Our national shame

According to the Christian Institute’s website, 29-year old Abby Johnson has recently resigned as director of an abortion clinic. The Planned Parenthood centre in Bryan, Texas has suddenly become the subject of widespread news reporting as a result.

 Ms Johnson’s resignation, might have gone unnoticed, except for the fact that she left the clinic to join the anti-abortion group Coalition for Life, which has a centre close to her former workplace, and regularly holds vigils of prayer outside her former offices. Such a marked turnaround is rare, and has ignited fresh debate on the ethics and morality of abortion.

 One of eight abortion workers to have left the industry in the past two months, Ms Johnson’s change of heart came about by watching an ultrasound of an abortion being carried out. ‘I can’t do this anymore’ was her response.

 The report of this incident appeared on the web just as research was published to show that more abortions are being carried out in Britain than any other country in Europe. That’s right – we are now the abortion capital of Europe, with almost 220,000 abortions carried out in Britain in 2007, more than the combined total of Germany and Spain in the same period.

 And as if that were not bad enough, our country also topped the number of abortion carried out among girls under twenty years of age. While the government spends millions of pounds on its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, abortion statistics continue to rise. Something is not right somewhere.

 Other, related, research is not any more encouraging. According to the University of London, more women are delaying pregnancy until their 30s and 40s, and nine out of ten women who discover that they are carrying a child with Down’s Syndrome opt for an abortion. Last year, that meant that an average of three children with Down’s Syndrome were aborted every day. And these are only the official figures – Down’s research groups question whether the incidence of abortion is that low.

 The statistics make appalling and depressing reading. They reflect a society living in a moral vacuum, spiraling out of control. If this is where evolution has brought us, then we are evolving downwards. Of all the creatures in God’s animate creation, man is the most dignified – yet we are the only creatures who readily legislate for the killing of our offspring.

 I realize that there are many reasons why I should not speak to this debate. After all, I have never had a child, and nor will I ever carry one. What right do I have to speak to women about what they should do with their bodies?

Nothing is as simple as it appears, of course. This is not a debate about us, even if it often becomes that. This is a debate about others – about the most vulnerable others, about the unborn others, about the others who are dependent upon us for health, wealth and happiness. It is about the silent holocaust of an unseen multitude who cannot speak for themselves, and whose lives are as precious in God’s sight as our own.

 For the past generation, since abortion was legalized in the United Kingdom, we have been adept at disguising truth with statistics and jargon. We prefer to talk about the termination of pregnancy than the killing of an unborn child. I believe in the termination of pregnancy. I believe that pregnancy should terminate in birth and in life. I don’t believe that pregnancy should go on forever; but neither do I believe that the right to control its end belongs absolutely to us.

 Yet the disguising of the facts continues – this is a foetus, a potential child, not really a human being. But that is not a logic we apply at any other stage of life. A child is only a potential adult, and I am a potential geriatric. But the dignity of my human life, and the value of my existence is not measured in terms of what I may yet become, but by what I have been since the moment of my conception.

 And, as with all cases of ethics and morality, there are always the issues that have the potential to cloud the truth – the pregnancy being a result of rape, the discovery of some condition or syndrome, the life situation of the mother. But do we really think it is better to kill the child for someone else’s sin, or because the child does not match our expectations, or because we think the mother cannot cope? Is the second wrong justified by the first?

 If we are not prepared to evaluate all human life, from conception to death, as being sacred and precious, then we have truly become worse than animals. Our morality has disintegrated the moment we arrogate to ourselves the right to determine who shall be exterminated at our convenience.

 The story of Abby Johnson is a brave one, one that strips bare the art of the abortionist and reminds us of its barbarism, its cruelty and its brutality. But braver still are the myriad stories posted on the internet of mothers who went through with ‘the procedure’ and are carrying the emotional and physical scars of having aborted a baby under pressure from family or from medical professionals. In the debate about abortion, these are the statistics that are rarely told.

Remembering the Fallen?

The older I get, the more I appreciate the deep significance of Remembrance Day services. Growing up in the Free Church in Stornoway in the 60s and 70s, such services were not the staple of our diet – they happened in other churches, and we were trained to be deeply suspicious of everything that went on in churches other than our own.

