Asbury Seminary President responds to Bell Controversy

I was very happy to read the response of Timothy Tennant, president of the seminary I spent two years at, to the Bell controversy. In case someone is unaware, Rob Bell is a pastor, very popular among "emerging church" types, who recently wrote a book, Love Wins, endorsing the heresy of Universalism. Below are my favorite paragraphs from Dr. Tennant's response but you can read the whole thing at his blog: timothytennant.com. Here's the quote:

First, Rob profoundly misunderstands the Biblical notion of God’s “love.” The entire premise of the book is to declare that God’s essence is “love” (which Bell states repeatedly). However, Bell never actually describes the biblical and theological relationship between God’s joyful engagement with the human race and God’s justice upon which the very gospel he celebrates is declared. Bell sentimentalizes God’s love throughout his book, making it almost equivalent to God being nice and reasonable to modern sensibilities. I suspect that Bell has underestimated how shockingly tepid and sentimental our understanding of biblical love has become. If he had inserted the phrase “God’s holy-love” for every place he has used “God’s love” he would have gained more biblical traction, but, in the process, much of his own argumentation would have become unraveled. Bell’s argument actually requires a logical separation between God’s love and God’s justice which is quite untenable in biblical theology.

Second, Bell has an inadequate understanding of Sin – not the little ‘s’ kind, but the big “S” kind. In other words, Bell understands that we all sin, but he doesn’t seem to comprehend that we, as a race, are part of a vast rebellion against God’s holiness. Without Christ we, as a race, stand under condemnation and desperately need a divine rescue. Sin doesn’t just impede our progress and slow down our autonomous capacity to receive God’s love. We are spiritually dead apart from God’s prior action. Both Reformed and Arminian Christians affirm the cosmic consequences of the Fall of man. We are not Pelagian. Bell’s solution takes humanity out of the dock and puts God in the dock. After reading Bell’s book one gets the feeling that Bell has put God on trial. It is God who now has to justify why he would be so cruel as to sentence a sinner to eternal separation from his presence, especially given the “few short years” we have had to commit sins. An eternal punishment for temporal sins is just too much for Bell to bear and so God had better provide an explanation – a good one. The unfathomable love of the Triune God which resulted in a sending Father, a crucified and risen Son and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit who ushers in the glorious realities of the New Creation into the present age is lost in Bell’s description of a “Son” who protects us from an angry “God.”

- Dr. Timothy C. Tennant, president of Asbury Theological Seminary

In Honor of Estes

My last post about my old seminary chapel at Asbury started me reminiscing about the blessings of being able to worship there. One of my favorite hymns to sing in that chapel, packed with seminarians and our professors and with Albin Whitworth playing the pipe organ, was Charles Wesley’s And Can It Be.

The lyrics of this hymn are very rich and I always loved singing the very monergistic recounting of Charles' own conversion:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

fast bound in sin and nature's night;

thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;

my chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed thee.

The Importance of a Chapel

In recent days I've been reading on a couple of Anglican blogs about the fire and destruction of the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary. Many commenters reflected on their experiences in that chapel and how it was an important place for them. Reading these comments made me realize how much of a loss I would feel if I heard that the chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary, Estes Chapel, was destroyed. Estes Chapel is a very significant place for me when it comes to God's work of grace in my own life. The stained glass portrait of Christ on the upper right-hand corner of this blog is the stained glass window at the front of Estes Chapel. In my house in Loma Linda I have a picture of Estes Chapel hanging on my wall as a reminder of my two years at Asbury in Wilmore, Kentucky. I pray for the Lord to comfort all of those who feel a great loss in the destruction of the chapel at Virginia Theological Seminary and I thank Him for the blessing He's given me in also knowing a seminary chapel which is such an important place for me.

Estes Chapel at night.

Inside of Estes, that circular window in the front is the same as the picture in the upper right-hand corner of this blog.

"Divine Appointment"

Some patient interactions make a strong impression on me. Sometimes it is because of an unusual diagnosis. But usually it's because I connect with a patient who is a Christian and is going through a very difficult time. Such an incident happened this week that I won't forget anytime soon.

I was just a few days into my internal medicine rotation, seeing patients in a clinic with an attending physician. Internal medicine is the field I'm interested in going into so I'm hoping I will like this rotation. The second or third patient of the day was called and entered the room. My first impression of the patient was that he was an elderly man who looked to be in a good physical state. He had no problem getting around and smiled widely as he shook my hand and the hand of the attending physician. As the doctor asked him why he had come to clinic that day it became obvious that this man had a very serious diagnosis, one with the potential to cause a lot of suffering and which had already caused a good deal of suffering in the days prior to his presentation to our clinic.

