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Its Birth-Pangs at Tyndale

Its Unapologetic Contribution of Theological Riches

Its Full Flowering in a World God Refuses to Forsake

Rev. Dr. Victor A. Shepherd

I shall never forget the faculty meeting, autumn 1993, at which Ian Rennie, dean of the seminary, introduced me as the first occupant of the new Chair of Wesley Studies. One faculty member looked askance at me, unable to disguise his aversion if not to me personally then certainly to the Wesley Chair and all it held out. He turned to Rennie and sniffed superciliously, “Does this mean that Tyndale Seminary will be moving in a Wesleyan direction?” With his characteristic good humour that defused nascent hostility Rennie shot back, “Why not? For then we could all get the second blessing!”

Now the extent to which ‘second blessing’ is characteristic of Wesley and the ethos of his descendants I shall leave for you to deliberate. In any case I rejoiced that the dean of the seminary, a Presbyterian, was undisguisedly delighted with the theological breadth and the spiritual richness the new Chair would lend Tyndale University.

Already Tyndale’s Board of Governors had approved necessary changes to Tyndale’s statement of faith. Heretofore the statement of faith had endorsed a predestinarian view of the security of believers, denying the possibility of apostasy. Now, however, it read, “Believers are kept by the power of God”—a New Testament statement no one upholding scriptural normativity could deny. At this point the trustees of the Chair gladly announced that the Chair would be housed henceforth at Tyndale. (The alternative, in case Tyndale had been unwilling to alter its statement of faith, was Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.)

While the location of the Chair at Tyndale was now formally a fait accompli, I continued to find untoward putdowns of Wesley in informal settings, such as the faculty lunchroom. Wesley, it was suggested, may have been a remarkable evangelist, but he was surely a theological lightweight, no better than a second-rate thinker compared to the giants of the Sixteenth Century Reformation. (Apparently overlooked, in these informal comparisons, was the fact that I was the only faculty member with a doctorate in the Sixteenth Century Reformation.) No longer could I sit by and allow John Wesley to be defamed. I decided (good-naturedly, of course) to bring down the hammer.

At our next noonhour confab I pointed out that Wesley had written 35 tomes, including a textbook on logic; in addition to his native English he knew thoroughly eight other languages: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish; in truth he knew them so very thoroughly that he wrote a grammar textbook in seven of them. Wesley, I observed, read more comfortably, in more languages, than Martin Luther, John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, Jonathan Edwards, Joseph Butler or Immanuel Kant. Not least, Wesley was a superb Patristics Scholar, having studied at Oxford in the twilight of a remarkable period of Patristic research.

Lest my seminary lunchroom companions thought Wesley to be one more ivory-tower theology professor remote from human anguish, I went on to inform them that when Wesley was 81 he was found begging door-to-door in winter, walking day after day through ice-cold slush, garnering money for his beloved poor. Having raised 200 pounds he stopped on the fourth day—because he had all the money his poor people needed? Of course not. He had stopped, rather, because he was ill; he was suffering, he wrote in his journal, from a “violent flux” (18th Century English for uncontrollable diarrhoea).He had stopped only because he was too sick and too shaky to continue.

By now, of course, I was in full flight, and nothing could deflect me from extolling the toughness of early-day Methodist preachers, in the U.K. to be sure, but more pointedly in the new world, where life was far more dangerous. With all the kindness I could muster I pointed out that Anglicans and Presbyterians thrived on the eastern seaboard of the Thirteen Colonies, but they lacked the flexibility, and above all, the hard-nosed toughness to thrive on the frontier. After all, of the first 737 Methodist preachers in the new world, 50% were dead before they were 30; two-thirds didn’t live long enough to serve twelve years. Ordination to the Methodist ministry was a death sentence.

What befell these preachers? They got lost in the woods and died of exposure, or they were caught in a forest fire, or they were swept away in a flash flood, or they froze to death, or they were slain by those threatened by the Methodist gospel and its implicates.

Thanks to these preachers, Methodism exploded in the new world, especially on the frontier. In this regard I often recall the story of Thomas Ware, an itinerant Methodist preacher on the frontier in early-day America. Come nightfall, on one occasion, Ware needed accommodation. He asked a young settler-couple if they would share their one-room cabin with him for one night. The settler-couple said “No”. In his journal Ware later wrote, “I looked at the man, and said, smiling, ‘That would depend on our comparative strength’”—meaning, “Do you really think you can lick me?” Ware was allowed to stay the night.

I continued to hear that whereas the Reformational tradition had a profound understanding of sin, Wesley had a shallow grasp of sin, superficial ‘Arminian’ that he was. (By the way, Wesley’s theology was set before he had read so much as one word of Arminius; and Wesley’s theology never reflected Arminius’ Aristotelian scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas being the most frequently referenced thinker in Arminius.) I knew I had to acquaint my skeptical colleagues with Wesley’s understanding of human depravity. At this point I spoke of Charles Wesley’s tract, ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’ (1742). Charles speaks of the sinner’s ‘supineness’ or utter spiritual inertia and non-sentience. He speaks of the sinner’s ‘indolence’ in the mediaeval sense of sloth, the condition of those who do not grasp, because they cannot grasp, their appointment as children of God, and cannot grasp it inasmuch as they are sin-blinded (not merely impaired) and therefore ignorant of their predicament as sinners before the One who does not tolerate sin. Charles speaks in the same tract of ‘stupidity’ not in our 21^st century sense of ‘feeble-minded’ but in the 18^th century sense of cognitive stupor and volitional torpor. He speaks of sinners as ‘insensible of their real condition’; in other words, one of the worst features of our depravity is that it renders us wholly unaware of our depravity and its fatal outcome before the Holy God. To make sure no one misunderstands him on this point, Charles insists that we are not only spiritually blind and numb; we are also corrupt, our putrefaction rendering us loathsome. In other words, not only does sin provoke God’s anger; sin also (and here Charles is one with Luther) arouses God’s disgust. Sinners are an ‘abomination’ [Greek: bdelugma] to God, where according to Scripture that which is an abomination to God is that which God cannot withstand and therefore ultimately destroys.

Perhaps I should moderate my severity concerning those who dismiss Wesley as theological fluff. For as recently as 1998 when I was in Seoul, Korea, for the meetings of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Professor Heiko Oberman, a Reformation scholar without peer, emphasized that Reformation scholars must maintain the most rigorous scholarship, or else, he expostulated, “We shall end up no better than Methodists!”

My informal lunchroom profferings suspended forever any suggestions that Wesley was a spiritual dilettante who had failed to endorse the Reformers’ understanding of the nature, scope, and arrears of sin.

As the first occupant of the Chair, and therefore the person who would determine the ethos of the undertaking for the next several years, I knew that initially I had to magnify the theology of John Wesley. As often as I heard the Chair spoken of, at Tyndale, as a Chair of Wesleyan Studies I made an immediate correction: “It’s a Chair of Wesley Studies.”

For too long, I insisted, Wesley has been regarded, not least by Methodist people, as inferior to the major thinkers in the Christian tradition. Overlooked here is the fact that Wesley is the most important Church of England theologian since Cranmer, and the most important Anglican thinker in the 18^th Century, a theologian who is unquestionably Protestant and therefore belongs to the Western or Latin Church.

I deemed it my first responsibility to slay the notion that compared to the Reformed or Lutheran or Roman Catholic traditions the Methodist tradition is theologically unsubstantial and intellectually effete. In fact, Wesley expected (unrealistically, perhaps) that his lay preachers, like him, would study five hours per day. He maintained the most important subject for the preacher to study was Scripture, and after that, logic—since a self-contradicted preacher will never utter a coherent message, and the preacher’s utterance ought to reflect the logical consistency of God’s action and speech. All theology has to be logically rigorous or else it doesn’t help the would-be preacher, it can only confuse the hearer, and it cannot be communicated in any case. Then what theology informed Wesley and will continue to inform those who bear his name?

Wesley was thoroughly acquainted with seventeenth-century Anglican thought; he read the sixteenth-century continental Reformers; he cherished the English Reformers (Ridley, Latimer, Tyndale, and Cranmer, the lattermost’s Book of Common Prayer being, Wesley insisted, the finest liturgical vehicle the church catholic had ever seen.) Regularly I point out to my students passages in Wesley where the vocabulary and the word-patterns come straight out of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. (It should be noted here that Wesley always insisted he agreed without reservation with the Genevan Reformer’s understanding of Total Depravity, and was only a “hair’s breadth” from Calvin on several other matters.) It was while Wesley heard read at worship the preface to Luther’s commentary on Romans that he came to faith; it was while Charles was reading the text of Luther’s commentary on Galatians that Methodism’s major poet came to faith. When Wesley published his Christian Library, a fifty-book collection he edited and expected Methodists to read, thirty-two of the fifty volumes were authored by Puritan divines. Wesley’s studies at Oxford found him meticulously apprised of the patristic scholarship for which the university was reputed. Wesley knew the church fathers thoroughly, and, although a son of the Western church, he was critical of Augustine, the chief Western thinker, always preferring the Eastern Fathers whose outstanding representative was Athanasius. Even though Wesley was sharp in his criticism of what he observed concerning the Eastern Orthodox congregation in London, he remained indebted to outstanding Eastern Fathers such as Ephrem the Syrian (ca. 306–373) and Macarius (ca. 300–391). In fact, Macarius was the Eastern thinker whose Spiritual Homilies underlie Wesley’s understanding of sanctification.

Then is Wesley’s theology a hodgepodge, little more than a grab-bag through which he runs his fingers, retaining whatever his hand happens to grasp? On the contrary, there is a profound, coherent theology that Christians who bear his name have found compelling; it is a theology that admits many ingredients just because it disdains no one. Nevertheless it is stamped ultimately by Wesley’s genius as he forged a theology that, as he maintained and as those after him have acknowledged, is formed, informed, and normed by the substance and the logic of “the general tenor of Scripture,” as he customarily put it. For instance, although some biblical texts might be read as supporting predestination, the “general tenor” of Scripture may not be read in this way; neither does the “general tenor” permit us to deny that God’s mercy is over all his works, an eternal decree of reprobation thereby ruled out. The “general tenor of Scripture” forbids us to narrow the idea that “God desires all to be saved” into “God desires some.” Wesley’s theology is catholic (i.e., non-sectarian). At its centre, he upholds the three “grand doctrines,” without which the gospel is neither needed nor effective: original sin, justification by faith, and holiness (“present, inward salvation”). He endorses the Vincentian Canon: what has been believed by all Christians, at all times, in all places. To be sure, Wesley wrote no tome of systematic theology. Neither did Luther, however, and no one disputes Luther’s theological singularity and profundity. Nevertheless, Wesley thought systematically, as an examination of his corpus on any topic shows.

Unquestionably, however, we remember Wesley today chiefly on account of his evangelism.

While he was, indisputably, the greatest Anglican thinker in the eighteenth century, we remember him today primarily because he was an evangelist. Contemporary evangelism, however, appears to differ from his in several respects. Our concern with evangelistic techniques, programs, and “Ten Effective Steps” he would regard as manipulation at best and unbelief at worst. Wesley’s evangelism presupposes three pillars: predicament, penalty, and provision. Humankind’s predicament is bleak: the unrepentant sinner “abides in death…lost, dead, damned already.” There is nothing in Wesley of modernity’s psychologizing of the human predicament; namely, we feel guilty (without being guilty), anxious, nervous, and frustrated. Neither is there any existentializing of the human predicament; that is, through our sin we have alienated ourselves from God, from others, and from self. Wesley insists, rather, that we are alienated from God, from others, and from self not on account of our sin but on account of God’s judgment on our sin. We haven’t sashayed or wandered out of Eden; we have been expelled by a judicial act of God. The penalty for our primal disobedience is God’s condemnation. Such condemnation is not reserved for the future; it is operative now. The Day of Judgment will merely render undeniable that truth of which the condemned are now culpably ignorant. In light of the foregoing predicament and penalty, the divinely-wrought provision is the atonement. Before sinners can repent and “return home,” provision must be made for them wherein the barricade to their return is removed. Before we can be reconciled to God, God must be reconciled to us. It is little wonder Charles Wesley exults:

His blood atoned for all our race,

And sprinkles now the throne of grace…

My God is reconciled,

His pard’ning voice I hear;

He owns me for his child,

I can no longer fear….

When I recited Charles’ hymn, in a gathering of people who claimed to be theological descendants of John Wesley, I met fierce objection: “We need to be reconciled to God because we sinners are estranged from God,” I was told; “but it is unthinkable that God would need to be reconciled to us. Does he not love us eternally?” As gently as I could I replied to the objector: [1] God does love us. In truth he loves us so very much that he refuses to confirm us in our sinful disobedience. It is never loving to confirm sinners in their sin; [2] as sinners we are indeed estranged from God—but not because sin results in estrangement from God. We are estranged from God because our sin has mobilized God’s judgement, and until God’s judgement has been dealt with; that is, until his righteous anger, his holy hostility to sinners, is dealt with, we cannot be reconciled to him; [3] in the cross of Jesus, God-incarnate, God’s wrath is averted at God’s initiative; i.e., God is reconciled to us. Now and only now may we and must we be reconciled to him. Now and only now can the gospel invitation, the evangelistic summons, ‘Come home.’ be issued. Apart from the cross, that act of God by which he reconciles himself to the ‘world’ God loves (the ‘world’, in John’s understanding, being the sum total of disobedient humankind tacitly organized in its hostility to God); apart from the cross as first God’s reconciliation of himself to us there is no ground for or possibility of our being reconciled to God; apart from the cross as God’s reconciliation of himself to us there is no home for sinners to go home to. “My God is reconciled”: Charles Wesley is oceans deeper than his detractors.

Wesley typically gathers up predicament, penalty, and provision in his pithy hymn: “Who hath done the dreadful deed.”

First Charles speaks of the human predicament:

Who hath done the dreadful deed

Hath crucified my God?

Curses on his guilty head,

Who spilt that precious blood.

Then he speaks of the human penalty:

Worthy is the wretch to die;

Self-condemned, alas, is he! –

I have sold my Saviour,

I have nailed him to the tree.

And then, typically, Charles concludes with God’s breath-taking, incomprehensible, ever-merciful provision:

Yet thy wrath I cannot fear,

Thou gentle, bleeding Lamb!

By thy judgement I am clear,

Healed by stripes I am:

Thou for me a curse wast made,

That I might in thee be blest;

Thou hast my full ransom paid,

And in thy wounds I rest.

Methodist hymnody, we should always be aware, sings about the atonement more than about anything else. Repentance and faith are impossible apart from God’s prior propitiation. Any so-called evangelism that denies or overlooks this much is shallow and ineffective. It is little wonder that when people came to faith Charles Wesley characteristically announced, “They received the atonement.”

Make no mistake. The gospel that early-day Methodists cherished, eagerly embraced by Spirit-sensitized hearers, was not welcomed in the sitting rooms of ecclesiastical officialdom. Indeed, wherever Whitefield and the Wesley brothers went they met shallow, ineffective, and obstructive fellow-clergy. In September 1740 George Whitefield, a lifelong Anglican glowing with Methodist light and warmth, arrived in Boston. There were five Anglican parishes in the city. All five denied Whitefield access to their pulpits. Whereupon Whitefield went outside, on Boston Common, and preached to 20,000 people. In October 1740 Whitefield went to New York City. There were ten Anglican parishes in New York. All ten clergy barred Whitefield from their pulpits. Whereupon he spoke outdoors to huge gatherings as he had done in Boston.

Whitefield will never be forgotten, and his name will ever remain fragrant. The five clergy in Boston and the ten in New York City who thought themselves and their anaemic drivel superior to Whitefield: can any person in this room name me one?

C.S. Lewis insisted that Jesus was kind, compassionate, caring, sensitive, truthful, merciful, even self-sacrificial; nevertheless, said Lewis, there was one thing Jesus never was: nice. Anyone who reads the written gospels with even one eye open finds our Lord endlessly sympathetic with sinning, suffering people, whether victimized by others or self-victimized, at the same time as our Lord’s public ministry always has a sharp edge to it, a laser-like penetration, and all of this articulated so very pithily and pointedly as to be unforgettable. The Wesley brothers were one with the Master in this regard.

As the Evangelical Revival gained momentum it threatened ecclesiastical officialdom, since church-bureaucrats are always rendered nervous by what they cannot control or co-opt. John Wesley was summoned to appear before hostile bishops. When told his theology was un-Anglican, especially his notion of Christian perfection, he knew how to handle the accusation. “Did you receive Holy Communion this morning, prior to arraigning me before you?”, he asked his episcopal interrogators. Of course they had. “And did you first repeat the Collect for Holy Communion”? That went without saying. “Would you remind repeating it with me?”—‘Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord.’” “Now when you prayed these words earlier today,” continued Wesley fearlessly, “did you mean them?” Of course they had meant them. “Then,” said Wesley, why do you fault me for holding out to my people a Christian perfection, a sanctification neither more nor less than self-forgetful, self-abandoning love to God and neighbour, when you prayed as much for yourself? Tell me what is un-Anglican about my notion of Christian perfection as single-minded, unimpeded love when you implore God for precisely this every time you celebrate or receive Holy Communion according to the Prayer Book you cherish?” (Wesley could have added that John Calvin, no less, had insisted, 200 years earlier, that the only way for Christians to avoid backsliding was to “resolve to go on unto perfection.”)

On another occasion the bishop of London summoned Charles Wesley to appear before him and articulate the substance, ethos and trajectory of the Methodist movement. Charles complied. Before dismissing Charles, the bishop of London said, “I trust you don’t think that by asking you to explain what you and your movement are about I am hereby granting you my approval.” Whereupon Charles riposted, “And I hope you don’t think, my lord bishop, that by complying with your request I am seeking your approval.”

The Wesley brothers, like their Lord before them, were many things to many people, but they were never nice. (By the way, just in passing, I want to remind you that in mediaeval English ‘nice’ meant ‘stupid.’)

Throughout my occupancy of the Wesley Chair I told every class that I remain persuaded that Wesley needs to be ‘owned’ for what he is in himself; namely, the ecumenical figure who can do so very much to bridge Eastern and Western churches. Unquestionably Wesley is Protestant and therefore Western, the Western church including both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic. Wesley always maintained that the Book of Common Prayer was thoroughly Protestant (in truth it has an undeniable Calvinist ‘ring’ to it), and the Church of England itself was Protestant (Anglo-Catholicism, the predominant expression of Anglicanism in Canada today, didn’t assert itself until the rise of the Oxford Movement in the Nineteenth Century.) Wesley maintained that Article XVII (the Thirty-Nine Articles being theologically normative for the Church of England); Article XVII, “Of Predestination and Election,” admitted ambiguity, and because the article was ambiguous it could be read in a manner that didn’t presuppose a Calvinistic, twofold decree of election and reprobation, eternal election to life (and therefore before the believer was born, or even conceived) and eternal reprobation to eternal loss (and therefore before the unbeliever could even have sinned.) Wesley chose to read Article XVII in a manner that didn’t contradict his scorching criticisms of Reformed predestination.

Article XI, concerning justification by faith, on the other hand, admitted no ambiguity at all. Therefore, said Wesley, Anglicanism was committed unreservedly to the Protestant sola fide, justification by faith alone. Anglicanism is Protestant, and Protestant only.

At the same time, Wesley is a Western church thinker who leans farther East than anyone else. For instance, while the Western church massively emphasized original guilt as a consequence of original sin, Wesley, while never denying that sinners are guilty before God, preferred to emphasize the East’s insistence on original sin as the introduction of death and corruption and the loss of the Spirit’s immediate presence. In the same vein, while Wesley agreed with the West’s Protestant avowal of justification by faith and the doctrine’s attendant juridical features, he agreed with the East’s greater contention that the main strand in Christianity isn’t juridical but restorative. And whereas Protestant Scholasticism (especially in the century following the Reformation) liked to speak of believers living in a ‘state of grace,’ Wesley objected, with the East, that the problem with ‘state of grace’ is simply that it is static. Believers live in the ongoing dynamic of grace as Christ’s life and their life interpenetrate in a mutual indwelling that finds believers living ever more intimately with their Lord and reflecting ever more vividly the fruits of that Spirit which the Lord bears and bestows upon his people. However, lest we think Wesley naïve concerning the East’s emphasis on the restorative nature of grace, Wesley maintained the East to have understated the Christological basis of grace: grace isn’t a substance, especially a substance to be discussed as ‘uncreated’ or ‘created;’ grace, rather, is always and only the effectual presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ.

