things and ultimately a strawman.

+Pax+

This Is My Body - Response to Andrew Clover I

An old friend of mine (a former Lutheran, now a Calvinist) recently came to this blog to challenge some of the Lutheran interpretations of the Lord's Supper. And while the exchange was less than irenic, I hope we can get to the bottom of some of this. The exchange can be found in the comments section here: Where Are You Looking For God

In the process, my friend Mr. Clover posted three blogs that he wrote over at the Reformation 500 site in which he lays out some arguments against the Lutheran interpretation of the Holy Eucharist. They can be found here: Part I, Part II, Part III

I would like to thank Mr. Clover for interacting with the Lutheran position on the topic. I do however think his argumentation falls short of any sort of refutation of the Lutheran position, and indeed I believe much of it is based on faulty conflations and argumentation.

It seems that Mr. Clover's main premise is that when Lutheranism insists that "is means is" we mean something else by it and don't take the words of Christ literally; at least not any more than anyone else. I intend to show that his argumentation falls short.

Mr. Clover begins his argument in Part I by saying the following:

"When describing their view of the supper, Lutherans will almost invariably say something along the lines of “We take Christ at His word. When The Lord says ‘this is my body’ we acknowledge that it ‘is’ His body.” It is a source of pride for the Lutheran, not pride in a sinful sense, that their theology doesn’t require them to change the words of institution or play logical and philosophical games or do mental gymnastics with the text. Often times the argument from a Lutheran is as simple as “Hey, is=is.” While I admire the approach to scripture that insists on letting the word speak and not making it say what it doesn’t, I believe that this claim to take Christ’s words literally while others do not is where the Lutheran argument falls on it’s own petard."

While I am glad that Mr. Clover gives a nod to Lutheranism's approach to the Holy Scriptures, it kind of seems to me that he is baiting and switching here. It sounds like "hey, I love how you guys look at Scripture. Too bad you're dead wrong." Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. I appreciate Mr. Clover's attempt to be gracious to his Lutheran brothers. He continues:

"As I said, Lutherans are fond of claiming that their understanding of communion avoids the mental gymnastics of the “sacramentarians”, a word which refers to non-sacramental Christians in the Lutheran confessions. But it doesn’t take long for the Lutheran argument to end up doing what the Reformed position is itself accused of doing. Why do I say that? The Lutheran position in reality, and I know I am going to elicit some anger here, does not believe that the bread “is” the body of Christ. It is in fact the case that Lutherans believe in what they call the real presence (explained, among other places, in Mueller’s Christian Dogmatics beginning at page 506). They believe that Christ’s body and blood is present “in, with, and under” the elements of bread and wine."

The main point he is making here is that we Lutherans don't really believe that "is means is" in the Words of Institution. In reality, he is leveling the claim that we rationalize our explanation of the Eucharist just like the Reformed do. He doesn't use that terminology, but that's ultimately what he is saying. Not only that, but he is conceding that Reformed Theology does not believe the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ.

But do we do that? I don't think so. Certainly many Lutherans have tried to explain the "how" of the Real Presence. We don't dispute that. But if one is familiar with Lutheran Theology, we hold to something called the Sacramental Union. More on this as we go along.

Here I think is where Mr. Clover starts going off the rails. He states:

"I hasten to point out, as have others, that if “is” must mean literally “is” in it’s most literal sense, then as soon as is means “present in, with, and under” the Lutheran argument no longer bears the weight of it’s own demand for a literal reading of the words of institution. But the convenient literalism of the Lutheran argument goes further. The “in, with, and under” concept is often explained as a “sacramental presence”."

He is essentially arguing that we say that "is means in, with, and under," or that "is means Sacramental Presence." But the problem with that argument is that we do not mean that at all. Mr. Clover is conflating two things into one thing here, and he ends up arguing erratically against the Lutheran position. We do not say that "is means Sacramental Presence." We say that "is means is." The bread truly is the body. The wine truly is the blood. The Sacramental Union is not our definition of "is." This is where Mr. Clover's argumentation falls on its own petard, to use his terminology.