But it has been my privilege over the past ten years or so regularly to conduct a short service of worship on Remembrance Sunday at local war memorials. I abhor the pietism that refuses to hold such services on a Sunday; our men fought and died in the trenches of Europe every day of the week, and it is only fitting that we should employ the context of worship to give thanks for their sacrifice. If a wake can be justified on a Sabbath evening, a service of remembrance can be justified on a Sabbath morning.

In the business of war, at least, those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it, and nothing is more eloquent than the names of those who left our villages all these years ago never to return. It is an insult to their memory, their bravery and their self-giving to think there is some virtue in not acknowledging their bravery and their service for a cause more noble than life itself.

How ironic, therefore, that the BBC should broadcast its first instalment of ‘A History of Scotland’ on Remembrance Day. Neil Oliver, who presented the programme, made no attempt to disguise his contempt for our Covenanting forebears and their religious fundamentalism. At least the BBC is being consistent. All our problems as a nation, apparently, are down to our religion.

The signing of the National Covenant in 1638 was one of the defining moments of our Scottish history. It was a national pledge of devotion to God, a recognition that there is a sovereign greater than the greatest parliaments of our land. In its historical context, it was undergirded by both political and religious considerations, and precipitated civil war throughout the kingdom.

But the religious dimension is not unimportant. The attempt to force a Prayer Book on the Presbyterian Church in Scotland showed how half-baked the Reformation had been south of the border. Scotland was different; Scotland recognized the important principle of the priesthood of all believers, however much Presbyterianism has managed to create its own hierarchies and control freaks. The democratization of Scotland owes no small debt to the idea, birthed in the church, that in Christ all social distinctions are dissolved, and the church is a community of equals.

The National Covenant is an important milestone in the principle of spiritual independence, woven into so much subsequent Scottish history. The Scottish people would not allow an earthly monarch to dictate the terms on which the church would be governed. Their covenant – their ‘contract with God’ as Neil Oliver put it – was a national commitment to the rule of Christ in his church through the Bible – ‘we believe with our hearts, confess with our mouths, subscribe with our hands, and constantly affirm, before God and the whole world, that this only is the true Christian faith and religion, pleasing God, and bringing salvation to man, which now is, by the mercy of God, revealed to the world by the preaching of the blessed evangel; and is received, believed, and defended by many and sundry notable kirks and realms, but chiefly by the kirk of Scotland…’

Based on biblical covenants between Israel and God, the National Covenant was not, and is not, in any sense, politically correct. It affirms the commitment of Scotland to a religion grounded on the Bible and embraced by the Church. That is nothing if not the logical outworking of the Reformation; Calvin’s doctrine of the church, for example, is that outside of it there is no ordinary possibility of salvation; if God is our Father, the church is our Mother, and we ought to revere her as such.

The BBC may dismiss all this as ‘extremism, fundamentalism and madness’, and Neil Oliver may intone his delight that ‘Once this was God’s country; it’s not any more’, but perhaps the issues at stake are higher than we realize. After all, hundreds of ordinary Scots were willing to give their lives throughout the seventeenth century in defence of the principles embodied within the National Covenant.

The Killing Times following this commitment were among the bloodiest Scotland has ever seen. Ministers who refused to submit to an imposed liturgy in worship conducted their services in the open air and could be put to death without any trial.

Yet Scotland’s Covenanting history is all but forgotten. Do our young people today know of Margaret Wilson and Margaret McLoughlin, tied to stakes and drowned in the Solway Firth for their loyalty to the principles of the Covenant? Or of John Brown of Priesthill in Ayrshire, shot by Graham of Claverhouse in front of his wife and children simply for being a Bible believing Presbyterian?

The National Covenant was followed by the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant some five years later. Of it, Burns wrote:

The Solemn League and Covenant
Cost Scotland blood — cost Scotland tears;
But it seal'd Freedom's sacred cause—
If thou'rt slave, indulge thy sneers.

Today’s Scotland is self-evidently not in slavery. For that reason, it is right to honour our glorious fallen who, for our tomorrow, gave their today. But there is another liberty woven into our history – the liberty of a church and a nation to honour God through the principles of his Word. In our honouring of the dead of the past, and what they secured for us, let us not dismiss the Covenanters as extremists who should have known better. For some of us, they are our heroes too.

