Reading LOTR to Kids

This morning I received the following question from Laura:

I see that you have Lord of the Rings as one of your featured books. Our son (just turned 7) is dying to have me read it to him, but I haven’t read it myself in decades and don’t recall how easy it is to understand. I know your kids are about the same age as ours so I wondered if you’ve given it a shot with them. Any insight would be great. Thanks!

My answer:

Hello Laura! Your question arrives at the perfect time. We are reading LOTR at the dinner table each evening. We just finished book 1 (of 6) in this beautiful edition. The younger kids need 15–20 extra minutes to finish eating so we’ve filled the time with Tolkien and a calorie-free helping of adventurous prose dessert. But LOTR has also proven to be a challenge and especially for the youngest two (and for me the reader!). The names and locations and language can get tangled and complicated and reading them verbally is an exercise in tongue-twisting acrobatics. Although we are going to press on, my regret now is that I did not begin with The Hobbit. If I had given it more thought that is where I would have started. The Hobbit is much less complicated, it is shorter in general, and I think it would have been a better entry door into Middle Earth for our younger two kids. I hope my regret can be your guide. Blessings in Christ! Tony

I know a number of you blog readers have read Tolkien to your little hobbits. Please share your experience with us in the comments.

Where’s the Cross in James?

It’s not there. Not explicitly. There’s no overt mention of the cross of Christ in the Epistle of James, nor of the resurrection for that matter (although the resurrection is clearly implied in 5:15).

The absence of the cross is striking and it led Martin Luther to degrade James to “strawy epistle” status. In Luther’s words, Paul, John, and Peter “show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know.” On the contrary, James “is really an epistle of straw compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.”

If the cross is so important why is it absent from the book of James? Is James deficient? Is my personal emphasis on the cross proven to be faulty by James? These are big questions, and they are big questions that get tackled in Richard Bauckham’s thoughtful commentary on James (pages 135–140), a book I read last week (occasionally I read commentaries cover-to-cover).

First off, Bauckham provides evidence that a substantial Christology undergirds the entire Epistle of James, an important point but one I will not detail here. It’s worth noting that he makes this conclusion:

James’ Christology is closer to Paul’s than first impressions might suggest.

His arguments are solid.

Yet,

It remains the case that anything like the Pauline soteriological interpretation of and focus on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus is completely absent.

But a second consideration should be borne in mind at this point. James writes paraenesis. …

Pause for a moment. So what is paraenesis?

Paraenesis is defined as “a technical term for moral exhortation and advice. While catechesis is the form of teaching that tends to emphasize basic instruction in the content of the faith [like the theology of the cross and resurrection], paraenesis is the instructional model in which ethical counsel and moral education were provided in a pattern of exhortation applied to practical problems or issues of living” (DLNT). The book of James is largely paraenesis, it has even been called the Proverbs of the New Testament.

Okay, now back to Bauckham:

… An appropriate comparison is not with Pauline letters as such, but with the paraenetic sections of such letters. These may well be among the most traditional parts of Paul’s letters, drawing on common traditions and patterns of Christian ethical instruction.

Romans 12–13 are an extensive example, and are no less lacking in Christology than James is. In the 35 verses of these chapters, Paul refers to Jesus Christ only three times (12:5, 11; 13:14). The frequency is only a little greater than in James (7 references in 107 verses). Two of the references (Rom. 12:5; 13:14) have characteristically Pauline Christological features. Like James, Paul in these chapters probably reflects the teaching of Jesus, but only implicitly (12:14, 17; 13:9), and, again like James, he refers to the law and all of its commandments (13:8-10).

Here’s his point:

Surprising as it may be, it seems that early Christian paraenesis, even in Paul, generally lacked much Christological reference. So James is as Christological as we should expect the kind of Christian literature he writes to be.

