“I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian…”

A guest post by Steven Opp

Doug Wilson is one of my heroes. I check his blog all the time, have read many of his books, and whenever a new interview or discussion with him appears on the internet, I tune in. When it comes to family living, cultural engagement, and politics he is probably the most influential person in my life. I love Doug Wilson and want to be like him when I grow up!

Wilson recently wrote a blog post titled “The Invisible Mainspring of Human Conflict.” It is a history of four major paradigm shifts in his theology over the years. They are:

1. Eschatology (he became postmillennial in 1985)
2. Soteriology (he became a Calvinist in 1988)
3. Covenant (he became a paedobaptist in 1993)
4. Girard (he became a partial-Girardian in 2006)

It was a fun read to see how the Lord has, over time, molded and sharpened Wilson’s views.

The article spends the most time on the fourth one on the list. The anthropologist/literary critic René Girard has a fascinating theory about the source of human conflict which Wilson says has helped him in understanding why clashes sometimes happen the way they do. He concludes, “Since I first read Girard, I have still gotten into conflicts. But I am not really mystified in the midst of them any more.”

While acknowledging Girard’s insights regarding desire and conflict as being extremely important in seeing what is really going on in the biblical text, Wilson also recognizes where Girard misses the mark. He says he finds Girard’s scriptural insights to be about 80% helpful, and where the good Frenchman falls short is mostly due to his views of the atonement.

Not only does Wilson only give Girard’s biblical analysis four out of five stars, he also warns of applying Girardian human conflict theory across the board lest it be abused. In other words, if you observe every motivation and discord through a Girardian lens you’ll miss the forest for the trees. Wilson explains, “perhaps you have absolutized the concept, which is another way of not grasping it. That is one of the reasons I don’t go all in with Girard—I find him too valuable, and don’t want to lose his insights. Going full Girardian means ceasing to be Girardian.”

I agree with everything Wilson says about Girardian theory, the fourth paradigm shift in his theological journey. What I would like to do in this essay is to show how in regards to Wilson’s other three paradigm shifts I am on board to a similar extent, about 80%. I find his views in these areas to be about 80% helpful. And where I believe he has gone 20% too far in each paradigm is where he loses its spirit. In other words, in these three areas going full Wilsonian means ceasing to be Wilsonian.

A Quick Stop in Narnia

Before doing this, let me first introduce a metaphor which I think will be useful in explaining what I mean.

In addition to reading much of what Wilson writes, I sometimes read what he recommends. One of the books he gives five out of five stars to in a review is Planet Narnia by Michael Ward. It is a very thorough and fascinating guide to seeing how C.S. Lewis intentionally themed each of his Chronicles of Narnia books after one of the “seven heavens,” the planets recognized by the medievals. I just finished Planet Narnia, thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it.

Ward explains how the first book in the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, takes place in the “world” of Jupiter. The themes and messages are all “jovial” (Jove is another name for Jupiter). Jupiter is the planet of merriment, royalty, and springtime. It is also the largest planet, and according to Lewis the most important, ruling the night skies. If you’ve read the stories, you know the first chronicle is about jolly Aslan bringing spring and enthroning the four children in Narnia.

The final book in the series, The Last Battle, has a Saturnine theme. Saturn, in contrast to Jupiter, is dark and cold. The positive word to describe the spirit of Saturn is “contemplative”. But Saturn is also regarded as the planet behind ugliness, old age, fate, irony, and death. All of these concepts are heavy in The Last Battle. An ugly old ape tricks the Narnians by covering a donkey in a lionskin in place of the real Aslan before one catastrophe follows another and eventually all the characters die.

Both Jupiter and Saturn are important and have their roles to play, but the contrast is sharp. Saturn is about contemplation. Jupiter is about play. Saturn is godly sorrow. Jupiter is godly joy. Saturn is Father Time. Jupiter is Father Christmas.¹Girard was born on Christmas Day and his middle name is Noël,  a fun foretaste of his wintery secularist anthropology in time converting and fleshing out so much of the Word of God. Girard’s work, which focuses on chronic envy, is ultimately a jovial gift.

The Last Battle, while being Saturnine, does not end with ultimate death. Rather, it ends with a beautiful eucatastrophe, Tolkien’s word for a surprise happy ending. Or, you might say, it ends with a Jupiter ending. The jovial tone of the final chapters of the story is more like the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The point Lewis makes is that though Saturn is big and important, he doesn’t get the final word. Rather Jupiter, king of the heavens, trumps gloomy Saturn and has the last laugh.

What I would like to do is to use Saturn and Jupiter to represent the difference between theology and the spirit of theology. Or, to put it another way, between the theology and the theologian.

Theology, like Saturn, is contemplative. When taken by itself, it is cold, dark ink on paper. Theology is important because ideas need to be presented in order to be understood. But for the words to truly be applied they must be transcended. They must be traced up to the spirit behind them, whether it be the deeper meaning or the character of the writer which the words fail to capture. This significance, the “take home”, is Jupiter above Saturn, what goes beyond the contemplation and has a life of its own.

Doug Wilson is a Jupiter. He is a jolly man. His theology is his Saturn, his contemplations. Where it is correct it is functioning in the appropriate Saturnine way, channeling truth and the character of Wilson himself in it so that others may jump on board. Where it is incorrect it morphs into things like oldness and fate and stillborn irony. Wrong theology is Saturn eclipsing Jupiter. Where I disagree with Wilson on his theology, the 20%, is where I see the contemplations becoming inflated and things going dark, hiding the real meaning and the real man. In other words, going full Saturn means ceasing to be Jupiter. Going full Wilsonian is ceasing to be Wilsonian.

I will now take you through Wilson’s first three paradigms and discuss where I see Saturn being contemplative and wise and where I see it hovering in the way of Jupiter’s spring.

Eschatology
Entering the Wardrobe

Wilson’s book Heaven Misplaced was the second book of his I ever read (after Persuasions) and it was like an oasis in the wilderness for me. It was also a big reason I started reading more of his work and began paying attention to what was going on in Moscow. The clear headed thinking in Heaven Misplaced that Jesus might not be back any time soon, and without any dream-killing disclaimers like “but no one really knows the day or hour so be ready (instead of going out and changing the world)” was wonderful to read.

In addition to learning about this positive eschatological outlook, I also saw it in action. Wilson’s church is full of people who believe in bringing Heaven to Earth in every capacity, and when I lived in Moscow I had the benefit of watching them do it, making schools, businesses, and families all with the kingdom building goals of dominion and legacy.

Too Much Chronicle and Not Enough Narnia

So why does Wilson’s postmillennial eschatology only get four and not five stars? Saturn refuses to give up his seat for Jupiter when the idea that the world won’t end soon extends into the assumption that it might not end for a very, very long time. I’ve heard Wilsonian postmillennialists use language like, “a hundred thousand years from now…” I find this to be irresponsible at best and unbiblical at worst.

First of all, it neglects to take nature into account. I understand that most environmental warnings today are hoaxes. But the oceans will fill with salt eventually, and the sun will one day burn out. To suggest that it won’t is making some of the same errors evolutionists make when they posit millions of years on the front end of things. This world is strong, but not invincible, and it cannot endure the beatings of Father Time for infinity in either direction.

From a more theological perspective, if the end comes when the world is discipled and the last enemy is death, to not put any sort of timeline on that limits the power of God. Just as atheists think they can hide the Creator Father behind a bunch of zeros when talking quantitatively about time past, so this sort of postmil thinking buries the Recreator Holy Spirit behind a bunch of zeros when talking about the future. God does not rush, but it will not take him a million years to wash the 10/40 Window (which is already much cleaner than it was twenty years ago), and we won’t be beaming to other colonies on other planets as we wait for peace in the Middle East. Syria will become Christian, Ceres will not.

Saturn has a Curfew

The spirit of postmillennial thought is wonderful. Let Christians be free and comfortable in this wonderful world. Let us faithfully endure death as we work to overcome all of the other enemies, building beautiful cities and cultures as we go. But let us not forget that Jove has the last laugh, and that Saturn’s old age will not define the future. Death must be with us for a time, but not for that long of a time.

Soteriology
Providence Picks a Picker

My friend David Salazar, now fifty, grew up a hard working kid filling baskets with the fruit that grew on the trees of central California. But when he wasn’t at work, he and his brothers did things their own way and his life was savage and base. One day when he was in his early twenties an evangelist came to his door and David bent the knee. The first book he read after that besides the Bible was Calvin’s Institutes, and it changed his life. He said that for the first time he understood what a loving father is, how he relates to his children, and that God himself is such a father.

My understanding is that this story of God’s grace and paternity encapsulates the “real Calvin”, so to speak. The Jupiter Calvin. The Calvin with no “ism” or “ist” attached. And when I think of Calvin, and reformed theology in general, I think of the sovereignty of God above all things, along with a rich and impactful church history.

Avoid all Isms Except for Prisms

Where I think Calvinists, Wilson included, fall short is in their “marketing,” so to speak. When the guy on the street hears “Calvinism,” he instinctually thinks of fatalism. He instinctually thinks of Saturn and not Jupiter. “But you don’t really understand Calvin” the Calvinist so often must explain. Well, is this a problem with the man on the street or with Calvinism itself? If the distinction is so important shouldn’t it be a bit easier to explain? A bit easier to understand?

