#400

Once upon a time, I believed reaching one hundred posts was a momentous occasion, one so memorable that I would want to do something, for myself, to mark it. The commemoration has become a personal tradition, and so, on this my four hundredth post, I offer you once again my favorite ten quotes from the previous ninety-nine posts.

10) An interview on Talking Philosophy with Alain de Botton proved to be my most interesting interaction with any atheist thinkers in the past hundred posts. His thoughts pointed to dangers in atheistic thinking and proposed, in deliberate critique of New Atheists, various senses in which religion was a good thing, even as an atheist. From Leading Atheist on What's Wrong with Atheism:

Attempting to prove the non-existence of god can be entertaining...Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether god exists or not, but where one takes the argument to once one decides that he evidently doesn’t. The premise of my book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless to find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.

9) I am deeply enamored of the thought of Eugene Genovese, a fact which will probably become evident over the next few weeks. In a criticism of southern support for American imperialism, I quoted Genovese, among others, to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Imperialism in the Imperialized South:

The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity - an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity.

8) Of the critical series I have written in this cycle, the one I most enjoyed researching and producing was my exposition of complementarianism in response to Roger Olson. The great quote, on the other hand, likely came from the Founding Father's series. In Illusions of Innocence, I applied Richard T. Hughes and Leonerd Allen's thesis about primitivism in American Protestantism and applied it to American political primitivism. To conclude, I quoted their evaluation of Roger Williams primitivist thought, a historically unsustainable but ideologically more appealing variety:

For Williams, the radical finitude of human existence, entailing inevitable failures in understanding and action, makes restoration of necessity an open-ended concept. The absolute, universal ideal existed for Williams without question. But the gap between the universal and the particular, between the absolute and the finite, was so great that it precluded any one-on-one identification of the particular with the universal...the best one could do was approximate the universal, an approximation that occurred only through a diligent search for truth.

7) Though most of the series on Christianity and Jain occurred earlier, the day after the three hundredth post, I added to the comparative study Christ, Jain, and Mutual Forgiveness. Here is some wisdom from Mahavira on the subject:

If, during the retreat, among monks or nuns occurs a quarrel or dispute or dissension, the young monk should ask forgiveness of the superior, and the superior of the young monk. They should forgive and ask forgiveness, appease and be appeased, and converse without restraint.

6) Long overdue, I finally shared a selection of quotes in The Wisdom of the Pilgrim connecting my longstanding love of fourteenth century hesychasm with a more recent text:

[O]ne of the most lamentable things is the vanity of elementary knowledge which drives people to measure the Divine by a human yardstick.

5) For Easter--that is East Easter not West Easter--I shared a few notes from the Ecumenical Patriarch about the meaning of life in Christ made possible by his death and resurrection and the destructive attempts of people to secure life apart from him. From Christos Anesti!:

There is no need for some nations to be destroyed in order for other nations to survive. Nor is there any need to destroy defenseless human lives so that other human beings may live in greater comfort. Christ offers life to all people, on earth as in heaven. He is risen, and all those who so desire life may follow Him on the way of Resurrection. By contrast, all those who bring about death, whether indirectly or directly, believing that in this way they are prolonging or enhancing their own life, condemn themselves to eternal death.

4) Buried deep in the recesses of a response to a Fox News article, Invade Iran (et al) for Christ!, is perhaps one of my favorite short quotes from any of the early church fathers. Here is Justin Martyr's response to persecution:

You can kill us, but you can't hurt us.

3) Of all the wonderful cow stories--and I had options this time around--that have been shared here throughout the years, none had me more excited than finding an archival story about Grady, the cow who got stuck in a silo and captured the imagination of a nation. On This Day in Cow History celebrated her generations old story, and its very happy ending:

What's in store for Grady? "Well, I believe she's earned peace and quiet the rest of her life," Mach [her owner] said. "She's had more excitement than most cows."

2) My commentary on J. W. McGarvey's sermons offered throughout the month of his birth was littered with excellent quotes. McGarvey was, however, perhaps most poetic and profound when he recorded his thoughts On Prayer:

If God was a God who did not hear our prayers, or care anything about our prayers, He might as well be made of ice. He is a living God; a God who has friends, and loves His friends; and this is the reason that He will do something for them when they cry to Him. Don't think of God as mere abstraction, or as a being who keeps Himself beyond the sky; but think of Him as one who lives with you, who is round about you, who lays His hand under your head when you lie down to rest. So in praying, pray with the confidence of little children...Pray in the morning; pray at the noontide; pray when you lie down to sleep…Pray often; pray earnestly; and in order that your prayer may amount to anything, be righteous men and women.

1) The Anarchy in May series is perhaps the most fun I have ever had here, and selecting a single quote from a month of my favorite thinkers is exceedingly difficult. More than anything, this selection from Tolstoy on Moral Culpability, is appropriate because of Tolstoy's preeminent place in the history of anarchism:

[W]e are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds, assist in carrying, them out. Those who suppose that they are bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers, deceive themselves.

I can only hope that the next hundred posts flow as easily and are as much fun to write as the last hundred were.

J. W. McGarvey: On Prayer

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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“No assurance is more solemnly given than that God is a prayer-hearing God, answering the prayers of His people.” It is tragic that such a statement should find so little unified assent in the Christian community. McGarvey says of his own day that “there is no subject of revelation on which there is more skepticism than on that of prayer,” and that skepticism continues to pervade the present discourse. McGarvey even goes so far as to recount the “scientific” experiment of physicist John Tyndall, who proposed setting up two hospital wards, one of which was being prayed for by Christians and one of which wasn’t, in an effort to prove the ineffectiveness of prayer. Similar experiments continue to be proposed and carried out today, and prayer is still a major battleground within Christianity and between Christians and the world.

Yet McGarvey correctly notes that prayer is one of the core features of the biblical narrative. More than baptism or the Eucharist or sacrifice or almsgiving, prayer saturates Scripture. Before Israel was a nation, the patriarchs prayed. Moses prayed before God covenanted with His people. The judges prayed long before the kings prayed; the prophets prayed and the psalmists prayed. Daniel prayed, even when it got him thrown in with the lions, and, from the belly of the fish, Jonah prayed. Jesus prayed, and he taught his disciples how to pray. How can Christians but pray, and do so fervently and with the certainly that God hears them?

As had been the case with so many subjects before, McGarvey does not pretend to understand how prayer worked or what, precisely it accomplished. Like providence, he thinks it both mysterious and mundane, and he tells the story of Elijah and the great drought to illustrate this. The first analogy he has recourse to, however, is a martial one. Understandably, as one who lived and worked in the Upper South throughout the Civil War, McGarvey (as well as his audience) knew the impact even a poorly aimed canon could have:

A man fires a rifle, taking aim, very careful, deliberate aim, and misses the mark; does that bullet accomplish nothing? Is there no force in it? In a great battle, the immense cannonading which begins the fight does little execution; most of it is vain so far as striking the mark is concerned; most of it is vain so far as killing the enemy is concerned; would you say, then, that there is no power in it? Would you say it avails nothing? Every one of those cannon balls does something. If it does nothing but split open the air, and plough up the earth, it does something. It is a tremendous force. So, if the Bible teaches the truth, every prayer that goes out of a good man's heart, goes somewhere and hits something. It is a power in this world. It has force and power, even if it misses the mark at which it is aimed; and no man is wise enough to track it and see what it does. The bullet goes out of sight through the woods. Sometimes it strikes an animal out of sight and kills it, sometimes, a man. A prayer goes out of the heart of a good man into the world; you don't know what it accomplishes; you can not follow its flight and see what is its effect; but you can believe that it avails much. When He to whom prayer is offered tells you that it is heard and that it avails much, can't you believe that? His eye can trace it when ours can not. So this matter of the force of prayer is, in the main, like everything else; sometimes, like the artillery fired in a great battle, or like a rifle shot, it strikes the mark and there is visible proof of its efficacy; and at other times it misses the mark, but strikes something else.

Here he strikes a note which has recurred throughout his sermons and which clearly functioned as a defining theological paradigm for McGarvey: the trustworthiness of God. Time has, unfortunately, not permitted us to examine all the sermons McGarvey published in his Sermons Delivered in Louisville (God just didn’t put enough Tuesdays and Thursdays in March to cover twenty-four sermons), but it will be profitable in this final entry to look at the way this overriding impulse in McGarvey’s thought has shaped the way he looks at so many features of the Christian walk.

