Category Archive: Theology
“Machen’s Warrior Children”
John Frame’s recent article, “Machen’s Warrior Children,” is worth reading.
Theology and Rhetoric
“How did Christian theologians … abandon rhetoric?” asks Peter Leithart in “When Theology and Rhetoric Embrace” (alternatively titled “Rhetoric and the Word”), published in the May 2004 issue of First Things. Leithart writes:
The twentieth-century poet W. H. Auden once commented on the absence of rhetoric among theologians. Were a poet to use a phrase such as “mortal sin,” he said, it would be meant as a hyperbolic way of warning people away from certain kinds of behavior. When a theologian uses the phrase, it has a very exact and technical meaning. Theologians are the least rhetorical of writers.
Auden’s observation is undeniably accurate, but when we glance at the literary shape of the Bible, it is difficult to fathom why it should be so. After all, the Bible has no theology that does not have a rhetorical shape and thrust. It is full of stories, laws, rituals, proverbs, psalms, genealogies, visions, and prophecies that often take poetic form. Scripture includes the severe diatribes of Jeremiah, the unutterable beauties of Isaiah and John, the goading wisdom of Solomon, the luminous allusiveness of Genesis and Matthew. The closest that the Bible comes to technical theology is the letters of Paul, but no one can read Galatians, Corinthians, or Paul’s sermons in Acts without realizing that he is a master rhetorician. To be sure, Paul’s rhetoric is not necessarily the rhetoric of pagan Greece or Rome (though scholars are finding that often it is), but he is rhetorical in that he speaks and writes above all to persuade, convict, and change his readers.
Already in Rome
From time to time, Doug Wilson has been posting parables on his blog, some (I find) more effective than others. I particularly enjoyed his latest, “Already in Rome.” Come to think of it, “Ah, To Have Been Submissive” is pretty good, too.
Satan’s Fall
I was working on Genesis 3:14-15 this week in connection with a sermon I was preparing (thanks, Tim for sending me your notes on that chapter). In the course of that study, I began to wonder about the timing of Satan’s fall.
I suspect that, if we think about it at all, we’re inclined to say that we don’t know exactly when Satan fell but it was before Genesis 3. We might (rightly) reject the view that Satan fell before Adam was created. After all, on the sixth day of creation, God declares that everything He created is very good and that would include the angels.
I suspect the angels were created at the very beginning when God created the heavens (Gen. 1:1a: “In the beginning, God created the heavens…”), since they were singing when God laid the foundations of the earth (Job 38:4-7) and that happened in the second half of Genesis 1:1 (“… and the earth”).
At any rate, the angels are creatures, included in God’s creative work in the six days of Genesis 1, and therefore among the creatures which God pronounces “very good” at the end of the sixth day. So, contrary to Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which Satan falls before the creation of man, Satan must have fallen after the sixth day.
But when? Again, we’re inclined to shrug our shoulders. We often think that a long, long time passed after the creation of man and before the Fall and that somewhere during that time, but up in heaven, Satan and his armies rebelled, we know not how. I’m more inclined to think that Adam’s fall happened very soon after his creation. After all, it doesn’t appear that Adam had yet eaten from the Tree of Life. If he’d been in the Garden for any length of time, you would expet him to have done so. It’s entirely possible that Adam fell on the seventh day, so that instead of entering God’s rest and giving him thanks for His creation, as appropriate on the seventh day, he rebelled instead (Rom. 1:18ff.).
As I was working through Genesis 3, I was struck by some of the things that it suggests with regard to Satan’s fall. I’d heard Jim Jordan say that he thought Satan’s fall happened in the course of his conversation with the woman (a view, if memory serves me correctly, he’d heard proposed by Jeff Meyers). “Hmmm…” I said to myself.
Before his fall, Satan was Lucifer, that is, the light-bearer. This name reflects Lucifer’s original calling, namely, to bear God’s light. To whom? To man.
We learn about Satan’s original calling by observing what the rest of Scripture tells us about angels and their work. Man was created “a little lower than the angels” (Ps. 8:5 as cited in Heb. 2:7), though that wasn’t man’s ultimate destiny (cf. Heb. 2:9). The Torah — the word means instruction, not law — was given by the ministration of angels (Heb. 2:2; Gal. 3:19), which, by the way, gives added significance to Paul’s statement in Galatians 1:8 (“Even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed”).
