Introduction

Have you ever noticed a mirror? I don’t mean have you ever noticed your reflection in a mirror; I mean, actually noticed the mirror itself.1

I have never once walked into a clothing store, passed by a mirror, and said to the passersby, “Wow! Look at this mirror! This thing is amazing! You can see yourself in it, the glass is immaculate, just take a look!” Most likely, what you really notice is the reflection in the mirror rather than the wonder of the glass. Mirrors were not created to draw attention to themselves but to what they are reflecting.

The story of mankind doesn’t begin with the fall in Genesis 3, but in Genesis 1-2, with the image of God. Theological liberalism wants to be free (or liberated) from any notion that man is inherently sinful. True freedom, says the modern liberal, is the ability to realize your own greatness, express your authentic self, and create your own reality; self-creation is the order of the day.

But true freedom is not ultimate self-determination or the ability to create your own reality (as the culture says), but to conform to reality as God created it. Such was the original righteousness of man in the garden.

The image of God in the beginning meant true, but changeable freedom. It meant that man’s mind was enlightened, being stocked with true knowledge of God, their affections (or loves) were well-ordered and oriented toward God, and their wills were unbound by anything that would hinder true conformity to His law. We were little mirrors displaying God’s glory.

A Broken Image: Man’s Sinfulness

Slightly different question: When do you notice a mirror? You notice the glass of the mirror when it is flawed. When there’s a smudge, a crack, or some kind of imperfection. Your eye becomes fixed on the glass and no longer on what it’s reflecting.

J. Gresham Machen describes Christianity as the “religion of a broken heart.” He is speaking of the reality of man’s sinfulness, their insatiable desire for self-glory, and their separation from the God who made them. He wrote: “…although Christianity does not end with the broken heart, it does begin with the broken heart; it begins with the consciousness of sin. Without the consciousness of sin, the whole of the gospel will seem to be an idle tale.”2

Mankind, after being created by God, fell from the scenic cliff of total perfection into the pungent, entangling swamp of sin. The mirror was irreparably shattered and marred. Genesis chapter 3 details the most horrific and dejecting event in human history. A mirror that once fulfilled its purpose by reflecting the image of its Creator has become a flawed image that draws attention to and exalts itself.

Even in our day, we see the exaltation of the self. God is the only One who can truly self-identify–“I AM who I AM,” He declares. However, many in the surrounding culture seek to self-identify and create their own reality rather than receive an identity that conforms to God’s design. Such is the outflow of the state of sin–the human will and personal autonomy become ultimate.

When a person acts, they do so by their deepest wants and desires, and those deepest desires are only explained by their true spiritual nature and the disposition of their heart, which is, of course, explained by the state of the image of God in that person, whether corrupted by sin or redeemed by grace.

Moral ability and therefore man’s will is inseparably united to the mind and affections of the heart; we cannot separate the will from the affections. The two are linked within the soul of man. This reality inevitably leads to an understanding of how the human will is enslaved and needs to be freed.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession helpfully sums this up:

Humanity, by falling into a state of sin, has completely lost all ability to choose any spiritual good that accompanies salvation. Thus, people in their natural state are absolutely opposed to spiritual good and dead in sin, so that they cannot convert themselves by their own strength or prepare themselves for conversion (9:3).

The Image of God & The Slavery of Sin

This may be an unpopular opinion, but ever since I was a kid, I’ve never been a fan of LEGO bricks. Now that I have kids of my own, I still don’t enjoy them. My 5-year-old son is incredibly creative and full of ideas, but I have to hold in all my impatience when a LEGO brick snaps off for the 114th time during the building process.

Recently, we built a rocketship together that took hours to build, and when I came home from work, he held up a shattered version of the rocketship. I could still identify it as some parts were intact, but it was not what it once was. But isn’t that just LEGO? $27.99 and 13 hours of my life for a shattered creation just 15 minutes later… (forgive me for venting)

This is what took place when mankind fell into a state of sin. The image of God can still be seen in part; it’s not totally lost, but it is a shattered image. The depravity of mankind does not reveal that man is as bad as they possibly could be. It means that they are as “bad off as they could be.” Pastor Jim Scott Orrick uses the illustration of a sponge. Imagine a sponge soaked in a bucket of vinegar.

You can take the sponge out, and it can be dripping with vinegar and just oozing with a foul stench. Or you can squeeze out as much of the vinegar as you want so that it’s no longer dripping, but no matter what, the vinegar touches every single centimeter of that sponge. You cannot fully rid the sponge of the vinegar. So too, the depth of man’s depravity runs to every aspect of body and soul; every part of man has been tainted and touched by sin, rendering them unable to respond to God positively.

Of course, we must acknowledge that non-believers—those who are not born again—can still do good things. Not every unregenerate person shows up in your life wearing a black cape and twirling a handlebar mustache. By God’s common grace, they can act with kindness toward others and do much good to benefit humanity.

However, there’s a difference between civic righteousness (good behavior that makes for good citizens) and spiritual righteousness, or good behavior that pleases God. Our corruption as humans is so deep that even the good things we do apart from Christ can be tainted with selfish motives, and that’s ultimately what God sees (1 Samuel 16:7).3

Thus, whoever is in the flesh, that is, the natural man, cannot do what is pleasing to God (Romans 8:8), for without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6). The health or nature of the fruit borne by a tree is always dependent upon the root. If the root is bad, the fruit is bad. Jesus teaches us this in Matthew 12:33-35, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (cf: Matthew 15:18-19; Luke 6:45).

This is why this doctrine has been called “total” depravity since the totality of man is corrupted. The three texts (among others) that highlight this doctrine are Genesis 3 and Romans 1-3.

Genesis 3

Man freely walked in moral perfection, with every response to God being only positive. God, being King over them, gave the command not to eat of the forbidden tree. They obeyed up to a point. But “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).

Romans 5 gives us divine commentary on this passage: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Romans 5:12–14). Sin “came into the world,” which means that all were made sinners; all men and women are born with inherent corruption.

Adam represented every human under his covenant with God (Hosea 6:7; Romans 5:18). He was our covenant head, the one who took upon himself the task of achieving life by personal, perfect, and perpetual obedience to the revealed will of God. Therefore, when Adam sinned, we sinned in him; his sin was imputed to us, and now all are made sinners by nature, condemned under that same covenant. The modern person likes to affirm, “Nobody’s perfect.” And that’s true. But our diagnosis is worse than that. We are not basically or inherently good. We are corrupt to the core of our being–death has spread, and we are all now “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). To what extent? How deep is our corruption?

Romans 1-3

Romans 1:18 states, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven…” God here is provoked to anger; He is revealing His divine wrath to mankind. For what? “...all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” God’s anger is not capricious. He’s provoked to wrath by unrighteousness and ungodliness. Their ungodliness is so deep that they have suppressed the truth–they cast plain truth behind their backs. What else? “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (Vs. 21). From suppressing the truth, to further darkening their hearts, to exchanging the glory of the invisible God for images to worship (Vs. 23), man has sunk into a sea of unrighteousness. The idol factory–man’s heart–is open for business, the conveyor belt daily bringing forth foreign objects of worship and adoration.

How does God manifest His anger? He gives them over. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves…” (Vs. 24) We see depravity manifesting in gross and awful ways even today, and this reveals that the shattering of the image of God, and therefore, sin, is not merely a force corrupting us from without; it is poison corrupting us from within. This evil can also manifest in self-righteousness.

Romans 2 deals now with the “moral” man or the outwardly “good” person. “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Vs 1). The bad news about “good” people is that the human heart is so corrupt that hypocrisy is a default. No amount of outward good can reverse the curse. God’s law doesn’t extend only to actions, but to the heart and mind.

Therefore, both the immoral gentile and the self-righteous Jew stand in the courtroom with this diagnosis: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12; Emphasis mine). Many miss Paul’s malediction: “No one seeks for God.”

This is how deep our corruption is–we went from only responding positively to God and His commands to now despising Him; we, by nature, do not want God. We want the opposite–we seek/love our own lusts and pleasures (1 Corinthians 2:14). Sin doesn’t just arise from our enemies “out there”; sin is an enemy within; perhaps to our bewilderment, we find that our greatest enemy is the self. The image of God is still present, but it is shattered and enslaved–man still has a will, but now it is a sinful will.

We as humans have been given a very bleak diagnosis. We are sinners to the core of our being from the time we are born. Man fell into a state of sin where their free power of choice was not lost completely but rather corrupted. They went from desiring only righteousness to desiring only evil every moment of every day–“evil” defined as preferring something else above God and not being concerned with His glory. Any action that does not have God’s glory as its chief end; any love that does not have God as its chief object; and any practice that does not have God’s law as its ultimate guide is ultimately evil.

God doesn’t look upon us as heaven-deserving people who are “basically good” in need of divine assistance, but as hell-deserving sinners where, since the fall, “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).

The Solution

As the storyline of Scripture progresses, we’re left wanting a specific solution: someone must come and be that perfect image.

Thankfully, Christ is that image.

The eternal Son of God, as He robes Himself in our nature, redeems humanity simply because He is that perfect human who shines as the perfect reflection of the Father’s lustrous character. It’s only necessary that the humans who took a hammer to God’s flawless image would need divine perfection to take on our humanity.

Jesus, then, shows what it truly means to be human. The reason is not only because He was sinless in His humanity, but because He is the last Adam who was not only the Son of God like Adam was (Luke 3:38), but He was “God with us,” the perfect image of God, the exact imprint of His nature.

