An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.

The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Death and Resurrection

The death and resurrection of Christ is now the central and final fact of the world, and it was the decisive blow to evil. I am going to argue that it is also the central reality of leadership. The theory of leadership presented in this book is a theory of martyrdom. One must experience a type of death before one can be raised to new life and authority to deal with evil and problems that are otherwise intractable.

There is nothing new in this. The Church Calendar, which is used by all liturgical communions (Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians), remembers a saint for every day of the year, and it remembers them not on their birthday (other than Jesus on Christmas and a handful of other figures), but on the day of their martyrdom or of their death (the day of their exodus to Heaven). The ancient and pagan world was conquered by martyrs. Can modernity be re-Christianized by anything else?

Islam is the perverse mirror image of Christendom,¹Leithart, P. (2007). “Mirror of Christendom: Why Islam Exists and What To Do About It.” Views and Reviews: Open Book Occasional Papers 24:15. and it is today attacking the West by the power of false martyrdom. Is it not necessary to re-understand the power of martyrdom in Jesus Christ? Even if full martyrdom is not called for, a real encounter with death still is called for.²John Collins states that every “Level Five” leader that he and his team encountered, were marked by peculiar humility combined with extraordinary power of will, and many had either experienced a religious conversion or had come close to death and come back from that experience. Collins, J. C. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap–and others don’t. New York, NY, Harper Business. pp. 17-40. David only became a great king, for example, because of his years in the wilderness fleeing Saul, and this constituted a kind of death. Paul overcame the Roman Empire from whipping posts and prisons. In today’s world, authority still comes by means of wildernesses and what seem like whipping posts and imprisonments. We are called to have “eyes to see,” so what may be typically viewed as hazards to be avoided, or hardships to be resented, may instead be seen as paths to transformation.

On a very large scale in the modern world, leadership by martyrdom can be seen in the extraordinary downfall of Communism at the end of the 20th Century. In the triumvirate of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and John Paul II, Reagan and John Paul both had narrow escapes from death when both nearly died at the hands of assassins. Both of them believed they were spared by God for the mission of toppling Communism. Reagan, who had always had a belief in predestination, had a great deepening in his faith that God’s hand was in all things and especially in this.³Kengor, P. (2004). God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life. New York, Regan Books pp. 197-216. It is doubtful that either man would have had the authority or wisdom to do what they did had they not come back from the dead.⁴It has become the minority report that Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul were the real force behind the collapse of Communism, and it is now commonly said that the entire event was somehow “inevitable” and would have happened no matter what. But it is very odd that during that era, Reagan alone was predicting the collapse of Communism, and the people now declaring the “inevitability” of its collapse, laughed at his bumpkin notions, and declared that Communism “was here to stay” and that it had now been amply proven that the Soviet style command economy had produced “remarkable results” fully the equal of the West.
D’Souza, D. (1997). Ronald Reagan: how an ordinary man became an extraordinary leader. New York, Free Press. Chapter 1, “The Wise Men and the Dummy.”
Anthony Sutton demonstrated that Communism, because of its economically self destructive nature, was repeatedly on the verge of collapse through the early to middle twentieth century. It was however, repeatedly propped up by the West, and not allowed to collapse. Sutton, A. C. (1968). Western technology and Soviet economic development. Stanford, Calif., Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace Stanford University.
Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul pushed the tottering giant to the cliff’s edge and did nothing to stop it when it began tumbling. It was also the case that the combined rhetoric of these leaders disestablished any vestige of moral respectability left behind the Iron Curtain. Mikel Gorbochev certainly did his part. He appeared to want the demise of his own empire.
He seems to have begun to believe in something else. Reagan on several occasions told his advisors that he suspected Gorbechev to be “a secret believer.” He was right. Gorbechev made his faith public in 2008 when he made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The Advisor to the King Goes First

The advisor is likewise called to experience death and resurrection. If he or she does not, they will lack the requisite authority to help the leader they are dealing with.

The two great biblical models for advisors to the king are Joseph and Daniel. Both experienced death and resurrection in their lives.

Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to a foreign land. That was a death. He was then imprisoned because of his virtue while faithfully serving his foreign master. He was eventually raised from the dead by being called out of prison as an interpreter of nightmares and then appointed the Prime Minister of the entire nation. He finally revealed himself to his brothers in Genesis 45 (“‘I am Joseph; does my father still live?’ But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence….‘I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt.’” Genesis 45:3-4) This is one of the first typological foreshadowings of the Resurrection of Christ in the Bible.

Daniel likewise was a refugee. He also faced death when he was put into the lion’s den. His three associates and friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, were likewise thrown into the fiery furnace. In both cases, there was an emergence in a resurrection.

The advisor must pass through great trial, grief, sorrow and difficulty or he will be unequipped to give the requisite help. Much of his calling is to enable the leader to pass through crisis, and sometimes crisis of great magnitude. What but the power of the Cross of Christ could possibly give someone the necessary strength and power to successfully pass through such deep waters?⁵This calls to mind this amusing passage from G.K. Chesterton’s great novel, The Man Who Was Thursday. Garbiel Syme volunteers to become a philosophical policeman in the battle against world-wide anarchism, and he meets Sunday in a completely dark room, and the following conversation ensues when he is recruited for his new position:
Somewhat dazed and considerably excited, Syme allowed himself to be led to a side-door in the long row of buildings of Scotland Yard. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he had been passed through the hands of about four intermediate officials, and was suddenly shown into a room, the abrupt blackness of which startled him like a blaze of light. It was not the ordinary darkness, in which forms can be faintly traced; it was like going suddenly stone-blind.
“Are you the new recruit?” asked a heavy voice.
And in some strange way, though there was not the shadow of a shape in the gloom, Syme knew two things: first, that it came from a man of massive stature; and second, that the man had his back to him.
“Are you the new recruit?” said the invisible chief, who seemed to have heard all about it. “All right. You are engaged.”
Syme, quite swept off his feet, made a feeble fight against this irrevocable phrase.
“I really have no experience,” he began.
“No one has any experience,” said the other, “of the Battle of Armageddon.”
“But I am really unfit——”
“You are willing, that is enough,” said the unknown.
“Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.” “I do,” said the other —“martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”

A Particular Account

A friend of mine gave a personal account that conveys the heart of this conviction. In an early pastorate, he came to a place of complete deadlock with his church. In all too typical fashion, he became the lightening rod for all of the problems in the church. He was blamed for everything and was repeatedly attacked and lied about. In one horrific congregational meeting, he was personally attacked and vilified and accused of numerous things that were clearly untrue. He described going home, putting his head in his wife’s lap, and weeping like a baby. This went on for hours. He finally felt as though he had come to the complete end of himself. Astonishingly, he believed that it was God’s will for him to stay and not to resign.

