Packer on Images in ‘Knowing God’
I reread J. I. Packer’s classic Knowing God last week for the first time since my teenage years. It was an overlong return, and well worth the read. Something I had not recalled, and was pleasantly surprised to find, was the Anglican Packer’s rejection of the use of images of God in worship. The edition of Knowing God I reread was from 1993, and Packer had faced so much pushback on his original position that he included an additional section in that chapter explaining why he had not changed his mind in the 20 years since the book’s original publication. So, evidently, this was a significant enough feature of the book to have warranted a lot of attention, and yet I had managed to forget it. The thing I was delighted to find in Packer’s argument was that his conclusion generally overlapped with my own: Images of God, including depictions of Christ, should not be used in worship; ambivalence in regards to the appropriateness of images of God for didactic purposes outside of worship; and finding prudent uses of images of God in art limited but acceptable.
Packer lays out his argument in these ways…
An 11th Way Pastors Can Encourage Church Attendance
The Gospel Coalition published an article by Baptist pastor Phil Newton called “10 Ways Pastors Can Encourage Church Attendance.” Take one guess which reason fails to make the cut.
The word “sabbath” never even appears in the article, much less the biblical idea that perhaps pastors can encourage church attendance by teaching that it is a Christian duty.
WSC 60: How is the sabbath to be sanctified? The sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.
I know that TGC is an ecumenical organization, but where are its Presbyterians on this?
Additional Warrants for Abolition from the Westminster Larger Catechism
I have written previously on how the teachings of the Westminster Confession and Catechisms proscribed chattel slavery as practiced in colonial and Antebellum America. An additional basis for this position was brought to my attention in John Murray’s excellent book on Christian ethics, Principles of Conduct. Murray includes a brilliant chapter on the ethics of labor and its implications for slavery…
A Quick Defense of Abolition from the Westminster Standards
I have recently been reading a good bit of 19th- century American Presbyterian history. Many Presbyterian ministers in both the Antebellum and Post-War South defended the institution of American slavery. Prominent Southern theologian Robert Dabney defended his church’s position by asserting that the Westminster Confession and Catechisms were silent on the issue, so it would be inappropriate for the church to take a definite stand on the rightness or wrongness of slavery. This is incorrect. While neither the WCF and WLC explicitly state, “Slavery is right/wrong,” they both contain several doctrinal points which should have led Antebellum Presbyterians to condemn the institution of chattel slavery as sinful.
First, WLC 142 states that the 8th Commandment forbids “man-stealing…
On Exceptions and Practice
When ministers are granted exceptions to their church’s confessional standards the church is allowing personal disagreement with its doctrine on the part of the minister. In considering the question of exceptions, I have been looking at the freedom of the minister to teach the exceptions granted to him. An error sometimes made is the ordaining presbytery attempting to prohibit the minister from teaching his own views. But often an opposite and equal error occurs: the minister believes that since he is granted an exception from the church’s doctrine, his congregation does not have to practice the church’s doctrine.
Let me use my church, the EPC, as an example. The congregations of the EPC follow the denomination’s constitution, which includes the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. These confessional standards inform and determine the practice of the church. Exceptions to the confessional standards are exceptions of personal belief when ministers take their ordination vows. There is no element in that process to allow congregations, the constituent parts of the denomination, to institutionally reject the constitution of the church. Just as a presbytery may not bind the conscience of a minister when granting an exception, the minister may not bind his congregation to his disagreements with the church’s doctrine…
