Next year the church will celebrate the 500th birthday of John Calvin. Be prepared to see a glut of books on the man for the next year. This newest volume, out soon from P&R, looks great.
A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis (Hardcover)
Publisher: P&R Publishing Company
Author: Hall, David W., Lillback, Peter
ISBN-13: 9781596380912
Binding: Hardcover
List Price: $25.99 $35.99 Westminster Bookstore: $16.89 $23.39
Expected arrival: June 2008
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CONTENTS
Foreword ix
J.I. Packer
1. The Historical Context of the Institutes as a Work in Theology 1
William S. Barker
2. A Primal and Simple Knowledge (1.1–5) 16
K. Scott Oliphint
3. Calvin’s Doctrine of Holy Scripture (1.6–10) 44
Robert L. Reymond
4. The True and Triune God: Calvin’s Doctrine of the Holy Trinity (1.11–13) 65
Douglas F. Kelly
5. Election and Predestination: The Sovereign Expressions of God (3.21–24) 90
R. Scott Clark
6. Creation and Providence (1.14, 16–18 ) 123
Joseph A. Pipa Jr.
7. A Shattered Vase: The Tragedy of Sin in Calvin’s Thought (1.15; 2.1–4) 151
Michael S. Horton
8. Calvin’s Interpretation of the History of Salvation: The Continuity and Discontinuity of the Covenant (2.10–11) 168
Peter A. Lillback
9. The Mediator of the Covenant (2.12–15) 205
Derek W. H. Thomas
10. Calvin on Christ’s Saving Work (2.16–17) 226
Robert A. Peterson
11. Justification and Union with Christ (3.11–18 ) 248
Richard B. Gaffin Jr.
12. Appropriating Salvation: The Spirit, Faith and Assurance, and Repentance (3.1–3, 6–10) 270
Joel R. Beeke
13. The Law and the Spirit of Christ (2.6–9) 301
David Clyde Jones
14. Ethics: The Christian Life and Good Works according to Calvin (3.6–10, 17–19) 320
William Edgar
15. Prayer: “The Chief Exercise of Faith” (3.20) 347
David B. Calhoun
16. Calvin, Worship, and the Sacraments (4.13–19) 368
W. Robert Godfrey
17. John Calvin’s View of Church Government (4.3–9) 390
Joseph H. Hall
18. Calvin on Human Government and the State (4.20) 411
David W. Hall
19. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Last Things: The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting (3.25 et al.) 441
Cornelis P. Venema
20. Essential Calvin Bibliography 468
Richard C. Gamble and Zachary John Kail
In the past I’ve been exhorted in my prayer life by the writings of A.W. Tozer. But in reading A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett (Chicago, IL; Moody, 2008 ) I’ve now been exhorted by Tozer’s practice of prayer.
Late in the book, Dorsett recounts a fairly famous account of Tozer’s writing of his classic The Pursuit of God. Here is that account—written by Tozer himself (a man not given to self-promotion).
He was invited to speak at McAllen, Texas, and he thought on the long ride down there that he would write on this book. He boarded the train—the old Pullman train—at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago—the days when you would pull the curtain on the roomette and he would be all alone. Well he asked for a little writing table which the porter brought him and he started to write. Along about nine o’clock the porter knocked on the side of the door and said, “Friend, this is the last call for dinner—would you want something to eat?” And he said, “Bring me some toast and some tea” which he did. [Tozer] kept on writing, all night long, this thing coming as fast to his heart as he could write, and when they pulled into the station, about 7:30 the next morning, at McAllen, Texas, that book was finished and all he had in front of him was just the Bible.
Dorsett follows with these exhortive descriptions.
The Pursuit of God is one of the most striking manifestations of the truth that if a man will concern himself with the depth of his ministry, the Holy Spirit will take care of the breadth. Zwemer was correct about the book’s origin. This powerful little book that has had such a profound impact on the souls of hungry Christians who crave a deeper knowledge of God was impregnated and nurtured in Tozers soul. And the gestation happened in long hours of adoration and awe of God. Although the author never boasted about his devotional habits, those few who knew him well knew that the angular man with little formal schooling learned much about his Lord and his God in the secret place.
Tozer spent incalculable hours in prayer. Most of his prolonged prayer time—with his Bible and hymnals as his only companions—took place in his church office on the back side of the second floor. He would carefully hang up his suit trousers and don his sweater and raggedy old “prayer pants” and sit for a while on his ancient office couch. After a time his spirit would drift into another realm. In time, he would abandon the couch, get on his knees, and eventually lie facedown on the floor, singing praises to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
No one presumed to interrupt these times of intimacy between A. W. Tozer and the Lover of his soul. But occasionally one of the men closest to him would climb the steps to his office and chance to see him on the couch or floor—totally oblivious to the world. Francis Chase, Harry Verploegh, and Tozer’s assistant pastor, Ray McAfee, all saw him at one time or another in one of these postures. And more than one of them mentioned that Tozer was weeping or moaning facedown in the old carpet.
I’m nearing the end of A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett (Chicago, IL; Moody, 2008). It’s been a well-researched portrait look at a fascinatingly godly (and isolated) man who, through his popular wittings, has shaped modern Christian spirituality.