It turned out that this patient had gone to the ER with severe pain in one of his bones a few days earlier. In the ER they had ordered an X-ray and then a bone scan which revealed cancer that had metastasized to many different areas of this man's skeleton. Only in the last week had one of these metastases began to cause severe pain. The patient had been diagnosed with and treated for prostate cancer years earlier but the treatment had obviously been unsuccessful and now, barring a miracle, this man would most likely die from this cancer.

It struck me during the interview that this patient had a more severe diagnosis than any I had seen recently and he was also currently in a great deal of pain. But unlike many patients I see every week with less severe diagnoses he had a peace about him. He was friendly and smiled as he interacted with us.

At some point during the interview he mentioned, for some reason, that he had been a pastor. This piqued my curiosity but I thought that in the presence of my attending physician I would not get to explore this further. The fact that this man's diagnosis seemed so severe also made it difficult for me to consider talking about things not relating to that diagnosis. As the interview progressed the patient commented on how the hospital seemed very busy and it reminded him of when he had been a hospital chaplain in Kentucky. I mentioned that I had lived in Kentucky for a couple of years and the patient said, "I also went to seminary in Kentucky." Now he really had my attention and I said, "so did I, outside of Lexington." The patient still didn't expect that we shared any deeper connection and he said, "oh, I went to a small seminary called Asbury." I smiled and told him that I also went to Asbury. At this point I wasn't sure what the attending was thinking as I had just began working with her. But I was happy when she said she needed to step out for a moment and encouraged us to both keep reminiscing. And that we did.

We found that God had touched both of us at a wonderful place called Asbury Theological Seminary. We were far enough apart in age that we had shared none of the same professors but we had enough in common to enjoy talking of our memories of Asbury and Kentucky. When I asked what denomination he had pastored in he said "United Methodist," but quickly added that he had been one of the few conservative evangelicals in California. I could sympathize with him when he told me that it got so bad in the California-Pacific Annual Conference that he and the handful of other Bible-believing United Methodist pastors just quit going to annual conference. He told me that his family had finally left the United Methodist Church for a conservative, Bible-believing church. We were both encouraged by our conversation and with a big smile this elderly gentleman proclaimed that this was a "divine appointment." I agreed. I asked him if I could pray for him and just after I had started praying the attending walked into the room. We both straightened up but I hoped that I would be able to finish my prayer for him at some point.

The attending physician asked a few more questions, did a focused physical exam, and then formulated her plan to our patient. It looked like it would all be over soon when I was surprised to hear her ask, "is it alright if I pray for you?" The patient explained that I had already started praying earlier and said he would be happy if we all prayed together. So the three of us held hands and my attending prayed a wonderful Christ-focused prayer.

It was a great experience. And even though I grieve for what this man and his family might go through in the coming months, I'm thankful that he and his family know the Lord and have a hope of eternal life beholding, worshipping and knowing Him more and more. Seeing a patient with so much peace and even the ability to encourage those around him in the midst of pain and a potentially frightening diagnosis also made me think that this was evidence of God's grace in his life. I've seen many other patients with far less severe diagnoses who were angry, bitter and left the clinicians they met tired and cynical. But this man was a blessing to those he came in contact with. May God have mercy on him and his family.

Islands in a Sea of Meaninglessness

More recently, in some of the post modern readings, we are called to all experience Christ in our own way and not be bothered by the confines of some ancient Apostolic proclamation. Post modernism urges us to live as independent islands in a sea of meaninglessness. Your autonomous opinions, they argue, are just as meaningful and valid as those who deliberated at Nicea or who were first commissioned by the Risen Lord. A hermeneutic of proclamation and faith is replaced by a hermeneutic of suspicion and doubt and both called equally valid. According to this scheme, theology, it seems, is really – after all – only anthropology. The church is a human construct, not a divinely ordained community. Yet, in the face of all of this - though the tempest rages for a season, the church is once again reconstituted into the truth. What we are experiencing in our day has been the re-emergence of a more faithful church from other quarters, mainly in the non-western world and the great unanimity of the church throughout the ages marches on, because God is the one who preserves His church and its living witness to Jesus Christ...

