Questions & Answers #11

Q: What does the Bible say about the role of visual arts in worship?

The Bible indicates that visual arts have a historical role in worship, as God commanded them in the tabernacle and temple. Throughout Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, God commanded the use of visual arts for His tabernacle and temple, illustrating its importance in worship. For example, the intricate designs of the temple and tabernacle highlight the value of beauty in the service of God. Therefore, the visual arts can communicate significant truths about God and serve to enhance worship. Artists in the church can contribute meaningfully by expressing the beauty of God’s truth through their work, as long as it directs attention to Him rather than becoming an object of worship.

Q: How do we hate the world in our daily life as Christians?

Hating the world involves complete self-denial and living in obedience to Christ and His Word. To 'hate the world' as Christians means to abandon our own agendas, ambitions, and desires in favor of following Christ’s will. This self-denial is a daily commitment to submit to God's Word and walk in obedience to it. It is about prioritizing God's will above our own, recognizing that living out our faith may call for endurance through trials and hardships. As we embrace this self-denial, we are reminded that true joy and fulfillment come from living lives that reflect Christ's love and truth to the world around us.

Q: Why is the concept of definite atonement important in Reformed theology?

Definite atonement emphasizes that Christ's death was effective for the elect, securing their salvation. Definite atonement, also known as particular redemption, is a key concept in Reformed theology that asserts Christ's atonement was intentionally designed for the elect. Unlike the idea of a merely potential atonement, which implies Christ died without a guarantee that any will be saved, definite atonement affirms that His sacrifice effectively secures the salvation of those He has chosen. This doctrine underscores the sovereignty of God in salvation and reinforces that Jesus' sacrificial work is both purposeful and effective, providing profound assurance to believers that their salvation is secure in Christ.

Q: How does the New Perspective on Paul differ from traditional Reformed views?

The New Perspective on Paul challenges traditional interpretations of justification and the law in relation to faith. The New Perspective on Paul presents an alternative understanding of justification that differs significantly from historic Reformed views. It often emphasizes communal rather than individual aspects of salvation and interprets Paul's references to 'works of the law' in a context that critiques ethnic boundaries rather than questions the basis of individual salvation. Traditional Reformed theology upholds justification by faith alone through grace, centering on the individual's relationship with Christ. In contrast, proponents of the New Perspective may reframe this relationship, suggesting that communal dimensions and covenant faithfulness are equally crucial. This divergence challenges the Reformed emphasis on personal faith and grace as the sole means of gaining righteousness before God.

