Volume 6: Issue 2 | April 2023
The Ninth Commandment
God's Children – Like Him – Tell the Truth
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor."
--Exodus 20:16
God has a method in the ten commandments. He forbids the worst sin in a given class, such as murder, the better to win our agreement. Yes, everyone says, murder is obviously a great sin. Having won our agreement, he then leads us by degrees to realize that everything that leads to murder is also forbidden. By explicitly forbidding the worst in a class, he implicitly forbids the entire class – the sins that lead up to the worst, the sins that are lesser versions of the worst, and the interior thoughts and hatreds that precede outward sins. By forbidding murder, he forbids harming our neighbor.
The ninth commandment is You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. The quintessential way to bear false witness is to lie in court, under oath, probably in a premeditated way, in order to pervert justice and convict the innocent or wrongly clear the guilty. Of all lies, lying in court is the most serious and potentially consequential.
But as we saw with murder, by forbidding the worst, God forbids the whole class. Lies themselves are forbidden. Rare wartime exceptions may exist, as with Rahab in Jericho, or to avoid genocide, as with the midwives in Egypt. But when these women lied, they lied to avoid become party to murder. Outside of these extraordinary situations, God forbids all lying. The same God who gave us hands, commanded us to use them to work, and forbade their use for murder, also gave us mouths, commanded that we speak the truth in love, and forbade using our mouths for lies.
Liars will not be easy to convince, however. Liars think lying is indispensable. They lie to get away with other sins. One might try to convince a liar that to be trusted, or to have a close, loving relationship, is a greater good, and that the only way to be trusted and close is to tell the truth. But while true, such arguments usually fall on deaf ears. Liars think they are smart enough to lie and still be loved, respected, and trusted. The only one they fool with this lie is themselves.
So let us instead ask where lies come from. Titus 1:2 rules out a divine source. God, it says, never lies. The Old Testament agrees: God is not man, that he should lie, Numbers 23:19. Do lies come from man, then? Not originally. Scripture's first lie was uttered by the devil. Thus John 8:44 calls the devil both murderer, and the father of lies.
God hates lies, especially when told within the church. When the first lie was told in the New Testament church, Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” Ananias then fell dead. When his wife followed him in the lie, she followed him to the grave. God hates lies!
Lies come from Satan. When liars lie, they show who their father is: the devil.
Do you want a different father? A better Father is willing to adopt you. He has provided an adoption agent, Jesus Christ. Entrust yourself to this agent, repent of your sins, beginning with your lies, receive his name in baptism, and God the Heavenly Father will adopt you. God, who never lies, promises to receive those whom Jesus confesses as his own. Only remember that this father has rules, and is never fooled: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:9-10). Christians have to take off the old self, the old liar, and tell the truth every time. This is how they show the world who their Father really is.
The deepest reason to tell the truth is to show to whom you belong. Liars show that the devil is their spiritual father. Those who want a better Father, one who gives eternal life, must tell the truth.
– John Edgar
Dry Crusts with Peace
"Better is a dry morsel with quiet
than a house full of feasting with strife."
– Proverbs 17:1
People do experiments in their minds as well as in laboratories. We imagine a situation and think how it will play out. There was an old Sesame Street cartoon thought experiment: a boy sat next to his little sister, who was holding a balloon. He imagines popping the balloon and scaring her. He smiles. Then he imagines her crying and the smile fades. Finally an angry mother turns up in his thought experiment, and he decides not to pop the balloon. Jesus’ parable of the foolish rich man is a thought experiment (Luke 12:13-21). Imagine a rich farmer whose fields produce such abundant crops that he must build bigger barns. He congratulates himself on his coming comfortable retirement. Now imagine that he suddenly dies. How will things turn out when he faces God in judgment?
Solomon in this proverb conducts a thought experiment. Imagine a family with only stale bread to eat and another family with a Thanksgiving feast every day. To sharpen the contrast, assume Solomon’s world where food scarcity was only one bad harvest away for most people. Next imagine a peaceful house where everyone loves each other, and another one with a family full of schemers who shout and fight. Then combine the families: make the hungry family peaceful and the well-fed family at war with itself. Which house is better? Where would you be happier? Which better honors God? Solomon’s answer: the poor family with peace is better than the rich family with strife.
Solomon grew up in a well-fed family rich in strife. When he was very young, his older half-brother Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar. Two years later, Tamar’s full brother Absalom murdered Amnon and fled into exile. After three years, Absalom’s first cousin Joab persuaded David to let Absalom return. Two years later, Absalom sent servants to burn Joab’s field, so that Joab would help him be fully reconciled with King David. Joab did that. Now Absalom began scheming to become king and carried out a coup d’etat against his father David. David fled from Jerusalem. In the civil war that followed, Joab (who was not just family but also King David's general) killed Absalom. David replaced General Joab with Absalom’s General Amasa. Joab soon killed cousin Amasa. Later, Adonijah, another half-brother, tried his own coup d’etat, but it failed when David suddenly made Solomon king. So maybe this proverb isn’t all thought experiment! Solomon grew up in a family “full of feasting with strife.”
If a peaceful poor family is better than a feasting fighting family, how should we live? The English Puritan Matthew Henry writes concerning this proverb that family members should “study to make themselves easy and obliging to one another.” Overlook mistakes, awkwardness, and faults, instead of seizing on them to exalt your superiority. Learn how to “bite your tongue.” Accept God’s Providence with thanksgiving and faithfulness, so that in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, the family remains at peace. A wise person values the peace of his family above its wealth.
– Bill Edgar
Book Review
Magnificent Rebels:
The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self
by Andrea Wulf
Penguin Random house, 2023
Andrea Wulf’s time in Covid-19 lockdown was focused. In her book, Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self, she turned 351 footnotes into 352 pages of prose. Her research is solid and her story robust. The question driving her work, “How did we get our present sense of the self?” has been around for a few decades but received some increased attention recently.[1] Like Carl Trueman’s book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Wulf’s contribution is an attempt to identify the historical origins of the contemporary sense of the self.[2] Both begin with the question: “How did we get here?” but presuppositions show in their vocabulary. Wulf asks about the tension between selfishness and self-determination; Trueman asks about normalizing transgenderism. Wulf wants someone to celebrate, and Trueman is looking for someone to blame. Although they have different origin stories, together they present the depth and breadth of the invention of the modern self.
