Poet of the Reformation

By Dr. Gene Edward Veith 11/1/2007

     Christians have a rich cultural heritage, but these days they are often oblivious to it. I suspect most American Christians have no idea who George Herbert was — other than, perhaps, the first two names of President Bush I (“George Herbert Walker Bush”). Some may recall him from a British Literature class as the author of those poems that were shaped like physical objects (an altar, wings, and so forth). Others may know him as a major literary figure, who sprung poetry loose from its dependence on a few conventional forms to invent a new form for every poem. But few know him as arguably the greatest Christian lyric poet, who writes about his relationship with Christ in a profoundly biblical way and who captures poetically the spiritual dynamics of the Reformation.

     Part of the problem may be that Herbert (1593–1633) was an Anglican priest whose imagery draws on liturgy, vestments, and the sacraments. Indeed, high church Anglicans do know him very well, as do many Catholics. But Herbert was writing in a time long before nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholicism, when the Church of England — though on the verge of coming apart — was still very much influenced by the Reformation. And certainly George Herbert lived and breathed the Reformation Gospel.

     In the religious poetry of medieval Catholicism as well as later mystical verse, God tends to be imagined as high and lifted up, with the poet striving to reach Him. In The Divine Comedy, Dante imagines himself slogging through hell, laboring up the mountain of Purgatory, and finally — freed from his sinfulness — soaring upward through the sky and all its spheres, until he breaks out into heaven itself and the glorious, beatific vision of God.

     In Herbert’s poetry, grounded in the Reformation, the vectors are reversed. The speaker in the poems is not ascending to God. Rather, the speaker has a habit of running away from God, and God descends to him. God in Christ is doing the laboring. God is the actor, breaking into the poet’s life through His Word.

     In his poem “The Collar,” the speaker of the poem is rebelling against God. He is a frustrated pastor, angry that he has thrown away his talents and a promising career to minister to people in an obscure country church who do not seem to be responding, who only give him grief. (Herbert was an heir of one of the noblest families in England, a member of parliament, who, upon his religious awakening, left it all to serve in a tiny country parish in Bemerton.) He wants to break out of all of his restrictions and be free from all of this religious stuff: “I struck the board, and cried, No more; / I will abroad. / What? Shall I ever sigh and pine? / My lines and life are free; free as the road, / Loose as the wind.”

     He carries on like this for thirty lines or so. Then something happens: “But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild, / At every word, / Methought I heard one calling, Child: / And I replied, My Lord.”

     The “word” of God breaks in. Despite all of his rebellion, God calls him, addressing him lovingly as His “child.” The rebellion melts away as the poet acknowledges his “Lord.” The relationship between the Lord and His child is restored.

     The title of the poem, once we know the ending, expresses it all: The pastor’s “collar” feels restrictive; but the value of his ministry and his Christian life has to do with the “caller.” The poet has been called by the Gospel, and he has been called into the ministry (the “caller” has given him the distinctive clerical “collar”), and that makes all the difference.

     Herbert’s acclaim as a poet is also due to his mastery of poetic form and to his way of relating the form to the content. In this poem, as the emotions grow “more fierce and wild,” so does the form: the rhyme scheme is disordered; the lines are of varied lengths; the rhythm goes wild. But then, when the word of God breaks in with that last stanza, order is restored: the lines rhyme; they have a regular rhythm; the varied line lengths of the earlier stanzas come together into a poetic order. As the poet attains emotional and spiritual harmony, the poem itself becomes harmonious.

     Herbert arranged his poems into an ordered whole that he entitled The Temple, with reference to the Old Testament building, the New Testament church, and the human heart as the temple of the Holy Spirit. His first section, “The Church Porch,” consists of maxims of the Law, but this is only a portal to “The Church.” This section consists of a series of poems on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, punctuated by poems of response to what Christ has done. After these poetic emblems of justification, we have a poem on baptism and then a large number of poems on sanctification, the ups and downs of the Christian life.

     The series ends with surprisingly upbeat poems on death, concluding with the famous poem “Love,” the third of that title, in which Herbert compares entering into heaven with coming into an inn. He feels dirty and unworthy, but his Host insists on serving him. “‘Know you not,’ says Love, ‘who bore the blame?’” The unworthy guest, feeling that he would be more at home in hell, than at this feast, keeps pulling back. He says to the Divine Love, I need to serve you. No, says Love, you just have to accept what I do for you and sit down for the feast.

The Collar

I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.

Perseverance in the Face of Persecution

By C. FitzSimons Allison 11/1/2007

     Gilbert Meilaender is a truly heroic figure. I would like to share my admiration for him with others as an encouragement to persevere in the face of persecution. Meilaender is an internationally known ethicist and one of a group of eminent students belonging to the Ramsey Colloquium, named for the Princeton scholar, Paul Ramsey. These are among the most distinguished scholars of their generation. A careful, pastorally sensitive, contemporary statement regarding the church’s teaching on homosexuality was published by this colloquium. As a result, many of them were harassed and treated with inexcusable persecution on campuses, including Oberlin, the University of Virginia, and Yale.

     Meilaender, a professor at Oberlin, seems to have received the worst treatment. In his article “On Bringing One’s Life to a Point” (1994 November edition of First Things), ( I have copied the entire article in the next article section with a link to the original website page. ) he describes his response to the cruel rage and paucity of responsible support with a testimony of unyielding perseverance without anger, self-righteousness, or self-pity. His demeanor and spirit were so devoid of what would be natural and human (in the negative senses of both terms) that it could be only described by one word: graceful.

     I only know this man through his writings, but his graceful perseverance and faithfulness could be an example for any of us facing hostility in our own lives. Under pressure he drew on Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, and the psalmists whose testimonies could lead and encourage any of us to a similar grace. In rereading his article after more than a decade, I am newly inspired by an insight he gives from Lewis.

     He shows me something I had too long missed. It is the very word understand. To stand under an idea (as did Mark Studdick in Lewis’ novel, That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book 3)), with the knowledge that ideas are not mere opinions but tough, durable, and objective realities, gives one a perspective that is deeper and less self-righteous than one would have defending one’s own opinion.

