Verbum Humanum

  It was precisely because the visible church existed in the temporal kingdom that Christian magistrates had a duty to protect and reform them.  The princes were not to personally involve their office in crafting doctrine or worship, but they surely were involved in financing, defending, and promoting certain visible churches to the exclusion of others.  Since all Christian laypersons were priests, the Reformers saw no problem with allowing princes to function as Christians in their particular vocation and to make use of their superior ordering abilities in the visible church.  All of the Reformed confessions are in agreement on this point, as well, and so it seems impossible to remove this feature from the ecclesiology of the Reformation.

Questions to aid maturing as a “prophet”:

1. What am I currently trying to learn?
2. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of God? Is my love for God growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about God?
3. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of other people? Is my love for them growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about my fellow humans?
4. How am I currently pursuing knowledge of creation? Is my love for creation (and the Creator) growing with my knowledge? To what extent am I still ignorant about the created order?
5. What have I read in the last year? What am I reading now? What is the quality of the books I read?
6. Am I currently communicating truth and affirming goodness in my speech? Am I currently communicating falsehood and affirming evil in my speech? Is my speech always “seasoned with grace”? In what ways is my speech “rotten”?

Questions to aid maturing as a “priest”:

1. What space (or place) has the Lord entrusted to me? Over what has He given me jurisdiction?
2. What is the general state of affairs in this jurisdiction? Is it well ordered? Is it pure? Is it beautiful?
3. Am I setting apart times for worship, especially those God has appointed? Does my life revolve around such times of worship? How are these times of worship influencing the rest of my life?
4. What habits am I consciously cultivating? What disciplines am I cultivating? What are the routines of my daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly life? What rituals do I (and my household) regularly observe?
5. What work has God given me to do? How am I seeking His pleasure in my work? How am I enjoying His goodness in it? How am I exhibiting in my work His beauty, goodness, grace, truth, and righteousness?
6. In what ways is my life infected with lawlessness, darkness, lies, rebellion, unbelief, and idolatry? In what ways am I currently defiling my body, my soul, or the “space” God has entrusted to me?

Questions to aid maturing as a “king”:

1. What is the “kingdom” for the coming of which our Lord taught us to pray? How am I actively contributing to the expansion of this kingdom in the world?
2. Who are my superiors, my equals, and my inferiors? How am I honoring each of these in their station? Am I currently discipling anyone?
3. How am I currently cultivating manners that befit a member of God’s royal household?
4. How am I currently cultivating fruitfulness of soul (mind, affections, motives, choices)? How am I currently cultivating fruitfulness in bodily deeds (charity, hospitality, witness, homebuilding, education, skill, creativity and innovation, etc.)? Am I simply maintaining the status quo in my life?
5. How am I currently interacting with the “stuff” of creation? How am I cultivating this “stuff” for the joy of God and to exhibit His excellence, wisdom, goodness, and beauty?
6. How am I currently wasting time? Am I working too much? Too little? Why do I work?
7. Am I currently building anything? What am I aiming to accomplish, achieve, or obtain through my work? What are my goals and objectives for the next month, the next year, the next five years, and before I die?
8. Is the atmosphere of my life one of peace? Of joy? Of gratitude and contentment? How am I enjoying my God, my family, my friends, and God’s creation? How am I paying attention to the goodness of the Lord?

Husbands, what is your wife to you? If you have a decent marriage, you could probably answer in greeting card terms. “She is my best friend.” “She is a wonderful mother to my children.” But if you have a biblical marriage, the answer should be quite different. “She is my glory.

Instruction in Christian Doctrine for Young Children
John Calvin
composed in Strasbourg, 1538-9 - translated by S. Joel Garver

The First Part
Teacher: My child, are you a Christian in fact as well as in name?
Child: Yes, my father.
Teacher: How is this known to you?
Child: Because I am baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Teacher: What faith and knowledge do you have of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?
Child: I have that which the principal articles of our religion signify to us, of which we make profession through individual confession.
Teacher: What is this confession?
Child: I believe in God the Father almighty, maker...etc.
Teacher: In how many parts are these articles divided?
Child: In three.
Teacher: What is the first part?
Child: Concerning God the Father.
Teacher: The second?
Child: Concerning God the Son.
Teacher: The third?
Child: Concerning God the Holy Spirit.
Teacher: Recite the first part.
Child: I believe in God the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
Teacher: What do you confess in saying this?
Child: That God is the sovereign and everlasting good, who has created all things, that his power and his action are present in every place.
Teacher: But what benefit do you receive from this faith you have in God?
Child: It teaches me that I must find any consolation only in God, that I must have my hope in him alone, that I must use the creatures that he has created and given to humanity with thanksgiving and in moderation.
Teacher: May the Lord grant you the grace to accomplish this and always take care of your growth in it. Now recite the next part of the Christian confession.

But what does redemption look like? For the most part, you'll know it when you see it, because it looks like flourishing. It looks like a life well lived. It looks like the way things are supposed to be. It looks like a well-cultivated orchard laden with fruit produced by ancient roots. It looks like labour that builds the soul and brings delight. It looks like an aged husband and wife laughing uproariously with their great-grandchildren. It looks like a dancer stretching her body to its limit, embodying a stunning beauty in muscles and sinews rippling with devotion. It looks like the graduate student hunched over a microscope, exploring nooks and crannies of God's micro-creation, looking for ways to undo the curse. It looks like abundance for all.