One illustration Wilson uses to communicate the sovereignty of God is that God is writing history like Shakespeare would write a play. Can Hamlet challenge Shakespeare for how he wrote his part? Neither should man call out God for how he wrote his part. And the distance between God and man is infinitely greater than the distance between Shakespeare and Hamlet.

This is all true, but we also have to remember that the distance between God and man is infinitely smaller than between Shakespeare and Hamlet. Shakespeare never became one of the characters in his play. God did. To put it another way, as Mike Bull has tweeted, “Was Jesus a Calvinist or an Arminian? Both. The incarnation was the sovereignty of God and the will of Man united at last.”

Calvinism is helpful in emphasizing God’s sovereignty. But the Bible doesn’t speak in these sorts of terms much (predestination, reprobation, etc.) The Bible isn’t that Saturnine about it. But as long as they wear the label, the “ism”, Calvinists are being Saturnine about it, and those reformed beards start to look less like Calvin’s and more like the beard of Chronos. At a certain point this sort of contemplation bends towards fatalism and people don’t see the living Spirit of the Father in Calvin’s theology as Salazar did when he first read him. Rather, they just see a casket with tulips on top.

I Elect the Big Man

So I’m with Wilson 80% of the way on soteriology. But as for how to best communicate the mystery of the marriage of divine and human agency, I’ll fall for the gravitas of Chesterton every time. His cracks at Calvinism tickle my funny bone a little more than Wilson’s pokes at Arminianism. Jovial G.K., in this regard, takes the cake—and no one made him do it.

Covenant
Cair Paravel is for Real

Which came first, the king or his crown? Covenantal theology is wonderful because it emphatically says “Crown!” without any shame. Lewis’ goal in using planet imagery in Narnia was to emphasize that there are constant things going on beyond nature. You are born into something bigger than you.

Covenantal theology also makes sense of many other things as well, and is useful in debates regarding evolution, marriage, and politics, to name a few. It is very important for navigating one’s way in the world.

The fundamentals of the Federal Vision theology which Wilson agrees with affirm the connection between the sacraments and the covenant. This is important because it preserves the power of the sacraments. When someone is baptized into the kingdom of God, something objective happens. They are now enlisted, so to speak. And like a spouse in a marriage, they are in whether they like it or not. Union with Christ is real, and so are the means of entering into it.

Uncircumcised Application

So far so good. But when it comes to covenant theology administration, Wilson drives 100 where the speed limit is 80. And the lead (the Saturnine metal) in his foot is paedosacraments.

Wilson recently admitted on a podcast that at first glance at scripture the Baptists have a better argument when it comes to who to baptize than the paedobaptists do; you don’t see a bunch of babies being dunked, let alone sprinkled, in the New Testament. But, he argues, if you take the Bible as a whole you have a “juggernaut” of structural/typological evidence which supports paedosacraments.

Most Baptists can’t take down that juggernaut. They end up feeling outsmarted, shrug off the argument because they sense that paedobaptism is still weird, and go back to dunking converts. For me, I never wanted to be outsmarted so I took the paedobaptists’ conclusions on authority. But there was always a part inside of me that still thought it strange. It wasn’t until I started reading Mike Bull that I saw exactly why.

What appealed to me about Bull is that he didn’t try to fight the “covenant theology” juggernaut. He commandeered it. Standing on the shoulders of typological giants James Jordan, Peter Leithart, and Doug Wilson he actually took the juggernaut, figured out what a lot of the seemingly useless buttons and levers do, and showed how the paedobaptists had misinterpreted its trajectory. Furthermore, far from being the juggernaut itself, paedobaptism (what he calls “bapcision”, an ugly hybrid of baptism and circumcision) is in fact the rope tying the Federal Vision juggernaut to a stake and keeping it from being released and changing the world.

The main way Bull cuts the paedobaptistic cord is by acknowledging the similarities (covenantal juggernaut) between circumcision and baptism, but also the differences (Baptist horse sense). To understand these differences, you need to read more of Bull’s writing on baptism. You will need to immerse yourself in biblical symbols before it will begin to make sense but as you do, you’ll start to see how the pieces don’t just fit together, they fit in three dimensions.²See The Myth of Covenant Membership. As Bull says, “Bad theologians need to think in pictures. Good theologians need to think in moving pictures.” After reading Bull for a while, I started to see these moving pictures. And like Wilson says of Girard’s scriptural insights, “Once you see them there, you can never unsee them.”

Here is the main thing that those with a strong understanding of the covenant have a hard time wrapping their minds around because they still see it as flat: Every person on the planet, that includes Doug Wilson’s baptized grandchildren and the baby born to an ISIS leader, are born under the New Covenant. They are all born under the same King, Jesus Christ, and his circumcision, that is, his crucifixion, is the new blood boundary encompassing all people—not just Jews, and not just the baptized. Like the Jews under Mosaic Law, everyone within this boundary is under the same terms of faithfulness to the covenant: metanoeite and believe.³See Paranoia and Metanoia. To baptize a baby and say they are now in this covenant is therefore redundant. Christ is Lord of all, wet or dry, churched or unchurched.

So the covenant has to do with authority (the crown), and who wears it (Jesus Christ). But here’s the third dimension that makes paedobaptists go cross-eyed: to truly be baptized into Christ requires a confession. This confession is done in faith, which comes by hearing. It is not taken hold of by being born according to the flesh (Christian parents) but by being born according to the Spirit. It is not about being born into a Christian heritage (generations) but about being born again as a co-heir with Christ (regeneration). It is not about who your earthly father is, or your godfather, but who your Heavenly Father is, your Father God. Now you are not just under the New Covenant in Christ’s blood (like every child in the world since Jesus came), you are now an ambassador of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, washed on the inside by it and adopted into His family. You aren’t just at the event. You wear the staff uniform. You don’t go from being outside of Christ’s realm to then being under the crown (complete with expectations to behave as a Christian, a new form of law) as “bapcision” would have you do. No, a biblical baptism takes from being merely under the crown to wearing a crown of your own.

Covenant theology that veers toward paedosacraments creates an add-on to the Gospel: Christ plus covenant (a word rarely used in the New Testament). But Christ is the New Covenant.⁴See Jesus and Covenant – Part 1. This is the key to truly understanding the covenant. Everyone is under him. But only those who have heard him and have seen him, who believe, who share His Spirit, are in him. You have to go to Narnia and meet Aslan before you are given a seat on a throne in the castle by the sea. You have to encounter Jesus. He is the Jupiter that outshines Saturn. And that impersonal extra 20% Saturnine paedosacramental covenant theology is covering the face of Jupiter, the face of the King.

I will make one final illustration about the bleakness of paedobaptism which goes undetected by those who practice it but is obvious to those on the outside who see a donkey tail poking out from under the lionskin. Saturn is the planet of irony, and that is good and necessary. But it can also fall flat when unchecked by Jupiter. Paedosacramentalists think they are revealing a cute irony in the gospel, that Christ saves us before we even realized we needed saving, that little children who have no knowledge are as valuable as the wise old sage, for God is no respector of persons. True as it is, the joke itself is in poor taste because the butt of it is still in diapers and isn’t playing along.

What makes a biblical baptism jovial is that the sinner who the joke is on is laughing along with Jesus as he or she intentionally follows Him in slipping on the banana peel of recognizing one’s own fallen humanity and voluntarily dying with Him in baptism in order to rejoice with Him when brought back out of the water as a royal (jovial) priest-king. Since confession is laughing at the ridiculousness of your own sinful rebellion because you’re a new person and on the other side of it, running this play on those who do not understand what is happening is cruel, dark, and leveling. Sending these little ones to the baptismal grave without their “getting it” is the kind of black comedy Saturn gravitates to when left to himself.

False baptisms create confusion and place a burden of law and accountability upon the shoulders of those who not only cannot bear it – like child soldiers or child brides – but also did not choose it. This is Father Time eating away at his kids with a spiritual responsibility they didn’t sign up for. Baptism is life to the “twice-born” but it is creeping death to the “once-born.” In dark seasons when children need comfort they are encouraged to look at a cold theological abstraction instead of their gifts, lest they become self-reliant. But “leaning” on a baptism you never chose, a rite which basically spiritualises everything natural, removes the opportunity to discover personally that the flesh isn’t enough. So an exhortation to “remember your baptism” is about as helpful as finding coal in your stocking. There’s nothing you can do with it. The true gospel paradox is that sinful children don’t need contemplation (law). They need Christmas.

Wilson (Not his Tamed Juggernaut) is on the Move

Doug Wilson is the jovial king of Christmas. He knows how to be merry. He knows how to enjoy the good things of life with a full heart. He has a tribe of joyful children and grandchildren to prove it. But this has nothing to do with paedobaptism and everything to do with faithful Christian parenting. It is a result of saturation love, not saturation water. It is of the gospel falling on soft ears, not water sprinkled on soft cranial tissue. It is a legacy of celebrating Christ’s birthday with gifts, not celebrating what family or church family you were born into by good fortune.

Of course, Wilson is not consciously boasting in his own blood or society, but his 20% counterfeit Saturnine covenantal theology is. Wilson’s children and grandchildren (the ones old enough to have spiritual eyes of faith) are believers not because they have looked in the mirror and seen a fake lion skin (bapcision) that some apish theology told them was Aslan. No, they believe because they have seen Aslan himself. And they have probably mostly seen Him not on but in and through their confessing father and mother who wear the royal robes of Christian witness.