The theme came out most clearly perhaps in McGarvey’s discussion of redemption, which is ultimately why that entry focused on it. McGarvey’s central theme contradicts prevailing misconceptions about the Stone-Campbell Movement (at least historically) that it was essentially a movement founded on an assurance that human reason could lead to salvation. To whatever extent that may be true, even comparatively, cannot undermine that for McGarvey the ultimate assurance for redemption did not rest with human effort, but divine agency, not in the bounds of human knowledge, but in spite of human ignorance. This is echoed as McGarvey outlines his vision of providence. While he rejects the popular notions of his day of a heavy-handed, irresistible providence micromanaging the world, McGarvey does trust in a God who is actively, responsively working in the world to achieve his ends cooperatively with humanity. The duty of humanity is not to set its own course or to devise its own salvation, but merely to seek out and recognize the will of God and try to submit to it.

McGarvey is more than happy to admit that this will is not comprehensible and insists that its incomprehensibility is no reason to question it. Undermining, again, common stereotypes about the Stone-Campbell Movement, McGarvey says of baptism that, if we follow Paul, we cannot give too strong a voice to the countless questions that arise from our imaginations: is baptism really necessary, why is it necessary, how are sins removed in baptism? It is enough that Jesus commissioned his disciples to baptize. From there—whatever our debates may yield—our salvation is a matter of trust in God. Scripture, McGarvey reminds us from the outset, is surprisingly unreceptive to the kinds of questions we want to put to it. That is because it records the messages and purposes of God for His people and of the people for their God.

We must trust in the God who has kept His promises countless times and for countless generations that He will keep His eternal promises to us. We trust that He has not deceived us about the magnitude of sin or about our need to repent of it. We trust that He has shown us the way He has ordained to lead us out of sin and into life, even if we don’t understand that way. We trust God, foolishly and uncynically, because with childlike eyes we have perceived a God who is trustworthy. It is on this note that McGarvey ends his sermon on prayer and we end our series on his sermons:

If God was a God who did not hear our prayers, or care anything about our prayers, He might as well be made of ice. He is a living God; a God who has friends, and loves His friends; and this is the reason that He will do something for them when they cry to Him. Don't think of God as mere abstraction, or as a being who keeps Himself beyond the sky; but think of Him as one who lives with you, who is round about you, who lays His hand under your head when you lie down to rest. So in praying, pray with the confidence of little children. One of the bitterest cries I ever heard of, came from one of the great historians of England, when he said, "I would give all I am and all I ever hope to be, for one hour of my childhood's faith, when I looked up at the sky and called it heaven." He had lost the simple faith of his early days, and could not get it back again. We are to believe that God is with us, that His eyes are upon us, and that He hears the prayers of His saints. Pray in the morning; pray at the noontide; pray when you lie down to sleep…Pray often; pray earnestly; and in order that your prayer may amount to anything, be righteous men and women. Walk humbly before God, and truly with the people, and your prayers will be heard.

J. W. McGarvey: On Money

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Admittedly, I find matters of church finance to be a great deal less inspiring than questions of providence or even baptism. Yet, McGarvey rightly notes that it is the “experience of all religious bodies” to struggle with money, so much so that “the very first sin and scandal within the Church in Jerusalem was connected with its financial matters--the sin of Ananias and Sapphira.” It is appropriate, therefore, that McGarvey should take time in his sweeping homiletical programme to say a few words about money. Thankfully his sermon does not take the form—as so many modern ones do—of a thinly veiled appeal to boost donations.

McGarvey’s first point is to define the biblical principles which ought to guide regular contribution for church maintenance. The first is stewardship, which is more often than not a euphemistic way of attributing theoretical ownership to God while claiming all practical rights for humanity (e.g. the stewardship of natural resources). In McGarvey’s estimation, however, a proper understanding that humanity truly owns nothing in the world and that everything is owned by God would radically redefine the way Christians deal with their money. “Don't you suppose there would be reproduced in that congregation [that understood stewardship] the liberality of the first Church?” The absence of that liberality with God’s goods by Christians is perilous for Christians; just consider the parable of the unjust steward.

The second principle is proportionality, tied closely to the third principle of equality. First, God has commanded that all give proportional to the degree they are blessed or burdened. There is no fixed fee for membership in the church, and God has made allowance for times of fiscal hardship just as He has proportional expectations for times of great blessing. “If I am to give to the Lord of that which he has entrusted to my hands for the time being, it follows, as a necessary conclusion, that the amount I am to give is proportioned to the amount which He gives me.” Yet, proportionality is not intended to shift the burden onto the blessed. Even as there is a quantitative disparity between the duties of the rich and the poor, everyone shares equally the command to give. This is not the US tax code; there is no line beneath which you are no longer expected to contribute. Even the widow offered her mite.

After listing the principles which ought to govern church contributions, McGarvey takes a moment to remind his audience that the Christian’s fiscal responsibility to the church does not nullify the Christian’s fiscal responsibility to the world. To be in Christ is to be committed not only to the body of Christ but to the world which Christ came to save:

With these principles to govern us, I do not think it will be very difficult for us to decide what is the best way to secure from the members of a congregation that portion of their funds which is necessary to carry on the work of the Church. I am guarded in saying that portion of what they have, because I do not think it can ever occur in this country (it certainly can very seldom occur) that all the giving to be done by the members of a congregation is that which is necessary for its own regular and current expenses. Of course, that must be met. But what man is there that is willing to be contented with that? What man who loves the Lord, and desires to do some good in the world, is willing, while giving what he ought for his own congregation, to never give a cent for the broad, outlying world that is perishing in sin for the want of aid from those who have the knowledge of the truth? The home demand can not bound the liberality and the benevolence of any man or woman who has a heart to feel for the suffering and dying nations of the world. A man can not be contented to give to the treasury of his own congregation what is necessary to keep it up, and refuse to give to the suffering poor in the city. Our benevolence must reach out beyond the narrow circle of our own congregation's wants.

It is here that McGarvey makes a contentious suggestion, controversial in his own day and exponentially more so in our own: “Just here let me remark, that I find men all over the country in the churches, who think that they are not responsible to anybody except God, as to their giving;--Nobody's business but mine and my God's. I wonder if those men could give a reason why a man should be held accountable by the authorities of the Church for all the other sins he is guilty of, or maybe guilty of, and not be held accountable for this particular sin…The Church has greatly sinned in not dealing with them as it ought. The time is coming when we shall deal with them more faithfully.” In our own time, there is a prevailing sentiment that every sin is “nobody’s business but mine and my God’s.” McGarvey was lucky enough to live in a time with the more biblically defensible worldview that sin was a community matter among the members of Christ’s body. If we believe that—or, in the case of the modern church, if we can reclaim that belief—it is difficult to circumvent McGarvey’s suggestion that what we do with our money ought to be just as much a matter for concern among the brethren as the much more popular topic of what we do with our genitals.

Finally, McGarvey turns his barbs to his own ilk, preachers. Insofar as he hoped from the beginning that this sermon series would be a homiletical aid for young minister for generations to come, this exhortation rings especially true:

I am afraid that we preachers are not as faithful as we ought to be in dealing with this subject in the pulpit. I have myself tried to be, and consequently I have never yet lived and labored regularly for a congregation that was not a liberal one. I remember an incident told me by an aged brother when I was a young preacher, which often comes to me in this connection. There was a man about to die, the richest man in the congregation. He sent for his preacher. When he came, he said, "I want you to read and pray with me; I think I am going to die." The preacher sat down, and not recalling at once any particular passage to read, opened the book at random. His eye fell on this--"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust do corrupt, and where thieves breakthrough and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven." He said to himself, I will not read that to the dying man; he will think I am hitting at his great failing. So he gave the leaves a flirt at random to another place, and the first passage his eye fell on, was the story of the man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, but who, when he died and was in hades, lifted up his eyes in torment. He would not read that. Then he flirted the leaves towards the back of the book, and the first passage was this: "But they that desire to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in destruction and perdition." The preacher's conscience began to hurt him now. He felt as if the Lord was dealing with him. He said to himself, maybe it is the intention of the Lord that I should read these very passages. So he read this last passage; he turned back to the story of the rich man and read that; he turned back to the passage in the sermon on the Mount and read that; and when he got through, the dying man looked up at him and said; "Why haven't you called my attention in your sermons to these passages? You know, and I know, that they strike the very sin of my life, and you have been unfaithful to me."

