Dividing Word and Sacrament

“A wife who only wants to share a meal with her husband once a month for fear of taking him for granted is kind of missing the point. This mystery is straightforward, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

Following up on my previous post, here are two brief thoughts about why I find the infrequent (i.e., less than weekly) celebration of the Lord’s Supper to be unfitting—I hesitate to say sinful, but unhelpful might be a good place to start—for the people of God and out of place within our broader system of doctrine.

First, consider Q/A 88 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q. 88. What are the outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption?
A. The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption, are his ordinances, especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for salvation.

Word, sacraments, and prayer are all especially mentioned as ordinary means by which Christ communicates to us the benefits of redemption. However, when we preach the Word every week and pray every week but do not celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week, we run the risk of forgetting that sacraments are ordinary means of grace in the same way that the Word and prayer are. We deny with our actions what we affirm with our words. We treat the sacraments extraordinarily and, in this way, divide Word and sacrament.

Second,—and this point is a little more abstract, so bear with me—prioritizing the Word over sacrament by preaching the Word weekly without celebrating the Lord’s Supper weekly implies a faulty theological anthropology. When we pour all of our effort into targeting our intellects, making an extended time of expository teaching the centerpiece of our worship without following up with the embodied practice of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, we implicitly affirm a view of man as a primarily rational, intellectual being and implicitly deny the importance of the body. Even while we wholeheartedly deny a Gnostic or Cartesian anthropology with our words, we begin to allow these faulty views to sneak back in with our actions. Word and sacrament should not be divided precisely because they together address the whole person: intellect and affections, mind and body.

These thoughts have been prompted by—or, perhaps I should say, nearly stolen from—two excellent books: Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith and Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren. Although I’m definitely late to the party, I can’t recommend these books highly enough. Even where I don’t fully buy their arguments (which is a rare occurrence), I find their perspectives immensely helpful to consider. Other resources which I have greatly appreciated with respect to a Christian view of the body are “The Mind/Body Problem in Biblical Perspective” by Greg Bahnsen, “Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in his Complex Contexts” by N. T. Wright, and Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson.

2018
01/07
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Frequency of the Lord’s Supper

If we believe that the Lord’s Supper is “for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of [Christ] himself in his death; the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers, their spiritual nourishment and growth in him, their further engagement in and to all duties which they owe unto him; and, to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other, as members of his mystical body” (WCF 29.1), wouldn’t it be a great blessing to a congregation to celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week? Are there any good arguments for observing the Lord’s Supper less frequently?

The two most common arguments I have heard are that celebrating the Supper weekly would (1) make it less meaningful and (2) make the service take too long. I find these arguments unpersuasive. In response to argument (1), I would reply that this argument could as easily be applied to the weekly reading of Scripture, singing of Psalms and hymns, prayer, or any of the other elements of worship. If we really believe that the Lord uses the Sacraments to communicate his grace to us for our spiritual nourishment, then it is the Lord, not us, who makes the Sacrament meaningful. In addition, I know from my own personal experience, and that of many others to whom I have spoken, that a more frequent observance of the Lord’s Supper only serves to bring the meaning of the Supper to mind more often, making it more meaningful, not less. In response to argument (2), I would reply that this is an argument from pragmatism, and if the pragmatics of how long the service takes are that important (which I’m not convinced should be the case), there are other ways of shortening the service without leaving out one of the means of grace which God has ordained for our good (e.g., leaving out a few verses of a hymn, asking the pastor to shave a few minutes off the sermon, etc.). In summary, I don’t think it’s a sin to observe the Lord’s Supper less frequently, especially if there are extenuating circumstances a church must work through (such as a lack of resources). However, if a church has both the resources and the opportunity to celebrate the Lord’s Supper weekly, I think it would only serve to bring the congregation closer to the Lord and to one another.

For a slightly more historical perspective, see this article.
2015
07/05
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Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming!

Beautiful lyrics:

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,
When half spent was the night.

Isaiah ’twas foretold it, the Rose I have in mind;
With Mary we behold it, the virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright, she bore to men a Savior,
When half spent was the night.

The shepherds heard the story proclaimed by angels bright,
How Christ, the Lord of glory was born on earth this night.
To Bethlehem they sped and in the manger found Him,
As angel heralds said.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere;
True Man, yet very God, from sin and death He saves us,
And lightens every load.

O Savior, Child of Mary, who felt our human woe,
O Savior, King of glory, who dost our weakness know;
Bring us at length we pray, to the bright courts of Heaven,
And to the endless day!