"I am not really sure how one can chide another for engaging in mental gymnastics, as Lutherans often do other Protestants, and then in the same breath introduce a category like “illocal presence” claiming all the while to simply be taking the word “is” at face value. This is a problem particularly in light of the demand on the part of Lutherans that we glean our understanding of this doctrine primarily from the passages that deal directly with the issue of the supper (I agree in principle). Martin Chemnitz, one of the great Lutheran dogmaticians of history, is quite insistent on this point in his work “The Lord’s Supper”. So my question is: Is the definition “Present in, with, and under in an illocal, supernatural, yet real way” really just a plain understanding of the word “is”? No, rather the allegedly literal, or plain reading as they are want to call it, ends up defining “is” as “is present with” and then redefining “is present with” as “is not physically present with”. Whatever this interpretation of the words of institution is, it isn’t a literal one. It may be non-literal in a different way than the memorialist view; but it is non-literal all the same."

Here again, Mr. Clover continues this line of thought. Here is the problem: When we say all this stuff about the Sacramental Union, we are not trying to define the word "is" in the Words of Institution. I have to wonder if Mr. Clover knows what the word "Sacrament" means. A Sacrament is essentially a mystery. That is what the Latin term means. So when we talk about the Sacramental Union, we're not saying that "is equals Sacramental Union." We're saying that the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ, in some mysterious way (Sacramental). Far from being a rationalistic explanation, we are simply saying that the bread and wine are Christ's body and blood, and we can't explain exactly how they are Christ's body and blood. Hence, the terminology of Sacramental Union.

The Sacramental Union, in other words, is us saying that we can't completely explain the *how* of how the bread and wine are Christ's body and blood. Nor do we need to. Scripture never gives us any rationalistic definition of how this occurs. It does not teach transubstantiation or consubstantiation, for instance. It simply says that the bread is the body of Christ and the wine is the blood of Christ.

Therefore, our interpretation of the Words of Institution is literal, while we freely admit that we cannot explain how this comes about (hence, Sacramental Union...mystery). The only thing Scripture gives us are the Words of Institution.

+Pax+

We're All Sacramental. Kind Of. Unless We're Not.

Pretty much every Christian church has Sacraments. And if a church has no sacraments, it rejects means of grace. That usually leads to a false dichotomy between spiritual and physical (*cough* Gnosticism *cough*).

33 year LCMS veteran Pr. Peters wrote an excellent piece on made up sacraments, and I would like to piggyback his thoughts and hit it from a different angle a bit. The blog is found here:

Made Up Sacraments  <<< READ THIS!!!

sac-ra-ment (noun)

Ecclesiastical . a visible sign of an inward grace, especially one of the solemn Christian rites considered to have been instituted by Jesus Christ to symbolize or confer grace: the sacraments of the Protestant churches are baptism and the Lord's Supper; the sacraments of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches are baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, matrimony, penance, holy orders, and extreme unction.

 

That's the definition we get from dictionary.com. According to that site, a sacrament either symbolizes grace or is a means of grace (confers it). I would argue strongly for the latter; that a sacrament is a means of grace, and that is why mainline evangelicalism will not call baptism and the Lord's Supper sacraments. Rather, they are termed as ordinances. An ordinance carries the force of a ceremony or rite, in a purely symbolic sense. No grace is conferred.

 

However, even in these mainline churches, they still have sacraments. They're just not the ones that Christ gave to us. So if baptism and the Lord's Supper aren't sacraments, but rather ordinances...what are the sacraments? More specifically, what are the means of grace in mainstream churches? Well, here are a few.

 

1. Prayer

 

Prayer becomes a form of transaction with God rather than an act of worship and thanksgiving. Prayer is a vital part of Christian life, but it's not something we do to get God to do our will.

 

2. Altar Calls

 

How many times have you seen an evangelical altar call where people walk the aisle and make a decision for Christ? This heterodox practice traces it's roots back to the Second Great Awakening and Pelagian teachers such as Charles Grandison Finney.

 

One big altar call

 

The altar call, sometimes referred to as the invitation, has become a staple of American Evangelicalism, especially in Baptist and Methodist churches. Sadly, nothing even remotely close to this is ever found in Scripture.

 

Know what else came out of the Second Great Awakening? Seventh-Day Adventism, The Latter Day Saints (Mormons) and the Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'.

