The Upper Register Blog

For my daily Greek reading I was in 1 Corinthians 15 this morning. The opening paragraph is very helpful in orienting us to the primacy of the gospel:

“[1] Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, [2] by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. [3] For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, [4] and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, [5] and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [6] After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; [7] then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; [8] and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. [9] For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. [10] But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. [11] Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. [12] Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? [13] But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; [14] and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. [15] Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. [16] For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; [17] and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. [18] Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. [19] If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” (NASB)

Several things stand out:

First, Paul makes it clear that the gospel is “of first importance,” literally, “among the first (i.e., most important) things” (ἐν πρώτοις, cp. BDAG). This implies that there are many other important issues in the Christian faith and life — perhaps some of the topics Paul has addressed in the foregoing parts of his first letter to the Corinthians, e.g., church unity, church discipline, the dangers of immorality, lawsuits, marriage and divorce, food sacrificed to idols, and spiritual gifts — but none of these stands on the same level as the gospel itself.

Second, this begs the question, “What is the gospel?” Paul answers the question by pointing to the central reality of substitutionary atonement (”that Christ died for our sins”), as well as his burial and resurrection on the third day, confirming that his sacrifice of atonement had been accepted. The prepositional phrase in the death-formula, ”for our sins” (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν), is critical, because it identifies the death of Christ as a penal substitution. That is, he died the death that we deserved for our sins. [See Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, pp. 383-89, on the substitutionary meaning of the preposition ὑπέρ in Koine Greek.]

Third, the death of Christ for our sins and his resurrection on the third day is also the content of a message that is proclaimed. Paul uses several different verbs to refer to the proclamation of the gospel message concerning the death and resurrection of Christ:  twice, the verb εὐαγγελίζομαι (”to preach the gospel,” vv 1-2); twice, the language of “handing on” and “receiving” a tradition (vv 1, 3); twice, the verb κηρύσσω (”to herald, proclaim,” vv 11, 12); once, its cognate noun τὸ κήρυγμα (v 14); and once, the verb μαρτυρέω (”to bear witness,” v 15). The gospel, then, is the apostolic preaching of the saving message of the cross of Christ. Now that the apostles have died, we merely preach what the apostles preached, but we do so in their name and authority.

Fourth, the message is not only proclaimed, it is also believed, and when it is believed, received, and held fast, it leads to salvation. This is stated at the beginning of the passage:  “Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain” (vv 1-2). What it means to be “saved” is fleshed out a bit later: “For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” The point of believing that Jesus died for our sins and rose again is that we will not perish or die in our sins, but will have the hope of attaining to the resurrection from the dead, of which Christ’s resurrection is the pledge.

Note the tie between the message and faith:  “So we preached and so you believed” (v 11). Thus the message is preached, then it is received in faith, and the result is that when we die, we do not perish, but are destined to attain resurrection life with Jesus at his coming. This is why Paul mentions the fact that some of the witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus have fallen asleep (v 6) — they did not merely hope in Christ in this life only (v 19). Their hope is that, through the death of Christ for their sins, they will be raised up with Christ in the age to come.

So what’s the point?

This, I believe, is a most helpful passage in orienting us to what is primary for Paul, and by implication, what ought to be primary for us as well. When people read our books and blogs, or listen to our sermons, or attend our worship services, what do they perceive is “of primary importance” to us? I hope it is not that we are “Reformed,” or that we subscribe to “the Reformed Confessions,” or that we are “Presbyterian” in our church government. I hope it is that we love, preach, and live out of the apostolic gospel of Christ’s death for our sins.