When Sinclair Ferguson quotes
Sam's, is he talking about 1 Samuel or 2 Samuel? Sam's is how David said it. So that's all you care to say?
Certainly not. It's like Isaiah. which is how
Attic Little said it. Okay, well, I think people have
been helped. You've answered that question very specifically.
R.C., first question to you. Dr. Sproul spoke eloquently about
the need for the church to return to proclaiming beauty along with
truth and goodness. As an artist, my question is,
what is the role of the visual artist and the visual arts in
the church? Can we only proclaim beauty through
music and preaching in worship? The role of the visual arts.
Well, if, you know, every year at St. Andrews we have a Sunday
that's called Ligonier Sunday. It's the Sunday that follows
this conference because we have a whole lot of folks who stay
afterwards and come out and join us for worship. And one of the
things that will often surprise people is the artwork that adorns
St. Andrew's church, and there are
those from the Reformed community that are often shocked by that.
Bob Godfrey near St. Andrews. And I'm theologically
very much at home with the Puritans, of course, but I completely disagree
with their view of art. As I said yesterday, every form
is an art form, and every art form communicates something.
And so try to banish art, the visual arts. from a building
or from a sanctuary in the first place is impossible. And so the
question you want to ask is, what kind of message do you want
your forms to communicate? And I think historically there
is a significant role and a place in the church for the visual
arts. And I pointed out yesterday how
if a person objects in principle to the use of visual art in the
sanctuary, then they have to object to what God Himself explicitly
commanded for His tabernacle and for His temple in the Old
Testament, where He not only allowed the visual arts to be
adorning His tabernacle, but He commanded it. Could you foresee a church having
a visual artist in residence, such as they would have a music
director? SPROUL JR.: : Well, our church
has a conservatory of music connected with the church. And yes, I see
nothing wrong with an artist in residence, that sort of thing.
In fact, the artwork that we have, and apart from the stained
glass window, but the paintings that we have at St. Andrews were
painted by Richard Saron, who has been acclaimed as the greatest
religious artist of the twentieth century. He is an American, he
paints out of Florence in Italy, he uses the style of the Italian
Renaissance, mixes his own paints, his own glazes, all that sort
of thing. He just follows the classical tradition of religious
art, borrowing scenes from the New Testament, which I think
are terrific. There's an argument that the
stained glass is the only visual art form that the Christian church
actually invented or pioneered, which is kind of interesting
in our history and tradition. You know, that's one of the things
that Reformers, by the way, when they inherited their churches, There was kind of an iconoclasm
in many circles where they would remove a lot of the statuary
and icons and all of that out of the churches that had been
Roman Catholic. and tried to make their sanctuaries plain.
One of the things that often remained intact were the stained
glass windows. One of the most beautiful rose
windows I've ever seen is at St. Giles. I don't know if that was there
before Knox or not. I'd have to speak to this guy. Sam. Second Sam. What do you
think, Sam? It's there. On what? Was it before
or after? Anybody else want to jump on
that at all? Any other rebuttal? You're raising your eyebrows
there, Sam. Okay, it looks like you won the
day. Okay, Bob. I was going to be polite,
but well, I certainly would agree with R.C. to the point that we
as Protestants have frequently not given much thought to the
visual beauty of the church, and there have been some among
us who have seem to imply that sort of the uglier the church
was architecturally, the more faithful we had been. And in
that sense, we certainly would want to stand for beauty. I think the focal question is
whether the deity ought to be represented either in the incarnate
state or the pre-incarnate state in visual arts. And I would stand
with the Reformed Puritan tradition on that and say no, the deity
neither incarnate or pre-incarnate ought to be represented in art,
which is not to say there's no place for Christian artists and
artworks in all sorts of circumstances and conditions, but that particular
issue in terms of the church is where I would think we ought
not to go. Based on the second commandment?
Right, right. And I could argue as well, based
on the tradition of the ancient church, there was no visual representation
of Christ or of the Godhead used in worship for at least the first
three or four centuries of the church. Assuming they didn't
worship ever in the catacombs. He replied. Well, the characteristic
witness of the fathers is that there ought not to be any visual
representation of Christ except the Eucharist. That's what Eusebius
of Caesarea said when he was asked for a picture of Christ.
If I could throw something in here, when the Bishop of Marseilles
tore down some images that were in his church, or in a church
under his authority, Gregory the Great wrote him a letter
admonishing him, and he praised him for prohibiting the worship
of these images, and chided him for having destroyed them. And
although I believe that distinction is a good one and we all know
how to make it when we're dealing with the Jesus movie, which is
objectionable on other grounds. We have a problem because we
know that we're not supposed to worship this image, but if
you see this image over and over and over again, you can say,
oh, that's Jesus. And especially if you're in a
primitive tribe and this is the gospel, when you come to worship
God through Jesus Christ, what comes to mind when you say, in
Jesus' name, amen? It's interesting to me that evangelicals
have taken over Gregory the Great's argument and said we should have
the images but just not worship them. So what I would like to
argue is that I think R.C. is exactly right. that visual
imagery is inescapable. It's not whether we will have
it, it's whether it's going to be good or bad. I believe that
that includes representation of biblical stories and so forth. But we have to be aware of a
thousand years of a bad habit that grew up in the Christian
church that had direct ramifications, direct connection to the second
commandment. it's easy for us to drift into