     Meilaender writes: “The truth I think I understand and for which I must stand up is, in reality, a truth that I stand under and to which I look up. To put the point again in the language of hymnody, in such moments I prefer ‘beneath the cross of Jesus, I long to take my stand,’ to ‘stand up, stand up for Jesus.’”

     An even more important grace that comes with persecution is shown in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Isolation and suffering for what one sees as right is fraught with the temptation of self-righteousness. But in Bonheoffer’s writings and life Meilaender realized that in reading the Psalms, as Bonhoeffer did, we “pray them as our own only in him [Christ], the righteous sufferer who calls on God for vindication.” It is indeed “under the cross” that we are to take our stand.

     These stands have always caused division, isolation, loss of friends, and sometimes death. Much of what and whom we have trusted is lost, and we have painfully discovered how relatively unimportant are the lesser things in which we have put our faith. Calvin taught us that our hearts are veritable “idol factories.” The refreshing thing about persecution, suffering, or unpopularity for remaining faithful to the Gospel is the chance to appreciate freedom from our idols. We can sing with more passion and gratitude: “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also…. His kingdom is forever.”

     The most subtle and unproductive of idols has to do with righteousness and its shadow, self-righteousness. I have a painful recollection of sitting in my pew halfway listening to a sermon on the book of Amos. My mind wandered to my fellow bishops in the Episcopal Church. I was comparing myself with them and coming out quite favorably when the preacher poured Amos’ plumb line of God’s justice on my pew. My heart tore. I went home and fished out my carpenter’s plumb line and hung it from the second floor over the stairs so that it greets me at the front door. After two and one-half years my wife asked when we could take it down. “When there’s no more problem of self-righteousness,” I replied. It still hangs there.

     When Jesus warned us against the yeast of the Pharisees (Matt 16:6, 12), it is an enduring and ever-needed warning. The yeast of self-righteousness is always in the air, and it is always welcome by our self-centered hearts. Like the alcoholic who never says he used to be an alcoholic but only claims that he is a recovering alcoholic, so we victims of Pharisee yeast should never say we used to be self-righteous, only that we are recovering Pharisees.

     Danger lies, however, in the very subtlety of recognizing one’s unworthiness. It can inhibit the very nerve of action and fight, as Hamlet observed, “and conscience doth make cowards of us all.” One can wish perhaps that Gilbert Meilaender had fought more aggressively against the wickedness and tyranny of politically correct dogma in the academic world.

     The figure of John Bunyan comes to mind as one whose stand for what he saw to be just and right landed him in jail for twelve years, refusing to relinquish his call to preach the Gospel. Whatever courage we might be showing today is reduced to less than insignificance in comparison with Bunyan.

     In remaining faithful to Christ, subsequent stands can be occasions of freedom from our idols and a quality of grace we did not before possess.

• 1     The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter
• 2     Guilt, Anger, and God
• 3     The Rise of Moralism: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter
• 4     The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy
• 5     Trust in an Age of Arrogance:
• 6     Fear, Love, and Worship
• 7     The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy
• 8     THE RISE OF MORALISM: The Proclamation of the Gospel from Hooker to Baxter.

On Bringing One's Life To A Point

By Gilbert Meilaender November 1994

     In February of 1994, in what was its March issue, First Things published a statement on the homosexual movement signed by twenty-one people, of whom I was one. An excerpt from that statement was published in the Wall Street Journal on February 24. I do not intend here to rehearse the argument of that statement or to defend it. In my own view, it was certainly not perfect, and I see ways we could have made it better. Moreover, I think the Wall Street Journal excerpt was inadequate, losing part of the point of the statement. But I have not changed my mind on the question involved; and a reader, in order to understand what follows, will have to keep that in mind, and, if he or she disagrees with the statement, bracket such disagreement for the moment.

     The day the Wall Street Journal excerpt appeared, things began to explode on the campus of Oberlin College, where I teach. Since Oberlin has been described by Newsweek, for example, as a “gay mecca,” perhaps this was not surprising, though I could never have predicted the intensity of the reaction. In order to provide a context for what follows, I must describe briefly here the reaction at Oberlin. But just as I do not seek to rehearse again the argument on the issue, so I also do not intend here to take up the topic of “political correctness.” My experiences provide in many ways a textbook example of that phenomenon, but I am interested in something I regard as ultimately more important.

     What happened? Posters went up around the campus, xeroxes of the WSJ piece, with arrows pointing to my name and various statements written on the posters (“rampant homophobia,” “read this and fear”). Over the next few days several more rounds of posters appeared, attacking me, for example, as “super bigot.” It is not too much to say that an uproar had been created. Students expressed outrage that such views were held by someone at Oberlin. They called for a boycott of my classes this fall (since I was on leave during the spring semester of 1994). One student was quoted in the student paper as calling for a march past my home, though I did not expect that to take place and it did not. The student senate voted to reprimand me, and the student paper editorialized against me, charging that I had compromised my “academic objectivity.” Students talked publicly about bringing charges against me through the college’s judicial system, and a student who is cochair of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Union was quoted as saying, “Some people would like him out of here.” Fifty-one members of the faculty (about a quarter of the total) signed a letter criticizing the statement on homosexuality—charging that it engaged in “repugnant stereotyping,” was “intellectually naive,” and provided “sanction for a homophobic agenda.”

     For at least the first week, while the uproar was at its height, I felt largely isolated—an experience that is almost paralyzing, since one hardly knows how to respond under such a circumstance. Over time, at least the appearance (though not, in truth, the reality) of some balance was restored when letters providing support of various kinds for me appeared in the next week’s edition of the student paper. (I myself did respond in writing to the letter signed by members of the faculty.) Some defended the right of free speech, some testified to my good character (which I appreciated greatly, though there is something unsettling about having to be defended on such grounds), and a very few expressed substantive agreement with my views. A couple of brave students wrote letters expressing such support. One member of the faculty did so. At this point he remains the only member of the faculty who has publicly expressed agreement with the position adopted by me and other signers of the First Things statement.