The Theology of John Calvin

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This lecture on John Calvin was delivered in Stornoway on 11 November 2009 as a Presbytery event to commemorate the birth of John Calvin. By a happy coincidence, two Korean pastors, Chang Won Shu (who studied at the Free Church College with me) and Young Bok Kim, members of the Kyoungi Presbytery in Seoul, South Korea, with whom the Western Isles Presbytery is twinned, were present on the occasion. 

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Death of Colin Peckham

I received my copy of Adventures of Faith: Colin Peckham's story just yesterday, and made it my bedtime reading last night. Colin and Mary defined the work of the Faith Mission in the latter part of the twentieth century, and it was our privilege to have them visit us at our home.

It was with a sense of shock, therefore, that I learned today of Colin's sudden death yesterday. Having served his generation by the will of God, he has fallen asleep in Jesus. May God bless his life's work, and continue to uphold his family.

One of Heaven's Jewels

The nineteenth century was a remarkable period in the life of the Scottish Presbyterian churches. Marked by divisions and ecclesiastical adjustments, it threw up some of the brightest and best preachers of the gospel. A period of social and political change, as well as a period of great industrial advance, it was also a period of religious revival; in many ways it was the best of times, even if in other ways it was the worst of times.

One of the great luminaries of the Highland evangelical pulpit was Archie Cook, whose biography has just been published by Norman Campbell, local BBC journalist. One of Heaven’s Jewels: Rev Archibald Cook of Daviot and the (Free) North Church, Inverness tells the remarkable story of a remarkable Scottish minister.

Archie Cook was born in Arran in 1788. Hardly known today as a centre of vibrant evangelicalism, it was not always so in Arran: from the beginning of the nineteenth century it was the theatre of some remarkable works of God. Many young people became Christians, and Archie Cook and his brother Finlay, himself to become equally notable in the history of the church in Scotland (and not least in Lewis, where he ministered for a time in Ness), were among these.

The separatist movement, a kind of lay revolt against compromise in the wider denomination, was evident in Arran at the time, as it was to raise its head in the northern Highlands at a later period. The Cooks were in sympathy with the leaders of the movement, but needed the imprimatur of the Church authorities in order to prosecute their divinity studies. Such tensions began early in Archie Cook’s life and marked virtually the whole of his ministry.

Norman’s biography of Cook is not just the story of its subject. He has meticulously researched the other influences on Cook’s life, such as the preaching of John Love in Glasgow, under whose ministry he sat as a student. It is an interesting phenomena that divinity students learn as much from the churches they attend as from the Colleges they attend – more, perhaps at times – and, as Norman points out ‘Love’s own influence on the rising generation of Highland-born evangelical divinity students was to be significant’ (p43).

The blend of expository ministry, experiential piety and missionary zeal which characterized Love made a great impact on Cook. In a later chapter on the influences of Love’s preaching on Cook, Norman suggests that it was not only in matter but in style that Cook emulated his mentor, developing a ‘searching’ kind of ministry (p210). In this sense, for both Love and Cook, the Bible was not just a book to be read, but a book to be read by.

From 1822-37, Cook ministered in the Berriedale mission in Caithness. From the beginning of the century it had been a seed-bed of Calvinistic piety. Preaching in both Gaelic and English, Cook’s felicitous and searching sermons impacted the population, while at the same time angered the landowners. These were the pre-Disruption days, in which Church and State clashed over the question of the Church’s spiritual independence. Vilified in print and hated by proprietors, Cook nevertheless exercised a faithful and fruitful ministry which ended with his translation to the North Church in Inverness.

This story is one of the core elements of the biography, and Norman has given us a treat in his account of the origin of one of the prime Free Church congregations in the Highlands – the Free North Church Inverness. Originally the result of a split with the East Church, the North Church erected a building which still stands on Chapel Street (and is used by the Pentecostal Church). In these days, of course, the congregation belonged to the Established Church, but joined the Free Church in 1843, and worshipped in the original building for half a century before the construction of the present Free North building on the banks of the River Ness.

