“And they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us.” (Matthew 1:23; Isaiah 7:14). “And his name shall be called . . . Mighty God.” Isaiah 9:6
A Christmas “Fairy-Tale”?
Calvinist Contact on October 5 reported in a special insert, on the enthusiastic opening of t he new King’s College in Edmonton, Canada. Main speaker for the occasion was Professor Richard J. Mouw of Calvin College’s Philosophy Department. In a charming style he related the opening of the College to the coming of Christ the King as anticipated in the prophets and recounted in the gospels. Suggesting that he had gotten his idea from Abraham Kuyper’s speech of 99 years ago at the opening of the Free University at Amsterdam, Professor Mouw said, “It is this same vision of the kingship of the man from Nazareth which has informed and inspired the dreams and plans and prayers which have led up to this celebration today.” He saw this emphasis explicitly expressed in the name, “King’s College.” In working out this theme he saw in “Jesus . . . the fulfillment of the deepest yearnings of the human species with regard to authority, power and kingship, to be understood especially by being compared with the popular fairy stories of J. R.R. Tolkien. According to Tolkien, ‘The Gospel itself is a fairy–story of sorts.’” “Like the fairy-story the Gospel depicts a catastrophic turn of events.” “Deliverance from this tragic situation seems virtually impossible –but, lo and behold, the rescuer appears on the scene.” “Tolkien does not mean to deny the historical truth of the Biblical record,” for he says that the Gospel “story is supreme: and it is true.” Dr. Mouw then explains:
The relationship of Christ to the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament can, I think, be understood as a kind of fairy–tale that has come true. In the Old Testament the children of Israel experience a long series of political disillusionments. They have high standards and expectations with respect to the office of kingship, as can be. seen in Psalm 72, where the King is described as being “like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth.” But these high hopes and expectations were regularly frustrated. Israel experienced many instances of political scandal and corruption. Her kings were all too obviously frail and sinful human specimens.
But in the midst of this kind of political disillusionment, an interesting thing happens. Rather than falling into utter despair over the political process, the Old Testament believers, and especially the prophets, engage in a kind of imaginative wishing.
They began to weave a tale of political fulfillment and satisfaction. They began to ask questions about what is the proper shape of political hope.
The process of questioning goes something like this. “What would it be like if one of these days the Lord God would send us a real king? What would it be like if we were to wake up some fine morning and find out that our political warfare has ended, that God has put a stop to political scandals and rivalries, that there will be no more Watergates or Koreagates or Ottawagates? What would it be like if some fine morning we would awaken to the announcement that unto us a child has been born, and unto us a son has been given, and that the government will rest upon his shoulders, and his very name will be Wonderful, Counselor and Prince of Peace, and of the increase of his government and of his peace there will be no end? What would it be like if the Lord God would send us a real King . . . a king who would feed his flock like a shepherd, who would gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and who would gently lead those who are with young?”
Jesus is that king. Jesus is the promised one of Israel. Jesus is the fulfillment of the political fairy–tale which was woven–under the guidance of the Holy Spirit—out of the political hopes and fears of the Old Testament believing community.
A Twisted Gospel
It must be pointed out that this characterization of Christ’s coming in Old Testament Prophecy and New Testament fulfillment as a “fairy-tale,” although it would not deny its factuality, makes it a product of man’s dreams and imagination instead of the direct revelation of God. In presenting it in that way it really perverts in typically Liberal tradition, everything the Bible teaches about Christ’s coming. The prophecies of His coming were completely different from, in fact, totally opposed to the imaginative fairy-tales or “myths” of the ancient Greeks, those of Anderson or Grimm which we read as children, or those of Tolkien which some of us enjoy today. The Apostle Peter for example makes that difference as explicit as words can express it. He wrote, “For we did not follow cunningly devised fables (the Greek word is ‘myths’) when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16) and he proceeds a little later to say of Biblical prophecy “For no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” (21). Note that instead ot explaining this as the projection of human imagination, “a political fairy-tale . . . woven . . . under the guidance of the Holy Spirit,” as the speaker did, the Bible insists of on pointing out the opposition bet ween men and their imagined “fairy-tales,” political and otherwise and what God revealed. That same point is repeatedly stressed by God’s prophets. The only prophets whose visions were produced in the way described in the speech, as the imaginary products of themselves or the community were the false prophets. The writings of Jeremiah abound in the Divine denunciations of the men who in the name of God “prophecy . . . a lying vision . . . the deceit of their own heart.” (Jer. 14:14; cf. 23:25; 27:9, 29:9, etc. Compare also Ezekiel 13)
The predictions of the coming of Christ, far from being the imaginative wishing of the prophets, as the speech described them, were in fact, as the Apostle Peter explicitly stated, not even understood by the men through whom God revealed them. He wrote, “Concerning which salvation, the prophets sought and searched diligently … searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them” (1 Peter 1:10,11).
No one, sinner, saint—or angel, could have imagined what God did. Notice too how the King’s College speech in its humanistic re–write of the history pointedly skips the name of “Mighty God” attributed in the prophecy to the Messiah, holding him up simply as the “man from Nazareth.”