     Events such as these remind us that, despite torrents of talk about diversity at our elite colleges, they lack anything resembling genuine intellectual diversity. But, although this much summary has been necessary to give the reader some context for the reflections that follow, I repeat that I do not intend here to add another chapter to debates about political correctness. What follows is, as best I can manage, “emotion recollected in tranquility.” Although I have over the years defended in print a number of positions that are relatively unpopular in our society, this experience is unlike any other I have had. And I have found myself reflecting on what it means to bring one’s life to a point—which is, on the one hand, a place of solitude, and, on the other, a moment of significance. (The irony has not escaped my attention that this is not unlike the way gays sometimes speak about the experience of “coming out of the closet.” But to take up here the similarities and differences would draw me back into substantive discussion of the argument, which is not my aim. The reader who disagrees with my normative views is simply going to have to stop reading or prescind from such judgment for a while.)

     I

     The experience involved for me an act of recovery—and this in several ways. In the midst of unrelenting public attack, one regains some sense of what counts in one’s life—not what I would like to count, but what does in fact count for me, what matters to the person I have become. In that sense I recovered myself within my deepest commitments.

     Thus, for example, I reclaimed the significance of the local community of believers. The Lutheran congregation that I attend (which I attend for the simple reason that it is here in Oberlin) is neither particularly large nor noteworthy. It has the virtues and the vices of many small congregations, and I have to admit that worshiping there seldom stirs my soul deeply. But, as the apostle writes, we are many members with many gifts, but one body in which burdens are mutually borne. The reaction of many people in the congregation (when a local newspaper carried an article about the controversy at the college) was immediate and powerful. They spoke words of support in conversations with me. Several said something like, “I would like to write a letter on your behalf, but I know I probably wouldn’t get it right, so I am praying for you.” Which was, of course, precisely right. And, although I am by temperament a person not eager to be prayed for publicly, when the pastor included me in the special intercessions of the prayer of the church, I found it affecting and appropriate. Many members with many gifts—I am probably better at offering arguments, but they did what they did better than I might have were the tables turned. One body—reminding me how foolish I would be if I thought, finally, that I could offer arguments simply on my own apart from the way of faith and life that the entire body sustains.

     There are, however, other ties that are also very important in a person’s life—chief among them, at least for me, the bond of the family. A few years ago I wrote a little piece titled “I Want to Burden my Loved Ones” (FT, October 1991). It was written in fun, but also in all seriousness, arguing—in relation to questions about care for dying patients and advance directives about one’s own care at the point of death—that the impulse to handle these problems autonomously was mistaken, that the family was a context in which we are quite properly burdened by others. And my recent experience—at, remember, a small college in a small town, where anyone’s business is everyone’s business—reminded me of how deeply implicated we are in the lives of our family. One might think that my signature on a document does not involve my wife or children, but life teaches otherwise. The experience intrudes into their own lives in conversations with friends or teachers, and they are, in a sense, forced to make it their own. They didn’t ask for it, but it found them. And if I have burdened them, as I have, perhaps I have also—to the best of my ability—helped them to understand how important it may be to bring one’s life to a point.

     I recovered also some of the Psalms that I have never quite known what to do with, Psalms that have been a puzzle for me. Christians use them regularly in worship, but what are we thinking when we do so? A few examples, which could readily be multiplied, may suffice:

     Be gracious to me, O Lord! Behold what I suffer from those who hate me, O thou who liftest me up from the gates of death, that I may recount all thy praises, that in the gates of the daughter of Zion I may rejoice in thy deliverance. (9:13–14)

     Keep me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of thy wings, from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me. They close their hearts to pity; with their mouths they speak arrogantly. They track me down; now they surround me; they set their eyes to cast me to the ground. (17:8–11)

     Consider how many are my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me. Oh guard my life, and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in thee (25:19–20). Save me, O God, by thy name, and vindicate me by thy might. Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. For insolent men have risen against me, ruthless men seek my life; they do not set God before them (54:1–3).

     Enough. We get the picture—of one who has attempted in integrity to be faithful to God, who because of that is surrounded by enemies, and who brings that situation before God. I suspect that most Christians are uneasy with making the prayers of such righteous Israelites their own. We are uneasy because such claims to our own integrity are difficult for those who with St. Paul have taken seriously the deep division even within the self that seeks to serve God and have learned to claim Christ as their righteousness. This note of the righteous sufferer is, of course, not the only note sounded in the Psalter. A Lutheran pastor, having heard of the controversy raging at Oberlin, wrote to thank me for the position I had taken and to offer encouragement and support. But she also, very nicely, reminded me not to suppose that this cause was simply my own to assert, and she in turn cited the psalmist (19:13):

     Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me; then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression.

     That is, of course, one very important way to deal with Psalms that are puzzling and troubling in their protestations of righteousness. We set them in the context of other Psalms which remind us that we cannot plumb the depths of our own self and must finally hand that self over to God for judgment and safekeeping.

     But what do we do with the Psalms themselves—those that assert one’s integrity and ask for deliverance from enemies that surround one? I myself have generally made two moves in dealing with them. The first I learned from C. S. Lewis, who suggests that we place ourselves not with the righteous sufferer but with the evildoers—that, in making such Psalms our own prayers, we remember soberly that we might have brought others to a point where they felt as isolated as the psalmist sometimes feels. The second—and for Christians ultimately more telling—I learned from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who reminds us that we make these prayers our own only when we see Jesus as this righteous sufferer. We pray them as our own only “in him,” the righteous sufferer who calls on God for vindication.

     Bonhoeffer’s reading is, I think, the first and the last reading that a Christian ought to give such Psalms—but, I now believe, not the only one. For between those first and last readings may come another that is closer to the psalmist’s own experience, one that enters into the text’s own trajectory (as we like to say these days). For this is, in fact, what it may feel like to try—as best one can—to be faithful. No one should seek such experience, and perhaps we should even be hesitant about assuming that it is our own, but if others persuade us that they do indeed surround us, then we can pray these Psalms as our own, as—perhaps—that righteous Israelite did. Cautious as Christians must inevitably be to make such a move, I am not prepared to say we cannot or ought not.