Reaching for the Stars

Like I said, I want to be like Doug Wilson when I grow up. My aim is to go full-Wilson in life. I want to be a jolly and contemplative man with a grand and glorious legacy. I want five out of five stars! But to get there I must not go all-in Wilsonian. I find him too valuable and don’t want to lose his insights. So I will continue to follow him, staying close to the spirit of his work and the spirit of his person, but steering clear of those Saturnine traps of old age, fate, and flat irony which would cause me to miss out on the good faith of Jupiter: Christ in Wilson’s paradigms, the hope of glorious theology.

(Recorded October 2013)

Wilson: Who’s Harvey?
Miss Kelly: A white rabbit, six feet tall.
Wilson: Six feet?
Elwood P. Dowd: Six feet three and a half inches. Now let’s stick to the facts.
(Harvey, 1950)

It is a pity that this imaginary Covenant-of-obligations cannot be photographed and fingerprinted, let alone identified in the New Testament. Oh wait, it is mentioned in the New Testament. It is called the Law.

The best place to learn about biblical Covenants—what they are, what they look like, and how they operate—is the hallowed halls, past and present, of Reformed Theology. Strangely, this is also the worst place to learn about the New Covenant. It seems somebody did not get the system upgrade.

When most Reformed theologians speak about “the Covenant” as it applies today, what they are referring to is nothing more than an imaginary friend, a puck or pookah¹”The pookah takes many forms, but is most famous when he appears as a giant, six-foot white rabbit — which is the form most Americans know from the play and film, Harvey. Whatever form the pookah takes, he retains the special ability of his species, which is like that of Thoth in Egyptian legend, Coyote in Native American myth or Hanuman the Divine Monkey in Hindu lore – he can move us from one universe, or Belief System, into another, and he likes to play games with our ideas about ‘reality.’” Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger, Volume II. that stands in for some imagined deficit. For sacramentalists, what is missing is the Law of Moses. They know they cannot have it back, so they peddle moral standards as “Covenant obligations” for a segregated community. The problem they have is that the New Covenant is an entirely different animal.

Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. (Galatians 3:19)

“The Covenant” is no longer the imagined security of a “gated estate” like the nation of Israel or the Jewish identity as it built synagogues across the empire. The Covenant is now a Man,²See Jesus and Covenant – 1 which means that just about every reference to it by sacramentalists is entirely erroneous.

Doug Wilson’s pastoral heart is always apparent in everything he writes, but unfortunately this leads him to set up the New Covenant as a picket fence, a stand in for the wall which separated Jew from Gentile. The blurb for his 2002 book Reformed Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant, gets to the heart of the matter on the main arguments he presents, and allows us to nip them in the bud rather than dealing with their well-intended but terribly misguided fruits.

 Covenant Breakers

Suppose a husband is committing adultery. Is he still a husband? Being a husband is not just a state of mind; it’s not just a private decision. Being a husband is a public relationship made from a public exchange of vows, an objective covenant. An adulterous husband is a covenant-breaking husband but still a husband. Being a husband is what makes his infidelity so horrendous.

So good, so far. The problem is that paedobaptists continually use marriage vows as an illustration of baptismal vows. The only time marriage vows are taken by proxy by one’s guardians is for the purpose of betrothal, in arranged marriages. My Reformed friends are very bright people, but when it comes to some of their fundamental assumptions, they entirely fail to think things through. They resort to the Old Testament to turn baptism into an “objective” sign, like a revised unisex circumcision, yet never mention the fact that the infants of Israel were exempt from the Mosaic Covenant vows taken at Sinai. This leads to some stunning misunderstandings, the most gobsmacking of which is that the next generation of Israel surviving the wilderness and entering the Land is seen as evidence for the importance of “Covenant children” rather than evidence for the exemption of infants from the Covenant vow. Go figure.

But my main point here is that a betrothed baby is not a husband. There is a promise and an intention, and a training up to come, but the only public relationship a paedobaptism can ever be is a superstitious “sanctification” of one which already exists. Parents and “god parents” make promises to keep obligations which they already had, so this is nothing like a marriage. And this brings us to the real reason for this renewed focus on “Covenant.” It is a magic marker used in exactly the same way the Lord used the Law to preserve the nation of Israel. The Law cannot bring life, but it can certainly highlight our sin. And the sin which “Covenant” highlights is our culture’s horrendous failure to raise our children in the nurture of the Lord.

So “Covenant” is used to put a burden on people who do not have the Spirit of God, to make their sin more apparent. Why not just point them to the Law of Moses? That is the purpose it serves today. It is to bring us to Christ. The only reason the Law was introduced is because the children of patriarchs in many instances were nothing like their faithful father Abraham. The Law was like the “gutter guards” used by children at the ten pin bowling alley, or trainer wheels on children’s bicycles. The law was a leash that Israel might not stray. The point of the New Covenant is that dogs who have the Spirit of God hear their Master’s voice and stay by their Master’s side without a leash. Douglas Wilson’s “Covenant” is nothing more than a Mosaic leash, and the online testimonies of those who have misunderstood his love for them as a brutal legalism is evidence of this fact. They are considered to be “Covenant breakers” when in fact they already were, simply by being in the old Adam. For somebody so well versed and insightful in other areas, this is an enormous blindspot. An ex-Baptist abusing the New Covenant in such a way is simply falling off the other side of the horse. The dark side.

Christian Identity

In the same way, when people are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are ushered into an objective, visible, covenant relationship.

It is a good thing to “recover the objectivity” of the Covenant, but what Pastor Wilson has recovered is not what he thinks it is. He just has an old boot on the end of his fishing line, and it seems he will keep kicking us with it for years to come.

Apparently, the New Covenant is something outside of us, something done to us that does not require any response, including our permission. (The reaction of some paedobaptized unbelievers in Europe has been to get themselves rebaptized in bull’s blood to undo the rite and thus the claim of the Church, which they never asked for, but which still obviously troubles their consciences.) And Wilson is exactly right. But he thinks it is that old boot.

This objective act which replaced circumcision was not the establishment of a “bap-cision.” God did not simply replace our old trainer wheels with newer, shinier trainer wheels, and ones which the girls can use too. Circumcision was fulfilled and made redundant once-and-for-all in the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, enthroning Him above all the kingdoms of the world, making the Jew-Gentile distinction utterly irrelevant. But the flesh wants to go back to Egypt. In their misguided Lord’s table, sacramentalists mistake the “manna” of obedience for a sacrificial meal of carnal identity. There is no longer any such identity, which means clubbing people with it cannot produce the righteousness of God.

It amazes me how sacramentalists cannot seem to get their highbrow heads around the idea that everyone is already “in” or “under” the New Covenant. A sprinkling of water cannot put you into something you are already under—an obligation to repent and believe in Christ. And a reverse baptism of bull’s blood cannot take you out of it, either. There is simply no escape from Jesus, so sacramentalism is incredibly small-minded. The New Covenant is bigger than any exhumed Abrahamic construct can ever be. Such an imaginary fence merely creates sacramentalist zombies who can only stay alive by eating Jesus’ flesh and blood. This is not the new life which Jesus spoke about. The New Covenant is about the dead living, not the living dead.

The “Covenant relationship” is already there, which is what the Great Commission is all about—the claim of the true God for priestly submission from Jews only now extended to all nations. So “Covenant membership” in Abrahamic terms no longer exists. Everyone is under the Covenant, but not everyone is a member of the Body of Christ. Only those who hear and answer the call. It is worth noting that these exact distinctions existed within Israel after the establishment of the Levitical priesthood, and Peter Leithart even wrote a book about that. But the logical consequences for baptism as a priestly ordination rather than a new circumcision somehow did not occur to him.³Peter Leithart, The Priesthood of the Plebs.

Visible Saints

Regardless of the state of their heart, regardless of any hypocrisy, regardless of whether or not they mean it, such people are now visible saints, Christians. A Christian is one who would be identified as such by a Muslim. Membership in the Christian faith is objective—it can be photographed and fingerprinted. In baptism, God names us and imposes gracious obligations upon us.

It is a pity that this imaginary Covenant-of-obligations cannot be photographed and fingerprinted, let alone identified in the New Testament. Oh wait, it is mentioned in the New Testament. It is called the Law. Muslims know all about the Law, and the fact that it brings death. They deal in death all the time. They revel in the sword, both in the home, in their cursed lands and abroad. The sword is the answer to everything.

The Christian sword is the same as that of Christ, since baptism is a knighthood. It is testimony. A Muslim will identify a Christian on Islamic terms: obligation and coercion. And it is sad that Pastor Wilson believes a Christian can be identified in this way.

No, a Christian is one whose heart gives God pleasure, which is exactly what occurred at the baptism of Christ. When we believe, and only then, does God put us into Christ, and in Christ He is also pleased with us. This is why the claim that paedobaptism puts an infant “in union with Christ” just about makes me physically ill. (It’s a good thing the blows of a friend are faithful, because it makes me want to punch many of my friends when they spew forth this anti-Christian bilge.) Nothing could be further than the truth. What the infant is under is the worldwide objective call to repent and believe the Gospel. That is the ONLY gracious obligation for the unregenerate regarding access to God.

