continuing this string of Jonathan Edwards related posts, i came across this article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review which involves Jonathan Edwards’ sixth-great-granddaughter who is a pastor in the PCUSA.

apparently she believes that she is following her forefather’s example in performing same-sex marriage ceremonies. in the article, she is described as “liken[ing] performing the ceremony to her famously orthodox ancestor, Jonathan Edwards, preaching to the Mohicans in the 18th century, when racism made Native Americans the object of scorn and fear.”

so if i understand this correctly, preaching to the Mohicans is the same as, or in the same line as, marrying same-sex couples. carrying out the Great Commission is the same as enabling and condoning sin and sinful lifestyles. brilliant.

an Edwards scholar, Amy Plantiga Pauw, is also quoted in the article as affirming Janet Edwards’ correlation in saying, “There is a kind of parallel — Jonathan Edwards was not afraid to challenge so-called respectable Christians of his time.”

but again, Edwards never went so far as to promote sinful lifestyles or to encourage sin. there is an ocean’s depth of difference between preaching to an unreached group of people and enabling people to further engage in the sin that they are in. of course we are all sinful creatures and we all have pet sins. but for clergy to be aiding in and encouraging that sin that is strictly forbidden by the Bible is inexcusable. even worse is when this is done by saying that some historical figure (who has long passed and is unable to answer such lewd allegations) would have done the same thing, which could not be farther from the truth.

Jonathan Edwards was known as a staunch defender of the Bible. if he would not tolerate the teenagers of Northampton ogling and passing around a guide to midwifery (Puritan porn!), it is ridiculous to even imply that he would champion the agendas such as this one if he were around today. contrary to what these folks might thing, Edwards was hardly an “activist.” at least in the modern sense of that word. Edwards was a student of the Bible. he spent 13 hours a day in his study reading, writing, and meditating on the Scriptures (as well as meeting with congregants and others). his passion for the Bible and the doctrines contained therein are what he is remembered and cherished for, and to consider him an ally in any arena that is not geared towards a promotion of the Scriptures and the Gospel of Christ, especially in arenas that are fundamentally opposed to such biblical promotion, is to do great disservice to his name, his life’s work, and the God whom he served and now resides with in glory.

Janet Edwards says, “I do not feel I have done anything wrong. On the contrary, I felt I was holding up the vows of my ordination.” this may very well be the case (i don’t know what the PCUSA requires in the form of ordination vows), but she should realize that she is under a higher authority than her ordination vows. perhaps a warning from the man in whose footsteps she is claiming to follow is appropriate here:

There is a time coming when ministers of the Gospel must return to Him that sent them to give Him an account of their ministry. As they have been sent forth from Him so they must return again to Him. As they have their commission and instructions from Him so they must render an account to Him (Hebrews 13: 17). They that Christ appoints as stewards in His house must give an account of their stewardship. They must give an account to their great Master how they have done the work that He has appointed, what pains they have taken, what diligence they have used, the manner they have handled the word of God, what care they have taken of the souls of those that are of the flock that He has ever given them the charge of. And those that have been faithful and successful when they have finished their embassy will return to their Lord to give an account of what success they have had, as the servants that recieved the 5 talents and the 2 talents declare to their Lord how much they had gained - as in the 25th chapter of Matthew.

[...]

How dreadful will our case be when we when we come to give an account to our Lord if we have been unfaithful…when we shall see those precious souls that were committed to our care lost through our neglect and standing at the left hand of the Judge in horrid amazement. And they shall rise up in judgment against us and shall declare how we neglected their souls…Instead of meeting our Lord with joy, with what dreadful horrours shall we behold His Son in which be no token of rejoicing at the relations we have to give Him, but tokens of wrath and fearful indignation ready to frown us into distinguished torment and misery…As faithful ministers shall be distinguished in Glory so perhaps none will be so distinguished in misery as unfaithful ministers.

