Economist Thomas Sowell has cogently argued that all consistent political positions arise out of a vision, a vision that entails “a sense of causation.” “If causation proceeds as our vision conceives it to, then certain other consequences follow, and theory is the working out of what those consequences are.” How does that play out? Though there are many different political theories, when you boil them down they can all be represented by two visions about political means and goals: the constrained vision, and the unconstrained vision. The constrained vision recognizes that life in this world will never be perfected in any given society, and that everyone will have to be content to live with trade-offs. The unconstrained vision has the goal of the perfectibility of society by removing all barriers to political idealism. The constrained vision gives much credence to pragmatic solutions to problems, and so holds that even common people with little education can do much to improve society. The unconstrained vision believes that intellectuals are better prepared to make the world better, and so “professors in a university turned statesmen” may be the best prescription for improving our world.

When it comes to social processes, the constrained vision “puts little faith in deliberately designed social processes, since it has little faith that any manageable set of decision makers could effectively cope with the enormous complexities of designing a whole blueprint for an economic system, a legal system, or a system of morality or politics.” One is reminded here of Friedrich Hayek’s comment on command (socialist or communist) economies. No man or group of men could ever know everything necessary to be able to determine supply, demand, production, price, the cost of labor and management, the quality of product, and countless other variables necessary to planning a nation’s economy. The unconstrained vision sees it differently. Building in part off of engineering models developed by engineer-turned-economist Thorsten Veblen, the unconstrained vision sees the solution to social problems as merely a matter of “technical coordination” by experts. All such problems are theoretically solvable; you just have to put together the right team of smart guys. The unconstrained vision believes that utopia can be achieved in this world that we live in. But in order to be able to pull it off, the Administrative State, that is, the all-encompassing federal government, has to be given the kind of power and authority that it takes to make it all happen.

Historically, our nation was committed to the constrained vision. Our founding fathers had been a part of unconstrained visions in Europe, where powerful monarchs taxed people at will, confiscated their property when it served their purposes, and ran rough-shod over the rights of common people. They employed “experts” to run the government, believing that common people were too inept to be given opportunities for important service. So, when they established our country, with its Constitution, they composed that founding document so that each part of government had only limited power, and so that no part, especially the executive branch, could ever simply force its own will upon the rest of society.

Enter our present Administration. Little wonder that former chief of staff Rahm Immanuel trashed freedom of speech as being “over-rated.” That freedom, enshrined in the Constitution, could be seen as a threat to a modern Progressive, grasping Administrative State whose intellectual hired guns think they know what our country really needs. Little wonder that a recently appointed Justice of the Supreme Court, giving a speech in Egypt, counseled the Egyptians not to model their constitution after that of the United States, since it is too out of date. Our Constitution limits the power of courts, of legislators, and of the Executive. Our current Administration wants all constraints removed, because it knows what we really need.

But the last ten days have seen all the chickens come home to roost. With the new mandate handed down from the White House regarding implementation of Obamacare, we have witnessed the trashing of freedom of religion. When the episcopal bishops issued a Response to the new mandate, chaplains in the US Armed Forces were warned by the Pentagon not to read those directives in chapel services. Freedom of religion and of speech curtailed. As the Administration attempts to seize control of more and more responsibilities that the Founders intended to be spread among other branches of government and to state legislatures, when are the American people going to wake up and realize that we have in the White House George Washington’s worst nightmare?

This is the unconstrained vision of governing that is as extreme as anything we have seen short of Soviet oppression. It wears a friendly face, a feminist face, a not-white face, a face that says it is concerned for the poor. But one thing is becoming more and more clear every day. It is all about power. Lord Acton had it right. We had better wake up.

Chad Owen Brand

On January 21, 1525, a small group of men gathered in the home of Felix Manz in the Swiss city of Zurich. For some months Manz and his friends, Conrad Grebel, Georg Blaurock, and others, had been convinced that the Catholic Mass and other Catholic teachings were contrary to Scripture. They had followed the lead of their teacher and mentor, Ulrich Zwingli, in calling for reforms in the churches of their city. Zwingli wished for these reforms, but was constrained by the slow hand of the city council, which, though it had ousted the Catholic bishop from leadership, was slow to authorize any real changes in the worship in the city’s churches. But the students of Zwingli wanted even more. Though they agreed with Reformers like Luther that much needed to be changed, they differed with the other Reformers on the nature of the church and the timing of baptism. They had concluded that infant baptism was an abomination, and that only believers’ baptism was consistent with the New Testament. To be even more specific, what they were contending for was not merely believers’ baptism understood generically, but disciples’ baptism, since baptism was to be reserved for “committed disciples who had shown by their steadfast faith, self-discipline and whole-hearted following of the ideals of the gathered community that they were genuine disciples.” That January evening they acted on their convictions. After prayer, Georg Blaurock stood up in the midst of their meeting and asked Grebel, “for God’s sake to baptize him with the true Christian baptism upon his faith and knowledge,” whereupon Grebel complied, and then Blaurock baptized the other adults in the room. They then pledged themselves as true disciples of the Lord “to live lives separated from the world and to teach the gospel and hold the faith.” Thus began the movement commonly known as Anabaptism, but better known to modern scholarship as the Radical Reformation.