While Pastor Wilson’s “Covenant” is nowhere to be found, the Bible never speaks of the Church as being either visible or invisible. It simply does not make that distinction. The whole point of Pentecost was that sacrificial flesh (visible, like circumcision) and holy fire (the invisible Spirit of God) were united, resulting in an audible testimony.⁴See School of the Prophets. While a deluded Muslim can only identify a Christian with social criteria (baptism as circumcision, and don’t Muslims love circumcision!), saints are actually identified by their testimony. The true Christian is an audible one. While Pastor Wilson loads unkeepable demands upon the unregenerate, he also maintains that if they are baptised, they are saints. Paedobaptism causes this sort of stupid confusion wherever it goes, simply because circumcision of flesh and circumcision of heart are entirely different things.

Against Pietism

Paedosacraments are merely a social identity, and the Old Testament, which is no friend to them at all, reveals them to be a superseded commodity.

The sacred, triune architecture of the Garden Sanctuary (Most Holy Place – Adam and Eve), the Land (their offspring as firstfruits) and the World (the intermarriage of Abelite priesthood and Cainite kingdom resulting in diverse nations united by one Spirit) runs throughout the Bible. Consequently, it reveals to us the purpose of both circumcision and baptism. Circumcision was a split between the later Cains and Abels, preventing the intermarriage which resulted in an eclipse of worship, that is, kingdom without priestly submission to God. It was a fundamentally Social demarcation, whereas “Christian” is fundamentally Ethical.

Sacramentalists condemn pietists for making the New Covenant all about personal faith, and they have a point. Doug Wilson likes to make fun of the song which speaks of spending time alone with Jesus in the Garden “while the dew is still on the roses.” Many evangelicals and others are certainly stuck in the Garden, retreating to be with Jesus in private devotion, but the solution is not to resurrect the Land of Canaan as paedosacramentalists do and get stuck there, waiting around in the maternity ward for the promised Seed to come. This is actually more misguided than pietism, because it is only those serving as Prophets in the World who have access to the Garden.

Baptism as a rite is the induction of the saint as a ruler like Noah, one who is able to bless and to curse. It is the individual who rises from the Flood and begins a life of submission to heaven and rule on the earth, creating a new Social order through prophetic words, in our case, the Gospel of Christ. The solution to pietism is to get out of the Garden like Mary and the other women did, and tell everyone about the resurrection, everyone in the World. The Abrahamic Gospel was about the firstborn from the womb. The Christian Gospel is about the firstborn from the dead. Pastor Wilson maintains there are two kinds of Christians (those by birth and those by faith)⁵See Doug Wilson, One Kind of Baptism Means Two Kinds of Christian but, theologically, he is really just trying to keep a foot in both Covenants, which means one foot is in the grave.

So while Doug is quite rightly trying to get the baptists out of the Garden and into the Land (under Mosaic-style obligations “because of transgression”), Jesus has already ripped the Land in two, dividing between those circumcised in flesh from those in heart. I want to get Doug out of that Jewish fable and into the World, theologically-speaking.

But What Did God Say?

Multitudes of faithless, corrupt Christians show that they do not believe what God said at their baptism. They live like adulterous husbands. But the tragedy is that many conscientious conservative Christians also do not believe what God said at their baptism.

God did not say anything at your paedobaptism. Like circumcision, it just said you were the child of your father. Jesus’ baptism is our model. He went and preached straight away, with the authority of the Father in heaven. Baptism is a delegation of authority, which involves accountability to the Church.

So what did God say? Repent and believe. And that call is for every man, woman and child on the planet. Pastor Wilson and others preach the Gospel faithfully, but alongside it, they tolerate this perverse rival, one which maintains that “Judas was a Christian.”⁶Reformed Is Not Enough, ch.1. No, Judas was a Jew (Social) but he was not a true Jew (Ethical). His father on earth was Abraham (circumcised flesh), but his “father in heaven” was the devil (uncircumcised heart). Baptism is about vindication by the Father in heaven. Just because Judas was baptised does not mean we have to redefine what a Christian is.⁷Any more than we have to redefine marriage because a couple of guys went through the ceremony. So how do we handle false professions? I know! Let’s baptise everybody, and disconnect baptism from conversion altogether. Smart move. If you are the devil.

Do we not have the Spirit of God? Are we not called to discern the spirits as God does? When the Son of God comes and shines His light, the demons all start crawling out of the woodwork. The New Covenant brought about a move from Social identities to the Ethical animus in every individual. It got to the heart of the matter. Attempting to prove that a) every baptised person is a Christian, and b) that because there is one baptism there must be two kinds of Christians, the once-born and the twice-born, misses the purpose of the end of circumcision. Baptism is only about circumcision of heart. Jesus’ heart was circumcised before God, and this bore fruit. Judas’ bowels were spilled across the Land, prefiguring the fate of all those who maintained they possessed a Covenant identity by mere inheritance.

The opposing error is that of straight hypocrisy. This is the idea that mere covenant membership can replace covenant faithfulness as the one thing needful. The lips draw near while the heart is far removed from God. But such snakes within the covenant have the worse lot of all.⁸Wilson, Reformed Is Not Enough, 21.

There is no longer any such thing as “Covenant membership” in Abrahamic terms, so the “Reformed” which is “not enough” is not in fact anything at all. Attempting to bolster it up with “Covenant obligations” makes it even worse. It becomes a substance similar in nature to the skubalon which Paul detested.

Everyone is under obligation to repent and believe, and thus be faithful. But only those who do so are actually “members” of Christ. There is no Covenant with men any more. These all grew old and failed. There is now only a Covenant with one Man. We are either in Him and the Law is fulfilled, or outside of Him and it is unfulfillable, but all are under obligation to Him to repent and believe. This means that the “Covenant people” are not so much “in here” as “out there.” The New Covenant is not “Hear, O Church!” but “Go and tell!” There is an enormous difference.

So your “Covenant” is a six foot rabbit, an Easter bunny contrived to keep you in line by making you feel special.

Frank: I’ve been watching you.
(Donnie Darko, 2001)

Elwood P. Dowd: You see, science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space, but any objections.
(Harvey, 1950)

Notes on Douglas Wilson’s
21 Theses On Assurance and Apostasy

“Paedofaith is like the New Testament, but with midichlorians.”

Doug Wilson likes to quote the Proverb that says God draws straight with crooked lines, so my post title is a little cheeky. Anyhow, I thought it would be helpful, for myself at least, to work through his thoughtful list with a red marker. A red, permanent marker.

1. There are only two final destinations for human beings after the day of judgment, those two destinations being the final damnation of the old humanity in Adam, and the final salvation of the new humanity in Christ.

Agreed, but what is this “new humanity”? The hope of the saved in the New Testament was not salvation (from God’s judgment) but resurrection.

2. Throughout all history, God has kept a visible covenant people for Himself, intended to declare, model, test drive, instantiate, train for, grow toward, and otherwise approximate that final redeemed humanity.

Certainly, but this statement points out the similarities between Israel and the Church and does not mention the vast differences, the major one being the union between the visible and the invisible: the filling of the Spirit, and the ability to discern the spirits and fight them. The way to deal with a misguided focus on the invisible Church is not to shift to an equally misguided focus on the visible Church. That leaves us with something akin to circumcision. The telos of the Old Covenant was God with us, but the New began with God in us. And the first sign of God in us is profession, some kind of testimony as a firstfruits of the Spirit.

3. Depending on location and era, that visible covenant people has ranged between a grotesque parody of that final redeemed humanity and a genuine approximation of it. As history grows toward its glorious consummation, the historical progress toward that final eschatological goal will be more and more unmistakeable.

Very optimistic, and I agree in many respects once again. But where we disagree is the hangover from Christendom when it comes to the definition of “Christian.” Is a Christian someone under the sound of the Gospel, or a someone who has heard, responded and is now proclaiming that Gospel? Any “boundary of flesh” is just a revived circumcision, the Church as zombie Israel.

4. But in either case this means that the rosters of names involved, those of the visible covenant people, and the final redeemed humanity, the elect, are not identical rosters.

Firstly, the real difference here is Pastor Wilson’s very Abrahamic definition of “covenant.” If the Church is a “Covenant people” like Israel was, then there are those who are “inside” the New Covenant and under its obligations, and those who are outside of it, which would logically mean they are not under any obligations. Even Gentile believers were under no obligation to join Israel, but they could certainly repent and believe. The New Covenant, however, is global. There is no one outside of it, not one. This is why the New Testament does not speak of a “Covenant people” but of a royal priesthood. The Church is visible gatherings of regenerate people working as priests within all nations. The “Covenant community” is thus not in here but out there.

Regarding the rolls in heaven and on earth, we cannot judge people’s hearts but we are called to know them by their fruits. The Church is quite clearly called to make the roll on earth resemble as closely as possible the one in heaven. That is what Church discipline is for.

The fact that we cannot know men’s hearts is no excuse for resorting to institutional Christianity. The question here is not whether we can know, but the biblical definition of what a Christian is. Being “Christian” is nothing like being Jewish. There is no tribal or national identity involved at all, which is exactly why both circumcision and uncircumcision were superseded. If paedobaptism had been the Old Covenant rite, Paul would have said that both baptism and un-baptism were now meaningless. The cultural expression of the indwelling (invisible) Christ is the outflow, not the source. A true Jew is someone whose religion begins in the heart.