Wulf attends to the comings and goings from Jena (pronounced ‘ja:na) in “a mere blink of time,” a decade from the early 1790s to the early 1800s. Central but nearly invisible is Jena’s University, the hub of happenings. The local princes, sort of ruling Jena, sought to be enlightened leaders in the spirit of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s famous and influential 1784 essay, “Was ist Aufklarung?” (“What is Enlightenment?”). They allowed Jena University unprecedented liberty that young German Romantics tested to the breaking point.
First, a botany symposium threw together the poet Goethe and the playwright Schiller, launching a life-long friendship. Fichte, following his triumphant first book, arrived. The energy of this triumvirate drew in August Wilhelm Schlegel and his new bride Caroline. August’s brother, Frederick, joined with his lover Dorothea Veit. The final core member was the philosopher Friedrich Schelling. (Don’t worry if these names mean nothing to you. Keep reading.)[3] In Wulf’s tale, they turned inward and unleashed the power of free will. The free exercise of the will was the exhibition of the self.
This cast of characters takes attentiveness to follow. They were all poets, philosophers, and playwrights. At the edge of their circle was a constellation of who’s who in 19th-century German literary society: the poet Novalis, the philosopher Hegel, the linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, the scientist Alexander von Humboldt, the theologian Schleiermacher, and the author Tieck. This “Jena Set” (Wulf’s term) was an intellectual community whose genius foundered on the shoals of immoral behavior, frequent reshuffling of romantic attachments with many quarrels and spats. Wulf’s survey of philosophical developments is comprehensive yet accessible, woven seamlessly throughout the narrative. But her alternatively neutral and celebratory prose belies the devilish damage self-indulgence did to friendships.
Napoleon’s intentions for Europe overshadowed the Jena Set’s decade of intellectual exploration and uninhibited dalliances. Several in the group idolized him. They saw him as the true self, imposing his imagination on the world. In the end, his arrival in Jena permanently rearranged the city and university, ending its contribution to the rise of Romanticism. Ironically, Napoleon was late. The Jena Set had already self-destructed, dismantling their previously prolific collaborations with pride and lust. Wulf’s chief failing as an author is providing a cheerful patina to this self-destruction, blurring the line between free will and willfulness.
The Jena Set wanted to unite a new post-Enlightenment world with a new order: science and art as complements, not rivals; poetry and philosophy as friends, twin offspring of intuition and feeling. The self stood at the center of it all. But they proved to be little more than fair-weather friends whose serendipitous cooperation could not overcome the self-interest that brought them together and tore them apart. Petty and rash, proud and immoral, their personal story reads like a script for a 20th-century daytime soap opera. Who is sleeping with whom? Who is fighting with whom? If these rebels are magnificent, it is for their minds, not their morals.
Even in philosophy, they fell short. Their goal was to be happy, whatever the cost. Likewise, true love was a devotion to making another happy. Open marriages arose. Affairs were financed and affirmed in the name of love. This fitful evolution of the philosophy of the self was reformed and refined until divergent points of view alienated the proud thinkers beyond any possibility of further cooperation. Their dream was to restore enchantment to the world by empowering the imagination over the reason. But a self cannot make a society. The will, no matter how free, cannot find happiness until it prays, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39, NKJV). The self freely, willingly surrenders to one worthy of its self-abnegation. The self finds both itself and its happiness not within but above.
Wulf’s master class about the origins of the “modern self” begins when she surveys the international influence of the Jena Set. She traces it through English Romantics, such as Shelley whom Trueman also discusses, and American Transcendentalists, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. Romanticism surged across Europe, leaping the channel and the ocean. Rolling back both the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, it continued into the 20th century, appearing in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and James Joyce’s novels.
In a charitable, even rose-colored, view of the Jena Set’s story, Wulf concludes, “The Jena Set gave wings to our minds. How we use them is entirely up to us.” This is both untrue and restrictive. Freedom for the self is found in fear of the LORD.
In contrast to Wulf’s narrative focusing on Germany, Carl Trueman’s version of the story of the modern self begins in France with Rousseau and follows his ideas through English Romantics and European thinkers like Nietzsche and Marx, leading to Freud. According to Wulf, the rise of the modern self begins in Jena and comes directly to America through the Transcendentalists. Trueman appears to follow the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor in overlooking the Jena Set’s role in the emergence of the self. Ignoring German Romantics seems a critical omission in Trueman’s story, but Trueman has enough caution to escape such censure.
First, The Rise of the Modern Self, for all its similarity to Magnificent Rebels, is actually attempting something else. Trueman is situating the sexual revolution in the larger revolution of the self. His route from Rousseau to Obergefell v. Hodges follows those thinkers who sought a social order, which celebrated sexually expressive individualism. This road did not travel through Jena. The earliest Romantics tended toward sexual immorality as individuals but they did not seek a sexually expressive society.
Second, Trueman begins with Rousseau, partly in deference to Taylor and partly as a Genevan counterpoint to John Calvin, but mostly because he was one of Freud’s heroes. Attention to similarity of thought, rather than historical relation, is a hallmark of Trueman’s book. This is an intellectual history with a faint narrative outline, avoiding assertions of causation. Trueman does not claim that Rousseau launched Romanticism or the modern sense of the self. Instead, he notes they had similar thinking. He likewise presents the efforts of Nietzche, Marx, Darwin, and Freud to reshape society as significant but not cooperative or collaborative.
Trueman restricts himself to a modest enterprise of identifying historic similarities to contemporary thinking, excusing himself from including the Jena Set.