The next day, he went to his elders and said that he was determined to stay and that he would not leave. They were stunned. My friend was a dead man. He had been murdered the night before. And yet, here he was, alive and refusing to leave his post. What does one say to a dead man come back to life? They were speechless. That was the turning point. From that time on, he had the authority and wisdom to deal with that church’s failings and needs. The church changed and prospered.⁶The accuracy of this account, and permission to use it, was confirmed to the writer in an e-mail from Rev. Williams on February 28, 2009.

Only a leader who comes back from the dead has the power to do this. And likewise, if one is called to be a counselor to leaders who will themselves have to experience this, then the counselor must likewise go through the same fires in some way before that can be a reality.

Metropolitan Manifesto: Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial bishop of his city, a recognized adviser to the king. In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience. The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.

Thirty-Five Theological Notes

(for old friends and new, who are trying to figure out where I’m coming from) 

Prolegomena

1.  I am an exegete, storyteller, and shepherd. My personal ministry focuses on helping people to pray, know God personally and directly, learn and live the biblical Story, retake lost territory the Church has ceded to the pagans, and use high-concept folk culture as a vehicle for reformation. Mostly in Englewood, Colorado.

2.  I have tried to listen well to the Scriptures and be as faithful as I can be to what they say. Theologians tend to gather in herds like anybody else, and my particular set of emphases has not led me into one of the standard herds.

3.  The spirit of the day being what it is — postmodern ectoplasm that evaporates in a strong light — I am expected to reject herding and its attendant labels, and demand recognition as an absolutely unique snowflake. But no. Gathering in community and giving apt names to things are expressions of the image of God. Hence this explanation, which I hope will help.

4.  Much mischief comes of affirming something we ought to affirm, and then on that basis denying something we ought not to deny. We ought to have learnt this from the doctrine of the Trinity: if we believe in inerrancy, then sometimes we must submit to mystery.

5.  Mood is often more important–and harder to capture–than the standard talking points. For example, I have worked productively with postmil brethren with no problem, and had trouble working with some of my fellow premil folk. The practical difference is mood: when the kings of the earth conspire against Him, Yahweh laughs at them. Do we laugh with Him, or do we think the sky is falling? The difference is easy to see in real life, but it can be quite difficult to codify meaningfully in the standard form of a doctrinal statement.

Basics

6.  I believe the historic Christian faith expressed in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the Definition of Chalcedon, and the National Association of Evangelicals statement of faith.

7.  I believe in the biblically attested miracles — crossing the Red Sea, Joshua’s long day, virgin birth, water into wine, all of it, because the Bible says so. I believe in a recent, six-literal-day creation and a worldwide flood for the same reason.

8.  Since I don’t approach the Scriptures with the skepticism of a 19th-century liberal, I don’t approach the history of the Church that way either. Having been taught by the Scriptures to believe in such things, I believe in the miracles of the Christian Church, reported in the ministries of such notable saints as Augustine, Patrick of Ireland, George Wishart, John Knox, Charles Spurgeon, and Francis MacNutt. And I’ve seen some myself.

9.  I have personally experienced the exegetical bankruptcy, practical impotence, and willful historical ignorance of cessationism. Never again. That said, supernatural ministry can be mightily abused, as in Corinth. 1 Corinthians prescribes a solution; cessationism ain’t it.

10.  Just to get it out of the way, I am not a Calvinist, and still less of an Arminian. Both Calvin and Arminius did good service to the church, but they were both Calvinists, and shared a number of assumptions which the Scriptures do not support. Talking about “the theological spectrum from Calvinism to Arminianism” is like talking about “all the colors of the rainbow, from red to pink.” There were 15 glorious centuries of Christian theology before those two worthy gents came along, and a few centuries after them, too. For which all thanksgiving.

11.  I am Protestant, and happy to be. I am deeply in debt to the magisterial Reformation; it remains one of the finest creations of the Roman Church.

Prayer

12.  A strong view of divine sovereignty is necessary to the integrity of the Christian faith. The Scriptures require it, and there’s no point in praying for things unless God is in control.

13.  I believe that God’s hand moves in response to prayer, and sometimes we do not have because we do not ask. This is tough to square with divine sovereignty, but if we only know enough to be obedient, then we know enough. So I pray; resolving the mysteries can wait.

14.  I believe we should learn to pray by praying in the categories of the Lord’s Prayer, because Matthew says so, and in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, because Luke says so. Many struggle to pray effectively because we do not honor our Lord’s instruction in this matter.

The Unity of Christ’s Body

15.   I am small-c catholic. Those who belong to Christ belong to me, and I to them.

16.  I believe in the unity of the Body of Christ. Unity is a cardinal doctrine and practice, essential to maintaining justification by faith (as Paul said in Galatians), and a crucial part of our witness to the world, not to mention being Jesus’ dying wish for His people. Our real convictions on unity are demonstrated in our choices of whom to eat with, pray with, worship with, and work with. If we don’t do those things outside the narrow confines of our home community, we might think unity is permissible, but we don’t think it’s important.

17.  I believe in historical unity. All Christ’s people, everywhere and everywhen, are My People, more so than my family, my fellow Americans or the members of my martial arts club. In the second century, my Church was still finding her feet. In the eleventh century, my Church had suffered an unfortunate split that has yet to be healed. In the fifteenth century, my Church was hopelessly corrupt. She has always been headquartered in the New Jerusalem, no matter what some folks believed about Rome. If we celebrate Veteran’s Day but not Purim or the Feast of All Saints, we have an odd notion of where our primary loyalties lie.