Explicit references to the cross are absent in the Epistle of James, but that should not surprise us. This is not uncharacteristic for its genre, even in Paul. Catechesis and paraenesis serve unique functions, functions that complement one another (a point made obvious in the broader context of Romans).

“That there are very considerable differences between James and Paul is not in doubt,” he writes. Yet by looking at the distinct functions of genre, Bauckham helps us see the continuity between James and Paul and, to me at least, suggests one way to reconcile James with Scripture’s overall priority on the gospel.

Crucifixion

The cross of Jesus Christ is at the center of the gospel message and defines what it means to be a Christian. For that reason alone it is a huge privilege traveling around the country with one of the most effective preachers of the cross. My boss does it about as well as anyone, especially when it comes to the frankness of the Savior’s cruel death (the cross is too easily sterilized in our modern context) and the saving results of the cross work of Christ that are now offered to ill-deserving sinners like me.

This week we flew to Palm Springs for the Resolved conference and during the flight I read Martin Hengel’s survey of crucifixion in the Greco-Roman world published in 1977 under the title Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross. It is a technical book, but also brief, readable, and valuable. And while I don’t agree with all of his theological or political conclusions (clearly the author disagrees with any and all forms of capital punishment), I do agree with the author’s overarching purpose for writing it, which is stated in the final sentences of the book: “Reflection on the harsh reality of crucifixion in antiquity may help us to overcome the acute loss of reality which is to be found so often in present theology and preaching” (90). Doubtless it will have that effect.

What follows are a few excerpts I marked to share with you:

“The heart of the Christian message, which Paul described as the ‘word of the cross’ (λόγος τοῦ σταυροῦ), ran counter not only to Roman political thinking, but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular to the ideas of God held by educated people.” (5)

“Even Paul’s Greek audience could hardly have approved of the λόγος τοῦ σταυροῦ, much less the Jews who could see the Roman crosses erected in Palestine, especially when they could hardly forget the saying about the curse laid upon anyone hanged on a tree (Deut. 21.23). A crucified messiah, son of God or God must have seemed a contradiction in terms to anyone, Jew, Greek, Roman or barbarian, asked to believe such a claim, and it will certainly have been thought offensive and foolish.” (10)

“For Paul and his contemporaries the cross of Jesus was not a didactic, symbolic or speculative element but a very specific and highly offensive matter which imposed a burden on the earliest Christian missionary preaching. No wonder that the young community in Corinth sought to escape from the crucified Christ into the enthusiastic life of the spirit, the enjoyment of heavenly revelations and an assurance of salvation connected with mysteries and sacraments. When in the face of this Paul points out to the community which he founded that his preaching of the crucified messiah is a religious ‘stumbling block’ for the Jews and ‘madness’ for his Greek hearers, we are hearing in his confession not least the twenty-year experience of the greatest Christian missionary, who had often reaped no more than mockery and bitter rejection with his message of the Lord Jesus, who had died a criminal’s death on the tree of shame.” (19)

“The passion narratives in the gospels are in fact the most detailed [crucifixion accounts] of all. No ancient writer wanted to dwell too long on this cruel procedure.” (25)

“Even in the Roman empire, where there might be said to be some kind of ‘norm’ for the course of the execution (it included a flogging beforehand, and the victim often carried the beam to the place of execution, where he was nailed to it with outstretched arms, raised up and seated on a small wooden peg), the form of the execution could vary considerably: crucifixion was a punishment in which the caprice and sadism of the executioners were given full rein. All attempts to give a perfect description of the crucifixion in archeological terms are therefore in vain; there were too many different possibilities for the executioner.” (25)

“In terms of severity, crucifixion can only be compared with the ‘popular entertainment’ of throwing victims to the wild beasts (bestiis obici); however, this was not listed among the regular forms of execution because whether or not it was carried out depended on the chance circumstances that such a popular festival had been arranged. By comparison crucifixion was a much more common punishment; it could be carried out almost anywhere, whereas bestiis obici required a city arena and the necessary facilities. Of course, crucifixion too could serve as a ‘popular entertainment.’” (35)

