Slowdown

As you may have noticed, the blogging has slowed down here in the last while.  The reason is simply that any spare time that I would normally use for blogging is right now being used to get my dissertation ready for printing.  The final edits are almost finished and, if everything goes well, it will go to the printer and bindery next week.  I imagine the defense will be scheduled for February sometime.

For those who don’t yet know what this is all about, here’s the abstract:

For the Cause of the Son of God: the Missiological Relevance of the Belgic Confession

In the 1950s and especially the 1960s, discussions surfaced in the Christian Reformed Church about whether the Three Forms of Unity were liabilities or assets when it came to the church’s missionary calling.  A consensus developed that these documents had little to do with mission or missiology.  The Belgic Confession was particularly singled out as being inadequate at best.  The goal of this dissertation is to re-examine this question using more recent historiographical methods and insights into the context out of which the Belgic Confession emerged.  This study argues that the Reformed churches of the Lowlands of the sixteenth century understood themselves to be living on a mission field, and this self-understanding is reflected in the content of the Belgic Confession.  Furthermore, the case is made that, structurally, the Confession can be regarded as a highly contextualized witness.  The contemporary missiological strengths and weaknesses of the Confession are considered in depth and an attempt is made to provide a missiological commentary on selected articles of the Confession.  The dissertation also considers the use of the Confession by a seventeenth-century Reformed theorist of mission (Gisbertus Voetius) and a seventeenth-century Reformed practitioner of mission (Johannes Megapolensis).  The next-to-last chapter gives attention to discussions of the Belgic Confession in the CRC in the 1950s-1980s; discussions which led to the development of the Contemporary Testimony: Our World Belongs to God.  Finally, the concluding chapter considers the relationship between Reformed missiology and the confessions, as well as the perennial issue of status confessionis.

The Confessional Presbyterian

Volume 5 of The Confessional Presbyterian is now available.  This is an excellent periodical and it contains much of interest not only to Presbyterians, but also to those of a continental Reformed background.  This new volume contains my article on a pioneer Reformed missionary to the Mohawks of upstate New York, Johannes Megapolensis, and my review of Michael Horton’s People and Place.  You can order from the CP website here.

Singing Psalms — Why Not the Whole Enchilada?

Frank Ezinga has another interesting post over here about the singing of Psalms. Specifically, he’s interested in tracing the history of why so many Reformed churches only sing very select parts of the psalms, rather than whole Psalms.  He believes there’s a historical reason for this and he provides a musical sample to prove his point.  If you’re familiar at all with the Genevan tunes as sung in Canadian Reformed Churches, this sample will probably be unrecognizable.

I’ve always agreed with Frank:  we ought to strive for singing whole Psalms.  I know that sometimes it’s impractical — Psalm 119 being the classic example.  My personal guideline is that if it has five stanzas or less, we normally sing the whole thing.  I don’t think that’s unreasonable.  By that guideline, with the latest revision of the Book of Praise there are some 72 Psalms that can easily be sung in their entirety.  There are quite a few more that have six or seven short stanzas that could also be sung whole.  Psalms of eight or nine stanzas can be split and the whole psalm can still be sung in the worship service, even if not all at once.

I know that if I’m sitting in church and the minister selects, say stanzas 1 and 5 of Psalm 146, I always feel cheated.  It’s only five stanzas — why not sing the whole thing?  It’s a beautiful Psalm.  Sometimes, however, even ministers get squeamish about some of the content of the Psalms.  A classic example is Psalm 95 and its last two stanzas.  The Psalm starts off encouraging praise for God and then stanza 4:

Today, would you but hear His voice:

Do not repeat your father’s choice

who stubbornly with Me contended;

at Massah’s rock and Meribah

they tested me although they saw

how they by Me had been defended.

And stanza 5:

For forty years they wearied Me,

I said, “They show no loyalty.”

Their hardened hearts resist My favour;

My ways they foolishly ignore.”

And so I in my anger swore:

“Into my rest they’ll enter never.”

I can remember attending a Psalm-sing at a Free Church of Scotland congregation some years ago.  I requested Psalm 95 (from the RPCNA Book of Psalms for Singing).  The minister presiding asked the congregation to sing it, but left off the last part because he thought it was awkward for us to sing that.  I’ve seen many CanRC ministers do that too and I’m just as guilty as anyone.  Why are we so squeamish?  We have no problem reading the whole of Psalm 95, why such a problem with singing it?  Are we afraid that someone might be offended?  Then we may just as well drop the reading of the Law.  It makes no sense.  Let’s sing whole Psalms as much as possible.

Reformed Church in Regina, Saskatchewan

Back in the mid-1970s, my Dad was posted by the RCMP to Regina.  This is where he began his career as a pilot for the Mounties.  Back in those days, our church choices in the capital of Saskatchewan were limited.  If my memory is correct, we remained members of the Coaldale CanRC, while attending the local CRC.  These days there are some interesting ecclesiastical developments taking place in Regina.  A local Presbyterian church is applying for membership in the United Reformed Churches. That’s great news!  It’s also going to be good news for the growing numbers of CanRC men (and the occasional woman) who spend several months in Regina training to be RCMP officers.  May God bless the brothers and sisters at Grace Presbyterian richly.