18.  Today the Church lives with denominations and highly denominated nondenominational entities by the million. These tribal loyalties are a blessing insofar as they inspire greater love for God and our neighbors, but when we cease to act as one Body with others who belong to Christ but not to our tribe, we are failing in exactly the way Peter failed at Antioch.

The Church Service

19.  Every regularly held public meeting has some kind of liturgy to it; some churches are more conscious and competent at using their liturgies to achieve their goals. I prefer them.

20.  I believe that worship is about what God wants to receive, not about what we happen to want to give (cf. Cain), and still less about what’s fashionable this month. I believe God has told us to be a Psalm-singing people. If we sing the Psalms and follow the directions they give, we will experience richer worship than is typical in the American church.

21.  Having been taught by Psalm-singing, baptism, communion, and anointing with oil, I believe in physical expressions of worship. I believe that the arts have a strong place in the church’s worship. There’s nothing wrong with spontaneous worship, but I believe in the value of planned prayer, painting, and dance as I believe in the value of planned music and sermons.

22.  I believe in the use of the supernatural ministry gifts in the worship service, because the Bible says so. I also believe that if you’re serious about that, you leave space for it. If you have a 90-minute service time, and you plan 90 minutes of content, you don’t value supernatural ministry. If you schedule a move of the Spirit 27 minutes into the service, you are attempting to control something you shouldn’t. He blows where he wills.

23.  I believe the church service ought to end in communion, with its attendant implications of security and fellowship, rather than an invitation, with its attendant implications of insecurity and crisis. Invitations are fine for revival meetings, but have no place at family gatherings. Repeated invitations of the “Maybe you know a lot about Jesus, but have you ever really…” type have done much mischief to impressionable children who were unfortunate enough to grow up hearing them every week.

Sacraments

24.  I believe in baptizing believers immediately, like they did in Acts. Baptism is the New Covenant analog to circumcision. Of course, we circumcise the baby after he’s born, but since New Covenant members are born twice, we have to ask: “Which birth are we talking about?” If baptism is the new circumcision, then what is the new birth? Well…the new birth. Paedobaptism is a throwback to the days before Christ broke the power of the clan.

25.  I believe in weekly communion, but I also believe that weekly communion will be unbearable until it is celebrated as the feast of victory that it is, rather than observed as an orgy of ungodly introspection. It is vile for a shepherd in Christ’s flock to turn the Corinthians’ sin — which no one is committing today — into an excuse to torment the sheep with every imaginable doubt. Self-examination for the sins discussed in the passage is fair game.

26.  I believe that the wine in the communion cup should be wine, because the Bible says so. I also believe that it is foolish and wicked to divide the Body over how we conduct the Table, so when necessary, I drink my grape juice with joy and thanksgiving.

27.  It is not my Table; it is Christ’s. I am nowhere commanded to fence it; how dare I? All who are His are welcome; all who desire Him are welcome. Jesus did not stint to give Himself to the children, the outcasts, and those who did not yet believe. Of course giving the body and blood of the very Son of God to such people (to any people, for that matter) is blasphemy and sacrilege. But it is Jesus’ sacrilege, not ours. Who am I to argue?

28.  I believe we must speak of the Table as God speaks of it, without hedging. I believe in the real presence of Christ in the elements, without feeling a need to explain the details. I follow the examples of John Knox, John Williamson Nevin, and other stalwart Protestants in refusing to let vain Romish speculation ruin this for me, as it did for poor Zwingli.

Living as a Christian

29.  Eternal life is knowing God. Salvation is irreducibly relational, and individual conversion is absolutely necessary; well-remembered crisis conversion is another matter entirely. Seeing a child on the playground, I can be sure the child is alive without knowing the moment of his birth. Striking up a conversation, I might find that the child himself does not know when he was born. It does not follow that he was never born.

30.  The new birth is a miraculous, gracious act of God which we receive by trusting God. Like any birth, it is the work of the parents, and not the child, that accomplishes it.

31.  The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Continuing to grow in Christ requires an ongoing miracle, and again, we must be willing to receive that miracle. But if we are, God will do it.

32.  It is the birthright of every child of God to hear and understand his Father’s voice, in the Bible and in his heart.

33.  Uncertainty is a poor foundation for a life of righteousness. Like any good father, God assures us that we are His own, and urges us to live on that basis. The accusations and doubts that cause us to question our place in the family come from the world, the flesh and the devil–or from our fellow believers, doing the devil’s work for him.

34.  Living as a Christian is a life of continual repentance. We always fall short, and God’s grace is always there to transform us and move us closer to Him. We need only be willing.

35.  Willingness is being open with God: openly communicating to Him what we think, believe and have done, openly hearing His approval and correction, and obeying.

Republished with permission.

The unity Jesus is leading us toward has far less to do with hammering out a single organizational structure and far more to do with many different Christian tribes and tongues bringing their respective glories to the King.

There are many legitimate reasons to lament the divided state of the church. Fleshly pride, theological hubris, sectarian rivalries are each in their own ways modern versions of the Galatian heresy, refusing table fellowship with brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. And denominations have frequently played the same role as the names of Paul and Apollos in Corinth, for which we join in Paul’s manifesto to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.

Yet, as we pray for the unity of the Body of Christ, as we labor to be one as the Father, Son, and Spirit are one, there ought to be just as much concern over the dangers of certain forms of unity. It seems there’s a romantic demon lurking in all the sons of Adam, and I mean that in a rather wooden etymological sense: there’s an idolatrous love of Rome and her ways that seems often lurking in discussions of catholicity. And by that I do not merely mean the Roman Catholic Church, but rather something subtler, more ancient, more pervasive in human nature. We do well to remember that Rome was the last of the great beasts that Daniel saw coming up out of the sea, a certain way of power, a style of consolidation, a promise of unity going all the way back to Babel that Jesus came to shatter.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

“The guardian’s role is to prevent evil; the judge’s role is to deliver from evil, once it has been allowed in.”