...If Nicea does not lay out boundaries, then we are left only with self-identification and we can no longer use the word ‘Christian’ or ‘Body of Christ’ with any real meaning. For if you don’t have doctrinal stability, you cannot have ethical stability and if you don’t have ethical stability you don’t have stability of worship and therefore we are no longer related vitality and necessarily to the headship of Jesus Christ. Our historic boundaries would become lost in a post-modern sea of autonomous self-definitions. What a contrast from the Apostle John who gives that final testimony at the end of time which gives us the courage to know that in the Final Day the church will be preserved out of every snare for he hears this act of worship in heaven, testifying not to another gospel or something novel, but to the Apostolic proclamation:

You were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…and so… to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever (Rev. 5:9,13), thus fulfilling those words of the Apostle Paul in Col. 1:18: And He is the head of the body, the church; He is the beginning and the firstborn from the dead, so that in everything He might have supremacy.

- Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, President of Asbury Theological Seminary from his essay here.

Woodstock Anniversary

Lately I've noticed a lot of coverage in the media on the anniversary of Woodstock. I was reminded of a video I watched on youtube a while back showing a group of young people who engaged in something other than "sex, drugs and rock-and-roll" (not that I have anything against sex or rock and roll in the right context) around the same time as the Woodstock festival. It's a long video but I believe it covers a genuine move of God which took place at an institution that is very important to me.

President Tennent and the ESV

I was procrastinating the other day, reading blogs, when I came across a blog post on Asbury Seminary's new president, Dr. Timothy Tennent. I was surprised to see that Dr. Tennent was a contributor to the ESV Study Bible, which I got a few months ago, and which I've thoroughly enjoyed using since. Dr. Tennent's contribution was to a section at the back of the Bible called "The Bible and Islam." As soon as I read that blog post I went and grabbed my ESV and read Dr. Tennent's essay. I was quite impressed. I especially liked two things in the essay which seem to hint at Dr. Tennent's classical Arminian theology. In one place Dr. Tennent says that Muslims reject the idea that Christ's death was a "substitute payment for sins." In this quote Dr. Tennent seems to imply that his own view of the atonement is something close to the traditional Arminian view of Penal Substitution. In another quote Dr. Tennent says that Islamic teaching rejects the idea that man is fallen or depraved. As before I think this implies that Dr. Tennent has a strong view of the depravity of man.

Good for Asbury.

P.S. You can win your own Calfskin ESV Study Bible, which retails for $239.99, at A Boomer in the Pew's blog.

The Need for Godly Sorrow

Somewhere for each individual who would be saved, there must be a place of repentance, of sorrow for sin, of deep grief and mourning, because of a profound sense of having sinned against a compassionate, patient and merciful God. One of the greatest needs of this nation is a tidal wave of conviction for sin, a godly sorrowing and turning away from wickedness. Somewhere between the present state of those who are in rebellion and sin against God, and a state of salvation, there must be a time and a place for godly sorrow, acceptance of Christ as an only Savior, and a blessed consciousness that sins are forgiven.

-Henry Clay Morrison - Founder of Asbury Theological Seminary (1857-1942)

Welcome President Tennent

Today Asbury Theological Seminary elected Timothy C. Tennent to be the seminary's eighth president. President Tennent is a Methodist who comes from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary where he was a professor of world missions.

My favorite lines of the seminary's press release were:

Tennent is passionate about classical, orthodox theological education.

"I am alarmed by the growing trend away from serious theological reflection and do not believe that the church will be adequately prepared to face the challenges of pluralism and post-modernism without a more robust theological preparation," he says. "I am also passionate about the emergence of the Majority World Church. I believe that the Western church continues to have an important role in global missions, in partnership with the increasingly vibrant Majority World Church."

It is my hope and prayer that President Tennent will guide Asbury Seminary down a road committed to theological orthodoxy and personal holiness. There are many who would have Asbury compromise in those areas. May he hold strong to Asbury Seminary's original purpose, "to prepare theologically educated, sanctified, Spirit-filled men and women to evangelize and to spread scriptural holiness throughout the world through the love of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father."

The Glories of Asbury

Well, I spent a wonderful first half of spring break in Wilmore, Kentucky with possibly the coolest group of people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. It was great being back on my old stomping grounds of Asbury Seminary's campus, seeing many familiar and many not-so-familiar faces. I got to meet with my old professor, Dr. Jerry Walls who was kind enough to give me a CD he produced of Charles Wesley hymns done in various genres in honor of Wesley's 300th birthday. I got to attend chapel in Estes on Tuesday and hear Asbury's president, Dr. J. Ellsworth Kalas, preach an Easter sermon. One of my favorite things at Asbury was hymn-singing in Estes Chapel as Albin Whitworth played the pipe organ. I was not disappointed on Tuesday as we sang "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," and "Up From the Grave He Arose."

I was in a Bible study with these guys during my two years at Asbury.