     But, of course, the final reading remains that in which they are the prayer of Jesus, and it did not escape my attention that this entire experience took place during Lent. How casually I tend to read the New Testament texts that speak of sharing in Christ’s sufferings and even most puzzlingly (in Colossians) of completing “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” One could, melodramatically, make too much of such passages—as Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch early in the second century, so famously did in a letter written on the way to his martyrdom: “Let me be fodder for wild beasts—that is how I can get to God. I am God’s wheat and I am being ground by the teeth of wild beasts to make a pure loaf for Christ.” The spirit that could seek such experience is, I confess, alien to my own. But to accept what comes when one has attempted to be faithful, and to make it one’s own by drawing it into an imitatio Christi, seems right to me, and surely Lent exists in part to ask us to take such possibilities seriously in life. We read these Psalms as the prayer of Jesus, accepting—even if not seeking—a share in the sufferings of his Body. Some people said to me at the height of the uproar: “It will pass; a new cause will come along.” Which is true. (Indeed, a little more than a month later the college’s administration was kind enough to provide through one of its personnel decisions a new cause, a new object for hostility, thereby providing me some breathing space.) But the passing of a moment is not the same as taking it up and bringing one’s life to a point around it. When the moment passes, life continues, more or less as it had before. But if we take up the moment, accepting a certain kind of death that it brings, we may be renewed—which is quite different from the simple continuation of life.

     II

     Beyond the recovery of such obvious truths, an experience like mine may also uncover some of the deeper meaning of the moral life, meaning that cannot be taught in the classroom. At one point, a couple weeks into the uproar, I had a short conversation with a faculty colleague, a little older than I, whose judgment I respect and whose counsel I have often sought. Although sympathetic to the concerns of the statement I had signed, he could not himself affirm its view, though he could and did offer support from his own perspective. But when we spoke, he commented that the standard upheld in the statement was a very “difficult” and “demanding” one. (He had in mind the larger concerns of the statement, its concern not simply with the homosexual movement but with the results of the sexual revolution more generally in our society. And, in fact, some of the strongest language in the statement—language entirely omitted from the WSJ excerpt—dealt with standards that applied to heterosexuals.) Our standard, he said to me, was such a demanding one that he was reluctant to affirm it. He could not say that he himself had always lived up to it.

     That set me to thinking about how we render moral judgment today. Beginning perhaps with the generous thought that we should not “impose” on others standards that we ourselves do not meet, we end with a morality that demands less even of ourselves than we ought. The norms to which I adhere are not those I can keep or do keep; they are those to which I hold myself accountable. I do not see how I could manage that if there were not ways to recognize my accountability—if, that is, I were not part of a community that regularly confesses its sin and seeks to begin anew. Only from such a perspective, I suspect, could I have the courage to set forth an ideal of which I myself may often fall short. The moral life is much more than we can or should teach in a classroom; it involves disciplines such as confession and absolution.

     Still more, the moral life involves—how not to put the point too melodramatically?—preparing to die. Thus, Epictetus: “Let others study cases at law, let others practice recitations and syllogisms. You learn to die.” Thus also Socrates, who speaks of pursuing philosophy in the right way as practicing “how to face death easily.” And in death we are, finally, isolated and alone. Others may and should do what Paul Ramsey called “companying” with the dying, they may through the virtue of love actually help to carry our sufferings, but they cannot enter the void with us. Christians believe, of course, that One has kept us company even there, but that belief is experienced as hope, not possession. To learn to die, therefore, we have to learn to be alone.

     This we are very reluctant to do—at least I certainly am. We value the ways in which our lives are joined with others in bonds of life, family, property, and reputation (the very bonds to which the second table of the Decalog points). Therefore, it is rather hard to sing sincerely the words of Luther’s great hymn (at least as that hymn was translated before we settled for less poetic translations designed to avoid allegedly sexist language): “And take they our life / Goods, fame, child, and wife, / Let these all be gone, / They yet have nothing won; / The kingdom ours remaineth.” Most of the time, if the truth were known, I probably prefer my good name with my colleagues to such a sentiment. And it is therefore useful—indeed, it is central to the moral life—to bring one’s life to a point, even if that is experienced as a point of solitude and isolation. This also cannot be taught in the ethics classroom, but this is what it means to begin to learn to die.

     Once we come to see that our self is at stake in such moments, we will get quite a different slant on the truth we think we understand. It cannot be simply my personal view, my personal cause. For that alone I would scarcely risk or endure isolation. Few “opinions” of mine are likely to mean as much to me as my good name among colleagues. So if it is my cause that is at stake, that good name is likely to trump other considerations. No, the truth we think we understand must have about it an impersonality; it cannot simply be one’s own private view or opinion. The truth I think I understand and for which I must stand up is, in reality, a truth that I stand under and to which I look up. To put the point again in the language of hymnody, in such moments I prefer “Beneath the Cross of Jesus / I long to take my stand” to “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.”

     That the truth we understand must be a truth we stand under is brought out nicely in C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy, Book 3) when Mark Studdock gradually learns what an “Idea” is. While Frost attempts to give Mark a “training in objectivity” that will destroy in him any natural moral sense, and while Mark tries desperately to find a way out of the moral void into which he is being drawn, he discovers what it means to understand.

     He had never before known what an Idea meant: he had always thought till now that they were things inside one’s own head. But now, when his head was continually attacked and often completely filled with the clinging corruption of the training, this Idea towered up above him-something which obviously existed quite independently of himself and had hard rock surfaces which would not give, surfaces he could cling to.

     This too, I fear, is seldom communicated in the classroom, where opinion reigns supreme. But it has important implications for the way we understand argument. During the course of the uproar at Oberlin I discovered to my surprise that the cause I defended had become genuinely an impersonal one—not my own. It was not the sort of thing over which one could become personally irritated or annoyed. Indeed, I have on occasion over the years been far more annoyed by minor criticisms of my writings than by the direct and personal attack I now experienced. For it was impossible to regard the position I defended as my own; indeed, I cannot imagine subjecting myself to such criticism for the sake of anything so minor as an “opinion” of mine. In such moments one needs a truth with hard surfaces to cling to and stand under, and this experience has renewed my fear that the teaching of ethics alone seldom offers such truth.