Adam plunged us into a place where the curse of the law was upon us because he didn’t perfectly meet the standard. Christ perfectly met the standard of the law, then repaired the image of God in man by fulfilling the law in our place, becoming a curse for us, becoming broken on the Cross, and subjecting himself to the shattering brought about by the hands of the men He created.

As He was dying, He declared, “It is finished.” He satisfied the ultimate demands of God’s justice and absorbed the full weight of the wrath of God against sin. He took the blow. He paid what we owed. And as God raised Him from the dead, He accomplished for all time the redemption of all His people, offering hope, forgiveness, and eternal life which begins at the moment of faith in His Person.

Now anyone who trusts in the Son of God has passed from death to life since He has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). Now the saints stand and applaud as we sing, “Man of sorrows–what a name for the Son of God who came. Ruined sinners to reclaim; Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Conclusion

The fundamental flaw of liberalism and modern progressivism is that they are seeking to call the righteous to repentance rather than allowing the weight of the law to reveal the weight of their own sin and thus drive them to Christ for salvation. Yes, salvation. Salvation from sin—its penalty of eternal hell, its power that keeps people in bondage, and its indwelling presence which imprisons the soul forever.

Machen concludes:

The fundamental fault of the modern Church is that she is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance. Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the Church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin...Such is modern preaching. It is heard every Sunday in thousands of pulpits. But it is entirely futile. Even our Lord did not call the righteous to repentance, and probably we shall be no more successful than He.4

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In part 1, I introduced and explored how Liberal Theology presented the doctrine of God. Here in part 2, I will respond to the movement’s impersonation of God by showing how Theology Proper has been recognized by Biblical, historic, and orthodox Christianity in accordance with Holy Scripture and draw some concluding applications.

What is Historic, Biblical, and Orthodox Theology Proper?

It makes sense for Machen to be horrified at Liberal Theology’s God, as this “God” is “Very different [from] the living and holy God of the Bible and of Christian faith.”1 As we have seen in the previous points, Machen argues that Theological Liberalism opposes even thinking of the doctrine of God because “It is unnecessary, we are told, to have a ‘conception’ of God; theology, or the knowledge of God, it is said, is the death of religion; we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel His presence.”2

But unlike Liberal Theology, historic, orthodox, and biblical Christianity has always held that “the Christian gospel consists in an account of how God saved man, and before that gospel can be understood” rightly, we must rightly understand who and what God is in accordance with Holy Scripture.3 So how has the faith once for all delivered to the saints addressed the doctrine of God in contrast to the liberal counterparts?4

First, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God has revealed Himself implicitly through creation and providence and explicitly through His Word, especially Holy Scripture.5 Whereas Liberal Theology asserts that God can only be known through our subjective experiences, the whole Bible testifies not only to the entire cosmos as a witness to God but also to itself as being the written Word of God. In Psalm 19 and Romans 1, David and Paul both highlight that God’s glory, power, and other attributes are revealed through creation as general/natural revelation. We call this natural revelation because “it occurs through God’s ordinary works and is appropriated by ordinary human sense and reasoning.”6

Yet, unlike Liberal Theology, which fronts all knowability of God to our inner sense of dependence and feeling, there is an objective reality about who and what God is that is knowable through his speech, specifically through his written Word. God is not obligated to reveal himself to his creation, yet out of his own sheer will and purpose, he chose to make himself known by his speech. This special revelation has come in many forms—through words of prophets, his audible voice, and even the incarnate Son of God, the Word made flesh—but the one medium by which anyone can obtain access to it today is his written Word, the Holy Scriptures.7 From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is God’s written self-disclosure to us, not a mere record of human experiences with the divine.

David, later in Psalm 19, states that God’s law is Perfect and able to transform the human heart. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 declares that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” Wellum rightly concludes that “Scripture’s own self-testimony is that it is God’s word written by the agency of human authors.”8 Real Christianity, not Liberal Christianity, is built on the foundation that there is a God who not only exists but has spoken to us directly, clearly, and certainly, especially through his written Word.

Second, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is the transcendent Creator who is separate from, rules over, and works in creation. Wrongfully, many Liberal Theologians conflate God and creation to the point that the creation is part of God’s nature, but throughout Holy Scripture, we see that there is a clear distinction between the Creator God and creation. True, God is immanent in that “he is present with his creation. . . . God is active in the world even though he is not ‘in’ time and space or limited by them (Deut 4:39; 10:14-15; Josh 2:11; Isa 57:15; Eph 4:4-6).9

However, Theological Liberalism fails to reckon with the biblical reality of God’s transcendence in that “as Lord, he is exalted ‘above’ all things, eternal, independent, and self-existent.”10 Throughout the Bible, we see analogical language being used by the biblical authors to show that God is not bound by space, time, and matter because “he is distinct from the world as its Creator and Lord. . . . God is omnipresent and transcendent; thus, he is not limited by space or time.”11 The Bible declares boldly that there is none like him, as he is utterly unique and thus his nature is not dependent on or connected to creation, and therefore, Christians must reject any notion of Panentheism. As Bavinck summarizes, “From the very first moment, true religion distinguishes itself from all other religions by the fact that it construes the relation between God and the world, including man, as that between the Creator and his creature.”12

If the Bible clearly testifies to God being the independent Creator who sustains the cosmos by the word of his power (Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:3), that leads us to affirm . . .

Third, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is all his attributes according to himself and thus not dependent on creation, no less our preferences. If Liberal Theology is correct in seeing creation as part of or connected to God’s nature, then that means he can be coerced or manipulated not just by the universe but by us humans. But the testimony of Holy Scripture could not be clearer in stating how God is completely independent and free from anything else; in other words, Christians have historically affirmed the aseity or self-sufficiency of God.13

The psalmist declares that “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Ps. 115:3), and compared to idols made by human hands, God is not dependent on the creatures he has made, nor can he be swayed by their whims. As the late John Webster wrote, “God simply is, originally, authoritatively and incomparably, and no creature can say, as does God, ‘I am who I am’.”14

Therefore, unlike many liberal theologians who assert that God is mutable, Christians have historically affirmed the biblical realities of God’s simplicity, aseity, infinitude, eternality, immutability, impassibility, omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. This does not mean God is a perfect yet distant being, but it is because he is absolute in his nature that “It is a mark of God’s greatness that he can condescend to the level of his creatures and that, though transcendent, he can dwell immanently in all created beings. Without losing himself, God can give himself, and, while absolutely maintaining his immutability, he can enter into an infinite number of relations to his creatures.”15

Machen concurs^, stating, “he is immanent in the world not because He is identified with the world, but because He is the free creator and Upholder of it. Between the creature and the Creator a great gulf is fixed.” It is the LORD alone who never grows faint or weary and is the everlasting God who is the creator of all things (see Isa. 40), and therefore, we must reject Process Theology’s claims that God is developing or able to be manipulated, as “This robs God of his divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.”16 Furthermore, because God is perfect in his nature, there is no need for us to pit his attributes against each other, as all that is in God is God.

Whereas liberal theologians sought to minimize or reject wholesale God’s holiness and righteousness for the sake of emphasizing his love. But the God of the Bible is not divided or conflicted within. As Louis Berkhof states, “Scripture does not explicitly assert it, but implies it where it speaks of God as righteousness, truth, wisdom, light, life, love, and so on, and thus indicates that each of these properties, because of their absolute perfection, is identical with His Being.”17

Thus God is perfect not only in his love but also in his holiness, righteousness, and all his other moral attributes, and, therefore, not only must punish sin by pouring out wrath but also demonstrates his mercy and grace by sending his only begotten Son to die in the place of sinners (Rom. 3:21-26; 5:1-8). Which leads us to my final point.

Fourth, in light of Holy Scripture, Biblical, Orthodox Christianity believes that God is the Triune, Covenant LORD who is Father to those who are united/associated with his Son, Jesus the Christ, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Whereas Liberal Theology asserted a vague notion of the fatherhood of God leading towards universalism with no need for a crucified Savior, historic Christianity has affirmed from the Bible the reality of the Triune God who has not only revealed himself as creator but also as the redeemer of all who trust in Jesus Christ. Machen writes how contrary to a vague fatherhood:

The gospel itself refers to something different; the really distinctive New Testament teaching about the fatherhood of God concerns only those who have been brought into the household of faith. There is nothing narrow about such teaching; for the door of the household of faith is open wide to all. That door is the “new and living way” which Jesus opened by His blood. And if we really love our fellowmen, we shall not go about the world, with the liberal preacher, trying to make men satisfied with the coldness of a vague natural religion. But by the preaching of the gospel we shall invite them into the warmth and joy of the house of God.18

What makes the Christian gospel good news is that the Triune God gives himself to sinners who have rebelled against him. Wellum writes, “God’s one act of redemption is the Father redeeming by the sending of his Son and the Spirit, the Son redeeming by becoming the incarnate Mediator of his people by the Spirit, and the Spirit redeeming by applying the work of the Son to us to the praise and glory of the Father and the entire triune Godhead.”19

The Bible from the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament testifies to the reality that all humanity are sinners deserving condemnation before a Holy God, “but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-7). Sure, God is like a Father to all creation as the Creator, but the only ones who can call God “our Father” are those who have been purchased by Jesus Christ “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

According to Holy Scripture, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:4-7). Only those who have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ can experience God as their heavenly Father who demonstrates his love towards them through Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (Rom. 4:23-5:11).