An excerpt from James B. Jordan’s commentary on Judges (47-51) concerning the role of Israel’s Messiahs.

What were the judges? They were civil rulers and deliverers of Israel. God is concerned with all of human life and society. It is false to try to limit His interest only to the institutional Church, though as the sacramental body of Jesus Christ, the Church is the foremost earthly “institution.” The judges show us God delivering His people from His and their enemies, in particular in social and political situations. According to Scripture, the civil magistrate bears the sword of iron (as distinct from the Sword of the Scriptures) as a threat to evildoers. A magistrate is a minister of God, no less than a Church officer is, but the magistrate is a minister of God’s vengeance, while the elder is a minister of redemption. (See Romans 13.)

The judges were civil magistrates. Their normal work was to act as magistrates for Israel, settling disputes (Ex. 18:21 ff.). Their special work was to act as avengers for Israel, destroying the enemies of God. This is still the duty of the magistrate today: to settle disputes in court and to prosecute defensive warfare against aggressors. The book of Judges focuses in on the exceptional work of vengeance and deliverance, because this is what is important for the purpose of revealing and foreshadowing the redemptive work of Christ.

In Scripture there are two offices or official works to which a man may be called beyond his normal capacities as worker, husband, and father. These two offices are those associated with redemption and vengeance. Those called to these offices are ordained for the purpose. Ordination is by the Holy Spirit, as represented by oil. In the Old Testament, the Levites and the kings (the house of David) were ordained regularly by oil, as a rite installing them in their official duties. We do not find such ritual anointing in the case of the judges, however; rather, they were anointed directly by the Spirit.

This does not mean they were not elected officials. E. C. Wines has provided a good commentary on this point: “Four stages may be noted in the proceedings relating to Jephthah; – the preliminary discussion, the nomination, the presentation to the people, and the installation (Judges 10:17, 18 and 11:1-11). The enemy was encamped in Gilead. At this point, the people and their rulers, assembled in convention on the plain, said to one another, ‘Who shall be our chief, to lead us against the foe?’ This was the discussion, in which every citizen seems to have had the right to participate. In the exceedingly brief history of the affair, it is not expressly stated, but it is necessarily implied, that Jephthah, of Gilead, a man of distinguished military genius and reputation, was nominated by the voice of the assembly. But this able captain had been some years before driven out from his native city. It was necessary to soothe his irritated spirit. To this end the elders went in person to seek him, laid before him the urgent necessities of the state, softened his anger by promises of preferment, and brought him to Mizpeh. Here, manifestly, they made a formal presentation of him to the people, for it is added, ‘the people made him head and captain over them.’ That is, they completed the election by giving him their suffrages, recognizing him as their leader, and installing him in his office. Here, then, we have, 1. The free discussion of the people in a popular assembly concerning the selection of a leader; 2. The nomination of Jephthah by the meeting to be chief; 3. The elders’ presentation of him to the people for their suffrages; and 4. His inauguration as prince and leader of Israel. It is to the analysis of such incidental relations as this scattered here and there through the history, that, in default of a more exact account of the primitive order of things, we are compelled to resort, in our study of the Hebrew constitution, for much of the information, which it would be gratifying to find in a more detailed and systematic form.” ¹E. C. Wines, The Hebrew Republic (originally published as Commentary on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews, vol. 2; reprint, Uxbridge, MA: American Presbyterian Press, n.d.), p. 110f.

Thus, the judges were not self-appointed men, but were leaders recognized by the people. This is obvious even if Wines’s analysis be not convincing in its every detail. There was a regular way to appoint judges, then, even if there was no anointing with oil involved. Wines enumerates the political characteristics of the judgeship system in Israel as follows:²Ibid., pp. 148ff.

1. “The Hebrew judges held their office for life.” This was true of Moses and of Joshua, and is presupposed throughout the book of Judges.
2. “The office was not hereditary. Moses took no steps to perpetuate this magistracy in his family, or to leave it as an hereditary honor to his posterity.” We may note that when Samuel tried to set his sons up as judges, it did not work out, and the people demanded a king.
3. “The chief magistracy of Israel was elective. The oracle, the high priest, and all the congregation, are distinctly recorded to have concurred in the elevation of Joshua to this office (Num. 27:18-23). Jephthah was chosen to the chief magistracy by the popular voice. Samuel was elected regent in a general assembly of Israel (1 Sam. 7:5-8 ).” There is nothing to indicate the contrary in the case of any other of the judges.
4. “The authority of these regents extended to affairs of war and peace.” These were their special and general works.
5. “A contumacious resistance of the lawful authority and orders of the Hebrew judges, was treason.” See Joshua 1:18 and Deuteronomy 17:12. This is important is evaluating Jephthah’s response to the rebellion of Ephraim in Judges 12.
6. “The authority of the Israelitish regents was not unlimited and despotic. It was tempered and restrained by the oracle. This is distinctly affirmed, in the history of the appointment of Joshua to the chief magistracy, as the successor of Moses (Num. 27:21). It is there said, that he should stand before Eleazar the priest, who should ask counsel for him, after the judgment of urim before the Lord.” In Christian lands, this means that the state should consult the Church in matters where the Church has competency.

“The power of the Hebrew chief magistrates was further limited by that of the senate and congregation.” They were not bound to consult with the body of elders on every point, but we see that “in important emergencies, they summoned a general assembly of the rulers, to ask their advice and consent. This we find to have been repeatedly done by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel.”

“Still another limitation to the authority of the Hebrew judges was in the law itself. Their power could not be stretched beyond its legal bounds.”