     III

     If trying to stand under the truth means the practice of an ars moriendi, we begin to see what the moral life really requires. I have been reminded of two favorite passages of mine, the first from Peter Geach, the second from C. S. Lewis.

     Every man is given sufficient grace to make the right choice, but many reject that grace and are lost. How this choice does come a man’s way, what chances men have and how they take or reject them, we shall not know till the Day of Judgment. In the stories of the Vikings there is recorded that one Viking was named Bairnsfriend because he would not share in the popular sport of tossing infants from spearpoint to spearpoint; let us hope that he took his chance; in such ways the Grace of God may show itself despite the most corrupting environment.

     And from C. S. Lewis:

     In King Lear (Folger Shakespeare Library) there is a man who is such a minor character that Shakespeare has not given him even a name: he is merely “First Servant.” All the characters around him—Regan, Cornwall, and Edmund-have fine long-term plans. They think they know how the story is going to end, and they are quite wrong. The servant has no such delusions. He has no notion how the play is going to go. But he understands the present scene. He sees an abomination (the blinding of old Gloucester) taking place. He will not stand it. His sword is out and pointed at his master’s breast in a moment: then Regan stabs him dead from behind. That is his whole part: eight lines all told. But if it were real life and not a play, that is the part it would be best to have acted.

     Two examples, each quite literally of bringing one’s life to a point. And although our opportunities generally come in far less dramatic ways, we can learn from such examples what is and what is not within our power.

     It has occurred to me any number of times that were I deliberately to aim to bring my life to a point, the issue of homosexuality would not have been the issue I would have chosen for the occasion. And, again, had I intended to bring my life to a point—a point of solitude, but also of significance and discovery—I would have done things a little differently. Certainly I would have changed a word here and there!

     But, in fact, we do not decide to bring our lives to a point. We are brought. The most important things have always been decided in advance and are not ours to determine. We can seize the occasion and seek to live faithfully, but we are ultimately not makers but responders. Hence, any account of the moral life is inadequate if it does not help us learn how to deal with what may come upon us without our choice—illness, suffering, a child, death. Few of the current approaches to morality do this or even seek to do it. If, therefore, we are not, like Prufrock, to measure out our lives with coffee spoons, we need to reclaim an older wisdom that may help us learn what it means to bring one’s life to a point.

• 1     Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Third Edition
• 2     Should We Live Forever?: The Ethical Ambiguities of Aging
• 3     Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person (Encounter Broadsides)
• 4     Faith And Faithfulness: Basic Themes in Christian Ethics (Revisions (Paperback))
• 5     Theory and Practice Of Virtue (ND Series in Great B)
• 6     The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis
• 7     Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics (Revisions: A Series of Books on Ethics)
• 8     Things That Count: Essays Moral and Theological
• 9     Bioethics: A Primer for Christians
• 10     The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life
• 11     Freedom of a Christian, The: Grace, Vocation, and the Meaning of Our Humanity
• 12     Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, Third Edition by Gilbert Meilaender (2013-01-06)
• 13     Body, Soul, and Bioethics
• 14     Love Taking Shape: Sermons on the Christian Life
• 15     Limits of Lovesome Theological Explorat
• 16     Neither Beast Nor God: The Dignity of the Human Person by Gilbert Meilaender (2009-09-29)
• 17     Letters to Ellen by Gilbert Meilaender (1996-01-02)
• 18     The Way That Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life by Gilbert Meilaender (2007-01-02)

Former Things

By Rev. Scotty Smith 12/1/2007

     Having read this incredible collage of articles on God’s kingdom in this Advent season edition of Tabletalk, hopefully you’re beginning to wonder how to “bring home” all this rich theology to your context and community. What are some of the telling and timely implications of a sound and lively theology of the kingdom for us in the body of Christ today? How are we to seek first the kingdom of God and the righteous and redeeming dominion of our wonderful, merciful Savior, Jesus Christ? If we’re not anticipating and working for the revelation of Jesus’ restorative rule over all things, then what are we seeking?

     I know of no better way to wrestle with these critical questions of application than to marinate our hearts in a small portion of the final vision that God gave His son and servant, the apostle John. Of the roughly 1189 chapters in the Bible, there are only four that give us a picture of God’s people and God’s world free from the influence of sin and death — the first two, Genesis 1–2, and the last two, Revelation 21–22. How incredibly awesome — the entire unfolding story of redemption is bracketed by four chapters of sinless wonder! Doesn’t it stand to reason that we should become as familiar as possible with these four chapters in order to understand how we are to live presently under the “new-creation” reign of God’s grace through His Son?

     If the kingdom of God is God’s people living in God’s world under God’s rule, then, certainly, we must soak in these consuming and consoling portions of God’s Word to understand what life in the kingdom means for us today as we take our place in the history of redemption. What did God’s unbroken people and cosmos look like before the intrusion of sin and death? What will the glorified people of God and the transformed universe look like with the return of Jesus?

     For brevity and specificity, let’s consider the first part of John’s last vision — Revelation 21:1–5.

     In these first five verses, the exiled prophet of Christ and servant of the church saw the fulfilment of the two main kingdom commitments God has made through the work of His Son, Jesus: first, the redeeming of a pan-national trans-generational family to love and cherish forever, and, second, the restoration through recreation of God’s fallen and broken cosmos.

     John’s vision guarantees us that there is no possibility whatsoever that Jesus will not redeem a people from every single race, tribe, and people group. And there is no possibility whatsoever that Jesus will not make a new heaven and new earth out of the first creation, so tragically marred and marked by sin and death. The God that called Abraham to count stars, sand, and dust will make good on His promise to create and bless a covenant family from all families! The God who gave Isaiah a vision of lambs lying down with wolves, and kings bringing their splendor into a New Jerusalem, and a perfect world of justice, shalom, and the unbroken worship of God forever — He did not lie! He will deliver! To read God’s unfolding story of redemption is to realize that the garden of Eden was just a preview of coming attractions! And the more I ponder John’s last vision the more I am smitten with the hope that one day a new people and new world will emerge that will be like the garden of Eden on mega-steroids!