[Cyberhymnal]

2014
12/26
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Speaking Carefully about Justification

Justification is an extremely important doctrine, and, especially as Protestants, we want to do everything we can to protect it. If you get justification wrong, you’re in danger of missing the point of the Gospel entirely, with grave consequences. Now, that being said, before we go out and start pointing the finger of accusation at others, we need to be very careful to understand our own position and take care to communicate our position as clearly as possible.

So, for example, we might say something like, “Isn’t it wonderful that our good works don’t have anything to do with our justification?” And, at first, this seems to communicate a glorious truth about our justification, namely that we cannot do anything to merit our own justification. And, yes, that is wonderfully true! However, upon closer examination, our original statement actually says far more than we intended. Is it really true that there is no way in which our good works and our justification are related? Well, at the very least, we could say that our good works are evidence of our justification, and that both are the result of our union with Christ.

Or, we could be tempted to say, “Because of our justification, we don’t need to do any good works!” And, once again, this is getting at an important truth: we are accepted as righteous in God’s sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone (WSC 33). We don’t need to do any good works in order to earn our salvation. But, do we need to do good works? Of course we do! Why? Well, the Bible tells us so! Christ commands us to do good works.

Furthermore, we might say, “We are justified, so there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more or less!” This is a tricky one, because it is absolutely true in one sense of the word love. The tricky part comes in when we realize that love is a complex concept. It is a word with many different meanings. The sense it has in our statement is that of God’s love of benevolence, God’s electing love which he has equally for all of his people. This is the love associated with justification. However, there is also another sense in which God loves us, and this is called God’s love of complacency. In this sense, God’s love for us is that of a father who blesses us when we obey and disciplines us when we break his commands. In this sense, God does love us more or less depending on the holiness of our behavior. [For more on this topic, see Mark Jones’s recent book Antinomianism: Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest?]

If we can be careful to define what we’re talking about, I think we can go a long way toward avoiding unnecessary conflict with our brothers in Christ.

2014
07/19
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Who’s an Evangelical?

How to define “evangelicalism” is a notoriously difficult question to answer. A few weeks ago on an episode of Christ the Center, a podcast of the Reformed Forum (which, incidentally, I would highly recommend), the show’s panelists (all three OPC ministers) addressed the question of whether or not they consider themselves evangelicals. The overall answer was no, primarily because of Darryl Hart’s argument (which I haven’t read) that it is a category too broad to be useful. Well, that answer is fine as far as it goes, but it seems to me that it really depends on whether you’re willing to define your terms (and one of the panelists on the show did briefly gesture in the direction of this line of thought).

If you’re working from a prescriptive definition of evangelical which provides criteria people/groups can be evaluated against, then it seems to me that “evangelical” could be a perfectly useful category. One such definition is the Bebbington Quadrilateral, which lays out four criteria for what it means to be an evangelical:

  1. Biblicism (the Bible is our authoritative rule for life and doctrine)
  2. Crucicentrism (Christ’s atoning work on the cross is the central focus)
  3. Conversionism (the necessity of the new birth)
  4. Activism (the Gospel should change the way you live your life)

So, using these criteria, I’m perfectly happy to call myself an evangelical, as well as a confessionally Reformed member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

The problem is when people start using the term in a popular sense, without defining what they mean. In a popular context, “evangelical” could mean:

  • Not Roman Catholic (applies to me)
  • Generally theologically conservative (applies to me)
  • Not a mainline/liberal protestant (applies to me)
  • The group that formerly included Rachel Held Evans (doesn’t apply to me)

And, it’s when the term starts getting as broad as this last point that we run into trouble. When non-RC, non-mainline, generally theologically conservative protestants stop being so theologically conservative while still calling themselves evangelicals, we have a problem. So, I still consider myself an evangelical, and I still think that’s a useful term to use, but I realize that it is as important now as it has ever been to define our terms in this discussion.

 

[As an aside, I was really proud of the Christ the Center guys in this episode, in which they tackled John Piper’s use of the term “New Calvinism” in his recent lecture at WTS. I thought the guys were nuanced in all the right ways as they teased out the difference between the New vs. Old Calvinist distinction and the Confessional Presbyterian/Reformed vs. 4-to-5-points Calvinist distinction. In short, there have always been concentric circles of those who hold to more or less of Calvin’s theology, and that hasn’t changed in the “New Calvinism” movement of the last several years. You’re not an “Old Calvinist” just because you’re a member of a confessional presbyterian church, and you’re not a “New Calvinist” just because you’re a Reformed Baptist.]