A White Easter

He is Risen! For the first half of my spring break from Loma Linda I've returned to my home-away-from-home in Wilmore, Kentucky where I spent two years at Asbury Theological Seminary. I spent a blessed Easter with old friends at my old church, St. Patrick's Anglican. It was a wonderful service with a baptism the way a baptism should be. I especially enjoyed the preaching from Father Peter Matthews. It was a short message but it was one that confronted the reality of death with the stronger reality of the Resurrection. The day became even more interesting when last night it began snowing hard here in the Bluegrass of Kentucky. It only snowed for a while and there wasn't much more than a trace of accumulation but it was the first "white Easter" I had ever seen.

In his message Fr. Matthews talked about the unnaturalness of death. He talked about how the very center of our beings cry out against this reality we all must face. Fr. Matthews didn't preach that we should somehow embrace death as a natural part of life. He said that there is a reason why death seems so wrong to us. That is, we were not made for death but for life. In his message he quoted this poem from Dylan Thomas:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

More Asburians in L.A. . . . Well, actually Pasadena

I got to start my Thanksgiving break by hanging out with a good friend from Asbury, Anna and one of her friends, Allison, who is also in medical school in Texas. Anna is thinking of doing Ph.D. work at Fuller and was visiting there with Joel Green who used to be at Asbury. It was a lot of fun to see Pasadena and just to hang out and catch up.

Asburians in L.A.

Today I unfortunately did not get to worship with my brothers and sisters at Christ’s Church - Anglican, but I did get to go to Korea-town in L.A. and worshiped at the church of one of my classmates. It was a Korean Methodist Church that we went to and I had the great pleasure of meeting an Asbury Seminary graduate, Pastor Park. We chatted for a while and I found that he had gone to Asbury in the nineties and had lived in Larabee. He seemed also to have had a wonderful experience at Asbury as I had. I was impressed with his preaching and the ministry he has in L.A. to mostly Korean-Americans in their twenties. The ministry seems to emphasize the need for community among Christians and today he concluded a sermon series on friendship. He emphasized the need of cultivating friendships that will spur us on spiritually to draw closer to God and do his will. After worship, the church served everyone a very tasty Thanksgiving dinner.

And Now for Something Completely Different

I'll be mountain climbing for the next few days so I wanted to post something before I left. I was thinking about posting a cool quote from John Calvin on holiness, which I will probably post later, but I decided to post something I've wanted to put on here for a long time. I read a lot of good books my last semester at Asbury. But one quote from one book has stayed with me. It is from a book I read in Jerry Walls' class on theodicy called "The Doors of the Sea." It is by Eastern Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart...

Until that final glory, however, the world remains divided between two kingdom, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy. Such faith might never seem credible to someone like Ivan Karamazov, or still the disquiet of his conscience, or give him peace in place of rebellion, but neither is it a faith that his arguments can defeat: for it is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead. Now we are able to rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes - and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, "Behold, I make all things new."

Obviously I am not a Calvinist. Dr. Walls cured me of that. Don't get me wrong, I have great respect for John Calvin and I like many Calvinists. My favorite line is, "God will not unite all of history's many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable." There are things in this world that happen and exist and are contrary to the will of God. It is only a hope in God's victory in the Eschaton that can make sense of the world we live in. I thank God for the tokens of His promise that we receive in this life.

The Making of a Charismatic or “Fan the Flame”

Some of you who know me well know a bit of my Christian journey. I was baptized as an infant at Ontario United Methodist Church in Ontario, Oregon and I asked Jesus to be my Savior when I was 13. I remained a very immature but zealous Christian until college. In college I wanted to party so I decided to become a liberal “Christian.” God by his grace brought me back to the faith with some relationships, some books and with my own inner struggle. For the next few years, while I was a youth pastor at a United Methodist church, I tried to embrace mainstream Evangelicalism. It was actually a very good time where God’s presence was very evident in my life and where I began to ask the Holy Spirit to take control of my prayer. I felt called to seminary and went to Asbury where I was richly blessed by God.