It may seem an incidental thing to us, this evening baptismal event with only a dozen or so obscure figures present, but in reality it constituted a very tiny (at the time) but extremely significant revolution in theology. The age-old practice of infant baptism with its implications for politics and social relations was immense. Social expectations, legal enactments and
interpersonal relationships all built on this foundation. So to deny that the paedo-baptism (infant baptism) of all was legitimate and to insist on a later baptism of only a few could not be simply a personal decision with the goal of pursuing greater spiritual fidelity. It inevitably also entailed a stinging indictment of the Christian faith of the others and of the legitimacy of the civil state.

As much as anything, the Radical Reformation constituted a new way of understanding the church—“new,” that is, insofar as it is difficult to find others who sympathized with them any time in their own recent memory. For them the church was a believers’ church. Menno Simons, one of the important theologians in the movement, argued that he was simply applying Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith to the doctrine of the church. If people are justified by faith alone, then only such justified people ought to be “members” of the church. The church then is a “believers’ church” in the sense that only those are members of the visible church who are, by their own testimony at least, members of the mystical body of Christ. Menno further argued that the NT only depicts and teaches the baptism of those who have made a conscious choice to become disciples of Jesus, and that this was consistent with his views on the nature of the church. Luther had done much good in his reforming efforts, as would Calvin, but not enough. While the Magisterial Reformers (those who promoted reforms with the assistance of the magistrates) wished to “reform the church on the basis of the Word of God, the Radical Reformers were more concerned to restore the primitive church which they believed had ‘fallen’ or apostatized.” Menno viewed his work as a furthering or a completion of what Luther had started.

The implications of such a set of convictions are momentous. If the church is made up only of a believing community, Menno further contended, then it alone is responsible for its ministry, its leadership, its support, and its own reform efforts. This entailed a staggering impact politically. In all of the other reform efforts in Germany, Geneva, Basel, Strasbourg, Zurich and other places (including England), the reform efforts were supported by, and in some cases even initiated by, the political authorities. This in effect “put the state in a position of dominance in the life of the church.” Additionally, these reforms were carried out for the most part only under the approving watch-care of town councils, nobles, princes, and other political leaders. Grebel, Manz, and the other key leaders of the new Radicals rejected this out of hand. The church needs no assistance in carrying out its reforms. Whenever the government adds its lending hand to reform efforts it also looks for some kind of pay-back as well as complete cooperation with the political realities that are in place, whether those political realities are just or not. The Anabaptists in effect said, “We do not need the government’s help in carrying out our reforms, and we do not want its interference.” It was a truly radical position; these men were not, in all likelihood, fully prepared for the storm that was about to be unleashed on them.

The practice of “rebaptism” (the meaning of the term “anabaptist”) was outlawed in Zurich. Felix Manz was executed early in 1527 for “rebaptizing” persons, executed by drowning. The Radicals were proscribed all over Europe, with the exception of Holland. The reason is that their convictions challenged one of the most long-standing and universal beliefs of Western (and, indeed, Eastern) Christendom, the belief that church and state were in some sense two sides of the same coin. It is not that everyone else saw church and state as the same thing. It is not even that kings and popes always got along well. But the common belief, so common that it was part of the fabric of their very lives, was that there was only one state (in any given geographic area) and that there was also only one church, and that this seamlessness was requisite to a stable society. To contend for a different political reality was tantamount to treason or sedition; to contend for a different ecclesiastical reality was to do the very same thing. Starting a new church was seen as rebellion and insurrection. This was at least the view that outsiders took of the Anabaptists, a name that “came to be used in a general pejorative sense to describe those who were believed to oppose the existing social and political order.” There is only one way to deal with usurpers. This is why Manz was drowned by the Zurich authorities, in a kind of parody of his own baptismal practice. But the Radicals believed that practicing mandated infant baptism in the context of an established church was to confuse the church with the world.