III

While rightly appreciating the necessary polemical element in the Wesleys, we mustn’t lose sight of the ‘downbeat’ in their ministry and mission, the ‘bass note’ that reverberates throughout their outward articulation and organization just because it lies ever so close to their inward conviction and experience. I speak now of their concern for holiness, “present, inward salvation”. Tirelessly Wesley insisted that God had raised up Methodism to “spread Scriptural holiness throughout the land.” He had profoundly come to see that holiness is the preoccupation of Scripture.

Here I am one with my theological ancestor. I have long been convinced that the ‘general tenor’ (Wesley’s expression) of Scripture is holiness: the holiness of God and the holiness of God’s people. I have long been convinced that Scripture, cover-to-cover, re-affirms God’s holiness in the wake of our denying it, and re-establishes our holiness in the wake of our contradicting it. As sinners we deny God’s holiness, God’s sheer, uncompromisable, inimitable Godness—whereupon God reasserts it. And as sinners we repudiate our own holiness—whereupon God re-establishes it. In this regard I have insisted, in every course I have taught, that the ‘root’ commandment in Scripture is Lev. 19:2 (and parallels): “You shall be holy, as I the Lord your God am holy.” And in every class I have taught I have pointed out, as our Puritan friends remind us, that all God’s commands are ‘covered promises;’ that is, all God’s commands may and must be read also as promise. “You shall be holy” contemporary Christians always hear rightly as command, but wrongly fail to hear as accompanying promise. Not only does God insist that his people must be holy; God also guarantees that his people will be holy, will appear before him one day without spot or blemish.

Rightly apprehending the substance and logic of Scripture, Wesley consistently pointed to holiness, that of God and that of his people, as the raison d’être of his movement.

Yet Wesley magnified the theme of holiness for another reason; namely, he had noticed that where the doctrine was held up, people in the Methodist societies knew and enjoyed a genuine deliverance from sin’s grip. Where the doctrine was neglected, the same people may have been assured of forgiveness, relief of sin’s guilt, but they remained unreleased from sin’s grip. What is the point of being relieved of sin’s guilt if sin’s power is undiminished? Wesley had noticed that in his communities where the inculcation of holiness was neglected, his people remained sin-habituated. (Not to put too fine an edge on it: for how long would an Alcoholics Anonymous group last if each meeting began with the speaker saying, ‘We are certainly glad to see all of you tonight; we want you to know you are always welcome. And by the way, no one in this group has ever been rendered contentedly sober’?) Wesley had observed that where release from sin’s power wasn’t at the forefront of his communities, they withered quickly.

Wesley announced to his people, “God can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.” What, specifically, can God do? Charles Wesley announced, “He breaks the power of cancelled sin; He sets the prisoner free.” Isn’t any gospel, so-called, that can’t undo addiction ultimately useless? Isn’t a gospel that proffers forgiveness but doesn’t effect deliverance no gospel at all?

We are fond of singing, “He can break every fetter.” Can he? If not, why not? If not, which not? In his understanding of holiness/perfection Wesley wasn’t concerned to defend himself in an abstract argument about doctrine that is abstract by definition; rather, in his insistence on ‘practical theology’ his heart broke for habituated people whose last hope was release in this life. For this reason—and this reason alone—he maintained it was nothing less than cruel to pronounce limits to God’s deliverance in this life. Of course all Christians are going to be freed definitively in the eschaton. Wesley, however, refused to proffer as spiritual counsel, ‘Wait until death.’

We should note that all deliverance groups (Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Porn-Addicts Anonymous) survive for one reason only: realistically they hold out hope for deliverance now.

I want to conclude my address with my vision for Tyndale’s Chair of Wesley Studies.

[A] Without losing sight of any of the profundities the Chair was designed to uphold, expounded already in my address, I envision the Chair to be Tyndale University’s locus of ecumenical conversation. While always convinced of his own theological tradition, Wesley appreciated the contribution of others within the church catholic. For instance, while he never hesitated to speak of the “Romish delusion” and its theological deficits, at the same time he published the works (admittedly thoroughly edited) of eight Roman Catholics from the Counter-Reformation, so highly did he esteem their spiritual discipline, their experience of Jesus Christ, their self-renunciation, and their concern for holy living. (Let us not forget that Wesley himself was criticized frequently for being a crypto-Jesuit.)

Wesley appreciated the contribution of Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Pietists of different sorts, not least Anglican Calvinists like George Whitefield and John Newton. Then was there anyone of whom Wesley had virtually nothing good to say? Yes: Quakers. Because Quakers elevated the ‘inner light,’ their idiosyncratic experience, above Scripture, Wesley denounced them. He knew the whole point of the primacy of Scripture to be the ultimacy of Jesus Christ; and therefore to elevate the ‘inner light’ above Scripture was to deny Christ’s lordship and substitute one’s self-perception as normative. For this reason he wrote, in his letter to someone who had recently become a Quaker, “Friend, you have an honest heart, but a weak head.” Wesley maintained that for fifty-five years he hadn’t found any Quakers who grasped the foundation of the gospel, justification by faith.

I envision the Wesley Chair promoting conversations with the diverse families in the church catholic, while simultaneously exercising a discernment (discernment being the principal manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts) that can properly recognize and charitably forfend theologies, movements, ideologies, novelties, and ethical compromises that are a denial of the gospel.

[B] The second aspect of my vision for the Wesley Chair reflects Wesley’s position in the burgeoning Enlightenment of his era. Wesley never allowed his gospel-driven theology to be adulterated by developments in world-occurrence even as he recognized aspects of world-occurrence that were humanly helpful. In this regard he always urged his people to “Plunder the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:22). On the one hand, the Egyptians were Israel’s oppressors, ignorant of HaShem, wantonly cruel, and idolatrous. On the other hand, the Egyptians possessed no little worldly wisdom that all people, everywhere, could profit from.

Among other matters, electricity was a preoccupation in Wesley’s day (think of Benjamin Franklin, his kite, and lightning) , and Wesley himself was entranced. When I first visited Wesley’s Chapel in London, I was intrigued by his ‘electrification machine.’ It consisted of a stator, a rotor, and two electrodes to be attached to a suffering person’s temples. The faster one cranked the rotor, the greater the electric shock to the recipient. Whom did Wesley shock? Depressed people, those who today are diagnosed as suffering from endogenous depression. The point is, Wesley came upon severely depressed people whose depression, he insisted, was not rooted in spiritual defectiveness or degenerate behaviour or demonic possession. In this regard he was light years ahead of many contemporaries. To be sure, he had no grasp of the neurological sophistication that underlies today’s Electro-Convulsive Therapy. However, when faced with atrocious human suffering, he was willing to learn from anyone.

In 1747 Wesley penned his Primitive Physic, a compend of treatments, no better than folkloric to us, aimed at relieving human distresses. Those afflicted with ‘the flux’ (diarrhoea) were to “Receive the smoke of turpentine cast on burning coals.” And for the ‘bloody flux,’ “Apply suppository of linen dipped in aqua vitae.” At the same time, Wesley never disdained professional medical treatment. In 1773 (Wesley was 70 years old) his horse stumbled, throwing him against the pommel of his saddle. Soon he found himself with a hydrocele, a large fluid collection in his scrotum. When next he was in Edinburgh he visited three leaders of the university’s faculty of medicine, and ultimately underwent surgery for his affliction.

Always aware of the suffering attending gynecological disorders, Wesley proposed a treatment for menorrhagia: half an ounce of powdered alum was to be drunk with a quarter of an ounce of dragon’s blood (dragon’s blood being the bright red resin that is obtained from different plants.) Before we laugh at Wesley, we should note that dragon’s blood is possessed of antiviral and wound-healing effects. Taspine, a component of dragon’s blood, is an alkaloid whose wound-healing efficacy is scientifically documented.

My vision for the Wesley Chair includes a willingness to speak with and learn from anyone, in any discipline, especially where human suffering may be alleviated. What creaturely wisdom (not the gospel, to be sure, but creaturely wisdom nonetheless) can be gained from the social sciences? (In my work with convicts and ex-convicts, for instance, I am aware of the dreadful effects of inadequate provision in early childhood, of family instability, of assorted abuses that will haunt victims for life.)

Although I am not medically trained, I am hugely immersed in the psychiatric world, and have been invited to address both the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association, on the assumption that Christian faith and psychiatric wisdom can together promote the healing of wounded people. What creaturely wisdom can we gain from the rising tide of neuroscience? What wisdom can be found in such disciplines as philosophy, literature, and history? Cicero once remarked, “To be ignorant of history is to remain forever a child.” Is not part of the church’s mission to have people become mature in all dimensions of human existence?

Wesley spared no effort to “plunder the Egyptians” not only because of the creaturely wisdom they possessed but also because he already knew, even more profoundly, that “In Jesus Christ all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17) Wesley knew there are no dichotomies in the universe (apart from that of sin). Knowing that in Christ all things hold together, and aspiring to obey God’s command to plunder the Egyptians, Wesley magnified the Lord who is himself the integration and coherence of a creation that the same Lord has already rendered the Kingdom of God.

My vision for the Wesley Chair includes a forum where gospel-conviction and theological sophistication welcome, gain from, and contribute to any discipline that enhances us. Herein the Wesley Chair will anticipate the person, made in God’s image but now wounded as a creature and sinful as a human; herein the Wesley Chair will anticipate that person who will be found on the day of our Lord’s appearing with their creatureliness no longer disfigured by pain and their humanness no longer distorted by sin. In other words, in its multi-disciplinary conversation the Wesley Chair will promote both wholeness and holiness; it will promote nothing less than a human flourishing that redounds to the praise of God’s glory.

St Andrew’s Presbysterian Church Service Feb 5, 2023

February 5, 2023

Dec 27th worship service at First Presbyterian Church in Penetanguishene

January 3, 2021

Psalm 97: The God Who Dispels our Doubt

August 15, 2020

Everyone fails somewhere in life. Everyone, however successful on however many fronts, nevertheless fails somewhere. Therefore I too am a failure. Specifically, I am a failed agnostic. I wanted to be an agnostic, even tried to be an agnostic, but I didn’t succeed. Here’s what happened.

I had been aware of a vocation to the ministry, nothing less than a commission from the hand of Jesus Christ, since I was 14 years old. My vocation irked me, however, since I didn’t want to be a minister; I wanted to be a lawyer. When I began university, I enrolled in courses that would prepare me for law school. Along the way I majored in philosophy, and did so very well in it that I gave up my dream of being a lawyer in favour of becoming a philosophy professor.

Yet my vocation to the ministry nagged me. No one likes to be nagged. And so I decided to will myself into agnosticism (not hard to do in a philosophy programme, I assumed). After all, God would never call an agnostic to the ministry, would he? Surely an agnostic is of no use to God in the ministry. All around me, in university classes, young Christians were struggling to retain faith. I was struggling to jettison it. I was determined to be an agnostic.

But I couldn’t get there. I failed. The One who abandons nobody; the One who said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you”—this One hounded me and haunted me. Little by little I had to give up my pursuit of agnosticism.

And then in a fourth-year philosophy course a bomb fell on me. I had to speak with one of my professors about an essay I was to write. I went to his office. This time he wasn’t standing formally behind a lectern in front of a class. Instead he was sitting casually with his feet on his desk, chair tipped back, glasses on his forehead. He was much warmer than he appeared in class, and we chatted about my essay topic for three or four minutes.

Prof. Emil Fackenheim, the brightest star in U of T’s 85-philosopher firmament; Fackenheim, a Jew who had survived Sachsenhausen (30 kms outside Berlin) where 6000 men were reduced to 300 in a Nazi horror beyond telling; Fackenheim, not only philosopher but rabbi (I didn’t know this at the time), took a cigar out his shirt pocket, lit it, exhaled smoke like the incense that had overwhelmed Isaiah in the temple centuries earlier; Fackenheim barked, “Shepherd, enough about philosophy; let’s talk about God.” And for reasons I’ll never grasp, when he said “God”, the room ignited. I was overwhelmed with the shekinah (the perceptible presence of God’s glory); it seemed I was on Sinai with Moses or on Carmel with Elijah.

“Shepherd,” Fackenheim continued after another noxious exhalation, “modernity thinks God to be vague, abstract, ethereal, ‘iffy.’ God, however, is concrete, solid, dense beyond our imagining. There is nothing ‘iffy’ about God; but there is a great deal that is ‘iffy’ about you and me.”
Dumbfounded at the spiritual assault (albeit benign) from a world-class philosopher, I was still reeling when he launched the next salvo: “Shepherd, in view of the horrific depredations of our century—crowned by the Shoah—there are huge question marks above humankind. But concerning God there is no question whatever. Never forget,” he concluded, “We do not demythologize God; God demythologizes us as God exposes the lethal, groundless myths by which we mesmerize ourselves and on account of which we slay each other.”

My encounter with a world-class philosopher exposed my attempted agnosticism as ridiculous, stupid, juvenile fatuity.

God is dense beyond our imagining? God is weightier than we can imagine? What’s the densest substance you can think of? Lead? Lead isn’t very dense at all. The flaming hydrogen gas that constitutes the sun is far denser; one milk-jug of the sun’s flaming hydrogen gas weighs 400 pounds.

The densest substance I know? A neutron star. The matter comprising a neutron star is so very dense that one thimbleful of it vastly outweighs the earth’s total human population. One teaspoon of it weighs one billion tons.

Then how dense is God? Do you understand now that when God leans on a Hebrew prophet, the prophet cannot doubt him? – that the prophet’s only concern is how to survive?

I: — “The Lord reigns”, exults the psalmist. The God we’ve just spoken of is operative; not remote, not disengaged, not indifferent; this God is present to us and alive among us and forever at work within us; this God is operative at all times, in all places, amidst all circumstances.

“Let the many coastlands be glad”, continues the psalmist. “Coastlands” is a Hebrew expression for the farthest outposts of humankind; “coastlands” means the entire inhabited world, all women and men everywhere. There is no one and nothing that escapes the rulership of God. “The Lord reigns.”

Now in a different sense Queen Elizabeth reigns. Elizabeth reigns, but she doesn’t rule. She doesn’t govern. The queen is a figurehead; she is a carryover from a bygone era; her sovereign effectiveness (beyond sentimentality) is zero. The queen may reign, but the British government rules.

When the psalmist cries “The Lord reigns”, on the other hand, he means that the living God rules, rules effectually. The One who reigns isn’t a figurehead; he’s nothing symbolic. His reign is his rule; he reigns effectually, and reigns regardless of what overtakes his creation and contradicts him.

Think of the coronavirus. For the past several months the coronavirus has been on everyone’s mind. The newscasts expatiate on it every day. To be sure, the coronavirus is no small matter. But we are mistaken if we think it is the first such pestilence to overtake us.

I grew up when polio was no minor threat, and everyday we were warned about the disease and the horror of having to live immobilized in an iron lung. In 1918, just when World War I ended and the western world anticipated relief, Spanish flu appeared: it killed between 50 and 100 million people. A century earlier tuberculosis took down millions. Before that smallpox was a scourge.

Our mediaeval foreparents had to contend with bubonic plague. Bubonic plague, the black death, surfaced in Europe in 1347, and it quickly devoured 50% of Europe’s people. “Old stuff”, we say; “bubonic plague is gone forever.” Wrong! The deadliest outbreak of bubonic plague in modern times occurred in Madagascar in October 2017. It infected thousands and killed 170.

II: — The psalmist (who wrote his priceless encouragement 3000 years ago) faced everything we must confront; he encountered everything we can’t avoid; he had to contend with everything that upsets us. And still his experience of God was so very rich that he could shout, “Clouds and thick darkness are round about him.”

The cloud is the Hebrew symbol for God’s majestic presence; God’s presence that is grand yet inherently attractive; God’s presence that is imposing yet resplendent. When we speak of clouds, we usually have something negative in mind: “It’s such a cloudy day again; I wish the sun would shine; I’m tired of dirty grey clouds.” But when the Hebrew thinker speaks of clouds, he has in mind the hugest, whitest, grandest clouds (the sort, by the way, I see on Prince Edward Island.) Such a cloud, for the Hebrew mind, symbolizes the presence and loftiness and grandeur and towering transcendence of God.

Then what about “thick darkness”? Let me say in passing that ‘darkness’ and ‘thick darkness’ are entirely different and translate two different Hebrew words. ‘Darkness’ refers to evil. ‘Thick darkness’ is the Hebrew expression for God’s solidity, density, opacity. ‘Thick darkness’ is the Hebrew expression for God’s thickness; thicker, denser, weightier than a neutron star. “Thick darkness” means that God cannot be dislodged, cannot be set aside, yet also cannot be domesticated.

So this God reigns. To what end? What does his rule accomplish? The psalmist tells us that “righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.” “Righteousness and justice” is Hebrew shorthand for shalom; God’s restoration of a disordered, evil-afflicted cosmos; and God’s salvation of a dysfunctional, sin-ridden people. Right now the entire creation, marred by evil, lacks wholeness; right now the human creature, marred by sin, lacks holiness. What’s more, the disordered creation and dysfunctional sinners interpenetrate each other. While neither is the cause of the other’s problem, both torment each other. A disordered creation that finds people lacking the necessities of life lends them an added inducement to sin (as if they needed added inducement); on the other hand, sinners who are self-preoccupied care little for a creation they are polluting and degrading every day. God’s purpose is to remedy both. He is intent on a world in which righteousness dwells; and he pursues a people who will praise him everlastingly as only rescued sinners can.

Will God achieve his purpose? Or is he going to be stymied, frustrated finally? Using yet another vivid image, the Psalmist reminds us, “Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about….The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth.”

Now please don’t say, “Just a minute, Shepherd. God is thick darkness; God is also consuming fire that overcomes his adversaries. How can God be dark and fiery at the same time? Doesn’t fire shed light and thereby eliminate what’s dark?” If you ask this question you are asking the wrong question. Concerning these wonderfully vivid images of God’s presence and power we are to think not literally but literarily. Of course God isn’t literally fire, flaming methane gas. Of course God isn’t literally a cloud, water droplets suspended in air. We aren’t to think literally but literarily.

It all adds up to one thing: God is bigger, grander, denser, more substantive, more effective, than anything we could guess at apart from the God-ordained images the psalmist gives us.

III: — The truth that God’s commitment to the restoration of the creation and those creatures made in his image; the truth that God’s commitment to this end and God’s zeal in pursuing it; the truth that God’s adversary-consuming intensity is hot enough and intense enough to have mountains melt like wax; none of this means that we, God’ people are to do nothing. God has called us into his Kingdom; God has recruited his people to join him in his pursuit. For this reason the psalmist declares, “O you who love the Lord, hate evil!”

I am always startled at the juxtaposition: those who love are simultaneously to hate; those who love God are to hate evil. Love and hatred are passions. Plainly God expects his people to be impassioned, as impassioned as he is. What’s more, he expects his impassioned people to be more than impassioned; he expects them to act. The apostle James insists it isn’t enough to be an enthusiastic hearer of the Word; we must no less be an ardent doer of the Word. Jesus Christ challenges misguided disciples, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46) We are to hate evil.

Now the last thing I want to do this morning is to foster false guilt in anyone, make anyone feel inadequate or deficient in that she isn’t zealous enough, discerning enough, resolute enough, brave enough in her active hatred of evil. False guilt doesn’t help anyone.