Here again was an instance of a highly significant church coming into existence as the result of personal disagreements over the settlement of a minister. His ministry in the new congregation from 1837-44 was birthed in controversy and overshadowed by it. Yet Cook himself was to cite the formation of the Free North congregation as an example of good coming out of evil, an example of God’s sovereignty over human mischief.  ‘…who can tell what may be in the secret purpose concerning it’ he said of the mission church planned by another Inverness congregation in 1863 (p81); and in all church movements the same is true.

There is a salutary lesson here for all readers of Scottish church history, from the Reformation to the present, who can so easily despair of the ease with which Christians split from each other, and choose to worship and work apart. As Cook testified, God may have a secret purpose in it all; and while our default position ought to be unity, Providence may well ordain such unity to be enjoyed in diversity rather than in organizational harmony.

Cook, always approached by other Highland congregations to serve as their pastor, accepted a call to Daviot in 1844. A non-intrusion case in Daviot (‘the main non-Intrusion case in the Highlands during the Ten Years Conflict’ according to Norman – p105) was one of the main causes of the Disruption. The Free Church of Scotland was only one year old when Cook was called to a pastorate which had been torn apart by the conflicting interests of landowners, church members and separatists.

Yet Cook was also entering into an area of the Highlands which had been remarkably blessed with a long succession of evangelical influences, and his arrival ‘consolidated that evangelical impulse’ (p115). As well as recording some of the main incidents during the Daviot years, Norman devotes a lot of space to related matters: separatist controversies, Union negotiations, the ‘lost friendship’ between Cook and Jonathan Anderson of Glasgow, the tradition of communion seasons and Cook’s role in them.

One of the most illuminating chapters is the discussion of Archie Cook’s style and method of preaching (chapter 12). By his own admission Norman is here working with slender apparatus, but his analysis is as enlightening as it is informative. Cook’s theological emphases, his use of imagery, his treatment of assurance and the gospel offer – these are issues discussed still, and they are still the stuff of evangelical preaching.

Cook’s death in 1865 removed from the Scottish church a preacher of personal piety and faithful biblical application. There is a famine in the land of such preachers today. Norman’s warm blend of academic research and theological insight makes the telling of Archie Cook’s story more than a biography: it is a call to remember our heritage and to awaken to our need. Cook is one of the heroes of our past, and Norman is to be congratulated on producing such a fine biography.

One of the best lines in the whole work, in which Norman is emphasizing the stories that lingered long in Caithness after Cook’s ministry there, is this one: ‘One old lady once expressed approval of a young minister … ‘just because he coughed like Archie Cook’ (p64). That’s the danger with heroes – sometimes it is enough to cough like them. But that can never be enough; the church’s need is not men who will ape the distinctives of those whom they admire, but will, like the heroes themselves, be single-minded in their passion for God’s glory and the proclamation of his word.

One of Heaven’s Jewels is self-published and is priced at £19.99 (278pp), is attractively bound and beautifully illustrated, and is sold in aid of Bethesda Home and Hospice. It is available at the Baltic Bookshop, Stornoway, Borders Inverness, the Free Church bookshop, the FP Bookroom, and Harris Christian Bookshop. It can be ordered online from the Bethesda Hospice website at http://shop.bethesdahospice.co.uk.

 

The Triune God - Larger Catechism (3)

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What is the chief end of man?

One of the most coveted church prizes of my youth was the Bible that was the reward for repeating the whole of the Shorter Catechism at a single sitting. That meant a straight run through all 107 questions and answers which make up one of the most important and fundamental documents produced out of the Westminster Assembly of Divines which met in London in the seventeenth century.

I still remember the day when passed that particular rubicon. I have to confess that I stumbled slightly at one or two of the Catechism answers, but I had a gracious examiner. Even for a precocious budding theologian like myself it was quite a challenge; the words and concepts of the Catechism are hardly the stuff of everyday speech. A young man’s mind can struggle to remember the benefits which in this life flow from justification, adoption and sanctification, or what is required and forbidden in all the commandments.

Yet in many ways I have learned little beyond the theological content of the Catechism. As BB Warfield put it, Shorter Catechism boys tend to grow into Shorter Catechism men, and the habit of committing to memory, as we did in Sunday School and in some school classes too, the questions and answers of the Catechism, bears its own unique fruit. Theological ideas are still lodged in my brain, ideas which are the stuff of my faith and the language of my preaching.