idolatry. So, I believe that we should
pursue visually rich environments while being wary in our best
Puritan behavior to avoid anything that people might use as they
come to God in a devotional way in order to pray or worship.
So, I would side with the Bishop of Marseilles and say, you know,
things that are getting worshipped, get them out of the church so
that people aren't stumbled. And if the person's worshipping
something that it's a personal problem and not a stumbling block
that the church has set up, then you teach and admonish. All right, our pre-conference
seminar was on worship and different forms of worship, and then you
spoke to this directly last night, so I'm sure that's what stimulated
the question. Why don't we move ahead? You've
kind of drawn out the lines of debate there for us on that issue.
John MacArthur, a number of questions. How do we hate the world in our
daily life? How do you live out self-suicide
on a daily basis? What does it look like in an
ordinary life? Well, I think if you just follow
the verse Jesus said, let a man deny himself, take up his cross
daily, and follow Me. The negative side, of course,
is that we abandon all our own agenda, our own will, our own
hopes, ambitions. We submit everything to Christ,
and that means we walk in perfect obedience to Him. And I think
that takes us to the Word of God. Living a life of self-denial,
living a life that disdains the world is simply living a life
of absolute obedience to the Word of God, worshiping in spirit
and in truth, reflected in obedience to what the Word of God reveals
as God's will. I don't think it's anything particularly
mystical, and I don't think it's sort of endless self-abasement
or artificial means such as, you know, monkish practices might
indicate. I just think it's living a life
of complete obedience and submission. and living life joyfully within
the unfolding providences of God so that we count it all joy,
even we fall into various trials knowing that God's purpose for
these things is our spiritual development. I think it was the
term self-suicide that probably… that was used in a number of
the questions because that's such a jarring term and wondered
if you had some particular, you know, No, I used it to try to
get people's attention. Somewhere during the message,
you have to inject certain things to get their attention, and so
four or five times you try to say something that would do that.
But I know it's a jarring statement. That's why I used it. But I mean,
it's a jarring statement in our culture, a culture literally
fed on self-love to even talk about self-denial. But we're
so used to self-love, self-esteem, everything being fulfillment
for us, that I wanted to go completely in the opposite direction. It's
really the end of you, self-suicide. I mean, I'm done. I'm finished.
I bow my knee completely to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. I abandon
myself to whatever His purposes are. The value of the salvation
He provides for me causes me to be willing to literally abandon
everything. That's essentially what I think
Jesus was saying. And I think that's what Paul did, I mean,
obviously. And that's what he conveyed to others when he said
to Timothy, don't be ashamed of the Lord. You've suffered
hardship along with me as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. All
that live godly in this present age will suffer persecution.
He was saying to Timothy, this is the price, this is the cost.
You knew it from the beginning, you know, be strong in the Lord.
So your response is more of a positive sense of trying to obey as carefully
as you possibly can. It's not just endless self-abasement. It's not that. submission. It's humble humility, of course,
is the key thing in understanding it. It's humbling myself in full
submission, which is a daily commitment in my heart to be
obedient to the revealed Word of God and to respond rightly
to the unfolding of His providences. Okay. Good clarification. Anybody
want to jump in on that? Feel free if anybody wants to
follow up or or help one of your brothers out? Yeah, I think,
you know, picking up what John said this morning, and also what
Doug was saying at the end of his message, that resurrection
lies on the other side of death. And, you know, we so associate
the death and resurrection of Christ with the kind of foundation
stone of the Christian life, but the New Testament sees it
not simply as the foundation stone, but the ongoing pattern.
returning to church architecture, you know, for centuries the church
built its buildings in the shape of a cross in order to make precisely
that point that not just the foundation of the gospel lies
in the death and resurrection of Christ, but the shape of the
church and the shape of the individual life is an ongoing outworking
of union with Christ in His death and resurrection. And I think
that's the point John is really making, that the death is with
a view to the resurrection. And the kind of thing Paul says
in Colossians 3, that because we're united to Christ, crucified,
buried, raised, exalted, reigning, coming again. The implication
of belonging to such a Christ is that since we belong to the
crucified one, we put to death the things of the flesh. Because
we belong to the resurrected one, we positively put on the
characteristics of the new life, the fruit of the Spirit, and
so on. And that is just a… that's a perpetual cycle of the Christian
life. As it is, and I think Doug was
making this point with great point this morning, that the
fruitfulness of the church always lies on the other side of the
church's sharing in the death of Christ. Like Calvin says in
commentary on 1 Peter, from the beginning God has shaped the
church so that death would be the way to life and crucifixion
the way to victory. And in both of these messages
earlier on today, that is a point that was being hammered home
in different ways. And I think, you know, reflecting
on what I was saying earlier on, it is the thing from which
the devil Most wants to keep us back, and that is embracing
Christ as He is crucified and risen in such a way that we'll
bear in our bodies the marks of the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that we'll glory in the cross by which the world is crucified
to us and we are crucified to the world, that we are in union
with Christ and we yet live. Yet, no longer we who live, but
Christ living in us. So this is a holistic pattern
in the New Testament for Christian living. Sproul, Jr. It's a central
theme. We're baptized, and as a baptized person, I identify