Neither do I want to deny that more than a little discretion is needed before we hurl ourselves against evil, even the most blatant evil. I am always aware that many a person has recognized an evil to be just that, has determined to roll it back, only to find himself overtaken by, victimized by, the very evil he thought he was called to undo.

A friend told me he had a vocation to work on behalf of the women wretchedly immersed in the sex-trade, now proliferating everywhere.

Now I had had several opportunities to observe certain domestic sensitivities concerning my friend. I feared that if he worked among these women he risked disgrace. As gently as I could I said to him, “The evil you want to roll back; it is evil and it should be rolled back; but it isn’t your task to do this. You identify a different evil to hate.”

While we are on this topic we should admit that there is much evil we can do nothing about. If someone tells me that there is corruption in the way government funds are assigned to some researchers (but not to others, equally deserving); if someone tells me there is corruption in the tow-truck industry (this point is beyond dispute), I’m not doubting it, denying it, or minimizing its seriousness. But neither is there anything I can do immediately about it. I have no access to the tow-truck industry; I have no access to the assigning of government funds to researchers. I don’t have a ready-to-hand tool to use against such corruption.

Then were do we begin? Instead of beginning with massive evil or dramatic evil, let’s begin at the other end. Let’s begin with something closer to home, something personal, something to which we do have access and about which we can do something.

Let’s look at the book of Proverbs. The author of Proverbs exclaims, “There are six things which the Lord hates, seven which are an abomination to him.” (Prov. 6:16-19) Then he lists them.

The first is “haughty eyes.” The Lord hates haughty eyes. Haughty eyes are the murderous facial expression of the disdainful person, the contemptuous person. Haughty eyes are the bodily expression, the dismissive wave of the hand, the sarcastic smile, the derisive write-off of the person now written-off as not worth bothering with, not even considered to exist.

In Matthew 5:12 Jesus says, “Whoever insults her sister mobilizes God’s prosecution; and whoever gives his brother the finger is on the brink of hell.”

People who are adept at verbal or bodily putdowns are proud of what they do and protective of themselves (they think) at the same time. Even as they slay those they deem beneath them they remark, “Did I say anything?” Of course they haven’t said anything. There’s no need to speak when facial expression kills more quickly.

Haven’t we all seen someone publicly humiliated by a false smile? Wretchedly embarrassed by a snort of superiority? Haven’t we all seen someone shamed publicly and reduced to helpless, voiceless anguish by the smart aleck’s smirk? Haven’t we all seen someone shrivelled by a belittlement she will never forget?

“Did I say anything?” Haughty eyes, says our Hebrew friend, is an evil no less evil than the tuberculosis bacillus or the cancer cell or the corona virus. The Lord hates evil. We must hate evil. If we can’t do anything about evil in Putin’s Russia, we can surely do something closer to home.

Next, says the book of Proverbs, is “a lying tongue.” In Matthew 5:37 Jesus says, “Let what you say be simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Anything more than this comes from evil.” Christ’s pronouncement is repeated five times in the New Testament. It’s plain that transparent speech, devoid of deviousness or dissimulation, must be found in Christ’s people. Christians are to be characterized by unadorned, unambiguous speech. We mean what we say and say what we mean. We don’t traffic in that subtly disguised doublespeak wherein we can say something caustic and then deny it credibly when we are faulted for it.

We have all met those who are adept at ambiguous speech. They know how to say something that publicly allows them maximal wiggle room, even as they know the hearer will hear something that suggests no wiggle room at all. They laugh at how clever they are. They dismiss Christ’s command concerning ‘yes’ and ‘no’. They dismiss the apostle James: “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your’ no’ ‘no’, so that you may not fall under condemnation.” (James 5:12)

When John Wesley was putting together the earliest Methodist classes, he wrote in 1743 that Methodists must never be found “using many words in buying or selling.” Using many words in buying or selling simply means the speaker is bent on making a sucker out of the person he’s doing business with. It appears some Methodists didn’t get Wesley’s point, because one year later, 1744, he wrote that Methodists must always “be at a word [one word – only] in buying or selling.”

If we are not truthful, not transparent, then we shouldn’t expect people to trust us. Why would anyone trust those who display themselves as untrustworthy?

If we love the Lord, says the psalmist, we must simultaneously hate evil.

“Six things the Lord hates; seven are an abomination to him”, says Proverbs. Today we have looked at only two. The remaining five we shall leave for another day, even as we are invited to search our hearts and honestly confront ourselves with the as-yet un-named evil within us that we are to repent and repudiate.

IV: — Finally, Psalm 97 tells us, at the end of the day, we are summoned to rejoice in the Lord and give thanks to his holy name. In Hebrew, ‘name’ means nature, person, presence, power, deserved reputation. As God acts in history God names himself. In the calling of Abraham and Sarah for the sake of a people who live to the praise of his glory; in the summoning of Moses to lead a people into a promised land that would one day be nothing less than the Kingdom of God; in the calling of prophets who re-acquainted God’s people with God’s uncompromisable truth and God’s undeflectable purpose—in all of this God named himself repeatedly, ever revealing his nature, his person, his presence, his power and his reputation.

And then he named himself definitively in his Son. At the Jordan and again at the Transfiguration God said concerning Jesus of Nazareth, “You are my Son; you are the One the whole inhabited earth is to hear and heed; you are the One who bears my Spirit for the sake of bestowing it upon my people.”

The apostle Paul reminds the congregation in Ephesus that God has named himself forever in the name “that is above every name”, the name of Jesus Christ. For Christ Jesus our Lord has pioneered for us that way through life which honours God. Jesus Christ has borne our sin and borne it away leaving us the freedom to follow him, our elder brother, in our lives as children of God. Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead; God has thereby vindicated his Son, and vindicated his people with him, allowing us his people to stand with him cheerfully amidst those who still mock him and scorn his people.

Just because God has named himself victoriously in the name of him whose name is above every name we can rejoice; we must rejoice. For the God who is brightest cloud, thickest darkness and consuming fire all at once; this One has defined himself for us in Jesus Christ, now guarantees the fulfilment of his purpose for us and our world, and holds us close to him in a grip that will never let us go.

Every day I thank God I’m a failure; a failed agnostic, that is. Victor Shepherd 9^th August 2020 S.U.C.

Psalm 97 English Standard Version

The Lord Reigns

97 The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice;
    let the many coastlands be glad!
²Clouds and thick darkness are all around him;
    righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.
³Fire goes before him
    and burns up his adversaries all around.
⁴His lightnings light up the world;
    the earth sees and trembles.
⁵The mountains melt like wax before the Lord,
    before the Lord of all the earth.

⁶The heavens proclaim his righteousness,
    and all the peoples see his glory.
⁷All worshipers of images are put to shame,
    who make their boast in worthless idols;
    worship him, all you gods!

⁸Zion hears and is glad,
    and the daughters of Judah rejoice,
    because of your judgments, O Lord.
⁹For you, O Lord, are most high over all the earth;
    you are exalted far above all gods.

¹⁰O you who love the Lord, hate evil!
    He preserves the lives of his saints;
    he delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
¹¹Light is sown for the righteous,
    and joy for the upright in heart.
¹²Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
    and give thanks to his holy name!

On Digging Again The Wells Of Our Father Abraham (Gen.26:18) Encouragement, Caution, Recovery

October 26, 2019

24 October, 2019

Intro.] I have been asked, as a Christian of evangelical conviction, commitment and confession, to share with you my angle-of-vision on the evangelical movement in its present self-understanding and expression. I have been asked as well to share with you what cautions or corrections might be in order, and not least what might need to be re-emphasized if not recovered.

1:1] First of all we must ever keep at the forefront of our mind and heart and mission the human condition before God.

“Lost, dead, damned already” writes John Wesley in his tract Awake, Thou that Sleepest.¹ Evangelism at all times, and therefore evangelicalism at any time, presupposes the human condition he learned from Scripture. Wesley preached 40,000 times and travelled 400,000 kms, frequently rain-soaked in summer and winter alike, not because humankind ultimately needed help or improvement or encouragement or fixing up or topping up. He spent himself because he knew humankind needed saving. Saving from what? From whom? In other words, what is the gravest threat confronting the sinner?

When I put this question to my class in theology, invariably the class answers, “Sin is; or satan is; or cosmic evil is.” And invariably I reply, “No: God is; God is the sinner’s gravest threat”. Startled now, the class ripostes, “But isn’t God our saviour?

While the shocked class splutters, I pose my next question: “If you insist God is our saviour, then from what does God save us?”. The class thinks this question easier: God saves us from sin, or from ourselves, or from meaninglessness, from frustration, from futility, or from alienation of any and every sort.

To conclude the exercise I inform students that the gospel isn’t good news because it alleviates depression or despair or frustration; the gospel is good news in that it spares us condemnation at God’s hand. The gospel, simply, is God in his mercy saving us from God in his condemnation. God is the sinner’s enemy and therefore the one the sinner is to fear; and finally, God is the sinner’s saviour and therefore the one we are to trust, love and obey.

When students deem me overstated on this point, we re-visit the saga of Genesis 3. Adam and Eve, in the wake of their ungrateful, disdainful disobedience, are found outside the Garden of Eden. Did they wander out? If they did, they can smarten up, turn around (‘repent’ in biblical parlance), and step back in.

But they didn’t wander out carelessly or step out adventuresomely or stride out defiantly. They were driven out, expelled. Who expelled them? God did, by a judicial act. And the angel with the flaming sword bars re-entry.² Of themselves, therefore, they can’t repent. They can repent and go home only as God rescinds his condemnation. For until God rescinds his condemnation, there is no ‘home’ to go home to and no one to return to.

In the cross of Jesus Christ God rescinds his condemnation: now there is a home and a welcoming Father. In the cross of Jesus Christ God is reconciled to sinners: now sinners may become reconciled to him.

As I move around in evangelical circles I am disturbed by a tendency I am hearing too often; I am hearing the human predicament psychologized (i.e., we feel guilty for any number of reasons without being guilty before God). Or I hear the human predicament existentialized (i.e., through our sin we have alienated ourselves from God, from others, and from self). Lost here is Scripture’s insistence that we are not alienated from God on account of our sin; we are alienated from God on account of God’s judgement on our sin.

We must always remember that the penalty for our sin (to be distinguished from the consequences of sin) is condemnation. Such condemnation is operative now. The Day of Judgement will announce nothing new but merely render undeniable that truth of which the condemned are currently culpably ignorant. Right now God is rightly hostile to the sinner.

1:2] And yet through the cross of Jesus Christ God is overwhelmingly the sinner’s friend. Thanks to the atonement the barricade denying us access to God has been removed; the way home is without impediment; the invitation “Come unto me” is sounded and pressed upon us relentlessly.

Thanks to the atonement, I said a minute ago. The biblical notion of the atonement is fast falling from favour in the church, and finding heavy weather even in evangelical circles. “Substitutionary atonement amounts to child abuse”, we are told.³ What parent torments, even kills, his child for any reason, let alone for the ridiculous ‘reason’ of supposedly benefiting a third party, sinful humankind? Any doctrine of the atonement is cruelty cloaked in gibberish.

Evangelicalism insists, nevertheless, that either our Lord “…bore our sins in his body on the tree”⁴ or there is no gospel at all. Evangelicalism knows too that all shallow caricatures of the atonement are wide of the mark. After all, in the Incarnation God himself has come among us and identified himself with us in his condemnation of us. In the Son who is “reckoned with transgressors”⁵ the Father has bound himself to sinners.

In the incarnation, however, the Son’s alienation from the Father on Good Friday is nothing less than the Father’s self-alienation for our sakes. In other words, Father and Son alike are one in their judgement of sinners and one in their execution of that judgement. In the incarnation, however, the Father’s visiting his condemnation of sinners upon the Son is finally the Father’s visiting his condemnation of sinners upon himself. In Jesus Christ, the Son Incarnate, the just judge executes his judgement and absorbs that judgement in himself. If the just judge absorbs in himself the deadly condemnation we sinners deserve, then what remains for us?—acquittal, pardon, forgiveness; relief, release, life. With consummate concentration Athanasius declared, “Our resurrection is stored up in the cross.”⁶

Our resurrection is indeed stored up in the cross—if, so far from any sort of child abuse, God, the implacable foe of sinners, has executed his judgement upon them; and then, in his incomprehensible mercy, has absorbed that judgement in himself and thereby rendered himself the undeflectable friend of sinners.

I remain persuaded that the foundation of evangelicalism is gathered up in scriptural faithfulness to humankind’s predicament under God, as well as in God’s provision for us in the atonement of the Incarnate One. If either aspect is omitted, then evangelicalism has betrayed its trust, trivialized itself, and rendered itself unable to speak savingly to our contemporaries.

2:1] Jesus Christ, God’s definitive provision for us who are “lost, dead, damned already”, must be owned in faith. He must be seized, trusted, “put on” in Paul’s vocabulary.⁷ While we can embrace him only because he has first embraced us in the cross and illumined us as to his act by the Spirit, we in turn must hold him fast “with both hands in that fellowship by which he has bound himself to us”, in Calvin’s vocabulary.⁸

To embrace Jesus Christ is to embrace all of him, the totus Christus, in Luther’s vocabulary.⁹ To embrace all of Christ is to embrace head and body alike. In other words, we cannot be immersed in and identified with Christ our Lord unless we are immersed in and identified with the church.

For this reason I am persuaded that evangelicals are frequently in danger of minimizing the cruciality of the church; frequently in danger of thinking a parachurch movement to be a substitute for the local congregation if not superior to it.

Too often evangelicals appear to suggest that to be converted to Christ is to be converted to a severed head, the body of Christ amounting to little more than an option for those who ‘do church’ or an inessential encumbrance for those who don’t.

On this matter we need to look back to David, Israel’s greatest king, the Messianic figure with whom God’s covenant is eternal, the one who therein anticipates Jesus Christ. Samuel, we are told, “anointed him [David] in the midst of his brothers.”¹⁰ The translation “in the midst of” is crucial, for according to our Hebrew foreparents the Messiah always brings his people with him. To be sure, the Messiah cannot be reduced to his people; neither is he a function of them. At the same time, however, he isn’t who he is apart from them. Intimacy with him is intimacy with them.

For this reason weaker translations of the Hebrew text are misleading; e.g., David was anointed “in front of his brothers”¹¹, or “while his brothers watched”¹², and perhaps weakest of all, “from among his brothers”.¹³ “While his brothers watched” suggests his brothers were spectators at an event that didn’t include them; “from among his brothers” implies that his brothers were left behind.

Luther was more profound: to be related to Christ at all is to be related to all of him, the totus Christus.

While Jesus Christ cannot be collapsed into his body thereby rendering him no longer the church’s Judge and Lord (an error for which evangelicals correctly fault Roman Catholic thought), neither can the Judge, the Lord who transcends the church ever be separated from it (an error for which Roman Catholics correctly fault much Protestant thought). Evangelicals need a scriptural understanding of the church that is theologically more profound and more nuanced; evangelicals need this much more than they need instruction from the social psychologists on how to foster homogeneity in group-growth dynamics.

I maintain that it is helpful, in our grasp of ecclesiology, to revisit how the church has been viewed in major families in Christendom.

2:2] In the Reformational families of classical Protestantism the church is understood as those who gather to hear the Word of God preached. The sermon is the single largest item of worship, occupying no less than one-third of the service and frequently more than one-half.

The presuppositions of this understanding of the church are noteworthy. One presupposition is that the gospel has a precise content; another, that we have to be informed of this content. In other words, the content of the gospel has to be divinely revealed; and it is impossible to intuit it.

The precedent for this understanding has ample scriptural warrant. Moses preached. The prophets preached. Jesus, we are told, “came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God.”¹⁴ Not least, when Jesus sends out the seventy missioners, he declares, “Whoever hears you hears me.”¹⁵ There is no ‘as if’: ‘whoever hears you, it’s as if they heard me.’ To hear the missioner preach is to be confronted with and encountered by Christ-in-person; i.e., whenever the Word of God is preached, Jesus Christ acts—unvaryingly.

The Reformers speak with one voice here. John Calvin maintains that when the gospel is preached the “blood of Christ flows.”¹⁶ Intensifying this point, Calvin adds, “When the gospel is preached, [Christ’s] sacred blood falls on us along with the words.”¹⁷ The congregation, in other words, consists of those who hear the Word of God preached and therein find themselves drenched in the blood of Christ. It is little wonder Calvin reminds us, “When he [Christ] speaks, we tremble.”¹⁸

Any understanding of the church that highlights the uniqueness of the gospel will also emphasize the need for and place of correct doctrine. Doctrines are truths about Christ that point to him and describe him. He, by contrast is Truth (in the biblical sense of aletheia, reality). To be sure, Truth cannot be reduced to truths; eternal reality cannot be reduced to provisional statements that speak of it. Still, Truth cannot be described or commended or communicated apart from the truths that speak of him. Therefore to belittle doctrine is to belittle the one of whom it speaks.

The church consists of those who gather to hear the Word of God preached.

2:3] Another understanding of the church attested in Scripture is one dear to Eastern Orthodoxy, and the twenty-two churches that make up the Catholic family, chief among which is the Roman Catholic. This understanding highlights the church as the body of Christ.

In this understanding we exist as individual Christians; that is, we are identified with Jesus Christ only as we are found in and identified with his body, the corporate people of God. What’s more, it is only as we are members of the body that we share the body’s ministry and mission. Ultimately there is only one ministry, the ministry of Jesus Christ in his body. To remove ourselves from the church is not to share in his ministry; which is to say, not to share in any ministry (a point evangelicals often appear not to grasp).

Christians who understand the church as the body of Christ have a fine sense of historical continuity. They know that humans are human in any era. Therefore Christians today are not the first to face, for instance, religious pluralism. They know that biblical faith took root in the midst of religious and cultural pluralism. After all, God spoke to Abraham and Moses and Malachi in a setting that included Canaanite religion¹⁹ and child sacrifice²⁰ and sacral prostitution.²¹ Christians in the apostolic era attested the uniqueness of the Incarnate Son of God amidst a sea of Gnosticism, mystery religions, and idolatrous worship of the Roman emperor.

As for multisexuality (never think there are only half-a-dozen sexual orientations), any comparison between what occurred, and was even trumpeted, in the ancient world and what can be found in the scores of documented paraphilias today (paraphilias being unusual patterns of sexual arousal and gratification); any comparison here falsifies contemporaneity’s claim to sexual novelty or discovery.

Aware of the 3500-year history of the church, our Catholic friends grasp the cruciality of Christian memory. They know that to lack memory is to be amnesiac. And the tragedy of amnesia isn’t that someone has forgotten this or that. The tragedy is rather that the institution without memory lacks an identity; lacking an identity it cannot be trusted. An institution that slights memory, not knowing who it is, doesn’t know how to act in conformity with who it is. Therefore it can only act whimsically, capriciously, arbitrarily.

Possessed of Christian memory, however, and therefore acquainted with the church’s history, Christians in the Catholic family are characteristically patient. The church is weak? God will strengthen it. Compromised? God will restore it. Confused? God will enlighten it. While we should always be concerned, we should never panic. After all, since Jesus Christ is never without the earthly manifestation of his body, he is never without witnesses to himself.

2:4] There is yet another understanding of the church that can be traced from the First Century congregation in Corinth to charismatic Christians today; namely, the church as the community of the Holy Spirit. This tradition reminds us that we must choose to enter the Kingdom; no one oozes into it; that while God so loves the world as to go to hell and back for it, the world remains the world: the sum total of God-defiant, disobedient men and women tacitly organized in their hostility to the gospel. This tradition reminds us that faith is not the same as ‘beliefism’; cruciform discipleship is not the same as middle-class ‘yuppyism’; the gate admitting us to eternal life is narrow, and the way is anything but easy.

In the same vein these Christians insist that doctrine, however necessary, is an abstraction, while life in the Spirit is concrete.