So defining the Church outwardly is a wrong move, and it has consequences.

5. God has always given His visible covenant people visible covenant markers. In our time of the new covenant, these markers are gospel and sacrament. God is sketching His preliminary drawing of His final redeemed humanity in charcoal — Word and water, bread and wine. It does not yet appear what the final oil painting will be like.

Very poetic, but once again, the differences between Old and New are conveniently ironed out. And although Israel was a type of the Church, the Church is not a “people” in the sense that Israel was. The “mark” that Israel bore was like the mark of Cain. It was a sign of mercy. Baptism is not a sign of mercy but a sign of authority. I’ve argued this for years and so far nobody has responded. It’s very clear in the text. The role of the Church is witness, including martyrdom. Where Israel’s mark meant that animal substitutes carried their sins, the New Covenant marker makes us the actual sacrifices. The baptizand now speaks of Christ with the authority of the Church. Arguing that baptism is all about a declaration from heaven (as Peter Leithart does) totally overlooks what Jesus was commissioned to do after His baptism.

6. The visible covenant people therefore necessarily contains two kinds of people, regenerate and unregenerate — lines that will be used in the painting forever and lines that will be erased.

This is truth mixed with error. The New Covenant marker is supposed to be a sign of regeneration, not a sign that somebody is merely under the sound of the Gospel. Even during Jesus’ ministry, the disciples were not merely those who heard (Israel first), but those who heard, recognised God’s voice, and followed. Again, the question is not whether there are unregenerate people in the Church but the standard itself. The misguided idea that “Christian” and “regenerate” are two different things is the source of all the silly fights. These gents act as though this issue is tough to work out from the Scriptures, as though it is highly nuanced and that various shades of interpretation are possible. Guess what? The Baptist preacher on the street with an IQ half yours is way ahead of you on this one.

7. Christ is always present and offered in His gospel and through His sacraments. When an unregenerate covenant member does not close with Christ, the issue is his absence, not Christ’s. With their lips they approach Him, but their hearts are far away. Christ was not far away, they were far away.

It’s one thing to argue that the sacraments are efficacious. But logic dictates that one should first work out from the Scriptures what those sacraments are for, and thus what they are actually doing when they are efficacious. Most of the Reformed world simply refuses to submit to the obvious on this one. When presented with a New Testament text, they take you back to the Passover, as if it wasn’t the Lord’s Table itself which put Passover to death! Jesus killed Passover and pulled the Lord’s Supper out of its side like a freshly washed rib. If Judas had lived a few more decades, he would likely have celebrated Passover with no problem at all, being Jewish.

My main issue here is the despicable idea that there is a “New Covenant membership” which is divorced from regeneration. No. Everyone is already a member of the New Covenant when it comes to obligations to Christ. He is King of Kings. If Pastor Wilson is correct, then the body of Christ has members which are dead in their sins. He would argue that Jesus cuts off the branches that don’t bear fruit, but that was a text concerning Israel. Its membership was Abrahamic, tribal, genealogical, earthy. The fruit which God is after is spiritual, and it is that fruit, the fruit of righteousness rather than the womb and the Land, which is the baptismal entry standard.

Personally, I think the idea that Christ is offered to people in the sacraments in a salvific sense is akin to heresy. It turns the sacraments into a rival Gospel, which is basically what Paul was arguing against in Galatians: a set of “Covenant obligations” from which the Spirit of Christ frees us. I could go on about the specifics, but the heart of the matter here is that the New Covenant sacraments are not offered for salvation but as means of testimony. To what do they testify? Repentance and faith. Faith comes by hearing, so the sacraments are not object lessons to us to call us to Christ. They are object lessons to the world. Pastor Wilson’s Abrahamic definition of the New Covenant no doubt springs from a pastoral heart, but it boils down to legalism.

8. When covenant members who are not elect are erased from the preliminary drawing, this means there was something wrong with their presence there from the beginning. God is all wise, and so their presence was no mistake. At the same time, that presence does not function at all like the presence of the elect.

I have covered the mistaken definition of Covenant, so here it is probably better to point out how parochial this thesis is. When Paul spoke about vessels of destruction within Israel, the Abrahamic era was not yet over. But it is over now. The Church is not a tribe or nation but a priesthood. The standard for service is election, and the government of the Church is supposed to be Spirit-filled. The chasm between carnal Church government and the government of the Spirit is not to be bridged by defining the Church in pre-Pentecostal terms. Yes, there are unregenerate people in the Church, but the reason they are there is usually because the Church itself has lost sight of its mission. When the saints get out and witness the “non-elect” can rarely keep up the act. If they are sincere but unregenerate, it usually leads to conversion. In the Reformed world, it seems to me that since the standard for “Covenant membership” is not regeneration, the non-elect set the standards, and the bar is very low. All Christians are prone to legalism, but this philosophy institutionalises it — from birth. It creates exactly the kind of culture out of which Christ eventually calls His people.

9. Because the covenant markers can be abused by unregenerate covenant members, these covenant markers cannot be a ground of assurance. True evangelical faith can and should use them as a means of assurance, but never as the ground of assurance.

This is the kind of muddy thinking that results from hybridising a social demarcation (circumcision) with a spiritual/ethical one. Certainly, Abraham believed God, but he was not given a spiritual marker like baptism. Circumcision was about who was in school (“Hear, O Israel!”) whereas baptism is about who can teach (“Go and tell…”).

Peter Leithart seems to believe that baptism actually is a ground of assurance, but I could be mistaken. This whole debate is so confused simply because these gents won’t submit to the New Testament. Can you every imagine a Jew wondering if he really was a Jew checking under his robe for assurance? (I’m not sure what the females did.) If being a Christian is merely a social demarcation, then check your paedobaptism certificate, silly. But if you think that this social demarcation also somehow magically infused you with the Spirit, and you are relying on your baptism for either the means or ground of assurance (this is just semantics), you’ve just discovered how mistaken this philosophy is. A credobaptism is a testimony that somebody has looked to Christ. A baptism is not a means or ground of anything for the baptizand, except authority to witness. Dr Leithart rightly says that the baptism texts are disempowered by most paedobaptists, but why does he never entertain the idea that those text might in fact not be talking about the kind of baptism that could ever be carried out on an infant?

10. Covenant markers can never be a ground of assurance because unbelief and/or apostasy can be hidden and secret. Countless hypocrites have had all their external papers in order. If externals were a ground of assurance, then hypocrites could have true assurance. But a true Christian is one inwardly, and real baptism is of the heart, by the Spirit.

Somebody needs to take the Covenant markers away from Pastor Wilson. He keeps colouring outside the lines drawn by the New Testament, and then wants us to honour those lines. How about colouring inside the lines? Certainly, we baptists misjudge the line every now and then, but at least we know what the standard is.

And someone also needs to ask him if an infant can have a real baptism of the heart. If so, did the infant know it? Did the infant repent and believe? If a true Christian is one inwardly, then a baptised infant is by definition a false Christian until he or she hears the Gospel and repents. Why be a false Christian factory? The fact that he a mentions a baptism of heart rather than a circumcision of heart is telling. What was a true Jew? A person whom the law had wounded and brought to faith, whether Jew or Gentile. That is the kind of person who was and is baptised. And circumcision always comes first. Pastor Wilson, if you are reading, it’s never going to work. Give up now.

11. Believers who struggle with assurance should constantly be encouraged by pastors, family and friends to look to Christ wherever He has promised to be — in the proclaimed Word, in His people, in the sacraments, in the reading of Scripture and prayer.

Good stuff. My take on this is, if you are worried about assurance, and are not resting on your works, that’s a pretty good sign you are regenerate. Non-believers don’t care.

12. When such believers continue to struggle, they need to be strongly encouraged to repent of and abandon false and unbiblical notions of what a “true” conversion must look like. If God had wanted everyone to have a Damascus road experience, He would have given everyone sandals and a horse.

The experience of a pastor. Very glad that conversion is at the heart, here. Peter Leithart extends conversion to infant baptism, which redefines conversion like letting women into the men’s club redefines men’s club, or gay marriage redefines marriage. It becomes a meaningless definition, or something else entirely, like when a friend tells you they have “converted” from Catholicism to Judaism. No thanks.

13. When a professing believer comes to question his assurance, and his life is one characterized by drunkenness, fornication, a foul mouth, bitterness, backstabbing, out-of-control parties, pot smoking and the like, questioning his assurance is exactly what he ought to be doing, and about time. It is not pastoral care to try to squelch questions that have been a long time coming. People who live that way will not inherit the kingdom of God, and should not be allowed to think they are going to.

Yep. Church discipline is a bit like witch dunking in this regard. If the one disciplined repents and is restored, they were always regenerate. And if they weren’t regenerate, they are now, so who cares? The standard has not been compromised by well-meaning sociology and carnal fears for offspring.

14. To repeat, for such persons, we ought not to ask why Christ didn’t show up in the covenant markers for them. Christ was always present there. Somebody else didn’t show up.

Well, for a start, with the NEW Covenant marker, used obediently, this would not be such a tough question. “Why did you choose to get baptised?” would be the question. Baptism is not a social marker like circumcision. The baptizand did show up. The question is why? Were they coerced? Did they just go along with the crowd? Did they fear being ostracised? Baptist baptism theology needs a lot of work, too. The best candidates for baptism are those who truly desire it to identify them with Christ’s testimony and suffering.