Therefore, the end goal of salvation is not primarily the brotherhood of man and betterment of temporal life but God saving sinners from his wrath and making them into a new humanity that has been “brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man” (Eph. 2:13-15). The Church is the new creation of a people born again by the regenerating indwelling of the Holy Spirit through the reception of the Gospel of God’s grace that is received by faith in Christ alone (John 3; 2 Cor. 5:17; Tit. 3:3-7).

Application: Who is Truly Glorious, All-Satisfying, and Strong Enough to Save?

Much more can be explored, but I hope you have seen that Liberal Theology’s explanation of God does not match what Holy Scripture testifies and Christians have historically recognized. But why does getting the doctrine of God right matter so much? Sure, God is God and so we must rightly understand who he is, but getting the “God-ness” of God right is not to be treated as a mere intellectual exercise to get right on a theology quiz. Let me give three brief reasons why Theology Proper supremely matters.

First, the doctrine of God is a glory issue. What we have unpacked about the “liberalizing” of God’s nature shows how the God that theological liberalism presents to us is a being that is more like us. The God of the Bible is not a vague entity whose nature is linked with all existence, able to be manipulated by creation, and wants all humanity to just get along. God himself declares in Isaiah 45:5-7, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.” Holy Scripture unfolds for readers the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who is absolutely glorious in all that he is, undivided within, infinite in all his perfections, and sovereign over all creation. The god of Theological Liberalism cannot compare to the one, true, living Triune God and is thus not worthy of any ounce of worship.

Second, the doctrine of God is a joy issue. Liberal Theology’s version of God seems attractive because it makes God close to us and in tune with our experiences. But can this god whose nature is tied to our experience and vaguely knowable truly satisfy our hearts? The answer is “No” because Liberal Theology’s god is tied down to the human experience, not truly perfect in all attributes, and, therefore, not able to provide everlasting joy. But the God of the Bible is not dependent on his creation as if he needed anything (Acts 17:15), and being perfect in all that he is, he doesn’t grow faint or weary like us (Isa. 40:28).

Are you tired and weary from this life? Are you looking for true joy that will last forever? The “gods” of this world, including Liberal Theology’s, will never satisfy us nor be an everlasting comfort in life and in death.20 It is only the LORD God who “gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isa. 40: 29-31). It is only the God of the Bible who is all-sufficient in himself that can make known to us the path of life and provide us with fullness of joy and pleasures forever by us being in his presence (Ps. 16:11).

Third, the doctrine of God is a salvation issue. Later in Isaiah 45, the LORD declares, “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:22). Liberal Theology is not honest about the brutal reality that sin has marked not just all creation with brokenness but also all humanity as “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1), rebels against the infinitely holy, righteous God, which thus makes us all deserving of everlasting condemnation.

Conclusion

It is not enough to strive for a “brotherhood of man” under a general “Fatherhood of God,” when the God of the universe is truly all of his attributes and must punish sinners who make up all human societies. But Hallelujah to what Paul states in writing:

If we believe in a god that is more like us, as Liberal Theology presents God to be, we do not have a God who can save us to the uttermost, but a god who only empathizes with us and tells us to work harder to make the world a better place. But in ourselves, we can’t save ourselves, let alone all creation. Only the almighty, creator, Triune God can save those who have rebelled against him. If God is like us, then we are lost. If God is absolutely God, then we have good news because he alone can save those who can’t help themselves.

Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.

I Don’t Know the God You Worship

“You’re not Jim!” exclaimed Dwight Schrute after “Asian Jim” greets him at his desk. One of my favorite bits from the show The Office is the prank when Pam, Jim’s wife, has Steve, their actor friend, come and impersonate Jim while he is at the dentist. Because it’s so hilarious, I’ll let you watch it instead of me describing it.

If that wasn’t enough, in another prank, Jim himself impersonates Dwight from his outfit to his manners, to which Dwight famously yells, “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!” Roll the clip:

“Joseph,” you respond, “I thought this series you, Johnny, and Emily have worked on was about Christianity versus Liberal Theology, not a recap of The Office.” You are most correct, because did you notice a common pattern in both clips? In both pranks, the impersonators do a great job acting like their subjects, but obviously they are not the actual person. Just because Steve dressed, acted, and even knew key pieces of information like Jim, he is not Jim. Just because Jim procured the exact look for only $11 and perfectly acted his colleague’s mannerisms and speech patterns, he is not Dwight.

Here’s my point: The God of Liberal Theology may look, sound, and act like the God of the Bible, but it is truly not.

In the previous post, Johnny demonstrated clearly how Liberal Theology’s dismissal of doctrine as an essential category in the Christian life is self-destructive, as that “uproots the life of the disciple from objective facts about the person and work of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”1 But the testimony of Scripture shows that what one believes is the foundation for one’s life, and thus sound doctrine is essential for a truly healthy, Christian life. If that is the case, shouldn’t then what we believe about who God is and what he has done be of central importance for our Christian experience?

In other words, how we understand who God is will determine whether or not our worship is real.

In this two-part essay, I will introduce Theology Proper (the Doctrine/study of God) in two ways: the impersonation that Liberal Theology presents and the recognition of historic, orthodox, biblical Christianity in light of Holy Scripture. Much more can be written and researched, but my hope for this theological primer on the Doctrine of God is that you will see how one’s doctrine of God determines the rest of one’s theological framework and beliefs about other tenets of theology. Ultimately, I want you to see both how the God of Liberal Theology is not only false but also not one who is worthy of worship and how the God of the Bible, as recognized by the Church throughout the ages, is truly God and thus the one we ought to glorify and enjoy forever.2

Does Liberal Theology Have a Doctrine of God?

Before answering that question, let’s briefly summarize what Liberal Theology is. “The task of liberal theology was to reinterpret Christian belief within the cultural values and intellectual trends of modernism. It has two basic commitments. On the one hand, liberal theology explicitly embraces the rational and scientific assumptions of modernism. On the other hand, liberal theology retains allegiance to Christianity.”3

First, foundationally, Liberal Theology generally asserts that God is not directly known objectively through propositions and metaphysics but subjectively through experience. This sounds vague, but the major liberal theologians and scholars grounded their epistemology of God primarily on empirical and experiential factors, not on direct divine revelation. Although a variety of expressions exist among liberal proponents, Gregg Allison highlights that a classic example of Liberal Theology’s epistemology of God is typified by its father, Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Allison states that Schleiermacher located “God within the realm of human experience—indeed, within the human consciousness. According to Schleiermacher, religion is ‘a feeling of absolute dependence’ on the Geist, or world spirit that pervades everything. Thus, being in relationship with God comes through intuition one becomes self-consciously aware of being dependent on this universal being. It is not mediated, or passed on, through the Bible, the church, human morality, or religion but, ‘it is a universal element of life.’”4

In Schleiermacher’s own words, “This feeling of absolute dependence, in which our self-consciousness in general represents the finitude of our being (cf. § 8, 2), is therefore not an accidental element, or a thing which varies from person to person, but is a universal element of life; and the recognition of this fact entirely takes the place, for the system of doctrine, of all the so-called proofs of the existence of God.”5 This inner intuition within us, then, is what gives us a sense of God, and this results in us looking for divine revelation not from above/outside us but from within us.6 Thus, Liberal theologians in general held to a form of “Immanentism” which placed a heavy emphasis on divine immanence with creation—even to how they understood the nature of divine revelation.7 As Millard Erickson assessed, for Liberal Theology, the definition of revelation, for instance, became more generalized. In an extreme form, that of Schleiermacher, revelation is any instance of conscious insight.

Thus, the Bible is a book recording God’s revelations to humanity. As such, however, it is not unique; that is, it is not qualitatively different from other pieces of religious literature, or even literature that does not claim to be religious . . . Any truth, no matter where you find it, is divine truth.”8 In short, the Bible is not considered God’s inspired word but instead a collection of people’s experiences of God; the Bible itself cannot be regarded as inerrant.9

Second, Liberal Theology historically blurs the line between creator and creation. As seen in the previous point, theological liberalism emphasized that our knowledge of God comes from within our experience, and, logically, this affects how one understands the relationship between God and the universe. Erickson remarks, “The liberal . . . tends to have a single-story view of reality. There is no supernatural realm outside the natural realm. God is within nature rather than beyond or outside it.”10

Many would thus adopt a view called “Panentheism,” which is “the view that the world, or ‘all’ (pan), is ‘in’ (en) ‘God’ (theos), thus denying the Creator-creature distinction. ‘God’ is greater than the world but not distinct from it. Both God and the world are eternal and dependent on each other.”11 In Machen’s words, “In modern liberalism, on the other hand, this sharp distinction between God and the world is broken down, and the name ‘God’ is applied to the mighty world process itself. . . . God, therefore, it is said in effect, is not a person distinct from ourselves; on the contrary our life is a part of His.”12

A great example of this view would be Paul Tillich, who, although he viewed himself as being somewhere between liberal theology and Neo-Orthodox, held that “God is not a being, not even the highest of all beings; he is being itself, or the ground of being, the internal power or force that causes everything to exist. Thus, whereas all finite beings exist, God does not exist. While this may sound like a derogatory statement about God, it is not, but was intended as a compliment. When he said that God does not exist, Tillich meant that God does not merely exist—God is! Finite beings exist; God is, and is the basis of the existence of everything that exists.”13 Although somewhat different from Pantheism, where God and creation are the same, Panentheism still connects the universe to God’s nature, and thus he is affected by events occurring in it.14

This has massive implications which will be expanded later, but as Wellum summarizes, “God is not the transcendent, sovereign triune Creator and Lord. Instead, God is (“in”) the natural processes of evolution by which the world and history take shape as the one who ‘lures’ and ‘shapes’ the world by offering it various aims, but he cannot guarantee his will since he is incapable of unilateral and/or effectual agency, making him mutually dependent on the world.”15

Third, Liberal Theology remixes God’s attributes by interpreting them for modern sensibilities. When thinking about the “what-ness” or nature of God, liberal theologians have reinterpreted God’s nature in various ways.