 

3. The Sinner's Prayer

 

How often have you heard a pastor or evangelist lead people in the sinner's prayer? As someone who was a baptist for years, I heard it a lot. It was almost a given. We took it for granted. That is how one gets saved. You admit that you're a sinner and that you need a Savior, then ask Jesus into your heart. Or, as I have heard stated repeatedly lately (I don't know why, but I have), you "pray" Jesus into your heart.

The Sinner's Prayer: An Example

This is the big one. The evangelical sacrament if there ever was one.

 

The problem is, this is unbiblical at best. Where did any of the Apostle's ever lead a congregation in an altar call or the sinner's prayer in Scripture? You'll search in vain for it, because none of that is in there.

 

Yeah. It's sort of like this in some circles.

 

 

 

I could go on and on and perhaps name some more. I won't. The point is this: None of these things (well, prayer is) are Christian practices. People don't "get saved" by walking an aisle, coming forward to the altar, or praying a prayer asking Jesus into their heart. Only God's creative Word gives us grace that creates faith. Not our choice and not a memorized sinner's prayer that puts Christ in our heart.

 

Here is where someone will interject and say that the methods can change. No, you don't use an argument from methodology to justify unbiblical practices and pragmatism.

 

God did however give us His Word and Sacraments. According to Scripture, they are Baptism and the Lord's Supper. In these, the Word is given to us. In preaching, the Word is given to us. In public reading of Scripture (or private), the Word is given to us.

 

Why did early American Evangelicalism decide to introduce these new methods into their churches? We could probably write a book on that (Such as Michael Horton's Made in America) but we'll keep it simple: Early 19th century American ideals revolved around the sovereignty of the individual and the power of the will (like the self-made man). Those ideals got imported right into faith and practice in Baptist and Methodist churches, and voila.

What is even more appalling is that generally these folks tend to say they stick to Scripture alone, then turn around and reject the sacraments and insert their own.

Now it was not about God giving Himself to us as a gift in Word and Sacrament, it was all about us appropriating it by an act of our will.

 

And sadly, this stuff is still going strong.

+Pax+

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 3

I continue my response to Pr. Jordan (J.D.) Hall today. I am replying to a blog post he wrote over at the Pulpit and Pen site that was very condemning of paedobaptism and baptismal regeneration. The blog was written in response to my friend Tamara Blickhan's article that was published at The Examiner.

The original article that began this discussion, written by Tamara Blickhan, can be found here:

Baptism for the Christian: Rebaptism is not biblical

And Pr. Jordan (J.D.) Hall's response can be viewed here:

It's not "Re-Baptism": It's Baptism



Pr. J.D. Hall. Sweet hat.

I got a sweet hat too, yo! Plus Aviators. I win.

I responded to Pr. Jordan Hall's blog post yesterday, which is found here:

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 1

And I responded again in part 2 here:

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 2

Let's get to it.

Tamara Blickhan stated: "There is no recorded instance in the Bible where someone was rebaptized in the Trinitarian formula: in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Baptist must form the conclusion that rebaptism is biblical from a source other than the Bible or from the misunderstanding that a person must be saved by Jesus Christ first and that if they realize later that they were not truly saved, they should be rebaptized to obey what they consider to be a work to be done after regeneration."

Pr. J.D. Hall responded: "This is a hilarious claim for the paedobaptist to make, considering there’s no recorded instance in the Bible of babies, dogs, or aliens being baptized (and baptism does all of the above three the same good). The idolatry of ritual, in the author’s view, is so pervasive that even if the ordinance is not conducted in the name of the Thrice-Holy God it still counts as legitimate. Here, they separate the ordinance from the ordinance-maker, giving baptism the status of idolatry."



Bearing False Witness is in there.

This accusation actually makes no sense at all and should be retracted. As someone who was a Baptist for many years, I can attest to the fact that Tamara is correct. I know numerous people who have had multiple believer's baptisms, because they weren't really saved the first couple times.

Regarding Pr. Hall's response, it's flat out untrue. It's bullcrap. More seriously, it's bearing false witness. The author, Tamara Blickhan, does not accept Baptisms that are made in another manner than in the Name of the Triune God. I have no idea what is prompting these statements. A non-Trinitarian Baptism is not legitimate. Period. Lutherans universally believe that.