The Anabaptists were attempting to break a millennium-old assumption. Their beliefs were counter to Augustine, contrary to the practice of the Medieval popes, counter to the convictions that launched the Inquisition, and they were inconsistent with the compromise position of Luther or the rational approach of John Calvin. Their belief was also not consistent with their own local situation in Zurich in which Zwingli was willing to allow the city council to set the tone and the pace of reform, in effect, to govern the church’s affairs. Grebel. in conversation with Zwingli, rejected the city council’s authority over the churches. He contended that the churches ought to be able to handle their reforms on their own. “The decision of Conrad Grebel to refuse to accept the jurisdiction of the Zurich council over the Zurich church is one of the high moments of history, for however obscure it was, it marked the beginning of the modern ‘free church’ movement.” Furthermore, this action by “Grebel and the Swiss Brethren who gathered around him in the ensuing year(s) planted the seed out of which has come, through the influence of the Anabaptists in Holland and England, the modern Protestant commitment of freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, voluntary church membership, and separation of church and state.” These are truly monumental issues! Grebel would pay for his actions with imprisonment in Zurich in 1525/26, but would be released and then die in August of 1526, probably from the plague in Maienfeld. Living only to the age of twenty-eight, he had founded a theological revolution that would live on for generations.

All of the previous theologies advocated the view that there can be only one government and only one church in any locale, and that there was some kind of mutually-supportive symbiosis between them, even though leaders of church and state did not always agree on how to handle any given situation. For the previous “Great Tradition,” the two (state and church) had to find a way to work together for moral, economic, political, and ecclesiastical advancement, in effect, to create a Christian Society. But this was not so for the Radicals, and in many places they paid a great price for their “sedition.” They did not see themselves as rebels, of course, but were simply calling for a new model of church-state relations, a model that actually would be tentatively attempted in the Low Countries by the 1540s. This does not mean that the Radicals in Zurich were advocating separatism. They rejected the Catholic Church and the idea of a state church, but they did wish for “one united church, not a little church outside the big church, for they believed that the majority of the people would accept their program.” They wanted one church, but not a church under the boot heel of the city council. Thus was the desire for true religious liberty born, in the heart and mind of a twenty-something university student who had learned from his mentor (Zwingli) that Scripture alone was the authority for all of life. Would that his mentor had learned the lesson as well as his students.

Chad Brand
From the forthcoming book, Seeking the City, by Chad Brand and Tom Pratt.

There is a significant question that lies before the student of early American “politics.” The question is: how does the American situation move from Puritanism to Republicanism so quickly? What was the process that took us from Puritan to Yankee in the course of a generation? We may recall that England came close to a sort of republicanism after the Civil War of the 1640s and the Commonwealth government that ruled in the wake of the early Stuart kings. It stopped short of republicanism in the Commonwealth, though, and subsequently reinstated the monarchy. What was it that led the Protestant citizens of the American colonies to move away from centuries of tradition and adopt a new form of government? And why would they break with their mother country in the very first place? The answer lies in the amazing ministry of George Whitefield.

Until recently, many historians of colonial religion have despised Whitefield. One famous historian called Whitefield, “repulsive, reckless, irresponsible, whining, sanctimonious.” We will offer a different opinion. By his own testimony, George Whitefield went to the colonies in the first place because he was convinced that the clergy in the Anglican colonies were incompetent and corrupt. His first trip in 1738 (to Georgia) was attended by remarkable instances of repentance and renewal in the churches. Writing in his own Journal later he noted that the Church of England might “flourish” in the colonies if her ministers were “found faithful.” Only bad ministers were sent there, and the result was a lukewarm church. Whitefield’s approach to evangelism actually mirrors the kind of market economy that America would soon become, since he used dramatic “marketing” in announcing his meetings ahead of time, and he felt no compunction to enter into “competition” with established ministers in the towns he visited. Whitefield was a preaching entrepreneur in a land that would soon become a land filled with the same spirit toward the economy. To a certain degree that was what the Great Awakening was all about.

Whitefield’s preaching struck a note even more clear and arresting than had Edwards’s. Returning for a second and much more expansive preaching tour in late 1739, the Anglican priest scoured the colonies with his call for “regeneration,” and the bestowal of the gift of the Spirit to American church members. People in the Church of England rarely (with the exception of the Puritan wing, now become the Congregationalists in the New World) rarely emphasized any sort of “personal connection to God” as part of the Christian experience, but instead believed that “a person inherited their religion via family tradition and intellectually agreed upon church doctrines.” Whitefield, having been converted through the ministry of Charles Wesley several years before, came preaching that genuine Christianity was regenerate Christianity. Such an experience normally does not occur in an instant, but entails a period of time of conviction of sin, seeking the Lord, and finally bursting through with sweet assurance. The result of regeneration is the gift of the Spirit to the believer, a gift that brings about transformation of character.

Whitefield was confessionally a Calvinist, subscribing to the Calvinistic Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, even requiring the students enrolled in his New World college to memorize the confession. Like Edwards, he was a Calvinist who urged his auditors to seek to be converted. But he went beyond Edwards in this matter. Edwards, who had done a careful reading of Locke and believed that one could discern through “affections” (emotions) the reality of God working in the heart, and so to find a sense of assurance with that, found it difficult to take the matter much further. Whitefield, though, believed that “the prepared heart had a choice,” and that it was the job of the preacher to challenge his hearers to make that choice. This constituted a seismic shift in American religion, especially in New England, with the new birth eventually being associated with “the pursuit of happiness,” a key theme in decades ahead.