God messed with me a lot during my first year at Asbury. I came out of that year broken. I struggled regularly with fits of depression and anxiety. I told a friend that I felt “weak.” I also struggled with doubt a lot during that time. There were weeks when I had to will myself into being a Christian. But during that time God continued to meet me, I would say, miraculously. When I returned home to Washington from seminary in 2006 I was invited by a good friend and brother in Christ, Josh Monen, to a church service that was a ministry of a local Pentecostal church. The ministry was called ‘Fan the Flame,’ taken from 2nd Timothy 1:6 - “For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands.” I was suffering the first time I went. The service was held in a barn in the countryside not far from my house. We worshipped and there was a short message. Then there was a prayer time. A family went up to be prayed for and I imagined that the service would wind down and I would talk with my friend for a while and go home. But that’s not what happened. As I said, I was suffering. I was standing about halfway back in the congregation, minding my own business, when the guy who had preached, Ross, pointed at me and said something like, “you need prayer.” He couldn’t have been more right. I went up and balled my eyes out before a whole congregation of people (something I had never done before and couldn’t imagine myself doing) while brothers and sisters layed on hands, prayed, prophesied and spoke in tongues. I asked for healing and I received it. I was free of the frightening depression and anxiety that had plagued me for months and it has not returned since. That was the first miracle of that summer. Fan the Flame continued to amaze me throughout the summer. I’ve commented to Josh that Fan the Flame has been the only place where, on a Monday, I was excited about what might happen at church on Sunday that week. There were a number of amazing things that happened that summer but one other thing is worthy of note. I’ve mentioned it on this blog before. One Sunday we had a guest preacher at Fan the Flame. I came to the service as usual not knowing what to expect but excited about what God had in store for that night. After he had preached, the guest preacher began telling random people from the congregation to stand up. He would then lay his hand on their head, pray, speak in tongues and prophesy. I am a skeptic. My natural reaction to every situation is to find a naturalistic explanation. I was skeptical about this preacher. I didn’t want him to prophesy over me because I loved Fan the Flame and I knew that if he said something that wasn’t true, I would be devastated. He walked down the center aisle, pointed at me and said, “stand up!” I obeyed and he began to speak in tongues and prophesy. He said something to the effect of “you have been hurt by a church in the past and you still need to forgive them.” First of all, I was happy that what he said was true. But I was also able to remain skeptical because I thought to myself, “lot’s of people have been hurt by churches - he could probably have said that to three quarters of the people here.” The fact was that I had been hurt by a church - the liberal church I had grown up in. But I thought I had forgiven the people there. After the service I went up to the preacher, Frank, and I let him know that what he said was true but that I felt like I had already forgiven those people. He looked at me and said something like, “I have something more to tell you - you are bitter about that church and that bitterness is affecting your theology.” I was surprised about having been contradicted but two words he used surprised me. The two words were “bitter” and “theology.” As I thought about it, I realized that this guy who didn’t even know me told me the same thing that the guy who knows me best, Blake Brodien, had been telling me for months at seminary. Blake had been telling me that I was bitter about liberalism and this ‘prophet’ now said the same thing. The other word that struck me was “theology.” This struck me because I was studying theology - and bitterness certainly was affecting it. In fact, I’d be willing to say that bitterness about liberalism was the primary force driving my theology. As you can imagine, that is a pretty unhealthy source of theology. As I thought about this true prophet’s words I grew more and more amazed. I was so amazed that I later asked my friend Josh whether he had talked to this preacher about me before the service - he hadn’t. On further thought, another aspect of the words of this prophet which struck me was that what he had to say was what I really needed to hear. At the service, before he prophesied over me, I had thought about what God would probably want to say to me through a prophet. I thought about the obvious struggles with sin in my life. I thought about lust among other things. But the struggle that this prophet hit me with was something that was very real but also something that I was in denial about. Hearing that I was bitter from him made me finally listen up after my best friend had been telling me the same thing for months. I would be lying if I said that the bitterness was gone - it’s not. But I’m aware of it and I realize that stoking it and feeding on it is keeping me in a kind of bondage that God wants me to be free of.

In my experience with Pentecostalism, I have seen little of what seems so problematic to those on the outside. That’s not to say that the problems aren’t real. But in my experience, Pentecostals are a group of people who value intimacy with God above all else, who believe the Bible and who are willing to live self-sacrificial lives. They are also aware of the marvelous and miraculous ways in which God acts in people’s lives today and they expect miracles in their churches. I believe that God honors this openness to His power by doing amazing things in Pentecostal churches.

For All Men From All Sin

As I said in my post yesterday, doing construction gives me a lot of time to think. Today I was thinking about what is central to the faith. I don't claim to have gotten some revelation, but I feel like God was messing with me. I was thinking about what I would be willing to break fellowship with a person over. I became convinced that a lack of commitment to holiness would be one of the first things I would break fellowship over. I would break fellowship over the issue of holiness before a lot of other theological issues that I also feel strongly about.

Holiness is central and many Christians have forgotten it or just don't want to deal with it.