The final statement here is not true either. I would hope that a pastor would know the stance of Lutheranism before going off on an online rant "refuting" it. I sort of see what he is trying to say here when he states "Here, they separate the ordinance from the ordinance-maker, giving baptism the status of idolatry." But in reality, the opposite is the truth. Baptism is only effacious precisely because it delivers the Word of God objectively to a person. This is why we are baptised in the Name of the Triune God. It's water that has power and it's not empty ritual. It's the Word of God being directly given by means of water. It's the Word that gives Baptism its power, not the water.

His non-Sacramental theology rears its ugly head throughout his blog post, but here it is paramount. As a friend of mine stated,

"It's amazing how people can reject the efficacy of the sacraments due to human involvement in administration. This thinking would reject the office of preaching and violate Romans 10. Jesus' baptism by John would be rejected and God sending the Holy Spirit would be a mistake on His part. The Crucifixion would be rejected because the Jews by "wicked hands" took and slew Him.

The aforementioned instances were Divine works in spite of human agency, and even the Crucifixion was done by man according to God's eternal foreknowledge and decree, and it is this very act which takes away the sin of the world. The anti-sacrament logic actually nullifies the Atonement." ~Steven E. Anderson

Pr. Hall continues, "Once again, the Baptist does not believe in rebaptism, because this water-pouring ritual perpetrated upon unwilling recipients isn’t baptism."

As I argued in Part 2, this is attacking a strawman. On what basis does he assert that infants are  unwilling? The only thing I can think of is that his theology, despite being Calvinistic, comes back around to positive choice for Christ as opposed to Christ giving Himself to us via objective means.

Pr. Hall continues, "To be clear, the Bible’s stance against so-called “infant baptism” has nothing to do with the age of the recipient. The prohibition against baptizing infants is because they happen to be in the same number as many of the lost, unconverted, unwilling heathen of the world that need to first hear, receive and embrace the Gospel before following Christ into discipleship and being called “Christian.”"

Which is why we baptise infants. He has pointed out the major crux of the issue within this statement. Infants are sinners that need to be saved as well. The problem is, he also argues that infants can't believe, repent, or have faith. Where does this leave Pr. Hall? I posit that it leaves him at one of two places.

A. Universal infant damnation, or

B. Pelagian doctrine of Age of Accountability that rejects Original Sin.

He correctly points out that infants are born sinners and are in the same state as the heathen. He has no solution beyond this. I am sure at this juncture he will fall back on the doctrine of election and God's infinite wisdom and assert that perhaps all infants who die in infancy are elect or that at least some of them are.

However, Scripture never tells us these things. In fact, the only way of salvation that Scripture gives us is by grace through faith. If another one is inserted, one is adding to the words of Holy Scripture. Once you deny that infants can have faith, you have shut the Kingdom of Heaven to them.

Praise be to God, He gives faith as a gift to whomever He will. Also, He does this objectively through specific means of grace. Baptism is clearly one of these means of grace, especially if St. Paul and St. Peter in the didactic epistles have their say. Baptism saves (1Pe 3:21), it buries us and unites us to Christ (Rom 6:3-4), it raises us in faith (Col 2:11-12). Only grace can do this. Baptism must be gracious. It's Gospel for you. Objectively.

It's really pretty simple. Why do we baptise infants? They need it. They're part of Adam's condemned race and are sinful and need to be saved.

He continues, "How terrible it is to tell so many lost people that they’ve been born again because water has touched the tip of their head!"

What's not terrible is telling people that God objectively claimed them via His Word of promise given specifically to them in their Baptism. They are, after all, baptised into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Mat 28:18-20). It bears repeating: It's the Word of God that gives Baptism power.

And finally, "This is why, at my Baptist church, we rejoice when folks whose parents forced them against their unconverted will to take part in a water ritual, make the decision to, for the first time in their life, be baptized."

He wraps up the blog with the same old strawman. And then in doing so, violates clear Scripture. One baptism. To re-baptise a person is to question the promise of God given to that person in their first, and only legitimate, baptism. And that is not a place any Christian wants to be, for God's Word is light and truth.

There are a lot more comments to be responded to regarding things Pr. Hall has said in the comments section on his blog. I don't think I will be dealing with them. There are very able Lutheran participants in that discussion right now. Hence, I shall be finished.