“The relative scarcity of references to crucifixions in antiquity, and their fortuitousness, are less a historical problem than an aesthetic one, connected with the sociology of literature. Crucifixion was widespread and frequent, above all in Roman times, but the cultured literary world wanted to have nothing to do with it, and as a rule kept quiet about it.” (38)

“In most Roman writers crucifixion appears as the typical punishment for slaves. … This basic theme of the supplicium servile illuminates the hymn in Philippians 2.6–11. Anyone who was present at the worship of the churches founded by Paul in the course of his mission, in which this hymn was sung, and indeed any reader of Philippians in ancient times, would inevitably have seen a direct connection between the ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’ (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών) and the end of the first strophe: ‘he humbled himself and was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.’ Death on the cross was the penalty for slaves, as everyone knew; as such it symbolized extreme humiliation, shame and torture.” (51, 62)

“In the Greek world the cross is never, so far as I can see, used in a metaphorical sense. Presumably the word was too offensive for it to be used as a metaphor by the Greeks.” (68)

“The ‘word of the cross’ is the spearhead of [Paul's] message. And because Paul still understands the cross as the real, cruel instrument of execution, as the instrument of the bloody execution of Jesus, it is impossible to dissociate talk of the atoning death of Jesus or the blood of Jesus from this ‘word of the cross.’ The spearhead cannot be broken off the spear. Rather, the complex of the death of Jesus as a single entity for the apostle, in which he never forgets the fact that Jesus did not die a gentle death like Socrates, with his cup of hemlock, much less passing on ‘old and full of years’ like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Rather, he died like a slave or a common criminal, in torment, on the tree of shame. Paul’s Jesus did not just die any death; he was ‘given up for us all’ on the cross, in a cruel and a contemptible way.” (89–90)

Joy’s Ignition

This Sunday at his church (Sovereign Grace Fellowship; Bloomington, MN), my friend Rick Gamache kicked off a new summer sermon series in the Psalms. The series begins with Psalm 33.

On the opening three verses (Psalm 33:1-3) Rick made the following comments in his sermon:

This is not a casual suggestion to worship God. This is not a suggestion at all. It’s a command. There are five imperatives in this three-verse invocation to worship. Here they are: “shout,” “give thanks,” make melody,” “sing,” “play.” We are to do all those things joyfully and so we are to do all those things very loudly. It is a call to passionate, exuberant exultation. As Charles Spurgeon said, “Joy is the soul of praise to God.”

This is a hymn to be sung when the people of God gather together. The Psalmist, by commanding that we worship joyfully, is saying that joy should mark the people of God. Joyful praise, the Psalmist says in verse 1, befits the people of God. In other words, joy is the appropriate response to God. It’s not the only response. There are other hymns that call for other types of response: stunned silence, or awe and wonder, or holy fear, or brokenness and contrition, or deep longings. But in all those other responses to God, there should be an undercurrent of joy because joy is the soul of praise. So when the people gather–like we are gathered this morning–the accent should be on joyful celebration.

Note that the joyful shouts and the joyful expressions of gratitude and the joyful singing and all the joyful playing are not tied to our circumstances.

Were not told:

• Shout for joy in the Lord … if everything is going well with you.
• Give thanks to the Lord … if everything went as you planned it this week.
• Sing a new song to God … if you got a raise.

The imperatives are not tied to our situations or our circumstances. …

So what is all this joy about? Why give exuberant thanks? Why sing new songs? The Psalmist does not encourage us to put on a show. He’s not saying, “Gather with the people of God and when you do, do all that you can to appear joyful.” This is not a command to be disingenuous. The Psalmist and God expect us to experience joy–real joy–as we shout and give thanks and sing. And so the rest of the Psalm tells us why we should be joyful.