I think that the only kind of Christian there can be is a radical Christian. Anything less and I think a person is risking, "Lord, Lord, did we not prohesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.'" Do we not believe that the road is narrow leading to salvation? Have we forgotten "unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Anyone who is not seeking utter obedience to God is condemned by Christ's words, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching." What was Christ's teaching on sin? To the woman caught in adultery he said, "leave your life of sin." He says the same thing to all of us. Do we love him enough to do it?

Is this holiness easy? Do we just get saved and have no desire to sin? Perhaps some have experienced entire sanctification at conversion but most do not. So what does this mean? It means that the Christian life is a constant battle against the flesh. It means that there are things in us, things that seem to be central to who we are that must be renounced and rejected in obedience to and trust in God. Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Self-denial, cross bearing - not things that feel good but things we MUST do to follow Christ. There is no other way. These are the basic values that liberal "christians" utterly reject and that many other true Christians try to ignore.

We must also trust that it is out of God's love that he calls us to this holiness. If God becomes our portion, that is, if we truely experience the Presence of God in this life then I think that all the things we are called to leave behind will appear weak and ugly compared to what we gain in God.

Did Jesus' death and resurrection free us from needing to be holy or did they allow us to become holy? On a plaque outside of the chapel at Asbury College is written, "Salvation For All Men From All Sin." I believe it. Christ frees us from sin. That is what he calls us to. He didn't just die to give us a ticket to heaven. Heaven can begin now and there is no sin in heaven. 1st John 3:4-6 says, "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him."

Amen

The Blessings of Asbury Part IV: Conclusion

Asbury was a place where I met the Living God. I’m tempted to think that my faith in Christ, which I thought was very real before coming to Asbury, was not real at all. I feel like at Asbury God entered my heart. Before that, faith for me was more about assent to certain doctrinal truths (which is important) and not as much about a vital relationship with my Savior. My time at Asbury has made me much more aware of the presence of God and it has also taught me how radically God will change a person’s life if we allow Him to have control. I said to someone the other day that I feel like Asbury made me a man. I know that sounds funny. I was almost embarrassed to say it but I really believe that it’s true. There was a time when I sang the hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand,” and I wished that I could believe what I was singing. I believed that I had accepted Christ as my savior and I read the Bible and prayed daily but I didn’t trust Him enough for him to be a “solid rock” for me. Now that Christ has become this “solid rock” in my life, I find it easier to face many situations and I’m much less prone to depression and anxiety. My newfound trust in Christ has perhaps most importantly given me a new confidence. I have a confidence now that whatever might happen in my life, no matter how horrible it might be, the only thing that matters is that I am obedient to God. If I am seeking and serving Him then I have nothing to worry about. I believe that for the first time in my life and I revell in the awesome freedom that that confidence brings.

The Blessings of Asbury Part III: Friendship

The most important blessing of Asbury Theological Seminary has been for me friendship. We have debated important issues, we have prayed for one another, we have confessed our sins to one another and we have encouraged one another toward holiness. The most transformative events that happened at Asbury for me, happened in Grice Hall. Those events were the Bible study group meetings, they were the conversations and debates that went into the morning hours, they were the times of heartfelt prayer and of crying out, "why God?" There are too many people who have blessed me greatly at Asbury to talk about but there are two who rise above the others. Those two are Blake Brodien and Ben Douglass.

I met Blake the first night I was at Asbury. We played poker and I remember not liking him much. Somehow we ended up becoming friends. We had Method & Praxis of Theology together and we realized how different we were from each other. Blake had grown up in an evangelical Christian home in the Bible belt. I grew up going to a liberal "church" where the gospel was not preached in the least-churched region of the country. Our diverse backgrounds has often made communication difficult. Our relationship made me realize that many people from "red state" regions underestimate the evils of liberal theology. It also has made me realize that right-wing fundamentalism can be just as bad. Blake could see during that first year of seminary that I was bitter. I was bitter about the liberalism that had withheld Christ from me and the havoc that it wreacked in my life. Blake told me that I needed to overcome that bitterness many times but I did not listen. It took hearing a word of prophecy, almost verbatim what Blake had been saying, from a pentecostal preacher the summer after that year of seminary for God to get my attention. I still have bitterness but now I'm aware of its presence and that it's something God wants me to be free of. Blake also got me through a battle with depression that first year. It was one of the toughest times in my life but Blake was always there to remind me of who God is and to pray for me. Our friendship has only deepened during our second year of seminary and I look forward to lifetime of being a blessing to one another. Blake showed me what true Christian compassion is. Being doctrinally correct and pursuing holiness are two of my most important values. Blake has taught me to add compassion to both my battle for good doctrine and my quest for holiness. Blake also has shown me a great trust in God that I can only hope someday to possess.