What is there to unite these seemingly disparate threads? McGarvey offers very little in the way of an explicit overarching theme. He concludes with an uncharacteristically short invitation with an all-too-familiar tie-in to the trustworthiness of God, but for the most part his musings on church finances show no signs of coherence. In truth, however, there is an obvious principle which undergirds all of them: the Christian use of money is essentially a matter of ethics. That is not all that revolutionary a suggestion, at least in its formulation, and yet McGarvey applies it with remarkable consistency to push the bounds of Christian thought on money. If improper use of money really is a sin, why do we marginalize it in our ethical discourse? Why do we care more about a man’s divorce records than his tax records? Why are we not afraid to condemn homosexuality but terrified to preach that it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle? That last one is easy: American Christians are more likely to be affluent than sexually aberrant. Undoubtedly that is the motive behind all marginalization of monetary ethics. In an American society that worships the unbridled power of wealth, our pulpits are conspiring to teach the church how to serve two masters. Unfortunately, we’ve been told that doesn't work. It was perhaps a little easier for McGarvey, who was born into a Southern society that, at least in his youth, still had a built-in cultural critique of Yankee capitalism and “mammonism.” How much harder is it today to hear the truth of his message?

J. W. McGarvey: Addendum on Providence

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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We have already seen that J. W. McGarvey's vision of a patient, mysterious, mundane providence was intended to be a message of hope for his listeners. It involved a vision of a God who manifested Himself most powerfully in those features of our lives which often escape notice, a God who speaks in the whisper rather than the gale, so to speak. Just as important, however, was the forward-looking nature of providence. For McGarvey, the beauty of providence is that it is always oriented toward the great ends which God has planned and is not thwarted by the ugly people on which it works or by the often messy means through which it works. This truth is made apparent powerfully in the story of Joseph and his brothers:

Why did God select ten men to be the heads of ten tribes of his chosen people, who were so base as to sell their brother? O, my brethren, it was not the ten who sold their brother that God selected, but the ten who were willing to be slaves instead of their brother. These are the ten that he chose. If you and I shall get to heaven, why will God admit us there? Not because of what we once were, but because of what He shall have made out of us by His dealings with us. He had his mind on the outcome, and not on the beginning. If you and I had to be judged by what we were at one time, there would be no hope for us. I am glad to know that my chances for the approval of the Almighty are based on what I hope to be, and not on what I am. Thank God for that!

J. W. McGarvey: On Providence

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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J. W. McGarvey believes in the power of stories. In introducing the first of six consecutive sermons on individual cases of conversion, McGarvey justifies the minute examination of figures in Acts: "Now, the Lord knew, before men discovered it, the power there is in examples to make a matter plain, and also to stimulate men to action." True to this conviction, McGarvey spends much of his time in each of the following sermons simply retelling the story as it appears in Scripture. There is obvious value in this, especially as there is in modern preaching a tendency to lean too heavily on application. Perhaps the gradual shift away from a more narrative style typified in McGarvey has contributed to the rampant biblical illiteracy of this present generation. Regardless, McGarvey's commitment to the power of examples is not limited to conversions in Acts, and he immediately follows that series with a series of three sermons on providence which follow much the same pattern.

"God is not mocked." This is perhaps not where most, if any, modern preachers would ground a lengthy series on providence, but for McGarvey the text functions perfectly. He examines it and determines that to mock God is to attempt to circumvent providence:

This he lays down as the universal law of God's government over us, and when he says, "Be not deceived" about this, "God is not mocked," he means to inform us that, if we should think that we can sow one thing and reap another we would be thinking that we had the power to mock God--that is, to defy him by overriding his plans and arrangements. Men are very apt to think they can do that. They do so many things by means of their perseverance and determination that they are very apt to conclude they can do anything they choose, whether it pleases God or not; that they can go on trampling God's laws under their feet as long as they choose, and still come out well. Paul knew very well that men were prone to deceive themselves into such an idea as this, and hence he says, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

With this understanding of mocking God established, McGarvey offers us three stories over the course of three sermons which examine the character of providence. He begins, unsurprisingly, with the story of Ahab in which he establishes, among other things, that providence is patience. McGarvey retells the story of Ahab as essentially the tale of "a spoiled child," at one point literally describing Ahab as throwing a temper-tantrum up in his bedroom, refusing to eat, to bath, or to get out of bed until his "mommy" comes in and gives him what he wants. What he wants, a piece of land that isn't his, he gets through means of violent coercion. No sooner has he claimed his prize, however, than the Lord makes a declaration of providence through Elijah: "And thus saith the Lord God before whom I stand, Dogs shall lick thy blood, even thine, O king, where they licked the blood of Naboth." Ahab was scared sick. But, as so often happens, years went by and time and apathy worked to make Ahab forget the ominous promises of God. He went on with his life, secure in his amnesia, waging war, forging alliances, and belligerently ignoring the prophets of God. Lo and behold, years after his offense and in an apparently unrelated military incident, "it was proved that God could not be mocked." Ahab died and dogs lapped up his blood.

The second sermon centered on the story of Joseph, whose narrative is so familiar that it would be imprudent to retell it here (in direct contradiction to my earlier exhortation to preachers to retell the familiar stories). Here, again, McGarvey makes a point of demonstrating the patience of providence, noting that, after all, God could have "wrought one great miracle to translate Jacob and his children through the air, and plant them on the soil of Egypt." Certainly that would have been faster. But, somewhat unexpectedly, McGarvey sees in the actual operations of God in the story of Joseph the truth that providence is mysterious. He notes that God did not use a series of neat, clean "links" in his providential chain. Quite the contrary, "some of them are desperately wicked deeds, some of them are good deeds." Some are moments of inspiring fidelity, others of nauseating infidelity. It was a providential plan which involved the wickedness of Joseph's brothers, their suffering under the guilt of what they had done, the harsh famine that drove them to Egypt, and the blessings they found there. McGarvey notes that much of what the characters experienced must have felt like the severest punishment, and he imagines that many in his audience "whom God has disciplined, whether less or more severely than he did these men." For them he has a message about providence, "The same chain of providence which brought them unexpectedly into Egypt, had fitted them for the high honors which were yet to crown their names." However stern the workings of God may have seemed, "the kind Redeemer whom you rejected, and sold, as it were, to strangers, stands ready to forgive you more completely and perfectly than Joseph forgave his brethren."

Finally, McGarvey concludes with a sermon on Esther. He of course reinforces the previous ideas about providence, but he sees in Esther a unique opportunity to demonstrate that truth that providence is mundane. Esther is the perfect story to demonstrate this fact because, unlike the stories of Joseph and Ahab, "the story of Esther follows without even the name of God." Yet, McGarvey believes that it is impossible to read Esther without seeing God and His providential guidance writ large across the narrative. The fact that Esther was brought before the king to replace Vashti, that the king had trouble sleeping, that Haman arrived just moments too late to have Mordecai hanged, that the king extended the scepter a second time to Esther. All these coincidences--"you call it an accident, perhaps"--had they not worked together in harmony, God's will may have been thwarted, a possibility McGarvey is not ready to admit. Yet none of these is a great, spectacular miracle. They are great and spectacular, especially when viewed as an integrated story working toward divine ends, but they are certainly not miraculous. The same was the case for Joseph, whose purpose was achieved "without the intervention of miraculous power except here and there; for in all this long chain of causes God touched the links only twice, directly...all the rest were the most natural things in the world." In fact, contrary to popular perception, there is a strong sense in which much of the Old Testament is dominated by a providence which works itself out through natural rather than supernatural mechanisms. Mechanism is perhaps a good word, as McGarvey compares providence to the workings of the wondrous new technologies of his day:

A few days ago I stood in the great fair at Chicago, before a weaving machine--a wonder. There were coming out beneath the shuttles bands of silk about as wide as my hand, and perhaps a foot long, four or five coming out at one time at different parts of the loom, woven with the most beautiful figures in divers colors. One of them was "Home, Sweet Home," the words woven by that machine, and above the words was the music. There was woven at the top a beautiful cottage, trees in the yard, bee-gums, and children at play, and down below the words and music, a lone man sat, with his face resting on his hand, thinking about that distant home. All coming out of that machine. The shuttles were flying, threads were twisting and dodging about, the machine was rattling, and no human band on it, yet there the song, the pictures, the music, were coming out. Did they come out by accident? By an accidental combination of circumstances? I could not, to save my life, tell how it was done, but I saw a pattern hanging up at one side with many holes through it, and I was told that that pattern was ruling the work of that intricate machinery, and leading to that result. I was bound to believe it. Now you could make me believe that this beautiful piece of work came out of the loom by accident, and without any man directing and planning it, just as easily as you can make me believe that this chain of circumstances, of facts, bringing about, in accordance with God's faithful promises, the deliverance of his people, was accomplished without him. God was there, my brethren. And just as little can I believe that all those intricate circumstances in my life and yours, which shape and mould and direct and guide us, which take us when we are crude and wicked men, and mould and shape us and grow us up until we are ripe and ready to be gathered into the eternal harvest--that all this is human, or all blind force, or accident, and that there is no hand of God in it.