Tozer was raised in a blue-collar, non-Christian home, a farmer who followed his family when they moved to the big city for better employment. From the farm Tozer transitioned into a job hand-cutting rubber in a Goodyear tire plant. His gifting for the ministry however became evident to the Christians around him and Tozer was ordained by the Christian and Missionary Alliance on August 18, 1920 at the age of 23. After the ordination service, Tozer prematurely left the fellowship celebration to spend time alone with God in prayer, a priority he would cherish and model throughout his life. Years later the private prayer from his ordination day was written and published, “For Pastors Only.” Here is the text as it later appeared in the Alliance Weekly on May 6, 1950.
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For Pastors Only - Prayer of a Minor Prophet
By A. W Tozer
This is the prayer of a man called to be a witness to the nations. This is what he said to his Lord on the day of his ordination. After the elders and ministers had prayed and laid their hands on him he withdrew to meet his Saviour in the secret place and in the silence, farther in than his well-meaning brethren could take him. And he said:
O Lord, I have heard Thy voice and was afraid. Thou hast called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. Thou are about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. O Lord, our Lord, Thou has stopped to honor me to be Thy servant. No man takes this honor upon himself save he that is called of God as was Aaron. Thou has ordained me Thy messenger to them that are stubborn of heart and hard of hearing. They have rejected Thee, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the servant.
My God, I shall not waste time deploring my weakness nor my unfittedness for the work. The responsibility is not mine but Thine. Thou hast said, “I knew thee—I ordained thee—I sanctified thee,” and Thou has also said, “Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.” Who am I to argue with Thee or to call into question Thy sovereign choice? The decision is not mine but Thine. So be it, Lord. Thy will, not mine, be done.
Well do I know, Thou God of the prophets and the apostles, that as long as I honor Thee Thou wilt honor me. Help me therefore to take this solemn vow to honor Thee in all my future life and labors, whether by gain or by loss, by life or by death, and then to keep that vow unbroken while I live.
It is time, O God, for Thee to work, for the enemy has entered into Thy pastures and the sheep are torn and scattered. And false shepherds abound who deny the danger and laugh at the perils which surround Thy flock. The sheep are deceived by these hirelings and follow them with touching loyalty while the wolf closes in to kill and destroy. I beseech Thee, give me sharp eyes to detect the presence of the enemy; give me understanding to distinguish the false friend from the true. Give me vision to see and courage to report what I see faithfully. Make my voice so like Thine own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow Thee.
Lord Jesus, I come to Thee for spiritual preparation. Lay Thy hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet; not a promoter, not a religious manager—but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from the bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from overeating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that I could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall expect opposition and try to take it quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falleth out to Thy servants, I shall have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Thy kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that it will not injure my soul nor diminish my spiritual power. And if in Thy permissive providence honor should come to me from Thy church, let me not forget in that hour that I am unworthy of the least of Thy mercies, and that if men knew me as intimately as I know myself they would withhold their honors or bestow them upon others more worthy to receive them.
And now, O Lord of heaven and earth, I consecrate my remaining days to Thee; let them be many or few, as Thou wilt. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and I would not influence it if I could. I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame and I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven. Though I am chosen of Thee and honored by a high and holy calling, let me never forget that I am but a man of dust and ashes, a man with all the natural faults and passions that plague the race of men. I pray Thee therefore, my Lord and Redeemer, save me from myself and from all the injuries I may do myself while trying to be a blessing to others. Fill me with thy power by the Holy Spirit, and I will go in Thy strength and tell of Thy righteousness, even Thine only. I will spread abroad the message of redeeming love while my normal powers endure.
Then, dear Lord, when I am old and weary and too tired to go on, have a place ready for me above, and make me to be numbered with Thy saints in glory everlasting. Amen.
An excellent selection from Herman Bavinck’s 4-vol magnum opus on the role of faith, reason, and theology.
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Reason Serving Faith
… we must first of all and fundamentally reject the notion that regards faith and reason as two independent powers engaging in a life-and-death struggle with each other. In that way one creates a dualism that does not belong in the Christian domain. In that case faith is always above (supra) or even opposed (contra) to reason. Threatening on the one hand is rationalism and on the other supernaturalism. Faith, the faith by which we believe, is not an organ or faculty next to or above reason but a disposition or habit of reason itself.
Reason, or if people prefer, thinking, is certainly not a source of theology, not a principle by which or through which or from which or on account of which we believe. Reason is a source, not the source of any science; at most it is only for the formal sciences such as logic or mathematics. Still reason is the recipient subject of faith, capable of faith; faith is an act of the human consciousness; an animal is not capable of believing.
Furthermore, faith is not an involuntary but a free act. Christians do not believe on command, out of fear, or in response to violence. Believing has become the natural habit of their mind, not in the sense that there is often not considerable resistance in their soul to that believing, but still in such a way that, though often doing what they do not want to do, they still take delight in God’s law in their inmost self [cf. Rom. 7:22]. Believing is the natural breath of the children of God. Their submission to the Word of God is not slavery but freedom. In that sense faith is not a sacrifice of the intellect but mental health (sanitas mentis). Faith, therefore, does not relieve Christians of the desire to study and reflect; rather it spurs them on to the end. Nature is not destroyed by regeneration but restored.