(this quote was taken from an unpublished, unedited sermon manuscript which is why the language seems choppy; i cleaned it up as much as i could while still retaining the original words and meaning)

as i was doing my daily Jonathan Edwards reading, i came across this amazing exhortation in a sermon on “The Church’s Marriage to Her Sons, and to Her God.” i was really struck by it because there haven’t been very many times where i’ve sat down and thought about those i am going to be ministering to and have gospel authority over. so this passage really made me stop and think about that and i realized how much i desire to teach others and to show them the glory of God’s grace that i have been so blessed to see. even under the immense gravity of the task set before me, my desire is to persevere and to do my part in preparing a bride for Christ. so with that, i’ll share what Edwards says that struck me so deeply:

Let us who are honoured by the glorious bridegroom of the church, to be employed as His ministers, to so high a purpose, as has been represented, be engaged and induced by what has been observed, to faithfulness in our great work; that we may be and act towards Christ’s people that are committed to our care, as those that are united to them in holy espousals, for Christ’s sake, and in order to their being brought to the unspeakable blessedness of that more glorious union with the Lamb of God, in which He shall rejoice over them, as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride. Let us see to it that our hearts are united to them, as a young man to a virgin that he marries, in the most ardent and tender affection; and that our regard to them be pure and uncorrupt, that it may be a regard to them, and not to what they have, or any worldly advantages we hope to gain of them. And let us behave ourselves as those that are devoted to their good; being willing to spend and be spent for them; joyfully undertaking and enduring the labour and self-denial that is requisite in order to a thorough fulfilling the ministry that we have received. Let us continually and earnestly endeavour to promote the prosperity and salvation of the souls committed to our care, looking on their calamities and their prosperity as our own; feeling their spiritual wounds and griefs, and refreshed with their consolations; and spending our whole lives in diligent care and endeavour to provide for, nourish, and instruct our people, as the intended spouse of Christ, yet in her minority, that we may form her mind and behaviour, and bring her up for Him, and that we may cleanse her, as with the washing of water by the word, and purify her as with sweet odours, and clothed in such raiment as may become Christ’s bride. Let us aim that when the appointed wedding-day comes, we may have done our work as Christ’s messengers; and may then be ready to present Christ’s spouse to Him, a chaste virgin, properly educated and formed, and suitably adorned for her marriage with the Lamb; that He may then present her to Himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, and may receive her into His eternal embraces, in perfect purity, beauty, and glory.

amen.

Dr. John H. Gerstner (1914-1996) was one of the most renowned Jonathan Edwards scholars. i have had the immense privelege of taking a course on the theology of Edwards, which Dr. Gerstner thankfully completed before he died. the course has been a tremendous blessing for me, especially given that i have a personal goal to complete doctoral work in Edwards studies at some point in my life. apart from this legacy, the good doctor was also renowned for giving a set of the two volume Banner of Truth edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards to anyone who made a vow under God to complete the reading of both volumes within a year of receiving them. to my great amazement and joy, this is apparently still being carried on even though he has long since gone to be with the Lord. i received my set on thursday, and thus bind myself to the vow.

Resolved, having received the gift from the late Dr. Gerstner and thereby making a vow under God accordingly, to finish the reading of both volumes within the time period of a year, thus being February 24, 2007.

may God grant me patience and endurance in completing this task.

today in my Advanced Biblical Exegesis, we were discussing the importance of theological heritage and why that heritage is relevant to us today, even though we may feel far removed from it. in our discussion, we focused mainly on the importance of creeds and confessions and their use not only in corporate worship, but also in our personal devotions. our professor even went so far as to say that besides the Bible, creeds and confessions are the second most important deposit and treasury of truth that the church possesses. creeds and confessions are not infallible, nor should they be used in place of Scripture (thus the “second most” caveat), but they are vitally necessary for us today because they express the heritage of the church throughout the centuries.