This is also relevant for us in helping us to decide what our relationship ought to be with broader evangelicalism, and indeed with all professing Christians. They may be confused about many matters. They may have a low view of the church and the sacraments. They may be too quick to reject the traditions and creeds of the church. They may hold to something less than a purely monergistic soteriology. They may think baptism must be preceded by a profession of faith. But if they have received, stand firm in, and preach this gospel, then they are to be received as brothers in Christ and to be encouraged to continue in the gospel, even as we also discuss other matters with them (just as Paul does in his letters to the Corinthians). This is why I am much more concerned about those so-called evangelicals who are denying penal substitution, than I am about evangelicals who disagree with me on infant baptism, for example.

Of course, I realize that there are other essentials not addressed by Paul in this immediate paragraph, such as Christology and justification by faith alone, that must also be taken into account. These should also be understood as presupposed and can be fleshed out by other NT passages. My point is that the saving work of Christ on the cross was central to Paul’s preaching and that this ought to inform our priorities today as well.

John Fonville of Gospel Driven Blog wrote to me and said this:

It is very encouraging to know that there are some “Reformed” brothers out there who actually, with grace, acknowledge that some of us Evangelicals (who are evangelical, yes, we know the difference, and practice credobaptism) are not, as I have been called, “illegitimate,” for coming to a different conclusion concerning infant baptism and not embracing in total the Three Forms of Unity or the Westminster Confession (by they way, I love all of those confessions, excepting for a few points of difference). This has been a painful area for me and cost me some cherished friendships. In any case, thank you for modeling grace and for keeping the main thing, the Gospel, central.

By the way, you are exactly right about being Reformed and going into places like Cambodia. When I went, all I preached on for the week was the doctrine of Christ and the Gospel. In response to your follow up article, I agree about your emphasis about being on the mission field. Knowing what I know about Cambodia, I would be happy to see a flourishing Gospel-driven/centered/saturated church established in Cambodia, whether it is Reformed/Presbyterian or Evangelical/Baptist. I have worked with just about every denomination in Cambodia, South Korea or Cuba. In every case, whether it has been the Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians, or others, all groups have been strongly evangelical in the orthodox sense of that term. I guess my short term mission experiences have helped me learn to work with a wide range of traditions with relative comfort so long as those traditions are rock solid and centered on the Gospel.

He also reminds me that The Cambridge Declaration (with its emphasis on the sola’s of the Reformation) is a good statement defining what it means to be “evangelical” in the historic sense of the term. I agree.

Then there is this really insightful comment by Dr. Ken Stewart posted to Between Two Worlds:

Thank you, Lee (and also Sean Lucas, Stephen Nichols) for making this irenic case as to why we should not scrap the use of the term ‘evangelical’ and why evangelicals among the Reformed should link with others outside the Reformed heritage. Here are three subsidiary considerations supporting the same conclusion.

1. In historical English usage, the terms evangelical, evangelicalism etc have been bound up with the maintenance of positions on the supreme authority of Scripture, atonement by Christ, and justification by faith in just the forms in which reformed evangelicals still maintain them. So far as is known, William Tyndale was the first to be labelled ‘evangelical’ (in English) by his opponent Thomas More. Thus, by historical association we should be able to see that we have a ’stake’ in continuing to own this term and to protect its actual meaning. The Reformation position was not distinguished from the Evangelical position for the longest time.

2. Scratch a Reformed advocate of ditching the use of the term ‘evangelical’ and you will very often find someone who is a refugee from some expression of revivalist or ultra-dogmatic fundamentalism (which they in hindsight identify as an expression of evangelicalism). In their legitimate desire to distance themselves from this, they desire to scrap the term evangelical, since it seems so broad as to embrace as legitimate what they now flee from. But this begs item #1 (above). Degenerate expressions of evangelicalism need not discredit the category itself. There is no necessity for me to cede this terminology to Joel Osteen, Trinity Broadcasting, or the Toronto Blessing people. These people, if they identify themselves as evangelical, are ‘squatting’ on territory that is not properly owned by them.