2014
04/06
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Christ’s Life of Faith

Mark Jones:

Jesus of Nazareth was no ordinary man. He was the God-man, without spot, stain, or wrinkle in his human nature. But he still had a human nature, and because the finite cannot comprehend the infinite (finitum non capax infiniti), there was room for real advancement in his human nature. He knew no sin in his own experience, and the unity of his person—he is one person with two distinct natures—meant that he was unable to sin. Nevertheless, while he lived on earth during his stare of humiliation, he lived by faith, not by sight. Because Christ is the holiest man ever to have lived, he is the greatest believer ever to have lived (Heb. 12:2). There has never been, nor will there ever be, a more perfect example of living by faith than Jesus. Reformed theologians have historically agreed—though, I fear, we have lost this precious truth today—that Christ had faith for justification (i.e., vindication, Isa. 50:8). Of course, unlike us, he did not need to go through a mediator to be justified by his Father, for he was not ungodly like us (cf. Rom. 4:5). But he still needed justification, which culminated at his resurrection (1 Tim. 3:16), because of his accursed death (Gal. 3:13). By faith, he believed the word and promises of God. Furthermore, Christ did not exercise faith merely for himself; he also exercised faith for all those for whom he died, so that they may receive from him that particular grace. For there is no grace we receive that was not first present in Christ himself, particularly the grace of faith. As Richard Sibbes notes, “We must know that all things are first in Christ, and then in us.”

Antinomianism: Reformed Theology’s Unwelcome Guest? (P&R, 2013), p. 22-23.

Certainly worth pondering.

2014
03/20
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Drawing Near to God – Leviticus Series Intro (#0)

I have not posted in a long time, so, sorry.

A few things have happened since I last posted:

I got married to my lovely wife.

I subsequently moved out of my parent’s house to my first apartment.

I joined Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Carson, CA

I became an expectant father of a beautiful baby girl named Jane Elizabeth Sprague (still in utero).

I was made a Sunday School teacher of a bunch of 10+ year olds.

I just moved (today) to a new apartment (2 bedrooms!).

Lastly, my Sunday school class wanted to go through Leviticus, and so a new series is going to start in the next post, showing, in broad strokes what I will be going over with the class.

2014
03/15
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Toward a More Beautiful Music

Over the summer, I was blown away when I listened to Ken Myers’s Epiphany Lectures at New St. Andrews College. (Incidentally, this is the second time I’ve been blown away by Ken Myers lectures. Both times, I wasn’t sure I’d be interested in the subject, but once I heard the lectures they significantly changed the way I think about the world. The first time I heard him speak was when he gave a lecture at the Torrey Honors Institute in which he turned me onto CS Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, a book which is easily one of the most influential in my system of thinking.) In these lectures, entitled “Ears to Hear: The Possibilities of Musical Meaning,” Myers lays out the beginnings of an argument for recovering a view of music as objectively good, true, and beautiful. Music has meaning and reflects the world more or less accurately depending on the quality of the music. That is to say, there is such a thing as good music, independent of cultural norms and personal preference. (To be sure, culture and personal preference play an important role in our interaction with music, but they are not the ultimate arbiters of what is good music.) Learning to discern good music from bad is a skill, and it takes training and practice. This is a view which has largely been abandoned in our culture, but it is a biblical view and one which would work wonders for the life of the church if it were recovered by Christians on a large scale. While Myers’s lectures are not exclusively concerned with church music and music in worship, the argument has direct implications for those subjects. The music with which we worship God should be music which is objectively good, true, and beautiful. Sadly, this is not the case in many instances of musical worship today.

Now, what I am going to say is likely to make people angry, so I will try to be as clear as possible in order to avoid unnecessarily stepping on anyone’s toes. I am not saying that contemporary worship music is comprehensively bad. I am not saying that worship experiences including contemporary worship music are invalid, inauthentic, incomplete, or deficient. I am not questioning the motives or intentions of the writers, performers, leaders, or singers of contemporary worship music. I do not doubt that many people worship God with contemporary worship songs, and I do not want to take anything away from their experiences. In fact, I do not have anything against contemporary worship music in as much as it is contemporary. There is a lot of contemporary worship music which is very good. I would much prefer a good contemporary song to a mediocre traditional song. However, I would argue that there is a fair amount of contemporary worship music which is “trite and superficial,” to quote Douglas Wilson in this Credenda/Agenda exchange with Jeffrey Ventrella.

Let me reiterate: in making this claim, I am not trying to invalidate or disparage anyone’s worship experiences, even if those experiences include music which I would consider trite and superficial. This is an objective critique of music, something which is public and corporate, not of anyone’s personal intentions or experiences. Establishing my claim that there is a lot of trite and superficial contemporary worship music is a project which I will not attempt at this time. I believe it could be established, but doing so would require extensive work to recover, develop, and apply the view of music argued for by Myers in the lectures cited above. This is important work which needs to be done, but more important than establishing the fact that there is bad music out there is establishing the fact that there is such a thing as good and bad music. Further, it is more important to work toward the creation of good music and the cultivation of musical ability and discernment in the church than it is to ruminate on how bad some contemporary music is. It is my prayer that we will see a new blossoming of beautiful music in the church. Soli Deo Gloria.

