House of Horne

In I Corinthians 1:17 Paul writes “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel–not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” This is said right after he states that he baptized very few of the Corinthians.

Now fast-forward to I Corinthians 3:5-9 which says:

“What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe–as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

In this quote, Paul assigns himself the role of planting a seed. We thus have a correlation between preaching the gospel and planting seeds, which exactly corresponds to the relationship established in the parable of the four soils between the gospel and seed in its farming motif. Notice then that Paul goes on to say that Apollos watered, in a context in which he has already explicitly said he did not baptize. It would follow then that watering corresponds to baptizing in the agricultural analogy that is in play. Paul preached the gospel <==> sowed seed on a field. Apollos watered <==> baptized them into the church.

Numerous thoughts leap to mind. Here’s a couple of them.

1. The parables are not isolated snippets of imagery with only one point and no correspondence to larger imagery that carries through the Bible. For instance, a well-developed agricultural motif is developed based on the fact that man is made of dirt, has seed sown in him, is watered by God, and is to bear fruit. This basic pattern (or portions of it) is central to stories, parables, exhortations, etc. For instance, Hebrews 6:7-8 comes to mind: “Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.” Thus, in some instances, one might find the clearest expression of a particular motif in a parable. Using that motif to understand other passages is not, in and of itself, an improper use of analogy, even if such a use goes beyond the one single point the parable is presumed to teach by those who approach the parables in such a way.

2. Baptism is an ordinary step in salvation, but does not ensure ultimate salvation. We hear the word, we are watered in baptism, but as Hebrews 6 reminds us, we must grow the fruits of salvation and not the thorns of apostasy. Lest any readers be confused, I am not trying to say anything more than, for instance, the Westminster Confession of Faith states when it puts baptism as the means of entering the church and the church as the place in which salvation is ordinarily found. Rather, I am trying to say it in a slightly different way, in keeping with the language of scripture that I have cited.

I need to stop here and get back to work. Perhaps I’ll have the chance to put up a few more thoughts later.

How many of you have heard a sermon that included an analogy intended to explain faith that went something like this:

Everyone exercises faith. That chair you are sitting in, you have faith in it. You wouldn’t have sat in it if you didn’t, right?

Simple enough to understand. But what would happen to this analogy in the hands of those who see hell and damnation in the likes of this article? Perhaps something like this:

Sure I have faith in the chair. But nobody has to actually sit in the chair to have such faith. You can’t demand we sit! We aren’t capable of sitting on our own… would you have us try to merit the chair by attempting to sit on it of our own power? Well, of course everyone who has faith will sit on the chair. You see, once you have true faith, a faith solely in the chair and entirely separate from actually sitting, then, as an entirely separate activity that comes later, you will sit out of thankfulness.

Now, I do not mean to disparage thankfulness, which should play a primary role in our sanctification. But it seems like the categorizations and deliniations being emphasized in such an approach are foreign to the Bible. We are saved by faith on account of God’s great grace. But such a great doctrine is not in any way opposed to a call to obedience. We sit in the chair. We may wrestle with fears and sin and often try to get off the chair, but we ultimately abide there because where else can we go for so great a salvation?

Well the metaphors are getting way too mixed up at this point, so I’ll leave off for now.

Here’s a post to a reformed discussion forum regarding Norm Shepherd:

I have had three friends convert to Rome thanks to talk like this and thanks to Scott Hahn. Not that that seems to bother anyone(I dont mean the RCUS guys here or Ted). One friend spoke this way about justification and works. It is very alarming and it is clear why Turretin said works are not part of justification. As for the Shepherd folks-you all are doing a great job. The pope should be very happy about this kind of talk. Make sure you all CC the Vatican so they can see that the counter Reformation is still working!

The author assumes, I suppose, these people are leaving for Rome because they hate God’s grace and want to earn them some of that there salvation. Perhaps. But is it not possible that they leave because the reformed folks they wish to talk to about issues of substance go ballistic whenever they catch a whiff of someone interacting with the countless passages of scripture that mention works in some relationship to salvation?

I’ve read some pretty stern criticism of Norm Shepherd or, for instance, the view espoused by Don Garlington on Justification and Perseverance. As far as I can tell, there are those in the reformed camp who believe these men are proposing a faith + works view and thus denying the gospel.

A few comments and questions:

1) Regarding the new perspective on Paul: how does Romans 9:30-32 fit in? (What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.”) This passage seems to support an “old” view of Paul… i.e. that the Israelites were not simply following the law to maintain covenantal boundaries, but were seeking to establish their own merit through the law.

2) I recently wrestled with a particular sin, and found strength in that time of temptation by recalling that my God is the God Who Sees, and that sin is no longer my master, and that where sin remains the abiding master, well, it doesn’t look good from Don G.’s reading of Romans 2. As it happens, I resisted the temptation in that particular case. But I then became worried, based on the harsh criticisms I’ve read of Shepherd and others. Was I now trying to earn my salvation? By allowing eschatological judgment to factor in to my ethic, had I just compromised the Gospel by making Justification ethical? I became surprisingly distressed, and ended up spending some time in prayer simply affirming my utter reliance on the righteousness of Christ. Were my means of finding strength against the temptation dishonoring to God? Was I to resist the temptation out of thankfulness only?

3) Shepherd is accused of making statements that are believed to be “soft” on justification by faith. He is said to have made justification ethical rather than forensic and all sorts of other horrible things. If Shepherd is so dangerous, what does the average Bible reader make of:

–Jesus: Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

–Paul: There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For God does not show favoritism.

–James: You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

I’ve heard countless answers to these passages to harmonize them with forensic justification, and I’m not questioning the explanations. Rather, I hear accusation after accusation that, although Norm Shepherd claims to believe in this or that sound doctrine, he doesn’t mean it, because look at what else he says, and look at his overall tone. Well, Jesus, Paul, and James would fall to the same criticisms if one approached them determined to find error and ignore the fullness of what they said.

I just finished the chapter on the hymn in Philippians 2:6-11 in The Climax of the Covenant by N.T. Wright. Once I got past the fact that he has quotes in four different languages (Hebrew, Greek, German, French… none interpreted because, after all, every Ph.D. in Biblical studies from a major school would know them…), I found it more or less earth-shattering. He spends numerous pages going over the 10 or so major strains of interpretation on that snatching/grasping word at the end of verse 6 and, after offering a synthesis of his own making, shows how the flow of the text fits in with Paul’s Adam-Christology as well as the creedal view of the Father and Son.

Basically, he has verse 6 saying that Jesus had something (e.g. part of the God-head), but he chose to not take advantage of it. So Wright creates a parallel with Adam, but makes much of the differences as well. At the end of the hymn, we find God exalting Jesus, demonstrating that Jesus had in fact revealed God. The particular point that hit home in a fresh way was the notion that Jesus’ humiliation unto death was not simply a means of our salvation, it was a revelation, in some basic, significant way, of who God is. Thus the admonitions before and after the hymn that call upon us to follow Christ are calling us live as God’s image-bearers. The humbling call of Christ is not simply to test us or sanctify us, it is in an essential way the outworking of being made in God’s image.

It’s really quite overwhelming.