     How was this vision meant to affect the lambs of Christ under John’s care? The same way this vision is meant to affect you and me! Far from turning our churches into “Fort God,” or ingrown communities of petty, privatized, and paranoid followers of Jesus, John’s vision of a gathered people and a glorified universe is meant to free every generation of Christians to “love not our own lives unto death.” It is meant to empower us sacrificially and joyfully to serve the One who reigns now by virtue of His resurrection, and who will reign forever by the reality of His eternal glory.

     How then shall we live and love? First, let us seek to bring the hope and the first-fruits of the new heaven and new earth into every sphere of life where God has placed us. Second, let us preach the Gospel with great passion and with humble astonishment. Finally, let us extend the tear-wiping hand of God to the places and people all around us that cry for justice and mercy endlessly. Until that final day, we the people of God are called to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God in this day (Micah 6:8). And we who experience the tear-wiping hand of God in our lives are called to extend it to the least and the lost.

• 1     Everyday Prayers: 365 Days to a Gospel-Centered Faith
• 2     Every Season Prayers: Gospel-Centered Prayers for the Whole of Life
• 3     Objects of His Affection: Coming Alive to the Compelling Love of God
• 4     Restoring Broken Things
• 5     The Reign of Grace: The Delights and Demands of God's Love

The Children’s Crusade

By R.C. Sproul Jr. 12/1/2007

     Context is everything. Consider for a moment the text that gives this column its name. My job here is to take whatever theme the editors have come up with for a given issue, and tie it into the call of Jesus to seek first the kingdom of God. Over the past several years, I have been encouraging us to set aside our petty amusements, to put behind us the distractions of vanity fair, to throw off the sloth that luxuriates in the status quo. Like some spiritual drill sergeant I have been trying to get us to wake up and smell the war and to get to the front lines. We have a battle to win, a great enemy to destroy. We are called to an epic struggle that spans the epochs, from the garden of Eden to the Garden City of the New Jerusalem. We have a kingdom to build.

     All of which means that I have missed the context. When Jesus told His students to seek first the kingdom of God, He wasn’t dealing with the problem of complacency. He was not seeking to rouse a bunch of couch potatoes into action. Instead, Jesus was calling on those who were caught up in worry and fear, to set such things aside. Instead, Jesus is seeking to calm anxious hearts and minds, to remind those who are His that they are the children of their Father in heaven. It is our Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

     Jesus makes much the same point in the gospel of Mark. We are all too familiar with the story. Jesus was in Judea, and the multitudes gathered around Him as He taught them. Many among the crowd brought their little children to Jesus, but the disciples rebuked them. Jesus, seeing this, we are told, was greatly displeased. Then He uttered these potent words: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). We’ve all seen pictures of this glorious event. We see the children gazing up at the Lord with trust in their eyes. We see the joy and delight in the shining face of Jesus. We walk away, our hearts warmed by the tender love of Jesus toward the little children, and once again, completely miss the point. As touching as this scene is, as moved as we might be by the love of Jesus for the children that were there that day, and toward our own children, what we miss is the reason for all this. We miss the wisdom of Jesus who says, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (v. 15).

     Jesus’ words present both a stern warning and a delightful invitation. The warning is clear enough. If we will not come as children, we will not come at all. There will be those in the end with their dignity intact, their maturity assured, and their eternity spent on weeping and teeth gnashing. Jesus does not say that if we do not come as children we will be least in the kingdom. He does not say that if we do not come as children we will miss out on joy. He does not say that if we do not come as children then we will lose some degree of fellowship with our Father. He says we will not come at all. We will, by no means, enter into the kingdom.

     But there is invitation here as well. We enter into the kingdom as helpless as babies. We enter into the kingdom as needy as babies. We enter into the kingdom as ignorant as babies. We enter into the kingdom as worthless as babies. We enter into the kingdom with nothing in our hands, not even a pacifier. We have no contribution to make and no agenda to follow. We come trusting like a baby, resting like a baby, and laughing like a baby. We enter into the kingdom with eyes wide with wonder.

     We were taught to pray by Jesus, to our heavenly Father, that His kingdom would come as His will is done on earth as it is in heaven. We will enter into heaven as children. We bring heaven down to earth as we live our lives as children. We bring heaven down by living now as we will then. In the upside-down economy of the kingdom of God, the call to Christian maturity is the call to immaturity. As we age, as we acquire wisdom, we learn more and more that we know less and less. When we are born, we begin the process of aging, growing closer to death. When we are born again, we begin the process of getting younger, growing closer to life.

     God, our Father, has called on us to teach our children well. We are to raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded. We are to instruct them in the way that they should go. We are to speak with them of the things of God when they lie down and when they rise up. We do this, we serve them, the children, because they are our spiritual betters. We teach them, because they are our teachers. May God grant us the grace not merely to suffer the children to come, but suffer ourselves to come as children. For of such is the kingdom of God. The King, remember, entered into His kingdom as a babe. And no servant is greater than his master.

Psalm 71

By Don Carson 5/18/2018

     Psalm 71

     Most Christians have listened to testimonies that relate how some man or woman lived a life of fruitlessness and open degradation, or at least of quiet desperation, before becoming a Christian. Genuine faith in the Lord Christ brought about a personal revolution: old habits destroyed, new friends and commitments established, a new direction to give meaning and orientation. Where there was despair, there is now joy; where there was turmoil, there is now peace; where there was anxiety, there is now some measure of serenity. And some of us who were reared in Christian homes have secretly wondered if perhaps it might have been better if we had been converted out of some rotten background.

     That is not the psalmist’s view. “For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on you; you brought me forth from my mother’s womb” (Ps. 71:5-6). “Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare your marvelous deeds” (71:17). Indeed, because of this background, the psalmist calmly looks over the intervening years and petitions God for persevering grace into old age: “Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone” (71:9). “But as for me, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more” (71:14). “Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, O God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your might to all who are to come” (71:18).