Of course, it was not the Shorter Catechism we should have been learning, but the Larger. In many ways it was a stroke of genius for the Westminster Assembly, called by Parliament to address issues of uniformity of faith and practice throughout the land, to produce two books of questions and answers for instruction in the faith. The Larger Catechism was meant to be the standard; the Shorter a concession.

But as one writer at the time put it, it is difficult to serve up both meat and milk in the same dish; and while the Larger Catechism (the meat) discusses aspects of doctrine more fully and gives greater emphasis to the concept of the church, the Shorter (the milk) gives basic instruction in the main theological emphases of the Reformed faith.

I have always been intrigued at what the Westminster Divines considered necessary to include in such a manual of basic theological instruction. The structure of the Catechisms are similar: first, questions on what we believe, second, questions expounding the ten commandments, and third, questions expounding the Lord’s Prayer.

 A third of the Shorter Catechism, in other words, ranges over the foundational teachings of the Bible – what we believe about God, about creation, about man and the fall, about God’s provision of a Redeemer, about what it means to be saved, and what we believe about the future. Another third expounds our duty before God. This, the Catechism says, is ‘summarily comprehended’ (that is one phrase I never forgot) in the ten commandments, so each commandment is dissected as to its meaning, its requirements and its prohibitions. Finally, there is an exposition of the Lord’s Prayer, since prayer is the chief evidence of an effective response to God’s revelation; having heard God speak, we then speak to him.

 I don’t know if catechetical instruction is recommended by today’s educationalists, but, even if it were, I doubt that this is the kind of catechism we would write for today’s young people. It is no longer fashionable, even in some evangelical circles, to believe that the ten commandments is the rule of our lives, and such detailed exposition of the Decalogue would be dismissed as mere legalism.

More basic still is the fact that much modern evangelicalism has become deliberately anti-intellectual. The God channel is full of programmes that use Christianity to promote either the feel-good factor or the miracle factor. Few productions help us to gird up the loins of our mind, to think through doctrine, or to delve deep into the faith of our fathers.

 And the change reveals itself in other ways too. To be an effective church in the modern day, one has to be involved in schemes and programmes and mercy ministries of different kinds. To be sure, the people of God are well placed to help those whose lives are broken in this fallen world, and nothing is more tragic if somehow there is a barrier between the message of the Church and the very people Christ came to save.

 Yet if we reach out at the expense of dumbing down the message, or think we have done it all when we have helped people out of their personal mess, we are much mistaken. Faith has to feed upon truth; and the reality is that nothing will make Christians stronger in their faith, and more ready to engage in mercy ministries, than to drink in the doctrine of God’s Word. Nothing will teach us our need, or show us God’s provision, or teach us to live, quite like theology. It’s a fatal simplicism to prefer Jesus to theology. There is no knowing the Eternal Word apart from the written Word.

 An interesting thing happens when Paul is in prison, reflecting on his final life moments and anticipating the glories of Heaven. He counsels Timothy to bring him his books. He doesn’t want a moment to be wasted. He knows the truth of preparing for death through knowing his truth. Maybe Charles Hodge went too far when he said that a knowledge of Greek grammar is the best preparation for death – but the thought is the same. How can we die well unless we know our Bibles, and know the God of the Bible well?

 I hope that is the legacy of all my Shorter Catechism learning – that it will help me to live well, to preach well, and to die well. Its insights and teachings challenge the shallow, vacuous evangelicalism of our modern age, and its expositions of the law remind us of the importance of the ten commandments for modern society.

 Above all, it brings us back to ultimate meaning and personal fulfillment right at the outset, as it asks that question that few ask now: ‘What is the chief end of man?’ What is the purpose and meaning of our lives? What are we all for? What is it that ought to drive us and motivate us and thrill us and inspire us day by day and moment by moment? What on earth is my life about?

 The Catechism’s answer is brilliant. Man’s chief purpose, in the twenty-first century as in every century, is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. We may re-interpret that, or dismiss it, or ignore it – but when all is said and done, that still remains the most illuminating statement about the nature of human life anywhere written outside of the Bible.