Believers who want to devote themselves to the study of theology, accordingly, must prepare their minds for the task awaiting them. There is no admission to the temple of theology except by way of the study of the arts. Indispensable to the practitioner of the science of theology is philosophical, historical, and linguistic preparatory training. Philosophy, said Clement of Alexandria, “prepares the way for the most royal teaching.” Emperor Julian knew what he was doing when he deprived Christians of pagan learning; he feared he would be defeated by his own weapons.
This thinking, thus prepared and trained, has, in the main, a threefold task in theology.
First, it offers its services in finding the material. Scripture is the principle of theology. But the Bible is not a book of laws; it is an organic whole. The material for theology, specifically for dogmatics, is distributed throughout Scripture. Like gold from a mine, so the truth of faith has to be extracted from Scripture by the exertion of all available mental powers. Nothing can be done with a handful of proof texts. Dogma has to be built, not on a few isolated texts, but on Scripture in its entirety. It must arise organically from the principles that are everywhere present for that purpose in Scripture. The doctrines of God, of humanity, of sin, of Christ, etc., after all, are not to be found in a few pronouncements but are spread throughout Scripture and are contained, not only in a few proof texts, but also in a wide range of images and parables, ceremonies and histories. No part of Scripture may be neglected. The whole of Scripture must prove the whole system. …
Yet another completed blank bible project. Congrats to Joe McBee. Looks nice. For more information, see our handy guide to making your own blank bible.
Nichols closes chapter 6–”Jesus on the Big Screen”–with these words:
“American Jesus films also invite us to use our imagination, even a sanctified imagination, to add to the biblical text. This furthers the trajectory that began in the nineteenth century in which the biblical accounts failed to address contemporary readers’ and viewers’ needs, which in turn legitimized the action of adding to the text (see chap. 3). The additions tend to have a strongly emotional appeal, embedding one’s encounter with Christ in experience, an experience limited by one’s cultural horizons. The Jesus of Scripture comes from outside, not from within, our cultural horizons, standing above, over and even, at times, against those horizons as the Lord and Savior.
The Jesus of American film, however, looks more like a homegrown action hero. At least that’s the conclusion of Stephenson Humphries-Brooks. He sees America’s fixation “to identify with, cast itself as, and become a hero in its own view” as underlying the development of Jesus as the action hero in this wave of Jesus films. Even Gibson’s The Passion speaks to ‘America’s preferred view of itself as a suffering hero.’ This leads Humphries-Brooks to pose the question, ‘Where is the real Jesus? For Hollywood he is no longer to be found in the gospel tradition.’ He continues with an explanation of why the Jesus of the Gospels no longer suffices, ‘We seem to desire a new kind of more heroic and more reassuring Savior,’ adding, ‘Hollywood certainly seems willing to create and to market him to us.’ In the turning from the Christ of Scripture to the cinematic savior, ‘we have lost those limits and questions posed by the individual Gospel portraits of Jesus that have from time to time ameliorated the tendency of all readers, the faithful and the not-so faithful, to see in him what they want to see.’ We have made Jesus a celluloid version of our own image. Maybe, at the end of the day, that is the true controversy of Jesus films.”
This week I was honored to attended the Acts 29 DWELL conference in Manhattan. There was a rainy, cold, and foggy theme to my first time in the Big Apple, but that didn’t dampen the experience.
Around 400 church diverse church planters–some wearing suits, others wearing faux-hawks and tattoos–gathered on the edge of Central Park in an 170-year-old, baroque church building owned by the Fourth Universalist Society in upper Manhattan. You get a sense of the impressive architecture, stained glass, paintings, and pipe organ from this photo I took with my phone.
The attendees were seated (by the dozen) around tables where application discussions took place between addresses. It was great to see a few old friends and meet some new one’s, too. It was an impressive lineup and location for a church planting conference.
C.J. Mahaney opened with a message titled, Pastoral Priorities, Watching Your Life and Ministry, centered on 1 Timothy 4:16: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”
C.J. closed his message with these words on the second half of the passage.
Paul is not teaching self-atonement. Instead he is accenting human agency in the experience of salvation. … Calvin comments on this passage, “Although salvation is God’s gift alone, yet human ministry is needed as is here implied.” In this passage we are reminded of the vital importance of human ministry and godly leadership as a means of grace. And in this passage we are assured that if we watch our life and doctrine closely and persist and persevere in these practices, we can expect God to preserve us, and those we serve, for that final day. Here in this passage we find a promise of effective ministry in a most unexpected place.
And, most importantly, what stands behind this profound promise? The reason Paul can make this promise is the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (2:5). The mediator stands behind this promise. What stands behind any effective pastoral ministry is the mediator Christ Jesus. What stands behind our watching our life and doctrine, what empowers our watching our life and doctrine, what guarantees the effectiveness of watching our life and doctrine, is the Savior.
Listen, if it were not for the work of the Savior, the burden of this verse would be simply too much to bear! But because of the Savior we have hope this morning for our pastoral ministry and in our pastoral ministry. We have hope that our lives, by the grace of God, will, in ever-increasing ways, faithfully reflect the transforming effect of the gospel. We have hope! We have hope that our preaching will faithfully proclaim our Savior. We have hope that our ministries will contribute to the preservation of ourselves and the congregation we serve. So, brothers, as we watch our lives, as we watch our doctrine, we are confident we will also watch the Savior work.