And the idea that these “Covenant markers” are a priestly calling is just Judaizing. The entire point of the second birth is that it makes the first birth redundant. A Christian baby is not a baby Christian. This really is not hard to understand.

15. A person who shows up physically to the covenant markers with habitual and characteristic sin in his life, of the sort that Scripture repeatedly says is inconsistent with inheritance of eternal life, does not need to be told to “believe.” He needs to be told to “repent and believe.”

Repent always comes before believe, unless you have messed with “believe” and invented paedofaith so babies can be Christians without repenting. I guess if you do paedobaptism, you’re going to have all sorts of weird paedobaptism problems. Paedofaith is like the New Testament, but with midichlorians.

16. When they are genuine, repentance and faith are two descriptions of the same motion, considered from two different vantage points. Sin and salvation stand opposite one another, and so to turn away from the former and toward the latter can be described as two actions — either as repentance or as faith — while being at the same time the same motion.

Cool. Now show me a baby that can do that. One that doesn’t look like Baby Herman.

17. This means that repentance and faith are inseparable. One cannot be removed without simultaneously removing the other.

Well, if you hadn’t redefined faith as something a baby can do, this thesis would not be necessary.

18. Therefore faith in the presence of sermons or sacraments that does not result in actual detestation of sin is not the kind of faith that can derive any grace whatever from any of the available means of grace.

I agree with this in the way Oswald Chambers put it, concerning thoughts which were mere sentiments but not acted upon, a faith which is merely “sentimental.” But in this case it is probably a way of dealing with those who have been given the Lord’s Supper since before they can remember, and now that bad tree of wild redefinitions is bearing its bitter fruit.

“But you told me I was a Christian? You told me that I belong to God?”

“Yes, but it seems you are a vessel fashioned for dishonour, a chamber pot, a servant not a son.”

This is where confusing the sons of Abraham with Abraham the son of God gets you.

19. Wise pastoral care does not want to in any way encourage this kind of impotent faith. It is not a faith that gets it part way right, not in any meaningful sense. A corpse is not partly resurrected, and dead faith is not most of the way there.

A baptism that doesn’t resemble putting a corpse into the ground isn’t a good place to start. Just saying.

20. It is possible to encourage weak believers who have a true but wavering  faith and simultaneously disrupt the hypocritical assumptions of those who want to hide from God by dint of great noise and observances. Sound preaching is good for both of them, and the same kind of preaching is good for both of them.

Yes! The Gospel! Yes!

21. The new birth is the one thing needful. It is the only reality that creates repentance and faith together, which is the only way any of this makes any sense.

Agreed. So why divorce the definition of “Christian” (or “Covenant member”) from the new birth, if that is the only thing that is needful, the clarity of the sharp black lines inside which we must colour? As I have written before, I believe the Federal Vision focus on faithful parenting is a good reaction to the failures in modern Western Christian culture, and the tireless attempts to get into the minds of our children. But turning to paedosacraments and God-parents, all markers of the first birth, is not the solution. They are not only not “needful,” they are entirely redundant. The New Covenant is bigger than that.

What is the solution? The Gospel is the solution.

I think I remember Pastor Wilson saying that he came to Reformed Theology like falling down the stairs. There is a certain amount of logic in the Reformed view, but the Abrahamic view of the New Covenant is not logical, and in fact contradicts the New Testament at many points. It is like finding your way around London with a first century street directory. This is why a Reformed commentary on Galatians is as clueless concerning Paul’s main argument as is a Dispensationalist commentary on Hebrews.

To sum up, lots of good points, but I think the teaching of “Covenant membership,” or membership of Christ without personal regeneration, confuses not only the people in the pew, but also those who teach it. And there is no end in sight.

If you are a regular reader, you will have some idea of how I feel about the practice of paedobaptism. But that is only half the story. I have just as much distaste for “baptist” Christianity without a spine. I myself need a Church with a spine, a Church full of grace and light because vows are not only made by baptizands but also understood.

I believe baptists get the “vow” part right, but neglect solid accountability to that vow. Paedobaptists, on the other hand, get the accountability right, but allow the priestly vow to be taken by proxy. This is why I have used the analogy of knighthood to describe New Covenant baptism. Although paedobaptism truncates the New Covenant “boundary,” I’m in agreement with my Federal Vision friends on just about everything else.

So, with that understanding, here is a guest post by a reader, Sarah Culbertson, who, like me, has learned a great deal from the Douglas Wilson camp, where the “front end” of the Christian vow is skewed but the “back end” is right on target.

How Does Baptism Affect Christian Education?

by Sarah Culbertson

There is a Christian comedian who jokes that the non-denominational mega-church is actually just a Baptist church with a coffee shop. And, as a member of such a church, I have to laugh at his accuracy.

There is much to chuckle about in the mega-church, such as the remarkable ability of pastors to present their sermons in five points all beginning with the same letter, or the fact that the I.T. guy (my husband) had to explain that the new electronic finger check-in system was not actually the mark of the beast.

The most peculiar thing about my ten years in this church, though, is how I have at the same time grown to love the people and become frustrated with the way we “do church.” I blame Douglas Wilson for that. It was through his writings that I learned about reformed theology (I thought all Protestants were reformed), classical Christian education, and a happy world ending. It was he who inspired us to start a school in an effort to train our children in the paidea of the Lord and transform the culture with the gospel.

The problem is that 90 percent of the families at our church choose anti-Christian education for their children. My husband and I, along with a handful of like-minded families have spent countless hours over the past three years in information meetings, dinner parties, and individual conversations trying to convince our friends of the necessity of Christian education for every person, in every subject, for all of life. However, try as we might, very few seem to be getting it.

I think this is because they don’t have a deep and reverent understanding of their baptism. Just what does baptism have to do with enrolling kids in a classical Christian school?

Baptism requires the action of a professing person (even when infants are baptized). The problems come when that professing person does not really know that there are responsibilities that go along with baptism. Baptists need more explanation of the implications of baptism than, “Jesus said to do it.” From my observations in the Baptist church and comparisons with the reformed, here are areas that I think would help my brothers and sisters come to a better understanding of baptism and thus a better understanding of their duties as people of God.

And wouldn’t you know, there are five points all beginning with C.

• Covenant. This, sadly, is a foreign word in the Baptist world. If anyone does know it, the other word that they typically associate with it is “unconditional.” The idea of stipulations at all, let alone stipulations that apply to themselves, is not understood. There is a large mental gap for the Baptist between the Old and New Covenants. Consequently, the requirements and promises given to Abraham, Moses, and David are not extended to include Gentile believers today. For Christian school enrollment, parents must see the application of Deuteronomy 6 to their own lives. Another mental disconnection is that the sinful mind believes salvation is ultimately a matter of one’s own personal will power to “make a decision for Christ” and does not acknowledge the calling of God on their lives that began before the world was made and continues until the last day. I believe this self-righteous understanding of God’s salvation reaches out into other areas of Christian thought as well, such as, “My child can feel when the teacher says something that is not right,” and “My child is already saved so she doesn’t need a Christian school.”
• Corporate worship. The call to corporate worship is given each week, but the actions of the congregation speak more of individualism. The lights are dark, so no one can see you. The music is artificially loud to drown out the tone-deaf man behind you. You can raise your arms, or not; sit or stand. You can pick from an early or late service with either contemporary or traditional music. You can dress up or dress down. Basically, you can have it your way. They need to know that as members of one body, what an individual does affects everyone. For example, enrolling their child in welfare school affects their brother. There is one baptism. So let’s demonstrate that in our worship, both on Sunday and the rest of the week.
• Citizenship. Baptist believers know full well that as Christians their citizenship is in heaven. What is not properly grasped is that heaven is coming to earth. The idea of Christian world dominion was completely new to me before Wilson’s “Heaven Misplaced.” There is talk in the church about victorious Christian living and every knee bowing, but for the gospel to have the power to transform nations? No. Everything is going to burn, they say, so we just need to maintain the status quo and hang around until we get sucked off planet earth. Thus, the Christian school is thought of as a bomb shelter rather than a training base for cultural transformation. As for the ruler of the kingdom, Jesus is King, they say, but Satan is the de facto ruler. With this perspective, baptism is reduced to merely a “spiritual” phenomenon and is not a political declaration of allegiance. Why is it that Muslims hate Christian baptism more than western secularists? It is because they live in a one-kingdom world where Allah is king. Their government, culture, and education reflect this. For them, to baptize into Christ is to reject everything they hold dear. Western Christians live in a two-kingdom culture where baptism only has meaning in “Christ’s kingdom.” The cultural result is Christian impotency in the public sphere and Christian students educated by atheists.
• Catechism. From my limited understanding, pre-baptized individuals were once referred to as a catechumen as they were taught the doctrines of the faith in preparation for baptism. (Does Jesus command the opposite order in the Great Commission, to baptize and then catechize?) By catechism I don’t mean simply the historic question and answer recitations, although those are certainly included. Broader than that is the ability to have a Christian (biblical) answer for any question. Baptists need a bigger view of biblical worldview thinking and living. For a lot of people I know, if you are solid in your Bible stories and don’t believe in evolution then you possess a biblical worldview. Sadly, that is typically the extent of Christian education that students, young or old, receive. What about a biblical view of math? A biblical view of American history? A biblical view of table manners or riding in the backseat of a mini-van? If they can take the Creation, Fall, Redemption framework and look through it rather than at it the world might just become clearer to them.
• Confidence. I once had a college professor tell me in front of the whole class that I was a wimp. She was probably right. As a child, I was baptized three times due to a lack of assurance of salvation. As a secularized adult Christian, I felt powerless and incompetent. I have noticed a greater sense of confidence in my reformed friends and in their children (their kids don’t even remember when they were baptized and that is good enough for them). Interestingly, my reformed friends use a different vocabulary than my baptist friends. The reformed speak frequently of blessings, faithfulness, joy, glory, and victory, while my baptist friends speak more of trials, brokenness, prayer, forgiveness, and evangelism. The baptist vocabulary reveals an introspective focus on life, preoccupied with a present state of mind. Even evangelism is about sharing “my story.” Conversely, the reformed are typically future-oriented with a vivid memory of God’s provision in the past. The confidence I see in them is rooted, I think, in their understanding of the sovereignty of God and is encouraged by their masculine music and study of faithful saints throughout history.