Like Wulf, Trueman shines brightest in the last half of the book. He wades through the swimming pool of ideas in which we are now floating. Moving through complex assumptions and conclusions, he ends with a swift survey of possibilities. He calls for Christian awareness of larger issues and heavenly ethics that do some earthly good. First, reject an aesthetic based morality and (re-)assert transcendent truths. Second, cultivate true community with vibrant relationships. Third, recover natural law and honor for the physical body. In such a conclusion, Trueman outshines Wulf, asserting that ordinary Christians living in relative harmony, not magnificent rebels living in heartbreaking discord, make the world a better place.
How did we get here? It’s complicated. Did it start in Jena or Geneva? Both and neither! Roots of a psychological self reach back to Augustine’s Confessions and spring up in Puritan conversion narratives. Deep struggles with sexuality can be found in the same places too. Nevertheless, the Jena Set did foreground the self against society in a novel and viral way. Likewise, Rousseau and the Romantics did elevate the inner self over the social self as one’s true identity. Wulf presents a better story with insufficient analysis while Trueman misses the narrative but supplies a stronger assessment. Taken together, Wulf and Trueman leave the clear impression that the invention, rise, and triumph of the modern self was centuries in the making and will not be unmade quickly. “This calls for patient endurance” (Rev 14:12, NIV).
– Noah Bailey
[1] See Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self (1989), Jerrold Seigel’s The Idea of the Self (2005), Carl Trueman’s The Rise and the Triumph of the Modern Self (2020), or Patricia Kitcher’s The Self: A History (2021). See a review of Carl Trueman’s book in A Little Strength 5.2 April 2022.
[2] Charles Taylor argues that three parts together constitute the modern self: the self as a psychological inner person, social affirmation of self in its ordinary existence, and happiness as vindication of self.
[3] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the most famous of all German writers, the German equivalent of England’s Shakespeare. His most famous work is Faust. Friedrich Schiller wrote plays. Fichte was a philosopher. Schlegel did everything literary, including philology. The reader gets the idea and can look up the others.
What Did Jesus Teach About War?
Introduction
Years ago, while I was an undergraduate history major at Swarthmore College, I spent some days browsing through its library’s Peace Collection. Swarthmore, a traditionally Quaker school, housed a vast quantity of writing about war, much of it dealing with the teachings of Jesus. Was he a pacifist? Would he have supported the later Christian doctrine of Just War? And so on. Most of the literature lacked any sense of the social and political background to Jesus’ teaching. Both pacifist and Just War writers treated Jesus’ words as timeless oracles, not as things he said in a particular time and place. This evening, I am not going to interact with those pacifist and anti-pacifist writings directly. What I want to do is examine, in the context of his time and place, things that Jesus taught which might have a bearing on war. Jesus was a Jew who lived and taught in Roman-ruled Palestine. The Roman governor Pilate had him executed about the year 30 AD.
Any discussion of what Jesus taught immediately raises the question of the reliability of our sources, most notably the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is a long scholarly tradition that views these books with deep suspicion, as the product of the traditions and life of a later Christian church, but not real history. Perhaps a process of “demythologizing,” to use Bultmann’s term, would allow scholars to discern some underlying kernels of Jesus’ teaching beneath the layers of elaboration that church tradition had added to them, but to take the Gospels as they stand as reliable reports about Jesus was naïve. This scholarly tradition of skepticism treated the assumed oral traditions behind the Gospels as though they were like a manuscript that had gone through many editorial hands. Then the Gospels as we have them finally emerged from some anonymous compilers late in the first century. Somehow famous names like Matthew and John were attached to them.
This skeptical take on the Gospels has never satisfied me. Powerful works of literature do not emerge from the Volk, contrary to the theories of early folklorists. Some individual always writes them. Furthermore, the time needed for an oral tradition to produce the “mythologized” Gospels never seemed to me to be nearly long enough: people who actually knew Jesus were still alive when the first Gospels were published.
A recent book by the English scholar Richard Bauckham, published in 2006, confirms my skepticism of the skeptics. He puts a thoroughly argued final nail in the coffin of mainstream Gospel studies of the last century. Entitled Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Bauckham’s book argues persuasively that the Gospels contain the testimony of Jesus’ closest associates. They were written according to the canons of mainstream Greco-Roman historiography. They were not the product of church tradition or later life, and indeed contain a lot of material not germane to later church life. The Gospels tell us what Jesus did and taught as he traveled through Palestine.
So in my talk tonight, I am going to take the Gospels as they stand as my sources for what Jesus taught about war. They describe a popular teacher and healer, calling himself the Son of Man, who gathered a varied group of disciples about him. After several years of itinerant ministry mostly in the northern province of Galilee, he ran afoul of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. They handed him over to Governor Pilate to be charged as a potential threat to the Roman peace. Pilate had him crucified outside of Jerusalem. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, commissioned his disciples to spread the announcement of his saving reign to all nations and to teach new disciples what he had taught them, and then left this world. What did Jesus teach about war during his itinerant preaching through the Palestinian provinces of Galilee, Samaria, Perea, and Judea? That is our question tonight. The canonical four Gospels are our sources.
Palestine at Peace In the Days of Jesus
When Americans today hear the word “war,” we think first of international conflicts between state-supported armies, or second of our own country’s civil war which began 150 years ago. The Roman Empire, of which Palestine was a small part, knew both kinds of war, but not in Jesus’ day. What the English historian Edward Gibbon first named the “Pax Romana,” began in 27 BC with Augustus’ final victory over Antony in Rome’s civil wars. It lasted, in Gibbon’s accounting, until 180 AD. In those two centuries, Rome and its provinces faced no significant external enemy, expanded their borders only slightly, and had no major civil wars between rival claimants to Rome’s throne. There were occasional border troubles with the Germans to the north and the Parthians to the east, which the Roman legions managed with relative ease. There were also two important Jewish revolts, which we will get to later.
