Horton on Evangelical Ecclesiologies

Earlier, I posted a blurb from Mike Horton on Volf and Grenz, specifically discussing Free-Church ecclesiology.  Volf had a penetrating critique which Horton draws upon and expands from the Reformation point of view in People and Place.  By way of reminder, Volf (himself within the Free Church tradition), criticized Free Church ecclesiology for giving into the spirit of the age – consumerism and personal choice.

Also by way of reminder, Grenz’s ana/baptistic congregational ecclesiology is summarized this way (in his own words): “The true church is essentially people standing in voluntary covenant with God.”  Grenz also writes, “Because the coming together of believers in mutual covenant constitutes the church, it is the covenant community of individuals.”  In other words, individuals form the church rather than vice versa (p. 177).

Here are a few of Horton’s repsonses.

“…The Reformed confessions defined the visible church as believers together with their children.  Yet even this violates the rule that is basic to congregational polity: a voluntary covenant, which not only entails the independence of local churches but also the independence of invidivuals within them until they mutually agree on the terms of that relationship” (p. 177).

Drawing on Bonhoeffer (“Only a community [Gemeinschaft], not a society [Gesellschaft], is able to carry children”), Horton writes:

“Infant baptism, therefore, is not incidental but essential for a covenant ecclesiology.  It is integral not only to the continuity of the covenant through Old and New Testaments, but also to a conception of the church as the place where faith is born and fed as well as the people who exhibit it.  The inclusion of believers’ children underscores the priority of God’s sovereign grace in ecclesiology as well as soteriology, challenging all voluntaristic and contractual interpretations that contribute to an individualistic faith and practice.  When construed in the context of a covenantal theology, the baptism of believers together with their children underscores 1) the priority of divine activity in creating the church (i.e., covenant over contract); 2) the ‘mixed’ character of the body of Christ at present, which subverts overrealized eschatologies; 3) the importance of personal faith as well as communal mediation in the nuture of faith and repentance” (p. 186).

I realize some of our readers may disagree; yet I think it is essential – as Horton notes – to see that and how the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) affects or carries through to our doctrine of the church (ecclesiology), and vice versa.  Both go together, of course, if there is consistency.  The Reformers worked hard to balance church as place (institution) and church as people (organism); covenant theology was the balancing biblical factor.  Of course this has to do with Arminianism and Calvinism as well, which I’ll leave you to ponder when it comes to soteriology, ecclesiology, and covenant theology.  Read Horton’s stuff again!

Quotes taken from People and Place (Louisville: WJK, 2008).

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Evangelical Ecclesiologies: Volf “vs” Grenz

Mike Horton, drawing on Miroslav Volf (in After Our Likeness), has a profound critique of free church (evangelical church) ecclesiologies, something which Stanley Grenz has written on.  Here’s a summary of Horton’s interaction with the two in his recent People and Place (from pages 176-177).  I’ll post Horton’s own words in a day or two.

Grenz says the Ana/Baptist congregationalism “asserts that the true church is essentially people standing in voluntary covenant with God” (from his Theology for the Community of God, p. 609).  “Because the coming together of believers in mutual covenant constitutes the church, it is the covenant community of individuals” (Ibid., 614).

Here’s Volf’s critique of such Ana/Baptist congregationalism or individualism:

“Whether they want to or not, Free Churches often function as ‘homogeneous units’ specializing in the specific needs of specific social classes and cultural circles, and then in mutual competition try to sell their commodity at dumping prices to the religious consumer in the supermarket of life projects; the customer is king and the one best suited to evaluate his or her own religious needs and from whom nothing more is required than a bit of loyalty and as much money as possible.  If the Free Churches want to contribute to the salvation of Christendom, they themselves must first be healed” (Volf, After Our Likeness, 18).

Wow.  That’s scathing.  I’m with Volf here, on this quote, though his aforementioned book defends free church ecclesiologies along the lines of Grenz.   Stay tuned for more, this time from Horton’s fine covenantal (rather than individual/contractual) emphasis.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

We Can[not] Do It!

 If you haven’t grabbed this book yet, you should do it sooner than later.  Here are a few blurbs from two different sections (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008]). 