Three verses tell us what to do (1–3), and those are followed by 17 verses that specifically tell us why (4–22). And that’s evidence of the fact that we need all the help we can get to be stirred to joyful praise.

If you are anything like me, then you are fickle, you are distracted, your joy wanes, and sometimes it seems to disappear completely. And yet here is a call to joyful worship. Why? What or who ignites this joy? God. God is the one who ignites the joy. The 17 following verses answer why we worship with joy—because of God, who he is, and what he’s done for his people. God is the reason for our joy. And it is this joy that runs as an undercurrent and withstand all the attacks of life.

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl DVD

A few days back I mentioned N.D. Wilson’s new “bookumentary” DVD. Beginning today our friends at Westminster Books are selling the new DVD for under $9 (for a limited time). Find more details about the DVD here.

WTSB is currently selling the book for $9 here.

Big Sig (Pics)

Wednesday night my son (9) and his baseball team won the league baseball championship–a three-peat! Before the game I was persuaded by my wife and some other parents of players on the team that it was time to break out my digital SLR camera (Canon Digital Rebel XT) and “Big Sig,” the affectionate name for my Sigma 400mm telephoto lens. It has been a while since I’ve shot with it and the conditions that night were not perfect for taking pictures, but I did manage a few shots that I wanted to pass along. Click images for larger versions.

On My iPod

A few of the albums currently streaming through the ‘buds:

• The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow (2011). An album that grew on me after about the third or fourth play. [Amazon | iTunes]
• Josh Garrels, Love & War & The Sea In Between (2011). Apart from one or two songs that grate on me, I like this album a lot. Don’t miss his track “Farther Along.” Crank it and sing along! Garrels recently told CT, “We were so provided for during the making of this album, by both God and men, that it seems appropriate to give away as freely as we received.” In that spirit, you can download the album for free here.
• Sovereign Grace Music, Risen (2011). I’ve been listening to this album since before Easter. Why stop now? [Amazon | iTunes]
• Sigur Rós, Takk… (2005). Because my playlist is always flavored with a little Sigur. [Amazon | iTunes]
• Glenn Gould, Bach: The Goldberg Variations (1955). It’s unclear if Gould was autistic or just eccentric but it’s obvious he was a prodigy. The energy he brings to the piano in this recording is impressive. [Amazon | iTunes]

What albums currently flavor your life?

Suffering

Francis I. Andersen, Job (Tyndale OT Commentary), 68:

Men seek an explanation of suffering in cause and effect. They look backwards for a connection between prior sin and present suffering. The Bible looks forwards in hope and seeks explanations, not so much in origins as in goals. The purpose of suffering is seen, not in its cause, but in its result. The man was born blind so that the works of God could be displayed in him (Jn. 9:3).

But sometimes good never seems to come out of evil. Men wait in vain. They find God’s slowness irksome. They lose heart, and often lose faith. The Bible commends God’s self-restraint. The outworkings of His justice through the long processes of history, which sometimes require spans of many centuries, are part of our existence in time. It is easier to see the hand of God in spectacular and immediate acts, and the sinner who is not instantly corrected is likely to despise God’s delay in executing justice as a sign that He is indifferent or even absent. We have to be as patient as God Himself to see the end result, or to go on living in faith without seeing it. In due season we shall reap, if we do not faint.

Lay Face Down and Clutch the Grass

If you enjoyed N. D. Wilson’s brilliant book Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World, I think you will enjoy his new DVD by the same title. The new “bookumentary” is just as artistic, personal, creation marveling, Creator worshiping, and as serious about worldview, graveyards, hell, art, evil, and enjoying hotdogs, ice cream, shorelines, and butterflies. It’s a 50-minute worldview film about God and life that will edify your soul and give you a new appreciation for the marvelous world in which we live. And it’s a project that has quite a lot of potential uses in campus and community outreach (study guide included).