During the old creation (i.e., the events from Genesis 1 to the end of the Old Covenant) man was under the angels, to be instructed and trained by them. (Jim Jordan says in his Brief Reader’s Guide to Revelation that the presence of so many angels in Revelation indicates that the events John is describing took place in the time when man was still under the angels, that is, they refer to the time of the end of the Old Covenant in AD 70.)
Furthermore, we learn a lot about Lucifer’s original task by looking at the Angel of Yahweh in Scripture. After Lucifer fell, he was replaced as man’s tutor by the Second Person of the Trinity, acting in the role of the messenger (which is what “angel” means”) of Yahweh. That this Angel is himself Yahweh is made clear in several passages, among them Judges 6:11ff. and 13:17-23.
A brief digression: In Jude 9, we read that
Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.”
Where is that story in the Bible? Well, “The Lord rebuke you” is from Zechariah 3. In that chapter, Joshua the high priest stands before the Angel of Yahweh and “the Satan” stands there to accuse him:
And Yahweh said to Satan, “Yahweh [Greek translation: The Lord] rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, Yahweh [the Lord] who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!”
This is the dispute Jude has in mind. It’s a dispute over “the body of Moses.” “The body of Moses” isn’t Moses’ physical body; like “the body of Christ” (the church), it’s corporate. “The body of Moses” is Israel, brought back from exile but still defiled by sin, which Joshua the High Priest bears on himself and which is the basis for Satan’s charges against Joshua, Jerusalem, and Israel.
Zechariah identifies the parties of the dispute as the Angel of Yahweh and Satan. Jude identifies them as Michael and the devil, which implies that Jude understands the name of the Angel of Yahweh, the pre-incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, to be Michael, the same Michael who appears in Daniel and Revelation. Anyway, that’s a digression.
As Jim Jordan has pointed out in his lectures, before He was the second Adam, God’s son was the second Lucifer. That is, before He was incarnate as a man, He acted as “the Angel of Yahweh,” replacing the fallen Lucifer as man’s tutor. He led Israel to the Promised Land (Ex. 33:2) and to conquest (Josh. 5:13-16:5; Jud. 6:11ff., etc.). He also taught God’s people the Word of Yahweh (e.g., Gen. 18).
That’s the work of the Angel of Yahweh, man’s chief tutor up until the end of the Old Covenant. But in the beginning, the angel who came to man — God’s appointed tutor — wasn’t the Second Person of the Trinity taking on the role of an angel. It was Lucifer, who fell and became the devil (“the adversary”) and the satan (“the accuser”). In the beginning, Lucifer was to be the light-bearer, man’s tutor and guide who would train him and prepare him for his calling to subdue and rule the world (as the new tutor, the Angel of Yahweh, prepared Israel to conquer and rule the Promised Land).
But did Lucifer fall before he ever got around to carrying out that task? That’s possible. But in that case, it seems to me that he would have been replaced before he got to the Garden. It makes more sense to me to think that Lucifer fell as he was executing his calling.
In fact, Lucifer’s fall was that he perverted his calling. He “tutored” the woman, but he “tutored” her to disobey God.
What was his motive? Well, given that Adam and Eve were created a little lower than the angels but were intended eventually to have dominion over the angels (as Christ, as a man, now has dominion over the angels and as we shall eventually judge angels, 1 Cor. 6:3), the serpent’s motive may have been jealousy. He didn’t want to be like a drill sergeant who trains a man knowing that one day that man will be an officer and have authority over him. So he passed on perverted teaching to keep Adam and Eve from reaching that destiny. At least, that’s a plausible motive.
When did that perverse tutoring start? We often think that it must have started with the first thing the serpent said in 3:1b (“Has God said…?”) and that’s possible. As Eve’s sin begins with her thinking about doing what God had forbidden and as Adam’s started with his failure to guard the garden and protect Eve, so the serpent’s sin may have begun with him contemplating leading Adam and Eve astray before he ever opened his mouth.