In his fifteen-month tour of America that began in November, 1739, Whitefield ignored denominational barriers by preaching in outdoor events that brought together Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and others. This brought colonists together, making them for the first time since the earliest colonization a family, a family knit together by the “new birth” that thousands were experiencing all over the land. The concept of the new birth was even more significant for the people of that time than it is for us, since the message was a new one (Anglican priests had neglected this biblical theme) and since farmers and midwives, both very common in the day, connected intuitively to the imagery.

The newly regenerate saw themselves as spiritual equals to many pastors, since they had now shared the same Holy Spirit with them. This of course caused consternation to the older institutionalized clergy who rejected Whitefield’s message, and resulted in the formation of “New Light” congregations in New England to be set alongside the “Old Lights.” These New Lights “were those who had begun to see themselves as Americans.” Old Lights, like the respectable Boston pastor Charles Chauncy, “preferred a top-down society led by a king and lords [Tories], while the New Lights favored a strong, grass-roots, parliamentary self-rule, with loyalty to the king as symbolic of their devotion to the British Empire [Whigs].” What had begun as a revival of religion was morphing into a new conception of society. Older European social divisions based on blood and soil were giving way to a new kind of unity based on a common conversion experience.

War between France and England in 1745 drove Whitefield to further reflection on not merely the social, but the political implications of the new birth. The combined power of France and the Papacy attempted a coup to reinstate the Stuart monarchy in the form of James II’s grandson, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” England was triumphant in fighting off the Catholic advance, but it all made Whitefield recognize that, though he was loyal to King George II, “he could envision the Church of England becoming as oppressive as the Catholics.” While the conflict hung in the balance, Whitefield preached a sermon in which “he promoted religious liberty by speculating about life under a Roman Catholic-dominated government.” From this point on, his sermons would be peppered with republican ideas, many derived from Locke. It needs to be said that republicanism did not flow from politics to religion, but rather in the reverse direction. What began as a revival in the church, a revival of spiritual egalitarianism under the heading of the new birth available to all, moved in the next generation to become a revival of hatred of political oppression and a love of political egalitarianism. Whitefield was the man who sparked this revival. The colonies would never be the same.

Among other impacts, the Great Awakening had at least done this to America: it “gave a distinctive American flavor to a wide range of denominations.” Not everyone accepted the revivals, of course, and in every denomination there were detractors. The churches were changed in five ways by the Awakening: “evangelical vigor, a tendency to downgrade the clergy, little stress on liturgical correctness, and even less on parish boundaries, and above all an emphasis on individual experience.” Revelation 21:5 was the key text to the revivals, and also the key text for the American experience as a whole: “Behold I make all things new.” Before the Awakening each of the colonies saw itself as relating to the Crown individually as colonies, as the Spanish colonies would continue to do for a hundred years; the Awakening had left the impression with its supporters that they were all part of one grand cause that gave them more in common with one another than they had with their English relatives. “Historians agree that this national revival prepared Americans for the national revolution that was to follow in just thirty years. Religious cooperation thus prepared the way for political and military cooperation.” The Awakening facilitated the Revolution. “The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background.” One could almost say, “No Whitefield, No Revolution!” The Great Awakening was a defining hour for the colonies, whichever way we attempt to explain it as a historical phenomenon.

From the forthcoming book, Seeking the City: Christian Faith and Political Economy, A Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study

by Chad Brand and Tom Pratt

Resources for this article include Jerome Dean Mahaffey, The Accidental Revolutionary: George Whitefield & the Creation of America (Baylor University Press, 2012), Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield the the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Eerdmans, 1991), and Earle E. Cairns, An Endless Line of Splendor: Revivals and their Leaders from the Great Awakening to the Present (Tyndale, 1986).

My mentor, friend, and co-author (of a forthcoming book) Tom Pratt posted this blog on his website on the comments by Aaron Rogers regarding Tim Tebow. I think you will enjoy this. Tom’s web site info is at the bottom of the blog. Check him out!

Tim Tebow, the NFL, & St. Francis

By Tom Pratt, Jr.

1/2/2012

“Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” – St. Francis of Assisi

This was recent advice given by one avowedly Christian quarterback in the NFL (Aaron Rogers) to another outspoken Christian quarterback (Tim Tebow). Rogers has discovered, of course, that it is not Christian good deeds that produce hostility from the world and some nominal Christians but Christian testimony and advocacy of the saving ability of Jesus Christ. Even a former Super Bowl winner, Kurt Warner, previously as apparently vocal about his faith as Tebow, has advised his younger brother to, in effect, “cool it” in his regular reiteration of the source of his strength and ability. Other voices have joined the chorus of sometimes harsh rebuke and ridicule.