For me, sitting off to one side, there was dramatic irony in these closing paragraphs. C.J.’s voice rose a few decibels reminding us of the ministry-sustaining power of the gospel. The amplified emphasis of his voice, proclaiming the importance of the gospel, echoed through the old unitarian church built intentionally hollowed of the gospel and doctrine.
As I listened to the echo it was not only a great reminder to persist in watching my life and teaching, but in looking around at the church’s ornamentation it was also a reminder that failing to watch our life and teaching may not mean our churches will empty out for us to see our failures in this lifetime. A very sobering reminder we can take into all areas of life as we walk by faith, seeking to please God.
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A longer version of this message was delivered in the 2006 Together for the Gospel conference message, “Watch Your Life.” Download here.
In the first post, I passed along a recommendation for a book that serves as an overview of the intellectual and spiritual composition of the patristic authors. Personally, I want to learn enough about patrology to roll up my sleeves and begin excavating for myself gems from the original writings.
So today we turn to a recommendation on original source reading.
There is widespread agreement on one valuable collection of writings from the apostolic period (ca. AD 70-150), a volume edited by J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889), compiled by his student J. R. Harmer, and now skillfully updated and edited by Michael W. Holmes titled The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, Third Edition (Baker Academic, 2007).
Holmes has done a nice job of keeping the scholarship up to date, adding very helpful book introductions. The 800+ page book includes several short letters preserved from the infancy of the Church. Though academic, the book is well-written and assembled for general readership. In the introduction to the Letters of Ignatius, for example, Holmes writes, “Just as we become aware of a meteor only when, after traveling silently through space for untold millions of miles, it blazes briefly through the atmosphere before dying in a shower of fire, so it is with Ignatius, bishop of Antioch in Syria. We meet him for the first and only time for just a few weeks not long before his death as a martyr in Rome early in the second century” (p. 166).
And Baker should be commended for their work, retypesetting and printing it on nice thin Bible paper. To think of it, The Apostolic Fathers has a similar look and feel to the beautiful NA27 Greek New Testament. Overall, I love the size, feel, and features of this volume. It comes with one of those built-in bookmark ribbons, and the dark green cover with the gold embossing is sharp.
On to a few excerpts.
In my evening reading I’ve been especially impressed with two excerpts from Ignatius’s letter to the Ephesians, written on or before 117 AD (pp. 182-201). Two themes emerge; the centrality of the cross and cautions to cultural adaptation.
1. Centrality of the Cross. This first excerpt has a lot to exegete. Listen to the known dangers of false teaching in this passage, where we see the Pauline warnings of the dangers of false teaching here echoed by a later generation of Christians.
But more specifically, notice the centrality of the cross in building the Church.
9:1 But I have learned that certain people from elsewhere have passed your way with evil doctrine, but you did not allow them to sow it among you. You covered up your ears in order to avoid receiving the things being sown by them, because you are stones of a temple, prepared beforehand for the building of God the Father, hoisted up to the heights by the crane of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using as a rope the Holy Spirit; your faith is what lifts you up, and love is the way that leads up to God. 2 So you are all participants together in a shared worship, God-bearers and temple-bearers, Christ-bearers, bearers of holy things, adorned in every respect with the commandments of Jesus Christ. I too celebrate with you, since I have been judged worthy to speak with you through this letter, and to rejoice with you because you love nothing in human life, only God.
Ignatius beautifully captures the centrality of the cross in building the church.
2. Darkening lines in cultural engagement. And I find the patristic authors to be stimulating on the issue of cultural engagement. Try and isolate Ignatius’s warning amidst all the commands to relate to those in the world.
10:1 Pray continually for the rest of humankind as well, that they may find God, for there is in them hope for repentance. Therefore allow them to be instructed by you, at least by your deeds. 2 In response to their anger, be gentle; in response to their boasts, be humble; in response to their slander, offer prayers; in response to their errors, be steadfast in the faith; in response to their cruelty, be civilized; do not be eager to imitate them. 3 Let us show by our forbearance that we are their brothers and sisters, and let us be eager to be imitators of the Lord, to see who can be the more wronged, who the more cheated, who the more rejected, in order that no weed of the devil may be found among you, but that with complete purity and self-control you may abide in Christ Jesus physically and spiritually.
In light of the harsh pagan culture, Ignatius reminds the Christian Ephesians, “do not be eager to imitate them.” This is a helpful reminder for us today. Love those in the world? Yes. Love in word and deed? Yes. Respond to sin with kindness? Yes. See them as your equals, as brothers and sisters? Yes. Imitate the rough and crass edges of culture? No.
Be “OK” with not following and imitating their roughness. This excerpt is an interesting warning for early Christians struggling with loving those in the world without inadvertently absorbing the roughness of culture. This balance of engagement without conformity is still a tough question to answer nearly 2,000 years later. It’s helpful to see how these early Christians tried to understand the issues and set their parameters.
I could go on, there are other excellent passages. But my intent here is to recommend these books, stir a desire to read them, and let you spend less time on this blog and more time discerningly reading the patristic authors for yourself.
