Authentic Scottish drizzle--Knox and Covenanters

I never get tired of exploring church history where it happened in Edinburgh, Scotland (join us in June on the Knox quincentenary Scotland tour www.bondvoyage.webs.com). It's a bustling city, not as pretty and nicefied as London or Cambridge, as most English towns, but it has a primal ruggedness about it that makes one feel that maybe, just maybe, it has not fully emerged from the Middle Ages, not just yet. Think of England as the string chamber ansemble and Scotland as, well, a bagpipe band; or England as steak and ale pie and Scotland as Haggis, neeps, and tatties. There's nothing quite like being here on such an important year for Scotland and the church and Kingdom of Christ anywhere on the planet: Knox's birth year, 1514, born 500 years ago. 

Knox took zero credit for the powerful and gracious working of the Spirit of God in Scotland; his explanation of one of the greatest revivals in the history of the church? "God raised up simple men in great abundance." May he do so again! 

After guiding my students up the cobble stones of the Royal Mile, we began with push ups in the rain on the steps of St Giles High Kirk (for a couple of tardy young gents, I at their side offering moral support and setting the pace--I never do this on my adult tours, trust me!). The push ups out of the way, I began orienting the young people to the one-time cathedral's Medieval roots, then Knox preaching here and Reformation revival, then Jenny Geddes and the Covenanters. Knox's totally unpretentious grave under parking stall 23, the Mercat Cross where Covenanters were martyred--some like David Haxton hanged, drawn, and quartered, then Greyfriars Abbey where the National Covenant was signed--in blood, then the stone momument to 18,000 Covenanter martyrs, next the prison where many Covenanters were crammed after the Battle of Bothwell Brig, then the Grassmarket at the West Bow where the gallows were kept busy, and lastly to the imposing ramparts of Edinburgh Castle. In all likelihood The Scots Confession 1560 was presented to parliament in the Great Hall after being crafted in only four days on nearby Cowgate Street at Magdalen Chapel (by Knox and four other Johns).

The Scots Confession was overwhelmingly approved as the best summation of the Bible's teaching. Later the Church of Scotland would adopt the Westminster Confession, a still more refined and careful encapsulating of what the Bible principally teaches. Confessions of faith are imminently biblical and essential bulwarks against the enemy's constant stratagem to corrupt the gospel little-by-little. Here is an excerpt from the SC on the so critical topic of sanctification and good works. 

� "The cause of good works, we confess, is not our free will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, who dwells in our hearts by true faith, brings forth such works as God has prepared for us to walk in... For as soon as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whom God's elect children receive by true faith, takes possession of the heart of any man, so soon does he regenerate and renew him, so that he begins to hate what before he loved, and to love what he hated before." (Dickinson, John Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland, 2 :263)

Make a mimgle mangle of grace here and the whole of reformational gospel and understanding of Scripture collapses, gets turned into haggis, the good news chopped up like sheep guts crammed in a sheep stomach and tied at both ends. And then consumed.

John Knox--not a Metro Male: JOHN KNOX at 500 (1514-2014)

Excerpt from THE MIGHTY WEAKNESS OF JOHN KNOX,  by Douglas Bond (Reformation Trust, 2011).

John Knox’s Mighty Weakness

 “John Knox felt toward [Scotland’s] idolaters,” wrote historian Roland Bainton, “as Elijah toward the priests of Baal.”[i] Recollect what Elijah was called to do to the priests of Baal, by the express command of God, drawing his sword and cutting down 450 of the deceitful clerics. Men called to be prophets—to do feats such as Elijah was called to do--are not generally touchy-feely, kinder-gentler, metro males. Far from it. In redemptive history, the Elijahs have been tortured voices crying in the wilderness, lone men called to take their stand against gnashing critics, men charged with the profoundly unpopular task of declaring God’s word to people who have taken their stand with the enemies of God’s word. Such men inevitably find themselves in the crosshairs of critics. For his Elijah-like zeal, Knox is—as was his spiritual, theological, and pastoral mentor, John Calvin—“as easy to slander as he is difficult to imitate.”[ii]

