Couldn't Help Noticing

The Message of Isaiah

This book is now 11 years old, but as I am preaching on Isaiah at church, I pulled out Barry Webb's commentary on Isaiah and stumbled upon this wonderful passage:

Through all this [the crises in Judah and Jerusalem] Isaiah clung to the truth that had been etched into his consciousness by his call. In the year that king Uzziah died he had seen the King, high and exalted, and the whole earth full of his glory. So when Senaccherib's men stood at the gates and proclaimed, in the name of ‘the great king, the king of Assyria’, that Jerusalem was utterly at his mercy, then Isaiah knew it was a lie. The truth behind appearances was that the Lord himself was the supreme ruler, and would determine the fate of Assyria and Judah alike. Isaiah lived by the old creed. Ahaz and Hezekiah found it hard to translate into practical politics, the common people gave it only lip-service, and Senaccherib mocked it as madness, but Isaiah charted his course by it.

The meagre biographical details we have indicate how completely Isaiah's mission dominated and consumed him. Jerusalem, which featured so much in his preaching, was his home city. His ready access to the king suggested that he was high born and moved in the most elite circles. Yet there was nothing effete or fawning about him. His presence was a constant reminder that royal power was not absolute, and privilege entailed heavy responsibility. His tense confrontation with Ahaz in chapter 7, for example, speaks volumes for his courage and unswerving commitment and to his high calling, qualities that were eventually to cost him his life. His wife is called ‘the prophetess’ in 8:3, suggesting that she, too, prophesied. Certainly she did so indirectly, for she bore sons to Isaiah whose symbolic names expressed key aspects of his message. Beyond this, we know nothing of his family life, what solace he drew from it, or what strains it suffered. All we know is that he was not a divided person; his call impacted and shaped his home life as it did every sphere he moved in. We catch a glimpse in 8:16-18 of a small band of disciples gathering around him, with a strong suggestion that it included his sons. That, at least, must have been a tremendous comfort to him and a most fitting reward for his faithfulness.

Barry Webb, The Message of Isaiah (Leicester: IVP, 1996), pp. 24-25.

It is a great commentary—one of the first you go to once you've struggled with Isaiah for a while. And Isaiah, too, was a very great prophet.

The eternal gospel

The angel of Revelation 14:6-7 has an eternal gospel—the eternal gospel—to announce. Here it is:

Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

A lot of contemporary gospel preaching omits these twin themes of lordship (arising from creatorship) and judgement. Yet they are the only elements that the angel of Revelation 14:6 treats as indispensable to the eternal gospel. The God of Revelation, who sent Jesus as sacrifice and raised him to sit on the throne of God, is the one who is coming as ruler and judge of all.

Without these two essential elements, the ministry of gospel proclamation is reduced to plain sentimentality, or social work with a slightly spiritual dimension. Without the lordship and judgement that Jesus brings, there's no ultimate need to be right with God or to honour his authority. There's no fear of coming judgement—no particular urgency to get on with the job of talking to others about the Lord Jesus who will come to weigh up the words and deeds of the living and the dead.

As a result, this other sort of ‘gospel’ ministry (which has actually lost connection with the real gospel) will centre only on human need. We become addicted to responding to immediate demands and maintaining existing church structures. There's no real need or push to tell others of God. There's no drive or hurry to train anyone to do likewise.

And so, slowly but surely, various bits and pieces of Christendom that have lost connection with the true gospel become in their home towns a minor and curious sect—like the Zoroastrians who don't believe in telling others their beliefs, so, unsurprisingly, very few people want to know what they are about and even less commit themselves as followers.

What do Zoroastrians believe again?

Is the Pope a Catholic?

So the cat is out of the bag: the Pope really is a Catholic, and so is his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. They really do believe Roman Catholic doctrine that their Church is the only ‘true’ church, because it alone ‘enjoys apostolic succession’.

If you want to read the official document reiterating the Church's position, it can be found here.

Seems like a good time to remind you, dear reader, of our forthcoming book by Ray Galea: Nothing in My Hand I Bring: Understanding the differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant beliefs, due out in just a few weeks time.

Here's a quote from the book that seems pertinent to this issue:

... Needless to say, the Roman Catholic Church has a very high view of its own role in determining what Christians should believe and do. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church sees itself as the literal body of Christ; as an extension or continuation of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, a kind of ‘permanent incarnation’. Cardinal Bellarmine spoke of Christ as sustaining and living in the Church in such a way “that she may be said to be ‘another Christ’”.

It is on this basis that the Roman Catholic Church claims infallibility and that its teachings are without error ...