But it’s also possible that his sin began between his first and second statement. His question in Genesis 3:1b can be taken as a veiled accusation of God (“Was God really so mean as to forbid you to eat from all the trees?”). But it may also be taken in a better sense. Teachers use these kinds of questions today so that the student will respond by correcting them, thereby showing that he really knows the right answer. “Jesus isn’t God, is He?” the catechism teacher asks, and the child quickly says, “Yes, He is!” It’s possible that man’s tutor, the angel in the form of a serpent, is doing that kind of catechesis.
But in 3:4, the serpent directly contradicts what God said: “You shall not surely die.” That statement (or perhaps the question in 3:1b), together with the thoughts and inclinations leading up to it, it seems to me, is the point in history where Lucifer fell.
A few more things in this passage appear to support this view.
Genesis 3:1 tells us that the serpent “was more cunning than any beast of the field which Yahweh God had made.” “More cunning” here doesn’t mean “sinful.” Rather, the implication is that being cunning is a good thing. Yahweh God made the serpent “more cunning” than the rest of the field animals (that is, the wild animals out in the world beyond the garden, as opposed to the tamer garden animals).
But if the serpent in 3:1a is still good (and given 1:31, we have no textual reason to think he was not still good), then his fall must have taken place either just before 3:1b or in the course of his instruction, when he contradicts God in 3:4.
And then there’s 3:14. When Yahweh God pronounces judgment on the serpent, he says this: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field.” That is to say, God declares Satan cursed because he has attacked the woman with lies. That is why Satan will be crushed by the woman’s seed.
But if Satan fell at some earlier time, before Genesis 3, we would expect him to have been under God’s curse and in for a crushing already. But Scripture says that he is cursed and forced to grovel and “bite the dust” and that he will eventually be defeated and crushed because of what he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden. That suggests to me that Satan’s fall into sin — for which he is cursed and sentenced to destruction — took place in the events of Genesis 3:1-5.
Finally, whatever we are to make of Yahweh’s message in Ezekiel 28 to “the ruler of Tyre,” who is described as wearing garments like Israel’s priests and who is described as “the anointed cherub who covers,” he is said to have been “in Eden, the garden of God” (28:13), placed by Yahweh “on the holy mountain of God” (28:14) and “blameless” at that time. His fall took place in Eden; he was thrown from God’s holy mountain (28:16). Again, I don’t exactly know what to make of this passage. The primary reference is to “the ruler of Tyre,” but the reference to the “anointed cherub” suggests that there may be some link with Lucifer. But if so, then Ezekiel 28 implies that Lucifer’s fall took place in Eden, the Garden of God, on God’s holy mountain.
Putting all of this together, it seems to me that Satan’s fall took place in the events of Genesis 3:1-5, in the seduction of the woman, which is the event for which God curses him to destruction.
When did his hosts fall? Perhaps at the same time somehow. Perhaps later.
But wouldn’t God’s curse on the serpent have frightened them enough to keep them from falling by following Satan (“Yike! Look what happened to him!”)?
Not necessarily. After all, they had seen that Satan’s lie had been successful in seducing the woman away from God and that the man had fallen too. Through sin, the whole human race came under the dominion of sin and death and of the devil, who held the power of death (Heb. 2:14-15). Perhaps some of the host of heaven followed Satan because, curse or no curse, they thought there was a chance that he might win. He’d done pretty well already and so far his head hadn’t been crushed, nor was it for many years.
I don’t claim that these thoughts are original with me; in fact, I’ve heard most of this stuff from others. But these are some things I’ve been mulling over this week. I invite your thoughts in response.
Spirituality
The current age is a particular challenge for preaching a particular God who is manifest to us in Jesus the Christ. For some time now, we have been in the mire of something called “spirituality,” which in my experience tends to be decidedly anti-traditionalist, anti-institutional, amorphous, vague and therefore undemanding.
Spirituality is what I feel when I feel better than I did before I felt it. It is a big, accommodating basket into which I can put almost anything I want to feel about the “higher power,” or “spiritual force,” or “my own little voice,” or whatever I call whatever it is that makes me feel better.
Just for now, I’m trying to discipline myself, whenever I hear someone around here say “spirituality,” to think “idolatry.” — Will Willimon, “Jesus vs. Generic God,” Leadership, Winter 2002.
