This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 6, 1994.
About this sermon
The ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ document quietly reshapes justification by faith into something both sides can sign without agreeing. The real problem behind it is ‘cultural Christianity.’ Machen, Van Til, and Vos supply the theology for seeing the difference.
Sermon transcript
Once more, we are looking at Romans chapter 4. We are beginning our reading at verse 13. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy and infallible word. For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law. but through the righteousness of faith.
For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified. So the law brings about wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there violence. For this reason, it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace. In order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, a father of many nations have I made you.
In the sight of him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope. he believed. In order that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, so shall your descendants be. And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform.
Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now, not for his sake only was it written that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Him who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was justified in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”
Let’s pray together. Our Father, you have introduced us to life. We have been born again. Our life belongs to you. It is hid with Christ. in you. Father, we know that we are provided for. That provision comes to us not in the bread of this creation, but in the bread of your word. Father, feed us, for we come to you. And Lord, knowing your word, May we be helped in our obedience. For truly, O God, we love you and we wish to serve you with all that is in us. We pray this, O God, through the very One who served you with all that was in Him, your Son. Amen. We have, just last weekend, enjoyed a very successful Reformation celebration marking the 477th anniversary of Martin Luther’s courageous act in nailing the 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
However, as you listened to Dr. Hart Last week, in his messages, you could not help but be a little sad. As he talked to us about J. Gresham Machen, a man instrumental in the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and a man identified at the time of his death by Caspar Whisker Hodge as the greatest theologian in the English-speaking world, you may have started to think, Where is the nation of our death? Where is the man of his stature, his integrity, his depth, and his courage? In fact, as we look out upon the Church of this present day, for a theologian of nation’s capacity and strength, we soon realize that there is not one, no, not one to be found.
With thoughts like these, last Sunday morning’s sermon may have offered little to no consolation. In that sermon, you may recall, I stated that it appeared that we, the Protestant Church now, have entered our own dark ages. As evidence, I cited the fact that even though the twentieth century has experienced what has been called a Luther Renaissance, There has been no genuine rebirth of interest in the doctrine of justification by faith, the doctrine that stood at the center of Luther’s rediscovery of the Gospel. If we need confirmation of this tragic and even depressing truth, it comes to us not because of modernists and liberal redefinition of the doctrine of justification by faith to suit the unbelief of our time, nor because of a general rejection of or indifference to the doctrine of justification by faith across the plane of the Church, but because of the attitudes that are now found in, of all places, the evangelical link of the Protestant Church of our time.
Maybe you haven’t heard the news. Maybe you haven’t heard about the document entitled Evangelicals and Catholics Together, subtitled A Christian Mission in the Third It was released on the world this past March 29th with great fanfare. It is a document signed by some of the leading whites of evangelicalism, who seem to do everything with a great deal of fanfare. Such leading whites as Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Chuck Coulson of Watergate Faith, founder and director of Prison Fellowship, William Fry, president of Trinity Episcopal School for the Ministry here in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, famous for his ties to Labrie, a fellowship in Switzerland, Nathan Hatch, Evangelical, church historian at Notre Dame University, Kent Till, president of Eastern Nazarene College, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard, now president of Full Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Mark Knoll, former member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and maybe the leading evangelical historian in the world presently.
Thomas Oden, conservative Methodist at Drew University. J.I. Packer, who needs no introduction. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and an ill-fated request for the presidency. Herbert Schlossberg, famous author of the book, Idols for Destruction. And last but not least, Dr. Jack White, president of Geneva College. who was also a framer of the document.
I would think any Protestant or Catholic worth their salt would be embarrassed by this document. As to how bad it is, He would take a month’s worth of sermons morning and evening to explain. Before I’m done this morning, you may feel like I have done that. But on the doctrine of justification by faith, this document presents an extremely curious position. For example, among the issues that, quote, are frequently thought to divide us evangelicals and Catholics, unquote, a telling statement in its own right, justification by faith is not even as much as mentioned. This omission makes the document especially noteworthy, if not notorious and scandalous. It is downright dishonest.
Such an omission could not be anything but deliberate, and suggests that these evangelicals and the Catholics who were a part of it have arrived at a point of agreement with respect to this doctrine. But you may well ask, how in the world is this possible?
How is it possible for evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics to agree at this fundamental point by which the Reformation was conceived, given birth, and defined? For example, listen to the Reformer, John Calvin, on this essential Reformation doctrine.
