Bible, Theology & Philosophy

Reprinted with permission from Faith Pulpit (Apr-Jun, 2011).

Sola Gracia, Sola Fide. Sola Scriptura. These affirmations are held to be the guiding principles of the Reformers. However, one of my professors in graduate school, a Catholic scholar of the Reformation, openly questioned the Reformers’ commitment to the last of these principles: sola scriptura. At the time I quickly dismissed his query, considering the source of the objection. But later, as I studied the Reformation at another university, I began to rethink his idea, especially regarding infant baptism. I concluded it was important to revisit the 16th century baptismal controversy in order to understand how the Reformers justified infant baptism.

Baptists see the Reformers’ defense of infant baptism as a concession to a historical practice over the Word of God. Is that a correct assessment? Did the Reformers violate their own guiding principles in defending infant baptism?

The issue of infant baptism affected many other areas of doctrine in the Reformation, including the use of church discipline, the concern for the purity of the lives of church members, and especially the practice of allowing the unsaved into the membership of the Reformers’ churches. All of these issues in the Reformation have left tangible results in the contemporary church scene and deserve further investigation.¹

This article will briefly explore how the Reformers defended infant baptism.² The three major recognized Reformers are Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. I will add a lesser-known Reformer, Martin Bucer, who also was prominent in the controversy over infant baptism.

When we answer theological questions, we often find ourselves confronted with a variety of evidence. Some of the evidence will point in one direction while some of the evidence may seem to point in one or more other directions. Because the evidence is of different sorts, it carries different weights.

Weighing the evidence to discover an answer is one of the more difficult challenges in theological method. It is more of an art than a science. It usually involves an element of judgment. When the evidence appears to point in more than one direction, we must allow some of the evidence to explain the rest. In other words, part of the evidence will explain not only our answer, but also the remainder of the evidence.

Previously, I have suggested three methodological principles that should guide us in making these judgments. First, didactic (teaching) passages must explain historical references. Second, clear passages (texts that have only one likely interpretation) must explain obscure passages (texts that have more than one plausible interpretation, but in which no single interpretation is significantly more likely than another). Third, deliberate passages (texts that aim to address the theologian’s question) must explain incidental passages (texts that touch on the question only tangentially).

These principles need to be illustrated in practice. Therefore, in the present essay I wish to bring them to bear upon a theological question. In doing so, I shall deliberately avoid the issues that have more obvious answers (e.g., the fundamental doctrines). Of course, by selecting a question with a less clear answer I shall open myself to disagreement. That kind of interaction, however, is useful and necessary. Theologians learn through conversation, which is one reason that the best theology is done in community.

The following is by Dan Chapa of the Society of Evangelical Arminians (SEA). Since theologically serious alternatives to Calvinism seem to be in short supply these days, SharperIron contacted SEA recently about the possibility of representing classical Arminianism for the SI audience. To learn more about the SEA, see their About Us page.

Arminianism is a summary of our understanding of the Scripture’s teaching on salvation. The name comes from Jacob Arminius, who led 17th century opposition to Calvinism, but the idea stems from Scripture and has deep roots in the early church fathers. Many non-Arminians have mistaken notions about Arminianism—as do many Arminians. This post will define and defend the essential aspects of Arminianism (total depravity, resistible grace, unlimited atonement and conditional election), without critiquing Calvinism.

Total Depravity

Both Calvinists and Arminians believe in total depravity—the idea that fallen man requires God’s grace through the beginning, middle and end of the salvation process. Adam’s fall left us unable, of our own strength, to repent and believe or live a life pleasing to God. But total depravity is not utter depravity; the lost don’t commit the worst sins possible on every occasion. Still without God’s grace, sin impacts every aspect of life and we cannot seek God on our own. Rather, He seeks us and enables us to believe.

Resistible Grace

Arminians may vary on exactly how God’s grace works; but all Arminians hold to the necessity of prevenient grace (grace that comes before conversion that enables us to believe). When God’s grace starts drawing us to conversion, we can choose to say no and reject Christ. God hasn’t predetermined repentance and faith; nothing causes these such that rejection is impossible and we cannot choose otherwise. But believing does not earn or cause salvation; God chooses to have mercy on believers.

Read Part 1.

The famous Twelve Articles which preceded the Peasants War of Luther’s day are very modest by today’s standards. In their own day they were conservative and presented no challenge to the feudal system. They began with the demand that “every municipality shall have the right to elect and remove a preacher if he behaves improperly. The preacher shall preach the gospel simply, straight and clearly without any human amendment, for, it is written, that we can only come to God by true belief.” Luther had written words quite similar, with the difference that he named the congregation as the deciding body. In those days, of course, there usually wasn’t much difference between congregation and municipality. Now if this type of congregational control had been standard practice in 1520, neither the Twelve Articles nor Luther’s tract would have ever been written. Indeed, most political and religious leaders in those days did not take well to it. It would take over three centuries before independent congregations which chose their ministers were generally tolerated in European nations.