Five Points & Five Sacrifices
Here’s something James Jordan writes in the latest Biblical Horizons newsletter (no, it isn’t online yet). The article is entitled “Misusing the Westminster Confession”:
… it is important to realize that to a large extent the Standards were intended for pastors, for ordained clergymen. The writers knew that what laymen need is the Bible, the whole Bible. The Confession set up standards for the guardians of the Church. But there are churches today that are full of people who know the five points of Calvinism, but who cannot tell you the five basic “sacrifices” of the Bible, because these laymen have been indoctrinated primarily in the Westminster Standards rather than in the Bible. That was not the intention of the writers, though of course they expected pastors to teach the content and theology of the Standards along with teaching the Bible.
The City
Toward the end of his introduction to Charles William’s novels, Thomas Howard deals with Williams’ view of the City as a complex system of order involving a mutual exchange of gifts:
Williams derives his picture of the City from Saint John the Divine and from Saint Augustine. In its perfection of order and architecture it supplies us with a pattern (or what Williams also liked to call the “web” or “diagram”) of glory. Things must be intricately worked out and interwoven. In any earthly city there are one-way signs, yellow lines in the streets, traffic lights, bus schedules, commerce, taxes, laws, police, a council, a mayor, and so forth. Every item forms part of the pattern without which everything would tangle, break down, and grind to a halt. If one car ignores the yellow line you have a shouting, hooting traffic jam backed up for blocks. The life of any city depends entirely on its obedience to the imposed pattern. The paradox, of course, is that this imposed pattern is the guarantee of everyone’s liberty. The attempt to break free of the pattern results in chaos.The difficulty is that all earthly cities are imperfect patterns. Corruption, sloth, inefficiency, stupidity, cynicism, and violence mar the pattern. But this only throws the thing itself into starker relief. There is no life that does not depend on this pattern of “co-inherence” — of you and me mutually submitting to the rules — for its sustenance, and where this is flouted you find anger, sorrow, and ruin, which is what you find eventually in hell (pp. 37-38).
That may be worth thinking about the next time I’m sitting at a red light waiting, perhaps impatiently, for it to change. Impatience while driving is a species of pride: “Why doesn’t everyone submit to me and get out of my way?” But at a red light, what are we doing? We’re regarding others — the people with the green light — as more important than ourselves. And then we discover that they also are compelled to stop and we get to go because the traffic light imposes a system of mutual deference, mutual courtesy.
It seemed to Williams that here was a principle. Everyone, all the time, owes his life to others. It is not only in war that this is true. We cannot eat breakfast without being nourished by some life that has been laid down. If our breakfast is cereal or toast, then it is the life of grains of wheat that have gone into the ground and died that we might have food. If it is bacon, then the blood of some pig has been shed for the sake of my nourishment. All day long I live on this basis: some farmer’s labor has produced this wheat, and someone else’s has brought it to market, and so on. These in turn receive the fruit of my work when I pay for the product. Money is the token and medium of the exchange that takes place: here is the fruit of my labor, which you need, and with this I purchase the fruit of yours, which I need. It becomes very difficult to keep all this very sharply in focus in a complex modern society where face-to-face transactions rarely occur. But the principle of exchange is at work in international commerce as well as in the village farmers’ market. It is just harder to see. Williams coupled this idea of exchange with two other ideas, namely, “substitution” and “co-inherence,” but they all come to the same thing. There is no such thing as life that does not owe itself to the life and labor of someone else. It is true all the way up and down the scale of life, from our conception, which owes itself to the self-giving of a man and a woman to each other; through my daily life, where I find courtesies such as a door held open if I have a package; and laws obliging me to wait at this red light while you go, and then you to wait at the next corner for the other fellow; and commerce, in which I buy what your labor has supplied; right on through nature, with its grains of wheat planted and harvested and animals slaughtered for my food; to the highest mystery of all in which a life was laid down so that we might all have eternal life.
The point for Williams was that all life functions in obedience to this principle of exchange and substitution and co-inherence whether I happen to observe it or not, or whether I happen to be pleased by it or not. It presides over all life, so that to resist or deny it is to have opted for a lie. For Williams, hell is the place where such a denial leads eventually. To refuse co-inherence will reward me with solitude, impotence, wrath, illusion, and inanity. I will have reaped the harvest I have sown in my selfishness and egotism. I will have got what I wanted. I will be a damned soul.