The one justified by faith, he writes, is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner, but as a righteous man. Justification is the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us.” Now, that statement should stir any Protestant’s heart. About the time that Calvin wrote those words, The Roman Catholic Council of Trent stated its own opinion on the doctrine of justification by faith. Canon 12.
If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be anathemized. Now, if you’re not up to speed yet this morning, you’re having a little trouble waking up, let me state that proposition for you again quite plainly and directly. The Council of Trent said that if you believe in justification by faith alone, you are damned. Now, it is difficult to imagine a more basic disagreement here. which we would judge that all honest men would recognize.
But the document, Evangelicals and Catholics together, appears to have reached some sort of common consensus, and that without the consultation of their Church bodies whatsoever. An interesting fact in itself. While omitting the doctrine of justification from the list of items that divide them, these people have now then proffered their own definition. It goes like this.
We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. Living faith is acted in love that is nothing less than the love of Christ. You will note that this definition, despite its quotes and dependence, of and dependence upon Ephesians 2 does not expressly exclude either works or merit, nor does it affirm the exclusivity of faith as the lone instrument of justification. We are justified by faith. You finish it alone.
These facts are significant because what is later said in the document about the subject of conversion. And here we are not dealing with a reformational doctrine of conversion at all. Conversion is no longer that momentary instantaneous transformation of sinners from wrath to grace. to regeneration by the Holy Spirit, by which sinners are enabled to believe, and thus, by this root, declared righteous before God, yes, justified. Instead, conversion, we are told, quoting now, is a continuing process so that the whole life of the Christian should be a passage from death to life, from error to truth, from sin to grace.
Truly, the Protestant dark ages are upon us with unmistakably and crushing force. But the situation is even more desperate. Not only have conservative evangelical and Reformed Christian leaders revealed their empty-headedness and their doctrinal illiteracy, Not only have they deserted their Protestant commitments, and in some cases betrayed their confessional allegiances and broken their ordination vows, but they have proved beyond a doubt just how much we are living in a religious wasteland. One overrun by second-rate theological personalities, whose claim to fame has been by way of well-managed careers and the manipulation of the media, or in the interests of an agenda that has at its center a public presence, the interests of which are a politically and socially defined refurbishing of society itself as a sort of holy moral empire upon which all sensibly moral people can agree. Our concern is no longer, it would seem, for a doctrinal honesty and integrity that grips the clear hope of the kingdom of heaven in and through the work of our Savior, instead our concern is much more for political and social alliance, and for political and social clout on election day, through which we hope to withstand the rising tide of barbarism. Better then that we rewrite Luther’s great hymn. Those last lines that stand out in our mind would better read this way, let truth and doctrine build. Eternal life also. Our bodies we can save through the way that we behave. Our culture is forever.
Now, in light of this desperate situation, One that witnesses the deepening shadows of a Protestant dark ages. One that witnesses the growing defection of Protestant leaders who should know better. One that can boast only of an emptiness when it comes to locating theologians of the first order. In light of this desperate situation, I am going to be a bit outrageous this morning, in the time that remains. I am going to engage not in exegesis as is my practice and is my calling, and I will apologize up front for that. But I am going to engage in a bit of unshamed promotionalism in the interests of fighting fire with fire. You see, one of the reasons, if not the major reason, we find ourselves in this desperate situation is because we have not been willing to follow the lead of those whom the Lord has raised up previously, even in this century.
As the twentieth century began, Protestantism was faced with an immense wall. with an immense wall, much of its own making. A wall that could be described as cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity. Religion of the civilized. A Christianity that had rejected, yes, the supernaturalism of biblical religion. This great monolith of unbelief called itself Christian, but promoted as its central doctrine a belief in the cooperation with the world for the creation of a better life for everybody.
There have been three men who especially stand out in their courageous and profound assault against this wall. Their assault has been especially courageous because they have had to attack assumptions that even Reformed and Evangelical folk have held, where those folk even unwittingly have been supplying bricks and mortar to build the wall.
J. Gresham Machen is one who breached the wall.
And he did so because, as Paul Woolley said, he began to put into practice the biblical doctrine of the Church. For all that is said about nature, for all the accolades that are directed towards him, Willie singled this out as his contribution. He began to put into practice the biblical doctrine of the Church.