When Paul, heartbroken and angry in equal measure, confronts the church in Galatia concerning its anti-gospel slide into legalism, he asks them, “Did you receive the Spirit through hearing with faith or by works of the law?”²² His reference to their receiving the Spirit is a reference to an occurrence in their Christian experience, an occurrence vivid, memorable, and undeniable. It’s as if he said, “That raging headache you have right now; did you get it through concussion or through over-exposure to the sun?” What can’t be denied is that someone with a headache knows she has a headache. “Did you receive the Spirit through embracing the gospel with faith or through self-righteous legalism?” Note that the apostle is endeavouring to correct their theology by appealing to their experience of the Spirit.

The apostle John, in his brief, five-chapter first epistle, uses the expression ‘we know’ or ‘you know’ or ‘I know’ 34 times in one of the smallest books in Scripture. “We know that we have passed out of death into life.”²³ It’s all gathered up in “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit”.²⁴ To be visited with God’s Spirit isn’t to wish or long for or hanker after or speculate; it’s to know.

To speak of the Spirit is to speak of the immediacy, intensity, and intimacy of God. The Spirit is God-in-our-midst acting upon his people so as to move them beyond uncertainty concerning who he is, what he has done, and what he asks of them.

There is a family of Christians who highlight what should never be forgotten; namely, a body without vivifying Spirit is no better than a corpse.

3] And yet evangelicals must always be aware of the distortions that lap at all three traditions of the church.

3.1] The church consists of those who gather to hear the Word of God preached? Before long an unbalanced emphasis on preaching turns into an adulation of the preacher as the congregation is built around a personality cult or verbal glitz. Or the sermon morphs into an intellectual exercise that happens to use religious words, while congregations become amateur, armchair philosophers who relish intellectual titillation and exude intellectual snobbery.

3.2] The church is the body of Christ? If this understanding is isolated from the other two, it is soon forgotten that Christ ever remains Lord and Judge of the body. It is soon forgotten that the church traffics in much that calls down Christ’s curse. It is soon put forward, usually implicitly, that Christ inheres the church and is a function of the church. Overlooked now is Peter’s startling pronouncement: “…the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God.”²⁵

3.3] The church is the community of the Holy Spirit? This salutary corrective is lost if this particular understanding neglects the other two. For an unbalanced elevation of experience leaves people unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of the world; unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of anything at all; unable to distinguish between Christian righteousness and cultural refinement. Now the measure of spiritual authenticity is intra-psychic intensity of any sort arising from any stimulus. Intensity, vividness, immediacy, we should note, can as readily describe a life of sin.

My point in my protracted discussion of the church is this: I long to see evangelicalism recover the totus Christus, the whole Christ. I crave having us recognize that to say “I believe in Jesus Christ” includes our saying “I believe that the church is essential to our salvation and witness.” I hunger to see evangelicalism endorse a richer understanding of the church as the body of Christ, gathered by the Word, empowered by the Spirit, and all of this for the sake of rendering visible that Kingdom which the King has brought with him in his resurrection from the dead, which Kingdom can no more be shaken²⁶, let alone overturned, than the King’s resurrection can be undone; which Kingdom, real right now, is discerned by faith in anticipation of that day when King and Kingdom alike will be beyond dispute because beyond denial.

4] One matter remains to be investigated; namely, what is the spiritual presupposition of the sinner’s predicament/rescue, and what is the spiritual presupposition of the church? The presupposition of the sinner’s predicament is the holiness of God, while the presupposition of the church is the holiness of God’s people. The holy God calls, equips, and commissions a holy people, the “holy nation.”²⁷

I have long been persuaded that holiness—of God and of God’s people—is the preoccupation of Scripture.

4.1] To say that God is holy is to say that God is incomparably himself. God belongs to no class. God is predicated of nothing. Yahweh isn’t one among several deities, not even the best of several. Yahweh, alone, is God.

Everyone knows how crucial Deut. 6:4 is to Israel’s faith: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” If this text (“…the Lord ourGod…”) is read by itself, however, it might suggest that Yahweh happens to be Israel’s God but Shiva could be no less the deity of Hinduism and Devas of Buddhism. In order to avoid this error we must always read Deut. 6:4 alongside Zech. 14:9: “And on that day Yahweh will be king over all the earth. On that day Yahweh will be one and his name one.” The Holy One of Israel alone is God.

4.1.1] Because God’s holiness is God’s unique Godness; because God’s Godness is derived from nothing else and is shared with nothing else, God is not to be identified with his creation as a whole nor with any part or dimension or aspect of his creation. While pantheism maintains that God is the essence of all that is, prophet and apostle insist that God is not the essence of anything God has made. The being of God is divine. The being of the creation is creaturely. The being of God is infinite and necessary. The being of the creation is finite and contingent. There is a qualitative discontinuity here, an ontological discontinuity that can’t be compromised. Any suggestion that a creaturely item is divine is an affront to the holiness of God.

Panentheism, a near relative, insists that God is in the essence or of the essence of all that is. If God is the essence or in the essence or of the essence of all that is, then there’s nothing that isn’t divine. And if there’s nothing that isn’t divine, then by definition sin and evil cannot exist. (Now we understand why our secular ‘yuppie’ friends flirt with or are even devotees of the New Age Movement. The New Age Movement, pantheistic or at least panentheistic, legitimates, even divinizes, all human behaviour while denying any human behaviour to be sinful or wicked.)

4.1.2] In the second place God’s holiness means that God cannot be measured by or assessed by anything other than himself. God is the absolute standard of himself.

4.1.3] In the third place God’s holiness means that God’s character is without defect or deficiency. God’s character is free from taint of any kind.

God’s love is devoid of sentimentality.

God’s anger is devoid of irascibility or petulance.

God’s judgement is devoid of bias or arbitrariness.

God’s patience is devoid of detachment or indifference.

God’s sovereignty is devoid of coercion or tyranny. (Who, after all, is less tyrannical, less coercive than the Lord of the cosmos dying between two criminals at the city garbage dump, derided by foes and abandoned by friends?)

4.1.4] In the fourth place, God’s holiness means that all aspects of God’s character are gathered up into a unity. Just as every shade of the spectrum from infrared to ultraviolet is gathered up into what we call ‘light,’ so every aspect of God’s character and God’s loftiness and God’s lordship is gathered up into God’s sheer Godness, God’s holiness.

5.1] God’s holiness, according to Scripture, entails the holiness of God’s people. The God who is holy insists that his people be holy too. Needless to say, we can’t be holy with God’s Godness, since God’s Godness is shared with no one. Nonetheless we are appointed to reflect God’s holiness, to mirror God’s character, in a way that is appropriate to us whom God has made in his likeness and image.

Unambiguously Peter exclaims, “…as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy for I am holy.’”²⁸ Echoing this conviction, Paul says of his fellow-Christians, “For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”²⁹ Plainly both apostles were acquainted with the dominical pronouncement, “Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them….”³⁰

It should surprise no one, then, that from cover to cover Scripture is preoccupied with holiness. Scripture is preoccupied, we have to admit, where the church hasn’t been. For instance, Christians have contended vociferously over predestination. We should note, however, that the predestination word-group occurs approximately fifteen times in Scripture, while the holy/holiness word-group occurs 835 times. Scripture’s characteristic concern is holiness, both God’s and ours.

I am convinced that the overarching, comprehensive theme of Scripture is one matter with two aspects: God’s re-assertion of his holiness in the face of our denying his, and God’s re-establishing our holiness in the wake of our contradicting ours. We deny God’s holiness and we contradict our own. According to Scripture God is ceaselessly at work to re-asserthis holiness and re-establish ours.

Both these concerns are gathered up in what I call the ‘root’ commandment of Scripture. The ‘root commandment’ is, “You shall be holy as I the Lord your God am holy.”³¹ This commandment is heard over and over throughout the bible. It’s the bass note; it’s the downbeat; it’s the refrain; it’s the pulse: “You shall be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

The ‘root’ commandment, I have called it. But look at the grammatical form: “You shall be….” “You shall be” can be read as command or as promise. Read as command it means “You ought to be holy, you had better be holy.” Read as promise it means “One day you will be rendered holy; I guarantee it: you will be found holy.”

It is our friends, the seventeenth-century Puritans, who insist that all God’s commands are “covered promises.”³² The Puritans always knew that what God requires of his people God gives to his people. What God commands his people to exemplify God promises his people will display. Put another way, “You shall be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy” is the command of God underlying all Scripture and no less the promise of God crowning and adorning all Scripture.

5.2] Holiness is both God’s gift and humankind’s task. What God gives us, we are to live. Holiness is both by grace and by grit. How gritty is the grit? Very gritty, according to the single most protracted discussion of holiness in all of Scripture. The single most protracted discussion of holiness is found in Leviticus, chapters 18-27. Leviticus 18 begins, “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you.’” Plainly holiness has everything to do with our doing. It doesn’t matter how we feel or what we intend or what ecstatic religious experiences we have undergone if we fail to do.

Do what? Holiness, so far from being so heavenly as to be of no earthly good, is startlingly mundane, according to Leviticus 18-27. Consider the following. We are to treat the stranger (the stranger is always vulnerable, lonely and anxious) as one of us. If we are merchants we are to use just balances and weights and measures. If we have to go to court we mustn’t attempt to bribe the judge. And if we happen to be the judge then we must judge justly, favouring neither the rich nor the poor.

We mustn’t offer up our children to pagan deities. Surely the discussion of holiness in Leviticus is irrelevant right here, for who would sacrifice their own children today? As a matter of fact millions offer up their children to pagan deities every day. How many parents are there in Thailand who have consigned their children, more or less twelve years old, to a horrific sex-trade catering to wealthy Europeans and North Americans while the Thai government looks the other way, so incomparably lucrative is the tourist sex-trade for the Thai economy?

Do you think children today aren’t offered up to pagan deities? Then why is it a child who is challenged—challenged in any respect—has the right to special education and the right to social assistance and the right to special access in public buildings and, not least, the right to her own toilet—but she doesn’t have the right to be born?

Lest we think that such down-to-earth holiness is a peculiarity of the book the church manages to avoid, we should look at holiness in the book of Exodus: “You shall not boil a kid (young goat) in its mother’s milk.”³³ Why not? A she-goat would never be aware that her offspring was being boiled in her milk.

There are two considerations here. One, even though the goat isn’t aware that it’s her offspring being cooked in her milk, anyone who has watched an animal nurse her offspring tenderly and defend it fiercely would be utterly insensitive if he did what the command of God forbids. In the second place, in the ancient world to boil a young goat in its mother’s milk was to invoke a foreign deity. If God forbids us now to boil a kid in its mother’s milk then God is forbidding his people now to call upon foreign deities.

Tell me: what deities, so-called, are invoked right now? What deities are invoked when a baseball player who fails to get a hit seven times out of ten is guaranteed fifteen million dollars per year for the next five years while homemakers are selling daffodils on street corners because cancer patients needing treatment have been told there’s a six-month waiting list for the equipment?

“Walk in love, insists Paul, “as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us….but fornication and all impurity or covetousness….Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”³⁴ And when we are told that Christians must keep the marriage bed undefiled³⁵, we cannot pretend that Scripture doesn’t presuppose, everywhere, marriage to be the union of a man and a woman.

5.3] A few minutes ago I spoke of the ‘root’ commandment of Scripture: “You shall be holy as I the Lord your God am holy.” Now recall the “great and first”³⁶ commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God without qualification or reservation or hesitation, and you shall love your neighbour with total self-forgetfulness.”³⁷ How is the root commandment related to the great commandment? The connection is plain: holiness is freedom to love. To be holy is to be human (authentically human); to be authentically human is to be free to love.

The purpose of God’s rendering his people holy is to render us authentically human. Some people have foolishly spoken of God’s sanctifying grace in terms of their becoming superhuman. But to aspire to be superhuman is to aspire after sin. And not to put too fine an edge on it; to aspire to be superhuman is to behave like a subhuman. It is the purpose of God’s grace to render us authentically human.

6] The Newer Testament characteristically speaks of Christ’s people as hagioi, ‘holy ones,’ ‘saints.’ Saints are not spiritual super-achievers of any sort. Saints are simply exemplary human beings. Saints are human beings, restored by God’s grace to human authenticity, who exemplify their Lord who went about doing good inasmuch as he knew that One alone is good, and this One alone is good just because this One is Yahweh, and Yahweh alone is holy; that is, uniquely, singularly, God.

This One we are to love—and fear. For only as we fear him, Scripture insists, shall we love both him and his people alike.³⁸

1 Wesley, Works, vol. I, 151.

2 Gen. 3:24.

3 E.g.,“Feminist theologians argue that no doctrine is more problematic, and no symbol more potentially destructive to women and other marginalized persons, than the doctrine of Christology and the symbol of the cross. Exclusive focus on a male savior subjected to unjust suffering and violent death for the benefit of all human beings, feminists proclaim, all too often leads to harm for women.” Deanna A. Thompson, Crossing the Divide: Luther, Feminism and the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 100.

For a trenchant critique of the ‘child abuse’ accusation, see Bruce L. McCormack, “The Ontological Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement”, The Glory of the Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), chapt. 17.

4 1^st Peter 2:24.

5 Luke 22:37.

6 Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos, 1.43.

7 Eph.4:24; Col. 3:10.

8 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.24.

9 Martin Luther, Palm Sunday Sermon from 1524, “On Confession and the Lord’s Supper”.

10 1^st Sam. 16:13, English Standard Version.

11 Good News; New Century.

12 Contemporary English.

13 Pearls from the Bible.

14 Mark 1:14.

15 Luke 10:16.

16 Calvin, Commentary Gal. 3:1.

17 Calvin, Commentary Heb. 9:20.

18 Calvin, Commentary Isa. 6:1-5.

19 See, e.g., Elijah’s confrontation with the Baal priests, 1^st Kings 18:20-40.

20 On child sacrifice see Lev. 18:21; Deut. 12:31; 2^nd Kings 21:2-6, 17-18; Jer. 7:31; 32:325; Eze. 16:20-21.

21 On sacral prostitution see Deut. 23:18; Hos. 4:14; 1^st Cor. 6:12-20. Sacral prostitution was found in Syria, Phoenicia, and Babylon. The Pentateuch and the Hebrew prophets denounce it.

22 Gal. 3:2.

23 1^st John 3:14.

24 1^st John 4:13.

25 1^st Peter 4:17.

26 Heb. 12:28.

27 1^st Pet. 2:9.

28 1^st Pet. 1:15.

29 Eph. 2:10-11.

30 Luke 6:47 (Emphasis added).

31 Lev. 19:2.

32 See, e.g., William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2017), chapt. 1, “The Saint’s Call to Arms”.

33 Exod. 23:19.

34 Eph. 5:2-3,11.

35 Heb. 13:4.

36 Matt. 22:19.

37 Ibid, paraphrased.

38 Deut. 10:12. For the relation of the fear of God and holiness of life see Calvin, Sermons on 1 Timothy, trans. Robert White (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2018), 25, 27.

The Triune God and the Threefold Nature of the Church

February 21, 2019

On Halloween many people wear false faces. No one is upset because everyone knows the false face is only a game. If, however, someone walked into a bank wearing a false face, it would be another matter. Everyone would know the false face is an occasion of evil.

Many of us ‘put on’ a false face, as it were, in different social situations in order to misrepresent ourselves and deceive others. I can hate you in my heart and yet ‘put on’ a face that suggests friendship. I can despise you in my heart and yet ‘put on’ a face that suggests admiration. In these situations (situations of sin, we should note) the face we wear contradicts the heart we possess. Plainly the person putting on the false face can never be known, and because she can’t be known she can never be trusted. If anyone is to be known and trusted, face and heart have to be one.

What about God’s face and God’s heart? If we think of Jesus Christ as the manifest ‘face’ of God, then the doctrine of the Trinity attests the face of Jesus and the heart of the Father to be identical. The face the Father displays in the Son is not and never can be a false face. Face and heart are one. God as he is towards us (the Son) is identical with God as he is in himself (the Father). This point is crucial, for otherwise God’s activity upon us and within us might be merely something God does, unrelated to who God is. If this were the case, God’s activity upon us and within us would be a manipulation that never acquainted us with the heart of God, with the result that we could never know God himself, and therefore we could never trust him.

The doctrine of the Trinity is crucial. At the very least it attests the truth that who God is in his dealings with us is who God is in himself; and no less importantly, who God is in himself is who God is in his dealings with us.

In other words, the doctrine of the Trinity witnesses to God’s identity: what we see in Jesus Christ is what we get; namely, God himself and nothing other than God himself. In addition the doctrine of the Trinity witnesses to God’s unity. What is done for us in Jesus Christ and what is effected in us through the Holy Spirit is an act of the oneGod: these two acts aren’t the activities of two different deities or two lesser deities or two non-deities.

What God does for us in the Son is called ‘Christology’; what God effects in us through the Spirit is called ‘Pneumatology.’ The arithmetic is simple: Christology plus Pneumatology equals Theology.

“Who is God?” Scripture never answers this question directly. Scripture answers this question indirectly by posing two other questions. “What does God do on our behalf? What does God effect within us?” The answers to these two questions add up to the question “Who is God?” God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This God is one. The doctrine of the Trinity attests the unity of God, and, as we have already noted, the identity of God.

While Scripture nowhere articulates a doctrine of the Trinity, the ‘raw materials’, as it were, of the doctrine are not hard to find. Everyone is familiar with Paul’s blessing: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (2^nd Cor. 13:14) The same triune formula is found in narrative form in Luke’s gospel concerning the Christmas annunciation made to Mary: “The Lord (“Lord” is the name of God in the older testament) is with you….you will bear a son who will be called the Son of the Most High….the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” (Luke 1:28-35) In John’s gospel Jesus announces that the Father will send the Holy Spirit in the name of the Son. (Jn. 14:26)

It is no surprise that when heresy threatened the church repeatedly, the Council of Nicaea (325 C.E.) framed a doctrine of the Trinity that has worn well ever since, departure from which is deemed no less than denial of the gospel.

I: — Despite the fitting emphasis on the Triune being of God, different theological families within the church tend to emphasize one person of the Trinity. Their emphasis gives rise to a particular theology and particular church practice. Later we shall see how a one-sided emphasis fosters serious distortion. But for now let’s note how highlighting one person of the Trinity characterizes one theological family in the church as a whole.

(i) Let’s think first of the understanding of the church in classical Protestantism, the churches that come out of the Reformation, more-or-less what we call ‘mainline’ Protestant denominations today. Here the church is understood as those who gather to hear the Word of God preached. And there’s nothing wrong with this as far as it goes, since we should gather to hear the Word of God preached.

This understanding is reflected in interior church architecture. The pulpit is front and centre. The pulpit is elevated, always elevated above the communion table. The bible is placed on the pulpit and is read from the pulpit. Plainly the theological order is Scripture, sermon and sacrament. Scripture is the source and norm of the sermon, and scripture and sermon together are the content of the sacrament. Good! Our Reformation foreparents were correct (I am convinced) when they insisted that without Scripture the sermon is no more than gospel-less subjectivism, and without Scripture and sermon the sacrament is no more than superstition.

The order of service reflects the priority of preaching. The sermon is the single, largest item of worship. It occupies not less than one-third of the service, frequently more than one-half. When, in this understanding of the church, a pastoral relations committee is assessing candidates for the pulpit, the paramount question on everyone’s lips is “Can she preach?”

The presuppositions of this understanding of the church are noteworthy. One such presupposition is that the gospel has a precise content, and people have to be informed of this content just because the gospel isn’t an instance of humanistic self-help or religion-in-general or vague sentimentality. The content is precise; it’s God-given. It isn’t negotiable or substitutable or alterable.

The gospel’s precise content matters, and matters supremely since the gospel is ultimately the power of God for salvation. (Rom. 1:16) The hearer’s eternal destiny and temporal wellbeing hang on the preached Word and the hearer’s response.