+Pax+

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 2

I continue my response to Pr. Jordan (J.D.) Hall today. I am replying to a blog post he wrote over at the Pulpit and Pen site that was very condemning of paedobaptism and baptismal regeneration. The blog was written in response to my friend Tamara Blickhan's article that was published at The Examiner.

The original article that began this discussion, written by Tamara Blickhan, can be found here:

Baptism for the Christian: Rebaptism is not biblical

And Pr. Jordan (J.D.) Hall's response can be viewed here:

It's not "Re-Baptism": It's Baptism

I responded to Pr. Jordan Hall's blog post yesterday, which is found here:

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 1

I didn't get too far into Pr. J.D. Hall's post yesterday. So, here comes part 2!

Pr. J.D. Hall states: "There’s a reason that credobaptists believe that baptism is only applicable (IE should only be applied) to those who understand the Gospel. It is because only those who have heard, understood, and received (their is no receiving without understanding) the Gospel to the point of repentance should be baptized."

This is of course the standard Baptist position on baptism. The problem with this interpretation is that it runs headlong into the Didactic Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter. Pr. Hall and all other Baptist believers assert that baptism is a sign of something that already has occurred within a person. St. Paul gives us numerous Baptism passages in the New Testament. We can start with Romans 6:3-4 and then move on to passages such as Galatians 3:27 and Colossians 2:11-12. The problem that Baptists have here is that all of these passages say plainly that Baptism actually does something. In Romans 6, it buries us with Christ and unites us to Him. In Colossians 2:11-12, St. Paul repeats the same thing and then goes even further, claiming that Baptism raises us in faith.



My Daughter! Water and the Spirit!

Of course, then we go back to the whole bifurcation of Baptism that Baptist theology erects; creating two Baptisms instead of one, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:5. This might sound silly, but what is to stop a person from claiming two Lords and two faiths as well? The truth of the matter is, there is one Baptism and that one Baptism has both water and the Spirit. They're not two separate Baptisms.


We respond of course that Baptism actually gives what Scripture says it gives, and actually does what Scripture says it does. To say that it is just an outward act of worship or discipleship flies in the face of the Didactic epistles.

Pr. Hall continues: "It is for this reasons that paedobaptists must resort to hermeneutic absurdities to claim the command to coerce unwilling recipients to receive the ordinance by force (for that is precisely what infant baptism is) is biblical. As they turn to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20), for example, to insist that our command to disciple and then baptize the nations is a command to baptize infants, they fall squarely away from reason. Unconverted heathen are in the nations. Are we to baptize them against their will and prior to their conversion? Muslims are in the nations. Are we to baptize them against their will and prior to their conversion? Or clearly, are we to preach the Gospel, disciple, and baptize those who have placed their trust in Christ?"

This is a very sloppy argument. In effect, Pr. Hall is attacking a strawman here to refute infant baptism. When he states that we logically should be baptising unconverted heathen against their will we respond that no, of course we should not be baptising unconverted heathen. But here is precisely where his argument breaks down. Are we actually baptising newborn infants against their will? No, we are not. We're baptising a sinner who needs grace. Infants are naturally more "givable to" than adults. This is another place where his thought falls apart. Pr. Hall infers that cognitive ability and the human will are actually helps to the person and not hinderances. This is a brutal mistake. The more developed the intellect gets, the more of an obstacle it is. Why? It's sinful, that's why.

To say that an infant is unwilling is a strawman at best. And once again we see here that in Baptist theology it's all about positive choice and proclamation and not about God giving through His means of grace. I can already hear the howls of protest, and indeed Pr. Hall himself takes umbrage with this train of thought, but how far off is it? I mean, am I missing something?

Tamara Blickhan writes: "The article from the Southern Baptist Convention website, How to Become a Christian, states: “As soon as you have decided to receive Christ into your life, you can and should be baptized.” This statement explains the position: you decide to become a Christian (not monergistic) and you then are allowed to be baptized."

Pastor J.D. Hall responds: "Here’s where I take real exception. The Baptist believes (at least, let me speak for my Reformed Baptist brethren who hold to our confessions) that when one “decides” to become a Christian (a terrible way to phrase it, granted) it has been a work done in them solely by the Holy Spirit. That is very, very Monergistic. We believe that God works in us both to will and to do (Philippians 2:13). Sadly, some in the SBC have become decisional-regenerationists, which is as much a damnable teaching as baptismal-regeneration."