The purpose here is not to strip the wonder and mystery out of providence, as it has already been seen that McGarvey believes that the mundane workings of God are in fact the most mysterious and wonderful of all. In truth, the purpose is to reassure his audience that God is in fact working deliberately in the lives of his people, whether they recognize it or not, whether they are surrounded by supernatural miracles or apparent coincidences. It is a message of hope for people who were living in a culture where every new Christian movement tried to be more attuned to the supernatural than the last. The spiritualism and Pentecostalism of the early twentieth century was simmering somewhere just beneath the surface. McGarvey's message was that Christians may still have faith in an active, engaged, loving God who is guiding human affairs, even without the ostentation of outpoured miracles. "My friends, God is dealing with you to-day, to-night. You can not see his hand; you may not, as in this story, hear his name; but he is here. Will you believe it?"

J. W. McGarvey: On Baptism

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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I have heard people say, "Bro. McGarvey, I would like your preaching better if you would just preach Christ crucified, and not speak of baptism so often. Well, I like to oblige my friends, but I can't go along that way.

While I, along with many of McGarvey's audience, would have preferred less time be dedicated to "that old hackneyed theme" of baptism, McGarvey makes a compelling argument that baptism is a part of the Gospels and, as such, the gospel cannot be preached without it. So, whether excessive or not, McGarvey devotes much of his following month of sermons to baptism, it purpose and proper method. McGarvey correctly notes that the necessity of baptism is not really the primary question; in his day, he insists, "you can not go into any church on earth except that of the Quakers, without being baptized." Whether or not that is technically true, there is great truth in the generalization both in his time and in our own when the overwhelming majority of Christians belong to churches which continue to emphasize baptism ("that is...an ordinance which the church calls baptism") as a rite of conversion and consecration. What is really up for debate is when, how, and why people are to be baptized, a subject which McGarvey treats with all the titillating rhetorical flourish of Common Sense induction:

If my mind were unsettled in regard to baptism, I would take this course:--I would take my own New Testament, and, beginning at the first chapter of Matthew, I would read it all the way through, watching for that word `baptism'; and everywhere I found it, I would examine carefully the passage in which I found it, and learn all I could about it; and when I got through I would put all of this together, and I would make up my mind on the whole subject of baptism that way. Then I would feel sure that it was God teaching me, and that he would approve my decision.

As riveting as it would be to follow McGarvey on this journey on which he dutifully leads his audience, it is perhaps more productive to consider the ways in which his sermons do not conform to our contemporary expectations. The debate surrounding baptism has been raging for centuries; McGarvey points out that it even antedates the Stone-Campbell Movement, shockingly. Yet, in a very real sense controversy surrounding baptism has played a crucial role in defining the Churches of Christ over and against all other denominations, perhaps even more so than other credo-baptist groups like the Baptists. The language which predominated the Church of Christ dogma until very recently is that "baptism is necessary for salvation." Rejection of the truth of this proposition defined all denominations against the truth of the "undenominational" Churches of Christ, and modifications or qualifications of it positioned those within relative to the core orthodox constituency.

McGarvey may or may not have agreed with that phrasing, though I imagine someone specializing in his work could quickly settle the question. Certainly he sees baptism as an essential part of the conversion process, a statement he supposes he makes unanimously with the rest of Christianity. More important, or at least more interesting, than what McGarvey may believe about that language, however, is the fact that he never uses it or any analogous language in his sermon on baptism. Rather than calling it a condition for salvation, he calls it "a most solemn, interesting and precious ordinance...the most solemn and significant ordinance ever appointed by the Lord Jesus Christ." He doesn't speak of it as a salvific work but calls it instead "a sacred and a blessed privileged." One moment he stridently argues, "We can not overestimate the value of it. We can not consent to speak of it as a mere external act." Immediately afterwards he calls it the next best thing to being able to go to Palestine and lie down in the tomb of Jesus. It is a spiritual act of communion with Christ which we are both commanded to do as an act of obedience and privileged to do as an act of worship. Whatever else may be said of it, this is certainly not the mechanistic soteriology which has been the fodder for caricatures of the Stone-Campbell Movement, stereotypes to which the Churches of Christ has lamentably conformed.

Even as McGarvey insists that to try to alienate baptism from conversion is to take a knife to the text of Scripture--and not without substantial merit--the remaining sermons play out a more nuanced view of the nature and efficacy of baptism which is distinct from but not necessarily irreconcilable with many understandings of baptism which continue to prevail. When he retells the story of Paul's conversion, he not so subtly critiques the endless spate of questions which dominate the controversy surrounding baptism:

This [vision of Jesus] caused him to believe, and when he believed, his faith was that which threw him into the agony of repentance. Then, when he heard the word, "Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on His name," he does not stop to raise any questions. This thing of raising questions about the ordinance of the Lord--why is it necessary to be baptized? Is it absolutely essential to be baptized? Are our sins certainly washed away when we are baptized?--the time to raise such questions as these had not come yet. This was a time of simple faith. Men believed and accepted what the messengers of God said, just as they said it. That is faith. The very moment he heard the command, he arose from his prostrate position and was baptized. Now he is satisfied.

If not on the multitudinous trivialities surrounding baptism, what would McGarvey have us focus on? In the conversion of the Eunuch, McGarvey invites his audience to recast the narrative as if it were happening to them. In doing so he stresses as much the "special providence" at work in conversion and the faith by which he "began to see a great light" as there is on baptism. In all cases, the uniting theme is the "glorious Redeemer dying for the sins of men" and "the promise of the Lord" into which the eunuch is inaugurated. For Cornelius, McGarvey stresses that as great a man as he was on his own, he was insufficient; "he lacked something yet that was to be supplied." What was supplied, through the providence of God and the preaching of Peter, was a completion of Cornelius' faith so that it became an active faith, a faith productive of repentance and obedience.

These themes continue to express themselves in the conversion story of Lydia, and they are themes which ought to critique the way many in the Churches of Christ continue to focus on baptism as a polemical rather than a pastoral goal. First that baptism is not a work exclusively or even substantially of our own doing and that room for providence must be made at every step along the way:

I wonder if God ever does anything like this for you and me. It is the word of the Lord that conveys to our hearts the mind and power and will of heaven; but how did it happen that that particular preacher preached to us? How did he happen to be there, and how did I happen to be there, when my heart was opened? Oh, my friends, if you had an inspired writer, his mind enlightened by Him who sees all things, you might have as strange a story written about yourselves as was recorded about Lydia. I imagine that wherever in the broad earth there is a poor struggling soul, wrapt in darkness and struggling for light, sacrificing self in order to please God, God has an eye on that person; He hears those prayers, and He will over-rule and over-turn and direct, until the truth shall, some way or other, reach that soul.

Second that baptism is not some self-standing, independent rite but primarily the expression of an active, responsive, obedient faith:

Now then, when it is all through, when Lydia and those women accept the truth, and are baptized then and there without delay, showing how willing they were to walk in the way of the Lord, Luke looks back over the journey, the long, weary labor, the doubt and the uncertainty, and he sees it all explained. The Lord was hearing the prayers of these women, and in all of these strange movements He was simply reaching out toward the heart of Lydia and the others, that He might open their hearts to receive and obey the Lord.

And finally that faith along with repentance and baptism as consequences are all Christ-centered. It is Christ alone which may be appropriately said is necessary for salvation:

It was necessary, if Lydia...should be saved, that she should hear of Christ, that she should believe in Him, and that she should come to Him as the mediator between God and men, to obtain the forgiveness of her sins. This she did at once--as soon as she heard the Gospel message.

J. W. McGarvey: On Repentance

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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In all likelihood, the title of McGarvey’s sermon “Conditions of Forgiveness” would have chaffed against many nineteenth century Christians the way that it would grate on modern ears. No one likes the idea, much less the explicit language, of conditional forgiveness. We prefer to think of salvation in terms of “a free gift,” without delving too deeply into how the offering and the reception of that gift might play out practically. In truth, however, McGarvey’s points are not all that radical and are probably less so by modern standards than nineteenth century ones. His three conditions of forgiveness are faith, repentance, and baptism, and he makes very clear that belief that “Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God” is the bedrock on which the other two rest. He makes clear, both in this sermon and the following sermon (“Faith,” which was treated in the previous entry), that he falls well within the bounds of Protestant sole fide dogma.