The precedent for this understanding of the church is impressive. Moses spoke – to the people who assembled to hear him. His speaking imparted something the world will never be without. The socio-political shape of the Western world (at least) is unimaginable without the Decalogue. When Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Great Britain, was taunted repeatedly in the House of Commons on account of his Jewishness, one day he had had enough. Disraeli turned on his ridiculers, “Yes, I am a Jew. And when your foreparents were eating acorns in the Forest of Arden, my foreparents were giving laws to the world.”

Not only Moses preached; the Hebrew prophets preached. Amos cried, “God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8) In the same manner God exclaimed to Jeremiah, “I am making my words in your mouth a fire.” (Jer. 5:14) Either Jeremiah opened his mouth to let out the fiery word or he was consumed by it.

Jesus, we are told, “came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God.” (Mk. 1:14)

Not least, when Jesus sends out the seventy missioners he insists, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” (Lk. 10:16) There is no ‘as if’; “whoever hears you, it’s as if they heard me.” To hear the missioner preach Christ is to be confronted with Christ-in-person. To say the same thing, whenever the Word of God is preached, Jesus Christ acts – invariably.

The Protestant Reformers knew this. In his commentary on Galatians 3:1 John Calvin maintains that when the gospel is preached the “blood of Christ flows.” And in his commentary on Hebrews 9:20 Calvin writes, “When the gospel is preached, [Christ’s] sacred blood falls on us along with the words.” Imagine it: whenever the gospel is preached the saving blood drips onto and soaks into the congregation. In his commentary on Isaiah 6:1-5 Calvin reminds us that when Scripture is read today God-in-person speaks; then Calvin adds soberly, “When he speaks, we tremble.”

The living Word, Jesus Christ, surges over us as the inscripturated Word is expounded in the preached Word. This living Word we cannot acquire elsewhere or elsehow No one looking at the creation, however long and however intently, ever came to an understanding of redemption and righteousness and sin. No gazing upon the immensity of the universe informs us of the God who, for the sake of us who despise him, humbled himself in a manger and humiliated himself at a cross where he was publicly identified with the scum of the earth.

To say that the church consists of those who gather to hear preached the gospel with its precise content is to say that there’s no such thing as blind faith. To be sure, we have to trust God on days so dark as to be utterly opaque; but the God whom we trust on opaque days himself can’t be opaque or we wouldn’t know whom to trust or why we should trust. Unless we are schooled week-by-week in the precise content of the gospel, faith will erode and discipleship will disappear.

Any understanding of the church that highlights the gospel in its uniqueness will also emphasize correct doctrine. Doctrines are truths about Christ that point to him and describe him. He is Truth (in the sense of reality). Truth, reality, shouldn’t be confused with or reduced to provisional statements about him, truths. At the same time, as Truth he can’t be described or commended or communicated apart from the truths that speak of him. To belittle doctrine is to belittle him of whom it speaks.

The church as those who gather to hear the Word preached; this understanding is important and should be cherished.

(ii) — Yet there’s another understanding of the people of God in Scripture. It’s one that’s dear to the Catholic tradition: Eastern Orthodox, and the twenty-two churches that make up the Catholic family, chief among which is the Roman Catholic. This understanding highlights the church as the body of Christ.

There are 188 images of the church in the New Testament. Immediately all of us could name some: the bride of Christ, for instance. Others are less-known: the church as perfume, or a farmer’s field, or a letter delivered by U.S Postal Service. By far the dominant image among the 188 is the body of Christ. Jesus Christ is head of his own body, the church. Any assault on the body is at the same time an assault on our Lord. For this reason not to discern the corporate nature of the church, the body of Christ, is horrific.

In the Hebrew bible, as soon as you ask someone his name he tells you the name of his tribe, because he has no identity apart from his tribe. In the Hebrew mind the corporate identity of the people of God looms large.

We modern individuals have difficulty understanding the solidarity of Israel. The prophet Isaiah, commissioned by God to address a sharp word to the people; Isaiah doesn’t say, “I may be stuck living with degenerate people whom God is going to punish, but I know better than they and I’m not one of them.” Instead Isaiah, fully aware that he has a commission others lack, cries, “I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.”

According to biblical understanding the church as body of Christ has everything to do with the church’s identity. You and I exist as Christian individuals only as we are related to Christ’s body, the corporate people. We like to think we can be related to Jesus without being related to the church, and we could be related to him without being related to them – if Christ were a severed head. But he isn’t a severed head. He is always and everywhere the head of his body. Therefore to be related to him at all is to be related to all of him, head and body.

Paul asks us to imagine a human body dismembered, the sort of spectacle we might find at an airplane crash or wartime bomb blast. There are detached arms and legs and torsos scattered everywhere, along with blood and guts and faeces and interstitial fluid and who knows what else. Repulsive? He wants it to be. He wants it to be so very repulsive that you and I will think twice about dismembering the Christian fellowship.

The second point the apostle has in mind is reflected in his question, “Of what use is a leg?” A leg is used to support and propel a torso. A severed leg can’t support or propel anything. Strictly speaking, therefore, is it a leg at all? Strictly speaking a severed ‘leg’ doesn’t exist; what exists is a chunk of putrefying flesh, nauseating and malodorous, that should be buried immediately.

It is only as you and I are members of the body that we share in the body’s ministry and mission. There is in truth only one ministry, the ministry of Christ in his body. To remove ourselves from his body is not to share in his ministry; which is to say, to have no ministry at all.

Christians who understand the church as the body of Christ have a wonderful sense of historical continuity. They know that humans are humans in any era, and therefore Christians today are not the first generation of Christians to face major issues. They smile when they are told that pluralism, for instance, is a new challenge to the church. New? Biblical faith took root in the midst of religious and cultural pluralism. Our Hebrew ancestors knew that God had spoken to Abraham and Moses and Malachi in an environment that included Canaanite religion and child sacrifice and sacral prostitution – all of which they had to resist. Christians in the apostolic era upheld Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God, the world’s sole saviour and Lord, the Messiah of Israel and the coming Judge – and all of this amidst a sea of Gnosticism, mystery religions, and idolatrous worship of the Roman emperor. We aren’t the first generation of Christians to face pluralism. Neither are we the first generation of Christians to face multisexuality, the presence of which, we are told, ought to find us adjusting our convictions. The ancient world, and every era ever since, has been acquainted with multisexuality.

Aware of the 3500-year history of the church, our Catholic friends appreciate the cruciality of Christian memory. To be without memory, anywhere in life; to be amnesiac is no small matter. The tragedy of amnesia isn’t that someone can’t remember where she left her umbrella. The tragedy, rather, is that the person with no memory doesn’t know who she is. Lacking an identity, she doesn’t know what to do, how to act. Lacking an identity, therefore, she can’t be trusted – not because she’s uncommonly wicked – but rather because, not knowing who she is, she doesn’t know how to act in conformity with who she is. Anything she does can only be arbitrary, capricious, spastic, inconsistent.

The year 2013 is only a few years behind us. 2013 was the 450^th anniversary of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), a document some folk regard as the crown jewel of the shorter Reformation writings. The Heidelberg Catechism has sustained generations of Christians when shaken by assaults from without and upheavals from within. It begins magnificently. Its first question (of 129) is, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” Answer: “My only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but I belong, soul and body, to my faithful saviour, Jesus Christ.” Since 2013 was the 450^th anniversary I looked in the Reformation churches everywhere in Canada for a celebration, or at least an acknowledgement, of this wonderful document. I looked in vain. Make no mistake: had the Heidelberg Catechism been written by Catholics it would have been visible that year in every church. Do we Protestants know who we are? Can our grandchildren trust us?

“The church as the perduring body of Christ; it all sounds good,” the sceptic remarks, “but it must refer to some mythological church that exists nowhere. It doesn’t refer to my church, St Matthew’s by the Esso station, with its bickering, pettiness, and power-plays.”
But it does refer to St Matthew’s by the Esso station. Yes, the church is like Noah’s Ark, Reinhold Niebuhr reminded us: if it weren’t for the storm outside no one could withstand the stink inside. Or as Karl Barth liked to say, “If Christ hadn’t been in the boat it would have sunk.” The point is, Christ was in the boat – and still is.

For this reason those who understand the church as the body of Christ, with its identity and visibility and perdurability, are characteristically patient Christians. Is the church weak? God will strengthen it. Compromised? God will restore it. Confused? God will enlighten it. While we should always be concerned, we should never panic.

For as long as time remains Jesus Christ will be head of his body. Decapitation isn’t going to occur. Christ will always use his body to do his work in the world; and he, the head of his body, will always guarantee the efficacy of that work.

(iii) There is yet another understanding of the church highlighted by many Christians, the church as the community of the Spirit. While we might think first, in this regard, of our Pentecostal friends, the church as community of the Spirit is found in many of the smaller, more charismatic denominations and independent congregations.

While the Pentecostal denomination appeared early in the 20^th century, its antecedents were found in the holiness movement of the 19^th century, and in every century before that, all the way back to the 1^st century church in Corinth.

Those who uphold this understanding of the church insist that we must choose to enter the kingdom; no one oozes into it. They are quick to remind us that while God loves the world and suffers on its behalf, the world remains the world; namely, the sum total of God-defiant, disobedient men and women tacitly organized in their hostility to the gospel. Repentance is not the same as remorse. Faith is not the same as ‘beliefism’. Cruciform discipleship is not the same as middle-class ‘yuppyism’. These people remind us that the gate which admits us to eternal life is narrow, and the way is anything but easy. There is a great gulf fixed between righteousness and condemnation, life and death, truth and delusion; in short, between God and evil.

They are quick to remind us that doctrine, however necessary, is an abstraction, while life in the Spirit is concrete; they tell us graphically that a body which lacks the Spirit is no better than a corpse.

When Paul, heartbroken and angry in equal measure, confronts the church in Galatia concerning its anti-gospel slide into legalism, he gets to the point in a hurry. “Tell me,” he writes: “Did you receive the Spirit through hearing with faith or by works of the law?” (Gal. 3:2) His reference to their receiving the Spirit is a reference to an occurrence in their Christian experience, an occurrence as vivid, memorable and undeniable as any occurrence in experience of any sort. It’s as if he said, “That raging headache you have right now; did you get it through concussion or through over-exposure to the sun?” What can’t be denied is that someone with a headache knows she has a headache. “Did you receive the Spirit through embracing the gospel with faith or through self-righteous legalism?” The apostle is trying to correct their theology by appealing to their experience of the Spirit.

The Christians in Rome are reminded that they have received the Spirit of sonship, adoption, with the result that the cry, “Abba, Father”, is drawn out of them. They utter it spontaneously. They can’t help crying, “Abba, Father,” as surely as someone in pain can’t help groaning, or someone tickled by a good joke can’t help laughing, or someone rejoicing can’t help beaming. The apostle isn’t asking them to expound the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God; he’s asking them to recall how they came to be ‘lit.’

The Christians in Thessalonica had undergone terrible persecution when Paul wrote them. Aware of their faith and their resilience he wrote, “You received the word in much affliction with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit.” (1^st Thess. 1:6) The Lord whom they cherished had poured his Spirit into them with the result that they remained unbroken and undeflectable, and all of this without grimness but rather with joy, when they had no earthly reason to rejoice.

The apostle John, in his brief, five-chapter 1^st epistle, uses the expression “we know” or “you know” or “I know” 34 times in one of the smallest books in Scripture. “We know that we have passed from death to life.” It’s all gathered up in “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.” To be visited with God’s Spirit isn’t to wish or long for or hanker after or speculate; it’s to know.

In one of my seminary courses on homiletics we students had to preach to each other under the supervision of the professor. One of my classmates delivered a sermon in which he used the expression “I suppose” half-a-dozen times. When he finished, the class, and especially the student who had preached, waited on the professor for his evaluation. There was silence, painful silence. Then the professor looked at the student for the longest time and finally remarked, “You suppose? You suppose? Mister, when you ascend the pulpit steps on Sunday morning either you know or you don’t say anything.”

To speak of the Spirit is to speak of the immediacy and intensity and intimacy of God. The Spirit is God-in-our-midst acting, and acting upon and within his people so as to move them beyond doubting who he is, what he has done, and what he asks of them.

II: — Let’s return now to a discussion of the Trinity. Plainly any departure from Trinitarian understanding lands us in confusion, error, falsehood, even in personal distress. Yet despite Scripture’s insistence on a Trinitarian understanding of God and the church’s wisdom in framing the doctrine, a non-Trinitarian unitarianism always laps at the church. Such pseudo-Christian unitarianism can be a unitarianism of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Spirit.

(i) – A unitarianism of the Father depicts God as austere, even severe, even tyrannical. It renders God frigid and fearsome. It likes to speak of God as “in control.” It reiterates that God is sovereign, even as it confuses sovereignty with coercion. It speaks of God’s providence, even as it confuses providence with omnicausality. God is said to be “high and lifted up,” as Scripture maintains, even as unitarianism’s one-sidedness renders the exalted God inaccessible and unknowable.

(ii) There is also a unitarianism of the Son. Jesus is our pal. For this reason he and we can be palsy-walsy. He sympathizes with us in our pain and we sympathize with him in his. He’s our friend – and why not, since in John 15 he names us his friends. Forgotten, alas, in the unitarianism of the Son, is the complementary truth that while he is our friend, he ever remains Lord and Judge of the relationship. To be sure, Jesus is our friend, but he is always a friend to be feared.

We are quick to co-opt Jesus for our self-serving agenda, when all the while he claims us for his Kingdom-agenda. He may be our friend, but he will never be our ‘flunkie.’

(iii) Lastly, there is a unitarianism of the Spirit. Religious experience is now featured. Before long any experience is featured, as long as it’s vivid and intense. Forgotten, of course, is that only one Spirit is holy; all other spirits are unholy. Holy Spirit gives rise to holy living; unholy spirits give rise to something else, regardless of intensity or vividness. A unitarianism of the Spirit one-sidedly magnifies religion of the heart, conveniently overlooking two crucial Scriptural truths: one, the heart of humankind is “deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, utterly beyond understanding,” says the prophet Jeremiah (Jer. 17:9); two, ‘heart’ (‘lev’ in Hebrew) always includes the mind.

III: — To no one’s surprise, any distortion concerning the Trinity; that is, any decline from a Triune understanding of God to a unitarian misunderstanding of God results in a deformed understanding of the church cherished by that particular church family which one-sidedly highlights Father or Son or Spirit.

(i) Let’s begin with classical Protestantism, with the notion that the church consists of those who gather to hear the Word preached. Before long the emphasis on preaching turns into an adulation of the preacher. Now the congregation is built around a personality cult, or hero-worship, or verbal glitz. “Our minister is a dynamic speaker” some people have boasted to me. I don’t doubt that he is. And I have heard many dynamic speakers whose rhetorical gifts were deployed in the service of a high-flown enunciation of nothing. Such speakers forged a lucrative career by craftily saying nothing, and skilfully saying it well.

Again, where preaching is emphasized one-sidedly, the congregation becomes a club of amateur, armchair philosophers who relish intellectual titillation. Since Sunday morning worship is now one-sidedly intellectualist, a mood of intellectual snobbery arises in the congregation. After all, not every Christian is as intellectually sophisticated as are they and their pastor.

Again, a one-sided emphasis on preaching will always highlight doctrinal precision, and the history of the church tells us that unnecessary intricacy promotes a wrangling that finds yet another Protestant splinter added to the thousands that exist already.

(ii) What about our apprehension of the church as the body of Christ? Here too a glorious truth will be distorted and deformed if it is emphasized one-sidedly, in isolation from the other two understandings. While it is correct to maintain that the body of Christ will perdure inasmuch as Christ the head will never be severed from it, too often it is forgotten that Christ ever remains the Lord and Judge of the body. As soon as the church forgets this truth it assumes that everything it does has Christ’s blessing when in fact much that the church has done calls down Christ’s curse. “‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evil-doers’” – says Jesus himself. (Mat. 7:23)

Again, denominations that recall the promises Christ makes concerning the church – e.g., “The powers of death will never prevail against it” – assume that the survival of their denomination or congregation is guaranteed. The promise means nothing of the sort. When Christ pronounces the church irrefrangible he is promising that he will preserve the community of his faithful people; faithful people, faith-filled people – not membership rolls or baptism registers or Christmas and Easter drop-ins. History is littered with the dust of long-dead denominations and congregations. Christ’s faithful people can count on his promise; no one else should ever presume upon it.

Again, a one-sided emphasis on the church as the body of Christ finds people assuming, perhaps unconsciously, that Christ has collapsed himself into the church; he now inheres the church and is a function of the church: whatever the church does, he does. Wrong! Jesus Christ is never the church’s possession to be manipulated or deployed or even relegated to the basement should he prove awkward and embarrassing. Alas, such a church has forgotten Peter’s startling pronouncement: “…it is time for judgement to begin at the household of God.” (1^st Peter 4:17)

(iii) Lastly, a one-sided understanding of the church as the community of the Spirit will find the church’s one-sidedness distorting and disfiguring what it rightly tries to uphold. While a recognition of the place of Christian experience is legitimate, even necessary, a one-sided, unbalanced elevation of experience leaves people unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of the world; unable to distinguish between experience of God and experience of anything at all; unable to distinguish between Christian righteousness and cultural refinement. Now the measure of spiritual authenticity is intra-psychic intensity, inner intensity of any sort arising from any stimulus. As a pastor of 50 years’ experience I have heard the silly, sad tale of those who insisted their extra-marital affair was God-willed and God-blessed; after all, the intensity of their affair was so much more thrilling than humdrum domesticity. Intensity, vividness, immediacy, we should note, can as readily describe a life of sin.

Ultimately, a one-sided emphasis on the church as community of the Spirit lends religious legitimacy to any community born of any spirit. At best there is the inability to distinguish the church from a neighbourhood club or social-service organization or humanistic association. At worst there is the inability to distinguish between the Holy Spirit and the satanic. Do I exaggerate? Recall the history of Germany in the 20^th century. The German people claimed a spiritual sanction (specifically a Christian sanction) for a demonized state that German people today want only to forget.

Not least, a one-sided understanding of the church as the community of those whom the Spirit has ‘torched’ in the present moment overlooks the history of the church and the wisdom entrenched in its tradition. To be sure, no one wants traditionalism, the suffocating grip of the long-dead. Nevertheless, our Christian sisters and brothers who have moved from the church militant to the church triumphant have something tell us, and they should be allowed to speak. Remember: we are not the first generation of Christians, and it is the height of arrogance to think that we can see farther by not standing on the shoulders of our foreparents in faith.

Lastly, a one-sided emphasis on the Spirit and Spirit’s immediacy undervalues the mind. We are to love God with our minds, and it is impossible to love God unless we understand something of his nature and his purpose and his way with us. Unless we understand something of God’s nature and purpose and way with us, our worship is sheer idolatry.

IV: — Distortions of the church abound. Invariably they arise from a distorted grasp of God as Triune. Plainly a more profound apprehension of God is needed if the church is to be healed. Therefore we must turn once again to the God who is Father, Son and Spirit.

While we rightly speak of the being of the triune God as Father, Son and Spirit, when it comes to our knowing the Triune God the order is always Spirit, Son and Father. As the Spirit surges over us and frees us, we abandon our unbelief and embrace in faith the Son who has already embraced us; and having embraced the Son who has already embraced us we are rendered one with the Father. At this point God’s Triune incursion and the church’s threefold witness have borne fruit concerning us.

Then today may the Spirit ever join you and me to the Son in the Son’s obedience to and adoration of the Father. For then we shall know ourselves sealed upon the heart of God, and this for ever and ever.

Victor Shepherd Greenville University 2019

The Congregation’s Ministry to the Congregation: Four Essential Aspects

February 21, 2019

Ezekiel 36:22-26 1 Peter 1:23-2:3 Matthew 18:1-14

I: — First of all, the congregation is a nursery for the newborn. Peter writes, “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” (1 Peter 2:2-3) When Peter addresses certain Christians as “newborn babes” he isn’t finding fault at all. He isn’t saying that newborn babes shouldn’t be newborn or shouldn’t be drinking pure spiritual milk. In everyday life nobody faults a baby for being a baby; nobody faults the 3-month old because he isn’t 30 years old. It’s normal for a baby to be a baby and be treated like a baby; it’s wonderful to see a baby eager to drink pure milk.