First, due to many proponents of Liberal Theology’s affirmation of Panentheism, they understood God’s nature as prone to change along with creation, which is a rejection of the classical doctrine of God. As mentioned before, theological liberals held that the universe is part of God’s nature, and although they would say he is still “distinct” from creation, he is still affected or moved by whatever occurs in creation. One key manifestation of this comes as a system called Process Theology, which holds that God is “finite, mutable, less than omnipotent, and via his physical pole suffers alongside of his creatures.”16 Originating from the likes of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, this theology holds that God “should be thought of as fundamentally dynamic and developing, rather than static and fixed. Everything is growing and processing. Change, rather than fixed essences, characterizes reality.”17 Therefore, liberal theology rejected the classical formulation of God’s attributes—especially his incommunicable attributes—like simplicity (God’s nature is not made up of parts), aseity (self-sufficiency), infinity, immutability (unchanging), and impassibility (incoercible), since his nature is prone to change like his creation.18

Second, Liberal Theology overemphasizes the love of God to the detriment of other attributes, like holiness and righteousness.19 This elevation of God’s love over others that seems antithetical to it was common among liberal theologians, though they varied in how they conveyed it. Some, like Albrecht Ritschl, asserted that “the goodness of God, as the general presupposition of everything, is embraced in the specific attribute of the Divine Fatherhood; or, in other words, the truth that He has revealed Himself to the Christian community as love. There is no other conception of equal worth beside this which need be taken into account.”20 Allison remarks that for Ritschl, “any other attribute . . . that seems contrary to the divine love could not be real . . . . From the point of view of theology, therefore, no validity can be assigned to the idea of the wrath of God and his curse upon sinners.”21 C. H. Dodd would hold to a similar view in that he would state that God could not be wrathful against sinners but would deem his judgment as part of the moral fabric of the universe,22 but others like Albert Knudson would attempt to soften God’s wrath against sin by not getting rid of God’s holiness and righteousness but by having God’s love conquering over them.23 We can see from both the mutability of God’s nature and the confusion of God’s love over other attributes that Liberal Theology has not only remixed God’s incommunicable and communicable attributes but also rejected the horror of human sinfulness and thus the need for a savior from his wrath against sin. Which leads us to . . .

Fourth, Liberal Theology emphasizes the unifying “Fatherhood” of God over all creation, leading to universalism. Machen takes note of how many liberal preachers love to speak of God as “Father” in that they derive from Jesus’ teaching that God is father of all humanity and thus we should embrace the brotherhood of mankind.24

Machen comments:

“It is very strange how those who accept only the universal fatherhood of God as the sum and substance of religion can regard themselves as Christian or can appeal to Jesus of Nazareth. For the plain fact is that this modern doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God formed no part whatever of Jesus’ teaching.”25

It is true to say that God is the author of all life and being that he should be, as creator, called the “father of all,” but what liberal theology asserts to be the “essence of Christianity” is “at best only that vague natural religion” which rejects the necessity of the doctrines of sin, salvation, and atonement by the blood of Christ.26 As previously shown, Liberal Theology’s emphasis on God’s immanence and the conflation of God’s relationship with creation has led many liberal theologians to elevate the Fatherhood of God, thus downplaying the Bible’s description and assertion of the three persons of the Trinity. I will let Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley summarize several liberal proponents on their assessment of the Trinity:

For Friedrich Schleiermacher, the Trinity was not about a distinction of persons in one eternal God, but about how God unites himself with human life in our feelings and experience. Albrecht Ritschl rejected theology as a description of who God is and reduced faith to what God does in us. Adolf von Harnack accused Christianity’s theological system of being a Hellenistic philosophical imposition on the church. He replaced the classic doctrine of the Trinity with a universal affirmation of God’s fatherhood and a denial of Christ’s unique sonship—Jesus was just the most divine of God’s many children.27

If the whole point of the Christian faith is God’s universal fatherhood, then the goal of Liberal Christianity is not the salvation of sinners from the holy wrath of God but the betterment of all human society for the brotherhood of man. Therefore, Liberal Theology’s God does not provide an exclusive message of salvation, as there is no sin to be saved from and no wrath to reflect any holiness because he is only fatherly love.28

In part 2, I will respond to Liberal Theology’s presentation of God by showing how Theology Proper has been recognized by Biblical, historic, and orthodox Christianity in accordance with Holy Scripture and draw some concluding applications.

Author: Joseph Yu (B.A., Boyce College; M.Div., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been a member of Gospel Life Church in Sunrise, FL, since 2017. In his spare time, he writes on his blog, The “Yu”ng Theologian, where he aims to show that there is always hope for Christians and churches who want to be more infatuated with Jesus.

Introduction

“Keep your doctrine. Just give me Jesus.”

Perhaps we’ve heard it before: “Doctrine is not that important—what’s important is that we’re experiencing Jesus.”

In J. Gresham Machen’s (1881-1937) day, liberalism championed this teaching:

“Christianity is a life, not a doctrine.”

Leaving aside the doctrinal nature of this statement (!), is it true?

While it’s certainly true that one ought to avoid “cold orthodoxy, which is precise in doctrine but lacks heartfelt devotion,”1 liberalism takes it a step further and uproots the life of the disciple from objective facts about the person and work of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is a fatal mistake.

Let’s examine liberalism—then and now—its posture toward “doctrine,” and see the beautiful results when doctrine is taken seriously in the Christian life. As a garden without water or a car without fuel, the Christian life without doctrine will lack beauty and go nowhere fast.

Liberalism & Doctrine

Theological liberalism has essentially made three claims:

1. Christianity is a life, not a doctrine.

According to Machen, liberals in his day promoted the experience of Jesus, however that is achieved, as true Christianity, not the announcement of facts. If this sounds familiar, it’s because this still rears its head today in the form of Progressive Christianity, which has made its way into many modern evangelical churches.

Men like Phillip Gulley and Richard Rohr have restated this claim as follows: “Gracious behavior is more important than right belief.”2 People who are overly concerned with doctrine, argues Gulley, can be likened to the Pharisees in Jesus’ day. Their problem was their “fixation on orthodoxy” and their “misguided quest for theological purity.”3 Michael Kruger summarizes their accusation: “If you care about orthodoxy, you are probably just another Pharisee.”4

2. You can be a Christian without doctrine

In the mind of the liberal, doctrine ultimately doesn’t matter since it is only one expression of the divine in every age. In other words, orthodox Christianity is just a myth crafted by those who want to be exclusive and hold the corner on truth.

In the modern day, Progressive Christianity builds a slightly different structure with the same scaffolding or foundation. For instance, Tim Whitaker, with The New Evangelicals (along with many others)5, will emphasize doubt and uncertainty as key features of Christianity.6

What ensues is a flattening of various doctrines. No triage. No bucket reserved for essentials. Questioning the timing of the “rapture” can be granted equal standing with the truth of the resurrection, the deity of Jesus, or the inerrancy of Scripture.7 In Tim’s mind, there are no “essential doctrines,” and one cannot be certain what constitutes true-blue Christianity. It can be different in every age.8 Therefore, you can claim the name “Christian” and question or hold beliefs that depart from the apostolic witness since the beginning.

3. “Doctrine” emerges from the debates of the “subtleties” of the theologians.

Doctrine is not helpful, claims the liberal, but the fruit of worthless musing, hair-splitting, and the subtleties of theologians.

What are these “subtleties”? What causes scholars and pastors to get tied up in their theological underwear? The liberal would say the virgin birth of Jesus; the deity of Jesus; the resurrection of Jesus; the divine origins of the Bible. To get hung up on these things is to defend a defenseless cause and waste your time.

Thankfully, the Apostle Paul and Jesus firmly (yet graciously) push back.

Counterpunches from Paul… & Jesus

1. 1 Corinthians 15:3-6

Paul the Apostle, a man directly appointed by Jesus to speak on His behalf, declares to the church that he is passing on something “of first importance.” And what is it?

It’s a message. A doctrine: a teaching this church “received,” in which they “stand” and “are being saved.” Shockingly, after giving them sound Christ-focused ethics in the first 14 chapters, he starts this section by announcing historical facts that are even more foundational:

Look at how simple Paul makes the concept of “doctrine.” It’s merely the facts of history, followed by the meaning of those facts.

“Christ died”: This is history. “Christ died for our sins”: This is doctrine!9

As Machen confessed, without these two things together, according to Paul, there is no Christianity. If these facts aren’t, well, facts, we are the most to be pitied.

2. Galatians 1:6-9

In context, Paul is admonishing the believers to embrace the true gospel over against this other “gospel” that was being smuggled into the church—a gospel that says one can be justified by faith and works of the law.

But then Paul thunders the anathema:

Clearly for Paul, the gospel—the good news upon which Christianity is built—is not just “a life” but a teaching, one that can be polluted, denied, or verified at the expense of their eternal destiny. In Paul’s mind, the statement “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine” is an extraterrestrial intruder that should be unrecognizable to any true disciple of Jesus.

For Paul, and the primitive church, there was a bucket reserved for “essential beliefs” without which there is no Christianity.

“Yeah, but that’s Paul! We follow the teachings of Jesus.”