McGarvey insists, nevertheless, that faith must be an active faith. Just as in faith, Enoch walked with God, Noah built his ark, and Abraham uprooted his family, the faith of the Christian must be productive or else, in the words of James, it is dead. In view of this, he launches proudly into what amounts to a month long defense of his belief that faith must manifest itself in practice. Even to an audience of Disciples who must have largely shared his beliefs about the necessary outgrowths of faith, McGarvey admits that nothing is more difficult than translating that belief into action:

The greatest obstacle to the salvation of men is the obstinacy of the human will. It is not very difficult, in this country particularly, to induce men to believe the Gospel--to plant faith within the soul. Indeed, we may say it is difficult in our blessed land for a man to be an unbeliever. Multitudes of men try to be, and fail; and some women do the same. And even when they think that they have succeeded in persuading themselves that there is no truth in the Gospel or in the Bible, often, when they come to face death, their unbelief vanishes, and they find themselves among the number who believe and tremble. Neither is it very difficult to persuade men to be baptized, when they become penitent believers. I have never yet met with a person, who was a genuine believer and sincerely penitent, that raised any question about being baptized. They are ready to go where they are led.

The difficulty is to induce them to repent. I have often, in my preaching experience, studied and prayed and reflected and read, to find some way by which I could have more power in inducing people to repent. I would rather have that power than all the other powers and gifts that could be bestowed upon me as a preacher. But we modern preachers need not be discouraged, I think, on account of our weakness here, because we find, on reading the Gospels, that our Saviour experienced the same difficulty. When He was bidding farewell, or about to bid farewell, to Galilee, where the most of His mighty works were done, and upbraided the cities whose people had heard Him most, it was not because they did not believe; it was not because they refused to be baptized by John; but it was because they did not repent. With all the tremendous efforts that He had put forth to bring them to repentance, He had failed. Not surprising, then, that there should be found the same difficulty in the way of modern preachers.

The same is obviously true in our own day, and McGarvey’s specific critiques of America still ring true. The profession of belief continues to be widespread, and many would argue (though with diminishing success) that it is difficult to be a genuine atheist in American culture. There is an abundance of faith in the States, at least faith defined as a profession of belief. What Americans lack—and what perhaps all Christians have struggled with—is manifesting that belief in practice. Looking at Jesus’ critique of the unrepentant Galileans, McGarvey imagines that much the same criticism will be made of America. That is why he concludes “that this city, and this State, and this country of ours, are the worst places on this broad earth from which to go to hell…Why? Because, if that which has been done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have lived.”

What McGarvey is calling for is not merely proliferation of good works, and any accusation of merit based salvation is either uninformed or malicious. He goes into minute detail, risking the damning accusation of being one who likes “to multiply words,” to explain that good works may be the fruits of repentance and sorrow over sin may be its cause but that the true essence of repentance is a change of disposition. In many ways, his view of repentance mirrors that of his understanding of faith. To come to believe is to shift the mind from confidence in itself about things seen to confidence in God about things unseen. This same transition happens in the will through repentance. It turns from an impulse toward sin to an impulse toward righteousness.

When we take this understanding of repentance as situated less in behavior than in the will, we begin to find grounds on which to approach understanding in Christian ethical discourse. I am by no means one to shy away from the rigorous and frequent examination of moral behavior, and I as often as not disagree stridently with those around who seem to propound a Christian ethos (particularly when it smacks of jingoism, chauvinism, or militarism of any kind). But Christians need to realize that to repent from one’s sins is not to receive an infallible understanding of right and wrong. It is only to commit oneself to pursuing the right instead of the wrong. I will never stop trying to convince my fellow Christians who are politicians or soldiers that their vocations are incompatible with Christian ethics. I will never stop combating the notion that abortion can be morally justified through appeals to exigent circumstances. This is in no sense an appeal for ethical agnosticism. At the same time, we all need to understand that, just as a faith in a common God does not automatically equal a perfect understanding of that one God, our common repentance from evil does not automatically ensure a perfect and common understanding of what the good is to which our will is now directed.

J. W. McGarvey: On Trust in God

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Members of the Stone-Campbell Movement are often accused, now and in times past, of gross overconfidence both with regard to humanity’s ability to know facts about God and our role in our own salvation. There is a degree to which both these accusations have merit, and J. W. McGarvey often does as much to confirm them as to refute them. In a pair of sermons preached on redemption and forgiveness, however, he goes a long way toward reaffirming not only the limits of human knowledge but the limits our redemptive powers. In the process he carves out a place in restorationist thought for both human ignorance and divine agency. Consider this abbreviation of his first sermon, “Redemption in Christ” where the dual theme shows through clearly:

As sins are acts performed in the past, they can not be undone. A man may as well attempt to snatch the sun out of the sky, as to undo a single act, good or bad, that he has ever done. And, inasmuch as suffering is the inevitable consequence of sin, it is a most serious question how it is possible for men ever to escape the penalty due to their sins. I presume that this is the most serious problem ever considered by the minds of created beings, and perhaps by the mind of God, if God stops to consider any question.

Men commit crimes against human law, and escape the punishment by outrunning the sheriff, by bribing the jury, by breaking jail; by a great variety of corrupt methods which they employ. But there is no similar way of escaping the penalties that are assessed against our sins by God. We can not run away from Him. A part of that penalty is within our souls, and we can not run away from ourselves. We can not deceive anybody in this matter, because the eye of Him against whom we have sinned searches us through and through. Death is a very swift messenger when he starts after us, and when God calls on the Great Day we shall all appear before Him in judgment. How then can we escape that eternal penalty for our sins, which was the subject of the two discourses last Lord's day…

What is, then, the explanation? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't believe any other man knows what the reasoning of God was on this subject, by which he felt compelled, according to His own infinite nature, to refuse to pardon a single sin except through the blood of His Son. I don't know. I don't know how many sermons I have heard, trying to explain it. I don't know how many pages--heavy pages--in many books, I have read, from some of the ablest men in the world, trying to set it forth; but I have never yet been able to see it; and if any of you have, I congratulate you.

God's thoughts are not as our thoughts on many things. His ways are far above our ways, as heaven above the earth, and we may not expect to understand the reasons in His mind for the wondrous works of His prudence and mercy. I think, on all such themes, we are prone to look at the subject from the wrong point of view. We try to get at God's ideas about it. It is enough for us to see the part which addresses itself to man. There are multitudes of things that God does in nature, and in the providence that He exercises over the world, the divine reasons for which it is utterly impossible for any human mind to penetrate; but it is not difficult, generally, when we look at these same inscrutable workings and ways of providence, to see their effects, and to know by their effects that there is wisdom and prudence, as the apostle says in my text, behind them all.

Note that when it comes to our own means of redemption, McGarvey is not so much confident in human nature as he is confident that we can neither understand nor accomplish on our own the great plan of redemption which has been worked out mysteriously by God. He summarizes in his following sermon: “He it is who forgives. He it is who blots the record out of the book that He keeps. He it is that throws [our sins] away. It is He who will remember them no more forever.” Human efforts to escape the consequences of sin are themselves as sinful as they are futile. It is in the hands of God alone to redeem his people and forgive their sins; it is for us to be the delighted, unworthy recipients of that gift, for which we will never understand in this life fully divine means or motivations.

Now, so as to avoid the accusation that I am remaking McGarvey in my own image, it is important to recognize that his appeals to human ignorance are incomplete, and he gradually moves from his own profession of ignorance into declarations of confidence in the Christian’s ability to fully grasp the promises of God, thus allowing each to be assured of forgiveness. Moreover, he offers such a confident view of humanity’s cooperative role in their redemption that he all but does away with any divine role in the process of sanctification. Yet, both of these impulses need to be understood historically as reactionary statements, rhetorical flourishes against the “very doleful life…that low ground of doubt, and gloom, and hopelessness” that is Reformed thought on conversion. Whatever his anti-Calvinist polemics, he still supposes that “Paul was no more able to look in and see how God's mind worked out the problem, than you or I” and begs Christians to “to come and cast yourselves into the deep flood of the Saviour's dying love.”

Neither his endorsement of human ignorance nor his confidence in the ability to interpret and understand divine promises, neither his appeal to divine agency nor his exhortation for Christians to take hold of their own salvation are ends in themselves. They are all impulses toward a common theme to him which is foundational for his soteriology: the trustworthiness of God. This theme finds its culmination in the latter sermon "Faith," in which McGarvey tries to define the causes and consequences of our "confidence as to things hoped for; conviction as to things not seen." He launches from this scriptural definition into an examination of the so-called Heroes of Faith and discovers therein a common thread. Faith in God comes "not by reasoning about it; not by dreaming; not in answer to prayer" but through divine self-revelation. It is on these grounds alone that Christians can be confident in their faith. In fact, he scoffs at the idea that we would need any assurance beyond God's own testimony of the objects of faith. "Why, my friends, if God's word will not do it, what power is there in heaven or earth that you can conceive of, that could?"