with the death as well as with the resurrection of Christ. And
the Apostle tells us repeatedly, unless we're willing to identify
with the humiliation, we will not participate in the exaltation.
unless we identify with the suffering of Christ, you know, those sufferings
that Paul himself says, I fill up that which is lacking in the
afflictions of Christ, not as if there were anything lacking
in merit of Christ's affliction, but his church is called to participate
in this. We identify, and the Christian
life is a throwaway life in a very real way. And it gets down to
it, Luther, let goods and kindred go. I mean, I don't know how
many times I have to say that to myself because I like to hang
on to my goods, and I certainly want to hold on to my friends
and my family and my life. But always, you know, I hear
the other side of that, that we have to let it go for the
sake of the cross. Just a thought, too. I think
there's two aspects to it. The first is my willing submission
to that which is revealed in Scripture as the will of God
for me, my eager submission to live a life by the power of the
Spirit of God that submits to the biblical standard. And then
secondly, to take what comes providentially through my life
by the good hand of God, no matter what it is, and respond righteously
and godly so that He can do in me the perfecting work that He
wants to do and receive the full glory for that work, even though
there's pain in that. I mean, there are some things
I know to do in the Scripture and I plan to do those, and I
desire to do those. There are things that hit me
blind that tear up my world and shatter my life, and there is
another opportunity for a holy response that yields again all
that I am, all that I have, everybody that's dear to me, everything
that matters to me, if need be, to His perfecting work, which
I couldn't have anticipated. Okay. Let's move to Bob, I think. Bob,
you haven't been one of the speakers, but The early reviews are coming
in on the After Darkness Light book, and I just took a quick
glance here, and I think this is your chapter actually, so
it's good that you're here. It appears that limited atonement
has become definite atonement in After Darkness Light. Is this
a distinction or merely a name change to make the point more
universal? Actually, that wasn't my chapter.
I'll just answer the question. I think it is a name change that tries to communicate in a slightly
more gentle manner, but also in a slightly more specific manner,
what the Calvinist point is. Our chief concern is not to say
that the atonement is limited. although that's true, our chief
concern is to say that the atonement is definitive and effective for
those for whom it was offered. And so I think to try to prevent
a lack of understanding on the part of many that we simply want
to say some are in or some are out and ha, ha, ha almost. The
language of definite atonement wants to focus on, as I said,
the definitiveness and effectiveness of the death of Christ for his
own people. So I think it is in part a rhetorical
change to try to make the truth more understandable and also
maybe a little easier to accept on an initial basis. I still
think it's fine to talk about limited atonement. I usually
do characteristically when I'm with people who understand what
we're talking about. But I think there are a lot of
people for whom limited atonement sounds initially off-putting.
Why are we putting limits on what Christ did? And what we're
trying to really do is saying, no, Christ did something definite,
something effective, and hence the tendency to change language. SPROUL JR.: : It has to do with
the design. What was God's purpose? Did God
send Christ to make salvation possible? You know? And the idea being that Christ
could have gone to the cross to no avail, but there's no way
in the world that the eternal plan of God was that indefinite. but rather He sent His Son to
save, to atone, and it's a real atonement, and it really saves. And it saves all who believe. It saves all of the elect and
so on. It definitely does it. It's not just a possibility where
then God steps back like open theism, you know, and is a spectator
and is wringing His hand and says, gee, I hope somebody takes
advantage of this. Everybody but universalists believe
in a limited atonement. The question is, who put the
limit on it? And it's either man or God, and I think the Scripture
is absolutely explicit that it could only be God. It just occurred
to me that this will be the first book over your name that you
had absolutely nothing to do with, and you'll be answering
questions about a book that you had no interest in. I'm totally
innocent of that, and yet I've been signing it until my hand's
falling off. Probably the first one you've
signed that you haven't read, too. That's a big assumption, Paul.
I read that book last night. Oh, you had it last night. And
I know that he wrote it on unconditional election, not on definite atonement. All right. Well, good. Doug,
you stimulated probably the most questions. And with John here,
that's quite an honor I think your opening comments
about the desire for some fact-checkers in evangelicalism has probably
stimulated a number of questions saying, would you like to explain
the controversy over the new perspective on justification? Well, there's…actually, that's
part of the difficulty with this. There is one a theological perspective,
it's called the New Perspective on Paul. There are liberal adherents
of it, there are comparatively conservative adherents of it,
men like N.T. Wright, who to American evangelical
eyes, Reformed eyes, looks like he's over there with the liberals,
but over in England he's a flaming conservative and is thought of
as dangerously right-wing. So you've got this vast theological
school called The New Perspective on Paul, which is one thing. And then there was the controversy
a number of decades ago at Westminster East involving Norman Shepard,
whose book, The Call of Grace, was just released in the last
year or so by PNR. The charges that were leveled
as a result of the Auburn Avenue Conference in 2002, in the summer
following, and then the Auburn Avenue Conference in 2003 was,
sort of, stirred the pot even more. The charges that were leveled
at me and three other speakers were just simply wildly inaccurate
in terms of what we were saying, why we were saying it, what we
were trying to get across. And the erroneous and the crowning
error of this was the pronouncement of error and heresy and so forth
that was leveled, didn't just say that we were wrong in these