being Reformed, and attending a Reformed seminary, the Westminster Standards are indeed a standard tool that i have had to grow accustomed to. everytime i read a part of the confession, or a part of the Larger or Shorter Catechism, i am just struck with the biblical depth of the statements, as well as they way they are presented and worded. you just don’t find that kind of writing or expression in this day and age. but today, as my professor was teaching, something else hit me about these creeds and confessions.

saints from all centuries and heritages have stood together and verbally proclaimed the words contained in these creeds and confessions.

after thinking about that for a minute or two, it started to seem strange to me to think this. after all, haven’t saints throughout the centuries read the same Bible? what makes these creeds and confessions more “special”, so-to-speak, than that? the answer i came up with is that there are a million different interpretations of the Bible. two people can read the same verse and have vastly different interpretations of that verse. 100 people can read a verse and have 100 different interpretations, and so on. but the creeds and confessions are different. they are simple, solid, unwavering, undeniable statements about what Christians believe to be true about God and His work in the world. statements such as Jesus being “very God of very God” as the Nicene Fathers put it. God being “Father” as the Apostle’s Creed states. that “the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal” as the Athanasian Creed puts it. even up to the time of the Reformation where there was a huge burst of new creeds and confessions during the “back to the Bible” movement that resulted from the doctrine of Sola Scriptura in response to the Roman doctrine it opposed. these newer creeds and confessions produced such statements as “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” just amazing statements about what we believe to be true according to the special revelation of God in the Holy Scriptures.

the class continued and our professor read us a story from B.B. Warfield’s Selected Shorter Writings that stressed the importance of these creeds and confessions, the impact they have on us, and the cross-cultural connection they give us to saints from all times on all parts of the earth, including our current time. if i hadn’t been struck by the importance of such writings by this point in the class, i no doubt would have been after our professor had finished the story. this is because he was moved to tears in relaying the story. there could be endless conjecture on why he was so moved, but it is enough for me to say that the story, at least to me, speaks for itself. and so i’ll leave this post with the portion that was read to us:

We have the following bit of personal experience from a general officer of the United States Army. He was in a great western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting. The streets were over-run daily by a dangerous crowd. One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of mien, whose very demeanor inspired confidence. So impressed was he with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that when he had passed he turned to look back at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same. On observing his turning the stranger at once came back to him, and touching his chest with his forefinger, demanded without preface:

“What is the chief end of man?”

On receiving the countersign, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

“Ah!” said he, “I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks!”

“Why, that was just what i was thinking of you,” was the rejoinder.

It is worth while to be a Shorter Catechism boy. They grow to be men. And better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God. So apt, that we cannot afford to have them miss the chance of it.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

while reading one of my new favorite blogs, i came across this post that spoke of the author’s upcoming book. if you know anything about me, you’ll know that i’m interested in the so-called Emergent Church Movement that is currently sweeping the american church culture. Mark Driscoll is one of the more conservative pastors in this movement and i really enjoy his stuff. his book, coming out in may, will recount his experience in planting the church he currently pastors in seattle, washington. he’s posted an excerpt from his upcoming book, an excerpt that spoke of one of the main (and one of those most often misunderstood) issues regarding the movement.

a good number (probably most, if not very close to “all”) of emergents are very critical of the megachurch movement, charging that megachurches focus too much on being attractional and not enough, if at all, on being missional. what this means, according to these critics, is that megachurches are mainly concerned with boosting numbers (and church bank accounts) in a sort of community popularity contest to see which church can be the biggest and best, usually making the emphasis into nothing more than which service is more entertaining (self-admittedly this is a good bit of generalizing). those in the emergent movement would rather churches be missional, meaning that churches should not be all that focused on bringing people in to the church, but sending their people out of the church to minister to the outward community through building relationships.

Driscoll says, in the small excerpt posted on his blog, that this conflict is unnecessary and that both sides should be focused on moving toward the middle from where they are. he says,

Therefore, the growing hostility between attractional-ministry pastors with larger churches and missional-ministry pastors with smaller churches need not occur. Instead, each needs to learn from the other; each has a vital piece of the truth gleaned from the life of Jesus.

