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The Kingdom Of God and the Christian Man – Orienting Reflection
Ben Jun 3 1 Comment

The purpose of this study is to help young Christian men in the 21st century begin to recover the essentials of biblical leadership. Two assumptions undergird this study, neither of which will be documented or defended in any detail:

  1. That young men in the 21st century have, by and large, received little or no instruction (verbally or by example) in what it means to be a leader – that, in fact, young men today are, in general, woefully unprepared for leadership in any capacity; and
  2. That God has entrusted leadership in His church and in His covenant households to men (single mothers are sometimes in the difficult position of leading a household, but this is not the biblical norm; and where such situations arise, it is the duty of Christian men in the church to lend their counsel and aid to the single mother and her children).

The issues that will be explored in this study, then, are not (a) why training in biblical leadership is a crying necessity, or (b) whom God calls to leadership; but rather (a) what biblical leadership is (what it entails), and (b) how men are to exercise leadership (what it looks like on the ground).

This will not be an exhaustive study of leadership; rather, it will be a study of certain essentials, really one in particular. That one essential may be captured in the word direction. A leader, put simply, is someone who is purposefully going somewhere. At the heart of leadership is charting a course; the essence of leadership is the establishment, articulation, and pursuit of certain goals, certain objectives, a particular “vision,” a purpose, a telos. A man who does not know where he is going is not a man anyone can, or should, follow.

It is regrettable that much teaching on the subject of Christian husbandry and fatherhood centers on the question of “how to,” on methods. This is not necessarily bad in itself; but one cannot read the scriptures seriously without discovering that the dominant focus is not on everyday practical directives (e.g., how to love a wife, or how to instruct and discipline children), but rather on the fundamental direction in which family life is to move. The emphasis falls on the implications of the weighty fact that every Christian household is situated in an overarching metanarrative called the kingdom of God, in which the Lord God Himself is pursuing certain objectives, certain plans and purposes; and these purposes and plans of the High King are the template on which the head of each Christian household is to frame his purposes and plans. The central concern, biblically, is not everyday methods but rather the orientation of household life, which orientation it is the chief task of each household head to maintain and articulate before his family, in order that they may attain to the kingdom-objectives established by the High King.

Put simply, the direction in which God is moving His cosmic kingdom is to be the direction in which each Christian man moves the microcosmic kingdom of his household. God’s objectives, His kingdom-goals, are to be our objectives, our goals. A head of a Christian household who is not aware of, passionate about, and moving toward God’s kingdom-objectives cannot lead his household in the biblical sense of leadership.

The pressing question, then, is this: as the head of a Christian household, what are the goals I am to have for my family? In what direction(s) would the High King have me move my household?

A word should perhaps be said here about the role of a wife and mother with respect to the goals and direction of a Christian household. God calls a wife and mother to be a helper suitable to her husband in his leadership of the household. She is to submit to her husband’s leadership as he pursues the upward call of God for the family. But, in truth, many husbands make it miserably difficult for their wives to help and submit, because (a) they have no idea where they are going (which is another way of saying they don’t lead), (b) their goals for the household are not those of God, but rather are self-generated (which tends to make a wife feel tyrannized rather than led), or (c) they fail to articulate the “vision” or direction of the household (which leaves the wife in a state of confusion and uncertainty, even as she feels the pressure to follow along). A husband who is going somewhere, and going somewhere that is eminently biblical, and who has carefully and lovingly articulated this direction to his family, is a husband who is relatively easy to follow, and to whom it is relatively easy to submit. It should also be noted that a godly husband, while he communicates his objectives to his household, does not try to force these goals on his family; rather, he patiently keeps the objectives before his family, with the confidence that God by His Spirit will birth enthusiasm for them in the hearts and consciences of his family members. It is God who changes people, and wins their hearts to His kingdom-goals; a godly husband does not carry the burden of doing this himself.

Returning now to the question, in what direction(s) would the High King have a Christian leader and his household move, it is important to keep in view that God in Christ Jesus is restoring that which He created in the beginning, but which was lost in the first Adam. Ronald Wallace offers the following helpful summary in his work, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life:

    The purpose of our redemption is the restoration of the original order of man’s life. “It is the glory of our faith,” says Calvin, “that God, the Creator of the world, in no way disregards the order which He Himself at first established.” The work of Jesus Christ is to restore to man the image of God which was lost in Adam. “Adam was first created after the image of God, and reflected as in a mirror the divine righteousness; but that image, having been defaced by sin, must now be restored in Christ. The regeneration of the godly is indeed . . . nothing else than the formation anew of the image of God in them. . . . The design contemplated by regeneration is to recall us from our wanderings to that end for which we were created.” The work of the Spirit in our hearts is to “begin to reform us to the image of God” with a view to the complete restoration of that image both in ourselves and in the whole world. (p. 107)

Put another way, the basic template of God’s redemption-kingdom is the creation-kingdom; not in the sense that we are put back in the garden in precisely the same circumstances as Adam, but rather in the sense that what God intended for the first Adam, He still intends for those whom He redeems in the last Adam, Jesus Christ. The glorious life set before the first Adam as the goal of his existence (but forfeited by his sin), is still the life set before us afresh in Jesus Christ.