Please take with you one caution. Although this book looks, smells, and feels like a New Testament—even has verse numbers like a Bible!—it’s not Scripture. I receive emails and comments frequently from folks who say patrology transformed their understanding of Christianity. Statements like these read as though patrology and canonical scripture are equally shaping for these folks. They are not. So if your reading schedule is tight, you should never substitute time in Scripture with reading the early church fathers.
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Title: The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, Third Edition Editors: J. B. Lightfoot, J. R. Harmer, and Michael W. Holmes Boards: hardcover (not cloth) Pages: 808 Volumes: 1 Dust jacket: no Binding: sewn Paper: thin, slightly yellowed, Bible paper Topical index: yes, a thematic analysis Scriptural index: no Text: retypeset Publisher: Baker Academic Year: 2007 Price USD: $29.00 ISBNs: 080103468X, 9780801034688
This morning I received a comment from a reader saying, “In your ‘Possibly related posts’ section at the end of the LotR post includes a vulgar link. You should take it off.”
A vulgar link? What?
Then I followed the permalink to this morning’s LotR post on my blog and noticed WordPress was generating “Possibly related posts” and attaching external links to the end of my post. Then, after a little research, I found that WordPress was automatically adding this little “feature” and turning it “on” without notification.
After some digging, this is the option I discovered on my dashboard: “Hide related links on this blog, which means this blog won’t show up on other’s blogs or get traffic that way.” Notice the presumption–it’s on until you turn it off.
Not only is this unethical from a blog engine, it has the potential to undermine the integrity of a blogger. So if you are considering starting a blog, surprises like this should factor into your consideration.
Work is progressing on the two “Hobbit” movies. New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have announced that filming on the two films will begin in 2009 with the first movie released in 2010 and the second in 2011. Interestingly, this Reuters article, is saying the 2 films will fill in the 60-year storyline gap leading up to the LotR troilogy, making some predict that parts of the The Silmarilion will be found in the Hobbit movies, too.
“The key to the future,” Wells writes, “is not the capitulation that we see in both the marketers and the emergents. It is courage. The courage to be faithful to what Christianity in its biblical forms has always stood for across the ages” (p. 21).
The book title alone inspires me to tattoo Luther on my forearm (restrained by the bruising vanity of such an image when I’m old.)
Here’s why I like the title.
In these few words Wells is calling us to:
(1) Defend protestant Christianity, not just our little denominational sub-branch. What’s at stake is really protestant-wide reaching the broad limits of catholicity. The implications of these new movements are as big as is “protestant” is wide.
(2) Be courageous, not spineless. Don’t fall for the soft-sell marketing and neo-orthodox liberalism offered to our culture’s “perpetual squishitude” (DeYoung + Kluck). Enduring the relentless shifts in theology is not for the fainthearted.
(3) Love the truth of God’s word, don’t sacrifice it. The church’s hope rests in what is unseen, rooted in preaching of ‘the age to come.’ No matter the cultural drifts and currents, keep faithful to the preaching of the gospel. And love it! Don’t just be a truth-defender, be a truth-lover.
Wells–himself a monument of courage–reminds us that the hope the church offers the world flows from the freshwater spring of gospel proclamation.
Wells writes,
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“Christian hope is not about wishing things will get better. It is not about hoping that emptiness will go away, meaning return, and life will be stripped of its uncertainties, aches, and anxieties. Nor does it have anything to do with techniques for improving fallen human life, be those therapeutic, spiritual, or even religious. Hope has to do with the knowledge of ‘the age to come.’ This redemption is already penetrating ‘this age.’ The sin, death, and meaninglessness of the one age are being transformed by the righteousness, life, and meaning of the other. What has emptied out life, what has scarred and blackened it, is being displaced by what is rejuvenating and transforming it. More than that, hope is hope because it knows it has become part of a realm, a kingdom, that endures. It knows that evil is doomed, that it will be banished. This kind of hope has left behind it the ship of ‘this age,’ which is sinking. And if this other realm, this place where Christ is even now ruling, did not exist, Christians would be ‘of all people most to be pitied’ (1 Cor. 15:19). Their hope would be groundless and they would have lived out an illusion (cf. Ps. 73:4-14).
Vast, mysterious, and mostly unknown as the universe is, we are neither aliens nor strangers in it. It is our alienation from God that makes us see the world as if we were aliens. It is our estrangement from him that leaves us with this haunting sense that we are alone, strangers in a cold and indifferent universe. So it is that life comes to seem like only a ‘chance collocation of atoms’ destined to disappear beneath the rubble of a universe in ruins, as Bertrand Russell put it. It can all seem so meaningless, so ephemeral, so pointless. And it is meaningless, a vanity of vanities, until we see that fallen life yields up no meaning higher or deeper than its own fallenness. And that is only as high as the spirituality from below can ever ascend.
The only future there actually is, is the one established by God in Christ, the one wrought in time at the cross that alone reached into eternity. But we must receive entry into this future. We cannot seize it. It is not there to be had on our own terms. This is not our self-constructed future. It is God’s. It comes from above, not from below.