On the other hand, the City of God is the place where we see co-inherence brought to blissful fruition. What we encountered in this mortal life as mere genetics, say, in our conception, or as agriculture in the bread we eat, or as law with its traffic lights and yellow lines, or as courtesy with doors being held open, or as economics with its buying and selling, or as theology with Christ’s sacrifice — all this is unfurled in the dazzling light of the City of God (pp. 25-27).
What Howard doesn’t mention (perhaps because Williams hadn’t noticed it himself) is that all of this interaction, which Williams saw in all of life and which is encapsulated in the image of “the City,” is an image of the eternal fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of whom gives Himself to the others, seeking their glory. So, to ask the question again, what are we doing when we wait at a traffic light? We’re taking part in a complex system of rules and procedures which compel mutual deference and courtesy but in which we, as individuals and as a society, begin to image to some degree the mutual deference, courtesy, love, and humility –” putting others ahead of ourselves — of the Trinity.
Thanksgiving
In Romans 1, Paul describes man’s sin this way: “Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened” (v. 21). From one perspective, man’s sin can be described as ingratitude.
And from that perspective, Jesus’ work can be described as restoring us to a life of thankfulness: “The Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body which is for you; do this as my memorial'” (1 Cor. 11:23-24).
Jesus is the grateful one, and He unites us to Himself by so that we become His one body, giving thanks to God with Him. And now we are able to enjoy God’s creation and feast on all kinds of food: “For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4).
Happy Thanksgiving!
Theology After Wittgenstein
Tonight, I finished reading Fergus Kerr’s Theology After Wittgenstein. I can’t say that I understood all of it. In fact, I’m certain that I didn’t understand a lot of it.
Still, it was well worth reading and probably worth rereading in a year or two. Some books you understand completely with no effort at all, but often that’s because you already understood what the author was talking about. Other books stretch you. They’re hard to read, not (necessarily) because the author is unclear but because they’re forcing you to think in different ways.
That was the case with Theology After Wittgenstein. To start with, I’ve never studied Wittgenstein or, for that matter, any modern philosophy. At times, Kerr lost me, though I have to admit that he is often quite clear and even, as one reviewer says, “droll.”
But Wittgenstein himself wrote to challenge the ways people are accustomed to thinking and he wanted his material to be read slowly because he wanted people to think through what he was saying, not simply to let their customary way of thinking be challenged but to put up a fight, and then gradually to see what Wittgenstein was saying. And Kerr’s book, as it traces the relationship between Wittgenstein’s attack, for instance, on certain views of personality and our theological thinking often required me to slow down and think furiously. Having now been forced to think in a different way, I may profit from the book more on a second reading.
One part I (think I) did understand was Kerr’s critique of the idea that the “real me” is some hidden thing deep down inside me, something which can be separated from history, relationships, and so forth. He quotes Timothy O’Connell:
In an appropriate if homely image, then, people might be compared to onions…. At the outermost layer, as it were, we find their environment, their world, the things they own. Moving inward we find their actions, their behaviour, the things they do. And then the body, that which is the ‘belonging’ of a person and yet also is the person. Going deeper we discover moods, emotions, feelings. Deeper still are the convictions by which they define themselves. And at the very centre, in that dimensionless pinpoint around which everything else revolves, is the person himself or herself — the I (20).
I suspect there’s a connection between this (Cartesian) view of personality and the way people often protest that their actions don’t represent who they “really” are (“That’s not the real me!”) or the way that a criminal’s mother will claim that “deep down” her son is really a nice person, as if his actions or his relationships can somehow be separated from who he is.
Similarly, I suspect that this view of personality — what makes me me — has significant theological ramifications. Take what is often called “nominal” church membership. We sometimes think that, in the case of a “nominal” member, his connection to the church is merely “external” or “formal” or even, perhaps, “legal,” but that it doesn’t affect who he really is in any significant way. But that’s like claiming that being a Barach — that is, being a member of this particular family — has nothing to do with who I really am.