Several times in Matthew’s gospel Jesus angrily denounces those who make things difficult for the “little ones”. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin; it would be better for him if concrete blocks were tied to his feet and he were pitched into Lake Ontario.” Ten seconds later Jesus, still upset, lets fly again. “See that you do not despise one of these little ones…it is not the will of my Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” The “little ones” Jesus speaks of over and over and concerning whom he’s so very protective; these “little ones” aren’t 5-year olds; the “little ones” are adult men and women who happen to be new in the faith; the “little ones” are adults — 30, 45, 60-years old — who have only recently “bonded” with Jesus Christ. As old as they might be chronologically, they are yet spiritual neonates. They need milk, milk only for now, so that they may develop spiritually. Jesus never faults them for being mere “little ones”. On the contrary, he deems them so very precious that he guarantees the severest retribution to anyone who inhibits in any way the spiritual growth of the newest disciple.

The babes-in-Christ have to be nursed. And the church is the nursery for newborns.

What do we expect from a nursery, any nursery? What would we expect if we were taking our own child to a nursery?

[1] Safety; safety first of all; safety above everything else. Safety is so very crucial within the congregation if only because danger abounds without it.

Now what I have in mind here isn’t principally physical safety, bodily security. (Even though all congregations must be able to guarantee this. No one can be expected to be part of a congregation that tolerates harassment or molestation of people of any age.) What I have in mind here, principally, is spiritual safety: the integrity of the gospel, the substance and purity of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”

Think of the most elemental confession found on the lips of the earliest Christians; “Jesus is Lord.” But early-day “little ones” (and not-so-little ones) clung to this truth when “Caesar is lord” was being screamed at them every day. When political authorities sneered, “We’ll show you who’s lord. We’ll show you in the coliseum where wild animals haven’t yet learned that Jesus is Lord; we’ll show you in the mines in whose damp darkness you are going to spend the rest of your lives; we’ll show you on unpopulated islands where you are going to be exiled until you rot” — when this happened our Christian foreparents could only gasp out three simple words. And centuries later, when it was announced throughout Germany that “Hitler ist Fuehrer”, the same faithful cry went up from the same faithful few. What those who dislike saying “Jesus is Lord” seem not to understand is that to say “Jesus is Lord” is to say something about him, to be sure, but not only about him; it’s also to say something about us who utter it (by the grace of God we have been admitted to truth); it’s also to say something about the world (the world is not the kingdom of God but is riddled with falsehood, treachery and turbulence at all times).

In the midst of all the talk today about spirituality (how I wish we’d return to talking about faith, because “faith” always implies “Jesus Christ”) we must always remember that not all the spirits are holy. Unholy spirits are always ready to infest and infect. In many hymnals the words of the old hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so” have been changed to “Jesus loves me, this I know, and the bible tells me so”. The change of wording indicates that scripture is no longer acknowledged as the source and norm of our knowledge of God; at best scripture can only reflect what we think we can learn of God elsewhere. This is paganism.

Therefore the members of a congregation must ensure that there is safety in the congregation. It’s crucial that the congregation be a nursery where “little ones” are safe; crucial that this congregation be a nursery where “pure spiritual milk” is kept unsoured; crucial that this congregation nourish — and never cause to stumble — those “little ones” who have “tasted the kindness of the Lord” and who want only to become spiritual adults.

[2] Speaking of nourishment, nourishment is plainly the second thing we look for in a nursery. After all, babes remain in a nursery for quite a while; they have to be fed while they are there or else they won’t thrive.

Babes don’t get fed once; babes get fed small amounts frequently; babes get fed small amounts so very frequently that “frequently” amounts to “constantly”. They absorb nourishment cumulatively; the more they are fed, the greater their capacity to absorb; the greater their capacity to absorb, the more they are fed. Plainly there’s an incrementalism at work in the nourishing of babes.

Let’s remember that however sophisticated most people are (and nearly everyone is sophisticated in at least one area of life), more often than not they are babes in Christ, “little ones”. The nursery has to ensure nourishment. Pure spiritual milk must always be ready-to-hand.

[3] As much as safety and nourishment must be found in a nursery, so must affection. Everyone knows of the experiments — and the conclusions of the experiments — concerning babies who were picked up and those who were left crying; babies who were cuddled and those who were isolated; babies who were caressed and kissed and cooed to and those whose physical needs were attended to unfeelingly. Everyone knows the difference it made to the babies at the time, and more tellingly, what difference it came to make to the same person, now an adult, years later. Everyone knows that affection warming an infant makes the profoundest difference to the adult’s self, the adult’s self-esteem, self-confidence, resilience and adventuresomeness.

It’s no less the case in the nursery of faith. The babes among us have to be safeguarded, yes; nourished, yes; but always and everywhere cherished. Affection is as essential as food.

II: — The congregation isn’t nursery only; it’s also a school where we are to be taught. Schools exist for teaching. Which is to say, someone has to be taught, and something has to be taught. Frequently we hear it said, “Faith is caught, not taught.” It’s said as though it were self-evidently the soul of wisdom. But it isn’t self-evident; neither is it the soul of wisdom. At best it’s a half-truth. The half-truth — “faith is caught” — is true in that faith is a living relationship with a living person, not an intellectual abstraction. “Faith is caught, not taught” is a half-truth true in that no relationship of person-with-person can ever be reduced to a teaching. But it’s only a half-truth in that unless something is taught — in fact, unless much is taught — the person whom the truths describe can never be known. Those who insist that faith is caught, not taught; why do they never ask themselves why Jesus taught day-in and day-out throughout his earthly ministry? Jesus spent more time teaching than doing any other single thing. Shouldn’t this tell us something?

At the very least it should tell us that events are not self-interpreting. No event in world-occurrence is ever self-interpreting. Jesus could never merely do something and then assume that everyone who observed him took home the correct meaning of what he had done. Quite the contrary: he always assumed that they weren’t going to take home the correct meaning of what he had done unless he told them. Prior to his death and after it Jesus taught any who would listen the meaning of his death. If he hadn’t taught them the significance of his death they would assume that his death meant no more than the deaths of the two criminals crucified alongside him; no more than the deaths of miscreants whom the state executes. Not only would people not take home the correct meaning of Christ’s activity; they would certainly take home the wrong meaning.

There’s a story about Francis of Assisi that warms everyone’s heart; it may or may not be a true story about St.Francis, but in any case it’s a story that I don’t like. A fellow-friar asked Francis to join him in preaching outdoors throughout the city. Francis consented, and then added, “But before we preach we are going to walk through the city.” When they had finished walking through the city the fellow-friar asked him, “But when do we preach?” “We just did”, replied Francis, “we just did.” Oh, it’s a honey-sweet story dripping with sentimentality, but it’s only half-true. The half-truth, of course, is that the preacher’s utterance and the preacher’s life ought to be consistent. Fine. But no person’s life, not even a saint’s (Francis’), not even Jesus Christ’s unambiguously declares the gospel. If Christ’s life had bespoken the truth unambiguously, why would he have bothered to teach?

The mistake Francis is said to have made in Italy Mother Teresa never made in India. When Mother Teresa was awarded a Nobel Prize a Yugoslavian journalist (Mother Teresa was Yugoslavian herself) asked her why she rescued throwaway babies every night from garbage cans and took them to the Sisters of Charity orphanage. Mother Teresa didn’t say, “Need you ask why?” She didn’t say, “Isn’t why I do it obvious? The meaning and motive of what I do; isn’t it all self-evident?” Instead she replied in her trademark, measured manner, “I rescue throwaway babies for one reason: Jesus loves me.” To be sure, it was only a one-sentence reply. None the less, she knew she had to say something to interpret her action to the journalist.

We always have to be taught. We have to be taught answers to life-questions inasmuch as the answers are important; crucial, in fact. And if the answers are crucial, so are the questions. Think of the questions, of some of them:

*Who is God? He’s the creator. However, scripture insists much more frequently that God is also the destroyer. What does this mean?

*Why is it that Jesus describes his most intimate followers as possessed of the tiniest faith?

*Why do Christians regard as normative for faith and life an “older” testament that is four times longer than the “newer”? Why do we need the older at all? What would happen if we set it aside?

*Why is it that the only physical description of Jesus that the apostles furnish is the fact that he was circumcised? (It matters not to our faith what Jesus looked like; it matters everything to our faith that he was, is and ever will be a son of Israel.

*Why did our Hebrew foreparents regard idolatry, murder and adultery as the three most heinous sins? Why do we modern degenerates regard murder as criminal, adultery as trivial, idolatry as nothing at all, and none of them as sin?

Jesus assumed that truth isn’t self-evident. Jesus assumed, in other words, that the meaning of the most obvious event isn’t obvious at all. Jesus assumed that we always have to be taught. The congregation is a school in which Christ’s people are taught.

III: — The congregation is also an army that fights. Christians today aren’t ready to hear this. We don’t mind being a nursery or a school; but an army, an army that fights? Aren’t we followers of the Prince of Peace? Aren’t we called to be peacemakers?

I have noticed that those who are repelled by any suggestion that the congregation is an army are repelled by the notion of fighting. I have noticed too, however, that the same people who abhor any Christian reference to fighting will fight instantly if Canada Revenue Agency gets their income-tax assessment wrong (or is suspected of getting it wrong). They will fight instantly if their child is awarded a low grade on a school-project. They will fight instantly as soon as they hear that their employer has plans to alter working conditions or compensation or holidays. After all, their cause is right and therefore righteous.

How much more is at stake when the truth of Jesus Christ collides with the falsehoods of the evil one. How much more is at stake when someone is victimised and rendered a casualty in the midst of that spiritual warfare she was never even aware of — or may have been aware of. No wonder Paul picks up the metaphor of soldiering and urges the congregation in Ephesus to put on the whole armour of God: shield, shoes, helmet, breastplate, sword. (Eph. 6:10-17) There’s nothing God-honouring about being an unnecessary victim.

No wonder too that Paul reminds young Timothy that soldiering entails hardship, sacrifice, singlemindedness, “training in godliness”. No wonder he gathers it all up by urging the young man always to “fight the good fight of the faith.” (2 Tim. 2:3-4; 1 Tim. 6:12; 4:7) We can’t fight unless we have first trained!

Training? Many church-folk today see no point to training just because they see no virtue in fighting. They think that conflict is always and everywhere sub-Christian because non-loving. And they are wrong.

(i) In the first place our Lord leaves us no choice: if we are going to be disciples then we are going to be soldiers in that conflict which erupts the moment his flag of truth is planted in the citadel of a hostile world. Since the master was immersed in conflict every day, what makes his followers think they won’t be or shouldn’t be?

(ii) In the second place those who regard all conflict as sub-Christian because unloving fail to see that spiritual conflict arises on account of love’s energy. God is love; Jesus is the Incarnation of God’s nature; Jesus is immersed in conflict every day just because love is resisted every day, love is contradicted every day, love is savaged every day. What kind of love is it that won’t persist in the face of opposition? won’t contend to vindicate the slandered and relieve the oppressed? won’t fend off every effort of lovelessness to victimise and abandon? Love that won’t persist and contend; love that refuses to fight is simply no love at all.

(iii) In the third place the most love-filled heart knows that there is a place for godly resistance. There is a time and a place to dig in our heels and stiffen our spine in the name of Jesus Christ. When Martin Luther, grief-stricken at the horrible abuses in the church of his day, finally stopped weeping and decided to do something, he discussed what he planned to do with Professor Jerome Schurff of Wittenberg University. Schurff was professor in the faculty of law. He was one of the brightest stars in the Wittenberg U. firmament. Professor Jerome Schurff agreed with Luther that the abuses were dreadful. Schurff, however, was aghast at what Luther planned to do. “Don’t do that!” he cried, “You’ll renders us all targets here; we’ll all be in trouble in Wittenberg. The authorities will never put up with it!” “And if they have to put up with it?” Luther replied, “if they have to?”

To live in the company of Jesus Christ is never to relish conflict for the sake of conflict; but it is to share his conflict. To live in the company of Jesus Christ is to share love’s struggle in the face of un-love’s aggression.

IV: — The congregation is also a hospital for the wounded. When the apostle Paul discusses the different ministries to be exercised in any one congregation he mentions healing. (1 Cor. 12) If healing is to be exercised within the congregation, then the congregation is a hospital.

We must be sure to understand that there is no shame in being hospitalised just because there is no shame in being wounded. The fact that we are wounded simply confirms the truth that we are soldiers in Christ’s army and have recently been on the front lines. Spiritual conflict is no less debilitating than any other kind of conflict.

One military facility for the battle-worn is the Rest and Recreation Centre. “R&R” centres are not merely for military personnel who have broken a leg or fractured a skull; “R&R” centres principally accommodate those who have been under immense stress, are frazzled, and need to move behind the front for a while in order to recuperate. During World War II all submarine crews were given as much time off to recuperate as they spent on patrol. A month-long patrol at sea was always followed by a month’s rest ashore. No one ever suggested there was something shameful in the men’s need for rest.

Rest. Jesus invites us, “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:30) “Rest”, however, has a special force in scripture; “rest” in scripture doesn’t have the modern sense of “vegging”, utter inactivity. Rest, rather, has to do with restoration. “Come to me, all who are bone-weary and worn down and frazzled and fractured and frantic; come to me, for with me there is restoration.”

We should note that our Lord’s winsome invitation, “Come unto me…”, isn’t an invitation at all; it’s a command. “Come”, “you come”, “you come now” — it’s plainly an imperative; he commands us to come to him for restoration. To say that it’s a command is to say there’s no option here. We must go to him for restoration, just because he knows that his soldiers are beaten up, and once beaten up aren’t much use until restored.

In other words, providing hospital care for Christ’s wounded is as much the congregation’s ministry to the congregation as is being a nursery where newborns are nurtured, and a school where learners are taught, and an army where soldiers are trained and in which they fight the good fight of the faith until that day when we say with the apostle,

I have fought the good fight,

I have finished the race,

I have kept the faith.

Victor Shepherd

Greenville University

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ctreview-2015-v4-1-shepherdAbstract

Cirriculum Vitae

May 30, 2014

Victor Allan Shepherd

Professor of Systematic Theology and Historical Theology
Tyndale University College & Seminary
25 Ballyconnor Court
Toronto, Ontario, M2M 4B3
E-mail: vshepherd@tyndale.ca
(416)-226-6620 ext. 6726 (voice mail)

___________________________________________________________________________

I: EDUCATION

S.T.D. (Honoris Causa) Roberts Wesleyan College, 1995.

Th.D. Emmanuel College, Victoria University, University of Toronto 1974-77.

Postgraduate study at Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, Scotland, 1973-74.

B.D. Emmanuel College, Victoria University, University of Toronto, 1970.

M.A. Philosophy, University of Toronto, 1969.

B.A. Philosophy, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1965.

II: EMPLOYMENT

Academic

Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Tyndale Seminary, 2003-

Professor, Tyndale Seminary, 1993-1999 (part-time)
First Occupant of Donald N. and Kathleen G. Bastian
Chair of Wesley Studies, and Professor of Historical Theology,
2000-2003 (full-time)

Adjunct Professor, Regis College (Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2006-

Professor Ordinarius, Graduate Theological Foundation,
University of Oxford, 2005-

Adjunct Professor, Wycliffe College ( Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2005-

Adjunct Professor, Trinity College ( Toronto School of Theology)
University of Toronto, 2002-

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
University of Winnipeg, 2002-

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
McMaster University, 1985

Adjunct Professor, Emmanuel College ,
University of Toronto, 1982

Adjunct Professor, Department of Religious Studies,
Memorial University of Newfoundland , 1976

Church
Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg , Ontario , 2004-2007

Interim Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg , Ontario , 2001-2004

Minister, Streetsville United Church,
Mississauga, Ontario, 1978-1999

Associate Minister, Kingsway-Lambton United Church,
Toronto, Ontario, 1977-1978

Minister, Victoria Square United Church,
Victoria Square, Ontario, 1974-1977

Minister, Tabusintac United Church,
Tabusintac, New Brunswick, 1970-1973

III: SERVICE TO THE TYNDALE COMMUNITY AND WIDER ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

Associate Editor, Canadian Evangelical Review, 2005-

Member, Promotion and Tenure Committee, 2002-

Member, Research and Ethics Committee, 2002-

Chair, Tyndale Seminary Faculty Association, 2003- 2004

Member, Academic Planning Committee, 2001-

Member, Search Committee for Bernardo Chair of Leadership Studies, 2001-2002

Chair, Library Committee, 1996-1999

Member, Academic Planning Committee, 1996-1997

IV: VOLUNTEER COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Confessing Theologians Commission
(Association for Church Renewal), 2002

Juror, Manitoba Arts Council, 2000-2002

Trustee, William and Catherine Booth College, 1995-2001

Member of District Health Council of Peel, 1992-1993

Chairperson of Peel Mental Health Housing Coalition, 1992-1993

Boardmember of Foodpath, 1984-1989; 2001

Vice-chairperson of Pathway Community Developments, 1991-1993

CHURCH INVOLVEMENT

(The Presbyterian Church in Canada)

Corresponding Member, Committee on Church Doctrine, The Presbyterian Church in Canada ,
2005-

Minister, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church
Schomberg , Ontario , 2004-

Pulpit Supply, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church,
Schomberg, Ontario, 2001-2004

(The United Church of Canada)

Free Methodist Church in Canada
Representative to World Methodist Conference, 2001

Representative to Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, 1997

Commissioner to General Council, 1986

Member of Churches’ Consultation on the Jewish People,
World Council of Churches, 1985 -1988

Commissioner to General Council,
The United Church of Canada, 1984

Chairperson of Block Grants Committee,
Toronto Conference, 1977-1978

Minister, Streetsville United Church,
Mississauga, Ontario, 1978-1999

Chairperson of Group Insurance Task Force Committee,
General Council, 1979-1981

Member of Faith and Order Committee,
The Canadian Council of Churches, 1995-1998

Member of Education and Students’ Committee,
Halton Presbytery, Hamilton Conference, 1978-1987

Associate Minister, Kingsway-Lambton United Church,
Toronto, Ontario, 1977-1978

Minister, Victoria Square United Church,
Victoria Square, Ontario, 1974-1977

Minister, Tabusintac Pastoral Charge,
Tabusintac, New Brunswick, 1970-1973

V: COURSES TAUGHT
(in the last five years)

2005-2006
      Fall                   Systematic Theology I               THEO0531                  46 students
Fall                   Systematic Theology II             THEO0532                  22        “
Fall                   Theology of the Human Person THEO0646                  22        “

Winter Systematic Theology II THEO0532 41 “
Winter Theology of Martin Luther THEO0634 6 “

(The proposed winter course, Theology of John Wesley was cancelled on account of undersubscription, even as the same course attracted many in the DRR format. See * below)

*DRR                 Theology of Wesley                              THEO0633DS01         13        “
DRR                Theology of Calvin                                THEO0636DS01           6        “
DRR                Theology of Luther                               THEO0634DSO2          2        “
DRR                Philosophy for Understanding Theology
THEO0539DS01           7        “
DRR                Historical Theology                               THEO0536DS01           2
DRR                Theology of the Human Person THEO0646                               12       “
DRR                Systematic Theology I               THEO0531                                5        ”
(DRR Total: 47students)

2004-2005
Spring              Systematic Theology II             THEO0532S01            24        “
Fall                   Systematic Theology II                         “                       32        “
Fall                   Theology of Karl Barth             THEO0640S01            4         “
Fall                   Theology of the Human Person  THEO0646S01            50        “