Props to Wilson (@ndwilsonmutters) and director Aaron Rench (@aaronrench; also the executive director of Collision: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson) for pulling off a thoughtful, edifying, and artistic new film.

You can buy the movie from Canon Press ($22) or watch the trailer here:

Purging and Refurbishing the Imagination

Why all the imagery in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation?

This is one of the questions I try to answer in my forthcoming book.

My answer is three-fold:

1. the imaginative literature in Scripture helps us value the gift of imagination God has given us;
2. the imaginative literature in Scripture sparks our growth in godliness; and
3. the imaginative literature in Scripture introduces us to a theology of our world.

In my book I tackle 1 and 2 and explain why I think Christians should read fictional books to cultivate our God-given imagination. And I explain how developing skills to read fiction literature has in turn helped me read the imagery in Revelation. But due to space in my book, and in hopes of keeping the book as simple as possible, I was unable to deal with 3 and I want to more fully explain this point, with help from a few paragraphs out of Richard Baukham’s The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge University, 1993). In that book Bauckham explains that the Apostle John does not write in the imaginative form to dazzle us with his literary skill, but he writes in imaginative form to exercise theological motives.

The power, the profusion and the consistency of the symbols have a literary-theological purpose. They create a symbolic world which readers can enter so fully that it affects them and changes their perception of the world.

Most ‘readers’ were originally, of course, hearers. Revelation was designed for oral enactment in Christian worship services. Its effect would therefore be somewhat comparable to a dramatic performance, in which the audience enter the world of the drama for its duration and can have their perception of the world outside the drama powerfully shifted by their experience of the world of the drama. Many of the apocalypses could have something of this effect. But Revelation’s peculiarly visual character and peculiar symbolic unity give it a particular potential for communicating in this way. It is an aspect of the book to which we shall return. (10)

He returns to this “symbolic world” point just a few pages later.

We have already noticed the unusual profusion of visual imagery in Revelation and its capacity to create a symbolic world which its readers can enter and thereby have their perception of the world in which they lived transformed.

To appreciate the importance of this we should remember that Revelation’s readers in the great cities of the province of Asia were constantly confronted with powerful images of the Roman vision of the world. Civic and religious architecture, iconography, statues, rituals and festivals, even the visual wonder of cleverly engineered ‘miracles’ (cf. Rev. 13:13–14) in the temples—all provided powerful visual impressions of Roman imperial power and of the splendor of pagan religion.

In this context, Revelation provides a set of Christian prophetic counter-images which impress on its readers a different vision of the world: how it looks from the heaven…The visual power of the book effects a kind of purging of the Christian imagination, refurbishing it with alternative visions of how the world is and will be. (17)

So what’s the point? What is Revelation teaching us today? In the conclusion to his book, Bauckham wraps these points together.

We have suggested that one of the functions of Revelation was to purge and to refurbish the Christian imagination. It tackles people’s imaginative response to the world, which is at least as deep and influential as their intellectual convictions. It recognizes the way a dominant culture, with its images and ideals, constructs the world for us, so that we perceive and respond to the world in its terms.

Moreover, it unmasks this dominant construction of the world as an ideology of the powerful which serves to maintain their power. In its place, Revelation offers a different way of perceiving the world which leads people to resist and to challenge the effects of the dominant ideology. (159–160)

In the previous paragraphs Bauckham helps us answer these important questions: What is the purpose of our God-given imaginations? And what is the function of Revelation’s images?

The book of Revelation engages our imaginations until we see the world in new and radical images. These images help us see past the dominant ideologies of our loud culture, the everyday ideologies that we simply assume and ingest daily like thoughtless breaths of air. The images in Revelation expose us to the world again, but in new and shocking ways, breaking into our imaginations and offering us a new alien way of looking at the world.

God has given us the gift of imagination. The book of Revelation comes alongside us to purge and refurbish that imagination, providing us with a profoundly fresh theological angle on the world that we have grown familiar with.