As with any mere man, besieged by controversy in turbulent times, called upon to do significant things, ones that affect the fortunes of many people,[iii] staunch critics have found plenty in John Knox to criticize. He had rough edges, some would call them tragic deficiencies, even fatal flaws. Like all great men, strip him of his God-given might, and the thundering power of his calling, and what remains is a mere mortal, a small man, “low in stature, and of a weakly constitution,”[iv] one who, when first called to preach, declined, and when pressed, “burst forth in most abundant tears” and fled the room.[v] But then such was Elijah, cowering in a hole, feeling sorry for himself, and begging God to deliver him from his enemies. Yet by the grace of God, who alone makes weak men strong, Elijah and Knox lived lives that were characterized far more by power and influence than by weakness and obscurity.

What transforms a man from a hand-wringing nobody into a theological thunderbolt, a bull-horn of bravery, a commando of conviction, into the unflinching left tackle of the Reformation? Is it mere hyperbole to say that “Knox was a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil”?[vi] With the zeal of a Jeremiah, Knox thundered against the “motley crowd of superstitions” that infested religious life in sixteenth-century Scotland, and he considered his country’s devotion to such error as far worse “than the idols over whose futility Hebrew prophets made merry.”[vii] When God’s messengers mounted the rooftops decrying people’s transgressions against Yahweh—Hebrew ones or Scottish ones--the multitudes responded, not surprisingly, with rancor and violence.

So it has been with John Knox. In his lifetime he was denounced by regents, queens, and councils, and his effigy was hoisted high and burned at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh.[viii] Ridiculed as “Knox the knave,” and “a runagate Scot,” he was outlawed and forbidden to preach by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, with orders issued to shoot him on sight if he failed to comply. Knox did not comply. Years later a would-be assassin fired a shot through a window of Knox’s house at Trunk Close in Edinburgh, narrowly missing his mark.[ix] And still Knox preached.

And what of his legacy since his death in 1572? The English Parliament, 140 years after Knox’s death, condemned his books to public burning. In 1739 George Whitefield was ridiculed for preaching “doctrine borrowed from the Kirk of Knox.” Perhaps more than any other, he has been portrayed as “the enfant terrible of Calvinism,”[x] and has been characterized in books and film, and at his own house, now a museum, as a “blustering fanatic.”[xi] Moderns dismiss him as a misogynist for his untimely treatise against female monarchs, and for his unflinching stand before charming Mary Queen of Scots, denouncing her sins, and calling her to repent. In 1972, the 400^th anniversary of his death, it was decided that such a man as Knox was an inappropriate subject to commemorate on a Scottish postage stamp. As a crowning blow, the Edinburgh Town Council ordered the removal of the stone marking his grave, relegating his earthly resting place to obscurity under a variously numbered parking stall.[xii] In my most recent visit to Edinburgh the “JK” once legible on a small square marker was completely obliterated.

As faithless Israel resented Jeremiah’s prophesy of doom and destruction for her whoredom against the Lord, so, for the most part, has Scotland come to resent the life and ministry of John Knox. Knox himself, however, would have been little troubled by such neglect, even hostility. It seems to be an essential quality in truly great men of God that they care far more for the glory of Jesus Christ than for themselves, which is reason enough to examine closely the life of such a man as John Knox...

CONSIDER JOINING AUTHOR Douglas Bond and his wife Cheryl on the Knox @ 500 Scotland Tour in 2014. Space is limited.

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[i] Roland H. Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), 181.

                                              

[ii] Theodore Beza, Life of John Calvin (London: L. B. Seeley and Sons, 1834), 76.

[iii] Patrick Fraser Tytler, The History of Scotland from the Accession of Alexander III. To the Union (Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, 1869), 2:355.

[iv] Howie, The Scots Worthies, 63.