Baptismal Regeneration? Say it aint so!

I am truly glad that Pr. Hall rejects the foolish doctrine of decisional regeneration. Here we run into differences in theology, plain and simple. The Baptist of the Calvinistic stripe ultimately rejects means of grace altogether and asserts that if God uses the natural world to save the natural world (baptism, preaching, etc.) then it's not monergism. That is to say, the Holy Spirit must operate apart from those means and not through those means.

I'm happy they want to uphold monergistic regeneration here, but really, this is a completely different form of monergism that Scripture teaches and actually trends towards Gnostic thought in the separation of the spiritual reality from the natural means. At the very least, it's heavily influenced by Platonism. The irony of the whole thing is, infant baptism is actually the quintessential example of monergism. The flesh hates infant baptism because it violates the infant's right to choose. It boggles my mind how any monergist would have a problem with baptismal regeneration.

Pastor Hall then says: "Let me throw this back at the paedobaptist author of the aforementioned paragraph…one who believes people are saved (to be technical, made regenerate) by pouring water on the head (which, of course, is so not baptism anyway) without their consent and at the hands of priest, pastor or parent has to suffer from cognitive dissonance to call that position “Monergistic.” While it is true that the child him or herself didn’t have anything to do with their own salvation (or to be technical, regeneration), certainly God had Synergistic partners in the whole endeavor, chiefly the hands that pour water upon the head of the unwilling participant. Of all things, that is not Monergistic."

No, Pr. Hall, you reject means of grace and the office of the ministry. That's what causes you to make these claims. The root issue that Pr. Hall has here is that to him, monergism means completely random regeneration via an effectual inward call apart from natural means through which God does this. Christ instituted an office of the ministry. It began with the Apostles and goes right on through the ages up to pastors today. They do Christ's work through means.

"The article then goes on to assert that even if one had water poured or sprinkled upon them (once again, that’s not baptism) in the pagan Roman Catholic church they need not be “baptized” again."

Well, no, they don't need to be baptised again. Think with me for a second here. Does the Roman Catholic Church affirm the Trinity and baptise in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit? The answer is clearly yes, they do.

Likewise, does a Baptism depend on the personal piety of the priest or pastor administering it? I really hope not. What if Pr. Hall is unregenerate? Wouldn't that mean that every person he has baptised were illegitimate baptisms based on Pr. Hall being a heathen?

Hence, baptism cannot possibly depend on personal piety. It depends solely on God's Word and promise. You know, like the Gospel does. It's GOD'S Word. It's GOD'S promise. The regenerate state of the person administering matters not.

And come to think of it, how many Baptist pastors can claim that they know with certainty that every person they have ever baptised is saved? I assert that none can. The pastor can hear an outward profession and make a judgment call, but he cannot say with certainty the person is saved, especially if everything depends on inward condition and not on Christ and His objective works given to us in time.

Pastor Hall then fires off a typical evangelical whopper. When in doubt, call them Catholics! "As I’ve said for some time, the move to confessional Lutheranism, for many, is just a rest stop on the way to Rome. How far Lutheranism has come, that some consider a rite administered in what they’ve confessed to be an unchristian church now accounts for Christian baptism. When Lutherans feels themselves closer with pagan Catholicism than evangelicalism, this unfortunate papal slide continues."

I mean, do I even need to answer this? And yeah, we are Catholic, just not Roman.

I guess I'm going to have to go three blogs deep on this one. Until then...

+Pax+

Baptism Wars! Response to Pr. J.D. Hall - Part 1

Recently there was a scathing response written to an article one of my friends wrote that I thought was sloppily done at best. Hopefully, I can show why some of the author's arguments and statements fall short of making any actual headway in this discussion.



Pr. Jonathan Fisk of Worldview Everlasting

The article that my good friend, Tamara Blickhan, wrote can be found over at the Examiner site. Here is the link:

Baptism for the Christian: Rebaptism is not biblical

The response, coming from Baptist pastor, Jordan Hall (from here on referred to as Pr. J.D. Hall – a contributing writer of Pulpit & Pen), can be found here:

It's Not “Rebaptism,”: it's Baptism

Let it be said from the outset that the differences between Lutherans and every stripe of Baptists are too great to put the two groups in communion together this side of heaven. Therefore, these discussions, debates, and disagreements will continue to carry on through the ages. But, they're important to have because baptism is quite a large topic in the Christian faith.