Redemption sounds like the surprising cadences of a Bach concerto whose rhythm seems to expand the soul. It sounds like an office that hums with a sense of harmony in mission, punctuated by collaborative laughter. It sounds like the grunts and cries of a tennis player whose blistering serve and liquid forehand are enactments of things we couldn't have dreamed possible. It sounds like the questions of a third grader whose teacher loves her enough to elicit and make room for a sanctified curiosity about God's good world. It even sounds like the spirited argument of a young couple who are discerning just what it means for their marriage to be a friendship that pictures the community God desires (and is).

Redemption smells like the oaky tease of a Napa Chardonnay that births anticipation in our taste buds. It smells like soil under our nails after labouring over peonies and gerber daisies. It smells like the steamy winter kitchen of a family together preparing for supper. It smells like the ancient wisdom of a book inherited from a grandfather, or that "outside smell" of the family dog in November. It smells like riding your bike to work on a foggy spring morning. It even smells like the salty pungence of hard work and that singular bouquet of odors that bathes the birth of a child.

Redemption tastes like a fall harvest yielded though loving labour and attentive care for soil and plant. It tastes like a Thanksgiving turkey whose very "turkeyness" comes to life from its own animal delight on a free range. It tastes like the delightful hoppy bitterness of an IPA shared with friends at the neighbourhood pub. It even tastes like eating your broccoli because your mother loves you enough to want you to eat well.

So redemption looks like the bodily poetry of Rafael Nadal and the boyish grin of Brett Favre on a good night; it sounds like the amorous giggles of Julia and Paul Child and smells like her kitchen; it reverberates like the deep anthems of Yo-Yo Ma's cello; it feels like the trembling metre of Auden's poetry or the spry delight of Updike's light verse; it looks like the compassionate care of Paul Farmer and Mother Theresa. Redemption can be spectacular and fabulous and (almost) triumphant.

But for the most part, Spirit-empowered redemption looks like what Raymond Carver calls "a small, good thing." It looks like our everyday work done well, out of love, in resonance with God's desire for his creation—so long as our on-the-ground labour is nested as part of a contribution to systems and structures of flourishing. It looks like doing our homework, making the kids' lunches for school, building with quality and a craftsman's devotion, and crafting a municipal budget that discerns what really matters and contributes to the common good. Of course, redemption is the fall of apartheid, but it's also the once-impossible friendships forged in its aftermath. It's an open seat on the bus for everyone, but it's also getting to know my neighbours who differ from me. It's nothing short of trying to change the world, but it starts in our homes, our churches, our neighbourhoods and our schools.

It should not surprise us that redemption will not always look triumphant. If Jesus comes as the second Adam who models redemptive culture making, then in our broken world such cultural labour will look cruciform. But it will also look like hope that is hungry for joy and delight.

How might perichoresis help us with this? In a perichoretic world, the gift need not displace the Giver, as though they were two billiards balls. In the material world, the space that one object occupies is space that another object cannot occupy. We carry our assumptions about this over into the spiritual world, and we consequently assume that if we are thinking about meat on the grill, bees in the honeysuckle, a sweet wife in bed, beer in a frosted glass, or a full tank of gas and lots of Wyoming ahead, then we cannot be thinking about God also, or be living in gratitude before Him. But I don't think this is the case at all.

In order that the Christian youth may be diligently instructed in the principles of religion, and be trained in piety, three modes of catechizing should be employed. 1. In the houses, by parents. 2. In the schools, by schoolmasters. 3. In the churches, by ministers, elders, and catechists especially appointed for the purpose. That these may diligently employ their trust, the Christian magistrates shall be requested to promote by their authority so sacred and necessary a work; and all who have the oversight of churches and schools shall be required to pay special attention to this matter. 

Nevertheless, not even a “Reformed” hallway is anything more than a hallway.  “Reformed” has a specific meaning.  It’s not defined by movements, parachurch ministries, or powerful leaders, but by a confession that is lived out in concrete contexts across a variety of times and places.  The Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity (Belgic Confession, Heidelberg Catechism, and Canons of Dort) define what it means to be Reformed.  Like Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Anabaptism, Reformed Christianity is a particular tradition.  It’s not defined by a few fundamentals, but by a whole system of faith and practice.  If being Reformed can be reduced to believing in the sovereignty of God and election, then Thomas Aquinas is as Reformed as R. C. Sproul.  However, the Reformed confession is a lot more than that.  Even the way it talks about these doctrines is framed within a wider context of covenant theology.

Modern airy-fairy Reformed theology, whether the conservative or liberal kind, wants to float off like a helium balloon, and if you want to anchor it to Christ's love for this world, this earthy world, you will need more than stout beer and pipe tobacco to do it. That kind of thing teaches seminary students to feel very anti-gnostic because they can talk heady theology through wreaths of smoke -- but they still leave the heavy lifting of world-engagement and real gospel proclamation (to actual sinners) to the baptists. And they learn to watch with real dismay if any of their Reformed brethren start to show signs of wanting to make actual contact with the enemy. It is enough to make them suspicious. Wielding a sword is a form of works, is it not?

Doug Wilson drops the hammer. Convicting.