We have no doubt that Rogers and Warner are sincere in their apparent attempt to make more palatable the Christian influence in the NFL and its media outlets. However, in our opinion such popular (mis)usage of St. Francis’ dictum is one of the most unfortunate mischaracterizations of the Christian mission that has ever been foisted upon the world for two reasons. First, it misunderstands the mission of Francis and the order he founded. The short life of Giovanni Bernardore (1182-1226), commonly known as Francesco, the founder of the Franciscan order, was certainly a life of service lived in the circumstances of a vow of poverty taken in 1209. But it was far from a life of silence under the assumption that, in our modern parlance, “actions speak louder than words.” The group Francis founded preached and served faithfully around the Mediterranean world “always cheerful and full of songs, yet making a deep impression on their hearers by their earnest exhortations,” in the words of church historian Philip Schaff. The work “embraced devoted service in the abodes of sickness and poverty, earnest preaching by both priests and lay brothers, and missions in an ever widening circle, which finally included heretics and Mohammedans” according to Schaff. Notable among these missions was Francis’ journeys to Egypt and Palestine (besides Spain, France, and Germany) and his attempt to convert the Sultan Kameel, for which he narrowly escaped martyrdom, a fate actually suffered by five of his co-workers in Morocco. It was not his or their works of mercy, which were constant and persistent, that endangered his life and those of his colleagues, but their exhortations toward repentance and faith.

This historical note serves to reinforce the biblical mandate to maintain a good “confession” (Matt. 10:32-36; Rom. 10:9-21; 1 Tim. 6: 12, 13; Heb. 3:1; 4:14; 10:23; Rev. 12:11). One does not “preach” the Gospel by actions apart from words, or more properly, “the Word.” One’s actions may or may not support one’s “preaching,” but they cannot communicate the saving “word” of the Gospel. They may point to the Word or illustrate it or reinforce it or prepare for it, but no one in Jesus’ day or ours has found salvation through observing acts of kindness, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, etc., until they have been convicted and called to repentance through the Word.

Furthermore, none of us is capable of the “works” of the Savior when he was among us incarnate (though His promise of “greater works” in Jn. 14:12 is debated as to its intended import). He was not widely believed or received (less than a thousand confirmed followers even after the resurrection) even though he did works no man has seen on earth before or since and was followed constantly by great crowds of erstwhile “believers” impressed by His works (Jn. 2:23-25). He was not crucified for His works; He was crucified for His words, which revealed His own and the Father’s identity (Jn. 10:32; 15:24). His mock trial did not condemn Him for His works. He was condemned because He made Himself out to be the unique Son of God and threatened to “tear down this Temple” and rebuild it in three days (Matt. 26:59-67). He regularly pared down the crowds that followed Him with the challenge of discipleship because the works He did out of compassion and as signs and as Kingdom harbingers did not in themselves convey the “way” of salvation (Lk. 14:25-35; Jn. 6:35-70 and other passages in the gospels).

Nicodemus is a prime example of such a person, who came to Jesus in secret having been impressed with the “works” that He did (Jn. 3). Nicodemus averred that Jesus must be “from God,” but Jesus would have none of such a confession, no matter how positive it seems. He immediately challenged “the teacher of Israel” with the central Gospel dogma: “Ye must be born from above.” In the discussion that follows he implicitly charges the Pharisee with failure to know these things from the OT Scriptures.

This story appears to be an illustration of John’s notation at the close of the previous chapter in our versions that many “believed” when they saw His works, but He did not “believe Himself into them” (lit.). Immediately following the Nicodemus story in John 3 Jesus has the conversation with the Samaritan woman during which He uncovers her sinful past and asserts His authority as Messiah. In the process she is clearly changed by the work of the Spirit through the Word and herself becomes a “witness” to the power of Jesus in salvation.

One of the salient features of all four of our written gospels is the dullness of the inner circle of His followers in the light of Jesus’ ongoing works of power and mercy. They are constantly pictured in unflattering light because they require regular explanations even though they have the closest association with the Lord. John will ultimately decry the condition of the crowds, and by implication the weak faith of the twelve, though they had seen so many “signs” (Jn. 12:37, 38).

It is the apostolic witness of preaching that brings about Holy Spirit-given conviction upon the listeners at Pentecost so that they might be “converted” in Acts 2. It is this preaching that the Jewish authorities seek to silence in the fourth chapter of Acts. It is the preaching of Stephen that riles these same authorities and leads to his death in Acts 7. It is the preaching of Phillip that converts the Samaritans and the Ethiopian eunuch later on. And the theme continues throughout Luke’s story of the “acts” of the Apostles showing how the “word of the Lord…grew [increased]” (Acts 6:8; 12:24; 19:20), and concludes with Paul in his own house in Rome preaching and teaching the word daily.