Wines sums it all up this way: “No salary was attached to the chief magistracy in the Hebrew government. No revenues were appropriated to the judges, except, perhaps, a larger share of the spoils taken in war, and the presents spontaneously made to them as testimonials of respect (Jud. 8:24; 1 Sam.9:7; 10:27). No tribute was raised for them. They had no outward badges of dignity. [This may be a bit extreme on Wines’s part, since there probably was some type of robe of office, but Wines is certainly right in what follows.] They did not wear the diadem. They were not surrounded by a crowd of satellites. They were not invested with the sovereign power. They could issue orders; but they could not enact laws. They had not the right of appointing officers, except perhaps in the army. They had no power to lay new burdens upon the people in the form of taxes. They were ministers of justice, protectors of law, defenders of religion, and avengers of crime; particularly the crime of idolatry. But their power was constitutional, not arbitrary. It was kept within due bounds by the barriers of law, the decisions of the oracle, and the advice and consent of the senate and commons of Israel. They were without show, without pomp, without retinue, without equipage; plain republican magistrates.” While Wines may go a bit too far in rejecting all outward symbols of office, since these were common and expected in this period of history, in the main he is clearly correct. As we shall see, the history of the period of Judges shows the regents of Israel gradually aggrandizing to themselves more and more of the trappings of power.

Kings and judges are shepherds. The central section of Judges, at which we have now arrived, is concerned with this. Priests, prophets, ministers, Levites – these are guardians. The two appendices of Judges deal with Levites, and their failure to guard Israel properly. The point of the appendices (Judges 17-21) is to show that the failure of these moral guardians was the basic underlying cause of all the moral problems discussed in the preceding chapters (Judges 3-16). Thus, the ultimate guardians of society are the officers of the Church. Theirs is the powerful, positive work of instruction and worship (Ex. 18:19-20), which must underlie the negative, vengeance work of the judge (Ex. 18:21ff.). The guardian’s role is to prevent evil; the judge’s role is to deliver from evil, once it has been allowed in.

Christ is absent. Though he is not dead, he did go away, leaving his ministers to care for his bride and “raise up seed” for him. As levirs, they have the right to profit from the inheritance of the heir–the entire church–until the seed/son comes of age.

The church in Corinth was a pastoral nightmare. Factionalism, sexual immorality, incipient syncretism, using the church as a stage for self-promotion, and denial of the final resurrection were just some of the problems.

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, he confronts each of these problems directly and in an orderly fashion. The letter begins with what is soon seen to be the foundation for dealing with all of the relational problems in the church: the cross of Christ. In the cross we see the wisdom of God displayed. This is the wisdom that creates and orders the world as a master craftsman (cf. Proverbs 8). Paul and his co-labors are also Spirit-filled craftsmen who are building this new world according to the wisdom of the cross. If the Corinthians are to be faithful images of God in this new creation, they must build the life of their church according to the wisdom of the cross.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

Alastair Roberts points out for us that both sides of the debate concerning women in ministry have missed one salient point. From his post, Why A Masculine Priesthood Is Essential:

Most of the debates about women in the priesthood presume that we always know what priesthood is, the only question is whether women are permitted to exercise it. My argument cuts across this, claiming that the debate is generally operating in terms of a radically distorted notion of priesthood and that women are not able to exercise priesthood in the same manner as men—it isn’t just a matter of permission.

Debates about women ‘in leadership’ are fraught by the imprecision of our terminology, and the misleading pictures that implicitly govern our notions of what ‘leadership’ looks like. Near the heart of our problem is the fact that modern paradigms of leadership that are employed within the Church tend to be drawn largely from business, academic, and therapeutic contexts. Consequently, the skills that we look for from our ‘leaders’ are principally academic, management, and counselling skills. Of course, if this is what we are looking for, we will easily find them among women, often to a much greater degree than among men. Women can be incredibly gifted theologians, exegetes, teachers, guides, counsellors, managers, and directors. These skills are incredibly valuable in the life of the Church and should be recognized and affirmed and exercised in the life of it. Contrary to what people might think, at no point have the value and importance of women’s gifting in these areas been denied. However, priestly or pastoral leadership requires something more.

In contrast to much of the Church today, the paradigms of leadership in Scripture tend to be drawn from a more military context. Practically every one of the major figures in Scripture wielded a weapon and shed blood, or took life in other ways. While many want to argue that Jesus is some exception to this, in terms of which the whole pattern is redrawn, this is not the case. Alongside the images of Christ as the one led silent like a lamb to the slaughter, the New Testament presents us with the prominent image of conquering Lamb, who crushes his enemies. Just as Paul teaches that Christ judged the ancient Israelites, leaving their dead bodies scattered in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:1-11), so he teaches that Christ is taking the lives of unfaithful people in the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 11:27-34).

The Bible is largely written by warriors and about warriors. These were men who made life and death decisions, who knew that the pull of pity could be very dangerous, who understood the vulnerability and fragility of life, who recognized that life is an activity with extremely high stakes and fraught with peril, who saw themselves as being involved in a huge conflict, called to fight and contend for things, who had thick skins, who protected the weak and vulnerable, who knew that there were boundaries to be guarded, who appreciated that we are surrounded by grave threats to the security and health of our communities and their moral integrity, who know that we need the nerve to take radical and painful action. These are the values that shape the biblical notion of pastoral and priestly leadership.

The Bible does not glorify war in itself, nor does it value the powerful over the weak. However, it recognizes the reality of war and the necessity of power: our world is shaped by conflict. The people of God are compared to sheep and the paradigmatic person at the heart of the kingdom is the little child, weak, defenceless, dependent, and vulnerable (Matthew 18:1-5). Those who value vulnerability and weakness in a deeply hostile world must be prepared to defend it. The priesthood is charged with this task. The shepherd who loves his sheep and tenderly carries them in his bosom must be prepared and equipped mercilessly to fight the wolves, the bandits, the thieves, the bears, and the lions. He must be prepared to lay down his life in their defence. Those who perform this calling are servants of the sheep, not lords over them. The shepherd must put his life in jeopardy for the sake of the lives of his sheep, valuing them above himself. In a strange inversion of values, some Christians seem to have the notion that being a priest somehow means that you are greater than others.

This model of priesthood is a profoundly masculine one, involving combat and guarding at its heart. The association between martial virtues and masculinity is a close one. It doesn’t merely arise from the fact that men are generally more powerful, physically stronger, more combative, and that they naturally possess a greater drive and aptitude for the exercise of dominance and mastery, although these are all part of the picture.