I didn't hit it off with Ben as fast as I had with Blake. The first time I really made a connection with Ben was when I was complaining about the problems of liberalism not far into my first year at Asbury. In Ben I found someone who was as aware as I was of the horrendous nature of theological liberalism. This realization led to many discussions about theology. Eventually we formed a "Barnabas Group" of which Blake was also a member along with two other guys. A Barnabas Group is an accountability group which combines Bible study, prayer and confession of sin along with a commitment to five disciplines. The disciplines are commitment to a certain amount of time in Scripture and prayer daily, fasting, tithing, church attendance and Scripture memorization. Our Barnabas group and more specifically my relationship with Ben has been the greatest catalyst in my life for greater holiness. I have been freed from sinful inclinations that I didn't even realize I struggled with and that I certainly never thought I would be free of. Ben has also made me more aware of the spiritual battle we are in. A big part of my growth at Asbury has come from being aware of this battle and knowing that the most important thing for a Christian to do in fighting the forces of darkness is to strive for holiness. This striving for holiness must always be built upon a faithful prayer life and time spent in the word. Ben has also showed to me how joyful and exciting a life can be where a person is seeking holiness. So often holiness is seen as boring or opposed to having fun. Through Ben I have come to see that in seeking holiness there will be many sacrifices and struggles but that He whom we are seeking to obey is so much greater than anything we might have to leave behind in our quest. Jesus says that we must deny ourselves to follow Him. Many Christians today seem not to want to hear this. Ben embraces Christian self-denial whole-heartedly and he has helped me to also.

The Blessings of Asbury Part II: Classes and Professors

If you go to any school or educational institution you will hear people complain. We love to complain about the food in the cafeteria and the weird guy who lives upstairs in the dorm. We also love to complain about classes. I can join in complaining about some of the classes here. KCW and VOM were both wastes of time. But I've also had some amazingly good classes here:

COURSES

Church History 1 & 2 with Dr. Steven O'Malley. I love history and these classes did more to inform me on what it means to be Christian, perhaps more than any others that I took. Dr. O'Malley is very interested in Luther and Pietism among other things and his lectures on these topics were quite good. One of our biggest problems in the church is that we don't know where we came from and many of us think that it's not important. I think if more people took classes like these two, many of our disagreements would disappear if people had the humility to admit their mistakes. I think our willingness to compromise with our decadent culture on doctrine and practice would also decrease if we were all more mindful of the holiness and sacrifice seen in so many of the Saints of the Church.

The Gospel of Matthew with Dr. David Bauer. One thing Asbury has shown me is that people can be extremely intelligent and learned and still believe the Bible. Dr. Bauer is a prime example of this. This class has helped me to catch more of what is going on in Scripture.

Old Testament with Dr. Lawson Stone. I had no idea of how little I knew about the Old Testament before I took this class. The history I learned in this course was intriguing. Dr. Stone also provided a great amount of often not-so-appropriate humor to keep the class interesting. I also like Stone because he is very critical of postmodernism and isn't embarrassed about being a conservative.

Suffering, Tragedy and the Christian Faith with Dr. Jerry Walls. This is the best class I have ever taken. The readings were great and the class discussion was very instructive. The reading included an overview of modern attempts to deal with evil from the likes of Leibniz, Rousseau, Voltaire, Kant and Nietzsche among others. I came out of that portion of the course with a better understanding of the thought of those philosophers than an undergraduate philosophy course plus a lot of my own reading could give me. We reviewed some theodicies such as Plantinga's and then read a book that has changed my life: The Doors of the Sea by Orthodox writer David Bentley Hart. This book has revolutionized the way I look at the problem of evil. I would say that this course should be required but that would probably ruin it.

PROFESSORS

Dr. Steven O'Malley: Dr. O'Malley is perhaps the kindest and most humble Christian man I know. I could learn a lot from his patience and thoughtfulness in dealing with ideas. He always tries to see the best in people and he is very optimistic when it comes to what God is doing in the world. Optimism, and I'll admit it - humility, are not my strong points so I need to be around people like Dr. O'Malley to set me right. I took Church History 1 & 2, Sacraments in History and The Theology of John Calvin with Dr. O'Malley.

Dr. Jerry Walls: Dr. Walls is a clear-thinking intellectual with a hunger for truth. He doesn't compromise with the lack of logic that is prevalent in liberalism and postmodern thought. He actually believes in the law of non-contradiction which in this day and age is a breath of fresh air. Dr. Walls' classes engage my mind fully and inspire me to use my intellect to its full potential. If I could, I would take every class he offered.