[What follows is a collection of methodological observations about the exchange between Wilson and Ventrella in the Credenda/Agenda article linked to above.]

Wilson is, I believe, making an argument similar to that which I made in the previous paragraph. He is keen to establish the fact that there is such a thing as good and bad music and to encourage us to advocate for good music to be used in worship. However, Ventrella insists on keeping the discussion aggressively technical and antagonistic, with the result that very little is actually said or accomplished in the discussion. He uncharitably exaggerates Wilson’s statements and focuses on details of what Wilson says to the exclusion of the larger point Wilson is trying to make. Wilson is trying to propose the need for a more fully-orbed biblical aesthetic to be developed. Ventrella says that Wilson’s argument has failed because Wilson has not already completed the project he is proposing. Ventrella neither tries to understand and clarify Wilson’s position nor proposes an alternative. Rather, Ventrella attacks aggressively, preventing the discussion from moving forward. The only point that Ventrella seems to be advocating is that Wilson is an incoherent deceiver trying to enforce his own preferences as absolutes. Ventrella’s style may be appropriate for the courtroom, but it is counterproductive for a charitable exchange between two Christian bothers trying to come to a fuller understanding of the truth.

2013
09/21
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Not What My Hands Have Done

A beautiful hymn we sing periodically at church:

Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.

Your voice alone, O Lord, can speak to me of grace;
Your power alone, O Son of God, can all my sin erase.
No other work but Yours, no other blood will do;
No strength but that which is divine can bear me safely through.

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin;
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.
Thy love to me, O God, not mine, O Lord, to Thee,
Can rid me of this dark unrest, And set my spirit free.

I bless the Christ of God; I rest on love divine;
And with unfaltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine.
His cross dispels each doubt; I bury in His tomb
Each thought of unbelief and fear, each lingering shade of gloom.

I praise the God of grace; I trust His truth and might;
He calls me His, I call Him mine, My God, my joy and light.
’Tis He Who saveth me, and freely pardon gives;
I love because He loveth me, I live because He lives.

[Words by Horatius Bonar; text taken from cyberhymnal.org]

2013
08/11
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Health Disparities: One Approach to Causes and Solutions

The concept of health disparities is a topic which deeply concerns me. Nailing down a definition of health disparities is a little difficult, but, in essence, it’s the idea that different people groups (regional groups, ethnic groups, cultural groups, socioeconomic groups, etc.) experience diseases and illnesses at different rates. There are a number of factors that contribute to these disparities, some biological, some psychological/spiritual, some social. It seems to me that, inasmuch as these disparities are preventable, we should prevent them. (The ethics of this statement deserve their own fleshing-out, but I’ll save that for another post).

Right now, I would like to comment on a few statements made in the documentary series Unnatural Causes, which, on the whole, I would recommend. It does a fairly good job presenting problems and raising questions, even if the answers it offers might not be the the ones I would give. I will start with one comment, since I’ll never actually get around to this if I try to do everything at once.

At one point in the first episode (transcript here), the documentary discusses the relative paucity of grocery stores that offer fresh foods (compared to abundant fast-food chains) in low-income areas. This limits the availability of healthier foods for low-income families. To me, this does seem like a problem. However, this is the explanation offered:

It’s not the design of nature that these environments are going to be different. They arise as a result of policies or the absence of policies that create these enormous inequalities and resources.

The suggestion is that governmental policies (presumably zoning laws and the like) or the lack of such policies are the cause of the unavailability of healthier foods for poorer people. I would like to examine the logic of this statement by drawing an analogy to a statement made earlier in the documentary.

Earlier, this statement is made regarding the many and varied causes of illness and disease:

Health care can deal with the diseases and illnesses. But a lack of health care is not the cause of illness and disease. It is like saying that since aspirin cures a fever that the lack of aspirin must be the cause of the fever.

The lack of health care does not cause disease. In the same way, I would argue that the lack of governmental policies cannot cause grocery stores to avoid certain neighborhoods. Sure, governmental policies might be one way to fix the problem (not necessarily the solution I would prefer), but a lack of policies is not the cause of the problem.

There is a tendency to look to the government to solve every problem encountered which is pervasive in the discussion of health disparities. Personally, I would like to see a theological engagement with health disparities with an emphasis on how the church can become involved in solving problems of health disparities. It seems to me that health care is, at its core, a ministerial endeavor, and the church should be (and historically has been) intimately involved in medicine.

2013
07/08
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