areas, but it also pronounced where we had gotten all the errors
from, which was just simply ludicrous. If you know the backgrounds and
the history all of this. In my book, Reformed Is Not Enough,
there's an appendix where I attack the new perspective on Paul,
and I was accused of having been an adherent of the new perspective
on Paul, and I'm critiquing it. I don't think it's I don't think
it holds water. I don't think that everything
about it is wrong, but the things that are right about it are things
that biblical theologians have known outside that camp for some
time. So it was just simply erroneous. The bottom line for people, and
this is my comment on fact-checking, all of this was done without
ever contacting me or my office or anybody connected to us to
say, is this what you hold? Is this what you believe? And
if that had happened, I would have said, no, I don't believe
this, I don't believe this, I don't believe this. There was one list of charges
that the new perspective on Paul was erroneous in 18 different
significant ways. And I was charged and my friends
of having gotten this bad whiskey from N.T. Wright and these other
people. And I wrote back and said, out
of your 18 condemnations of the new perspective on Paul, I agreed
completely with 15 of them. Would you please tell me which
three I don't agree with? Well, there's no answer. It was
just, I think, the height of irresponsibility to get to that
level of the discussion without checking, without making sure
that you've got your facts right. Now, I think that there are important
theological issues to be debated and discussed and worked through,
and I'm not trying to do the Rodney King thing, why can't
we all just get along, we're all saying the same thing. I
don't think that's necessarily true, but I do believe that in
particular sectors of the American Reformed community, we've gotten
awfully provincial and we don't understand how broad and deep
the Reformed tradition actually is. And I'm not talking about
the liberals and the people who are watering down the faith.
I'm simply talking about people who believe the Bible and believe
the solas and understand and are confessional Reformed believers. So that's the short answer. Sinclair, if Satan is defeated
and also then the kingdom of darkness, how do we understand
John 1430, I will not speak much more with you for the ruler of
the world is coming and he has nothing in me. There are kind of two bits to
that question, really. Let me deal with the text. Jesus is with the disciples in
the upper room. As I exegete what happens in
the upper room, just at the point where Jesus then says, rise,
let us go, He actually uses language that implies something like,
rise, let us go to meet the enemy. And my understanding of what
he is saying in 14, 30, and 31 is that he is now, he is stepping
outside of the fellowship of the disciples, where he has been
teaching them about the Trinity into the context of, if I can
borrow a C.S. Lewisism, the last battle, a
battle he is going to engage in entirely on his own. And the
focus of that battle, he is saying, essentially, is not with Pontius
Pilate or with Annas and Caiaphas or with Judas Iscariot. The focus
of that battle is, as he says in the Synoptics, with the powers
of darkness, because this is their hour. And he is conscious
that in all the dimensions of the cross, There is a central
dimension of the cross in which He is engaging with the promise
of Genesis 3.15, and that aspect of that promise that focuses
not simply on what will happen between the two seeds of the
woman and the serpent, but what will happen in an individual
conflict that will take place with Satan himself. And what
he's focusing his attention on is the work that he's going to
do in the cross and the resurrection. And as he reflects on that from
John 12, about 30, right through to the cry, it is complete or
it is finished, there is a steady stream of reflection on Jesus'
part. on the fact that what He is going
to do on the cross is engage in a final battle in which He's
going to be victorious. And so He's able to speak about
the cross as the event in which He is lifted up through which
all men, and He's presumably there speaking as it were beyond
the limitations of the Jews within the context of John's gospel,
and through that event all men are going to be drawn to Him.
Now, I personally would relate that to the kind of thing he
says that the prince of this world is going to be cast out,
to the aspect of John's vision in Revelation 20 that this is
the event in which Satan is bound, to the notion that Jesus uses
in the synoptics or the synoptics accord to Jesus that if you're
going to set free the prisoners, you first of all got to bind
the strong man armed. And this is a very important
dimension of the cross to which we characteristically do not
give the attention that is merited by it in the New Testament itself. Colossians 2, you get it in Ephesians
1. I mean, really when you start
looking for it, it's all over the New Testament. Anybody else
want to add to it? Okay. That was specifically to
one of your quotes in your message this morning. Doug, let's back
up around this way. You referred to America as an
empire. Is this an allegory or metaphor
or are you in agreement with those like Noam Chomsky and his
critique of the American industrial military complex? Please explain. I'm in agreement with Noam Chomsky
on nothing. Let's put it this way, at the
height of the British Empire, which was an empire in the old-fashioned
sense where you had India was part of the British colonies,
formal colonies, and rulers that you established and so forth.
I'm not saying that we're an empire in that sense, but I believe
that we're accomplishing the same thing by other means with
a great deal of more finesse. The British Empire, at the height
of her power, had the two powers rule, where they wanted to have
enough firepower where they could take on any combination of the
second-tier powers. If two of the second-tier powers
banded together, they would be able to take them. The United
States firepower currently outguns the next 20 nations combined. So the next 20 nations could
put all their armies and navies and everything together and we
have a formidable enough force to take them on. This military muscle that has
continued on after the fall of the Berlin Wall has continued
for a reason. I believe that economic empires
are comparatively more benign than totalitarian or ideological
empires. When the commies wanted to take
over, they wanted to, you know, kill me or take me off to the