But the whole idea of congregations choosing their ministers would have seemed anything but radical in Jesus’ day. As I have related in previous articles, the concept of towns, cities, organizations, or religious congregations voting for their leaders was a widespread practice. The common (but not only) word for voting in the Greek language was cheirotoneo. Its second occurrence in the New Testament is in 2 Corinthians 8:19:

And not that only, but who was also chosen of the churches to travel with us with this grace, which is administered by us to the glory of the same Lord, and declaration of your ready mind. (KJV)

In this verse cheirotoneo is translated “chosen” by the KJV, NIV and NKJV and “appointed” by the NASB, ESV, RSV, and NEB. The BDAG lexicon gives the translation in this passage “choose” (by election). The Liddell-Scott-Jones Lexicon (LSJ) gives the translation “appoint” (like the high priest of Judaea).

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Mark 2:14 says, “And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he arose and followed him” (ESV, emphasis aded). It is here that “Jesus summarizes His call to discipleship” (p. 25). So what does it mean to follow Jesus? This is what Jonathan Lunde seeks to answer in his book Following Jesus, The Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship.

The title of the book is loaded with meaning, making a brief explanation of the words and phrases necessary. As Jesus, He calls people to follow Him as their leader. As Servant Jesus “has come to serve, and give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Throughout Jesus’ ministry, Jesus is seen serving various kinds of people, culminating with His death on the cross, thus fulfilling the role of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. As King Jesus gives commands to His disciples which “mirror the relationship God had with Old Testament Israel” (p. 26). Jesus is the promised Davidic king who rules His disciples and makes sure “God’s covenantal stipulations were upheld in the nation” (p. 26). As a biblical theology the book explores discipleship as the theme progressively unfolds from the OT to NT. Finally, as a covenantal discipleship, Lunde explores the overall meaning of discipleship through the lens of the covenants (Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic and New Covenant). He defines this covenantal discipleship as,

Learning to receive and respond to God’s grace and demand, which are mediated through Jesus, the Servant King, so as to reflect God’s character in relation to him, to others, and to the world, in order that all may come to experience this same grace and respond to this same demand. (p. 276)

On the grand scale the book is structured around answering three questions. First, “Why should I be concerned to obey all of Jesus’ commands if I have been saved by grace?” (p. 28). If Jesus has fulfilled the righteousness of the Law for me, why does He give me any commands to follow? Lunde seeks to counter both “lackadaisical” and “legalistic” disciples (p. 30). Second, “What is it that Jesus demands of his disciple?” (p. 29). To answer this question, Lunde focuses on a few of Jesus’ many commands as examples for how to understand them all. Finally, “How can the disciple obey Jesus’ high demand, while experiencing His ‘yoke’ as ‘light’ and ‘easy’?” (p. 30?). Obeying commands seems to be such a burden. How can Jesus say His “yoke is easy” and his “burden is light” (Matt. 11:30)?

When answering theological questions, one of the thorniest problems that we face is deciding what counts as evidence. To be sure, we affirm the absolute authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures and, in the case of questions about the church, the finality of the New Testament in all matters of faith and order. Simply believing in the Bible’s authority and sufficiency, however, does not tell us how the text ought to be brought to bear upon our questions.

One very common way of using the Bible is to look for examples of the kind of thing that we are asking about. These examples are then treated as permanently binding. Theological literature abounds with references to the examples or even the “uniform pattern” of Scripture.

The argument is a weak one. Scripture contains examples of all sorts of things, some good and some bad. The mere fact that someone did something is no indication that God wants that thing to be done by others at another time. Even when the example is viewed positively in the text, it may be an isolated instance. One would not appeal to Abraham’s treatment of Isaac in Genesis 22 as a universal pattern for relationships between fathers and sons.

An “is” never constitutes an “ought.” Sound theological method draws a sharp distinction between historical narrative and didactic requirement.

This distinction does not render the examples of Scripture irrelevant. When the Bible communicates a didactic principle, then we may legitimately observe the examples in the text to see how the principle looks in practice. By studying the examples we may also discover something about the rewards of obedience or the consequences of disobedience. By themselves, however, the examples of Scripture are not binding. Historical narrative always needs to be interpreted and applied by didactic discourse.

Republished with permission from Dr. Reluctant. In this series, Dr. Henebury responds to a collection of criticisms of dispensationalism entitled “95 Theses against Dispensationalism” written by a group called “The Nicene Council.” Read the series so far.

For the first time in eight years I am not the president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Early last November I initiated a process of transition that came to completion at midnight on June 30.

Why leave the presidency? I have both positive and negative reasons. I shall mention just two.

On the positive side, I have for some time experienced an increasing concern for a different area of ministry. My training and gifts are more academic and literary than they are organizational and political. While both kinds of gifts and functions are important, the community that I serve (Baptist fundamentalism) has a far fewer number of writers than it has politicians.

This imbalance has resulted in a network of individuals, churches, and institutions that has been much more effective at perpetuating (and sometimes enforcing) loyalty to slogans, organizations, and leaders than it has been at explaining ideas and working through their implications. Flaccid thinking has led, first, to a very tenuous grasp of core principles and, secondarily, to an increasing inability to apply those principles to new and changing circumstances. This is the situation that I most wish to address, and I have slowly become convinced that I cannot address it effectively from the position of president.

When I accepted the presidency of Central Seminary, I entertained rather a facile notion of how the position would function. In my naivety, I thought of a seminary president as a senior faculty member, an institutional coordinator, and a theological anchor. I believed that I had seen this model exemplified in presidents like Rolland McCune and Douglas McLachlan. During and since the era of their presidential service, however, the expectations and official functions of a seminary president have changed.