     Doubtless particular circumstances were used by God to elicit these words from the psalmist’s pen. Nevertheless, the stance itself is invaluable. The most thoughtful of those who are converted later in life wish they had not wasted so many of their early years. Now that they have found the pearl of great price, their only regret is that they did not find it sooner. More importantly, those who are reared in godly Christian homes are steeped in Scripture from their youth. There is plenty in Scripture and in personal experience to disclose to them the perversity of their own hearts; they do not have to be sociopaths to discover what depravity means. They will be sufficiently ashamed of the sins they have committed, despite their backgrounds, that instead of wishing they could have had a worse background (!), they sometimes hang their head in shame that they have done so little with their advantages, and frankly recognize that apart from the grace of God, there is no crime and sin to which they could not sink.

     It is best, by far, to be grateful for a godly heritage and to petition God himself for grace that will see you through old age.

Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored numerous books, and recently edited The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016).

Read The Psalms In "1" Year

Psalm 51

1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

By Gleason Archer Jr.

HISTORY OF KINGDOMS

     To sum up, then, it should be understood that prior to the development of these four realms an effort was made to keep the Alexandrian empire together. First Perdiccas was chosen as regent, but he passed away in 321 B.C. After him came Antigonus I who defeated King Eumenes of Pergamum, slaying him in 316 B.C., and subsequently claimed all of Asia under his control. Eventually, however, Antigonus and his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes, were defeated by the armies of Antipater, Lycimachus, and Seleucus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C. Then, along with Ptolemy, the way was clear for each of them to claim the title of king and maintain a seperate realm.

     In this connection it ought to be noted that the strongest argument for identifying  Daniel’s fourth empire with that of Alexander and his Greek successors is derived from the appearance of the little horn in chapters  7 and  8. That is to say, in chapter  7 the little horn admittedly develops from the fourth empire, that is, from the fearsome ten-horned beast who overthrows the four-winged leopard. But in chapter  8, the little horn develops from the head of the he-goat, who plainly represents the Greek empire. As we have already mentioned, this goat commenced its career with one horn (Alexander the Great), but then produced four others in its place. There can be no question that the little horn in chapter  8 points to a ruler of the Greek empire, that is, Antiochus Epiphanes (cf.  8:9 ). The critics therefore assume that since the same term is used, the little horn in chapter  7 must refer to the same individual. This, however, can hardly be the case, since the four-winged leopard of chapter  7 (i.e.,  7:24 ) clearly corresponds to the four-horned goat of chapter  8; that is, both represent the Greek empire which divided into four after Alexander’s death. The only reasonable deduction to draw is that there are two little horns involved in the symbolic visions of  Daniel. One of them emerges from the third empire, and the other is to emerge from the fourth. It would seem that the relationship is that of type (Antiochus IV of the third kingdom) and antitype (the Antichrist who is to arise from the latter-day form of the fourth empire). This is the only explanation which satisfies all the data and which throws light upon  11:4–45, where the figure of the historic Antiochus suddenly blends into the figure of an Antichrist who is yet to come in the end time.

     Two other considerations should be adduced to show that the author regarded the Medes and Persians as constituting the one and same empire. In  Dan. 6, Darius is said to be bound by “the law of the Medes and Persians,” so that he could not revoke the decree consigning  Daniel to the lions’ den. If the author regarded Darius as ruler of an independent Median empire earlier in time than the Persian, it is impossible to explain why he would have been bound by the laws of the Persians. Second, we have the evidence of the handwriting on the wall as interpreted by Daniel in  5:28. There Daniel is represented as interpreting the inscription to Belshazzar, the last king of the first empire, that is, the kingdom of the Chaldeans. He says in interpreting the third word, peres, “Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.” This is obviously a word play in which the term parsɩ̂n, or rather its singular peres, is derived from the verb peras, meaning “to divide or separate.” But it is also explained as pointing to pārās, or “Persian.” This can only mean that according to the author, the Chaldean empire was removed from Belshazzar as the last representative of the first empire and given to the Medes and Persians who constituted the second empire. This cannot mean that the rule was first given to the Medes and only later to be transmitted to the Persians, because the significant word which appeared in the handwriting on the wall was quite specifically the word “Persia.” The sequence, therefore, is clear: the empire passed from the Chaldeans to the Persians. There can be no legitimate doubt that the author regarded the Persians as masters of the second empire. This being the case, we must conclude that the fourth empire indeed represented Rome.

     If, then, the fourth empire of chapter  2, as corroborated by the other symbolic representations of chapter  7, clearly pointed forward to the establishment of the Roman empire, it can only follow that we are dealing here with genuine predictive prophecy and not a mere vaticinium ex eventu. According to the Maccabean Date Theory,  Daniel was composed between 168 and 165 B.C., whereas the Roman empire did not commence (for the Jews at least) until 63 B.C., when Pompey the Great took over that part of the Near East which included Palestine. To be sure, Hannibal had already been defeated by Scipio at Zama in 202 B.C., and Antiochus III had been crushed at Magnesia in 190, but the Romans had still not advanced beyond the limits of Europe by 165, except to establish a vassal kingdom in Asia Minor and a protectorate over Egypt. But certainly, as things stood in 165 B.C., no human being could have predicted with any assurance that the Hellenic monarchies of the Near East would be engulfed by the new power which had arisen in the West. No man then living could have foreseen that this Italian republic would have exerted a sway more ruthless and widespread than any empire that had ever preceded it. This one circumstance alone, then, that  Daniel predicts the Roman empire, is sufficient to overthrow the entire Maccabean Date Hypothesis (which of course was an attempt to explain away the supernatural element of prediction and fulfillment). As we shall presently see, there are other remarkable predictions in this book which mark it as of divine inspiration and not a mere historical novel written in the time of Maccabees.

     It should also be pointed out that the Maccabean Date Theory fails to explain how the book of  Daniel ever came to be accepted by the later Jews as Holy Scripture. In  Deut. 18:22 the principle was laid down: “If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.” That is to say, any person claiming to be a genuine prophet of the Lord, whose predictions of coming events do not come to pass, is to be utterly rejected. There can be no doubt that the description given in  Dan. 11:40–45 relative to the latter end of the little horn does not at all correspond to the manner in which Antiochus Epiphanes met his death; there is a definite break in the prophetic revelation beginning at  11:40. This break is indicated by the words, “and at the time of the end.” Those who espouse the Liberal theory can only allege that the Maccabean author of  Daniel was unsuccessful in his effort to predict the manner of Antiochus’s downfall. He did his best, but it simply did not come out that way. Yet if this was actually the case, it is impossible to conceive how the Jews could have continued to regard this writing as canonical or authoritative, since it contained false prophecy. If, however, the work was composed by the historic Daniel, it is easy to see how this work would have been preserved as the genuine Word of God. The fact that so many events in subsequent history were accurately predicted back in the sixth century by the historic Daniel would serve as an authentication of its trustworthiness as a divine revelation.