The other thing that can be said is that this topic is far more touchy and important for Lutherans than it is for Baptists. Please don't misunderstand me here. I am not saying that baptism is not important to Baptists. What I am saying is that in Lutheranism, Baptism actually accomplishes a salvific role, whereas in Baptist theology, it is a memorial of an already inward condition. So, this is not a case of me sticking my Lutheran “triumphal nose in the air” at all. It's an acknowledgement of what the theologies teach and to show how diametrically opposed they are to one another.

Lutherans have a "higher" view of baptism that Baptists, for lack of a better term. It's more important and does something for you in Lutheranism. The correlation here is simple: if a topic is higher up on the list, it's bound to be more important. We say (as does the Apostle Peter in 1 Peter 3:21) that baptism saves. That's a huge deal. Baptists say it's an act of obedience or an act of worship done by the already regenerate believer. That's less of a big deal, therefore, a lower view of the doctrine.

So, the reader has to understand from the outset that we, as Lutherans, will go after the Baptist stance on baptism quite often. Why? Because we believe that Baptist parents are denying an objective means of grace to their children. In short, they refuse to administer the Word of God to the child via Baptism. This is denying the Gospel to their kids. That's a big deal. A massively huge deal.

Baptists are far less likely to go after the Lutheran stance on Baptism because, to them, everything revolves around a converted will which involves a certain cognitive ability. The Bible is clear that we don’t make a decision to be saved; it is all of grace. John 1 explains: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”

So they scoff at us baptizing our infants, but in the end, it's really not a big deal since the child is either covered under grace due to the Baptist doctrine of the Age of Accountability (Pelagian doctrine) or the child simply needs to be brought to faith later in life by God's hidden monergistic grace alone (Reformed Baptist). In either case, everything in Baptist theology regarding Baptism revolves around an advanced cognitive ability which an infant does not have (or the mentally infirm for that matter) and a converted will.

I will follow the order of Pr. J.D. Hall's blog as I respond.

Pastor J.D. Hall (JDH) began his article responding to a comment on the article Tamara Blickhan (TB) wrote.

Tamara Blickhan says: "The controversy over whether a Christian should be rebaptized if the person has already been baptized in one church or another denomination is cleared up using Christian creeds and confessions that explain the Bible about this doctrine of Baptism." (TB)

Hall responds: "A broad generalization, indeed. First, the Christian creeds commonly used to define orthodoxy (the Apostle’s Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed) are silent on the issue." (JDH)

OK, let's get started. If Pr. J.D. Hall wants to call the first statement a "broad generalization," fine. I can live with that. That being said, when Lutherans speak of the "Creeds," we are speaking specifically about the three major ecumenical creeds that Pr. J.D. Hall has rightly identified. However, what he says about them and baptism is unfortunately incorrect.

He may want to read the Nicene Creed again. Near the conclusion of it, the creed states: "I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins." The wording of the Nicene Creed is quite clear. There is one baptism for the remission of sins.

Here is the Baptist's problem with that statement: first, they reject that baptism remits sin. Secondly, if baptism does remit sin and the Baptist definition of what baptism is errs, then the Baptist, against his will, actually teaches works righteousness. To be clear: If baptism is an act of the believer done as worship or obedience to God, and baptism actually remits (or forgives which is the same thing) sin, then the conclusion is inescapable. Sin is remitted by us doing something for God. That's quite a problem for the Baptist since they reject all forms of works-righteousness and rightly so.

Ah! But what about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit? That's generally the Baptist response here. They simply (re) interpret the Nicene Creed to be talking about Spirit baptism. Well, that's not entirely incorrect, to be honest, since it is only the Spirit of God who regenerates.

So, their problem lies not in claiming Spirit baptism, but in separating Spirit and water into two baptisms. Scripture is replete with references to water and the Holy Spirit being together in one baptism.