gulag and take all my stuff. In the American empire, they
just want to sell me a Windows upgrade. And I'm happy to talk with him
and so forth. And that economic free trade
and that sort of thing is comparatively more benign in that sense. But
it's not benign in the sense of spiritual warfare. It's not
necessarily benign when it comes to our souls. Jesus said, what
does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, which it looks
like to me we're on the verge of doing. And yet, he says, loses
his own soul. So, Christians have to learn
how to live in empire without being revolutionaries. We need
to be reformational, not revolutionaries. I think it's right and proper
for us to occupy positions of influence within this developing
reality, but I believe it's a concrete, real, tangible empire with economic
consequences and wars result in order to keep the empire growing
and expanding. The logic of the American empire
wants to open more and more markets. We want to open the market in
China. We want to open the market in the Middle East. And in the
providence of God, it may be that American military might
removes a problem for American missionaries in the entrenchment
of Islam. But that doesn't mean that Christians
have the right or the authority to encourage that or egg it on. What we have to do is be wise
as serpents, innocent as doves. The Apostle Paul used his Roman
citizenship. He used the Roman roads. He was
functioning within that reality of empire, but he refused to
worship. He refused to bow down. And that's
the thing that I think Christians need to fix in their minds. In
the providence of God, he's brought us to this point. I'm very grateful
for many aspects of it. I have no sympathy for Saddam
Hussein, who deserves everything he's about to get, good and hard,
and I'm not shedding any tears for him. But as we go to war,
there's nothing quite so exhilarating, there's nothing quite so adrenaline-producing
as success in warfare. And I would want to tell Christians,
keep your heads. keep your heart, worship God,
only worship God, and recognize the more we have this pressure
to create a pantheon where all the gods... The only reason the
Melanesian frog worshipers weren't at the National Cathedral is
there weren't enough voters who think that way. If there were, If that was a
voting group, they would have been there and our evangelical
leaders would have been there in that cathedral with them in
that joint worship service. And that, to me, is these... ultimate indicator of the sickness
unto death of the American church. And I feel like I'm going crazy
because I try to tell people this. Do you see what they're
doing? They're worshiping different gods in this church. And we helped. And it just whistles by people's
heads. And I think the only reason The
thing that accounts for that is money. The thing that accounts
for that is the logic of polytheistic empires. So polytheistic empires
are generally economic, pragmatic, and we have a name for that polytheism.
Our civil name for polytheism is pluralism. So every time someone
says pluralism is the way to go, they're saying polytheism
is the way to go. We should recognize that we live
in a polytheistic and pluralistic society. We do. Just like Paul
recognized that Athens was full of idols. But he didn't make
his peace with it. He didn't say it's all right
for you to worship these idols. And that's what the church is
in danger of doing, and I believe in large respect has already
done. Anybody else want to get in on
that? Just a comment, and I agree with
all that. You could have a clear indication
of how polytheistic we are, for example, if George Bush, who
I think has made it clear to the whole of the country that
he is a Christian, were ever to get up in a speech and proclaim
the exclusivity of the gospel he believes. I mean, he would
be dead meat in this culture. I mean, there wouldn't be no
way that he could survive if ever he got beyond, I pray to
God, my faith is strong, and other general sort of vague statement. I'm not faulting him for that
as president. That's for him to determine. But I'm saying he wouldn't survive
this empire's pluralism if he ever affirmed what it is that
he really believes in is exclusivity. SPROUL JR.: : Look at the firestorm
that hit Franklin Graham when he finished his prayer, in the
name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. They were ready to tar
and feather him, which is so outrageous. It's so anti-pluralistic. If I invite a Buddhist to pray,
I would expect them to pray to Buddha, you know, not the Confucius. And that's why a long, long,
long, long time ago I stopped in taking invitations to give
the invocation at the local chamber of commerce or whatever, because
it was just counterproductive, because if you would say, in
the name of Christ our Lord, you would have a firestorm. And
if you didn't, then you were betraying Christ, you know what
I mean? And what do you say? How do you end the prayer? In the
name of the unknown God, amen. That's where we are. LARSON.
St. Clair, how does this look to you from your perspective? Well, I'm a guest in your wonderful
country. I am as nationalist a Scot as
probably most Americans in this room are nationalist Americans. And there's just always the danger
that you are for something because you're a Scot or an American
rather than because it's godly and right. And the two things
do not coalesce. And as an outsider, and it is
very startling as an outsider to come from a place where the
church is very marginalized and the idea of a Christian leader
having any clout in the political world is kind of somewhat startling. It was very startling to me when
I came first of all to the United States to see our, what Doug
calls our evangelical leaders, being photographed with a series
of different presidents. And, you know, I had this vision
in my head of the folks back home seeing the photographs on
the front page of the evangelical newspaper, or for that matter,
even the daily newspaper, and evangelical folks are getting
the message. My, our guys are really influencing
the corridors of power. Whereas when I saw those photographs
as an outsider, I thought, well, there go the evangelicals, so
much more political fodder. And exactly the same photograph
could be viewed from two entirely different points of view. But
the difficulty is, if you are an insider, to separate the perspective
of faith from the perspective of power and triumph and glory,
and to remember that the way of the church is always the way