[...]

Simply, the goal of a church that is both missional and attractional is to continually follow Jesus’ example so that more people are saved for God’s mission and more influence is spread for God’s kingdom, without rejecting one aspect of Jesus’ ministry in favor of another.

i could not agree more. i think it’s important that both sides realize it’s not an either/or where our churches are totally focused on bringing people into the church and not ministering to the community or those outside our “church bubble”, or, on the flip side, so outwardly focused in ministering to the community that we neglect to shepherd and build up those in our covenant community.

i really liked what little Driscoll let us see in advance, and i cannot wait to read this book.

Erwin Raphael McManus is an author and pastor of Mosaic church in Los Angeles. this church meets three times a week at three different locations in the LA area, with the main meeting occuring Sunday nights at the Los Angeles Entertainment Center, a place that McManus describes vividly at the beginning of his chapter. it is a club whose walls “rumble from the sounds of rap, salsa, disco, and techno” and whose regular clientele includes sports stars, entertainers, musicians, and actors. all this changes when the church meets on Sunday evenings, however, as the building comes alive with the Mosaic “gathering.” McManus represents Sweet’s “park” clearing which relies on the message handed down from generation to generation, while seeking to find new ways of expressing that message. in other words, they fit into the “preserving message/evolving methods” paradigm. (more…)

Brian McLaren is an author, pastor, advocate of postmodernism, and a senior fellow in the Emergent Church. he represents the “meadow” clearing who, as Leonard Sweet described in the introduction to the book, fits into the “evolving message/evolving methods” paradigm. however, he begins his article responding to these claims and says that it is his view that the methods never change if methods mean “love, building friendships, being honest and authentic, treating others with gentleness and respect, praying, walking humbly with God while living justly and mercifully, becoming all things to all people.” likewise, he states that the message never changes as long as message means “the story that begins with ‘In the beginning, God created….’” (more…)

Frederica Mathewes-Green is a Greek Orthodox Christian, author, speaker, and commentator. she contributes regularly to beliefnet, National Review Online, and regularly appears on National Public Radio. like Michael Horton, she resides in Leonard Sweet’s “garden” clearing, unsurprising since she is an Orthodox Christian, and seeks to preserve both the methods and message of the church. her article, for me, was much harder to pin down than the other articles because of the style in which she wrote and because the content, for the most part, wasn’t exacly “on topic.” her article was much more a lesson in Greek Orthodox apologetics than it was a response to the question of the Emergent Church movement, although she does have some things to say about the topic at hand. because of this, this “review” will probably be pretty short as the purpose of these reviews is to respond, not to the theology of the Greek Orthodox Church, but the theology (or lack thereof) of those in the Emergent movement. (more…)

Michael Horton is a Reformed theologian, professor (i actually had the chance to take a class with him this past summer and didn’t, something which i now regret), author, the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and hosts a regular radio program called The White Horse Inn. he is one of two writers in this book to represent the “garden” clearing (the other being a Greek Orthodox Christian) described by Leonard Sweet in the introduction which follows the “preserving methods/preserving message” paradigm in the postmodern, emergent church conversation. (more…)

as stated in the previous post, Andy Crouch is the former editor of Re:Generation Quarterly and regularly contributes to Christianity Today. as revealed elsewhere in the book, Andy is a Wesleyan Christian. while many may see labels as unnecessary, i think, as a Van Tilian presuppositionalist, they help us to better understand the way in which the person being talked about views the faith they profess and what sorts of ideas (or baggage) they bring to the table. he also represents the “glen” paradigm that Leonard Sweet described as striving for “evolving message/preserving methods.” to review, this is the paradigm in which popular culture is the root of all evil and the introduction of techno savvy ways of doing church and worship is the unforgivable sin. (more…)