First, can we all at least acknowledge that there is one baptism? St. Paul says there is in Ephesians 4:5, which reads: "one Lord, one faith, one Baptism." There are not two baptisms any more than there are two Lords or two faiths. And per the Nicene Creed, it is this one Baptism that remits sins. It's fallacious to separate into multiple baptisms. Scripture never does. A Baptism is a washing with water that contains water and the Spirit. Without water and the Spirit together, it is not a baptism at all.

I'm not going to put all the Scriptures word-for-word on here, but I will give references where water and Spirit are linked, and inextricably so. John 3:5, Acts 2:38, Matthew 3:13-17 (Mark 1:10), Titus 3:5, 1John 5:6-8. That's a short list, not exhaustive.

Tamara Blickhan continues: "The question only comes to us from Baptists because of their belief about what baptism is. The Lutherans, Presbyterians, and other paedobaptist Christian bodies believe that baptism is the work of God and should only be done once in a lifetime." (TB)

To which Pr. J.D. Hall responds: "One must wonder why this ‘work of God’ has to be done by the hands of men upon unwilling and unregenerate recipients, which is what every infant who receives this libation ritual is." (JBH)

Pr. Hall has really dug himself deep here. I see two major theological problems with his statement.

First, I have to wonder if Pr. J.D. Hall is a Gnostic. I am sure he denies such a thing, but hear me out on this. The beginning of his statement is an outright denial of any means of grace whatsoever. This is to say, in essence, the pastor is rejecting that God uses the natural world to save the natural world. I mean, he would turn right around and say that God uses Gospel preaching as a vehicle to save the unregenerate right? I think he probably would. Or else, if he is a Hyper Calvinist, perhaps he would argue that the Spirit works completely apart from means and regenerates people sovereignly and independently with no means whatsoever.

If the first case is true, then he affirms natural means of grace and his argument is specifically with baptism and he worded his argument very poorly. Baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is no more a work done by the hands of men than preaching the Gospel is. Now I might be stupid, but I know a little bit about Physics (I have a B.A. in Physics).

When the preacher preaches, what we are hearing audibly is sound waves. That's natural. So, if God can give us sound waves to save the natural world, why can't He use water as well? How about bread and wine? If he rejects natural means altogether, he’s got a bigger problem: namely, Jesus. Jesus is a man, right? He was crucified in the flesh, right? I know with certainty that the pastor would not reject the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. That belief would be utterly Gnostic and far outside of the Christian faith.

Second, Pr. J.D. Hall just condemned every infant to hell. I don't think anybody believes that. He plainly states that every infant who receives this "libation ritual" (baptism) is unwilling and unregenerate.

Well, let's be clear: unregenerate people are not saved people. Grace saves us and grace regenerates us. I hope the man would at least agree on that. He plainly states that infants are unwilling and unregenerate. I assume that due to his Baptist theology, this is precisely because they are incapable of such.

The standard Baptist doctrine here to get around this is called the Age of Accountability, which ultimately denies Original Sin. Pr. J.D. Hall is not Pelagian, so it's completely inconsistent and silly to embrace the unbiblical dogma of the Age of Accountability. I won't say much more about that, because once upon a time, I said a lot about it. The blog can be found here:

Age of Accountability

As much as the pastor wants to label himself a Reformed Baptist, he's actually defaulting to conversion of the will here (which is against Scripture – see the first chapter of the book of John) and spoken profession, which can only be made by those who have developed their cognitive ability to a certain point. He robs from Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

As a Reformed Baptist, Pr. J.D. Hall is a Calvinistic man. He would affirm, with the Lutherans, that it is the Spirit who regenerates and that faith itself is God's gift, and no matter how much cognitive ability a person has, nobody is capable of faith in Christ barring a regeneration wrought by God alone.

Do pray tell, why are infants excluded from this? The only answer is that they cannot understand it. They cannot use their brains like this pastor has in order to respond to the gospel, yet faith doesn’t equate perfectly to understanding, but rather to trust in Christ. And that is given by God. Thus, in his theology, he has actually inserted a salvation by knowledge scheme to an extent where God only gives faith to those who have the necessary cognitive ability to receive the gift. In other words, there has to be a clear decision made by the person, or at the very least, a clear ability to understand before God gives His gift. This is synergistic. We'll call it a happy inconsistency.

Look for part 2, I'll have it up soon!

+Pax+