So be it:

1. Matthew 5-7 “The Sermon on the Mount”

This entire sermon by Jesus has been described as one big “do” message. It may seem that way on the surface, but upon closer examination, that line of reasoning fails.

Jesus has baked doctrine into the cake of the whole sermon. For example, notice the repeated refrain: “But I say unto you…” He says this after stating God’s law, not to nullify the law, but as if to clarify and say, “What I meant when I wrote that to Moses was this…”

Machen observed how liberals would not uphold Jesus as merely a “master teacher” if He was exalting Himself as supreme and authoritative as in the above refrain. To instruct someone in the Old Testament law is one thing. To declare “But I say unto you…” and announce the supremacy of His person is quite another. He’s not just a teacher; but God in the flesh Whose teaching is as authoritative as God’s law spoken from heaven and inscripturated for future readers.

Moreover, in Matthew 7:21-29, we don’t just see Jesus the good teacher or the wise sage; we see Him take the place of judge.

Machen directly commented on this text:

…have those who quote the passage so triumphantly in this way ever stopped to reflect upon the other side of the picture—upon the stupendous fact that in this same passage the eternal destinies of men are made dependent upon the word of Jesus? Jesus here represents Himself as seated on the judgment-seat of all the earth, separating whom He will forever from the bliss that is involved in being present with Him. Could anything be further removed than such a Jesus from the humble teacher of righteousness appealed to by modern liberalism? Clearly it is impossible to escape from theology, even in the chosen precincts of the Sermon on the Mount. A stupendous theology, with Jesus’ own Person at the centre of it, is the presupposition of the whole teaching.10

2. Mark 1:14-15

The evangelist here lets us in on Jesus’ first recorded words when He began his public ministry: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

Some may want to twist these words to speak of a subjective experience that involves expanding your mind and being transformed into a societal and cultural contrarian. Rather, Jesus is preaching about the inauguration of the long-awaited kingdom of God, which Israel would have been anticipating.

After being delivered from slavery and passing through the Red Sea, witnessing Yahweh’s rule over the floating Egyptians, the Israelites declared, “The LORD will reign forever and ever” (Exodus 15:18). Their declaration of Kingship was not a subjective experience of God reigning in their hearts; it was dependent upon a theologically pregnant, redemptive-historical act they had just witnessed.

Thus, when Jesus declares kingship, it’s dependent upon a fact that He has now arrived on the scene to offer a “gospel,” a royal announcement of “news.” “News,” by definition, is the announcement of facts or events, without which “experience” is baseless.

3. Mark 10:45

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Notice the word “for,” which serves as a ground for what came before. Christ reveals to His disciples what true greatness is: humbly serving others. What a good life to lead!

But what grounds the life?

A historical event—the Son of Man coming to serve and give His life as a ransom for man. No doctrine, no life of humble service.

Therefore, doctrine logically comes first, and experience flows from it, for better or for worse. The question is not whether doctrine is taking center stage, but what kind of doctrine has captivated your attention?

The Proper Place of Doctrine

As stated above, Christian Doctrine is simply the declaration of historical facts along with their meaning. It grounds the Apostle’s earliest message and the entirety of the Christian life. Machen wrote,

The narration of the facts is history; the narration of the facts with the meaning of the facts is doctrine. “Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried”—that is history. “He loved me and gave Himself for me”—that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church.11

The problem with today’s evangelical (and EXvangelical) culture may actually be the lack of theological precision or certainty, not the promotion of it. The objective facts of the person and work of Christ must not be accommodated to a post-Christian culture; they must be proclaimed and upheld as we allow them to fuel our Christian experience.

Modern progressives such as Tim Whitaker enjoy proclaiming their “EUREKA!” over others, telling them that certainty in doctrine is the crux of our problem. We should look back at Tim with tearful eyes and say, “Where else are we going to go? This Jesus, and Him alone, has the words of eternal life” (See John 6:68).

The statement, “Keep your doctrine, just give me Jesus,” is crippling the church because you cannot have one without the other. So dive in! Go deep! And, as you study the doctrines of Christ and His grace, Scripture and salvation, remember the proper place of doctrine.

Dr. Michael Horton describes doctrine and theology as the lights which brighten the runway for a plane. When a plane is landing, it doesn’t land on the lights. It lands on the runway.

Same with us. Doctrine guides our way so we land on Jesus; our great end is to worship, know, adore, experience, and savor Him. Thus, any hike up the path of doctrine that doesn’t lead to the scenic view of the Savior as revealed in Scripture is a superficial side quest.

Conclusion

Life and doctrine are inseparable, but order matters. So let’s adjust the liberal statement a bit: Christianity is a doctrine, then a life—Ah, that’s better.

Ironically, if someone says, “Keep your doctrine. I just want Jesus.” You immediately have to ask, “Who is Jesus?” The next words out of their mouths will be either false doctrine or sound doctrine, but doctrine nonetheless.12

It is unavoidable.

A Book for Our Times: (Re)Introducing J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937)

Enter stage right J. Gresham Machen (Pronounced: “GRE-sam MAY-chen”).

Born in Maryland on July 28, 1881, J. Gresham Machen was a theologian and apologist who encountered much controversy for boldly standing for truth. Many wince at the idea of controversy. But it’s been said that “Controversy and conflict bring clarity and conviction.” This was certainly true in the case of Machen.

Machen saw the rise of liberalism in his day, particularly within Princeton Theological Seminary and the denomination he ministered in, the Presbyterian Church (USA). After teaching at the seminary and becoming an ordained minister, he unknowingly entered the ring.

The year was 1915, and it was Machen’s first general assembly as a commissioner in the PCUSA. The so-called “Philadelphia Plan” proposed by the denomination sought to have union with other denominations using a creed that softened the core doctrines of the faith with imprecise language and maintained what Machen later called a “low visibility.” They sought to uphold traditional Christian terms but denied their historic definitions.

Machen opposed the plan. He (and his colleague, B.B. Warfield) argued that the creed advocated for unity at the expense of evangelical truth.

He was defrocked, but was unmoved by the attempts to silence him and so gave an address to the Chester Presbytery outside of Philadelphia. This address later became his most famous book entitled “Christianity and Liberalism.”

The most important part of the title was the word “and.” Think ham and cheese; fork and knife—the thesis is clear: Christianity is not liberalism. Or in the reverse: liberalism is not Christianity.

In this classic text, Machen argued that liberalism is not just a different version of the Christian faith, but an entirely different religion.

To do this, he surveyed the 5 core doctrines of the faith—the supremacy of God and the sinfulness of man, the infallibility of Scripture, the virgin birth (and deity) of Christ, the necessity of salvation, and the Biblical understanding of the church—and sought to reveal how liberalism has denied these tenets.

Liberalism, he argued, departed from the apostolic faith in favor of an anti-supernatural, moralistic, and therapeutic version of the faith that valued questions over answers and being “good” over being right.

And yet, this book is just as relevant today as when it was written; indeed, it “could have been written last Thursday.”1

Dr. David Briones presents a helpful summary and shows that, in his book,

Machen describes liberals who criticize Christians for defending a defenseless cause. It’s like defending the belief that the earth is flat, they say, or that miracles happen, or that sins need to be forgiven. “What’s the point?” asks the liberal. Everyone knows those things are impossible, so why bother defending them?

If that sounds familiar, it’s because we hear similar arguments from within the Church today. Many are calling for a reevaluation of Biblical views on sexual attraction, the sanctity of life, race, or even what it means to be a man or a woman.

Although the topics have changed, the motivation for liberalism or progressivism today isn’t all that different from that scathing critique of the Church Machen confronted 100 years ago. Back then, the American Church tried to compromise essential tenets of Orthodox Christianity to make it work… In the years after Machen’s book, Liberal Protestant Mainline Churches folded. Thousands made a shipwreck of their faith. Denominations split, and scores of ministries succumbed to theological compromise. So what should we do?2

It’s been over 100 years since Machen’s book defended the truth and over 500 years since the protestant reformation, when Luther stood for the truth. But in our day, we’ve (sadly) retained the name “protestant” while jettisoning “reformation.” The American church is a boat adrift from the dock of orthodoxy, its slow departure obscured by the thick fog of ecumenicism. Doctrinal minimalism, cloaked in the name of “unity,” has won the day.

Thus, Machen’s argument is still important for our times. In the spirit of Semper Reformanda (“always reforming”), I hope to keep it alive. Liberalism always rears its ugly head, just with a fresh coat of paint.

Dear Christian, understand something:

The task of defending true Christianity against liberalism will

not be finished until glory.

So what should we do? We don’t accommodate the gospel. We savor it, we proclaim it, and we fight for it. Thus, we must be equipped to engage with liberalism again and again to emerge on the other side clinging more closely to the unvarnished person of Jesus Christ. Unsurprisingly, you may have already engaged with liberalism without knowing it.

Liberalism: Beware!

How do you know Liberalism has come to town, your church, your small group? Here are snippets from the paper trail I picked up after engaging with the version that arose during the rise of modernity (and even newer iterations from someone like Phillip Gulley, who wrote “If the Church Were Christian,” which is the modern manifestation of Liberalism known as “Progressive Christianity”3):

• A master class in half-truths: What makes liberalism so dangerous is the half-truths that pervade its worldview (e.g., Jesus is a good moral example more than He is a God to be worshiped;4 Jesus might have risen again in history, but what truly matters is if He has risen again in your hearts5). They operate in “Low visibility”: using similar theological terms while holding a different dictionary.