of the cross, not the way of political influence, that the
voice of the church is always a prophetic voice. and that the
task of the Christian is to exercise that prophetic voice. Now, that
being the case, I think it's important for us to distinguish
what is true and right and godly from what is simply national
brouhaha. I think it's also important to
pick up the point that if it was true that Joseph was able
to function in Egypt of all places, and that Daniel was able to operate
in Babylon of all places, one of my close friends from university
has for years being a cabinet member of the government of Nigeria. And it is just a phenomenal thing
to me to think that he has been able to remain faithful to Jesus
Christ within that context. And so, you know, I think we
have always got to have this both-and perspective on how we
relate to the political world, to recognize the difference between
the secular and the biblical on the one hand, but also not
to be so pessimistic that we withdraw from engagement with
the culture. and are able to give leadership
in the culture, but it requires extraordinary courage and bravery. We have had one man in our government
who is retired now, Lord Mackay of Clashferne, who held for years
the highest law appointment in the United Kingdom. He was what
you might call a card-carrying Calvinist. He was a member of
the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, more Presbyterian
than which it is scarcely possible to get. The symbolism of that man appearing
as he appeared in our political realms was to us as Christians
observing the awful spiritual decline in leadership in our
country, just like a reminder that it's still possible for
God to raise up men of extraordinary ability who are able to stand
in the evil day and having done all to stand, and we desperately
need to pray for more. Thank you. You're a good guest.
John. I think the line has been so
horribly blurred by, quote, the religious right moving across
the borderline between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man
that the world, our nation is confused. The other night when
I was going to be on Larry King, I got a call from a producer,
and these were the questions. George Bush is an evangelical
Christian. Is this not true? Yes, on the
phone. Is God telling him to attack
Iraq? Is he fulfilling some divine
calling? I answered that, and we discussed
it a little bit later on the program. Does he personally feel
that God is using him to bring to pass the things that are in
the book of Revelation? Or, to put it in today's vernacular,
is he personally responsible to fulfill the Hardy Boys' meet
the apocalypse? Isn't that it? This is how people view evangelicals. I mean, if you're an evangelical
Christian, you've got some political not only domestic but international
and even prophetic mandate, you might be dangerous to the world
because here you are, the whole cast of this discussion, you're
dangerous. You could be leading this whole
nation into war because God is telling you to do that. So, I
think that there's been so much confusion that, and I said at
the end of the program on the air, I said, this isn't a Christian
war. This has nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with
anything about Christianity. I don't know whether the point
got across because the saturation level of all that activity is
so deep in our society. experience, secularly anyway,
is pretty shallow. I was chief of the umpires on
Little League board for four years, which put me in the midst of
the community pluralism quite deeply. But You know, I don't know. I'm struggling
with this a little bit, Doug, because, I mean, I thought the
National Cathedral Service was a wonderful event, and I don't
think I am a polytheist. I don't think I have
a pantheist or a polytheist bone in my body. And I think that
when you're the President of the United States, and you have
a country that has religious freedom and all the historical
traditions and all the things that we talk about, when you
have someone who is in a position, you have to make the best of
it. Be wise as a serpent, as harmless
as a dove. Speak on the Larry King show.
I mean, Larry King It seems like Larry, the thing that gets me
is that you have John McArthur on one night and just smile at
John and have, you know, Michael Jackson on the next night and
just smile at Michael, you know. It's just, but I'm glad John
goes on there and risk his reputation and risk being, seriously. It is a risk of your reputation
to go on and to participate and so I thought that what the president
was able to do and what those who planned that service was
able to do was by far on the positive, encouraging side rather
than the view that you're holding here. And I don't like to insert
myself into this discussion, but I'm probably representing
some people out here, so I'll take that risk. Let me just address
two quick things here. There's eight of us here. One
of them is simply a rhetorical judgment call. That would be
the Larry King sort of situation. Can I go into a situation like
that and speak with enough clarity and grace that by the grace of
God some people might hear me? If it works, then God be praised. If it doesn't, there's a danger.
Everybody who's in this position, if there are 12 clowns in the
circus ring cavorting about, and I jump down there and start
quoting Shakespeare to the audience, I'm just the 13th clown. I can't…
I can't… I appreciate that. I'm not sure that's fair to John
or the president or Billy Graham. But that's the rhetorical thing.
In the public discourse, in a polytheistic setting, we have to speak. We're
not given the option of being silent. We have to speak, but
we have to speak with wisdom so that when we speak, by the
grace of God, it may be heard. My objection to the National
Cathedral service was not that they had all these different
people as citizens of America getting together and mourning
together, let's say. If it had been a funeral or some
setting like that, I would have had no objection. But what we
had was the National Cathedral, it was a church, We had religious
officials from different denominations offering up prayers. It was calculated,
in my mind, to create the effect of a scratch-and-sniff religion
where we have all the accoutrements of religiosity, but none of the
substance. Now, the problem is not going
there. I believe that a Christian could
go to the cathedral and speak, but I believe that if he spoke
in such a way that he was faithful, he would have been arrested immediately
following because there is no way that Billy Graham could have