Not long before Jesus was born, the Jewish Hasmonean Dynasty (164 BC – 63 BC) ruled an independent Palestine. The successful Maccabean revolt against Hellenizing Greek Syrian rulers was recent history, about as long ago for them as our Civil War is for us. (The Jewish festival of Hanukkah commemorates the resumption of Temple worship after Judas Maccabee cleansed the Temple.) At Jesus’ birth, Herod the Great (lived 74 BC – 4 BC), the Hasmoneans’ successor, was “King of the Jews” by order of the Roman Senate. He answered to Rome. Palestine under Roman rule was peaceful and prosperous.
After Herod’s death, the provinces of Palestine were divided. At the time of Jesus’ death, Judea had a Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate (ruled 26 – 36 AD), while Herod Antipas (ruled 20 BC – 39 AD), one of Herod the Great’s sons, ruled Galilee. To maintain order and to protect the Empire’s borders, Rome usually had a cohort made up of six centuries, about 500-600 men, stationed in Jerusalem. There was a larger force of several cohorts stationed at Caeserea Philippi on the coast, and at least a legion (6 cohorts, or up to 5000 men) in Damascus to the north: altogether about 7000 - 8000 occupying soldiers stationed in a territory about the size of Maryland. Jesus personally dealt with a centurion in Galilee at least once (Matthew 8:5, Luke 7:2), when he came to Jesus asking him to heal his servant. The commander of the Roman cohort in Jerusalem sent some of his troops to oversee Jesus’ arrest (John 18:3).
Given the general peace between and within nations in Jesus’ day, it is to be expected that the Gospel writers would record little that Jesus had to say directly about war. He probably said little. One time, when the crowds became too large, he used going to war as an instance of a prudential weighing of the cost of following him.
"Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple…Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be my disciple.' ” (Luke 14:25-33)
Going to war as an instance of planning and foresight and then taking appropriate action does not, of course, make any judgment about war itself.
One other time, Jesus refers directly to what we usually mean by the term “war.” In talking about the future of his disciples, he mentions “wars” as troubling things to be expected in human affairs. But arresting as wars are, they should not trouble his followers, nor make them think that the end of the world was near. Jesus said, “But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” (Mark 13:7-8)
Palestine Restless Under Roman Rule in the Days of Jesus
While Palestine was peaceful under Roman oversight, however, the Jews were restless. Many longed for a hero who would free them from Roman rule. One indication of that longing for a hero is revealed in the names they gave to their sons and daughters.
I’m going to shift our focus for a moment to a small province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Around 1800, the Ottoman governor in the small town of Athens wrote back to Constantinople that the Greeks were up to something. They were starting to name their sons Pericles and Achilles rather than Peter and John. In 1813, a teacher in Athens sponsored a ceremony in which he held olive and laurel branches in his hand as he renamed his students. “From now on your name will no longer be John or Paul, etc., but Pericles, Themistocles, or Xenophon, etc. For the rest, fear God, help your Fatherland, and also love philosophy.” Eight years later in 1821, a Greek revolt of exceptional brutality, inspired in part by European classicism and by the ideals of the French Revolution, broke out against the Ottoman rulers. Names taken from classical Greek history, rather than from the Orthodox Church Saints, were an early indicator of the rebellious mindset of the Greeks.
What names were the Jews giving their children in Jesus’ day, and what did those names indicate about popular sentiment? Using all available sources such as literary sources, burial inscriptions, papyri such as legal documents, and so on, the Israeli scholar Tal Ilan published the Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity: Part I: Palestine 330 BCE – 200 CE in 2002, altogether about 2625 male names and 325 female names. The most popular male names in that ancient period surrounding the life of Jesus were the following: Simon, Joseph, Judah, Eleazar, Yohanan, and Joshua. The most popular female names were Mary and Salome. Readers of the Gospels will, of course, recognize these names. The name Simon, for example, was so common that the Gospel writers regularly attached a second identifier to it, so that readers could keep track of who was who. There was Simon Peter and Simon the Zealot, two of the twelve disciples, Simon the Leper, Simon one of Jesus’ brothers, Simon of Cyrene, and Simon Iscariot, Judas’ father. The book of Acts adds Simon Magus and Simon the tanner. The next name on Ilan’s list, Joseph, is familiar as Joseph the husband of Mary the mother of Jesus, and Joseph of Arimethea, in whose tomb Jesus was laid. Mary was the most common female name. In the Gospels, there is Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the sister of Martha, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Clopas. What is interesting about these names is that six of the top nine male names in Ilan’s list come from the Maccabean family: father Matthew and his five sons John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan. The female names Mary and Salome were prominent women’s names in the Hasmonean dynasty.
Given their prominence in the ancient history of Israel, one might expect some sons to be named David, Moses, or Elijah, but there are none in the Gospels or in other ancient sources. Palestinian Jews longing for a Messiah to deliver them from Rome knew the Scripture promises about a coming messianic age. Hebrew prophecy indicated a prominent role in that age for Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15), Elijah (Malachi 4:5), and David (Jeremiah 23:5-6 and many more). So it seems that no one dared to name a son David, Moses, or Elijah. But they could and did name their sons after the Maccabean heroes who had defeated Palestine’s Greek Syrian rulers in the second century BC and then set up an independent Jewish kingdom.
Indeed, a generation after Jesus in 66 AD, the Jews did rebel against Rome. They wiped out the Roman garrisons in Palestine, then did the same to the legion stationed in Damascus when it came south to restore order, and then held out for another three years against four Roman legions under Generals Vespasian and Titus. After finally conquering Jerusalem, the Romans destroyed the Temple that Herod the Great had built and brought an effective end to Temple worship. Sixty years later in 132 A.D., the Jews revolted again under Bar Kokhba, in a war that lasted for over three years. After that war, the Romans forbade any Jews to live in Jerusalem.