“We Americans are not well-known in the world as people who know how to blush.  On the contrary, we are a very self-confident people.  The last thing we want is to be told that we cannot do anything to save ourselves from the most serious problem that we have ever or will ever encounter – that we are entirely at God’s mercy.  Apart from a miracle, religious success in this atmosphere will always go to those who can effectively appeal to this can-do spirit and push as far to the background as possible anything that might throw our swaggering self off-balance.  When looking for ultimate answers, we turn within ourselves, trusting our own experience rather than looking outside ourselves to God’s external word” (p. 65).

Later on, Horton writes, “If the message the church proclaims makes sense without conversion, if it does not offend even lifelong believers from time to time so that they too need to die more to themselves and live more to Christ, then it is not the gospel.  When Christ is talked about, a lot of things can happen, none of which necessarily have any lasting impact. When Christ is proclaimed in his saving office, the church becomes a theater of death and resurrection” (p. 141).

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Christ – My Life Coach Helping Me Overcome My Bad Habits?

Here’s what Willimon says about Horton’s new book which diagnoses the Amerincan church, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008): “Here the roots of our current theological malaise are exposed and we see the wrong turns we took when we began taking ourselves more seriously than God.  Michael Horton diagnoses our trouble in stunning, unavoidable character.  Therapeutic, utilitarian deism is named, nailed, and defeated with the best weapon God has given us – the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Presumptively evangelical Christianity is exposed as the latest recruit to the cause of insipid, culturally compromised liberalism.  I am judged in the process.  Robert Schuller’s vapid ecclesiology is us all over.  My sermons are only slightly less silly and compromised than Joel Osteen’s.  Mea culpa.  Mea culpa.  Mea Culpa” (p. 10)

Here are a few blurbs from the book:

“My concern is that we are getting dangerously close to the place in everyday American church life where the Bible is mined for ‘relevant’ quotes but is largely irrelevant on its own terms; God is used as a personal resource rather than known, worshiped, and trusted; Jesus Christ is a coach with a good game plan for our victory rather than a Savior who has already achieved it for us; salvation is more a matter of having our best life now than being saved from God’s judgment by God himself; and the Holy Spirit is an electrical outlet we can plug into for the power we need to be all that we can be” (p. 19).

“It is not heresy as much as silliness that is killing us softly.  God is not denied but trivialized – used for our life programs rather than received, worshiped, and enjoyed” (p. 24).

“While God wants to give us everlasting life, we settle for trivial satisfaction of superficial needs that are to a large extent created within us by the culture of marketing” (p. 34).

This is hard hitting stuff, and much needed hard hits.  Read this book and take the blows; it will help purge you of the dross and drivel of self-love and positive thinking that has taken the American church captive.

One more note: this is the perfect book to give your elders and pastors after you get a copy for yourself.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Horton on Hearing Something Outside of Ourselves

Horton’s new one, People and Place, is not just about word, sacraments, and church.  It is has many implications for homiletics, for preachers of the gospel.

“In our day, the market promises to give us all the resources necessary for… self transformation, yet, far from autonomy, this only makes us slaves of the choices that the market gives us.  To the extent that the Bible facilitates these transformations, it is God’s Word, according to a view of inspiration that is essentially Romantic in character.  Where modern atheism from Fueuerbach to Freud argued that religion is essentially a projection of the self and its felt needs, much of contemporary church practice actually seems implicitly to embrace this perspective instead of recognizing it as a devastating critique.”

“It is precisely the aim of the sacramental Word to pull us out of ourselves – our pious experience, works, history, solemn pronouncements, hopes and fears – and to fasten our hearing gaze (the mixed metaphor is intentional) on the Savior who is outside of us (Heb. 12.2).  Since the essence of sin is being curved in on ourselves, turning to the familiar ‘god within,’ even in the name of pious introspection or spirituality, can only finally lead to the discovery of the God of wrath, not the God of grace.”

What does this “drawing outside of ourselves” mean?  “First, we are drawn out of ourselves to God and his grace in Christ.  Second, we are drawn out of our isolated experience to the covenant community; and finally, we are liberated from spiritual, moral, and emotional narcissism to love and serve our neighbor in the world” (89-91).