3. Over the past 200 years, confessional evangelicals have provided the ‘ballast’ to the broad evangelical movements across the English-speaking world. Carl Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, J.I. Packer, and Timothy George are late 20th century examples we can all recognize. There is nothing to prevent confessional evangelicals continuing to function as evangelicalism’s ‘think tank’ now, as in past - unless it would be our self-imposed exile - which is what those advocating scrapping the term unwittingly propose. There are already signs that where this ‘abandon evangelicalism’ mindset takes hold, confessional evangelicals find themselves in an echo chamber chiefly addressing their own number. And then, the bread is sliced always thinner, and the question of who is most or most truly Reformed becomes a moot point!

My previous point has generated some discussion on the blogosphere, so I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the most important reactions and respond:  

Zrim misunderstood my post and said that I was taking a shot at those who want to make a distinction between “Reformed” and “Evangelical.” But I readily acknowledge that there are important distinctions between the two. That isn’t the issue. My post was directed at those who say that we who are Reformed should refuse to be called “evangelical.” In contrast, I think we should adopt both labels, understood in their proper relationship using the hierarchical ordering:  Christian -> Protestant -> Evangelical -> Reformed. Zrim also laments that I did not mention the label “catholic” with a small c. No problem — I view “Christian” and “catholic” as interchangeable. I’m arguing that all four labels are valid, and that we should embrace all of them, and in the order described. I haven’t talked much about the label “Protestant,” but I view it as another hugely important term. To me it means that I’m not a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, i.e., I believe that the Bible, not the magisterium or tradition, is the ultimate authority, and that salvation comes by faith alone in Christ alone, not through the sacerdotal system of the church as a mediator between God and man. Yes, the historic label “Protestant” is also besmirched because it now includes mainline Protestants, but that’s why we also need the term “evangelical” to distinguish between liberal Protestants and Bible-believing Protestants. So big deal, all four labels have been and continue to be distorted, confused, and mis-claimed. But that doesn’t mean we abandon the labels to our enemies; we fight to define them properly and then we look up and see who is fighting with us and rejoice in their fellowship.

Scott Clark responds that, yes, historically Reformed theology is evangelical, but that the term “evangelical” has since evolved to the point where now it has no meaning, since there are “evangelicals” today who are Open Theists, who deny justification by faith alone, etc. Again, I will repeat what I said in my original post, the same could be said of the label “Reformed.” Within the mainline tradition (e.g., PC(USA), RCA, CRC, WARC, etc.) there are many who call themselves “Reformed” but who are actually Barthians at best and many are flat-out liberals. Why is Clark happy to fight for the historic definition of “Reformed” but not the historic definition of “evangelical”? Clark can’t say, “There really is no historic definition of ’evangelical’” because he writes: “Reformed confessionalists are evangelical, but after 30-40 years or so of calling ‘evangelicals’ back to the historic definition I think it’s time to admit that we lost.” So he admits that according to “the historic definition,” Reformed confessionalists are evangelical. The difference is that he wants to give up and I don’t think we have the right to give up fighting for the historic meaning of “evangelical.” We dare not make our Reformed distinctives so central to our identity that we no longer feel any bonds of identity, sympathy, affection, and love for those who do not share all of our Reformed distinctives but who are Bible-believing Protestants with a credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ.

Steve Hays says he is sympathetic with my basic point but disagrees with some supporting arguments. He says “upper taxa are abstractions,” and that the lower levels of differentiation are not incidental to our identity. I fully agree. Being “Reformed” is not incidental to my identity. I’m convinced that Reformed theology is what the Bible teaches. What I am pleading for is that we do both things — that we maintain our lower taxon identity (”Reformed”) and all of our upper taxa identities (”Christian,” “Protestant,” “evangelical”) at the same time. I’m not asking that we reject the lower taxon; I’m pleading that we not reject the upper taxa. Since Steve says, “We do need a general designation to denote Bible-believing Christians,” and “We should welcome anyone who can make a credible profession of faith into God’s family, and—hence—into our own family of faith,” I think Steve and I actually agree.