Paul the Apostle urges upon the Colossians that they “Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Col. 3:16 HCSB) Only in this way can they expect to put off the old way of life and put on the new way of life so Christ may be “all in all.” Thus, everything “whether in word or deed” will be done “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (v. 17). Here Paul, as he does elsewhere, also emphasizes the power and use of celebratory worship in the form of Christian music that mirrors and clarifies the message preached. “In the Christian liturgy, hymns often clarify the great themes of biblical exposition and prepare parishioners for proclamation and sacrament. In early Methodism, for instance, Charles Wesley’s hymns provided the context for understanding the theological contribution of his brother, John Wesley. And what interpretation of the magisterial Reformation is better or more convincing than Luther’s ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’?” (Rob Wall in IVPNTC in loc.)

The IVPNTC commentator, Rob Wall, goes on in this section to mirror our sentiments exactly on the weakness of the church in its failure to place the Word of God proclaimed and celebrated at the heart of its life and mission:

I have noticed a disturbing trend among my students, many of whom come from devout families and growing churches: they are biblically illiterate and therefore spiritually fragile. In many congregations worship has become a spectator sport, geared to a generation fashioned by the slick tricks of the media. The “feel good” experience has replaced the hard discipline of knowing God in spirit and truth. The church’s vocation in the world is to be of and for God, and this is a difficult and often costly calling. Christians today must have minds as tough as nails, able to cut through the vapid secularism and materialism of our world with the “word of truth.”

Every believer today is under siege; the church’s witness—even its faith in God—is threatened by the norms and values of a pervasively anti-God world. To support and direct God’s people for their daily battles, preaching must be informed by a rigorous study of biblical texts. The church’s teaching ministry must help its members understand all of life through a scriptural filter. If we are to know the truth and the demands of God’s reign and to better understand the deceits of our anti-God world, so that we are prepared to worship and bear witness to the Lord, our congregations need to gather closely around the Scriptures.

Paul in his previous correspondence to the Corinthians states unequivocally that it is the “foolishness of the message preached” (1 Cor. 1:21 HCSB) that confounds the wisdom of the world and saves “those who are being saved” (v. 18). This is in spite of the fact that the Jews seek “signs” and the Greeks seek “wisdom.” It is this same message that Paul urges the young Timothy years later to “guard” with great care (2 Tim. 1:13, 14) even though it should cause him “suffering” (v. 8).

The failure to preach the Gospel as committed to the church in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments limits the “message” of salvation to whatever human beings are able to accomplish, with the enabling of the Holy Spirit of course. However, as noble as this may sound it is in fact a formula for the limitation of salvation to human strivings. Nothing could be more disastrous for the mission of the church and the bulk of mankind who go without the benefit of the powerful converting force of the Gospel of eternal salvation. A “gospel” without words is essentially a man-made self-improvement course—a focus upon the activities of men instead of the salvation that can only come from the activity of God through Jesus Christ and the empowerment of the Spirit. No matter whether the church fails to live up to its proclamation or seems to fulfill its promise, the Gospel message is far more challenging and powerful than any human attempt to “live it out.” God forbid that any man or woman should limit God’s work in others to whatever may have been accomplished in one’s own life.

The failure to faithfully preach the Scriptures also has an indisputable ethical/moral element. Without clear “preaching” of the Word the world is easily duped into the wistful pursuit of philanthropy and politics as the “answer” to what ails it. Rob Wall defines the importance of this issue in his comment on Paul’s argument in Col. 3:
“For Paul, the moral content of the believer’s life has not changed with the coming of Christ. The will of a good and holy God did not change with Christ’s coming. The real issue, therefore, is one of moral competency: believers are made capable by God’s grace to do God’s will (compare Ro 12:1-2). The contrast between vice and virtue that Paul draws in this passage is yet another, more moral way of speaking of the believer’s conversion. In this sense, then, we can speak of Pauline ethics as “missionary ethics,” since virtuous character presumes conversion, and conversion presumes the preaching of the gospel.”

Most critical is the role of “confession” in the experience and mission of the church and the individual believer. As EBC puts it commenting on Romans 10:1-10, “The word of faith’” or gospel message is something to confess as well as to believe (cf. 2Cor 4:13, 14). ‘Confess’ (homologeo ) when used of sin means to say the same thing about it that God says; when used in the creedal sense, as here in v.9, it means to say the same thing that other believers say regarding their faith. This was done within the Christian group especially by new converts in connection with their baptism; when it was done “before men” (Matt 10:32) it had an evangelizing function. . . . the creedal statement before us pertains to the person of Christ rather than to his redeeming work. ‘Jesus is Lord’ was the earliest declaration of faith fashioned by the church (Acts 2:36; 1Cor 12:3). This great truth was recognized first by God in raising his Son from the dead—an act then acknowledged by the church and one day to be acknowledged by all (Philippians 2:11).” In our opinion Tim Tebow’s (and others’) confession specifically referencing his “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” rather than the generic “god” or “the man upstairs” or “the good lord” is what has become offensive. The one confession is biblically clear and challenges an acceptable culturally deistic pabulum – deemed inoffensive to all but the militantly atheistic or agnostic – represented in the other terms.