Machen began to see with increasing clarity the indispensable necessity for the purity of the Church of Jesus Christ. Because the Church is bound to Jesus Christ, Because it is bound to heaven, even now, the realm of holiness and purity, the Church herself must be pure. It must be pure doctrinally, and as Nation began to see at the end of his life, it must be pure morally. That was a message that did not go over well in the ranks of cultured Christianity. and established Protestantism. Nation breached the wall of that cultural Protestantism by wielding the sword of the Church’s purity, and that with increasing consistency and integrity.
Cornelius Van Chil is another man who breached the wall. Van Till understood that anything less than the consistent commitment to the Reformed faith, to the Reformational faith, would ultimately work to build the wall, not tear it down. No aiding and abetting the enemy, for Van Tills.
No embrace of the wrong-headed theology that blithely goes about its business, as if all humanity, regenerated and unregenerated, share common ground in reason and experience. and reason and experience are the building blocks upon which we can view a Christian view of life. Nor can the Christian be ignorant of his distinctive way of seeing things. He is born again, he is of the Spirit, he sees things from the perspective of heaven as he engages in the common tasks of humanity.
Manfred breached the wall by insisting upon the inviolable separateness of a Christian world and life view, and upon the absoluteness of the Reformed faith. He would not equivocate. Gerhardus Voss also breached the wall. He was the most unassuming, but the most profound and revolutionary of the three. It was Voss who saw that the greatest threat to the wall of cultured Protestantism was no bare supernaturalism that confined itself to belief in miracles. Rather, the greatest threat to this cultured Protestantism was the eschatological interest of the scriptures from beginning to end.
That is, the fact that the biblical religion, when rightly understood, sets before us the hope of another world into which God will bring his elect, despite the fall, through the work of his Son and his Spirit. And that, to the end, that God may have communion with his people. Specifically, the work of the Son and the Spirit must be seen in light of the end. to which their works press. We are told in Romans 8 that the Spirit itself groans. In intercession on our behalf, what is the content of the groanings of the Spirit? That we might enter into the fullness of that redemption that is ours in Christ, and be clothed with our resurrection body in the last day. That is the focus and the intent of the groanings and intercessions of the Spirit.
But specifically now, in relationship to the Son, Jesus is seen as the last man. As the last man, in whom and through whom we find our full redemption, and that redemption is sufficient, it is adequate, and there is nothing lacking there. Therefore, Vos saw that for us to be justified, giving back to that doctrine of justification, Vos saw that for us to be justified, we must be rooted in a justification that Jesus undergoes. There is the justification of Jesus, and that, you see, is the point at which the entire structure of the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by faith falls.
Is Jesus’ justification a double matter? Is it complete? Will you say to me that there is something lacking in that justification?” You cannot say that. It is that justification into which you have been brought by grace now, and you share it, because Jesus is the last man, and his humanity speaks for you.
This then is the meaning, as Voss saw, of the statement in 1 Timothy 3.16, when it declares there that Christ was justified in the Spirit. Voss breached the wall by turning traditional biblical interpretation and theological inquiry head over heels with his insistence that all interpretation and inquiry must self-consciously keep the true biblical eschatological goal in view. Earlier in this century, three breached the wall.
They stood in the breach, and they But you see, the Protestant Church has refused to follow. And we are now witnessing the consequence of that obstinance and, in some kinds, willful blindness. The document Evangelicals and Catholics together is but a consequence. It is but one consequence.
Another is that we are left in a world with no great theological leadership, that even remotely approximates the leadership of Nathan, Van Til and Vos. God help us, and indeed He shall, as we who wish to be true to the Reformed faith are forced forward through the bridge to meet God-willing great new leaders whom God will most certainly raise up to teach us more and more about the excellencies of Jesus Christ, who is the same. yesterday, today, and forever. And whom to know is life eternal.
Our Father, we cry out to you, because Lord, our situation may be more desperate than we admit. It may be more desperate than we can even see. But you know all things, Lord, and you know our plight. more perfectly than we know it ourselves. So, Father, we ask that your church might be helped by those who have breached the wall, and we pray this for all who confess the name of Christ, that the leadership of these men that we have spoken of this morning might be apparent that it is offered, in fact, for Jesus Christ and in his name, and that we are even able to see the pattern of our Savior in such service. But Lord, we ask that we may have courage ourselves to follow, that it may please you that once we’re through the wall and beyond it, to greet those whom you have raised up to be a help to us, servants of your spirit. And in this, O God, may the light of your gospel shine brightly, and we, your children, enjoy the full liberty that is found in that gospel which speaks to us about justification by faith alone. This we ask in Christ’s name.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.