The readers (as I’m sure was the case with the listeners in 1893) leaves with a confidence that no matter what they can or cannot do, no matter they can or cannot know, they can trust the steadfast promises of God. McGarvey reminds his readers that when they put money in a bank, they trust, on the basis of the character of the bank, that the money will still be there when they come back. When they make a contract with a person, they trust it will be honored based on the character of the signatories. How much more is a supremely trustworthy God worthy of our trust? So when McGarvey asks how we can know that we are redeemed, how we can be confident in our salvation, he has his set up his answer well:

Now there is a way, and it is this--God has said, over and over again in his blessed written word, in the plainest possible language, what you and I shall do in order to forgiveness of our sins; what we shall think; what we shall feel; what we shall believe; what we shall do; and He pledges His own blessed word that when we do these He will forgive us. When a man knows these things, and complies with them to the very last point, he has God's pledged word that his sins are forgiven--the word of Him who can not lie. Here is something solid to build on, the pledged word of the living God. This makes it certain.

We can certainly quibble with the language here, about complying with everything “to the very last point,” but in doing so we miss the message. When we rely on our feelings, on a vague sense of forgiveness, to assure us that our sins are remitted we make the same gross error as those who believe they are forgiven because they have reasoned what they need to do in order to get God to do what they want Him to do, balancing a rationalistic salvation ledger as it were. In either case, assurance is located in the sinner, in the heart or in the mind. Insofar as both are susceptible to error and doubt, Christians set themselves up for failure. We can have confidence in our forgiveness and redemption not because we feel it or have reasoned it out but because God is faithful; He has told us that forgiveness is there and that, if we seek, we will find. Whatever else may be said, that is an optimism with a sure foundation.

J. W. McGarvey: Addendum on Sin

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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Previously, J. W. McGarvey’s sermon on sin was examined, the main purpose of which was to employ hell as a vehicle through which we could begin to express the enormity of sin. McGarvey, of course, did not leave his congregants with nothing but the magnitude of sin to weigh on their hearts. In a series sermons focused on redemption, forgiveness, faith, and conversion (all of which will be addressed in time), he offers his listeners the path from death into life. At the conclusion of the following week’s sermon, entitled “Redemption in Christ,” McGarvey does offer at throwback to the theme of the magnitude of sin. Much as he suggested that sin could be better grasped by first grasping hell, he suggests that if we truly grasp the significance of the cross we can begin to grasp the atrociousness of sin:

If sin is of such a nature that God Himself, with all His infinite wisdom, and all His undying love toward our race, could find no way to redeem us from it, without the shedding of the blood of His own dear Son, the heart's blood of Him who came down from Heaven to endure the ignominious death of the cross for this great end, what an awful thing sin must be! Just think of it. And let me ask you another question in connection with this. Was the evil consequence which God foresaw that sin would bring upon us, some little thing, like a scratch upon your hand? Was sin a mere peccadillo? Was it a mere mistake that could bring but little pain upon us? Would the Almighty send His own Son to suffer the agonies of the cross in order to redeem us from a little thing like that? Ah! my dear friends, it is only when we know what we endeavored to show you last Lord's day, the darkness, the gloom, the gnashing of teeth, the awful agonies of the eternal world to which sin is bearing us, that we can realize why it should cost such a price, and why God should be willing to pay such a price, to redeem us from it. Are you living in sin? Oh! tremble before your God; get down on your knees; lift up your hands and your heart, and plead with Him to have mercy on you; smite your breast, and say, "God be merciful to me a sinner." Cast yourself into the arms of this Redeemer who is so ready and so anxious to redeem you--to blot out your transgressions, and to grant you everlasting life.

J. W. McGarvey: On the Enormity of Sin

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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After the toil of reading through J. W. McGarvey’s apology for the special inspiration of Scripture, I was delighted to see that the next set of sermons was on “Sin and Its Punishment” (followed by “Objections Considered”). Well, delighted is perhaps not the best way to describe it, but as the Bible is not self-aware, it has very little to say about the question of the Bible. In contrast, Scripture is littered with rich (and ripe for exploration) references to sin, its origins, and its consequences. McGarvey unfortunately, but predictably, spends more time on the question of “Its Punishment” than on “Sin.” McGarvey spends the bulk of the first sermon in a Q&A session with himself. He has five objects for consideration: is there any punishment for the wicked after death, when does it begin, is there a final judgment, what punishment will follow said judgment, and how long will that punishment last? McGarvey believes, and I concur, that Scripture offers some very plain answers to these questions, and consequently I find myself agreeing very much with his five points (one for each finger as part of an exercise that would have sent Scott reaching for a Prozac). Though they appear clumsy in hindsight with a century of research and discovery at our disposal, even McGarvey’s second sermon on the objections to his first has valid refutations, considering such timeless alternate theories as annihilationism and apoktostasis. He draws deftly from Scripture and logic to support what seems more or less uncontroversial in the biblical narrative: some will go off into eternal life, some into eternal punishment.

Unlike with his treatment of the inspiration of Scripture, McGarvey’s homily on the wages of sin needs to contortion to make it conversant with contemporary readers. Though it may seem at first that McGarvey’s interest is in a dry, Baconian lecture enumerating biblical facts about eternal punishment, his focus truly is on the nature of sin and not the character of hell. His problem is not an academic one--“List five aspects of hell”--but a deeply personal one. Throughout both sermons he returns to his true focus: why do I keep sinning even though I know I shouldn’t? He knows the answer from the start:

I wonder if any of us has ever realized what it is to commit sin. I believe that I would esteem above every other gift that could be bestowed upon me as a preacher, the power to adequately conceive what sin is, and to adequately set it before the people. A number of times in my ministrations, I have prepared sermons designed to set forth the enormity of sin; but I have every time felt that I made a failure. I found, I thought, two causes of the failure: first, a want of realization in my own soul of the enormity of it; and second, inability to gather up such words and such figures of speech, as would, with anything like adequacy, set it forth before my hearers. The pleasures of sin have blinded our eyes to its enormity.

Knowing the answer doesn’t solve the problem, unsurprisingly, and McGarvey makes no claims in his sermon to have accurately grasped sin or to have adequately conveyed its magnitude to his audience. In fact, he insists during the course of his second lesson that “in order to have a fair and equitable” understanding of sin and its consequences, a person would need to be “totally separated from sin.” As there is no one truly without sin save God, McGarvey admits that the best we can do is learn what God has taught us about it and defer to His judgment regarding its consequences.

With this purpose thus expressed, McGarvey’s sermon is seen for what it truly is. Rather than simply musing about the nature of hell, McGarvey suggests that the “words and figures of speech” best suited to illuminating the enormity of sin are those teachings in Scripture about its consequences. In this way he reappropriates hell, and it becomes no longer simply a scare tactic to get the unconverted into the water or a cause for sadistic revelry on the part of those who are sure they’ll never go there. Instead, hell functions as a mirror reflecting back to us the enormity of sin, of which we are all willing participants. The language used to describe hell and the eternal torment of its inhabitants is among the most gruesome, some would say repugnant, in the New Testament (or even the Bible as a whole). So often we turn from this galling language and ask what it might say about God (often with less than pious answers), but only rarely do we take what we know about God and what we know about hell and ask what it might say about sin. At the conclusion of his initial presentation of the character of judgment for “the wicked,” McGarvey returns to this theme with gusto:

Are you horrified at that thought? I think you certainly must be. Well, if you are, then how should you feel towards the sin which compels a God of love and mercy and infinite compassion to inflict such a punishment as that upon the sinner? What must sin be in the sight of the only being in this universe who is capable of appreciating it at its real enormity? And if sin be the horrible, the detestable thing that extorts from an infinite, merciful and gracious God such punishment as that, Oh! why should you and I be guilty of it? Why should mortal man ever gain his own consent to commit one single sin? And how amazing it is that men and women, who know of this, can consent to live in sin from day to day!