A few years ago, some CanRC members moved to Saskatoon.  There was some hope that we might be able to establish a church plant there.  However, the vision was lacking and the whole thing floundered.  That seems to be the sad history of much what goes for “church planting” in the Canadian Reformed Churches.  Prince George is a wonderful exception to the rule.  We need more people with vision and men who can serve as church planting missionaries.

Book Review: the Ultimate Proof

Jason Lisle, The Ultimate Proof of Creation: Resolving the Origins Debate, Green Forest: Master Books, 2009.  Paperback, 254 pages, $13.99 USD.

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) is an important figure from our Reformed heritage.  A careful theologian with a love for the Word of God, Bavinck is just beginning to be truly appreciated in North America through the translation of his four-volume Reformed Dogmatics.  Even though he isn’t mentioned, the book under review owes a debt of gratitude to this giant.  Back in the 1920s, a young student at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids became enamoured with Bavinck.  Reading him in the original Dutch, this student caught on quickly to Bavinck’s perspective.  In later years, this student would go on to apply Bavinck’s insights to the field of apologetics.  Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) never claimed to be original and never claimed to be doing anything other than standing on the shoulders of the giants who went before him.  While at Westminster Theological Seminary, Van Til would teach several generations of Presbyterian and Reformed men how Reformed theology demands a Reformed apologetic and he would offer that apologetic mostly on the basis of what Bavinck had developed.

One of Van Til’s disciples was Greg Bahnsen (1948-1995), a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.  Bahnsen was a well-known populariser of the Reformed apologetics developed by Van Til.  He not only taught the theory, he also effectively put it into practice in numerous debates with atheists, the most notable of whom was Gordon Stein in 1985.  Bahnsen is directly credited at the beginning of this book by Dr. Jason Lisle as the one whose writings and lectures provided its inspiration.  However, as noted, the credit ultimately goes back to Herman Bavinck.

In this book, Lisle (research scientist at Answers in Genesis) applies Reformed presuppositional apologetics to the question of origins.  Too often, Christians try to “fight fire with fire” when it comes to the debate between creation and evolution.  In other words, they use the same methods and approaches that the unbeliever or theistic evolutionist adopts.  This has been a notable problem in creationist literature.  Lisle calls this (using the terminology of Bahnsen), the “pretended neutrality fallacy.”  The debate is not over the evidence, rather it is a debate over worldviews.  When it comes to method, we need to begin and end with what the Bible teaches.  Lisle calls this a “Bible-first” approach, but we could also call it the presuppositional or Reformed approach.  It takes the biblical doctrine of sola Scriptura seriously, as well as the related matters of the Bible’s verbal plenary inspiration and inerrancy.  In other words, this is an effort to consistently apply what the church confesses in articles 5-7 of the Belgic Confession.

Lisle concretely demonstrates how the biblical worldview (which includes creation as described in Genesis 1 & 2) should be defended.  This involves exposing the weakness and irrationality of opposing worldviews (including those of theistic evolutionists) and then demonstrating how the biblical worldview is the only one which can make sense of the world in which we live.  Evidence has a place in this apologetic as a tool to drive the discussion forward towards a recognition that worldview differences are key.  However, evidence will not in and of itself resolve the issue.

One of the noteworthy features of this book is its attention to logical fallacies.  Knowledge of these is important for exposing the weakness of worldviews which do not take what the Bible says in Genesis 1 and 2 at face value.  Chapter 7 deals with informal logical fallacies.  One of these is a fallacy of presumption known as begging the question.  Lisle states, “Every old-earth argument I have ever seen commits the fallacy of begging the question” (113).  He gives the example of radiometric dating:  they say young-earth creationists are wrong because radiometric dating shows that rocks are billions of years old.  This begs the question of whether radiometric dating is reliable – the opponent assumes that it is and that the young-earth creationist is wrong.  Chapter 8 goes on to deal with formal logical fallacies.  This is more complicated, but Lisle does a good job of making it as understandable as possible.  Once again, he reveals the subtle fallacies that evolutionists (secular and theistic) commit in their reasoning.

The book concludes with three appendices.  In the first one, Lisle defends a natural, straight-forward reading of the Bible.  Here he especially has his eye on those who claim to believe the Bible but yet argue that the world is millions or billions of years old and that humans have primate ancestors.  In the other two appendices, Lisle gives numerous practical examples of how to put the apologetics described in this book into practice.

I am stoked about this book.  It’s been published at just the right time.  As I write, there is an ongoing debate in the Canadian Reformed Churches about creation and evolution.  This book argues that a consistent Reformed apologetic requires a belief in what the Bible literally says in Genesis 1 and 2.  This is the consistent application of Reformed, biblical principles handed down to us from Bavinck and others.  I highly recommend this book to one and all, and especially to my fellow pastors and elders in our churches, to our seminarians, to teachers in our schools and to post-secondary students.  This is the best book on the creation/evolution issue that I’ve read.

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Note:  the question might be asked whether Bavinck, Van Til or Bahnsen would have approved of this book.  I can’t say for sure about Bavinck or Van Til (though I might speculate that they would), but with Bahnsen it is quite clear.  See here for his Reformed Confession Regarding Creation.