Although women can and have fought and killed in exceptional, extreme, or fortuitous circumstances—a few such incidents are recorded in the Old Testament (e.g. Judges 4:21; 9:53)—the normalization of women fighting and killing is quite contrary to biblical and Christian values. In contrast to our contemporary society, Scripture never presents men and women as fundamentally androgynous individuals, whose identities are purely contingent upon their varying individual characteristics and aptitudes. Men and women are different kinds of persons, the bearers of different symbolic and relational meaning.

Women are associated with the most intimate bonds and communion of society. Every woman, by virtue of her sex—irrespective of whether she is married or has children—is the bearer of a maternal form of identity. The very form and basic processes of her body declares this meaning and—again, whether or not she is married or has children—everything that she does and is is inflected and elevated by the fact that she represents this reality. It is within her body that the marriage bond is consummated. It is within her body that the bond between parents and children are forged. It is within her body that the child grows and upon her body that it feeds. A society that truly honours this reality will not send women to fight its wars. A civilized society values and fosters the beautiful vulnerability of its most intimate bonds and seeks to protect them as much as it can from subjection to the harshness of conflict and struggle.

This principle is applied more broadly. We do what we can to avoid fighting with women, not just physically, but also verbally, and in other manners. Although men are often rough with each other, we aren’t rough with women. When we come into opposition with women, we take a gentler approach than we do with men. We don’t personally attack women more generally and seek to protect them from attack. We treat women as non-combatants.

This instinctive sense of the need to treat women differently when it comes to combat is deeply wired in every civilized man. I have already remarked upon the way that it functions as a driving force, albeit in distorted ways, in egalitarian approaches to these conversations. The push for women in the priesthood is often framed in terms of women’s need for protection, the fact that they need to be affirmed, valued, listened to, and protected from marginalization. The ugliness of the debates on this issue are also shaped by egalitarian men’s drive to protect women from what they regard as attack (as C.S. Lewis once sagely observed, battles are ugly when women are involved—suddenly, everything becomes much more personal, because men hate seeing women hurt).

The problem, of course, is that the priesthood is a combative role. Opposition to women in the priesthood is driven by, among other things, our refusal to put women into combat for us. While many of us strongly share egalitarians’ concern to see women affirmed, listened to, respected, honoured, and prominent in the life of the Church, there are many ways that this should be pursued without putting them into the priestly/pastoral office.

One of the chief causes and effects of women in priesthood is a dulling of our sense of the priesthood as a role involving conflict. Women, as many supporters of women in the priesthood have argued, ‘bring their own styles of leadership.’ And these styles of leadership are typically light on the martial virtues. Opposition to women in the priesthood should not be confused with opposition to women’s exercise of these styles of leadership within the life of the Church. Rather it is opposition to the reshaping—and consequent abandonment—of the priestly ministry.

The stakes here are very, very high.

With the loss of this model of priesthood, we have lost something fundamental in our understanding of the tenor of the Christian faith more generally. We have reduced discipleship from the uncompromising and costly loyalty expected of the soldier to a looser appreciation of Jesus as a moral guide. We have lost sight of the threat of hell and judgment. We have defanged the world, the flesh, and the devil in our imaginations. We have reduced God, displacing images of God as Judge, Sovereign, Ruler, King, Avenger, Father, and Lord. Instead of a fatherly authority that stands more over against us, we want a more cosy, maternal figure, still ‘authoritative’, but in a considerably weakened sense. Christ’s Lordship is now something that we think that we establish in our lives, rather than a public truth and reality that we must submit and bow the knee to. We have airbrushed divine violence out of Scripture. We have reduced divine authority as exercised in Scripture to the level of an illuminating text for selective consumption in the private spiritual life. We have sentimentalized the cross. We have lost sight of the deep weight—the dreadful yet profoundly joyful solemnity—of Christian worship, seeing it as more casual. We have abandoned or attenuated beyond usefulness the notion of spiritual warfare. We have abandoned church discipline (when was the last time that an Anglican church delivered someone to Satan for the destruction of the flesh?). We no longer see the world as being in cosmic spiritual conflict and don’t conduct ourselves as those in the dangerous realm of occupied territory, readily compromising with the surrounding culture instead. We don’t believe that our souls are in peril and so are indifferent to the fitness of the leaders who are responsible to guard us. We value their personability and academic credentials over their backbone, refusal to compromise, and commitment to do whatever it takes to present us whole and with joy before God’s throne on that great Last Day.

With the loss of a male priesthood—or, more particularly, with the loss of a masculine priesthood—we have attenuated the reality of the Christian message. We have no effective symbolization of the authority of God within our churches. When that goes, all else is enervated. The empowerment and valuing of women—an imperative for any Christian church—will best be served, not by putting women in the office of guardians of the Church, but when we appoint strong guardians for the Church who are committed to empower and value women, to hear their voices and to recognize their gifts, and to exercise their own calling as the servants of all.

“What is in the nature of these materials?”

The Bauhaus, founded in Germany in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, had a profound influence in every area of design, from graphics and typography to clothing, furniture and architecture. The institution was not so much a style as a method, its philosophy based on the idea that if something is well-designed it will be beautiful of its own accord. The means to this end involved the founding of an art school where every student was also a tradesman, and every tradesman was also an artist. The Bauhaus manifesto expresses Gropius’ desire to unite the trades and the arts that their works might possess the grace of an inseparable marriage of function (design) and form (beauty).

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

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“The whole world is like a drunken peasant.
They fall off one side of the horse or the other.” – Martin Luther

An Apology to Joel McDurmon – In Both Senses of the Word

“As Christians, an exhortation to ‘remember your baptism’ is a good one, but this begins with a baptism you can actually remember.”

Joel McDurmon of American Vision just wrote a post tracing back to their Arminian doctrine the deceit and manipulative tactics use by, and even marketed by, the Elevation Church to increase their baptism quota. He writes:

If “saving souls” is the main end-game of your Christian faith, and if the free will is the last hurdle of salvation, then why would you not what the help of an army of marketers, managers, assembly lines, pre-packaged directions, techniques, tools, processes, and networks of support farms and professionals who can claim “billions served”?