I have often argued that self-deception and selective amnesia are at the root of persistent sin in the lives of Christians. After all, is it possible imagine any sinful behavior in which we engage that we would still do if we truly believed and were mindful of the fact that “the wages of sin is death?” It’s irrational (as, unfortunately, are all people). Even that argument, however, still focuses inappropriately on hell as a post-judgment boogeyman meant to keep Christians in line. Without totally discarding the value or truth of that application, it is critical to see that what McGarvey offers is richer understanding of the way hell can function in Christian spirituality. Rather than saying a truer belief in hell would stop sin, why not recognize that a truer belief in sin would be a far more effective means of stopping sin. If we genuinely believed that sin was as detestable, as deleterious as God has told us it is, would any of us really continue to engage in it? Hell, if we can reclaim it as a theological tool rather than a biblical third rail, can serve to throw into sharp relief just how serious God is in His condemnation of sin. Hell is death, eternal and inviolable, in an analogous way to the sense in which God is life, eternal and inviolable. If we believed that, if we enshrined in our hearts and kept in our minds a genuine longing for life and a realistic appreciation of the enormity of sin, would we not find ourselves living more nearly the kinds of lives we have been called to in Christ?

J. W. McGarvey: On Scripture

The following is part of an ongoing commentary on J. W. McGarvey's Sermons Delivered in Louisville Kentucky. For an introduction to and table of contents for the series, see Happy Birthday, J. W.
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It is both ironic and unfortunate that J. W. McGarvey’s collection of sermons should begin with the address entitled “Inspiration of the Scriptures.” It is ironic because this opening salvo in his Sermons Delivered in Louisville, Kentucky was in fact given before the YMCA of the University of Missouri. It is unfortunate because, in spite of my admiration for McGarvey and the great deal of inspiration I draw from him, there could hardly be a subject on which we differ more completely or more profoundly than the inspiration of Scripture. With dry, scientific precision that has fallen out of favor in our contemporary culture of sensationalism, McGarvey seeks to demonstrate that Scripture is inspired, that this inspiration is self-evident, and that it grounds the authority of Scripture. I have no qualms, necessarily, with the first two purposes (though I imagine McGarvey and I would differ over precisely what all the relevant terms mean), but it has been my longstanding mission to correct the erroneous notion in American Christianity that scriptural authority is rooted in special inspiration. McGarvey specifically situates his claim in response to emerging documentary theories of Old Testament authorship and new historical assertions about the authors of the Gospels. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that many of the bloated claims of late nineteenth century scholars require extreme qualification if not outright rejection. For McGarvey, however, there can be only one reply: Scripture is the work of the traditional authors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. While I think there is value to the sermon outside this main (but misguided) theme, in historical fairness to McGarvey it seems necessary to at least outline his argument.

McGarvey has little trouble establishing from Scripture that the Bible is inspired and passes over that task without fanfare. The main body of his message is dedicated to establishing the self-evident nature of biblical inspiration, a fact which, for him, is manifest in the peculiar nature of the Scriptures. Making his focus specifically the historical books of the New Testament, McGarvey endeavors to show that—deviations in personal style not withstanding—there is a common character to the biblical text which is entirely unprecedented “almost from time immemorial.” He notes the brevity with which the authors write and their calmness in treating extraordinary events. He marvels at their candor about facts which one would expect to be glossed over and their silence about the events and topics the reader most wants to know. Consistent with the spirit of his times, McGarvey even appeals to the quasi-miraculous ability of Scripture to affect good in the world, more or less independently of human agency. With gusto, he exhorts his young listeners to seize hold of the foundational truth of biblical inspiration and to carry their infallible text into battle, into “the field of debate with the ablest of its enemies.” Many of McGarvey’s arguments about a common and unique character can be countered in modern times by discoveries of ancient documents with similar features. To his audience, however, McGarvey was almost certainly convincing.

There is no surprise there; as almost always the case, it is easiest to persuade those who already agree with your position. There is a more essential truth about the Gospel as it is presented in Scriptures that underlies McGarvey’s message and which, I would suggest, is fruitful for ongoing consideration. Regardless of our moment in history and regardless of the culture we inhabit, there is a strong sense when reading Scripture that it refuses to conform to our expectations. Of course, this sense would undoubtedly have been less pronounced to the original audience, but I suspect there are common features of the human condition which come to Scripture with a set of expectations to which the text refuses to conform. McGarvey hits on at least two which possibly have universal application: the reticence of Scripture and the absence of speculation.

With regard to the first, McGarvey marvels at the great omissions in Scripture, its refusal to answer the questions which seem naturally foremost in the mind. He offers, as one example, the extensive treatment given to the martyrdom of Stephen and the equally brief report of the martyrdom of James. Without in any way trying to diminish Stephen, McGarvey rightly observes that the death of James ought naturally to assume a higher priority in the Christian narrative. After all, James was not only one of the twelve but one of three members of Jesus’ “inner circle” (if it is meaningful to talk about such a thing). His death certainly meant more to the Jerusalem community and to the church at large than Stephen’s who is, in narrative terms, merely a flash in the pan. It could be that the original audience had already heard the story of James and needed to be told of the trials of Stephen. More likely, the martyrdom of Stephen functions in the Lukan scheme in important ways that the death of James does not. In either case, there is a longing on the part of any interested reader for a fairer treatment of the material. The lust is always for just a little more information where something is suspiciously lacking, in spite of the knowledge that a comprehensive story would fill the earth. Whether it is glaring omissions, such as the entire adolescence of Jesus, or more subtle silences, the Bible by design or by necessity firmly declares: “You will know this much and no more.”

Similarly, there is a marked rejection on the part of the biblical authors to engage in the kind of speculation that has characterized most great religious thought since. McGarvey speaks of it as the infallibility of the biblical authors, but, when the baggage that term carries is removed, what he is really interested in highlighting is how more-than-human the biblical authors sound. “On all subjects and on all occasions they speak with a confidence which knows no hesitation, and which admits no possibility of a mistake.” With none of the characteristic tentativeness with which all authors subsequent (and many parabiblical authors previous) write, the biblical authors do not invite us to question whether they are right or wrong. They leave no space for disagreement (even in Paul’s insistence that Christians should have space for disagreement), no wiggle room where often times we would want it most. “Was this the result of stupidity and of overweening self-conciousness?” McGarvey thinks not, and I am inclined to agree. He suggests it was inspiration; I suppose it was confidence in the messiah being proclaimed. In either case, people in every time—and increasingly in our age of customization—have always demanded room to maneuver and, if they are wise, have always been proportionally qualified in their assertions as they become increasingly grandiose. (A statement, perhaps, on the wisdom or folly of American politicians.) The biblical authors never offer speculations, however; they offer declarations “on some themes which have baffled the powers of all thinkers, such as the nature of God, his eternal purposes, his present will, angels, disembodied human spirits…”

McGarvey’s list goes on, as could a list of the ways Scripture refuses to bow to our expectations of it. Like Pharisees bring questions to Christ, we find our own demands of Scripture paradoxically and simultaneously met and rebuffed. It answers us in riddles or on questions we had never thought to ask; it answers us with stories we cannot shake and commands we cannot meet (or help but meet because they are commanded of us). Given what it purports to be, the Bible is spectacularly troublesome book. It lacks the fluidity and vagueness of a loosely defined religious philosophy such as many found in the East or manifesting now in the West. It lacks the clarity and exhaustiveness of legal codes, past or present. It demands that we balance its spirit with its letter and recognize that the two are inseparable. Ultimately, it is an icon which directs us to a God who is at once fundamentally inaccessible and lovingly beckoning us to Himself. Of course, this was the not the message McGarvey primarily aimed at conveying, but I would like to think that his image of a Scripture which pointed to the Holy Spirit as its ultimate author would admit an understanding of the text whose unusual nature served as a vehicle for encountering an unusual Father.

Happy Birthday, J. W.

On this day, 183 years ago, John William McGarvey was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The son of an Irish immigrant, McGarvey would find himself at Bethany College studying at the feet of Alexander Campbell and baptized by W. K. Pendelton. This impressive pedigree would be the beginnings of an auspicious career as a preacher, author, educator, and controversialist. In addition to a tremendous body of extant literature, McGarvey would make his greatest impact on the movement through his long, at times tumultuous, relationship with the school that would eventually become Lexington Theological Seminary. Thus, while he spent much of his life outside his home state, it was in Kentucky where his influence was most keenly felt.

In honor of his birthday this month, and the incalculable impact he had on religion in his home state and on the Stone-Campbell Movement at large, I will be examining his Sermons Delivered in Louisville, Kentucky, preached in the summer of 1893 before the Broadway Church where McGarvey was temporarily employed. McGarvey compiled and published his collection of sermons only with great reluctance, and in part because he recognized "that some preachers whom we have known, and on whose lips we have hung almost entranced, have left behind them, when they departed this life, nothing but the faint remembrance of sermons which we should have been glad to read again and again, and which were worthy of being transmitted to many generations." He was humbly skeptical of any suggestion that he might be such a preacher, but history has proved that he is and has benefited greatly from his decision to add a compilation of his sermons to his impressive list of publications.