• Prizing uncertainty: Knowing anything with certainty oppresses the doubter, they claim. Yet, that in itself is a claim of certainty. Moreover, in the modern repackaging of Liberalism, teachers have no issue speaking with great certainty regarding morals they deem essential, like accepting homosexual lifestyles.

• “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine”: Machen saw this as a top-tier issue for this whole discussion—a downplaying of doctrine due to a rejection of the authority and inerrancy of the Scriptures. And therefore…

• Moralism: Its good news centers on a horizontal-only vision of doing good and displaying “love,” yet achieving it requires doing more and trying harder. This is an adventure in collapsing the law into the gospel (“go-law-spel”)—a gospel that enslaves rather than liberates; one that damns rather than saves.

• Poisoning the well: What’s difficult about reading and listening to folks such as Tim Whitaker from the “New Evangelicals” or Brandon Robertson, or Phillip Gulley is that they poison the well of orthodox Christianity, making their audience predisposed to reject it before even engaging our arguments. It’s important to push past this as you seek to engage with their content and know why you believe what you believe.6

To summarize all of this in the words of Richard Neibur, liberalism exchanges the apostolic faith, the fundamental message of Scripture, for a message about a “God without wrath trying to bring man without sin into a kingdom without judgement through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”7

I’m all for Christians seeking to avoid a rank combativeness—Christians being known more for what we are against rather than what we are for—but controversy and conflict can also be a means of bringing clarity and conviction, so we ought not to shy away when they come.

The Way Forward

Over the next few weeks, I will be partnering with friends and fellow writers from (slightly) different church traditions to publish a series of essays in honor of Machen and to defend the historic faith against liberalism.

We will seek to cover a few of the topics in Christianity and Liberalism with contributions from my friends (Southern Baptist) and (Anglican).

Like Machen’s ultimate goal, ours is not to merely take down liberalism or “own the libs.” It is salvation through Jesus Christ; our goal is to propagate the only message that can save sinners from eternal death.

In the Spirit of Jude 3, 2 Peter 2, and 2 Timothy 2:24-26, we will contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints, while correcting our “opponents with gentleness” so that

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3

Progressive Christianity uses the same scaffolding as classic Liberalism but builds a slightly different structure. Put another way, same drywall, different coat of paint. Here’s my definition of Progressive Christianity: “Progressive Christianity is a contemporary form of theological liberalism with a distinct emphasis on the liberal doctrine of man and salvation. Though claiming to begin with the authority of Scriptural revelation, it rather begins with grounding human identity and moral authority in the autonomous self, leading it to revise Christian doctrine and morality to be in line with prevailing societal and political norms.” To test my conclusion, read one manifesto from a Progressive person here:

The Jesus Movement

What is Progressive Christianity?

A lot of people ask me about my Christianity. As an out gay man living in Brooklyn, many are surprised to hear me talk about my church, or are taken aback when I say I can’t grab a drink on Thursday night because I have Bible Study…

Read more

2 years ago · 72 likes · Andrew Springer

Introduction

One morning, when my family and I lived in San Diego, I was at Birdrock Coffee Roasters. It was a typical workday out of the office—headphones in, laptop out, quietly typing up my sermon.

Background noise of conversations and coffee grinders hummed faintly underneath the music playing in my ears. As I clicked and clacked away, a woman’s voice pierced through:

“…you know, the biblical Jesus is different than the historical Jesus.”

My eyebrows shot to the top of my forehead.

I sought to save myself from whiplash, forcing my head to stay as straight as possible. But I shifted my gaze ever so slightly to the right, where two women sat across from each other, coffee in hand, leaning forward, engaged in a riveting conversation about religion.

I stealthily reached for the top of my keyboard and muted my music.

(Don’t judge me…)

As I listened, one woman began to explain the supposed “difference” between the historical Jesus and the Biblical Jesus.

The Biblical Jesus in her mind is the Jesus who is intolerant, bigoted, and rigid, as incarnated by many of His followers. But the historical Jesus would have affirmed: “love is love.” He would have been for women’s rights and LGBTQ+ ideology. She wanted to make sure it was known: the real Jesus is the one who embodies all of the current cultural narratives, not the Jesus found in the Bible.

In other words, an ancient book doesn’t have to define Jesus for us; we need to look at the facts of “history” and not be so narrow as to think only one set of people gets “Jesus” right. Furthermore, it’s not only the individual on the street who posits these revisions.

One may think of Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, James Talarico, who brings to the table a different “kind of Christianity.” J. David Goodman wrote recently in the New York Times, “Are Texans ready for Talarico’s kind of Christianity?”1

What kind is this? It is theological liberalism with the crisp wrapping paper of “Progressivism.”2

After listening to a few sermons from Talarico (More like political pep talks with a side-order of Christianese), it’s easy to find that authority over morality has been located outside of the Bible, following Jesus’ example takes precedence over worshiping Him as God, and God’s definition of sin and man’s sinfulness are being rejected. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Theological Liberalism.

This ideology tends to creep back into the church in every generation, often with new packaging. But what we are seeing displayed in the high ranks of politics all the way down into the coffee shop is not just a kind or variation of Christianity, but something else entirely.

Tracing American Liberalism: How did we get here?

Surprisingly, the term “Liberal” or “liberalism”3 is not meant to be a swear word or a cheap shot to pull the plug on productive conversations. It is a tradition, with its own heroes, truth claims, and “ecclesiastical vision.”4

The timespan in view is 1880-1920. As the period of the Enlightenment progressed and Darwin washed ashore, a view of human progress—rooted in German soil—began to blossom. German higher criticism was a movement that sought to approach the Bible using critical methods. By the use of reason and a posture of anti-supernaturalism, one can approach the Bible’s claims to divinity and authority with an enormous amount of suspicion.

The underlying worldview was what is known as “Modernism” or “Modernity.” Much can be said about modernism, but the chief claim slowly dripping into universities, books, and scholarship was the idea of human progress predicated on man’s potential or inherent goodness. Sure, they would say, there is evil in the world, but it does not spring from bad people, but bad structures and institutions. With the right education and the reordering of bad structures, we can achieve a new phase of human progress.5

The English author and “father of science fiction,” H.G. Wells, even declared that we have turned a new page in history. Because of man’s goodness, we don’t need the Bible or any kind of atonement from Jesus. It’s nice to have Jesus as a good moral example, but we certainly don’t need him.

The seed of this kind of thinking was planted further back, even in religious literature. To summarize, we went “From Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who argued that the essence of true religion is a feeling of absolute dependence, to Albert Ritschl (1822-1889), who emphasized the kingdom of God as moral progress, to Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) who insisted that the development of doctrine marked the abandonment of true Christianity, to Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) who advocated the social gospel of deeds over creeds…”6 to Rudolf Bultmann who propagated the idea that the New Testament was simply a mythological retelling of the life of Jesus, giving rise to the claim, “the biblical Jesus is different than the historical Jesus.”

And in the face of Modernism’s main conclusion, namely, we don’t need God, these arguments seemed appealing and enabled those who claimed Christianity to accommodate and conserve some semblance of the Christian witness.

In America, this all came to a head in the famous sermon by Harry Emerson Fosdick preached in New York City in 1920 entitled, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” In this sermon, Fosdick took each of the essential beliefs of historic Christianity (The innerrancy of Scripture, the resurrection, the virgin birth, etc., you know, doctrines held by “fundamentalists”), and essentially advocated for maintaining the title “Christian” while modifying what we believe about each of them.

What looked like “modifying” or equivocating was actually a disguise for full denial. If modern philosophers and a modernist society are going to listen to the church, they thought, then we need to accommodate and innovate. Thus, said Fosdick triumphantly, we will not let the fundamentalists win!

This is why Stephen Nichols7 defined the liberal movement as,

In the next post, we’ll see the next player to enter the game that turned the tide on Liberalism in America. A whirlwind came to Philadelphia through a certain book you never knew you needed.

Stay tuned.

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Enjoy chapter five of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Reformed.”

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Enjoy chapter four of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Deformed.”

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Growing up, our nightly bedtime routine was fixed and rarely ever changed. One thing my mom and dad incorporated was Scripture memory. No system. No rigorous repetitions. No flash cards. They just read a passage to me until we all remembered it over time. But one we spent a significant amount of time on was Proverbs 3:5-6.

This was my very first memory verse. I don’t remember much from my early childhood, but I do remember this. Therefore, like a friend I haven’t seen in a while, this verse will seem to be distant but then pay me a visit at just the right time. In every season of my life, it makes inroads into my thoughts:

As I grew up and sat with my own musings, I treated this verse like a mere formula for decision-making or “finding God’s will.”

“I don’t know what college to attend! Okay, okay. I just gotta trust the Lord with ALL my heart (check), lean NOT on my own understanding (check)… Viola! The heavens will open up, a divine Apple Maps pin will drop, and I will know what decision to make!”

But upon further reading, the passage is so powerful because of what it shows us about the character of an infinite God.

Trust in the LORD (Yahweh) with all your heart…

What does this line teach us about God other than that He indeed can be trusted? What a striking statement from the Biblical author! It’s a command, not a suggestion. But why such confidence?

The capital “LORD” is the transliteration of the word Adonai, which the Jewish writers would substitute for the divine name YHWH (Or Yahweh). Yahweh (or I AM) is the special covenant name of God. It was the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush that was rife with redemptive underpinnings.

Moses asked for the name of the God who would send him to Pharaoh, whom he would audaciously command to let God’s people go. “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’ And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” (Exodus 3:14). God giving Moses His own name in this way suggests His self-sufficiency, self-existence (aseity), and faithfulness.