[v] John Dickinson Knox and William Croft Dickinson, John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 1:83.

[vi] Mark Galli, The Hard-to-Like Knox, Christian History, (Issue 46, Vol. XIV, no 2, 1995), 6.

[vii] Alexander Smellie, The Reformation in its Literature (London: Andrew Melrose, 1925), 245.

[viii] Howie, The Scots Worthies, 52.

[ix] Ibid, 56-57.

[x] Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (Eds), The Quotable Lewis (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 1989), 365.

[xi] Bainton, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, 180.

[xii] Iain Murray, John Knox: The Annual Lecture of the Evangelical Library for 1972 (London: Evangelical Library. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 3.

Interview today with KNOWING THE TRUTH talk radio 660, Greenvile, SC

Just finished an interview with Kevin Boling on Knowing the Truth radio in South Carolina this morning (our time). We talked about THE MIGHTY WEAKNESS OF JOHN KNOX, and especially about how Knox was a man empowered not by his or personality, or methods, or technology, or erudition, or status--he had none of these. Knox was a nobody in his world, a timorous and fearful nobody. Of the Reformation in Scotland, Knox wrote, "God raised up simple men in great abundance." And he considered himself one of those simple men. "I quake, I fear, I tremble," he said of going into the pulpit to preach Jesus and his free grace in the gospel.

For any who would like to listen in on the interview, here's the direct link to KNOWING THE TRUTH RADIO.

Ligonier interview on my new Knox biography

Here's the text of an interview with the folks at Ligonier on THE MIGHTY WEAKNESS OF JOHN KNOX, my newest book released just a couple of weeks ago.

1)   What does the title—The Mighty Weakness of John Knox—mean? We tend to think of Knox as the bold, thundering, charge-into-the-fray, no-holds-barred Reformer. Sort of a giant who walks into the room and says "Everybody move!" and they do. But the more research I did, the more formidable the problems with this stereotype emerged. The title (Greg's idea, by the way) reflects the character of Knox that developed from my research. The thundering might of Knox's ministry was not the result of DNA. He was not giant who just switched loyalties. Knox was a meek, reluctant personality, a weak man in the flesh, made mighty by the grace and power of God's sovereign call on his life in the gospel.

2)   Why is it important for Christians today to read about John Knox? We who live in the 21st century are such self-satisfied individuals, and this has its effect on the Church, in a big way. We're so impressed with our progress, our technology, our innovations, our scholarship. We tend to look down on the past. Now, there are things to distance ourselves from in the past, to be sure. But sitting down and feasting on the rich legacy that we have from those God has raised up and equipped to confront the challenges to the gospel that litter history--learning of these challenges and how God raised up men like Knox to contend for the faith through them is essential for Christians surrounded by a world that scorns the past and worships ourselves and the work of our hands in the present. I don't think learning from Church history and men like Knox is take-it-or-leave-it optional for Christians who know they must have the perspective of the ages on the moment they are living in in the present.

3)   You argue that the typical understanding of Knox as a giant of men thundering against queens is somewhat inaccurate. How so? A guy who when first called on to preach God's Word, breaks into tears in public and flees the room doesn't sound to me like a man who thundered simply because he was inherently a thundering sort of guy. Another feature of Knox's life--and I include an entire chapter on it, so central is it to understanding the man--is his life of prayer. Men who know they're weak and needy tend to be better prayers; men who know their frailty, who abandon all hope in themselves, these are the men who fall on their knees and cry out to their all powerful God. That was Knox. Tyrants didn't fear sickly, timorous Knox. Tyrants feared Knox's praying--more than the cannons of 10,000 soldiers.

4)   Is it necessary for the contemporary Christian to study Christians who lived so long ago? How could they be relevant for the milieu in which we live? There really is nothing new under the sun. What goes around does, indeed, come around. All the greats of Church history were great precisely because they contended for the gospel in the particular way in which the gospel was under attack in their day. The gospel is under attack in our day, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to spend more time studying church history (and Paul's epistles and the whole canon of Scripture). The thing that so impressed me with Knox was how unflinching he was about getting the gospel right. Anything that intrudes between the sinner and Christ our righteous Redeemer was idolatry to Knox, and idols had to be torn down. We need this today, in a big way. 