I will attempt to look at these sermons with a critical eye to their late nineteenth century setting, to uncover what McGarvey intends to be his themes and focus and how they arose in their historical milieu. In truth, however, the focus will be on drawing out these themes in order to understand and adapt them to the ongoing needs of contemporary Christian thought and practice. In this I seem to have McGarvey's approbation: "[My sermons] should...serve as a homiletical aid to such young preachers as can study them without imitating them." Whatever the rhetoric--then or now--it is critical to remember that the preaching of early Disciples was not about cold, scientific repetition. Their works were and continue to be living testaments to a vital faith which always merits study and often emulation.

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The following is a list of entries for this series to be updated as they are posted:

On Scripture
On the Enormity of Sin
On Trust in God
On Repentance
On Baptism
On Providence

Addendum on Sin
Addendum on Providence

Disciple of Peace: A Qaulified Endorsement

Craig M. Watts' Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State is not an academic text. Watts, a pastor and a doctor of ministry, is not a historian. It is important to keep these facts in mind when approaching the book. It is filled with great, accurate information, but it suffers from myriad deficiencies when evaluated against the standards of scholarly history. Particularly disturbing would be the unqualified use of Stone-Campbell history books written during the dark days of Restoration historiography when authors were more hagiographer than historian. This is mirrored by the almost completely absence of citations from relevant periodical literature. The limited and superficial engagement with antecedent and contemporary thinkers outside of a very narrow sphere is also suspect. Moreover, Watts breaks essentially no new ground and offers no new avenues for research. All this needs to be specified because the below recommendation of the book is based on what it is, a brief and interesting primer to the pacifist thought of one of the premiere thinkers of the early Restoration Movement. For a more in-depth, critical engagement of Campbell's thought on this or any other point, you would need to look elsewhere (and then be disappointed by the dearth of quality material on the subject).

For what it is, Disciple of Peace is a delightful read. While lacking in any overarching organizational pattern, each chapter makes for a concise, targeted treatment of some aspect of Campbell's pacifism. These range from the more predictable (and shallower) overviews of the relationship between pacifism and Campbell's postmillennial eschatology to the more interesting and insightful examination of the apparent hypocrisy involved in opposing war and promoting capital punishment. The truth which makes all of this possible is the trenchant observation--which ought to be obvious, but all to often is not--that "pacifism is not an ethical oddity unconnected with the main themes of Alexander Campbell's thought." The assumption that any feature of Christian ethics can somehow be isolated either from the ethical system as a whole or the heart of Christian theology is ultimately naive. This holds true nowhere more strongly than the ethic of peace. How a Christian thinks about peace and violence must be influenced by and influence how a Christian thinks about the nature of God, His purpose in creation, His method of salvation, and the telos of the material world. It is fitting, therefore, that Watts' work does more than simply establish that Campbell was a pacifist. Instead, Watts draws lines of connection between this pacifism and Campbell's understanding of the state, the Bible, the eschaton, and the other pertinent ethical issues of his time (e.g. slavery).

Even making allowances for the non-academic nature of the work, the great weakness of Watts' work is its historical naïveté, particularly as it manifests in relation to the way the Bible functions in Campbell's thought. Watts is unapologetically a member of the Stone-Campbell tradition and is writing for a press based out of a Stone-Campbell church. This bias bleeds fairly obviously into his reconstruction of history. When addressing the influences on Campbell's pacifism, Watts notes a wide range of social, historical, and hermeneutical forces which came to bear on Campbell's thought: church unity movements, dispensationalism, Seeder Presbyterianism, and ongoing American and British peace movements. Yet, again and again, Watts returns to the naive conclusion that all of these influences are ancillary. It is the Bible, plain and simple, that motivated Campbell to believe what he did. This conclusion makes for a nice historical sermon on the merits of pacifism, but it does not stand up to even lay scrutiny as history. The same assertion could be made of any Christian advocate of any ethical position on war. The most hawkish clergyman in the States would display a primarily Scriptural motivation for his ethical stance. It borders on the tautological to say that any religious thinker would ground any religious thought primarily in the religious text of his religion. Watts seems to be endorsing the Restorationist fallacy that there is a Bible--objective and unencumbered by our socio-historical baggage--to which Campbell can finally and authoritatively appeal. Watts would have done better to simply explain how Campbell used Scripture to justify his pacifism rather than contending, indefensibly, that the Bible independently motivated Campbell toward pacifism. (And this, coming from someone who clearly believes that the Bible endorses clearly and without qualification a pacifist ethic for Christians.)

Disciple of Peace is wanting in one other notable way. Watts, as already noted, spends very little time analyzing the connections between Campbell and those of his contemporaries who engaged the same subject, with a few token exceptions. Some of this oversight can certainly be attributed to the limits of space and scope. A comprehensive examination of pacifist thought during Campbell's life would have radically lengthened Watts' project and distorted its scope. Nevertheless, there is a certain sense in which the books lacks substance because it lacks critical comparisons between Campbell and his contemporaries, especially his contemporaries in the Restoration Movement. When Watts does bring in outside thinkers, it is primarily from other religious streams of thought. He seems willfully ignorant that there were other prominent proponents of pacifism within the movement who Campbell might have interacted with intellectually. Barton Stone springs immediately to mind as a comparably prominent thinker swimming in the same intellectual stream as Campbell. This is to say nothing of "lesser" figures like Tolbert Fanning, Raccoon John Smith, J. W. McGarvey, Benjamin Franklin, and Moses Lard who, among others, are rattled off in an introductory list of pacifist Restorationists and then quickly forgotten. In introducing Campbell's pacifism to the reader, Watts declares, "Pacifism takes a variety of forms...[Different forms] can differ in rationale, limitations and goals, among other things. Pacifism is not a single position." Given that he recognizes this fact, Watts would have done his readers a great service if he could have included a short chapter introducing how Campbell's pacifism fit into the broader Restoration vision of peace ethics.

Wherever it is lacking, however, Watts compensates in his closing chapter which reveals the true nature of his book. In his conclusion, Watts unashamedly sets out to demonstrate why Campbell is right in his construction of Christian ethics, except where Watts thinks he is wrong. This may sound like a brazen apology for Watts' own pacifism, and it is. Even so, his analysis of the shortcomings of Campbell's thought and his proposed correctives are sufficiently insightful to make the argument worth considering. He makes four crucial points in his conclusion which bear further thought. The first, as a critique of Campbell, is that pacifism must be cruciform; it must center on and take as its archetype the supreme act of Christ on the cross. Watts observes that in all of Campbell's thought on pacifism in the Gospels, the cross is notable absent, giving pride of place to the Sermon on the Mount instead. Watts pinpoints this shortcoming--with some accuracy, I believe--as the fault which makes possible the contrary stances on war and capital punishment. Taking his cue from Campbell, Watts then takes up the theme of church unity and its relation to Christian pacifism. By incorporating this concern into the pacifist ethic, Watts believes that we can heighten our sense of community and sharpen our critique of competing loyalties such as the self and the state. He then continues his adaptation of Campbell's thinking to criticize modern perceptions of pacifism as a strategy rather than a core belief. The perception that a commitment to pacifism can be evaluated in pragmatic terms is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be committed to peace as Christ endorsed it. (Whether or not Campbell can really be said to understand this critique is debatable, given his optimistic belief about the potential of human peace efforts, but as an ongoing criticism Watts' point still stands.) Finally, Watts concludes on the familiar terms of peace and Christian eschatology. This is not merely limited to arguing that peace is the eschatological ideal but that the church is the eschatological community proleptically living out the ideals of the eschaton in the present.

In the final evaluation, Disciple of Peace must be seen as a mixed bag. Certainly its value rises as academic expectations are lowered. In view of this, it may unqualifiedly recommended to the average reader who is interested in the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement generally or any Restorationist ready to critically engage questions of war, peace, and the state in view of the great thinkers of the tradition. Certainly, I believe that members of the Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, and Disciples of Christ would all profit from taking the small amount of time necessary to breeze through this work. The number of adherents in these churches I encounter on a regular basis who have no concept of the rich pacifist history of their traditions is astonishing. Beyond its function for these demographics, however, Watts' work has serious shortcomings which hamper its critical value for the well-educated reader.