These are merely observations I have made from my vantage point of the two different camps and how the differences have affected the way children are taught. I look forward to the day of true unity in the church and for all children to be taught by the LORD (Isaiah 54:13).

Sarah is wife to Jed Culbertson and mother of four kids ages 6, 4, 3, and 1 with one more baby on the way. The Culbertsons live in Minnesota and helped found Agape Christi Academy, a classical Christian school in the Twin Cities. They are members of Grace Church where Jed works as the IT and Creative Director.

by Steven Opp

I feel their eyes all over me
Itʼs lookinʼ like conspiracy
Iʼm outta friends that I can trust
Maybe theyʼre onto us!

- Needtobreathe: “Maybe Theyʼre Onto Us”

Everybody knows what the word “paranoid” means. Itʼs when somebody is irrationally afraid of something. People who are paranoid are always on the lookout for what might jump out and get them. Comedian Richard Lewis understands this: “Even at home, on my stationary exercise bike, I have a rearview mirror.”

But besides the fear aspect, which is really the result of the condition, the word paranoia can be expanded to mean craziness in general. In the Greek para = beside, and noia = mind. The meaning is that you are double-minded, beside yourself, or out of your mind (or gourd, which is more fun to say).

Now if weʼre honest, we can confess we are all a bit paranoid from time to time, and it never turns out well. It results in lashing out in fear at others, shooting from the hip at the first thing that moves. Chestertonʼs Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday candidly speaks of the trigger-happy in all of us: “My reason is quite clear. I attack him rashly because I am afraid of him.”

The Voice in the Wilderness

Paranoia is the human condition. It is what drives sin. Douglas Wilson says that sin is insanity. Sin is broken-mindedness. No one is born free of paranoia because it goes back to Adam, whose first inclination after disobedience was to hide in the bushes from the only one who could help him. Fear of the unknown has plagued man ever since.

By the time of the incarnation things had gotten really bad. Israel was as paranoid as could be. To protect themselves the leadership had become OCD and concocted a bunch of scrupulous, superstitious rituals. And the craziness manifested itself in the sins of the people, who were characterized by tax collectors, prostitutes, and demoniacs, all double-minded in their own way.

John the Baptist and Jesus came along to wake everyone up because there was a kingdom about to come. Fully aware of the problem–paranoia/bad thinking–they declare the only possible prescription. What did the voice in the wilderness cry out? What did the Good Doctor order for paranoid Israel? One word: metanoia.

In the late nineteenth century an Episcopalian minister named Treadwell Walden wrote a book called The Great Meaning of Metanoia in which he very beautifully describes what this word means. It is a short but wonderful book which you can read for free online here.

For starters, meta = after, or change, and noia = mind. So it means an after-mind, a changed mind, a new mind. Remember, the disease is paranoia, a divided mind. The cure is metanoia unto a right mind.

Walden explains how the word had a meaning so rich and full that it is difficult to describe. It is a reprogramming of the whole self through the portal of the mind.

“The Mind has entered upon a new stage, upon something beyond… Metanoia is a state of mind after experience; the mental condition which has developed itself after an entirely new set of circumstances has encompassed and invaded the consciousness.”

Walden wrote his book because the Revised Version of the Bible had just been released and metanoia had been mistranslated again. Instead of using a word which communicated the full, positive, powerful meaning of metanoia, or even the surface meaning of “changed mind”, the same word from previous translations was again used which conveyed a very different idea. That word: repentance.

Penitence Wonʼt Do

A house divided against itself [paranoia]…
Would be better than this!
- The Lego Movie: Honest Abeʼs response to Emmetʼs self-deprecating speech

Walden explains how the word “repentance” comes from the Latin penitence, the root of which means pain. The “re” of repentance implies a revisiting of your pain. Hurt again for what you did! Think on the agony of your situation! Feel really bad about yourself, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

But metanoia, the word translators wrongly call repentance, has no such meaning, and neither John nor Jesus meant it to. Walden explains:

“Despite himself the reader hears the ʻRepent ye!ʼ of John the Baptist and of the Saviour, like a cry, a note of danger, full of terror, amid which the hearts of the people stood still, instead of what it really was, the invocation of a mind, heart, and life which should befit such a glad and glorious ʻchangeʼ as the kingdom of heaven on earth. If the call had really been ʻRepent ye!ʼ it would have been only an appeal to the feelings.”

But metanoia is not directly concerned with emotion. As Jim Wilson says in regards to the Gospel, “There are no bonus points for feeling bad.”

Repentance is not sufficient to deal with paranoia because it doesnʼt put the mind back together. It just sits in the gap and feels sad about what this broken mind has done. This just leads to more fear. Round and round it goes. Whatʼs needed is a new mind, a whole new way to see things which overcomes both the paranoia and the pain:

“Fear has no genuine ethical power. Sorrow has no sure ethical consequence. Excitement of any kind can bear, of itself, no ethical fruit. None of these can have respect with God. The only thing that can be regarded by Him is that which He has arranged everything to bring about in us: that spiritual perception of the right and the true which grows within and around a Mind that is being gradually educated up to the divine standard; the nature wide open in front, not only looking behind, and receiving the whole counsel of God, not a part of it; every faculty enlightened, every feeling inspired; the entire man engaged; conviction, not excitement; earnestness, not impulse; habitude, not paroxysm; the heart tempered by the understanding, the understanding warmed by the heart; this, the consummate and yet attainable condition, this, the Metanoia, lived alike by Master and disciple, this, the “Mind” of Christ, and made possible to all by the Spirit of God–this is not conveyed in the ʻRepent ye!ʼ of our gospels.”

Walden explains that the call to metanoia is not a call to feel bad when people already know what’s wrong. He gives the example of Acts where most translations say Peter told the people to repent. But the word there is metanoia, and he is not telling them to feel bad about what theyʼve done, to “re-pain”. He is telling them to change their minds, which is entirely different:

“How little the repent of our version takes in the compass of the counsel! They [Peter’s audience] had repented already, in the usual sense; they were deeply penitent, they were “pricked to the heart.” But Peter made them understand that compunction or any other like feeling was not all. Their minds must seize the new situation, so that God might send Him who was before proclaimed to them, Jesus Christ. They were to turn from ignorance to knowledge.”

And what was the new situation? The Heavenly Kingdom…

How Metanoia Changed the Mind of the World

Some sort of idea, as it were, was coming to reign in his mind—now for the whole of his life and unto ages of ages.
- Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov

Metanoia is not about penitence, about suffering. Itʼs like what Bob Marley says about music: one good thing about metanoia: when it hits you, you feel no pain!

But it does hit you. And it hit the world in such a way that it was changed forever. Walden again:

“Did ever the world see so mighty and so radical a revolution as came upon it then? Judaism gave way to a universal religion. The Mosaic night broke into the dawn of the perfect day. The Fatherhood of God was revealed to all men, and the brotherhood with the Son of God! Now were they the sons of God! Partakers of the divine nature! This world was discovered to be within the boundaries of the other world, and death was merged into a resurrection of the dead! Righteousness and truth were to prevail, for the power of sin had been destroyed! And the efficacy of all this lay in the person of the Christ. It was He who gave all this light. The order of human life reversed itself in Him. All conduct was to flow from a spirit within, not by a law without. Selfishness was turned into self-surrender and self-sacrifice. The affections were to be set upon things above, not on things on the earth. The spirit was everything, the flesh profited nothing. In all human action was to be the consciousness of Eternity; in all intercourse of man with man no less than the magnanimity of God.”

 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:6).

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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or Nailed to the Mast

Rachel Held Evans is a writer who likes the challenge of “asking tough questions about Christianity in the context of the Bible Belt” while consulting the howling void of modern culture for the answers. That is indeed a challenge. She takes Christians to task for referring to the de-Christianizing of Christmas as “persecution”, offering a helpful chart.

Doug Wilson provides some wisdom in response.

Part of the modern mindset is this desire to “classify” everything, to label it, which is fine, but in doing so we very often become blind to the relationships which all of these isolated things have to each other. Is minor persecution actually persecution or not? Do we have the right to complain about the castration of Christmas? I believe the Bible gives us an entirely different perspective.