stood up with clarity and proclaimed the exclusivity of Jesus Christ. There's no other name given under
heaven by which we must be saved. And as Martin Luther said one
time, if we may say everything that's true Everything we affirm
may be true. And let's assume that with Billy
Graham and the others that were there. Let's assume that everything
that they said was true. I can misrepresent the truth
by speaking nothing but the truth. If someone said, if one of our
NSA students wrote home and said, Mom, Dad, the coursework out
here is going very well. Mr. Wilson came in sober today. That is completely true, but
it misrepresents everything. And I believe that we are in
this polytheistic, pluralistic moment and the desperate need
of the hour is for our Christian leadership to say, Jesus is Lord
and there is no other. I would be happy to gather together
as citizens of a grieving country and grieve together with Muslims,
Buddhists, whoever, citizens in grief meeting. But in a cathedral
with prayers and religious leaders, I just think it's a compromise.
It's one thing for the president. for the president in his office
where he's the chief leader of a nation that guarantees religious
freedom to every group there is, you know, to have to be publicly,
you know, kind and acceptable. But Paul, to be in a worship
service as a minister of the gospel and praying next to Muslims
and the rest, if that's not syncretism and blasphemy, I don't know what
is. I think it's important for us
to remember we don't have a national cathedral. The Episcopalians
built a church in Washington and they named it the National
Cathedral, which they're perfectly free to do. But we don't have
a national cathedral. We don't have a cathedral that
the nation has built or that the nation endorses. We have
a denominational church there that is occasionally used for
civic functions. And I think it's really very
unfortunate. It would have been much better
had the president gone to his church to pray with those who
shared his faith and maybe called on the nation to go to their
churches. But there's this little bit, it seems to me, of the American
propensity to the spectacular, you know. Something spectacular
happens, so we have to do something spectacular in response. It's
not enough to go to our little local churches with our, you
know, little local ministers, how important are they? Let's
get all the important people together so we can influence. Maybe God is influence when a
lot of important people get together. I think that's the sort of problematic
there. I also observed the service,
combination service and spectacle at Yankee Stadium that was held
Sunday afternoon. And There were two particularly
interesting things there, beside Bette Midler singing, You're
My Hero. One was the Muslim imam who stood
up and said three times, I am here to testify that there is
one God and Muhammad is his prophet. I thought to myself, there's
a man who's desperately wrong, but a man of integrity, unlike
most of the Christian clergy here who carefully avoided using
the name of Christ. I think there was one Christian
clergyman who used the name of Jesus in his prayer, the Missouri
Synod Lutheran minister. And I think within a week, that
Missouri Synod Lutheran minister had been deposed by the Missouri
Synod for having compromised the gospel for cooperating in
that service. So it seems to me there were
two moments of integrity in that service, but that the combination
itself is inherently problematic. Well, since I'm in the minority
here, let me clarify that I'm not standing up for the Yankee
Stadium service. I thought that was terrible myself.
Especially the lady that sang Amazing Grace and sang When We've
Been Here 10,000 Years. Unless she was post-millennial,
of course. But we're still not living that
long. But in my role as host, I won't
try to have the last word on the other discussion, but a penultimate
word. I think if we rewind the tape,
the exclusivity of the gospel was in the message there. And that's one of the things
that it was very carefully worded, but I think we could find it
in the tapes. If it was, then I praise God.
But I would say the fact that there wasn't a major stink means
that the point was lost. Well, we've used up our time
here. There is one final question here
to R.C. and to Doug. Let's see, and it
may have an application here. Here it is right here. What does
a postmillennialist see occurring at the return of Jesus Christ?
What's the question? What does a postmillennialist
see occurring at the return of Jesus Christ? What are you asking
me for? Well, because the questioner said R.C. or Doug. What am I? Oh, or Doug. The answer is lots of cool stuff. All orthodox Christians, post-,
pre-, amillennial, believe at the end of human history, there's
the resurrection of the dead. And at the resurrection of the
dead, there's the final judgment, and we enter into the eternal
state. And that's what happens when Jesus Christ returns bodily
once again. It's interesting to me that there's
only one eschatological position that the historic Christian church
has taken, and that is that hyper-preterism, as it's called, is wrong. So
the Apostles' Creed that says Jesus Christ will come to judge
the living and the dead, this future expectation, this future
hope, this resurrection of the dead, says that all notions that
the resurrection happened in the first century and it's all
completed and done, that's erroneous. But the Catholic Church, small-c
Catholic Church as a whole, has yet to work out an eschatological
confessional agreement. And I think that's one of the
important things for us to do in the next few centuries. And
as a post-millennialist, I don't mind saying the next few centuries
because I think we have a lot of time.

Questions & Answers #11

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the role of visual arts in worship?

How do we hate the world in our daily life as Christians?

Why is the concept of definite atonement important in Reformed theology?

How does the New Perspective on Paul differ from traditional Reformed views?

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Questions & Answers #11

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about the role of visual arts in worship?

How do we hate the world in our daily life as Christians?

Why is the concept of definite atonement important in Reformed theology?

How does the New Perspective on Paul differ from traditional Reformed views?

Sermon Transcript

Comments

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