This is why those churches that have banished pulpits or are ‘getting beyond’ the truth question are going beyond Christianity itself. The proclamation of the New Testament is about truth, about the truth that Christ who was with the Father from all eternity entered our own time. As such he lived within it, his life, like ours, marked by days and weeks and years. He lived in virtue of his unity with the Father, living for him, living as the representative of his own people before the Father, his very words becoming the means of divine judgment and of divine grace. But in the cross and resurrection the entire spiritual order was upended, his victory reached into and across the universe, and saving grace is now personalized in him. The world with all its pleasures, power, and comforts is fading away. The pall of divine judgment hangs over it. A new order has arisen in Christ. Only in this new order can be found meaning, hope, and acceptance with God. It was truth, not private spirituality, that apostolic Christianity was about. It was Christ, not the self, who offered access into the sacred. It was Christ, with all his painful demands of obedience, not comfortable country clubs, that early Christianity was about. What God had done in space and time when the world was stood on its head was Christianity’s preoccupation, not the multiplication of programs, strobe lights, and slick drama. Images we may want, entertainment we may desire, but it is the proclamation of Christ crucified and risen that is the church’s truth to tell.”
Wells’s new book is excellent and may tempt you to get inked. Buy it, read it, and—as best as feeble sinners can—seek to walk humbly, faithfully cross-centered, and courageously protestant.
In regards to patristics (i.e. the study of the early church fathers) I’ve been accumulating some excellent book recommendations. Some books were recommended in my interview with Dr. Ligon Duncan (listen here), some books have been resting dust-covered on my shelves from previous recommendations, and some from helpful recommendations by Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin.
So this week on TSS I’ll be sharing with you various titles on my reading list for all you aspiring patrologists.
First, Haykin (on his blog) recommends dipping our toes into the pool of patrology with Robert Louis Wilken’s, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Wilken serves as William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia.
I have found The Spirit of Early Christian Thought to be a refreshing and stimulating study of the characters and thought of the period. At times spiritually devotional, Wilken is always lucid and engaging. His goal is to draw a connection between the spirit and intellect, between worship and reason, as modeled by the early fathers. As with all books on patrology, this one should be read with careful discernment, the fruit of which, however, will be in the beholding a panorama of patristic intellectual fervor and heartfelt piety. It’s available in hardcover ($35.00) and paperback ($14.00).
Three short excerpts—
“In an essay on the church fathers, Hans Urs von Balthasar once wrote, ‘Greatness, depth, boldness, flexibility, certainty and a flaming love—the virtues of youth, are marks of patristic theology. Perhaps the Church will never again see the likes of such an array of larger-than-life figures that mark the period from Irenaeus to Athanasius, Basil, Cyril, Chrysostom, Ambrose and Augustine—not to mention the army of the lesser fathers. Life and doctrine are immediately one. Of them all it is true what Kierkegaard said of Chrysostom: ‘He gesticulated with his whole existence.’” (p. xviii)
“All the figures portrayed in this book prayed regularly, and their thinking was never far removed from the church’s worship. Whether the task at hand was the defense of Christian belief to an outsider, the refutation of the views of a heretic, or the exposition of a passage from the Bible, their intellectual work was always in service of praise and adoration of the one God. ‘This is the Catholic faith,’ begins an ancient creed, ‘that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.’ Often their treatises ended with a doxology to God, as in Augustine’s On the Spirit and the Letter: ‘to whom be glory forever. Amen.’ They wished not only to understand and express the dazzling truth they had seen in Christ, by thinking and writing they sought to know God more intimately and love him more ardently. The intellectual task was a spiritual undertaking. In the oft-cited words of the desert monk Evagrius, ‘A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.’
The point may seem obvious, yet it is often forgotten. More often than not the church fathers have been interpreted as solitary intellectuals, each working out his own system, beholden chiefly to the world of ideas and arguments, as though they were clandestine members of an ancient philosophical guild. To be sure, many of the best minds in the early church were philosophically astute and moved comfortably within the intellectual traditions of the ancient world. They knew the argot of philosophy, and their books and ideas were taken seriously by Greek and Roman intellectuals. But if one picks up a treatise of Origen or Basil of Caesarea and compares it with the writings of the philosopher Alcinous or the neo-Platonist Plotinus, it is apparent at once that something else is at work.” (pp. 25-26)
“The intellectual tradition that began in the early church was enriched by the philosophical breadth and exactitude of medieval thought. Each period in Christian history makes it own unique contribution to Christian life. The church fathers, however, set in place a foundation that has proven to be irreplaceable. Their writings are more than a stage in the development of Christian thought or an interesting chapter in the history of the interpretation of the Bible. Like an inexhaustible spring, faithful and true, they irrigate the Christian imagination with the life-giving water flowing from the biblical and spiritual sources of the faith. They are still our teachers today.” (p. 321)
It’s been a rainy spring here in Maryland, and after some rain outs the little league season began yesterday for our six-year-old son. In his first ever baseball game, he hit a single, two doubles, a triple, and scored three runs. At the plate he looked like a natural (if you didn’t get distracted by the undersized batting helmet that pinched his head and refused to go down all the way). Defensively, he made two put outs from third base in one inning. His team won 20-6.
But more importantly, I was watching to see how my son would respond to mistakes, errors, coaching instruction, the play of his opponents, and the successes of his teammates. We’ve been talking about the manifold temptations he will experience in baseball hoping to capture as many of these as opportunities to train him for life.