Graded levels of persecution only matter if we are trying to avoid it. Paul did not see any level of persecution as an infringement upon his “life, safety, civil liberties or right to worship.” He saw every persecution, at every level, as an opportunity for legal witness to the resurrection and the Gospel of Christ, and therefore rejoiced in it. The bigger the persecution, therefore, the bigger the opportunity. But he did not pass up the little ones, either. Paul’s testimony, along with that of the apostles, ended the false witness of Herodian Judaism, and led to the end of pagan Rome and institution of the Christian calendar and its holidays.

A millennium later, with the Roman Church now corrupt as the Herods, it was the murder of the Reformers which resulted in the celebration of Reformation Day, a holiday which is seeing a revival in some quarters.

Persecution is also a misunderstood opportunity in the book of Esther. Under Mordecai’s instruction, the heroine did not take advantage of the little opportunities. She refrained from revealing her Jewish identity. This mask was the epitome of the attitude of the Jews, who were largely keeping their faith to themselves to avoid making waves. They failed to take advantage of the little opportunities, so God sent a really big one: genocide, with the sanction of the Emperor.

So, Mordecai and Esther failed at the start but God turned their failure into faithfulness. Added to this, there was the irony that Haman was not aware of the identity of the Queen, so God even used her lack of witness as the key to his downfall.

They ended up passing with flying colors. Indeed, their colors were nailed to the mast for every Jew from India to Ethiopia: Haman impaled on a pole, lifted up like a serpent. The end of the persecutors at God’s hand even resulted in a new festival, Purim, an extra “happy, holy day” which is still celebrated today.

Every seed that falls into the ground and dies results in a great harvest. Our God delights in “turning the tables.” Secularists should learn from history that anyone who challenges His work in any age always comes off second best.

So whether you are confronted with a sanitized “Happy Holidays” at the supermarket checkout, or hauled before the courts (which is coming), every level of persecution is an opportunity to move history forward, to let God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, the only courtroom worth worrying about. And, who knows, it might even result in a brand new Christian holiday. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

__________________________________________
ART: Woodcut from the title page of a 1499 pamphlet published by Markus Ayrer in Nuremberg. It depicts Vlad III “the Impaler” (identified as Dracole wyade = Draculea voivode) dining among the impaled corpses of his victims.

]]> http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2013/11/26/happy-holidays/feed/ 0 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2013/05/11/qa-discerning-the-body/ http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2013/05/11/qa-discerning-the-body/#comments Sat, 11 May 2013 10:51:10 +0000 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/?p=12108

What is the referent of “body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 11:29?

“For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”

Is it the members of the Church, as Doug Wilson supposes?

A few years ago, when one of my grandsons first came to the table (he was one year old), he was beside himself. His parents had taught him a basic catechism with signs because he could not really talk. He answered the question “Are you baptized?” by patting his own head. I was administering the Supper, and he was sitting in the front row with his parents and grandmother. When he got his bread, he held it up to show me. Now all this could be dismissed simply as a grandkid doing a cute thing, not really understanding it. But he also turned and pattern his mother’s head and his grandmother’s head. We are all baptized. He was discerning the body. To the extent he understood the Supper, he was discerning the body. To the extent that he did not understand the Supper (as the rest of us do not either), he was learning, just as we are. [1]

Why do paedobaptists always play the “cute” card? Is it not obvious that the corollary to “We are all baptized” is that Christianity is tribal and/or hereditary? That discussion is for another day. I just thought this was a great quote to illustrate what is often understood by this verse. But then what is the meaning of the verse? Its Covenant structure might shed some light on it.

Creation/Initiation: Paul rebukes them for not following instructions concerning their gatherings (Sabbath/Ark/Genesis – Transcendence)

Division/Delegation: There are divisions and factions among them, that those who are genuine might be recognized (by their obedience) (Passover/Veil/Exodus – Hierarchy)

Ascension/Presentation: Some use the Lord’s Table for gluttony and self-exaltation, instead of humbling and self-examination, confusing the house of God with their own houses (Firstfruits/Altar & Table/Leviticus – Ethics given)

Testing/Purification: Paul recites the words of Christ concerning the bread (His body) and the cup (His Covenant) (Pentecost/Lampstand/Numbers – Ethics opened)

Maturity/Transformation: Paul repeats the curses for drinking unworthily (Trumpets/Incense/Deuteronomy – Ethics received)

Conquest/Vindication: We must judge ourselves that we may not be judged. We are disciplined that we may not be condemned along with the world. (Atonement/Mediators/Joshua – Sanctions/Oath)

Glorification/Representation: Our gatherings are to exalt Christ, not ourselves. The Lord’s table is not for those who are hungry, but for those who are hungry for righteousness. It is the Table of the Spirit. (Booths/Rest/Judges – Succession)

It should be clear from this structure that the Communion table, a place of the kind of self-examination which leads to repentance and faith, is not for infants. It is not intended for the training up of children, except by observation. The “bread” they require first is the hearing of the Gospel. But the main point here is that the context of “discerning the body” is not about figuring out who is in and who is out.

The Lord’s supper is a combination of Israel’s Levitical priesthood eating the sacrifices before God, and Israel vowing to keep the conditions of the Covenant. Before the Mosaic Covenant, all sacrifices were whole burnt offerings. God ate the lot, as a consuming fire. The Noahic priests did not eat with God. To do so required a greater ceremonial cleanliness, a blameless people with “Levitically spotless skin,” as living sacrifices.

Moreover, Israel’s priests only ate before God, they never drank with Him. Between the first Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham (to vindicate him as a priest-king) and the last Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham’s children (the disciples), the wine was always to be tipped out as an offering. [2] The symbolism of the cup is tied to the jealous inspection of the bride in Numbers 5. In the big picture, the true priest-king was Christ, the only one who could rightly drink wine before God as a qualified Adam, the true Son of God.

So the distinction here, the “discernment” of the body is not the gathered saints but the act of judging rightly between sacred food and common food, between the house of God and the homes we live in, between the priestly table and the kingly table. When we eat at home, our food is not the body of Christ, and our wine is not the blood of the New Covenant. This is only the case when the saints gather together for self-examination, worship and Covenant renewal.

He whose god is his belly does not discern the Table as the flesh and blood of Christ but merely as food and drink. His outflow is not sacrificial blood and a river of living water but the filth of the bowels of King Eglon of Sodom. Those who discern what the bread and the wine actually are in God’s eyes will rightly discern themselves. Those who see  the Son of God on the Table, judging Jesus as righteous and themselves as unrighteous will, by eating and drinking, humble themselves and exalt the Saviour. His pure words are intended for our hearts, not our bellies (Mark 7:19). For those who love this world, Jesus’ pure words are Ehud’s left-handed (priestly) blade.

For Israel, this discernment was related to the difference between Passover and Tabernacles. At Passover, Israel was set apart for purification. At Booths/Tabernacles, a purified Israel was called to minister to, to “feed” the other nations. [3] For the Christian, this is the difference between the Lord’s table and the love feast. We examine ourselves, eat with God, and will then eat with the unconverted with the right heart, ministering out of God’s abundance.

So much for the basic argument. As always, the identification of the Covenant structure gives us even more information.

It is helpful to note that divisions in the assembly are often instigated by God for the purpose of purifying the church, as painful as this may be. It is not always simple, but in this case, gluttony exposed the swine.

At the Levitical step, we have saints acting like the sons of Eli, who treated the house of the Lord as if it were their own house, and the food of God as their own food. They exalted themselves instead of humbling themselves as God’s butlers, His faithful servants.

At the centre of the passage, Jesus is under the curse of the Law, drinking the cup in the place of the adulterous Bride. Even now He was covering their disobedience through His own death, just as He was still covering the sin of the Jewish leaders who were yet celebrating Passover and building the Temple in kingly (“Cainite”) disobedience to the Gospel.

The “Sanctions” part of the passage reinforces the idea that the Lord’s Supper is for the regular public renewal of the public profession of faith made by each saint at his or her baptism. Baptism puts the saint into the resurrection body, as one who has been slain by the Gospel and now possesses new life by the Spirit. The Table is the place of self-discipline for God’s knights, who judge themselves that they may not be judged, something which is insane to expect from a one-year-old unless one has an erroneous tradition to protect.

Notice that those who will not discipline themselves are disciplined by the Lord. This is exactly what we see in the letters to the seven churches in Asia, as Jesus “passes over” them on His way to destroy Pharaoh/Herod. He comes to tend His garden, the children of God (spiritual, not physical children), to feed them with righteousness and holiness. Those whom He finally removes (as He threatens to do in Revelation 2 and 3), are judged that the church might be preserved from being entirely “snuffed out.”

The final section, like the first, mentions the gathering (Booths). The Table is the place where the saints sit as elohim, heavenly rulers, those who are purified and are now fit to sit enthroned with Christ in heavenly places as His elders, His court, His advisors, and judge the wicked and advocate for the helpless by their prayers. The Lord’s Table is for the maintenance of the two-edged sword of the Gospel in our lives. It is a place of death and life, where we eat and drink Jesus, the priest-king, and then become life-giving food for the world.

____________________________________________
[1] Doug Wilson, in his foreword for The Case for Covenant Communion, edited by Gregg Strawbridge.
[2] See “The Forbidden Feast” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion and a diagram.
[3] See “Eat Local and Die” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion.

ART: The Death of Eglon via Sarah Louise 

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