Having just come back from Cambodia, a nation that is 95% Buddhist with a mixture of traditional animist beliefs, the “Reformed isolationist” attitude that I am criticising makes no sense in such a context. There, cooperation and fellowship with evangelical Christians from non-Reformed backgrounds is essential and even precious. The denominational divisions certainly still exist in the mission field, but they become secondary in light of the much more important division between the light of the gospel of Christ and the spiritual darkness that reigns in Cambodia and much of the world. 

Another point — it is true that the majority of evangelicals in the U.S. are ill-taught, doctrinally confused, and engage in a variety of questionable practices. The teaching from evangelical pulpits across America tends to confuse cult and culture, has a moralistic bent, and often strays into the realm of heresy. Most evangelicals would not be able to explain the gospel clearly and accurately if asked. So identifying as an evangelical runs the risk of sending the message that we support and identify with this mess. But rather than viewing evangelicals as part of a big mess “out there” that we want nothing to do with, charity dictates that we should view them as immature brothers and sisters in Christ who need to be lovingly taught and encouraged to be consistent with the evangelical faith that they claim to profess. 

I don’t think we should worry so much about the message we send to others. The real issue here is not keeping up our pure image to outsiders but how we view ourselves and the attitudes we have as we relate to non-Reformed Christians. If we tell ourselves and others that we are “Reformed, not evangelical,” it affects our own sense of what is important to us. It may cause us to elevate the things that set us apart from evangelicals as more important than the things we have in common. And that is dangerous because the moment we say that we are totally separate from dispensationalists or Arminians or even Reformed Baptists, then it is at that moment that we have made “Reformed theology” into an idol and have lost our grip on what matters most — trusting in Christ alone for salvation, the Christ who is the Son of God who became man, who propitiated God’s wrath on the cross for our sins and was raised for our justification and is now exalted as Lord and is coming again (Nicea, Chalcedon, penal substitution, and sola fide). I will certainly teach what I think the Bible teaches on all matters, but I want to hold my theological distinctives in perspective, realizing that they are secondary to the gospel itself and that, in some cases, there has crept into Reformed theology (as in all theological systems) an inevitable human element, so that we are talking about doctrinal formulations based on the teaching of Scripture rather than the teaching of Scripture itself. I don’t want to sound too skeptical; not everything is a human formulation, e.g., I don’t regard the doctrine of unconditional election as a human formulation but as the teaching of Scripture itself. Nevertheless, human formulations are inevitable, and since not all Bible-believing Christians have come to agreement on many of these points — unlike the formulations of the Trinity and Christology which the universal church has agreed on – we must hold our cherished theological convictions on secondary matters with confidence but with something less than absolute dogmatism. I regard the distinctives of Reformed theology as supporting pillars that help us to understand the gospel more clearly and in a way that provides greater assurance to God’s people, but I do not view the supporting pillars as an end in themselves.

Sure, our differences on TULIP, the covenants, the sacraments, and so on, are important, but if you hold to the white-hot core of the gospel, then I embrace you as a brother in Christ and I want to be identified with whatever label will work to make sure that this embrace is clear. Of course, I will worship at my own Reformed church on Sunday and you will go to your dispensational Bible-church or Baptist church or what have you, but we can do so without either one adopting an attitude of superiority or exceptionalism since we recognize one another as brothers based on the common bond that we have in Christ.  

It’s good to see that there are still some Reformed people these days who embrace the label “evangelical” (see the posts by Stephen Nichols and Sean Lucas on the Ref21 site). I don’t sympathize with the Reformed trend that utterly scorns and detests the label. I have no desire to set myself apart as a “Reformed Confessionalist” who has nothing in common with evangelicalism. This separatist attitude is wrong for several reasons:

(1) It smacks of spiritual pride and elitism. I consider myself to be a Christian first, then a Protestant, then an evangelical, and only then Reformed. To exalt ”Reformed” über alles is to downplay our central identity as Christians. To exalt the Reformed confessions is to downplay the primary New Testament confession that “Jesus is Lord.” I’m not a Reformed person who happens to be a Christian. I’m a blood-bought Christian who happens to believe in the Reformed understanding of the gospel. And I do not view myself as a superior Christian for having this belief. It is only by the grace of God that I understand what I do of the grace of God, and even then I betray it all too often in my practice.