Do you see how this would be comforting to Moses while being commissioned to lead thousands of people out of slavery to the greatest earthly superpower with the greatest earthly leader, Pharaoh? Moses is thinking, “Who is this God who will go with me to Pharaoh?” Answer: The one who is—the infinite source of all life and being, the one who sustains and gives life to everyone and everything, including the big mean Pharaoh! Moses had the creator of all the universe on His side. You would almost feel bad for poor Pharaoh, for what created being is even remotely as strong as the great I AM?

Not only is the divine name a cause for God’s trustworthiness, but He acts in accordance with that name by fulfilling every one of His promises. Throughout Israel’s history, they were used to reading, “Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:45).

For disciples of Jesus, this is even more comforting. As we read of promises, prophecies, and prefigurings of a messiah and deliverer who would come to crush the serpent’s head, we stand on their fulfillment.

“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him [Jesus]. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory” (2 Co 1:20–21).

Because God the Son came to us and provided infinite hope as the long-awaited prophet, priest, and king who died and rose again for the guilty, what else can we say in light of this? Trust in the LORD with all your heart. It’s the only logical conclusion.

Lean not on your own understanding…

What does this teach us about God other than that, in light of our weak and flawed understanding, He is the God of infinite understanding, wisdom, and knowledge?

God is the God whose greatness is unsearchable since His understanding is unsearchable (Psalm 145:3; Isaiah 40:28). In other words, his understanding is far above us. Our understanding has limits. His is utterly limitless.

God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are His thoughts above our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).

In Christ, we have the storehouse of infinite wisdom since He is wisdom incarnate. Paul tells us that in Christ lie all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).

Let me ask: why on earth would I lean on my own understanding? Why would there be any trust in my finite mind to understand God and life under the sun? Leaning on my understanding is like using a twig as my walking stick as I traverse the highest peaks—It’s going to break, and I’m going to fall. Thus, I go to the place where God has chosen to reveal His divine mind that I may think His thoughts after Him; I run to the inerrant Scriptures.

In all your ways acknowledge Him…

What does this teach us about God other than that He is worthy of our attention?

In all of our ways—every decision, every season of life, every twist and turn—we tend to acknowledge other opinions, stock our minds with worldly advice, and absorb what is seen.

The call to acknowledge God in all our ways is a call to fruitful contemplation of what is unseen:

Facing temptation? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His power over sin.

Facing a tough decision? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His wisdom and providence.

Facing difficult people? Turn your attention to God. Contemplate His love for you, a difficult person.

We tend to acknowledge everything on earth before the One who reigns for all eternity. Rather, in all your ways, acknowledge Him. Remember Him. Contemplate Him. He’s worthy of your attention.

He will make straight your paths.

This is where we mistakenly take the turn toward formula. If I do all the above, boom, God will just tell me my next step in life… right?

Well, actually, the immediate context does not speak of decision-making or finding God’s hidden will. Solomon is instructing his “son” in the good commandments of God. He desires for God’s “steadfast love and faithfulness” to never forsake him but rather be written on the tablet of his heart.

He’s essentially trying to shine a beam of light on a straight path in the midst of dark, crooked paths covered with thorns and thistles. God makes straight a path no matter what we face—it’s the way of His commandments. Trusting God with all our hearts in this context is the idea that, when all your senses see are crooked paths, faith sees the straight path in the midst of them.

Proverbs 3:5-6: A formula for finding God’s will? Unlikely. An antidote for anxiety in various circumstances? Absolutely.

For instance, that temptation smacking you in the face is seeking to bring you into a crooked path. But acknowledging God’s commandments in light of the trustworthiness of Christ carves the straight way of escape, helping you “fear the LORD and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7).

That trial may be a cause for despair, but acknowledging the Lord Jesus who blazed the trail of suffering before you enables you to walk the straight path of submitting to His sovereignty (1 Peter 2:23).

That season of joy and celebration may bring with it the temptation to live independent of God. But acknowledging God will provide the straight path of continued dependence on Him, whose kindness cooled you down in the pool of joy while surrounded by the deserts of sorrow.

In all these things, therefore, the straight path that God makes for us is the straight path of His commandments. They guide us to enjoy Him when our hearts would rather wallow in sorrow and drown out the screams of our circumstances that seek to woo us onto the path of self-dependence.

“My son grew up in church, but now he needs to make his faith his own.”

“Look, I know your parents are Christians, but you can’t rely on their faith; you have to make their faith your own.”

Have you heard this sentiment? Parents, youth leaders, and pastors often say things like this to convey that every young person must personally place his or her faith in Christ or take initiative in spiritual matters.

If that’s all people mean, I agree theologically. But language matters, and I fear that this catchphrase has unintended effects: It perpetuates unbiblical ideas about the nature of salvation, appropriates the individualism of our culture, and promotes a subtle kind of legalism.

Salvation Belongs to the Lord

Strictly speaking, this language of making your faith your own isn’t biblical. The Bible’s testimony is that repentance is granted (2 Tim. 2:25), a new birth is necessary to see the kingdom (John 3:3), and this new birth comes from the will of God, not man (1:12–13). Additionally, faith is a gracious gift of God through Jesus (Eph. 2:8–9), the founder and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2); indeed, “salvation belongs to the LORD!” (Jonah 2:9).

The only place in Scripture we find language similar to “make your faith your own” is Philippians 3. Paul reflects on his former life in Judaism and explains that he’s no longer devoted to seeking righteousness by the law. His aim is to know Christ and experience the power of his resurrection. Paul says, “I press on to make it my own” (v. 12)—“it” being the knowledge of Christ and future resurrection (vv. 10–11).

Paul’s wording points to our participation in sanctification, not salvation. And even for sanctification, “make it your own” isn’t the consistent language of Scripture.

When we describe faith (and therefore, initial salvation) as something a child must take ownership of, the emphasis unintentionally shifts from receiving to producing. It takes the focus off what God has done and places it on what the child needs to do. In this way, a youth leader, pastor, or parent may inadvertently convey that the child contributes something to the process of salvation.

Discipleship Happens in Community

The idea of making your faith your own also evokes a distinctly American, Disneyesque individualism. Our culture pushes the narrative of the “self-made woman/man.” However, other people’s influence in our lives is real and powerful, and when it comes to the Christian life, that’s exactly what God intended.

Paul’s reflection on how Timothy’s faith was influenced by his mother is instructive for us:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. . . . Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Tim. 1:5; 3:14–15)

Paul doesn’t commend Timothy for making his faith his own; he highlights how God used Eunice’s faithfulness in teaching Timothy the Word to bring Timothy to saving faith and develop his firm belief.

Similarly, I can look back and say I became a believer because of my parents (e.g., regular Scripture reading, praying with me nightly even into adulthood, regularly rehearsing the gospel with me). I wasn’t pursuing faith like a person stranded in the desert looking for water. Rather, the Lord used my parents’ faithful discipleship. We ought not to minimize the channels through which gospel seed is dispensed, and discipleship is cultivated, whether that’s through teaching from the pulpit or in the living room.

When we do, we risk misguiding not only children but also parents. When parents come to believe that their children need to make their faith their own, it can loosen the parents’ sense of responsibility for the ordinary work of discipleship.

The Bible teaches that seeds of faith can be planted and grown through means of teaching, modeling, and retelling God’s wondrous works—especially in the home (Deut. 6:6–7; Ps. 78:5–7; 2 Tim. 1:5; 3:14–15).

Christ Fulfilled the Law

I grew up thinking that to make my faith my own meant I had to forsake some sin before I could genuinely embrace Christ. Or perhaps I needed to prepare myself for conversion through manifesting enough emotion or an inner willingness to forsake all else. I felt I could have peace with God only when my performance was up to snuff.

While it’s right to call children and teens to forsake their sin, telling them to make their faith their own may create confusion about the relationship between the law and the gospel. The weight of the law is meant to drive our children to Christ, who perfectly fulfilled its requirements. Christ alone, received with the empty hands of faith, grants us his righteousness and then transforms our hearts.

Rather than calling kids to make their faith their own, let’s call them to respond to Christ, the author and finisher of their faith (Heb. 12:2). Once they find refuge in the comforts of the gospel, we can point them to the law as their guide and “kind advisor.”

Better Way

We rightly desire to see children in our homes and churches “work out [their] own salvation” (Phil. 2:12), and it’s good for us to encourage them to actively seek the Lord. But we need to be thoughtful in how we talk to them about it. And we need to talk to the Lord about it regularly. I’ve found these two prayers helpful.

First, for kids who have professed faith, I pray that their faith would be tested and nourished to full maturity. That’s how Peter speaks: “that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7; emphasis added).

Second, if they’re not regenerated, I pray that Christ will make them his own. Our kids can then rightly pursue, by the Spirit, growth in knowledge of Christ and conformity to his image, as Paul pursued it: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3:12; emphasis added).

No, our kids don’t need to make their faith their own, but we can pray that Christ’s truth prevails over unbelief and possesses their hearts, resulting in the knowledge of Christ coming to full flower.

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Enjoy chapter three of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Formed.”

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Enjoy chapter two of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Free but Dependent.” Chapter one is below if you missed it:

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Enjoy chapter one of The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, entitled “Who is Most Free?”

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I hope you enjoy this audio recording of the introduction to my latest book, The Freed Will: Reforming Our Understanding of Free Will, which is made available for FREE today. All subsequent chapters will be behind a paywall.