To state the case boldly (and bald-ly) the world will one day confess that Jesus is Lord to the “glory of God the Father” because they are compelled by the truth, not the feeble works of believers. The fact of His objective Lord-ship is true whether anyone believes it or not or anyone obeys Him with good works now or not. Some acknowledge it “while it is called today” (Heb. 3:12-15); others will only do so to their great regret when no hope remains (Heb. 9:27, 28). Paul makes it clear that this Lord-ship was “declared” in the resurrection (Rom. 1:1-6) and forms the core truth of the message “preached” (Rom. 10:11-15). More power (literally) to you both, Tim and Francis.

Tom’s web site: Eagle Rock Ministries

Chad Owen Brand

We take the Bible for granted. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, but relatively few read that version any more. I am not bemoaning that fact. I love the KJV, but it has its problems, and, though it is still revered (in my heart), we needed fresh new translations, and the past hundred years or so has witnessed an explosion in Bible translation, some times for the good, and some times maybe not so much for the good.

The main problem lies not with the translations, new or old. The problem lies with us. We take the Bible for granted. There are millions of Christians in churches all over America who have never read the Bible. Oh, they have read parts of it–favorite parts–and they read it in church when the pastor reads his text on Sunday morning. They read it (some times) in preparation for a Sunday School class or Bible study group. They may even read a verse a day out of some “Daily Bread” or some other devotional guide, not understanding that the Bible was never intended to be read merely a verse at a time. The Bible was not even broken down into verses until 1560, with the publication of the Geneva Bible. It is intended to be read in paragraphs and in its entirety.

The New Testament was first made available in printed form in 1526 after William Tyndale, hiding out in various European cities for fear of his life, published his NT in Worms, Germany, and then shipped (smuggled) the copies into England. It was an immediate sensation. Historian Brian Moynihan has said that when Tyndale’s NT appeared, the people found that “The experience of reading God’s word was perilous, exciting, intoxicating, and illegal.” Imagine that! “Perilous, exciting, intoxicating, illegal.” In part it was intoxicating because it was illegal, but that is only part of the story. For the first time, Englishmen had in their hands a printed version of the Gospel. For the first time! They could read it for themselves, and it was relatively cheap, costing only four or five pence. Imagine the excitement of being able, for the first time in your national history, of being able to read, memorize, meditate on, and treasure God’s Word! It was electric!

It was also electric for Tyndale, who, ten years later, and as a result of betrayal by a friend, would be arrested by the agents of the Emperor, tried, and executed for his troubles. Tyndale never took the Bible for granted, and we should learn from his efforts.

May God’s Word once again be perilous, exciting, and intoxicating to us, even if it is no longer illegal. May 2012 be the year that some of us read the intoxicating Bible through for the first time in our Christian experience.

Chad Owen Brand

In Matthew 5:26 Jesus, in the context of encouraging people not to worry, said, “Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor do they reap, nor do they gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not worth much more than they?  I suspect that many people, reading this, take it to mean that God will take care of them, and that they should not be overly concerned with working at a difficult job, or working overtime to make a better life for themselves and their families, because, after all, God provides for the birds.  Certainly everyone has to balance work with family, health, worship, and all the other things that complicate life.  Being a workaholic is not much better than being lazy in terms of its impact on our spouses and our children.  But I want us to rethink this verse for just a minute or two.

Jesus said, “Look at the birds.”  Have you ever watched birds with this verse in mind?  Watch them.  They are always busy.  Flying here, looking for food, flying there to elude predators like hawks (and my cat).  Birds are among the most industrious of creatures.  If they are not migrating they are building nests (except some types of cuckoos that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds–a gesture at the welfare state among the bird world?), and taking care of young.  On one occasion as I tried to help a young Blue Jay that had somehow found its way to the ground, I got repaid by its two parents who dived for my eyes with their beaks and were only thwarted by my glasses.  Care-giving parents, but it is the last Jay I will ever help!

What is the point Jesus is making?  “Your heavenly Father feeds them.”  How does he do that?  Not by dropping seeds and worms into their beaks from above as they perch on wires and branches.  He “feeds them” by providing a world of abundance from which they may feed themselves.  He feeds them in the sense that he created all this wonderful stuff that they eat, and every year as Spring rolls around there is an abundant new crop of seeds, nuts, insects, worms, fish, rabbits (for the “big daddies”), and other goodies.  But they don’t get access to it by sitting on their tail feathers.  (Except for the four cockatiels in the cage in my study that squawk for breakfast as soon as they hear my feet hit the floor.  I have thought of letting them go, but they’d just sit on someone’s lawn and beg to be adopted.)  They get access to it by flapping their wings and humping their legs in a very industrious manner to care for themselves and for their young.  That is how your heavenly Father feeds them.