Winter              Systematic Theology                             THEO5231S01            38        “
Winter              Historical Theology                               THEO0536S01            10        “
Winter              ThM Seminar (Holiness)                       THEO0837                  7         “

DRR                Theology of Wesley                              THEO0633DS01         12       “
DRR                Theology of Calvin                                THEO0636DS01           6        “
DRR                Theology of Luther                               THEO0634DSO2          4        “
DRR                Philosophy for Understanding Theology THEO0539DS01           6        “
DRR                Historical Theology                               THEO0536DS01           4        “
(DRR Total: 32 students)

2003-2004
     Fall                  Systematic Theology II                        THEO0532S01           37 students
Fall                  Work of Charles Wesley                     THEO0643SO1           22        ”
Fall                  Philosophy                                          THEO0539S01           12        ”

Winter             Systematic Theology  I                        THEO0531S01           40        ”
Winter             Theology of Wesley                            THEO0633S01           12        ”
Winter             Theology of Calvin                             THEO0636S01           22        ”

DDR                Theology of Wesley                            THEO0633DS01         4         ”
DDR                Theology of Calvin                             THEO0636DS01         5
DDR                Philosophy for
Understanding Theology                    THEO0539DS01         4         ”

DDR                Luther                                                  THEO0634DS01         5         ”
DDR                Historical Theology                            THEO0536DS01         2         ”
ITS                  Contemporary Theology:
From Hegel to the
Death of God Theologies                                                        1          ”
ITS                  Augustine and Early
Mediaeval Theology                                                                1       ”
(DRR Total: 22 students)

2002-2003
Fall                  Systematic Theology II                        THEO0532S01           43 students
Fall                  Puritan Genius                                     THEO0635S01           9         ”
Fall                  Historical Theology                            THEO0536S01          13        ”

Spring Theology of Wesley THEO0633S01 12 ”

Winter             Systematic Theology I                         THEO0532S01           37        ”
Winter             Theology of the Human
Person                                                 THEO0646S01            30      ”
Winter             Holiness (ThM Seminar)                     INTD0930S01 3                     ”

    2001-2002
              Fall             Systematic Theology II            THEO0532SO1       62 students
Fall             Work of Charles Wesley         THEO0643SO1       12     ”
Fall             Philosophy                               THEO0539SO1      10    ”

Winter        Spirit of Methodism                  THEO0857SO2       10     ”
Winter         Systematic Theology I             THEO0531SO1        73    ”
Winter         Theology of Luther                  THEO0634SO2        15    ”

VI: SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

Invited Addresses

The Seasons of the Christian Life, Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church, ( Singapore , 2006)

Wesley Then and Now, Biblical Graduate School of Theology , ( Singapore , 2006)

Friendship, Hospitality and Ecumenism – from a Wesleyan Perspective, Wesleyan Theological Society, ( Kansas City , 2006)

Theology: Does It Help?
      Why Theology – at All?
      Martin Luther’s Theologica Crucis: An Exemplification of “The Cross is Our Theology”,
      Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections as an Instrument of Spiritual Discernment,
      John Wesley on Christian Perfection: A Word for the Church Catholic from an Ecumenical Thinker, Presbyterian College , McGill University , ( Montreal , 2006)

Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections: An Aid to Spiritual Discernment, Center for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, ( Toronto , 2005)

The Sufficiency, Supremacy and Finality of Jesus Christ, Perichoresis North Conference, ( Mississauga , 2005)

A Comment on the History of Christian Anti-Semitism, Beth Tikvah Synagogue, ( Toronto , 2005)

Martin Luther for Today, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, ( Ottawa , 2004)

John Calvin on The Knowledge of God, Scripture, and Sin, Wycliffe College , University of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2004)

John Calvin’s Doctrine of Preaching and Calvin’s Sermon on Ephesians 2:8-10: An Illustration of His Theology, Centre for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, ( Toronto , 2004)

Luther’s Theologia Crucis, Perichoresis North Conference, ( Oakville , 2003)

C.S. Lewis and the Psalms, C.S. Lewis Society of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2003)

God’s Re-Assertion of His Holiness; God’s Re-Establishing of Ours, The Salvation Army, Manitoba and Northwest Ontario Division, (Winnipeg, 2003)

A Theology for Preacher and Witness, Ottawa Summer School of Theology , ( Ottawa , 2003)

A Christian’s Reflection upon Terrorist Attack, “Jewish, Christian and Islamic Responses to ‘9/11′”, Jewish-Christian Dialogue of Toronto , ( Toronto , 2002)

The Catholic Wesley, Ottawa Summer School of Theology , ( Ottawa , 2002)

John Wesley and the Law of God in the Book of Romans, University of Toronto ( Toronto , 200

An Assessment of Jeremy Begbie’s Theology, Music and Time, Trinity College, University of Toronto, May, 2001.)

Neither Calvin nor Wesley but Schleiermacher or Whose Theology is Operative in The United Church of Canada ?, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, June, 2000.

Martin Luther and John Calvin on Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22: Hope as the Reconciliation of Promise and Command, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, November, 2000.)

Holiness: The Neglected Dimension of Scripture, The Salvation Army College For Officer Training, Toronto , 1999.

A Note On Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection: “Can You Find Anything More Amiable Than This? Anything More Desirable?, Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, Oxford , UK , 1997.)

Ministry in the Twenty-First Century, McMaster Divinity College , 1995

John Calvin: Theologian and Pastor, and Puritan Vigour and the Christian Life, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1993.)

The Victory of Jesus Christ Over The Principalities and Powers: An Exposition of the Work of William Stringfellow and Jacques Ellul, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1992.

A Root of Anti-Semitism, Equity Studies Centre, Toronto Board of Education, 1992.)

From New Connexion Methodist To William Booth: Retention and Repudiation, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1991.)

Elemental Christian Doctrine, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1991.)

Academic Lectures, William and Catherine Booth College , February, 1990.

Lesser-Known Personages of the Reformation, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1990.

Discrimination: A Prejudice Born of Pietism, Ontario Christian Teachers’ Association, October, 1990.)

Systems of Theology in Review, Ottawa Summer School of Biblical and Theological Studies, 1989

Concerning the Jewish People: Was Luther a Son of Paul? The Catherine Gilbert Memorial Lecture, Toronto School of Theology , University of Toronto , 1987.

Is There Ethics in Business?, York University , Toronto , 1986

Is Christianity Necessarily Antisemitic?, Adath Israel Synagogue, 1986.

Calvin’s Christology: A Contradiction of Reprobation?, McGill University , Montreal , 1986.

A History of the Church’s Mistreatment of Jewish People, Gathering ’85: A Symposium for Holocaust Survivors and Their Children, Ottawa , 1985.

A Religious Root of Antisemitism, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto , 1985.

The Life and Teaching of John Calvin, York University , Toronto , 1981.

The Ecclesiology of John Calvin, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto , 1976.

Activities

Calvin Studies Society of North America
Canadian Evangelical Theological Association
Canadian Methodist Historical Society
Canadian Philosophical Association
The Canadian Society of Presbyterian History
The Charles Wesley Society
The International Jacques Ellul Society
Karl Barth Society of North America
Kierkegaard Circle of Toronto
PEN Canada
Thomas F. Torrance Fellowship
Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium
World Methodist Historical Society
The Tyndale Society
The Writers’ Union of Canada

Awards

The R. Russell Fleming Scholarship in the General Course, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 1963.

The Prince of Wales Gold medal, Victoria University, 1965.

The Jean Preston Yoshioka Memorial Scholarship: First in Systematic Theology, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1968.

The W.J. Watt Prize in Christian Education, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1968.

The Emmanuel College General Proficiency Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The John W. Billes Scholarship for Session 1968-1969, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

The Gordon Hamilton Award: First in General Proficiency in the second year, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Charles Wesley Webb Prize: first in the basic course in the first year and one elective in the second year in New Testament, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Rowell Scholarship: to the student of the second year who stands first in the work in Church History, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1969.

The Principal and Mrs. Richard Davidson Memorial Scholarship: first in Homiletics in the basic course in Public Worship, Emmanuel College University of Toronto, 1969.

The Emmanuel College General Proficiency Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The John W. Billes Scholarship for Session 1969-1970, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto.

The Elizabeth Webb Prize in Old Testament and New Testament Literature over the three years, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Francis Huston Wallace Prize: first in New Testament, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The John Dow Scholarship: first in the basic course and at least two electives in New Testament over the regular three year course, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The William Robert Young Prize: first in Church History over the three years, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The T.B. Kilpatrick Prize: first in at least two elective courses in Systematic Theology, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Reverend Ezekiel Richardson Scholarship in Biblical and Doctrinal Preaching, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Albert Wallace Scholarship in Homiletics, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Reverend William J.H. Smyth Prizes for Stewardship Sermons, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Edward Wilson Wallace Postgraduate Scholarship, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Postgraduate Fellowship (A.J. Mitchell Bequest), Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

The Sanford Gold Medal in Divinity, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, 1970.

Award of Excellence for Outstanding Contribution in the Fields of Historical-Systematic Theology and Preaching, Center for Mentorship and Theological Reflection, 2004

Scholarship Excellence Award, Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006

VII: PUBLICATIONS

1. Scholarly Books

The Nature and Function of Faith In The Theology of John Calvin (Macon, Mercer University Press, 1983) ISBN: 0-86554-066-7

[Second printing: ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004) ISBN: 1-57383-328-2]

2. Scholarly Articles/Chapters

The Methodist Tradition in Canada , Encyclopaedia of Religions in Canada , ( Toronto , Harper Collins) [forthcoming]

Judging Ellul’s Jonah, The Ellul Forum For the Critique of Technological Civilization, ( Berkley , The International Jacques Ellul Society, October 2005) pp. 16-17

The Epistle to the Romans as Wesley’s Cure for Antinomian and Moralist Alike, Theopedia, (___, July 2005) [reprinted electronically]

John Wesley and the Law of God in the Book of Romans, Reading Romans: Encounters with the Epistle to the Romans Through the Centuries, ( Medford , Brazos Press, 2005) pp.149-168

Charles Wesley: 1707-1788, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , Sept. 2004) pp.35-44

International Kierkegaard Commentary: Vol. 21 (For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourself!), Robert L. Perkins, ed., International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford, January 2004) pp.85-90 [review article]

John Wesley (1703-1791): A Tri-Centennial Appreciation, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , Sept. 2003) pp.107-120

Music, Theology and Time, Jeremy S. Begbie, International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford , Summer, 2003) pp.243-247 [review article]

Sharing, Sharing, Sharing;
Tell Me the Old, Old Story;
Ridiculousness or Ravishment;
Of Enemies, Violence, Sacrifice and Life’s Crosses;
Living for the Present;
Glory, Grace and Gratitude;
Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ;
No Dabbling Here;
Three Deaths;
Promises, Promises, Promises;
The Lord’s Supper;
Terror and Tragedy;
Joseph;
The Good Samaritan;
A Note on God’s Love
Strathy Corpus of Canadian English, ( Kingston , Queen’s University, 2002) [electronic] [Published jointly by University of Liverpool and University of Cambridge ]

Egerton Ryerson: From Methodist Itinerant to Chief Superintendent of Education, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, ( Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg , September 2002) pp.38-46

The Trinity against the Spirit of Unitarianism, The Trinity: An Essential for Faith in Our Time, (Napp.anee, Herald Press, 2002) pp. 179-196

Thomas Oden, Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, (Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2002) pp.484-487

Jacobus Arminius, Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals, (Downer’s Grove, IVP, 2002) pp.18-20

Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22: Hope as the Reconciliation of Promise and Command, Teach Me Your Paths: Essays in Old Testament Literature and Theology, (Toronto , Clements Publishing, 2001) pp. 9-38

Neither Calvin nor Wesley but Schleiermacher: Whose Theology is Operative in The United Church of Canada?, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 13, ( Toronto , Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 2000) pp.203-211

A Note On Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection: “Can You Find Anything More Amiable Than This? Anything More Desirable?, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 12, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1999) pp.18-43

Foreword to Ecclesiastical Minefields, Outerbridge, Ross and Kary, (Toronto, Or Emet Publishing, 1994) pp.xxv-xxix

From New Connexion Methodist To William Booth, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, Volume 9 (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1993) pp. 91-107

Response to The Kingdom of Christ According To Bucer and Calvin (Willem van’t Spijker), Calvin and the State, P. de Klerk, ed., (Grand Rapids, Calvin Studies Society, 1993) pp.133-136

“…That We May Perfectly Love Thee: John Wesley and Sanctification”, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, (Winnipeg, University of Winnipeg, May, 1988) pp.27-37

Calvin’s Doctrine of Church, Ministry and Sacraments, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 53-62

Calvin’s Doctrine of Justification, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 63-72

Calvin’s Doctrine of Sanctification, Papers of the Canadian Methodist Historical Society, (Toronto, Canadian Methodist Historical Society, 1978) pp. 73-82

3. Audio Tapes

Why Should a Christian Study Philosophy?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2000)

Philosophy for Understanding Theology, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2000)

The Theology of John Wesley, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

The Theology of John Calvin, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Is Jesus Both God and Human?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Is Jesus the Only Way to God?, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prayer: A Theological Investigation, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2001)

The Theology of Martin Luther, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Soren Kierkegaard and the Birth of Existentialism” (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Historical Theology, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Luther’s Theologica Crucis, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Theology of John Wesley, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

Theology of the Human Person, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

4. Compact Discs

The Spirituality of Luther, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

The Spirituality of Wesley, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Calvin and Predestination (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prayer: A Theological Investigation (Vancouver, Regent College, 2002)

Historical Theology (MP3), ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Luther’s Theologia Crucis, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

Calvin’s Theology of Preaching, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

The Theology of John Wesley ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

What is Theology?, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2005)

Theology of the Human Person (Vancouver, Regent College , 2005)

Systematic Theology (Part I) ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections: An Instrument for Spiritual Discernment, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Daniel, The Den of Lions, and Christians of Any Era, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Reflections on Paul Molnar’s Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

The Supremacy, Sufficiency and Finality of Jesus Christ, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2006)

Concerning Intercessory Prayer, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

The Doctrine of the Trinity, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

The Doctrine of Scripture, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

Postmodernism and Christian Faith, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

Neither Epicurean nor Stoic but Christian,( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)
5. MP3s

Historical Theology, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2003)

The Theology of John Wesley, ( Vancouver , Regent College , 2004)

Theology of the Human Person, (Vancouver, Regent College, 2005)

Systematic Theology I, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2005)

Systematic Theology II, ( Toronto , Tyndale University College & Seminary, 2006)

6. Pamphlets

The Theology of John Wesley: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-04-2

The Theology of John Calvin: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-16-6

Philosophy for Understanding Theology: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing,2002) ISBN: 1-894667-15-8

The Theology of Martin Luther: Lecture Notes and Handouts (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002) ISBN: 1-894667-23-9

7. Scholarly Book Reviews

Watching and Praying: Personality Transformation in Eighteenth Century British Methodism,

The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth’s Theology, Eberhard Busch, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical in the Academy, A. Donald MacLeod, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity, Paul D. Molnar, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2005)

The Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, Donald McKim, ed., International Journal of Systematic Theology ( Oxford , March, 2005)

The Reformation: A History, Patrick Collinson, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring, 2005)

On Thinking the Human: Resolutions of Difficult Notions, Robert W. Jenson, Canadian Evangelical Review ( Edmonton, Fall 2004)

The Rebirth of Orthodoxy: Signs of New Birth in Christianity, Thomas C. Oden, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton , Fall 2004)

Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster, Toronto Journal of Theology ( Toronto , Fall 2004)

The Theology of the Reformed Confessions, Karl Barth, Canadian Evangelical Review ( Edmonton , Spring 2004)

The Redemption & Restoration of Man in the Theology of Richard Baxter, James I. Packer, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring 2004)

The Two Reformations: The Journey from the Last Days to the New World, Heiko A. Oberman, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring 2004)

Holiness, John Webster, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring 2004)

The Honour of God and Human Salvation: Calvin’s Theology According to His Institutes, Marijn de Kroon, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Fall, 2003)

Ever Against the Stream: The Politics of Karl Barth, 1906-1968, Frank Jehle, Toronto Journal of Theology (Toronto, Spring, 2003)

The Christian Faith: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine, Colin E. Gunton, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 2003)

Hugh Price Hughes, Christopher Oldstone-Moore, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring 2003)

Calvin: A Biography, Bernard Cottret, Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton , Spring, 2003)

The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, John Webster (ed.), Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton, Spring, 2003)

The Methodist Church on the Prairies: 1896-1914, University of Toronto Quarterly, (Toronto, January, 2003)

How to Read T.F. Torrance: Understanding his Trinitarian & Scientific Theology, Elmer M. Colyer, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 2002)

A Scientific Theology, Volume One: Nature, Alister E. McGrath, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Fall, 2002)

The Promise of Trinitarian Theology: Theologians in Dialogue with T.F. Torrance, Elmer M. Colyer, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Fall, 2002)

Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over Poenitentia, Timothy J.Wengert, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring, 2002)

The Binding of God: Calvin’s Role in the Development of Covenant Theology, Peter A. Lillback, Canadian Evangelical Review (Edmonton, Spring, 2002)

Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life, Geoffrey Wainwright, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 2001)

A Handbook of Contemporary Theology, David. L. Smith, Canadian Evangelical Review, (Edmonton, Spring, 2001)

The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, Guenther H. Haas, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses, (Regina, Spring, 2001)

For Our Salvation, Geoffrey Wainwright, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 1999).