If you enjoyed today’s chapter, consider becoming a paid subscriber!1 If you upgrade your subscription, you can receive this entire audiobook for as little as $5/month, as opposed to the $15 for the physical book on Amazon (Pick up a physical copy here!). You can simply unsubscribe whenever you’d like or after you finish the audiobook. Additionally, a paid subscription will give you constant access to the audiobook to use as you see fit, and will encourage me to keep on writing!

Either way, I pray this book encourages you and causes you to enjoy Christ more deeply.

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Why the recent attention? Of course, it’s not just recently, but the nation-state of Israel seems to be a topic of conversation in every generation. And particularly for Christians in 21st-century America, this brings up questions like: Is Israel central to God’s prophetic and redemptive plan? Should Christians behave differently towards Israel than any other nation? Are there two distinct plans for Israel and the church? What is covenant theology? Is it replacement theology? Is replacement theology a real thing, or are Christians being warned about a bogeyman that doesn’t exist?

But I think at the heart of all these questions is this one: Will God be faithful to His promises and His people?

I had the privilege of interviewing Pastor Chris Gordon of Escondido United Reformed Church on the importance of Israel, the Church, and Covenant Theology. If you ever wondered who God’s chosen people truly are, this conversation is for you!

Feel free to listen/watch on Spotify and YouTube!

Also, feel free to listen/watch on Spotify and YouTube!

Welcome back to Theology Thursday!

Here is your bite-sized lesson in orthodox biblical doctrine in 3 simple steps:

ONE concept explained

TWO concise definitions that must be kept distinct

THREE Scripture passages to meditate on

Concept: God’s Covenant

When speaking of the Christian religion, we often emphasize a “relationship” with God. Do we realize what we’re saying? Think about it. How does that happen exactly? Last I checked, no creature can see Him and live to tell the tale, let alone dwell with Him. In the first verse of the Bible, we’re struck with an infinite gap. How can we know that we have a relationship or communion with the King of Creation? If the gap between creatures and the Creator looms large, what guarantees His promises to us, or any meaningful relationship, for that matter? The Bible answers this with one word: Covenant.

Covenant Theology teaches two things: 1) how God enters into a relationship with mankind, and 2) an interpretive framework (hermeneutic) that unites the entire story of Scripture, which details God’s relationship with man through the man Christ Jesus. A Covenant speaks of an agreement, a sworn oath, or a promise between two parties. When made by God, they are sovereignly imposed, congeal with “you will/I will” statements, are secured by divine sanctions or threats to ensure unbreakability, and are typically accompanied by physical signs (Rainbow, sacrifice, circumcision, baptism, communion, etc.). Most importantly, they reveal God’s faithfulness. The word "covenant” should point you to a God who never ceases to fulfill His oaths or promises to His people, though His people continually break theirs. What God says, He will do, and our relationship with Him, therefore, will be unbreakable.

Definitions/Distinctions:

Overarching Covenants: The Bible’s own superstructure or system for interpreting the whole redemptive story, which climaxes in Christ. More clearly taught in Paul’s letters, redemptive history can be categorized under the three overarching covenants: the Covenant of Works, the Covenant of Grace, and the Covenant of Redemption. These covenants span the entire Bible and help us conceptualize the unfolding plan of redemption through the other Biblical covenants.1

Historical Covenants: The covenants laid out explicitly in Scripture between God and various covenant heads or representatives. These include the covenants made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and King David. These covenants serve to preserve the line of promise that brought us our Messiah, and unfold the one covenant of grace secured by the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

Passages:

“When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.’ Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, ‘Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations…’”

Genesis 17:1–4

“Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of [the] promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”

Ephesians 2:11–12 (Emphasis mine)2

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

Romans 5:12–17 (Emphasis mine)3

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*CORRECTION in the podcast: The Hebrew scholar who teaches at Westminster Theological Seminary is Jonathan GIBSON, not Jonathan Leeman.

I rehearse with my kids (almost) daily (especially when they seek to be sovereign over our home) that God is in charge of everything. Most agree with that statement. Christians often declare in hard situations, “God is in control!” But how far does his control extend? How pervasive is His care over His world? Is He in control of the natural and fleshly evil in my life? This is where many followers of Jesus start to squirm.

Thomas Boston once wrote, “Happy is the people whose God the Lord is: for all things shall work together for their good. They may sit secure in exercising faith upon God, come what will (193).”

How did he get to such a confident conclusion?

Boston Looks Back

Looking back at Boston’s life and the regular afflictions he would undergo, observe what he views as the source of his lot: “And here began more remarkably my bearing of the yoke of trial and affliction, the which lay on in my youth, has, in the wise disposal of holy providence…”

When reflecting on his mother’s death, he says, “…it pleased the Lord to remove my mother by death” (16).

When reflecting on his father’s recovery, he writes, “But it pleased the Lord that I was comforted in the recovery of my father sometime after” (16).

When he gets his first job working alongside a notary and hones his writing skills, he writes, “The favourable design of providence therein, then unknown to me, I now see, since it could not be but of some use to help me to the style of papers” (17).

Upon graduating from a school of theology, his deepest desire was to be licensed to preach through the Presbytery of Stirling, but “Considering the course of Providence,” he ended up being licensed to preach as an itinerate minister through the Presbytery of Dunse and Churnside, the place of his nativity (30).

Looking back on the first three major points of his life, from his birth to grammar school, grammar school to graduation, graduation to being licensed to preach, he summed up his life by saying,

“And looking on myself as a child of providence, and considering the manner of my education, I cannot but observe the kind conduct of that providence in carrying me through sundry states of life, and parts of the country, in that short time allotted for me, in the character of a student” (31–32).

He spoke of providence personified, comparing it to a father who raised and shaped him. This is precisely what Thomas Boston believed about his life—he was the product of the sovereign hand of God. Nothing, thought Boston, came about in His life apart from the Fatherly, meticulous providence of the author of all creation.

Boston’s Beliefs

As the sun rises, birds begin their songs as they fly over roofs, gardens, and trees. Have you ever seen one of them overtaxed over what they will eat? God’s constant care for them ensures they are not deprived of daily sustenance. Boston draws our attention to this as he opens his section on God’s Providence, commenting on the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29).

Boston comments,

“Sparrows are of a mean price and small value; and yet, for as mean as they are, God preserves them, guides and disposes of all things concerning them, so that one of them cannot fall to the ground by shot or any other way, without his sovereign ordering and disposal” (186).

He seeks to expound this doctrine from the scriptures and masterfully weaves together four aspects of God’s providence: Its reality, its object, its actions, its properties, and its everyday fruit.

To highlight only three aspects, we’ll look at how he understood its reality, its actions, and its fruit in everyday life.

The Reality of God’s Meticulous Providence

Boston takes an interesting turn to prove that there is a providence. After quoting very general Scriptural statements about God’s kingship and sovereignty (Psalm 103:19; Acts 17:28; Ephesians 1:11), he writes that providence can be seen in a “three-fold scripture-emblem.”

That three-fold emblem is first, Mount Moriah, “which upon occasion of the miraculous preservation of Isaac, and a ram to be put in his room in order to be sacrificed, was called Jehovah Jireh, i.e.. The Lord will provide, (Gen. 22:14)”

Second, “Jacob’s ladder, on which God appears managing all things, (Gen. 28).”

Third, “Ezekiel’s wheels, where there was a wheel in the middle of a wheel, denoting the agency of the first cause, and the superintending and directing providence of God, (Ezek. 1)” (186)

As a helpful and simple way to introduce this topic, Boston draws upon both kinds of God’s revelation, namely, God’s wisely ordered creation and the numerous fulfilled prophecies that would not have happened unless God’s meticulous providence was true. This leads to the actions that God takes in providence.

The Actions of God’s Meticulous Providence

This coin has two sides: Upholding (sustaining) and governing. Boston helps us sum up Providence with those two words alone.

God sustains all things. As the author of Hebrews puts it: “…He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb 1:3). Boston notes, “This act of providence is so necessary, that nothing could subsist one moment without it” (188).

Here, most Christians find themselves resting in a comfortable place. It’s with the next action of Providence that most take issue: God doesn’t merely sustain all of creation and, therefore, all of history, but He governs it; He exercises control, seeing to it that end from the beginning becomes what it becomes (Isaiah 46:10). Here we find that distinction between God’s decree and His providence. God’s decree is the reality that everything that comes to pass in history originates in God as the primary cause of all things. He unchangeably and infallibly planned everything that came to pass or will come to pass. On the other hand, Providence is God’s execution of the decree; God’s decree is the blueprint, and providence is the building project.

Boston shows how this arises from the text of Scripture. We see not only God’s providence throughout history and over big events like the cross of Christ (Isaiah 46:10; Acts 4:27-28) but over small and seemingly insignificant chance circumstances: “Prov. 21:1 ‘The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will, Prov. 16:33 ‘The lot is cast into the lap: but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.’ Chap. 16:9 ‘A man’s heart deviseth his way; but the Lord directeth his steps’” (188).

A king’s heart, the outcome of a lot being cast (like the casting of dice), and man’s plans—at the end of the day, God is the one steering all of these things for His glorious ends.

As Boston quipped,

“God does not make man as the carpenter doth the ship, which afterwards sails without him; but he rules and guides him, sitting at the helm, to direct and order all his motions: so that whatever men do, they do nothing without him: not only in their good actions, where he gives grace, and excites it, working in them both to will and to do of his good pleasure: but also in their evil actions, wherein they are under the hand of Providence, but in a very different manner” (189; emphasis mine).

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