A Survey of Old Testament Introduction

The Continual Burnt Offering (Habakkuk 3:2)

By H.A. Ironside - 1941

May 18

Habakkuk 3:2  O LORD, I have heard the report of you,
and your work, O LORD, do I fear.
In the midst of the years revive it;
in the midst of the years make it known;
in wrath remember mercy.   ESV

Revive Thy work, O Lord!
Thy mighty arm make bare;
Speak with the voice that wakes the dead,
And make Thy people hear.

Revive Thy work, O Lord!
Disturb this sleep of death;
Quicken the smould’ring embers now
By Thine almighty breath.

Revive Thy work, O Lord!
Create soul-thirst for Thee;
But hung’ring for the bread of life,
Oh, may our spirits be!

Revive Thy work, O Lord!
Exalt Thy precious name;
And, by the Holy Ghost, our love
For Thee and Thine inflame.
--- A. Midlane

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Translated by Henry Beveridge

     10. Now seeing that in the sacred assembly all things ought to be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40), there is nothing in which this ought to be more carefully observed than in settling government, irregularity in any respect being nowhere more perilous. Wherefore, lest restless and turbulent men should presumptuously push themselves forward to teach or rule (an event which actually was to happen), it was expressly provided that no one should assume a public office in the Church without a call (Heb. 5:4; Jer. 17:16). Therefore, if any one would be deemed a true minister of the Church, he must first be duly called; and, secondly, he must answer to his calling; that is, undertake and execute the office assigned to him. This may often be observed in Paul, who, when he would approve his apostleship, almost always alleges a call, together with his fidelity in discharging the office. If so great a minister of Christ dares not arrogate to himself authority to be heard in the Church, unless as having been appointed to it by the command of his Lord, and faithfully performing what has been intrusted to him, how great the effrontery for any man, devoid of one or both of them, to demand for himself such honour. But as we have already touched on the necessity of executing the office, let us now treat only of the call.

11. The subject is comprehended under four heads--viz. who are to be appointed ministers, in what way, by whom, and with what rite or initiatory ceremony. I am speaking of the external and formal call which relates to the public order of the Church, while I say nothing of that secret call of which every minister is conscious before God, but has not the Church as a witness of it; I mean, the good testimony of our heart, that we undertake the offered office neither from ambition nor avarice, nor any other selfish feeling, but a sincere fear of God and desire to edify the Church. This, as I have said, is indeed necessary for every one of us, if we would approve our ministry to God. Still, however, a man may have been duly called by the Church, though he may have accepted with a bad conscience, provided his wickedness is not manifest. It is usual also to say, that private men are called to the ministry when they seem fit and apt to discharge it; that is, because learning, conjoined with piety and the other endowments of a good pastor, is a kind of preparation for the office. For those whom the Lord has destined for this great office he previously provides with the armour which is requisite for the discharge of it, that they may not come empty and unprepared. Hence Paul, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, when treating of the offices, first enumerates the gifts in which those who performed the offices ought to excel. But as this is the first of the four heads which I mentioned, let us now proceed to it.

12. What persons should be elected bishops is treated at length by Paul in two passages (Tit. 1:7; 1 Tim. 3:1). The substance is, that none are to be chosen save those who are of sound doctrine and holy lives, and not notorious for any defect which might destroy their authority and bring disgrace on the ministry. The description of deacons and elders is entirely similar (see chapter 4 sec. 10-13). We must always take care that they are not unfit for or unequal to the burden imposed upon them; in other words, that they are provided with the means which will be necessary to fulfil their office. Thus our Saviour, when about to send his apostles, provided them with the arms and instruments which were indispensably requisite. [545] And Paul, after portraying the character of a good and genuine bishop, admonishes Timothy not to contaminate himself by choosing an improper person for the office. The expression, in what way, I use not in reference to the rite of choosing, but only to the religious fear which is to be observed in election. Hence the fastings and prayers which Luke narrates that the faithful employed when they elected presbyters (Acts 14:23). For, understanding that the business was the most serious in which they could engage, they did not venture to act without the greatest reverence and solicitude. But above all, they were earnest in prayer, imploring from God the spirit of wisdom and discernment.

13. The third division which we have adopted is, by whom ministers are to be chosen. A certain rule on this head cannot be obtained from the appointment of the apostles, which was somewhat different from the common call of others. As theirs was an extraordinary ministry, in order to render it conspicuous by some more distinguished mark, those who were to discharge it behoved to be called and appointed by the mouth of the Lord himself. It was not, therefore, by any human election, but at the sole command of God and Christ, that they prepared themselves for the work. Hence, when the apostles were desirous to substitute another in the place of Judas, they did not venture to nominate any one certainly, but brought forward two, that the Lord might declare by lot which of them he wished to succeed (Acts 1:23). In this way we ought to understand Paul's declaration, that he was made an apostle, "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father" (Gal. 1:1). The former--viz. not of men--he had in common with all the pious ministers of the word, for no one could duly perform the office unless called by God. The other was proper and peculiar to him. And while he glories in it, he boasts that he had not only what pertains to a true and lawful pastor, but he also brings forward the insignia of his apostleship. For when there were some among the Galatians who, seeking to disparage his authority, represented him as some ordinary disciple, substituted in place of the primary apostles, he, in order to maintain unimpaired the dignity of his ministry, against which he knew that these attempts were made, felt it necessary to show that he was in no respect inferior to the other apostles. Accordingly, he affirms that he was not chosen by the judgment of men, like some ordinary bishop, but by the mouth and manifest oracle of the Lord himself.

     Christian Classics Ethereal Library / Public Domain

     Institutes of the Christian Religion