Now if I had absolutely no contact with a club but they added my name to their membership rolls and didn’t even tell me about it, then in that case my membership in the club might be termed merely nominal. But even then it would define me in some way. I might (in my ignorance) claim that “the real me” isn’t a member of that club, but the claim would be false: I really would be a club member, whether I knew it or not. All of my experiences and relationships do affect my personality: they make me who I am, and I am not me apart from them.
That’s true even if I wish to escape from those relationships. I may wish passionately that I were not a Barach and that I didn’t have any ties to my family, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I am a Barach and do have ties to my family. I might wish passionately that I weren’t a member of Christ’s church — or I might simply ignore my membership and live as if I weren’t a member — but that doesn’t change the fact that I am, in fact, a member.
Even in the case of a member who has nothing to do with the church, then, his relationship to the church isn’t “merely nominal,” a fact with no significance. Even in that case, his church membership still makes him who he is. And his rejection of that membership also makes him who he is: an unfaithful member of the church, a rebel and a traitor instead of a faithful son.
Reformation
The Church today is in dire need of reformation. This is not said with any denominational exclusivity — the Reformed churches today need reformation as much as anyone else. I say this as one who embraces the richness of the Reformed faith, as will become apparent enough later. But at the same time, because of this Reformational commitment, it is still necessary to say that to be Reformed is not enough. We must certainly live up to what we have already attained, but together with this we must not be allowed to assume that the last significant attainment was in the middle of the seventeenth century. Semper reformanda is not something we should all chant together right up until someone actually tries it (Douglas Wilson, “Reformed” Is Not Enough, p. 13).
Knowing the Lord
Last night, I started reading John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, a book I read for the first time back in 1990. I enjoyed it then, but I think over the last couple of years in particular I’ve learned some things (and, I hope, gained some theological maturity) which will help me appreciate it even more. This book really ought to be a standard textbook for first year theology classes! Here’s a sample quotation from the Introduction:
We tend to forget how often in Scripture God performs His mighty acts so that men will “know” that He is Lord (cf. Exod. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29f.; 10:2; 14:4, 18; 16:12; Isa. 49:23, 26; 60:16; etc.). We tend to forget how often Scripture emphasizes that although in one sense all people know God (cf Rom. 1:21), in another sense such knowledge is the exclusive privilege of God’s redeemed people and indeed the ultimate goal of the believer’s life. What could be more “central” than that? But in our modern theologizing — orthodox and liberal, academic and popular — this language does not come readily to our lips. We speak much more easily about being saved, born again, justified, adopted, sanctified, baptized by the Spirit; about entering the kingdom, dying and rising with Christ; and about believing and repenting than we do about knowing the Lord (p. 2).
I also love his reference to God’s “mysterious historical slowness, which is never too late” (p. 2). Between this book by Frame and The Urth of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, I’m in for some good reading in the days to come!
Calvinism
The online magazine Razormouth (an odd name, I must say) recently printed an article by Andrew Sandlin in which he discusses some of what he sees as the assets and liabilities of Calvinism. Here’s the first liability he sees:
First, relationalism. We Calvinists don’t have a great track record in getting along with each other. I’m convinced that the prime (though not only) reason for this sin (for that is what it is) is a lopsided “doctrinalism.” We Calvinists are aficionados of sound doctrine and precise theology, but we’re often less interested in sound love and precise longsuffering.
This often comports with an unhealthy abstractionism, according to which doctrine and theology are seen to be divine propositions that sort of float along on the air to be snagged by a few brainy Calvinists. And only those whose intellectual nets have captured these propositions are worthy of our love (if we have any) and fellowship (if we can even maintain it). We’ve forgotten that the unconverted world will not know us by our sound doctrine (about which they care nothing) but by our love (Jn. 13:35). If love is not a central feature of Calvinism, then Calvinism is a false religion (1 Cor. 13:1).
Our evangelical and other non-Reformed brothers are often much better at this than we are, and this is one reason (not the only reason) that their churches tend to be five to 10 times the size of our churches, and why those same churches are often bathed with love and joy and peace and kindness, while ours are filled with pride, suspicion, anxiety, and vindictiveness. Surely, here we can learn from our evangelical brothers, no matter how firmly we may disagree with them.