What stance did Jesus take toward Jewish messianic hopes for a successful rebellion against Rome? He gave no encouragement to the Jews to rebel, rejected a messianic role for himself as leader of such a revolt, but nevertheless prophesied that the Jews would rebel, only to be disastrously defeated. The Gospels consistently record Jesus’ opposition to a military revolt despite the legal record of Jesus’ execution, where the charge posted over his cross was simply, “King of the Jews.”
In at least three instances, Jesus spoke clearly on the side of Jewish acceptance of Roman rule. The first place is in Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. He taught, “And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two (Matthew 5:41 NKJ).” A more interpretative translation reads, “And if one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles (TEV).” Roman law, following Persian and Greek precedent, provided that a Roman soldier could require a subject, or his donkey, or his wagon, to carry his provisions a mile. That law of legal but limited forced labor was the basis for forcing Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross for him. “Now as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. Him they compelled to bear his cross (Matthew 27:32).” So when Jesus said, “If someone compels you to go a mile, go two,” he meant, “If Roman troops tell you to carry their equipment, not only should you not resist, you should go twice as far as required.”
A second time that Jesus taught cooperation with Rome was in his famous saying concerning taxation. A week before Jesus’ arrest, the Herodians (collaborators) and the Pharisees (scornful of collaborators) asked Jesus in the temple, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” The point was to implicate Jesus with the Romans if he said no, or to cost him popular support if he said yes, pay. Jesus asked for a denarius, they gave him one, and he asked whose name and image it bore. “Caesar’s,” they answered. (That would have been Tiberius Caesar.) Jesus’ famous reply to the question trap then was, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” In other words, yes, pay your taxes to Rome. In the ancient world, of course, for a subject country to refuse its payments to the ruling country meant rebellion. So, again, Jesus urged no rebellion.
In a third instance at least, when he was arrested and Simon Peter pulled out a sword to fight the arresting Roman troops, Jesus told him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52).” Then Jesus healed the ear of the high priest’s servant Malchus, which Peter had cut off. After Jesus refused all resistance, his disciples then fled.
One further comment by Jesus is revealing about the stance, which he took toward the Romans. On one occasion, people told him about a recent atrocity in Jerusalem, “…about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices (Luke 13:1).” In reply, rather than excoriating an unpopular and brutal governor, Jesus directed his hearers’ attention to Pilate’s victims. He asked, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish (Luke 13:2-3).” Then he drove home the point with a reference to a recent disaster, the sort that our insurance companies call an “act of God.” “Or those eighteen on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish (Luke 13:4-5).”
Undergirding Jesus’ policy of not rebelling against Rome seems to have been an acceptance of the legitimacy of Roman rule. First, Roman power had a divine source. When Governor Pilate asked him as he stood on trial before him why he remained silent, given that Pilate had the power to release or condemn him, Jesus replied, “You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above (John 19:11).” Second, the Jews readily made use of the benefits of Roman rule. In his reply about paying taxes, Jesus by asking for a Roman coin, which they readily produced, seems to imply the principle that since the Jews used Roman coinage, they rightly owed them tax.
Finally, Jesus rejected all mob efforts to treat him as a messianic warrior hero or a political ruler. After the feeding of the 5000 in Galilee, the people were ready to come and make him king by force (John 6:15). Jesus fled, refusing to cooperate. When Jesus asked his disciples who the people said he was, they answered, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets (Matthew 16:14).” The surprising name in this list is Jeremiah, but perhaps not so surprising. Jeremiah was the prophet who insistently counseled Judah’s submission to Babylon against the popular determination to resist, a resistance that finally led to the destruction of David’s city and Solomon’s temple within it. And who did they think he was, he asked his disciples. Peter answered, “You are the Messiah (Mark 8:29).” Then, rather than sending them out to proclaim his identity and gather a force behind him, Jesus told them categorically not to tell anyone, adding to his disciples’ discomfiture that his destiny was to be rejected by the Jewish leaders and put to death.
Jesus repeatedly indicated that the Jews would in fact rebel against Rome with disastrous results. As he entered Jerusalem for the last time, he wept over the city, prophesying, “For the days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave one stone upon another (Luke 19:41-44).” Sitting outside its walls later, he told his disciples, who were marveling at the splendor of the temple that Herod the Great had built, not to be impressed. The days were coming when it would all be torn down (Mark 13:2). As he went to his death, carrying his cross through the streets of Jerusalem, he said to the lamenting women, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children (Luke 23:28).”
What about the Roman verdict that Jesus was a political rebel, the one posted above his cross? The Gospel writers insist that the verdict was unjust, the result of Jewish pressure on a vulnerable Governor Pilate, the result of a cowardly miscarriage of justice by the Governor. Their summary of the Jewish leaders’ dislike of Jesus is that it stemmed from envy (Matthew 27:18, Mark 15:10) and fear that Jesus by his popularity would provoke a full Roman takeover, leaving them no remnants of local rule (John 11:48). The Gospels consistently portray Pilate as trying to find some way to release Jesus or to impose a lesser sentence than death, but as giving way when the Jewish leaders threatened to report him to Caesar for letting an enemy of Rome go free (Matthew 27:11-26, Luke 23:13-25, John 18:28-19:16). Finally, as Jesus pointed out when he was arrested, he had not been acting like a rebel leader. For a week prior to his arrest, he had taught publicly in the Temple, where the Roman garrison stationed next to the Temple precincts could have easily arrested him. And while he sometimes attracted crowds, he never gathered an armed force. His disciples had all of two swords among them (Luke 22:38). One can, of course, prefer the Roman verdict to the Gospel accounts, but they are quite consistent: Jesus not only did not advocate or try to lead a war of national liberation; he actually opposed such a war and foretold that it would lead to disaster. He accepted Roman rule as legitimate.
In summary, what did Jesus teach about war? Concerning war between sovereign nations, nothing at all. Concerning a war of national liberation that many of his compatriots wished to wage, he stood against it.