We may think of this creation-template concretely along the following lines: man was created in an extraordinarily complex fabric of cultic, communal, and cultural relations. All these relations – his cultic relationship with his God, communal relations with his fellow humans, and cultural relations with the creation order – were components of what we may call the creation covenant, in which the Creator-King bound Himself to His created subjects in love, and bound them all to Him in love, with man standing as both a party to this covenant-bond and an administrator of it with respect to the rest of creation. Man was both subject and lord, both party and administrator.

This helps us understand what it means that man was created imago Dei, in the image of God. If nothing else, God’s image in man meant that man stood in a unique relationship both to God and to creation. He stood “closer” to the God than any other creature, by virtue of bearing His image, and stood “over” the creation by virtue of the same image.

As the administrator of God’s kingdom (even while he was himself a subject), and the mediator of God’s covenant (even while he was himself a party), man was called to be God’s prophet, His priest, and His king.

God’s purpose in redemption, then, is that man should – “in Christ,” the perfect Administrator of God’s kingdom, the perfect Mediator of God’s covenant, the perfect Prophet and Priest and King – be restored as the image-bearer of God; and should, progressively, be renewed in knowledge as God’s prophet, renewed in holiness as God’s priest, and renewed in righteousness as God’s king. (The purpose here is not to defend all of this with specific biblical proofs, but for those interested it would be worth consulting Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, pp. 44–90).

The implications of the foregoing for biblical leadership should begin to emerge. If this is what the High King has purposed and is pursuing in the cosmic reconstruction of His kingdom among His covenant people, then this is what the head of every Christian household is called to purpose and to pursue in the microcosmic construction of God’s kingdom in the home (and church). How am I, as the head of a home, moving in the direction of being renewed in the image of God, and how am I leading my household in this direction? More specifically, how am I pursuing my own and my household’s maturation in the exercise of our God-ordained offices (prophet, priest, and king) in the particular spheres of our cultic, communal, and cultural relations?

It is now possible to explore certain concrete objectives, toward which biblical leadership of the Christian household must be directed.

Back In The Saddle
Eric Jun 1 2 Comments

It’s been almost 2 months since our last blog post.  We have been very busy preparing our first book, The Kingdom Is At Hand: Studies In the Gospel Jesus Preached for publication.  The good news is that the book is done!  Now we are simply waiting for our ISBN information to propogate through the rusty innards of the internet so that you will be able to purchase the book on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and other online retailers.  We have been told this process will take between 6-8 weeks, which puts us somewhere around the middle to end of July for the full release of the Kingdom book, as we’ve affectionately been calling it.

While that happens, we are going to be devoting a lot of energy to this blog.  This will include a redesign within the next few weeks, as well as more posts about the Covenanters, Christian aesthetics, and Reformed Kingdom living.  We are also laying the groundwork for our next project, which will either be another original by Ben Miller, or a reprint of a classic Covenanter work.

The process of getting this book ready has been a learning experience, to say the least.  But it’s been great fun, and it’s only the beginning!

The Declaration of Arbroath
Eric Apr 6 No Comments

Last night, I was part of a discussion about the merits of the pre-Renaissance mindset, and how recovering the Christ-centerdness of that mindset would be useful to us as Christians.  Whatever you may think about that age, the fact is that the worship of God and the cultivation of His earth were the motivating factors behind everything the pre-moderns did: art, music, architecture, agriculture, education, family rearing, even politics and international law.  One of last night’s participants pointed to The Declaration of Arbroath as a great example of the mindset in question.  Notice the appeal, not to human reason and common understanding of natural law as the basis for the appeal against the provocations of Edward, but to the Scots place, as they saw it, in the Kingdom of God:

The high qualities and deserts of these people, were they not otherwise manifest, gain glory enough from this: that the King of kings and Lord of lords, our Lord Jesus Christ, after His Passion and Resurrection, called them, even though settled in the uttermost parts of the earth, almost the first to His most holy faith. Nor would He have them confirmed in that faith by merely anyone but by the first of His Apostles — by calling, though second or third in rank — the most gentle Saint Andrew, the Blessed Peter’s brother, and desired him to keep them under his protection as their patron forever.