(2) The current disdain for “evangelicalism” in Reformed circles is also wrong because it places the accent on the distinctives of Reformed theology and practice instead of on what we have in common with evangelicalism. But what we have in common with evangelicals (being Christ-centered, cross-centered, and gospel-centered) is far, far more important than our distinctives (our Calvinistic soteriology, our covenant theology, our view of the church and the means of grace, etc.). The distinctives of Reformed theology and practice are useful only to the degree that they undergird and clarify the gospel, the evangel.

(3) Being ”Reformed” but not “evangelical” undercuts the importance of seeking fellowship, unity, and love with all Christians who confess the historic ecumenical creeds (Nicea and Chalcedon) and the basics of the gospel (justification by faith alone, substitutionary atonement), regardless of our differences over secondary matters. The apostle John is fairly clear in his epistles that if you claim to know God but do not love the brethren, then your claim is proven to be empty. Confession of Christ as the Son of God and love for the brethren go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. 

None of this means that we cannot be critical of the excesses and problems that we see in evangelicalism. Yes, there are many who claim the name “evangelical” who are false teachers and wolves in sheep’s clothing (I’m thinking particularly of the prosperity gospel and some of the more radical emergent types). But the same is true of many who claim the name “Reformed.” A search on the keyword “Reformed” on the PC(USA) website turns up 3860 results (compared with 552 results on the OPC site). Consider also the very existence of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. If you think the term “evangelical” has been distorted beyond recognition so that you no longer want to use that label, then to be consistent, you shouldn’t call yourself “Reformed” either. Instead of being too proud to call ourselves “evangelical,” we should join with those who strive to uphold the historic meaning of the term.

The reason I haven’t posted in over two weeks is that my wife and I were in Cambodia for about 10 days. We were sent by our church to help a mission team in Phnom Penh who have been sent by Mission to the World. Misty did some discipleship for a handful of Cambodian women, while I taught on the Johannine Literature for pastors and church leaders from a neighboring country. Our teaching was done in translation and involved the usual difficulties of cross-cultural communication. But it was a joy to see the ways in which the Lord is working in South East Asia. The people we met were very sweet, patient, and kind to us. It was wonderful to worship with them, to sing hymns with them, and to enjoy the fellowship that we have in Christ. We also had a chance to visit Angkor Wat and some of the other temples in the area.

I’ve uploaded my syntax notes for Romans for those of you following my annual Greek NT reading program.

In my previous post I mentioned that I agreed with Tobin’s view that the Roman Christians were Gentile God-fearers who had adopted a partially Torah-observant lifestyle. But there is a crucial facet of Tobin’s description of these God-fearers’ self-identity that I find less convincing. Tobin argues that in addition to their commitment to partial Law-observance, the Gentile Christians at Rome self-identified as Jews – even after they had converted to Christ and even though they were uncircumcised (p. 43).

But there is no evidence from our extant sources to indicate that the God-fearers regarded themselves as Jews or members of Israel. Everything we know about the God-fearers suggests that, for all of their attraction to certain Jewish practices, they still regarded themselves as Gentiles. It is precisely their reluctance to get circumcised which proves this. From the side of the Jewish sources, at least, we can be fairly confident in asserting that the vast majority of Jews would not have regarded these uncircumcised God-fearers as members of Israel. Of course, Tobin could respond that it doesn’t matter how the Jewish community in Rome viewed them; what matters is how they viewed themselves. But the fact that Paul addresses the Roman Christians as ‘Gentiles’ (Rom. 1.6, 13; 11.13) suggests that they still thought of themselves as Gentiles. Furthermore, and most decisive in my opinion, is Paul’s warning against adopting an arrogant attitude toward the Jews (Rom. 11.18-24). If the Roman Christians already regard themselves as Jewish and are offended at Paul’s alleged exclusion of the Jews from the people of God, such a warning would not have been necessary. Tobin attempts to get around this by suggesting that Paul is addressing ‘imaginary opponents’ in accordance with the conventions of the diatribe (p. 363). This solution is unconvincing.