In some ways Dr. O'Malley and Dr. Walls are opposites. My natural inclinations certainly lean toward the ways in which Walls thinks and confronts the world. If there were more men like Dr. Walls in the church I would be much more optimistic about it. But I also know that I have a lot to learn from men like Dr. O'Malley. Even though things may look dark, he joyfully trusts God and believes that He is working even in the midst of those with whom we disagree.

The Blessings of Asbury Part I: St. Patrick's Church

Now that finals are winding down and as I prepare to leave Asbury, I want to reflect on the amazing blessings I have received from God at this place. I have been at the seminary for almost two years now and my life has been transformed more profoundly in this time than any other equivalent period of my life. The first subject I will write on is the church I have attended almost the whole time I have been here. I found St. Patrick's church, thanks to my friend Ed, the third week I was at Asbury. The three great blessings of St. Patrick's I want to concentrate on are: St. Patrick's has allowed me to find God in the Eucharist and the liturgy; the preaching of our priest, Father Peter Matthews; and last but not least, the community at St. Patrick's - the people I've met in this church.

I Eucharist and Liturgy
Before I came to Asbury I had read some Catholic and Orthodox authors, particularly Chesterton, a Kempis and Dostoyevsky, which made me more open to those traditions. I had also become friends with a Catholic guy, who had great knowledge of the Fathers and an obvious devotion to Christ, at the book store I worked at in Vancouver, Wash. So when I came to Asbury I was ready to embrace liturgy and to have my understanding of the eucharist changed. St. Patrick's has been the perfect classroom to learn more about the liturgy. As my priest has said, "Liturgical prayer forces me to pray in line with the redemptive historical narrative of scripture. Liturgical prayer forces me to pray in line with God's will disclosed in scripture and the living tradition of the Church." I have also come to see that Scripture and the Church through the ages were serious when they said that the Presence of Christ is really in the eucharist. When you think of how God has chosen to relate to man, that is, incarnationally in His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, then it makes sense that God would continue to meet us materially. This happens in the eucharist. I believe that God meets me every week substantially there. I find that I have a hunger for it and and am fed spiritually each week when I take the true Body and Blood of Christ in the eucharist.

II The Preaching of Father Peter Matthews
I have been greatly blessed by the preaching of Father Matthews. His preaching is authentic and doesn't have the off-putting quality of some highly polished mega-church style sermons. Peter preaches from Scripture and he gives the word of God the highest authority in his sermons. He also often cites personal experience in his sermons which makes them easier to connect to our own lives. I wish that I would have taken notes more often at St. Patrick's but one sermon I do remember was on the line from the Lord's prayers, "Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven." Peter defined the Kingdom as God's reign. He said that this was not a prayer of resignation like in Gethsemane and that Jesus isn't talking about us going to Heaven but about Heaven coming to us. I loved Peter's image of Heaven being right on the other side of a curtain, that it is real and immanent. This imagery made me think of an experience I once had when I was deep in prayer. I suddenly became profoundly aware of God's presence behind every object in the room, I felt that there was a kind of brightness behind the very blanket on my bed which I clutched as I prayed. It was one of the most mystical experiences I've ever had and I thank God for it. Another good point Peter made was that we don't build the Kingdom of God, God does. We are to be a witness to the Kingdom God has built and is building. We are to live lives that show what it looks like when God is in charge. Peter said in this sermon that discontentment comes from our placing our longing for hope and fulfillment in temporal things when our longing for hope should be placed on the Kingdom of God. He identified some basic longings that are fulfilled when the curtain is pulled back and the Kingdom is revealed, our longings for justice, beauty and for relationship and that these are all fulfilled in God.

III The Community
When I went on a church retreat earlier this year I became much more aware of how amazing the congregation at St. Patrick's is. We have a congregation of interesting people of diverse backgrounds who know how to have a good time and seek to serve the Lord and one another. It's been great going to church with some seminary people I've gotten to know better. Dr. Tsoukalas and his wife Sandy Richter go to St. Pat's and I've gotten to know him a little better. It has been interesting to hear him talk of the problems of postmodernism and how naively it has been embraced in many Christian circles. He encouraged me not to give up on Protestantism just yet and that people who will stand firm for doctrine should stay and fight - so that's what I'm doing. Another one of my favorite people at St. Pat's is Hubert who is a Greek professor at the University of Kentucky. It's great to see a committed Christian in the context of the secular university and I have been greatly impressed by his wisdom and great knowledge of a diversity of topics. I regret not having gotten to know many of my brothers and sisters at St. Patrick's church better.