The Most Holy Fathers your predecessors gave careful heed to these things and bestowed many favours and numerous privileges on this same kingdom and people, as being the special charge of the Blessed Peter’s brother…

But from these countless evils we have been set free, by the help of Him Who though He afflicts yet heals and restores, by our most tireless Prince, King and Lord, the Lord Robert. He, that his people and his heritage might be delivered out of the hands of our enemies, met toil and fatigue, hunger and peril, like another Macabaeus or Joshua and bore them cheerfully. Him, too, divine providence, his right of succession according to or laws and customs which we shall maintain to the death, and the due consent and assent of us all have made our Prince and King. To him, as to the man by whom salvation has been wrought unto our people, we are bound both by law and by his merits that our freedom may be still maintained, and by him, come what may, we mean to stand.

Updates
Eric Mar 25 No Comments

There hasn’t been any blogging activity here for a few days, and that’s because we were preparing our first work, “The Kingdom Has Drawn Near: Studies in The Gospel Jesus Preached”, for publication.  The first proof copy is being printed as we speak, and should arrive in a few days.  After we review the proof copy and make any changes, we’ll submit the final draft and cover to the publisher, and the book will go on sale immediately.

We’re all very excited, since this represents the culmination of 6 months of work.  But it’s been a labor of love, and a fun process.  It’s just the beginning of what we hope will be a fruitful enterprise.  Stay tuned.

Christian Aesthetics vs. Nihilism – The Urge to Create and the Urge to Destroy
Eric Mar 18 No Comments

This past Sunday night, as I was pulling into my driveway after a fantastic post-worship fellowship time with some friends, I had a sudden urge.  An urge to build something.  Something real and beautiful.  Something with bricks and mortar.  Something that would be hard to build, that would involve a certain degree of physical suffering, with dirty hands, and scraped knees.  Something that, in the end, would teach me something about life and about myself, and about my place in God’s world.  My own piece of culture to His glory.

As this urge passed, my mind immediately jumped to a line from the movie Fight Club:

I felt like destroying something beautiful.
- The Narrator

Those who have seen the movie will understand both the motivation and manifestation of the Narrator’s desire.

The next day I tried to understand where my urge to “build something beautiful” came from.  I am good at putting furniture together, but I am not what you’d call “good with my hands” in any sense.  My crafts are more of the digital variety.  But as I read more about the Covenanters, about Christian aesthetics and culture building in general, I have lately been overcome with a desire to produce something real.  I am not really sure what yet, maybe it’s as simple as piece of pottery, or as complex as a treehouse, or any number of things in between.

Whatever my piece of culture turns out to be, it’s clear to me that the Narrator’s urge to destroy beauty is the natural consequence of his nihilistic outlook on life.  To the nihilist, the idea of beauty, of value, is a false one, invented and perpetuated by man over the centuries.  Therefore, the destruction of beauty (or anything with value) is actually an act of liberation from the prison of human constructs.  Conversely, a person who understands that we live in God’s world, and that beauty is not a human idea, but proceeds from God’s very essence, will try as much as possible to reflect that beauty in the world around him, either through art, music, child rearing, planting a garden, building a website, or whatever, as a way to point to true liberation: new creation life in Jesus Christ.

In the battle between creating and destroying, what side are you working for?  I would humbly suggest that you build something beautiful, to the glory of God.

Why We Watch Movies
A Hobbit Mar 16 No Comments

This post is a draft of a presentation to be given on opening night at the Long Island Movie Night event.

Why, as Reformed Christians, do we watch movies? What justification, if any, can we give for spending a couple of hours at a time sitting passively in front of a screen? Beyond that, how can we rationalize inundating ourselves with the words, images, and actions of films which so often militate against our faith and the commandments of our God?

Film has been called “the art form of the twentieth (and, by extension, of the early twenty-first) century.” Motion pictures have taken over the place formerly held by other public art forms in previous centuries. Whereas once painting, drama, literature, and music were important forms of public art, forms that had a nearly universal appeal and a massive popular and communal significance, we find that, to a large extent, film is left to us now as the one incarnation of art which we all enjoy together.

And that is not neccesarily a bad thing. Film has a remarkable capacity to incorporate the salient features of other art forms. Film unifies in its single format components of drama, literature, music, visual arts, and so on, and provides them with a nearly limitless platform for expression.

So far I have explained why Joe Pagan might justifiably be interested in watching movies. But what about our case as Christians?

Consider Augustine’s comment on Exodus 12, where the Israelites are recorded as taking the riches of Egypt with them when they left:

Whatever has been rightly said by the heathen, we must appropriate to our uses…. For, as the Egyptians had…vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and garments,…in the same way all branches of heathen learning…contain also…instruction which is…adapted to the use of truth, and some most excellent precepts of morality; and some truths in regard even to the worship of the one God are found among them. Now these are, so to speak, their gold and silver, which they did not create themselves, but dug out of the mines of God’s providence … . These, therefore, the Christian…ought to take away from them, and to devote to their proper use in preaching the gospel. Their garments, also–that is, human institutions such as are adapted to that intercourse with men which is indispensable in this life–we must take and turn to a Christian use.