The Concept of Equity in Calvin’s Ethics, Guenther H. Haas, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Fall, 1998)

Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532 – 1546, Martin Brecht, Toronto Journal of Theology, (Toronto, Spring, 1997)

Trojan Horse, Donald L. Faris, Theological Digest, (Burlington, January 1990)

Science and the Gospel, Victor H. Fiddes, Theological Digest, (Burlington, January, 1989)

8. Professional and Popular Writings
Books

Our Evangelical Faith (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2006) ISBN: 1-894667-84-0

Ponder and Pray (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1985) ISBN: 0-88622-177-3

[Second Edition (Mississauga, Light and Life Press, 1993)]

[Third Edition (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2002)] ISBN: 1-894667-03-4

Witnesses to the Word (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2001) ISBN: 1-89466-00-X

[Turkish translation: Istanbul, 2004. ISBN: 975-8318-81-0]

Seasons of Grace (Carp, Creative Bound, 1994) ISBN: 0-921165-36-6

[Second Edition: (Toronto, Clements Publishing, 2001) ISBN: 1-894667-01-8]

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses (Mississauga, Light and Life Press, 1993) ISBN: 0‑919201-10-5

Making Sense of Christian Faith: Understood, Challenged and Lived (Burlington, G.R. Welch, 1987) ISBN: 1-55011-029-2

Articles
2006
We Believe in…the Holy Scriptures;
We Believe in…the Holy Trinity;
We Believe in…our Lord Jesus Christ;
We Believe in…Salvation by Faith;
We Believe in…he Holy Spirit;
We Believe in…the Church as Christ’s Body;
We Believe in…the Day of Judgment.
Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, March 2006) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in The Day of Judgment, Faith Today, ( Toronto , March/April 2006)

Bishop J.C. Ryle, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March 2006)

Women Preachers in Early Day Methodism, Daily Devotions, (___, January 2006) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in The Church as Christ’s Body, Faith Today, ( Toronto , January/February 2006)

2005
Women Preachers in Early Day Methodism, Devotions for Women, (___, December 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Love Means ‘I Want You To Be’, Mosaic, (Toronto, December/January 2005/06) [reprinted]

John Wesley, The Nassau Guardian, (Nassau, October 2005) [reprinted]

On Reformation Sunday, A Note Concerning William Tyndale. (Lima, Ohio, CSS Publishing Company, October 2005) [published electronically]

We Believe in The Holy Spirit, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, November/December 2005)

We Believe in Salvation by Faith, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, September/October 2005)

John Knox, Resources on The Scot’s Reformation (1546 – 1660): John Knox (1505-1572), Andrew Melville, Robert Bruce, James Stewart (Moray), Mary Queen of Scots, Mary of Guise, James (VI) I, (_________, August 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Pope John Paul II: An Assessment, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September 2005)

Susanna Annesley, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, August 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Calvin on Prayer, Channels, (Toronto, Presbyterian Renewal Fellowship, July 2005)

Almost Christian, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July 2005) [reprinted electronically]

We Believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, July/August 2005)

We Believe in The Holy Trinity, Faith Today, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May/June 2005)

Mandate for a Congregation, Homiletics, (Canton, Communication Resources of Canton, May/June 2005)

We Believe in The Holy Scriptures,, Faith Today, ( Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, March/April 2005)

Griffith Jones, 1683 – 1761 ( New Rochelle, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, March 2005) [reprinted electronically]

He is Coming, But Who is He? Four Judgements about Jesus, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, March 2005)

Pursuing Freedom in the Body of Christ, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May 2005( [reprinted electronically]

John Knox, The Irish Theological Association, (Dublin, The Irish Theological Association, February 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Teresa of Avila, European History, (http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/teresaofavila/, February 2005) [reprinted electronically)

Menno Simons, Anabaptist Network, (——-, February 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Heinrich Bullinger: 1504-1575, Touchstone: Heritage and Theology in a New Age, (Winnipeg , University of Winnipeg, January 2005)

Repentance, Church Alive, ( Burlington , Church Alive, January 2005) [reprinted electronically]

Pursuing Freedom in the Body of Christ, New Direction for Life Ministries of Canada , (Toronto, January 2005)

Jacques Ellul, Theory of Technology: Studies of Human Artefacts as Cause and Consequence of Socio-Cultural Development, ( Denver , University of Colorado at Denver; School of Education , Jan. 2005) [reprinted electronically]

2004
Susanna Wesley, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

Francis Asbury, Methodist Archives and Research Centre, (Manchester, John Rylands University Library, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

On the 500^th Anniversary of the Birth of Heinrich Bullinger, Reformer, Institut fur schweizerische Reformationgeschichte, ( Zurich , University of Zurich, Dec. 2004) [reprinted electronically]

What Do We Mean by ‘Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ?’, Homiletics, ( Canton , Communication Resources of Canton , Nov./Dec. 2004)

Julian of Norwich , Holy Trinity Newsletter, ( Utrecht , Holy Trinity Newsletter, December 2004) [reprinted electronically]

A Legacy of Journalism, a Vision for a Nation, The United Church Observer, ( Toronto , November 2004)

The Canadian Martyrs, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, October 2004 [reprinted electronically]

Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September 2004)

Crucial Words in the Christian Vocabulary: Repentance, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September 2004)

Helmut Thielicke, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2004)

John the Baptist and Jesus, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, May 2004) [reprinted electronically]

Oscar Romero, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March 2004)

On Putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians: The People of the Gospel ( Mississauga , World Team, March 2004)

C.S. Lewis and the Imprecatory Psalms, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March 2004)

Contemplating Wesley, Christianity.ca, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, February 2004) [reprinted]

Mother Julian of Norwich , Seabury Western Theological Seminary, ( Evanston , Jan. 2004) [reprinted electronically]

2003
Martin Luther King, jr., Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December 2003)

Questions Jesus Asked: “What’s Your Name?” (Mark 5:9), Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September 2003)

Celebrating John Wesley: A Man Consumed with Love for his God and his Neighbour, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , September/October 2003)

Not Glued but Grafted, Faith Today, ( Toronto , Evangelical Fellowship of Canada , September 2003)

Maximilian Kolbe, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2003)

Hugh Price Hughes, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2003)

Contemplating Wesley, The United Church Observer, ( Toronto , June, 2003)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2003)

2002
My Spiritual Debt to Martin Luther, The Canadian Lutheran, ( Edmonton , October, 2002)

The Canadian Martyrs, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2002)

“Our Doctrines”, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2002)

John the Baptist and Jesus, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March, 2002)

Honouring Martin Niemoeller, the Pastor Who Defied Hitler (reprinted), Common Ground, ( Vancouver , January 2002)

Adolphus Egerton Ryerson, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2002)

Thomas Clark Oden, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2002)

2001
Jacobus Arminius, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2001)

Pentecost, Faith Today, ( Toronto , May, 2001)

Women Preachers in Early-Day Methodism, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June 2001)

Science and the Word: Thomas Torrance, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September 2001)

Griffith Jones: First Light of Revival, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , December, 2001)

Running the Race in the Pursuit of Excellence, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2001)

Lord’s Supp.er: Last Supp.er, Family Supp.er, Future/Final Supp.er, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , September, 2001)

Two Kinds of Knowing, Science and Faith, ( Cape Town , South Africa , October 2001)

2000
William Tyndale, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Church , ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , January/February, 2000)

The Educational Ministry of the Church, Theological Digest & Outlook,( Burlington , March, 2000)

Thomas Cranmer, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , March, 2000)

The Coming Revival, (reprinted) Horizons, ( Toronto , The Salvation Army, March/April, 2000)

Thomas Cranmer, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , May/June, 2000.)

John Fletcher, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , June, 2000)

From Power to Effectiveness: Learning to be Salt in a Post-Christian Society, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , July/August, 2000)

Julian of Norwich , Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , September, 2000)

The Cross of Christ, Horizons, ( Toronto , The Salvation Army, Nov./Dec., 2000)

Jan Hus, Fellowship Magazine, ( Barrie , December, 2000)

How Did We Get Here? or The Origins of the Operative Theology of The United Church of Canada , Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , March, 2000)

The Educational Ministry of the Church, Theological Digest & Outlook,( Burlington , March, 2000)

Love Means “I Want You to Be”, Theological Digest & Outlook, ( Burlington , August, 2000.)

1999
C.S. Lewis” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, January/February, 1999)

Millennium Predictions, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1999)

Francis Asbury” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, March/April, 1999)

“Follow Me!”: Seven Questions on Discipleship, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, May/June, 1999)

John Newton” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, May/June, 1999)

When Christ Returns, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1999)

Foreword to Lowly Manger, Empty Tomb, E. Alan Roberts, (Raleigh, Pentland Press, 1999)

Barbara Heck” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1999)

Soren Kierkegaard, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1999)

Karl Barth” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, September/October, 1999)

William and Catherine Booth” (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, November/December, 1999)

Thomas Watson, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1999)

“What is Man?” or “Does Theology Matter?”, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, March 1999)

You Asked For A Sermon On Postmodernism, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1999)

1998
Predicament and Provision, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , Jan./Feb, 1998).

A Soldier of Christ, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1998).

Modern Saints and Prophets?, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, March/April, 1998).

What Are We?, The Free Methodist Herald, ( Mississauga , Free Methodist Church in Canada , May/June, 1998).

A Tribute to a Spiritual Mentor , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1998).

On God, Hockey and Children, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1998)

What in the World is Wesley Day?, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, July/August, 1998)

Teresa of Avila , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1998)

Loving Our Enemies, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, Nov./Dec., 1998)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (reprinted), The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Nov./Dec, 1998)

Surprise Best Seller: The Heidelberg Catechism, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1998)

Always to Pray and Never Lose Heart” (reprinted), The Messenger, (Steinbach, December, 1998) Will the 21^st Century be an Age of Religious Revival?, Books In Canada, (Toronto, The Canadian Review of Books Ltd., February, 1998)

A Note on Intercession, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1998)

Theology of Life, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1998)

1997
Athanasius, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March, 1997).

Proud to be Puritan, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, June, 1997).

A Flea for Methodism, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September, 1997).

Has The Church A Future?, Horizons, (Toronto, The Salvation Army, November, 1997).

Repentance and Life, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, Free Methodist Church in Canada, Nov./Dec., 1997).

A Note On Christian Maturity, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1997).

The Ethics Of Organ Transplants, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, September, 1997).

1996
A Tribute to Ross Salmon, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1996).

William Sangster, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1996).

William Sangster, Christianity.ca, (Toronto, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, September 1996) [reprinted electronically.]

Ulrich Zwingli, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, Fall, 1996).

Almost Christian, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December, 1996).

Of Reason, The Gospel, and Catholicity, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1996).

1995
A Faith for All Seasons, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1995)

On Honouring A Foreparent In Faith: John Wesley and “The Duty Of Constant Communion”, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1995).

John Wesley and the Witness of the Spirit, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July 1995).

Jonathan Edwards, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, April/May, 1995).

If Christ Be Not Raised From the Dead, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July 1995).

Menno Simons, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, Nov./Dec. 1995).

1994
Neither Mist Nor Mud, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1994).

John Knox, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, February/March, 1994).

A Guide Through The Minefield, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1994).

God the Holy Spirit, Light and Life, (Indianapolis, June, 1994).

George MacDonald, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1994).

Isaac Watts, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1994).

1993
Can A Recovery of the Doctrine of the Trinity Assist the Restoration of The United Church of Canada ?, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, January, 1993.)

Francis Asbury, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1993).

John Wesley, Fellowship Magazine, (( Barrie , March/April, 1993).

Eva Burrows, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1993).

Manifesto of the Real Revolution, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1993).

Rejoice Always, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1993).

How Does The Old(er) Testament Differ From The New(er)?, Theological Digest & Outlook, (Burlington, July, 1993).

Retiring Bishop Faithful to Wesleyan Root, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, August, 1993).

Susanna Annesley, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1993).

Doctrine – And The Shape Of One’s Life, The Free Methodist Herald, (Mississauga, October, 1993).

Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of Shaftsbury), Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, December/January, 1993).

1992
Martin Niemoeller, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1992).

Barbara Heck, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1992).

William Stringfellow, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1992)

Jacques Ellul, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1992).

William Wilberforce, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1992).

A Comment On “The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture”, Theological Digest, (Burlington, July, 1992).

1991
William and Catherine Booth, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1991).

John Calvin, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1991).

Charles Hadden Spurgeon, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1991).

George Whitefield, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1991).

The Elder Brother, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1991).

What Price Gratitude?, Abingdon Preacher’s Annual, (Nashville, Abingdon, 1991).

Karl Barth, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1991).

1990
Mother Teresa, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, January/February, 1990).

Charles Wesley, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1990).

William Tyndale, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1990).

C.S. Lewis, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July/August, 1990).

John Bunyan, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1990).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1990).

1989
Suicide, Presbyterian Record, (Toronto, March, 1989)

The Foundation of It All, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, March/April, 1989)

Luther, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, July/August, 1989)

Setting Forth Into A Brave New Theological World, Christian Week,

John Newton, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, September/October, 1989).

Francis of Assisi , Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, November/December, 1989).

1988
Symbol of a Secular World: the Mall as Cathedral, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, March, 1988)

All Because of the Risen Christ, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, March 1988)

Places A Challenge to Very Life of the Church, Christian Week, ( Winnipeg , April 1988)

A Critique of “Towards a Christian Understanding of Sexual Orientations, Lifestyles and Ministry”, Channels, (Toronto, Presbyterian Renewal Fellowship, July 1988) [reprinted]

On Bearing One Another’s Burdens, Not Necessarily My Best Sermon, (Toronto, The United Church Publishing House, August, 1988)

The United Church and Ordination of Active Homosexuals, A Crisis of Understanding, (Burlington, G.R. Welch, 1988)

1987
Murder and the Cross, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, May, 1987)

Principalities, Powers: Agents of Death, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, July, 1987).

Guilt and Grace in Abortion, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, October, 1987)

The Word Became Flesh, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, December, 1987)

The Walking Wounded, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1987)

1986
Always to Pray and Never Lose Heart, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, February, 1986)

A Search for Common Biblical Ground, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, June, 1986)

Finding the Lord For the Liberal Church , The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, August, 1986)

Journey to Iona and to Reconciliation, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1986)

1985
God’s Grace Also in the Mentally Ill, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, March, 1985)

The Risen Lord, Crowned as Crucified, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, April, 1985)

Holocaust Seeds in Christianity, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, May, 1985)

The Virgin Birth: God’s Gift of Hope, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December, 1985)

1984
Honouring Our Parent, John Wesley, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, September, 1984)

Dumpster Dinners: An Inner-City Sojourn, The United Church Observer, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, December,1984)

1983
Who Needs a Saviour?, Getting It All Together, (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1983)

1980
The Meaning of the Cross, The United Church Observer: Perspective, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp.. 2-3 (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1980)

Faith and Sexuality, A Spectrum of Theological Views in the United Church of Canada for the General Council, pp.. 20-21 (Toronto, The United Church of Canada, 1980)

Reviews

Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned, Q. Donoghue and L. Shapiro, Toronto , The United Church Observer, (The United Church of Canada, September, 1985)

Fortunate Exile, Irving Layton, Toronto , The United Church Observer, (The United Church of Canada , February, 1988).

The New International Commentary on James, Peter H. Davids, Fellowship Magazine, (Barrie, May/June, 1991)

Global Gods: Exploring the Role of Religions in Modern Societies, David W. Shenk, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, November 5, 1996)

John Newton and the Evangelical Tradition, Bruce Hindmarsh, Christian Week, (Winnipeg, March 18, 1997)

VIII: GRADUATE SUPERVISIONS

I am deployed in the setting and grading of PhD comprehensive examinations principally in Reformation Studies, Modern Theology, Systematic Theology, and Eighteenth Century Studies) for students, chiefly in the doctoral programme at TST, University of Toronto , but also in other institutions as I am requested. In addition I direct courses at U of T member colleges for MA, ThM and MTS students.

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and evaluation) (i) reason and revelation in Barth and Kaufman
(ii) reason and faith in Calvin, Edwards, Hodge and Warfield
(iii) the place of natural reason in fundamentalism and evangelicalism
Mr. George Coon 2003-04
TST, University of Toronto

PhD thesis co-supervision: The Deployment of Reason in the Transition from Fundamentalism to Evangelicalism
Mr. George Coon, 2003-
TST, University of Toronto

MA directed research in the work of John Wesley

Ms. Susan Carole, 2003

TST, University of Toronto

ThM thesis: The Concept of Sacrifice in the Theology of John Calvin

Mr. August Oku, 2003

TST, University of Toronto

ThD external examiner: John Wesley and the German Pietist Heritage: The Development of Hymnody

Mr. Paul Wagner, 2004

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of John Calvin

Mr. Marcus Johnson, 2004

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of Martin Luther

Mr. Marcus Johnson, 2005

TST, University of Toronto

PhD directed research in the theology of Martin Luther,

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto , 2005

PhD thesis: “John Wesley’s Doctrine of Preaching”

Rev. James Clubine

Graduate Theological Foundation, University of Oxford , 2005-

MA thesis: “The Doctrine of Assurance in the Theology of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley”

Mr. John Kiboi

TST, University of Toronto , 2005

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and examination)

(i) John Calvin’s Christology and Soteriology

(ii) The Doctrine of Justification in the History of the Church

(iii) The function of Unio Christi in John Calvin’s Theology

Mr. Marcus Johnson

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

PhD thesis: “‘ Union with Christ’ in the Theology of John Calvin”

Mr. Marcus Johnson

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD comprehensive examinations (preparation and examination)

(i) Faith and Reason in the Theology of Martin Luther

(ii) John Calvin’s Exposition of the Work of Christ

(iii) Desacralization and Sacralization in the Thought of Jacques Ellul

(iv) Comparison of John Calvin and the Westminster Theology Concerning the Nature and Function of Law in the Christian Life

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

ThM thesis: “Martin Luther and John Calvin on the Relation of Faith and Works, with Attention to Their Exegesis of the Book of James”

Mr. Jeffery MacMillan

Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto (2005-2006)

PhD thesis: “Calvin’s Understanding of the Atonement”

Mr. John Clark

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD comprehensive examination (preparation and examination)

“Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and the Influence of the Enlightenment

“John Calvin’s Unio Christi as an Aspect of Reformation Christology”

Mr. Jon Vickery

TST, University of Toronto (2005)

ThM thesis: “The Eucharistic Theology of Charles Wesley’s Hymns”

Mr. Matthew McEwen

Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto , 2005

PhD thesis: “The Role of Reason in the Theology of Thomas Goodwin and

Thomas Brooks”

Mr. Jon Vickery

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

PhD thesis: “The ‘Principalities and Powers’ in William Stringfellow and the ‘Lordless Powers’ in Karl Barth: A Comparison”

Mr. Patrick McManus

TST, University of Toronto (2005-)

MTS directed research in the work of John Wesley

Capt. Justin Bradbury

TST University of Toronto (2006)

PhD comprehensive examination (preparation and examination)

“The Person and Work of Christ: P.T. Forsyth’s Response to Liberal Theology”

Scott Kindred-Barnes, TST, University of Toronto , 2006

ThD thesis: “The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards”

Mr. Jonathan Li

TST, University of Toronto (2006-)

IX: RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

I am planning to research a book on nineteenth-century Canadian Methodist Theology. The book will investigate the thought of the three most prominent Canadian Methodist theologians (Burwarsh, Nelles and Blewett), therein indicating what Methodism brought in 1925 to church union and the formation of The United Church of Canada. In addition, the book will explore this matter as an aspect of Canadian intellectual history.

I am planning to turn my course, “Theology of the Human Person,” into a full-length book.

I am planning to research and write a monograph concerning John Calvin’s understanding of the “Majesty” of God.

Clements Publishing has asked me to re-write my 1987 book, Making Sense of Christian Faith: Understood, Lived, Challenged, as the publisher is convinced this book meets a need for a popular yet thoughtful articulation of the Christian faith beyond what is currently offered in the Alpha program. In light of the years I have spent probing theology since the initial publication of the book, and in light of the purpose to which a new edition is to be put, it is essential that the book be expanded and the material amplified. The ensuing book will therefore be approximately twice the length of the current book. In other words, enough material will be added to produce what is, in effect, a new book.

The publisher has already reproduced the text of Making Sense electronically so as to facilitate re-development of the material as soon as opportunity permits.

The audio lectures of my course Theology of Martin Luther have been transcribed. Since I now possess thirty-six hours of lectures in print form, I am currently turning this material into a book on Luther that aims at acquainting a thoughtful lay reader with the progenitor of the Protestant Reformation.

As a result of my being interviewed on radio CHIN ( Ottawa ) on the topic of the “Ornament of the World” (i.e., Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence in mediaeval Spain ) I shall shortly be added to Ottawa ’s “Jewish-Muslim Dialogue for the Next Generation”. My non-partisan role in this organization will entail research concerning the history of the relationship, the nature of the relatively recent conflict, and the manner in which a Christian may assist both groups at the same time as Christians are added to the Dialogue. A major area of research will be the role of Abraham and ‘Abrahamic faith’ as common to the three peoples who are alike ‘People of the Book’.

President Brian Stiller has asked me, together with the professors of the philosophy department, Tyndale University College , to write a four-part series of books that expound the faith and defend it in the wake of modernist and postmodernist attacks upon it.

Abingdon Press ( Nashville , Tennessee ) has asked me to write a book to be used by pastors in the USA . The purpose of the book is to provide pastors with a vehicle for schooling their congregation in the theology, history and practice of prayer. The book is to be more substantive than many of the manuals used currently. I have been in contact with representatives at Abingdon Press and have informed them, for instance, that John Calvin has written more on prayer than any thinker in the history of the church. For this reason more than a little of the book would arise from my knowledge of the Reformation.

Professor Daniel Wong, Tyndale University College , is currently editing a book on preaching. He has commissioned me to contribute the chapter, “Preaching in the Reformational Tradition.”

Several people, not least the current Managing Editor of The United Church Observer, have told me I should put my writing skill to writing short fiction. As a member of The Writers’ Union of Canada I have long been exposed to different kinds of writers (e.g., biographers and journalists), including novelists, short story writers, and poets. I am eager to begin writing short fiction. Once again, however, I am convinced I need a sabbatical leave in order to situate myself in the proper “space” required for this activity.