“Are you not worth much more than they?”  Yes, but we get it generally in the same way they do–by flapping our wings and humping our tail feathers.  And don’t forget to trust the Lord to help you find work, and to enable you to be blessed by it.

Look at the birds.

Chad Owen Brand

Everyone knows about Fast and Furious, the ATF’s debacle of selling guns to Mexican drug lords that has resulted in at least one death of an American law enforcement officer, and who knows how many Mexican nationals. Holder told the New York Times over the weekend in a front page Sunday story, A Partisan Lightning Rod Is Undeterred, that the House investigation of Fast and Furious was just election-year politicking, and that critics were just playing “Washington gotcha games.” He further offered that much of the animus was racially motivated. “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him,” he said, “both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.” So, the real issue in this debate is–race. Really?

I have no doubt that there exists racism in America. I have seen recent articles describing what it is like to be young and black (or hispanic) in some parts of New York City, and I have no doubt that racism rears its ugly head somewhere every day in America. I was raised in a family with many racists (but not everyone), but was also fortunate to have been a young teenager when MLK was making a lot of sense on the nightly news. I took a stand for what I thought was right. My stand has had its tests, but it has stood. I am sensitive to racism myself as I have a black son-in-law and grandchildren whose color is closer to their father’s than to their mother’s, and I have caught the odd stare or under-the-breath comment in a public restaurant. I have seen racism all my life, growing up in a community that was half-white, half-hispanic, and I know it is there yet.

But the concerns over Holder are not racially motivated. I did not vote for Barack Obama nor do I support his politics, but there was a part of me in 2008 that was proud that Americans now could at least elect a black president. I happened to wish it had been a different black president! But it was clear that we had passed a milestone. Florida Republican Rep. Allen West, himself black, accused Holder of playing the race card, and “the last card in the deck” (see this article in the Daily Caller: West: Holder\’s Race Card Is the Last Card in the Deck), and indicated that this is just an intimidation factor to fend off criticism from whites who don’t want to be viewed as racist.

The problem is that the impact of Fast and Furious is too profound. Too many have died. Someone has to pay for that policy, and the one who has to pay is the guy in charge of the government office that authorized the program. If Holder did know what was going on, he should be fired. If he did not know what was going on, he should be fired. That is bottom line.

We live in a nation of laws. As a Christian I believe that people have to be held accountable for their actions. As a Christian I also believe that God has broken down all barriers that divide us, whether Jew/Gentile or black/white. As a Christian with a mixed race family I also know that racism can be a subtle thing. But what happened in Mexico was not subtle.

It is not a black and white issue. It is a right and wrong issue. Eric Holder should be ashamed of himself. Is this what Martin Luther King died for, so that inept politicians could play cards with the American people? I don’t think so.

Chad Owen Brand

When the Constitution was proposed in 1787, not all the delegates were in favor, and after all the debates, not all voted to ratify; in fact, it narrowly won approval. The main problem for the detractors was that they feared substituting one top-heavy federal bureaucracy (England) with another one (The United States). The main concern? Taxation. That concern was not realized until the Civil War, and then not again until FDR gave us entitlement spending and LBJ even more of it. But now we are deep in it. Our debt is rising above GDP as I am writing these words.

The most vocal of the critics of the new constitution was the Patriot Patrick Henry. He was an anti-federalist to the core, and did everything he could to prevent ratification. That fact has left many historians with a “Yeah, but” assessment of the redoubtable Henry. But in light of our national debt situation, maybe it is time for a new look at Henry’s anti-federalism, and what it might say to our borrow-and-spend-bender Congress, on both sides of the aisle. Thomas Kidd of Baylor has provided that for us, both in the form of a short article with the Acton Institute and a brand new book on Henry.

For the article go here: Patrick Henry Warned Us about Extravagant Government

For a link to his new book go here: Patrick Henry: First among Patriots

I think you will find Dr. Kidd’s work to be arresting!

Chad Owen Brand

The problem in the world today is not too much free market presence, but not enough. The average per capita earnings in South Korea is $30,000, while that in North Korea is $1,800. Because the this impoverishment, most Korean children are malnourished and the average North Korean is 4-5 inches shorter than those in North Korea. Check out this excellent article by Mindy Belz: http://www.crosswalk.com/news/the-falsehoods-of-famine-and-food-aid.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=twpage&utm_campaign=dailyupdate

The Occupy people just need to do a little research. Free markets will not solve the spiritual problems of our world, but they sure can solve the physical starvation problem!

Chad Owen Brand

Excellent article by Jen Engle that you can find here:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/07/what-if-tim-tebow-were-muslim/

The editorial argues that if Tebow were a Muslim instead of a devout Christian, there would be no mocking of his faith, no criticism of his prayers, no allegations that he is too much of a fanatic. Read the piece. It is great!

Chad Owen Brand