C.J. Mahaney has helped me to understand these sports as great opportunities for God-glorifying, character building in our children. And Saturday I was reminded of the very helpful teaching of C.J. as I was watched the young kids kicking the dust, folding their ears over as they squeezed on the small batting helmets, listened to coaches blurt out the most obvious of commands, the chuckles of the parents watching our kids axe hack at pitches over their heads, watching grounders trickle to the outfield past statues of infielders, and the puzzled looks of two teams of players who had never worn a baseball uniform.
In an interview with Steve Shank posted earlier on TSS C.J. explains how he trained his son in humility during the soccer season (see “Interview with C.J. Mahaney on biblical masculinity”). I’m reminded that I want to prepare my son to walk on the field with a theological awareness of what’s happening. But first I need to become a father with this cultivated awareness. And that’s where the growth needs to first happen.
For more than a week now, I’ve been working next to an awkward-looking, loudly-clicking, nonstop-running printer. My desk is conveniently located about 6 inches from R2-D2 (as it’s been affectionately named). It’s a bulky printer, but also hard working, and very, very noisy. It reminds me of the old dot matrix printers that violently slapped back and forth, making that indescribable whining sound, across an endless line of perforated paper. It sounds a lot like that, with a shot of abrupt clanking mixed in.
I’m told the unceasing whine from the printer will be done soon. But for the last week, “R2″ has been humming away 24/7, printing out colorful plastic nametags for each of the 5,000+ attendees scheduled to attend Together for the Gospel next week in Louisville.
Click.
As the loud printer slowly births each nametag—delivering one card every few minutes—the newborn falls on top of the other cards in the catch bin. I hear the click of the new card as it drops on the pile. Several times over this past week, at the sound of that click, I’ve paused momentarily to thank God for the person it represents. I don’t see the name, but I know that card represents someone for whom the gospel is precious, someone who prioritizes the gospel. And that is a work of God in their soul. So many works of grace. So many new births.
Click.
In the first couple days of the noise, my first thought at the click of the card was to wonder: is that the card that reads “John Piper, MN”? But separated from a thin screen, I cannot see the names. It’s just as likely the card represents a rural pastor from a farming community in Nebraska.
Listening to this printer has been wonderfully equalizing. When I get up from my desk I can see the long stacks of nametags, all arranged in alphabetical rows. Whether a main speaker, an old pastor, a young pastor, a ruling elder, a deacon, a seminary student, an aspiring seminary student, or a soul who is simply attending out of love for the gospel—each nametag is the same color, the same size, and the same arrangement. Equalized.
God knows our frame, that each of us are dust (Psalm 103:14). Saved. Precious to Him. Blood-bought. But we are all dust, equally dust, from A-Z.
Next week we gather at Together for the Gospel. But we are not coming together to huddle around prominent evangelical figures or to merely collect a stack of free books. We gather to proclaim our allegiance and faithfulness to the unchanging and eternal gospel. We gather to form a picture of God’s compassion, who, rather than destroying us, has compassionately atoned for our sin and redeemed us (Psalm 78:38-39).
Today I posted my interview with Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III on “Patristics for Busy Pastors.” The interview was posted over at the Sovereign Grace blog.
Here is one excerpt:
“When we go back to the church fathers we see them defending the important Christian doctrines that are very basic to us, those doctrines that—if we’ve been Christians for a long time—we may well take for granted, doctrines we don’t question, or have any qualms about. Sometimes as important as they are, we don’t think about them much, and we don’t weave them into our teaching, nor do we express the passion for the importance of them to our people as we ought. When we go back to the patristic period and we see the church fathers defending the reality of, for example, the incarnation of Christ and showing the importance of it, we may—who have fully embraced the incarnation of Christ and never questioned it in our Christian experience—suddenly have a new sense of the significance and the absolute essentialness of the doctrine of the incarnation in a way we hadn’t before.
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PS- Please be praying for Dr. Duncan, First Presbyterian, and the people of Jackson, MS who recently experienced destructive storms. Please pray specifically–in the middle of a busy conference schedule–for his strength as he ministers to the needs of his congregation.
“If you find me short in things, impute that to my love of brevity. If you find me besides the truth in anything, impute that to my infirmity. But if you find anything here that serves to your furtherance and joy of the faith, impute that to the mercy of God bestowed on you and me. Yours to serve you with what little I have.” John Bunyan (Works, 1:336).
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Welcome to The Shepherd’s Scrapbook (Gaithersburg, MD), a blog serving sinners who seek their daily food in the Cross of Christ.
What is the Cross of Christ? In short, it is the Lamb of God offering His blameless lifeblood to absorb the wrath of a holy God thereby providing sinners a pure river of forgiveness, hope, joy and life. We are called to feed daily from the river of life flowing from the Lamb.
The grace to live this Cross-centered life is a precious and fulfilling gift, but living the Cross-centered life every day is no dreamy Utopia. It’s a call to battle our remaining laziness, pride, self-sufficiency and self-righteousness and to pay careful attention to outside temptations and wrong theology.
This blog is dedicated to the Blood-covered, grace-sustained, battle-minded, Cross-centered lovers of Christ. Welcome!
Our goal is provide thoughts on Cross-centered living, theology, preaching and pastoral ministry. We review books considered excellent, announce new books that look interesting, and encourage biblical discernment with both. All of this should fuel our pursuit of the Cross. [Meet the winners of the TSS book of the year awards: 2006 winner and the 2007 winners.]