It’s only from the standpoint of the doctrines of grace that it makes sense to criticize these manipulative tactics. It is encouraging that some Christians seem naturally uneasy when a church like Elevation admits what it does. But Elevation is just a mote. Free will theology is the plank.

Well, my nickname is Bully and I saw red. A discussion ensued on facebook which did not end on very good terms.  Of course, this is something that rarely ever happens (not). I believe what I wrote was entirely objective, and at least as gracious as Mr McDurmon’s opinion piece, however re-reading it, it was badly worded and Joel, a writer whose work and ministry I admire, took it personally. I wrote:

God is neither a Calvinist nor an Arminian. He is sovereign yet He very obviously holds each person accountable for their decisions. These truths are parallel lines that only meet at the throne of God. While the manipulation of Elevation Church is clearly a perversion of Arminianism, the cowardice, apathy, conceit, disengagement, bookishness and carnality of those who not only baptize the unregenerate and label them “Christians” but use Calvin as an excuse for a failure of personal witness, which is the premier task of the Church, makes me sick. Get off your high horse. Your “we are God’s people” Covenant construct is as much a manipulation as this is.

So, my sincere apology to Joel, who is certainly a faithful and courageous witness. What angered me was not simply his failure to see or deal with similar errors on the Calvinist side of things, but the snide attitude of many Calvinists in the subsequent facebook comments. If freewill theology is a plank in the eye of the Arminian, then a repentance-free “Christian” identity is a plank in the eye of the Calvinist.

Where Elevation has fallen off one side of the horse, Joel, with the well-meaning “Baptism Is Not Enough” Covenant construct he supports has already fallen off the other. Both methods muddy the crystal clear qualification of “Christian” by encouraging and honoring what is merely “natural.”

My point was that forcing God’s hand through deceit and manipulation in either direction is wrong. I don’t know if Elevation is actually preaching a Gospel of repentance and faith amongst their cultic stuff, but if they are, and those who, though manipulated, actually repented and believed, their baptism still has the required “ingredients” and is still valid in God’s eyes, unlike any paedobaptism, which is as much a “perfectly logical” outcome of a self-righteous one-eyed Calvinism. I’m not excusing Elevation’s tactics, but their baptism still submits to Scripture in a way that no sprinkling ever did.

Billy Graham visited Australia in 1959 and preached to crowds which were skeptical and yet had a “Sunday School” upbringing. The responses were huge, and emotional, and yet this country has benefited from the ministry of the thousands who were converted at those events ever since. (Video ckip here) So you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We know John was a Baptist because he preached like one. Ha!

In all cases, a tree is known by its fruits. It’s time we stopped pitting planting/watering and the harvest against each other. That’s the real problem. Sprinklers just want to plant and water and fools like Elevation just want a harvest every week.

“So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” (Acts 2:41)

This verse is not an indication of a really busy day for the midwives. Your infant baptism was no more a work of God than an emotional manipulation is. Both are simply the work of men, at the will of a man.

Certainly, these are strong words, but I write them because I love baptism and hate to see it distorted into manipulation by either Arminians or Calvinists. As Christians, an exhortation to “remember your baptism” is a good one, but this begins with a baptism you can actually remember. If it doesn’t, then you are placing your confidence in something or someone other than the perfect work of Christ.

I’ll keep reading Joel’s books, articles and passionate opinion pieces. And I’ll try to keep calm. And both of us pale in comparison to the vitriol of Martin Luther.

“The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people.”

If you are going to baptize infants, it makes sense that you would also allow them to take Communion. Baptism brings one into the priesthood (through the Laver) to the court of God, and Communion is fellowship in the priestly kingdom. To unite the two is consistent—as consistent as the two pillars flanking the threshold of Solomon’s Temple.

The inclusion of children in Israel’s religious meals is used to support the practice. Some of those against it have asserted that these meals, even perhaps the Passover, did not include the children. James Jordan has a fascinating chapter entitled “Children and the Religious Meals of the Old Creation” in The Case for Covenant Communion. Where many Reformed writers (including some other authors in this book) get tied up in knots by the Reformers and their own traditions, Jordan’s perspective is always fresh because he looks first to the Bible, not for proof texts but for principles.

Jordan makes a clear case for the inclusion of children in the religious meals of the “old creation.” He lists a number of age specifications for various Israelite offices, and notes that there is no age specified for participation in the Passover meal. He concludes that if God had wanted to, he certainly could have specified a minimum age for participation.

So, children were included in Israel’s religious meals, most notably in the Passover. Since Israel was the Covenant people, then the children in the Christian Church should participate in Communion. Or should they?

The Circumcision of Israel

This sounds logical, of course, but it is the same logic by which one would expect a bruised, bloodied Jesus to wake up in the tomb, crawl out and stagger around with His burial clothes hanging off Him. Paedocommunion doesn’t speak of resurrection so much as resuscitation. And despite the truth concerning the meals of the Old Creation, dragging them into the New Creation, as I have said before, is akin to heaving the bloody Bronze Altar with its flesh and ashes inside the tent. Paedobaptism and paedocommunion are a call for God to accept the flesh.

Appealing to the Old Testament to interpret New Testament events is extremely helpful, but what if the New Testament event is itself a deliberate reinterpretation? Jesus did this all the time, and one of the most important is what He did at His last Passover, or more correctly, what He did to the last Passover.

What was Passover about? Circumcision and Passover were about redeeming Israel’s males from the barrenness of the womb, and the barrenness of the Land, curses upon the Covenant Head which can be traced back to Genesis 3.

What did Jesus do to Passover? He ended it. He ate the Passover with His disciples, and then the meal which spoke of cutting off history (leaven speaks of historical continuity), was itself cut off. There would be no more Passovers because it was only a shadow, and the day was about to dawn. In Jesus, all Israel had been redeemed and grown up. It was time for something new.