So Tobin’s picture of the audience as self-identifying Jews fails on two counts:  (1) it does not fit the extrabiblical evidence concerning the God-fearers; and (2) it does not fit the contents of Romans.

This misunderstanding of the audience exercises a controlling influence on Tobin’s central thesis. Tobin thinks that Paul has substantially revised and even reversed his most anti-Law and anti-Jew sentiments as expressed in Galatians in order to gain the favor of these Gentiles who self-identified as Jews. This was necessary because ‘Paul’s views of the law in Galatians called into question much that was integral to their identity’ (p. 74). But as tidy as this construction may be in theory, it runs aground when one actually examines the texts of Galatians and Romans. While there are contextual differences between the two epistles, Tobin has not shown that the differences are of such a magnitude that one must speak of Paul revising and reversing his views. It is not a difficult matter to show that many of the ‘revised’ positions of Romans are also present in Galatians, and that many of the ‘unrevised’ positions of Galatians are also repeated in Romans.

Two examples will suffice. One of the contrasts between Galatians and Romans alleged by Tobin is that whereas Galatians speaks of the Law-faith contrast in dialectical terms, Romans employs a temporal framework. But Galatians also employs a temporal framework when describing the contrast between the Law and faith. In Galatians Paul says that the Law came 430 years after the promise (Gal. 3.17). He goes on to use the analogy of Israel under a temporary guardian or disciplinarian ‘until Christ’ (Gal. 3.23-25), ‘until the time set by the father’ (Gal. 4.2). A case could be made that the temporal framework is more dominant in Galatians than in Romans. Conversely, Paul’s thought in Romans is not exclusively dominated by a temporal framework, but also exhibits (so-called) dialectical contrasts between faith/grace and law/works (Rom. 3.27-28; 4.4-5, 14-16; 9.32; 11.6), or between the righteousness of the Law and the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4.13; 9.30; 10.5-6).

The second example is Tobin’s argument about ‘the seed’. He sees a shift from an individual interpretation of ‘the seed’ in Gal. 3.16 to a collective interpretation in Rom. 4.13-17. Tobin thinks that by using an individual interpretation of ‘the seed’ Paul excluded all Jews from membership in the people of God. But this inference is hardly justified and overlooks evidence of the collective interpretation even in Galatians. Paul expressly states that in Christ ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek’ (Gal. 3.28) and goes on in the very next verse to speak of the collective significance of ‘the seed’ by stating that all who belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3.29). Thus, in Galatians, just as much as in Romans, Paul teaches that all who belong to Christ, whether Jew or Gentile, are included in ‘the seed’.

In sum, Tobin’s central thesis that in Romans Paul revised his ‘rhetorically excessive’ (p. 249) statements in Galatians drives an unwarranted wedge between the two epistles. There may be differences in emphasis due to the change in context, but the differences are not as great as Tobin suggests. In addition, Tobin derives these differences from an unlikely construction of the Roman Christians as Gentiles who self-identified as Jews – a key presupposition that informs the whole of Tobin’s argument.

Nevertheless, in spite of these flaws, scholars can benefit from the innovative methods and suggestions Tobin has brought to the ongoing Romans debate. Although the book is not a commentary in the traditional sense, it contains extensive exegesis of most of the key texts in Romans, and can therefore be used as one would a commentary.