5)   In the preface of the book you write: Knox is a model for the ordinary Christian. What makes him relevant to all Christians? If we're honest with ourselves, in the trembling loneliness of our own hearts, we're all weak, insecure, frail and dying individuals. Some attempt to compensate by shouting this down and being arrogant, proud, and noisy. But many simply fear they have nothing to contribute, that God can't use someone so ordinary, or weak, or unskilled, or simple as they know them self to be. In Knox as he really was there is great encouragement for the saint who feels they have nothing to contribute. I was thrilled to discover this dimension about Knox's life. It seems so eminently practical for so many dear saints, the elderly, the untried youth, the sick, the handicapped, the many for whom life has been a succession of disappointments--God has a purpose and a use and role for each one of his children in his family in every age--yes, the broken reeds and the smoking flax. This is what I so much want to convey in this little volume. Readers may forget details about the convoluted history in Knox's world, but my hope is that they will not forget the mystery of God's providence in forgiving the adulteress, in calling smelly fishermen, in choosing the younger brother, in raising the dead. 

6)   What is a Christ-subdued life? A question right from a chapter title in the book. Simply put, it is dying that we might live. It is a life--like Knox's--where I must decrease and he must increase. It is knowing that without Christ we are nothing, but with Christ as our righteousness, as our Redeemer, as our Lord, and as our friend, weak, frail, and timorous sinners can do all things.

7)   What was the source of Knox’s strength in his own weakness? Christ, Christ alone, solus Christus!

8)   How is weakness an “essential prerequisite to being used of Christ”? Without knowing who we really are, we can never be made good by Christ himself. Therefore, right self knowledge--as in the order of Calvin's Institutes--goes hand-in-hand with right knowledge of God. If we think we can worship, serve, obey, be faithful to even the tiniest degree without the grace of God in Christ alone, we haven't gotten the gospel right and we'll never be used of Christ if we think we are clever, or well-educated, or sophisticated, or inherently gifted. Christ takes the empty and fills them. He came to seek and to save those who knew that they were in desperate need, that they were lost.

9)   What are some of the ways in which we see Knox’s strength in weakness? It is remarkable to see a man who feared preaching before friends, stand and deliver fearlessly before tyrants who had the power to lop his head off--and he knew they had this temporal power. Yet he preached anyway, and what preaching it was! He called a spade a spade, and a fig a fig, as he put it. No mincing of words with Christ-empowered Knox.

10) What have you personally learned from John Knox’s life? So much, it is hard to begin. God does not call all of us--myself included, of course--to be the instruments of reformation in an entire nation. But he does by his grace alone raise me from my weakness and insecurities to find strength in Christ alone, period, plus nothing.

11) What was your favorite chapter to write in this book? I found writing the first draft of the final chapter while sitting in Knox's house (for skeptics who don't think it was his house, I just could not find evidence to sufficiently discredit the long tradition of the house at Trunk Close being, in fact, a house that Knox did live in, and die in) on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh in April of 2010 a favorite chapter. I read from it just a few weeks ago with a tour group my wife and I led, and that was also a meaningful part of that chapter, sort of a completion of it in the final book form. It recounts his dying hours, the comfort he found in God's Word read by his young wife, and his final words.

12) Who do you hope will read the book? I hope our coach driver on this most recent tour will read the copy I gave him and everyone on the tour signed with a note of appreciation to him; the gospel is on every page. But I do hope all Christians--yes, especially the non-Presbyterian ones--will read it. All Christians who have ever felt inadequate to the challenges they face.

13) If readers take only one lesson from this book, what do you hope that will be? My hope is that this little book will help little Christians to look away from themselves and to the splendor and might of Jesus himself.