Why was Jesus, who accepted the title of Messiah from his close followers, even while in public he called himself the Son of Man, opposed to a war of national liberation? Many reasons could be suggested. Jesus foresaw that the Jews would lose such a war, as they did thirty years later. More importantly, Jesus had an interpretation of Scripture prophecy that identified the Messiah with the Suffering Servant of Isaiah who would die for his people. Unfortunately, we do not have time to develop that line of thinking tonight, but it is central in Jesus’ thinking. Finally, Jesus’ opposition to a Jewish war of national liberation rested on his goal of a more thorough transformation of human existence than such a war could possibly accomplish. Jesus came to create a renewed world, where the motives for war are subverted.
A Renewed World Where the Motives for War Are Subverted
The basic theme of Jesus’ preaching was this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel (Mark 1:15),” a message basically identical to that of John the Baptist (Matthew 3:2), except that John portrayed himself as the forerunner, while Jesus identified himself as the one who brought the Kingdom. For example, referring to himself, he said, “…and indeed a greater then Jonah is here…and indeed a greater than Solomon is here (Matthew 12:39-42), or again, he claimed to be new cloth or the bridegroom (Mark 2:19-22), or again, he said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6),” not exactly a humble view of himself. Jesus thought he was the person to change people and societies fundamentally. Rather startlingly, he sometimes portrays himself as an immigrant from a different place, come to spend some time with the people of Israel (see the familiar conversation with Nicodemus, John 3:1-19). He never said that he came to abolish war or even to critique it directly, but he did teach certain attitudes that undercut the common causes of war.
There is, of course, a vast literature aiming to discern the causes of war. Today’s favorite cause of all social maladies, namely poverty, seems not to be one of those causes. The endemic tribal warfare of the New Guinea highlands, for example, seems to be about revenge, pig stealing, and women (Jared Diamond, “Vengeance is Ours,” New Yorker, 21/4/2008, cf. Steven Pinker, “Violence Vanquished,” WSJ, 24/9/2011). Genghis Khan and the Mongols were after booty (Jack Weatherford, Genghis Kahn and the Making of the Modern World, 2004). The Trojan Wars were begun to redress the personal insult of a runaway wife (Homer, Iliad). The Punic wars between Rome and Carthage were about who would control the politics and commerce of the western Mediterranean world. In short, wars are about greed, revenge, hunger for power, and fear, recognizable human weaknesses. Poverty interferes with going to war; wealth funds war.
Jesus’ teaching points in a different direction than a society of conquest, or an honor culture of slights revenged, or a society ruled by fear of enemies. A few verses from Matthew about self-assertiveness and fear of poverty: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God (Matthew 5:9).” “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).” “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek (Matthew 6:31-32).”
A few verses from Mark about hunger for power: “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant (Mark 10:42-43).”
Something from Luke about acquisitiveness: “Then one from the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.’ (Luke 12:13-15).” Jesus continued with a story about a rich man who had such good crops that he thought he could retire and rest the remainder of his life. “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided? (Luke 12:20).” And from Luke on fear: “And I say to you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell: yes, I say to you, fear him! (Luke 12:4-5).”
In each Gospel, Jesus appears as a man at ease with the powerful, such as Jairus the synagogue ruler in Capernaum, or the Roman centurion who came to him for help, but not at all interested in climbing a social ladder. He tells his disciples to let women bring their infants to him, he converses with a Samaritan woman at a well, he eats with Zaccheus the collaborating tax collector, and he constantly interacts with Pharisees inside and outside of their houses. He evinces no interest in accumulating power, money, or women, the usual goals of able men. He certainly does not sound or feel like a man intent on fomenting rebellion against Rome. He does sound like a man completely familiar with his own countrymen, who had nevertheless been sent there from somewhere else. He aimed at a more thorough human renovation than simply replacing one political authority with another.
Jesus, in short, aimed at a new world based on himself, which would be born out of the old world and would live in its midst as it matured. That world would have its origin in his death and resurrection, which takes us back to the Suffering Servant Messiah, a theme we are not pursuing tonight. Finally, Jesus anticipated that the old and the new world would be in conflict. “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34).” Families would divide over him. He intended to leave people with no choice regarding himself and his teachings. “He who is not with me is against me (Luke 11:23, see Luke 9:49-50),” he said. Even today, in most places of the world, the introduction of the name of Jesus into a conversation or a situation will frequently provoke an argument that quickly becomes personal.
There is a fourth aspect of Jesus’ career, touching the theme of war, which I have left entirely untouched tonight. The Gospels consistently portray warfare between evil spirits and humanity. In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to use, the “Lord’s Prayer” for Protestants or the “Our Father” for Catholics, the last request is, “Deliver us from the Evil One.” Jesus, in fact, points to himself as the strong man who can set free men and women who are enslaved to evil (Matthew 12:25-30).
Conclusion
Time to conclude. What did Jesus teach about war? Taking the four canonical Gospels as our source, I conclude first of all that he taught nothing directly about war as we usually think of it. His world was at peace. Second, he stood consistently against the rebellious longings of his countrymen, who argued whether paying taxes to Caesar was moral, who named their children after Maccabean heroes, and who sometimes thought they saw in him the warrior hero who could lead them to political independence. Third, Jesus aimed at a more thorough personal and social renovation than simply replacing one set of rulers with another. As part of this new world, which he personally was bringing, he included new values and ethics, which would lead people away rather than toward war.
While Jesus is the only figure from antiquity still provoking heated argument, his continuing authority is so great that all sorts of movements wish to claim him for themselves. For example, Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King Jr. in a segregated American South invoked him for nonviolent action, liberation theology used him as authority for social revolution in Latin America, and Solidarity in Poland invoked him to resist Communist rule. Some make a better claim than others. Perhaps Solidarity with its refusal to live in fear and instead to think and speak like free men makes as good a claim as any. But all political and social movements that claim his authority mostly miss what Jesus aimed at: a new world based on himself and his teachings in which men and women transformed by his spiritual power turn away from the usual motives for war: greed, hunger for power, revenge, and fear.