Kuyper’s Warning
It is significant that no one saw and pointed out more clearly the danger of such humanistic distortions of the Biblical teaching of Christ’s Kingship than Abraham Kuyper. In the introduction to his great work, Pro Rege he warned against the notion that one could promote “Kingdom” enterprises by following “Christian principles” instead of personally surrendering to and serving Christ the King. He dealt with the danger even more directly in his comments on Lord‘s Day XI of the Heidelberg Catechism (E Vato I, p. 262–264) dealing with the name of Jesus (Matt. 1:21), who “shall save His people from their sins”:
Jesus wants nothing of all the praise and honor (of men) for the excellence of His person and ideas with all admiration of the philosophers for the simplicity of His means to recreate mankind, and even with all profound learning regarding the key to world history which is in His cross. He was not for that and He did not come for that. He seeks sinners and will save His people from their sins. Accordingly, every movement in the church that has gone in for all kinds of scholarly culture and fine speculation has irretrievably run dead as a stream in the sand; and life has always returned to the church among the “children” and the “miserable” who by the light of the Spirit have learned to acknowledge themselves as lost sinners worthy of condemnation.
In fact, the name Jesus breaks through all the fences of your imagination and pride and throws you down as a sinner in the dust.
Christ does not say that He does not bring well-being in an external way. But that other follows. That is not the starting point. That is not where He takes hold of you. What brings Him in contact with you and you with Him is exclusively the deep, bleeding wound in your heart. And anyone who does not want to face that has nothing to do with Jesus. He is completely outside of Him. For him no Jesus exists—that is, One who saves from sin.
His name is Jesus, i.e., He saves His people from their sins. This makes no sense if it is intended to mean that gradually t he whole world will be perfected by all kinds of sanctifying influences.
Jesus is a name that brings a separation among sinners . . . Some receive . . . others reject Him. The life of grace is among the first and distinguished from the life of the second. And that difference the philosophical confession of our century rejects. It wants no Jesus who saves from sins and even less a Jesus who saves His own people from their sins.
The End of Kuyper‘s “Kingdom” Enterprises
In our day we notice with regret what seems to be the burial of some of the last vestiges of the “Kingdom” enterprises associated with the name of A. Kuyper. His political party recently celebrated its hundredth anniversary and at the same time its disbanding! His Free University is also celebrating a hundredth anniversary, but although it has grown enormously on government funds, is no longer, even nominally, under the control of its founding organization. It harbors in its theological faculty men who are some of the most notorious promoters in the Reformed world of the Liberal views from which Kuyper was converted and which he established the University to oppose.
The loss of Reformed character by the Dutch institutions has come about over the course of a hundred years. Disturbing about the beginning of the new Kings College, avowedly “in Kuyper’s line” is the fact that it even at its birth has no expressed Reformed commitment. Its “Educational Principles” are a slimmed down and slightly altered version of the slender AACS “educational creed” from which even the AACS’ passing allusion to “Protestant Reformation” creeds has been dropped. It is saddening to observe such a venture, begun with so much enthusiasm, and effort starting off in such an unpromising direction. Such a beginning would have grieved, although, perhaps, not altogether surprised, Abraham Kuyper. We may be sure that he would have urged, with all of the zeal that he could muster as he did in his writings, a correction of its flawed vision by way of a return to the real Gospel. Let’s pray for that for the new King’s College as well as for our older institutions.
The Gospel of God
That authentic Gospel is not at all the product of man’s wishful thinking—not ever that of “the believing community.” Even less is it the product of the world’s wishful thinking. The Apostle Paul had to make that abundantly clear. It consisted of
Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the heart of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him 1 Cor. 2:9.
That gospel is “not after man” but exclusively God’s revelation (Gal. 1:11, 12). It is not the gospel of the “man from Nazareth” who in fairy–tale style realized the dreams of mankind and whose vision of a Kingdom, if enthusiastically and cleverly promoted, may succeed in capturing the interest and support of the peoples of today and so redirect the course of the nations. Such a presentation of it, no matter how well intentioned, is a humanistic distortion of the Gospel of God.
The genuine gospel to which God’s true prophets testified was uniquely and exclusively t he revelation of God. And the Christ to whom it pointed was not a product of the nation’s or nations‘ ideals but the revelation of God. And He was not merely “man from Nazareth” but the child whose name was Immanuel, “God with us.” He should be called “the Mighty God,” “Jehovah our Righteousness.” It was this claim that caused the Jews to reject Him as a blasphemer and the Greeks to dismiss him as foolishness and which still constitutes the offense of the Cross to the world of our time. But it is the Deity of Christ and the Divinity of His Gospel that is still the secret of the Gospel’s power. It is “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” As Abraham Kuyper so profoundly experienced and taught, we s hall have to relearn that ourselves if we are to have real life and salvation. And we will have to get this dependence on Gods direction by God, and dedication to God back into our churches and other institutions if they are to recover from the death that seems to be threatening so many of them.
“O the depth of t he riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been his counsellor?” “For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things. To him be the glory forever” (Romans 11:33, 34, 36).