Lux Lucet

Like a lot of kids growing up in the 70s and 80s, I was a huge comic book fan.  I had a subscription to Spiderman for several years – yes, just like Peter Parker I was a bit of a nerd – and did more than my fair share to help pay the local bookstore’s rent by constantly raiding their collection of overpriced back issues, all wrapped in special comic book protective covers.  Those wrappers were very important.  They added gravitas to the comic books, transforming them – in my mind – from kids stuff to real, serious collectors items.  As far as I know, I still have most of them too.  That is, unless mom threw them out…hmm, maybe I’d better go check on that first. 

At any rate, though I can’t recall much in the way of detail about the stories I read, one thing I do clearly recall from those comic books was an ad run by Charles Atlas.  The famous one we’ve all seen.  You know, where the beach bully kicks sand in the face of the 98 pound weakling and steals his girlfriend.  Determined not to let it end like that, the wimpy kid goes and orders a Charles Atlas book, bulks up and in the end gives the bully a good thrashing.  He gets his girlfriend back too.  Not a bad return on a ten-cent stamp.  

Now growing up in Cincinnati, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to go to the beach, so I can’t say that I ever had a bully kick sand in my face.  But of course bullies aren’t found only on the beach.  They’re on playgrounds and at the office too.  Some bullies teach in seminary and preach from the pulpit on Sundays.   

In the New Testament, Diotrephes was such a man.  Writing about him, the Apostle John says,

I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us.  Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words.  And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church (3 John 9-10).          

A few years ago, I had a personal encounter with a theological bully named Warren Gage.  He was Professor of Old Testament at Knox Theological Seminary when I was a student at the school. For three hours every Monday morning I’d sit in his class and become physically ill listening to him attack the Reformed faith.  The same faith I heard him swear to uphold at the start of the semester.  He was kicking sand in the face of all of us: any student who came to Knox expecting to get Reformed seminary training, the school that hired him, and the people who donated to Knox thinking it was doctrinally sound.  But unlike the skinny kid in the comic book ad, when Knox had the opportunity to confront the bully and defend Christianity, the school backed down and the bully won the fight.  Today, Warren Gage still teaches at Knox Seminary and has added the title Dean of Faculty to his name.         

Now it looks like the same sort of thing is set to happen at ETS.  After searching the internet for news about NT Wright’s appearance at the recent ETS Annual Meeting, I get the distinct impression that once again a bully has kicked sand in the face of those charged with defending the faith and that once again nothing effective is going to be done about it.  While I don’t claim to have read everything that’s been blogged about Wright’s appearance at ETS, here are comments typical of meeting attendees, 

• “I wish I could have been at Tom Schreiner’s presentation last night at the ETS Annual Meeting.  According to Justin Taylor, it was a helpful, careful, and charitable critique of NT Wright’s teaching on justification.”  – Tyler Kennedy, web content editor at Desiring God Ministries
• “The dialog was remarkably cordial and complimentary.  Even Wright and Schreiner who remain the furthest apart of the three demonstrated a high degree of respect and charity.  It would be great if every theological exchange manifested the same Christian virtues… It was nice to see all three panelists affirm how much common ground they share.  More clearly that [sic] I’ve seen before, all three recognized that far more unites than separates them.” – Marc Cortez, Th.M program director and academic dean at Western Seminary in Portland, OR
• “To hear NT Wright is to hear a mind that is massively analytical and a personality that is incredibly winsome and eloquent.   We are indebted to him for many things…In his comments today for instance, I’ve been newly reminded of how much we are in his debt for his understanding of the narrative of the Gospel…I remain unpersuaded, however, by his main point, which is that the reformers misunderstood the character of first century Judaism  and imported medieval forensic categories into their understanding of justification.  I think Tom Schreiner’s essential and winsome argument to me clarifies that the Gospel is what NT Wright describes it to be in the narrative, but it is quite individually understood in terms that the reformers got right ” – Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
• “This year the theme of ETS was “justification,” and our special guest in one of the plenary sessions was NT Wright.” – Denny Burke, Professor of New Testament and Dean of Boyce College

No modern-day Martin Luthers, these.  Since when did “winsome” become the defining character trait of the man of God?  Is that some newly discovered requirement for elders and deacons?  Must an elder be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate and winsome?  Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with winsome.  It has its place.  But when fighting for justification by faith alone, winsome simply doesn’t cut it.  A wolf is devouring the sheep and the best the shepherds can manage is winsome, charitable, and, of course, helpful?  Good grief!  Did they sing a couple choruses of Kumbaya when it was all over?

If these guys had been around in the 16th century, the Reformation never would have gotten off the ground.  Can anyone imagine Luther eulogizing Eck or Erasmus the way Mohler did NT Wright?  But while Paul does not identify winsomeness – if that’s a word – as a requirement for elders, he does state that an elder must be apt to teach.  This means he must be able both to communicate sound doctrine and point out false teachers together with their false teaching.  From what I can see, there’s very little of either being done by the folks at ETS. 

Maybe they need some help from Charles Atlas…or Hans and Franz.  Better yet, maybe they should start by reading this.