– Bill Edgar
Indiana University
October 2011
The Atlantic Presbytery has several connections with Presbyterians in Australia. Allan Nelson from Coldenham is a long-time elder in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Australia. Zach Dotson, recently the intern at Coldenham-Newburgh, is now the pastor of a Presbyterian church in Tasmania, Australia. We thank J. Bruce Martin of Elkins Park for sending us this editorial from Australia on the occasion of the accession of Charles III to the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. --ed.
The King's Accession Oath
Guest editorial by John Forbes in The Banner,
a publication of the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia
The death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 8th September 2022 occasioned much sadness and mourning for a much-loved monarch who, by the grace of God, for seventy years, reigned with dignity and a sense of duty that engendered widespread respect and admiration.
It is no exaggeration to say that the world looked on at the public ceremonies associated with the death of the monarch and, amidst the grandeur and solemnity of the royal funeral arrangements, also saw the accession of a new king to the throne. This event was televised for the first time and the world could watch the new king solemnly swear his oath of office in these words:
“I, Charles III, by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of my other realms and territories, King, Defender of the Faith, do faithfully promise and swear that I should inviolably maintain and preserve the settlement of the true Protestant religion as established by the laws made in Scotland in prosecution of the Claim of Right and particularly by an act intituled an act for securing the Protestant religion and Presbyterian church government and by the acts passed in the Parliament of both kingdoms for union of the two kingdoms, together with the government, worship, discipline, rights and privileges, of the Church of Scotland. So Help me God.”
It may seem surprising and out-of-date in this secular age that the first constitutional commitment of the British monarch is to the preservation of true Protestant Christianity and, in particular, to the historic worship, discipline and government of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. For us in the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia it should be a great encouragement. These are the very principles that we hold to and believe to be biblical. The accession oath is a public reminder that these principles have shaped the nations of Britain as well as this land of Australia, and have provided the foundation and cornerstone of a political settlement that has been blessed with a long-lasting peace and stability where once there was tyranny and oppression.
The wording of this oath has its origins in the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643. At that time England and Scotland were separate nations but had the same king. They found themselves in a crisis and civil war because the king, Charles I, sought to establish himself as an absolute monarch who could make decrees about civil and religious matters without the consent of the Parliaments or the Churches. In order to preserve their civil and spiritual liberties these nations, with their Parliaments, Churches and many people, entered into a solemn bond in which they committed themselves and their descendants to “preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms”. Though they were in conflict with the king they also swore to “preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority” and asserted that they had “no thoughts or intentions to diminish his Majesty's just power and greatness.”
The over-riding commitment of the Solemn League and Covenant, however, was religious rather than political. They committed themselves to “the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government” and to seek “the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, according to the word of God”. This is the origin of the wording found in the accession oath of the British monarchs to this day.
Sadly there was to be much conflict before peace was established for the British Isles. Oliver Cromwell seized power in a military coup and oversaw the execution of Charles I. This was followed by the reign of Charles II, which was increasingly oppressive. He was succeeded by his brother James VII/II whose reign was even more brutal. This period was known in Scotland as “the killing times” when many innocent Christians were imprisoned, financially ruined, or killed for upholding the principles of reformed worship and church government. It was not until 1689, at the accession of William and Mary, that peace came. Constitutional monarchy was then restored and permanently enshrined in the political settlement by oath along with the rights and liberties of the Parliaments and Churches.
The final step in the development of the accession oath came in 1707 when the Parliament of Scotland united with that of England to form the single Parliament of the United Kingdom. When the Treaty of Union was negotiated and ratified, the Scottish Parliament required as a “fundamental and essential condition” of the union “in all time coming”, that the true Christianity of Scotland was to be preserved and that every monarch, at accession, must solemnly swear accordingly. This is the only fundamental and essential condition of the union and is therefore its constitutional bedrock.
Sadly this history, and the significance of these religious principles have fallen out of the public memory. Nevertheless it is apparent that God has graciously blessed the union of nations that was established on this foundation. In these past three centuries God has greatly expanded the territory of the British monarchs to encompass Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other places. And God has granted to these realms, and the true churches of Christ within these realms, an unprecedented degree of peace and liberty.
– Rev. John Forbes
Recent Questions: On Homosexual Desire, and On Transubstantiation
1. Is homosexual inclination/desire okay and only homosexual acts sinful?
It is not sinful to hear the thought, “Go, do this evil thing.” Satan tempted Jesus, telling him what to do, but Jesus promptly rejected the temptation with a Bible quotation (always from Deuteronomy in the three temptations at the start of his ministry). He did not sin. Likewise, our own thoughts can tempt us to steal, for example, and we can react the same way: “No, God says not to steal.” And that is the end of the matter.
However, if a man looks longingly at a woman who is not his wife, and thinks, “I won’t touch her. That would be wrong. But it is okay to indulge pleasant thoughts about doing so, so I will,” then he is guilty of adultery. The desire to do wrong is not the same thing as the mere idea of doing so.
If a man propositions me and I respond, “No!” that is not sinful. However, if a man propositions me, a man, and I say “No,” but I think, “But it is something I would like to do or at least experiment with,” that desire indulged in my thoughts, that inclination to say yes, is sinful.
Homosexual acts are always sinful. Homosexual inclination or desire is also sinful. It is NOT an identity that has any validity. The “inclination” is evidence of a sinfully corrupt nature. Where the inclination appears, it should be repented of, perhaps many times. It should never be acted on, either in the flesh or in the mind.
There is nothing unjust or strange about calling homosexual “inclination” sinful. If an angry person tempted to violence excuses his anger, thinking, “I just have a choleric nature,” he gets it wrong. He needs to repent of his anger. Likewise if a “kleptomaniac,” a word popular when I was young, adopts the identity of someone inclined to steal, he makes a great mistake. And so does someone tempted to buggery – the legal term of art for sodomy for many centuries. His identity is not that of a “bugger,” or a homosexual, to use the term common now. (The term “homosexual” was invented by a German in the 19th Century in order to remove the censure attached to “bugger,” and to combine both the desiring person and the acting person in one term, “homosexual.”)