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Horton on Christ’s Real Absence

In Horton’s last of four volumes on Reformed Theology in today’s theological situation, People and Place, he discusses the doctrine of the church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008).  Along with the first three, this one shines.  In the first section, Horton wrestles with the truth that Jesus is not on earth, yet he is with us - not in the church as another incarnation, but by his Spirit.  Listen to this from page 23:

“The more we receive from the Spirit of the realities of the age to come, the more restless we become.  Yet it is a restlessness born not of fear but of having already received a foretaste of the future.  Only when we have caught the scent of everlasting life and joy that pervades the atmosphere of the consummation does the air of this present age seem stale and redolent of death.  Having tasted the morsels of the heavenly feast, we no longer find the rich banquets of this age satisfying. 

The Spirit’s presence always tantalizes us with the more still to be enjoyed, which makes Christian suffering different from either a nihilistic and cynical fate to be accepted with Stoic indifference or a reality to be denied in a spirit of triumphalism.  Those who are filled with the Spirit are characterized by struggle more than victory, since it is the Spirit’s presence that draws the two ages into conflict and draws out the insurgents of this present evil age to defend their new contested terrain.  Where the Spirit indwells, there is peace with God and conflict within, with the powers of sin and death within us and in the world.”

Click the box below for a good deal on the book.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Horton on Election and Grace

 

Michael Horton says it so well: 

“…We can talk about grace, sing about grace, preach about grace, just so long as we do not get too close to it.  Election is too close.  When we give in to election, we finally give up on ourselves in the matter of salvation.  This doctrine takes grace to its logical conclusion: If God saves me without my works, then he must choose me apart from them, too” (Michael Horton, Putting Amazing Back into Grace [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002], 59).

shane

sunnyside wa

Adoption and Justification

How do justification and adoption relate?  Look at adoption in the first century context, then see how Michael Horton describes it.  This is helpful, in my opinion (not to mention quite comforting).  I’ve put key terms in bold for ease of reference.

“Adoption was far more frequent and important in Roman society than it is today.  The person adopted (at any age) was taken out of his previous condition, all old debts were cancelled, and he started a new life in the relation of sonship to the new paterfamilias, whose family name he took and to whose inheritance he was entitled….  Adoption was a legal act, attested by witnesses” (Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity 3rd ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003], 65-6).

 

Now Horton.  “If union with Christ in the covenant of grace is the matrix for Paul’s ordo, justification remains its source, even for adoption.  We do not move from the topic of justification to other…ones, but are always relating the riches of our inheritance to this decisive gift [justification]…. Once again we see that the antithesis between forensic and effective or legal and transformative is unwarranted.  Adoption, like justification, is simultaneously legal and relational….”

Now hear this: “The tendency to replace the legal exchange with some notion of transfer of substance, properties, or habits in justification would have as its corollary a concept of adoption in which the adoptee, no longer adopted, receives a transfer of DNA”  (Michael Horton, Covenant and Salvation [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007], 247).

In sum, adoption in the biblical (ordo salutis) sense is legal and relational, as we can even see from Roman culture in the 1st century AD.  At the same time, it is not based on anything inside a person (see my earlier post here on Covenantal Ontology) any more than an adoption today depends upon an actual change in the adoptee’s biological makeup, or DNA.

Justification is the source for adoption; both have to do with an external act/declaration of God, not something wrought in us.  Side note: the Westminster Larger Catechism uses clear terms which agree with the above — adoption is an “act” (not “work”) of God (WLC 74).

shane

sunnyside wa

Brueggemann on Using Yahweh

Though one might not always agree with Walter Brueggemann, he is well worth the read.  Check out this section from Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 184-5.  It has to do with “using” God for our ends/purposes.

“…The possibility of a viable alternative to Egyptian slavery requires a Holy God who, as a critical principle, deabsolutizes every other claimant to ultimate power.  Thus the first three commands (Exod 20:2-7) assert the oddity of Yahweh, who has no utilitarian value and who cannot be recruited or used for any social or human agenda.  The God who commands Israel is an end to be honored and obeyed, and not as a means to be used and exploited…. We may see in the prohibition of images an assertion of the unfettered character of Yahweh, who will not be captured, contained, assigned, or managed by anyone or anything, for any purpose” (emphasis his).

Michael Horton also deals with “using” God in various places of his little book, Too Good to be True (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006).

shane

sunnyside wa