On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Ch. 40

This concept, known as “plundering the Egyptians,” is related to the Creation Mandate in which God commanded Man to subdue the earth and rule over it in obedience to Him. It also ties in to the Great Commission, where Christ ordered his servants to disciple the nations. This is part of what we ask for when we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” We see this approach to pagan culture in Paul’s actions on Mars Hill; we catch a glimpse of it in John’s Apocalyptic vision of the “wealth of the nations” being brought into the New Jerusalem.

As Christians we are to privileged to discerningly appreciate the legitimate cultural productions of the world’s societies, and to seek to appropriate what is good in them for the expansion of the Kingdom of God. By examining such productions in the light of God’s revelation, we separate the wheat from the chaff, praising what is excellent and condemning what is wicked. For, as Augustine, Calvin, and Kuyper have taught us, whatever is excellent among the heathen is the work of the Spirit of God.

Herman Bavinck – Beauty As A Gift From God
Eric Mar 14 No Comments

I am still plowing through Herman Bavinck’s Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.  If you enjoy theology and philosophy, this book is for you.  While learning about the Covenanters and the more general foundations for their thinking on a Christian’s role in the world around him, I somehow took a left turn and wound up reading about Christian aesthetics.  Providentially for me, the aforementioned Bavinck book has a short essay entitled “Of Beauty and Aesthetics”, in which Bavinck tries to briefly put forth a framework for thinking about aesthetics, from a Christian perspective.  Of course, we realize that God IS true beauty, and the only beauty in the world is the reflected beauty of the Lord.  It’s a simple but powerful thought.

Bavinck wraps up his essay tying the experience of beauty to the grace of God, in a beautiful and moving section:

And the beauty always awakens in us images, moods, and affections that otherwise would have remained dormant and not even known to us.  Beauty thus discloses us to ourselves and also grants us another, new glimpse into nature and humanity.  It deepens, broadens, enriches our inner life, and it lifts us for a moment above the dreary, sinful, sad reality; beauty also brings cleansing, liberation, revival to our burdened and dejected hearts.

We cannot express in words the valuable gift the Creator of all things has granted to His children.  He is the Lord of glory and spreads his beauty lavishly before our eyes in all His works.  His name is precious in the whole earth, and while He did not leave us without a witness, He also fills our hearts with happiness when we observe that glory.  Beauty and the sense of beauty respond to each other, as the knowable object and the knowing subject, the religio objectiva [responding] to the religio subjectiva.  Truly, awareness of beauty cannot be fully explained as “empathy”; when observing and enjoying true beauty, it is not man who bestows his affections and moods on the observed object, but it is God’s glory that meets and enlightens us in our perceptive spirits through nature and art.  Humanity and the world are related because they are both related to God.  The same reason, the same spirit, the same order lives in both.  Beauty is the harmony that still shines through the chaos in the world; by God’s grace, beauty is observed, felt, translated by artists; it is prophecy and guarantee that this world is not destined for ruin but for glory – a glory for which there is a longing deep in every human heart.

The next time you are enjoying a beautiful sunset, or strolling through a museum looking at classic art, thank God for the capacity to truly experience beauty.

Creative Orthodoxy – Part I
A Hobbit Mar 13 No Comments

Orthodoxy is not often considered in conjunction with creativity; in fact, orthodoxy and originality are frequently taken to be inimical. It is my contention, however, that the two should kiss and make up, as justice and mercy do.

The reason that doctrinal/practical fidelity is thought to be at odds with innovation is simply this: in almost all known cases, innovation leads to the rejection of fidelity. The church has struggled to resist error since the time of the apostles, most or all of that error being the result of creative thinking on the part of its proponents.

Another cause for the suspicion of originality is the desire to maintain a particular tradition. Even if those who seek to rejuvenate orthodoxy do so within the boundaries of accepted Christianity, they tend to be borrowers from other strains of dogma or praxis. Hence many well-meaning Christians within the Presbyterian tradition are currently seeking to remedy, to pick an example, the deplorable state of worship in our day by appropriating Anglican or Lutheran perspectives and branding them as “really-really Reformed.”

Presbyterian orthodoxy is in need of rejuvenation, I agree. I do not believe, however, that heterodoxy or the injection of alien traditions is what we need, because either of those options results in the transformation of Presbyterianism into something else.

Neither do I agree that hard-nosed conservatism is the answer. When both heterodoxy and alien traditions are rejected, the option of a tradition’s conservators seems to be limited to simply resisting change, at least to a degree.

I believe that there is a fourth way. Many times in the West we have seen rejuvenation occur as the result of a group digging deep into its own past, exhuming the ancestral corpse of founding concepts, and bringing it back to life. The Shakespearean sonnet can show us how to do this.