During the Passover, Jesus instituted a new meal. A symbolic meal, a “taste,” of risen bread and shared wine was taken out of the old meal. A new Israel was being established out of the corpse of the old one, not spiritually, not socially, not physically, but all three together. The combination of the priestly and kingly pillars in Solomon’s Temple invite the third pillar, the prophetic Shekinah, to indwell. The table of God is a place reserved for prophets.

Now, I could argue that since there were no children present, children cannot participate in Communion. But there were no women present either, and we know that women have always been allowed to take Communion. So there must be something deeper going on here.

Feed My Lambs?

“Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come…”

Tim Gallant, who also contributed to the book mentioned above, authored another book entitled Feed My Lambs: Why the Lord’s Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children. While I appreciate the pastoral heart behind the desires of these faithful men to see children raised in the knowledge of God, it seems to me they have missed the point of the Last Supper.

Firstly, the title of Tim’s book refers to Jesus’ threefold command to Peter after Peter’s threefold betrayal (John 21:15-17). But what was Jesus actually saying when He gave that commission to Peter? He was, as usual, taking Old Testament architecture and fulfilling it in the flesh as a human Tabernacle. From God’s Kitchen:

In Peter, Jesus takes the people of Israel from outside the tent of Moses to sit inside as priests and elders.

Peter warmed himself at a fire outside the house of the High Priest. Architecturally, he stood at the Bronze Altar. The Covenant Ethics are three tests, symbolized in the blood, the fire and the smoke—or flesh, eyes and life. When tested, Peter refused to identify himself with the Lamb.

Luke records that Jesus “looked” at Peter. Whenever Jesus “looks intently” in the Gospels, He is the Lampstand, the Law, the eyes of God, the watchman lifted up over Israel as sun, moon and stars. The lunar feasts were fast fading as the sun of righteousness arose. And the rooster heralded the dawn.

John records the dawning of a better day. This time the fire is not on the Land but by the Sea. The focus has shifted from the center of Israel to her borders with the wild nations. The resurrected Jesus invites Peter not to offer himself to death but to dine with One who has conquered death on his behalf. Architecturally, Peter has passed through the Laver—from death to life—to join Christ as an elder at the Altar of Incense.

Again, Peter is tested three times. Instead of Altar; Fire; Altar, it is Feed; Tend; Feed. In this way, Jesus deals compassionately with past failure and calls Peter to a better future (as He does with us every week at the Lord’s Table). But in Peter’s recommission, and in ours, there is a call to sacrificial life. There is a transfixing redness to the New Covenant dawn.

The “official” death-and-resurrection of Peter would be repeated in the Firstfruits Church. When Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, they both knew those sheep, like Peter, were being fattened for the altar.

Animal sacrifices were no longer acceptable now that Jesus had died and risen again.

But in Jesus, human ones were.

For whoever would save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and the gospel’s will save it. 
(Mark 8:35)

The reason there were only men at the Last Supper is because a new lamb was being selected for sacrifice: not only a head, but also a body. Following the Ascension Offering in Leviticus 1, the head would be offered first, and then the body would be washed and offered. Sharing in this feast with Jesus made these men members of the sacrificial lamb, that is, parts of its body. Jesus was the first human sacrifice which was acceptable to God. Because the Father accepted Him, as firstfruits, the full harvest, the body, was made acceptable also.

What I am saying here is that the disciples, through transformation into apostles, were human sacrifices. Just as Jesus’ death dealt with the serpent (the counterfeit head), their deaths dealt with the brood of vipers, the fiery serpents ruling Jerusalem (the counterfeit body). This is why there were not women and children present. Corporately speaking, the disciples were the “bones” of the Passover lamb which were not to be broken. They would form the structure of a new house, a new Tabernacle which was made entirely out of lambs. This was about the end of circumcision, which was not about children but about males.

After the resurrection, women are in the picture again, and in a big way. They are the first “witnesses” because the role of the Woman is the sacrifice of praise. After the serpent is felled, she sings and calls down the Covenant curses upon it. But once again, where are the children? Are they absent? No. But it is clear that the New Covenant is not about Jew and Gentile but about a new priesthood for all people. It is not about the cutting of flesh but about witness, about testimony, about telling what you have seen now that you have tasted death under the Law and your eyes have been opened. Having tasted death, as Jesus did for all men, innoculates one against death. It loses its sting. Baptism is for those who confess with their mouths that they are willing to lose their lives for Jesus’ sake and the Gospel’s. Baptism is an act of courage.

So Jesus’ commission to Peter after His resurrection was not to dole out bread and wine to infants. It was to fatten those who had taken up their crosses, to prepare them for the slaughter to come, through which they would bring down Jerusalem and then Rome—”every high thing which exalts itself against the knowledge of God.”

In the Law, a lamb does not speak of a young child but of a blameless son, like Jesus at His baptism. He was vindicated before His earthly father at age twelve and vindicated before His heavenly Father at age 30, ready for holy war. Baptism is not for babies or infants but for holy warriors, and there were no baby Nazirites (but there were women!). To make it so is to miss the point of union with Christ altogether, and make the New Covenant into something social, something carnal, a community according to the flesh. Paedobaptism is poison to the heart of the New Covenant.

To open baptism and Communion to infants is to take the Church back to the Old Covenant, the time of dark sayings and shadows. It is to say that Christ has not come in the flesh, and Christ is not risen from the dead, and this was exactly the motive behind the Herods’ years of glorious Passovers leading up to the destruction of their serpentine rulers, their women, and their children—the entire congregation was “circumcised.”

So, what about our children? We are holy members of the Lamb, bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh, but also Spirit of His Spirit. The Lord’s table is not for “feeding” infants the Gospel. Look at the picture above. It is a group of subversives planning to change the world by laying down their lives. The Lord’s Table is for dangerous people, and partaking in the Table is itself a public testimony. It is for living sacrifices, and our physical children, as with all those who hear and have not yet repented, feed upon us. We are the cut up, washed “members” of the lamb on the Altar. We mediate Jesus to them. Only the Gospel transforms the sons of men into the sons of God, and all the sons of God are sacrificial lambs who have willingly taken up the cross. The New Covenant body is a human sacrifice.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. (1 Corinthians 12:27)