Stay on top of the latest posts by subscribing to the TSS RSS feed.
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Current reading …
Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought
Michael Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (3rd ed.)
F.F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from its First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English
Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms: 73-90, Boulding trans. (vol. III/18 )
Colin Duriez, Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life
Do-it-yourself Blank Bible. Of all the books we promote, none compare with God’s Word. We pursue the Cross as God opens His Word to us. In this anticipation, we encourage you to make your own blank bible like Jonathan Edwards.’ Building a blank bible shows both a commitment to serious, life-long reflection and the anticipation of God’s illuminating Spirit. To date, over 15,000 readers have accessed the TSS Blank Bible Index.
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FREE book! What is God saying to us? How can we know Him? I wrote a little book — Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World — to answer these questions. You can download the book as a PDF and you can read more about the background of the project here.
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Humble Calvinism.Early this year we started a series on Humble Calvinism, a study through John Calvin’s Institutes. Especially noteworthy is Calvin’s experiential sensitivity to the contours of godliness. Join us as we continue learning humble and holistic Calvinism as Calvin intended. See the Humble Calvinism series index here.
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The Puritan Study. The Puritans were Cross-boasters. So how do we use the wealth of Puritan literature in our personal devotions and expositional studies? Our series on building and using a Puritan Study answered this important question. For more see the full Puritan Study series index.
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Who am I? My name is Tony Reinkebut call me “chief of sinners.” For 22-years I hid from God in self-righteous religious ‘faithfulness’ until my stubborn heart was subdued by God’s sovereign grace (Eph. 2). In one moment, after a sermon by Paige Patterson in Lincoln, NE on Luke 18:9-14, I perceived the Gospel as the great exchange, and by God’s grace I released my self-righteousness to cling to the saving righteousness of Jesus Christ. That day I recognized I was a sinner playing the part of the Pharisee. It was the day I was reborn. Now nothing is more precious than knowing Christ — the God-man who died for me and gave me His righteousness in place of my sinfulness (Phil. 3:7-9). Pursuing further up and further into the Cross has become the center of my life and this blog is intended as a place to share this pursuit.
Educationally, I graduated from Bellevue University in Omaha, NE with a degree in Liberal Arts. Theologically, I’m the product of a faithful local church and lots of reading. I’ve been married for 10 years to my best friend, Karalee (a more gifted writer and blogger than myself) and we have three precious kids, a majority of whom are named after dead preachers. Last year I was interviewed by Joshua Sowin about life, books and reading (if you want more info)
God has given me the rare privilege and joy of serving as personal assistant to C.J. Mahaney (if you really want to learn from blogs, navigate away from this sorry one and check out what C.J. is saying on his.)
Misc stuff you don’t need to know but will read because you’re bored and surfing the Internet to kill time anyway: My nicknames include any variation of The Scribe, T-Scribble, Scribs, Big Blog Daddy, Big Honkin Blogdaddy, Big Blog Papi, T-Rex, Blogzilla, and Scribola (take your pick). Curtis Allen calls me Tone Capone. And here’s my mug.
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My book wishlist. Hopefully one day these valuable books will be added to my library. All from the The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Yale editions) …
Vol. 25: Sermons and Discourses (1743-1758 )
Vol. 19: Sermons and Discourses (1734-1738 )
Vol. 10: Sermons and Discourses (1720-1723 )
Vol. 17: Sermons and Discourses (1730-1733 )
Vol. 22: Sermons and Discourses (1739-1742 )
Vol. 13: The ‘Miscellanies’ (No. 1-500)
Vol. 18: The ‘Miscellanies’ (No. 501-832)
Vol. 20: The ‘Miscellanies’ (No. 833-1152)
Vol. 23: The ‘Miscellanies’ (No. 1153–1360)
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Princeton Cemetery. I don’t know how I did it, but in the Spring of 2006 I convinced my wife and kids it would be fun to spend the day at Princeton cemetery. Princeton is famous for its school and less famous for its rich evangelical history. I took several photographs at Princeton Cemetery (where Edwards, Hodge, Warfield and the Alexanders are buried). These photos always remind me to be Cross-centered.
Next year the church will celebrate the 500th birthday of John Calvin. Be prepared to see a glut of books on the man for the next year. This newest volume, out soon from P&R, looks great.
An excellent selection from Herman Bavinck’s 4-vol magnum opus on the role of faith, reason, and theology.
“American Jesus films also invite us to use our imagination, even a sanctified imagination, to add to the biblical text. This furthers the trajectory that began in the nineteenth century in which the biblical accounts failed to address contemporary readers’ and viewers’ needs, which in turn legitimized the action of adding to the text (see chap. 3). The additions tend to have a strongly emotional appeal, embedding one’s encounter with Christ in experience, an experience limited by one’s cultural horizons. The Jesus of Scripture comes from outside, not from within, our cultural horizons, standing above, over and even, at times, against those horizons as the Lord and Savior.
On to a few excerpts.
faithful to scripture and and firmly rooted historically—requires vigilant steadfastness.
“If you find me short in things, impute that to my love of brevity. If you find me besides the truth in anything, impute that to my infirmity. But if you find anything here that serves to your furtherance and joy of the faith, impute that to the mercy of God bestowed on you and me. Yours to serve you with what little I have.” John Bunyan (Works, 1:336).