There are only two identities that matter. One is either in Christ or one is an unbeliever.
And there are only two versions of human, male and female. God has established these boundaries. Only rebellious fools pretend that they are mere social constructs. They spit into the wind.
2. What is wrong with the Catholic understanding of communion?
I will briefly discuss two things: transubstantiation, and Christ sacrificed over again. There are other issues that I will pass by, such as “reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession (Paragraph 1378, Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994)).”
Transubstantiation: The Catholic Catechism teaches the doctrine of transubstantiation, that Christ’s true body is literally present in the Mass: “It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament.” (1375). “This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.” (1376)
Christ, however, is now seated at the right hand of the Father until he returns to earth in the same way that he left it (Acts 1:9-11). His body is not everywhere. Christ is present in many places by his Spirit, whom he has given to his church. He is truly present by his Spirit in the celebration of Communion. Teaching that Christ is materially present in Communion by the transubstantiation of bread and wine into his body undermines the true material reality of his body.
Sacrifice: The Catholic Church teaches, “In this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the Mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner.” (1367) “Because it is the memorial of Christ’s Passover, the Eucharist is also a sacrifice. The sacrificial character of the Eucharist is manifested in the very words of institution: ‘This is my body which is given for you’ and ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood.’ In the Eucharist Christ gives us the very body which he gave up for us on the cross, the very blood which he ‘poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’” (1365)
The Bible teaches, however, that Christ died once for sin. There is no need for a further sacrifice of his body, bloody or unbloody. The writer to the Hebrews teaches, “And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:11-14).”
When the Catholic Catechism quotes Luke 22:19 and I Corinthians 11:24, “This is my body,” it mistakes the figure of speech that Christ is using as he speaks directly to his disciples. Christ is using metonymy, one thing standing for another even while it is not that thing itself, for example, using “Silicon Valley” to stand for tech companies located near San Francisco. As he holds bread in his hand, Jesus is obviously not making a claim of ontological identity, that is, that the bread he holds in his hand is also his hand that holds the bread. It would have been absurd for his disciples at the Last Supper to have so understood him, and it is absurd to teach so now.
– Bill Edgar
I Don’t See Jesus Anywhere
“Your sign says ‘Church.’ I came in, but I don’t see Jesus anywhere, not even a cross. Is this a church?”
Yes, this is a church. Let me explain what you see. You see people. A church is people gathered to worship God. We could meet in a house or a sports stadium or the Y to worship God and be just as much a church as here.
Up front you see a table that often holds a bowl, and there's a podium behind it. The bowl is for holding water for baptisms. The podium is for the preacher of God’s Word. The table represents what is called variously Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist. As for the pews, they are not necessary, just convenient; sort of like uncomfortable couches, and better than standing or sitting on the floor.
Okay, but I asked about what I don’t see. I don’t see Jesus anywhere.
If you mean pictures of Jesus, we don’t have them. We don’t know what Jesus looks like, except that he is a man. Does he have black eyes or brown ones? We don’t know. Was he tall or short? No one knows. Did he smile often or scowl? Does he have short or long hair? We don’t know. Every picture of Jesus is false, no more than an artist’s imagination. A picture is worth a thousand words, but every picture of Jesus is wrong. Powerful, but wrong.
There is another way to think about seeing Jesus besides thinking of a picture of him. The Church is the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27). When you love the Church, you love God. Jesus said he rewards anyone who gives just a cup of cold water to one of his followers (Matthew 10:42).
Okay, but when I contemplate a picture of Jesus, I feel close to him. Seeing a picture of Jesus is my way to be close to God. What’s wrong with that?
Do you remember the Second Commandment? It tells us not to make any likeness of God from anything in creation and not to worship it. Jesus is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. So God forbids us to make any picture of him. Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to God, not looking at his picture, no matter how you feel when you see it. Having not seen him, we love him (I Peter 1:8-9). Faith is confidence in what we do not see (Hebrews 11:1).
Well, why don’t you at least have a cross?
Jesus died on a cross, but after three days he returned to life. Where is he now? Not on a cross, but enthroned in heaven with all authority. He will come again. Christians pray for that day to come in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom come.” A cross reminds us that Jesus died for our sins, but it doesn’t tell us that Jesus is alive and coming. God saves people not by their seeing a cross but by the foolishness of preaching (I Corinthians 1:21).
I saw online that in some of your churches you have a banner behind the preacher that says, “For Christ’s Crown and Covenant.” What is that about?
The banner means that the church is “for” Christ the King. Many people are against Christ. Just mention the name of Jesus anywhere, anytime, outside of a church and chances are good that you will start an argument. “Christ” is a title that means King. Jesus is “King of kings and Lord of lords,” which you probably hear sung at Christmas in The Messiah, written by George Frederick Handel. The words are from the Bible. “Covenant” has a historical connection to Scotland in the 1600s, but its basic meaning is the New Covenant that Jesus sealed with his blood (Luke 22:20, I Corinthians 11:25). We will have to leave the meaning of “New Covenant” to another time.
No pictures of Jesus, no cross, and no organ or praise band either. There’s nothing here for a person except the preaching of God’s Word and fellowship with Christians. Is that right?
You’ve got it right, except you should add the sacraments also. Remember the table with the bowl on it. Church is about hearing and believing God’s Word and being with other believers. That’s it.
– Bill Edgar
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Authors in this issue
Noah Bailey is the pastor of Cambridge RPC (Boston).
Bill Edgar has published a two volume history of our denomination covering 1871 to 1980: History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1871-1920 and History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America 1920-1980. Find them on Crown & Covenant and Amazon.com. Read up and leave a review!
John Edgar is the pastor of Elkins Park RPC (Philadelphia).
John Forbes is a pastor in the PCEA, a Presbyterian and Reformed Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in Australia. Our thanks to retired pastor Bruce Martin for bringing this article to our attention.