... As a result of this infallible teaching office, the Catholic Church claims to be doctrinally and structurally unreformable ...

... The Catholic Church has so emphasized the unity between Christ and the Church that they have failed to understand the profound differences—the most significant one being that the body submits to the head (see Ephesians 5:23-24, for example). If the body is unreformable—if whatever it pronounces is infallibly true—then it cannot be led and taught by its head. It effectively closes its ears to the possibility of being rebuked, corrected or taught by Christ himself.

What is arrogance?

Would it be arrogant of me to suggest a definition of ‘arrogance’?

Well, clearly not, because merely suggesting something would not qualify as arrogance.

Perhaps in order to be arrogant, I would need to declare or proclaim a definition of ‘arrogance’, such as this perhaps:

‘Arrogance’ is an attitude of overbearing, proud, self-importance that shows itself in contempt or disregard for others and their opinions.

Would the very act of hauling myself to a dignified height and declaiming that this is, in truth, what ‘arrogance’ means mark me out as arrogant?

Some people seem to think so. Christians are often accused of arrogance merely for declaring something to be true—that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, for example. And here at The Briefing, we've been labelled as arrogant at different times for being so daring as to say that some things are right and some things, by implication, are not.

I used to think that the ‘arrogance’ accusation was entirely the result of the postmodern relativism that now afflicts our public discourse—that it was impossible to say anything forthrightly and clearly these days without being accused of what has now come to be known as ‘arrogance’ (even though it goes far beyond the dictionary definition of ‘arrogance’, which I quoted above).

But Douglas Wilson, in his little book A Serrated Edge, suggests that the ‘arrogance’ accusation is not new—it's just the latest version of the age-old practice of accusing one's ideological opponent of blasphemy or heresy. Dominant social groups always protect their power by demonizing the arguments of their opposition: “Don't listen to him; these are the ravings of a proud, self-important outcast. What gives him the right to oppose what all of Us know to be orthodoxy?” Wilson tells this story to illustrate his point:

A number of years ago, the first book I wrote came out ... Someone in our church gave a copy of this book to a relative who was from another theological tradition entirely. Some time later, this person told me that the relative had thought the book “arrogant”. This distressed me, and I went back to the book and opened it up. There in the foreword ... was a small forest of the first person personal pronoun I. Big as life—I, I, I. Of course I was humiliated and told my friend to tell the relative that he had a point, and that I was sorry. But she said something like, “Oh, no. That's not why he thought it was arrogant. It was the rest of the book, where you quoted from the Bible all the time.”

In other words, he had no problem with me talking about me. That was humble enough. But when I presumed to say what God had revealed—that was arrogant ...

In other words, the accusation of ‘arrogance’ is not usually an accusation that you have been proudly and presumptuously self-important, and treated others with contempt (which is what the word actually means). It is a rhetorical strategy designed to gut the status and claims of a particular group, while at the same time privileging the claims of another group who is also making an equally strong claim, but simply a different one. I will not engage with what you actually say; I will simply write you off as ‘arrogant’ for daring to challenge my orthodoxy.

As Wilson goes on to point out, there is no neutral ground here. The Christian regards the non-Christian as arrogant for being so ridiculously proud as to defy the God who made them; the non-Christian regards the Christian as arrogant for being so insufferable as to claim that he has a personal pipeline to God through the Bible.

If it's not too arrogant of me to say so, both sides cannot be right.

Church slogans

‘Welcoming, growing, sending.’ This is the slogan we use at 5.00 church at St Paul's Carlingford, inherited from somewhere or other and invented by I don't know who!

I have no idea whether it is the world's best slogan, and it's not something I spend a great deal of time thinking about. But, like all slogans that actually work, it's pretty good if you explain it the right way.

You are welcomed into the church by being welcomed into relationship with God through the once-for-all sufficient sacrifice of Jesus' blood shed on the cross.

The church grows numerically as people hear about Jesus, put their trust in him and join us. People grow in the knowledge and love of God as they hear his word and as we pray for each other.

We send people into the mission field and into other churches, so that they can keep praising God for his salvation from sin and seeing people welcomed into relationship with him.

The risk and temptation is to take a slogan like the one we have, and turn it into a description of friendly activities and a good vibe—at which point we are simply a community service organization or a group that has a common hobby. I think I'm tempted to describe the church in ways that don't even mention Jesus (and you'll notice that ‘welcoming, growing, sending’ doesn't!). Doing so makes it sound friendlier and less terrifying, and manages in one fell swoop to lose our reason for being.