What has Herman to do with Homer?

In his excellent essay “Classical Education” Herman Bavinck traces out the long and quite complex history of ancient literature in the life of Christian education. Near the end of his essay he addresses the contemporary value of writings by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Homer, Sophocles, and others. The following quote is taken from the end of the essay as it appears in Bavinck’s Essays on Religion, Science, and Society (Baker Academic, 2008), page 242:

The study of antiquity is not only of formal and practical value: for the development of thinking, understanding Greek and Latin terms in our scholarship, understanding citations and allusions in our literature, and so fourth. Its lasting value also lies in the fact that the foundations of modern culture were laid in antiquity. The roots of all our arts and learning — and also, though in lesser degree, the sciences that study nature — are to be found in the soil of antiquity.

It is amazing how the Greeks created all those forms of beauty in which our aesthetic feeling still finds expression and satisfaction today; in their learning they realized and posited all the problems of the world and of life with which we still wrestle in our heads and hearts. They were able to achieve all that, on the one hand, because they rose above folk religion and struggled for the independence of art and learning; but on the other hand, they did not loosen art and learning from those religious and ethical factors that belong to man’s essence. In the midst of distressing reality, they kept the faith in a world of ideas and norms. And that idealism is also indispensable for us today; it cannot be replaced or compensated for by the history of civilization or new literature.

Lit! Sale Online

To celebrate the release of Lit! our friends at Westminster Bookstore in Philadelphia are offering my very special blog readers a very special discount on the book. In fact they’re selling the book for almost 50% off the list price. Very generous!

• List price: $15.99
• Regular WTSB price, 40% off: $9.62
• With an additional 10% discount: $8.66

The generous sale ends in one month (Oct 23).

All you’ll need to do is copy/paste this special offer coupon code into the box when you check out: Lit! – Tony Reinke

And remember that WTSB orders over $49 ship for free in the US (UPS). So what good reason is there for not buying 6 copies?

If interested, go to the Lit! product page here.

Strewn Body Parts

During Paul’s time in Corinth the city boasted of many temples including the Temple of Asklepios, the god of healing. As you can imagine it attracted the sick and the diseased and the injured. Legend says those seeking to be cured were required to offer a clay replica of the body part that was diseased or broken. And according to later archeological discoveries, the temple was littered with such clay terra cotta likenesses of body parts, many of which originated from the 3rd-4th century BC. A large number of these clay replicas are now displayed at the Antiquities Museum at Ancient Corinth [see the picture at the bottom, a picture of the less risqué pieces (STDs were common in Corinth)]. It’s unclear whether Paul saw these clay casts with his own eyes or whether they had already been buried in the rubble under his feet at that point. But it seems safe to say that in various ways the Temple of Asklepios and its approach to healing led to a disjointed image of health. This may very well be behind Paul’s holistic body image in 1 Corinthians 12:12–31, which is a good reminder that Jesus does not settle for a healthy foot or leg, but desires a healthy Body thriving in unity with each other and in union with their Head. So much so that, “if one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (v 26). Such a contrast with the Temple of Asklepios would not have been lost on Corinthian ears.

Book Updates

I received my copy of Lit! last week in the mail. What an incredible experience for a first time author! This means the official release of Lit! is drawing nigh.

I’m happy to announce that Lit! has made its first appearance in a bookstore, more specifically at LifeWay on the campus of Southern Seminary in Louisville (thank you @mrmedina for the pic):

No, the glowing Albert Mohler book endorsement at the top of the picture is not for Lit!.

Oh well, even without that endorsement it appears the book has nearly sold out already (or their expectations are really low and only stocked two copies).

Other, more randomer notes:

• It appears that copies of the book shipped directly from Crossway to friends and reviewers have begun appearing in mailboxes across the country. That’s cool. Please read it and say nice things about it.
• I see that Westminster Books is planning to carry Lit! in their online bookstore. That’s cool, and quite an honor. See it here.
• I cite Herman Bavinck 11 times in the book. A random factoid my fellow Bavinckians may enjoy, but that never fit into previous blog posts. [Fist bump]
• Today Amazon sent out an email to folks who pre-ordered the book, moving the delivery date up from early October to September 27/28. Nice. This is the second such audible they have called on the delivery date.
• Last week I had a chance to introduce my book — and to vent on the Angry Birds video game — on The Paul Edwards radio program (Detroit). Thanks Paul for the opportunity. You can listen to me mumble here.
• I’m currently typing as fast as my fat fingers can type to keep up with written interviews and that includes a fun dialogue on books and reading to appear on one of Christianity Today’s sites. I’ll let you know when it’s up.
• I’m also being interviewed by John Starke for the TGC blog, where, among other things, he has asked me to determine whether Jane Austin or P. G. Wodehouse would win in a cage match. Such starky scenarios are to be expected in an interview with John, although the victor in this fight is not easy to determine. Hmm.
• At some point (soon I suspect) Justin Taylor will be releasing a video interview we recorded in Chicago a few months back — much to my embarrassment. (Watching self on video is a disturbing blast to all the senses.) This, I can only imagine, is payback for me spreading my portrait of JT holding his Dwight Schrute bubblehead. Touché. Now we’ll be even.
• My 3-part class on reading concludes on Sunday. That’s been fun.

More Lit! updates forthcoming.

Please, if you see the book in a bookstore, send me a picture. And thanks to those of you who already have!

Tony

Working Out What God Works In

Philippians 2:12–13:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 1955), pp. 148-149:

God’s working in us is not suspended because we work, nor our working suspended because God works. Neither is the relation strictly one of co-operation as if God did his part and we did ours so that the conjunction or coordination of both produced the required result.

God works in us and we also work. But the relation is that because God works we work. All working out of salvation on our part is the effect of God’s working in us, not the willing to the exclusion of the doing and not the doing to the exclusion of the willing, but both the willing and the doing…. The more persistently active we are in working, the more persuaded we may be that all the energizing grace and power is of God.

Greg Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology, as quoted in the pre-pub manuscript:

True saints should be psychologically motivated to fulfill God’s precepts because they know that God has given them the power to do so. … This kind of motivation is comparable to my neighbor’s desire to remove snow from his driveway. He has a fine snow-blower and gets his driveway cleaned off quickly. On the other hand, I do not own a snow-blower but have only a rusty snow shovel. When it snows a few inches, I have no desire to go out and shovel the snow. After it keeps on snowing and I still don’t go out to clear it off, my wife gives me a polite implied command by way of questioning, ‘when are you going to shovel the driveway?’ But I have no desire to respond positively to her command. I continue to let the snow build up until after the snow has finished falling, and then I go out rather reluctantly to shovel. I don’t have the motivation to clear off the snow because I don’t have the power to do it effectively. On the other hand, my neighbor has all the desire in the world because he has the power to remove the snow effectively. When one has the power to do something, the motivation for doing it follows.

Augustine on Pride

Augustine defined pride as the creature’s refusal to submit to God. Pride was present at the fall of Satan when he sought to escape God’s authority just as pride was present in the fall of Adam and Eve who sought to escape God’s authority by becoming self-gods (Gen 3:5). Pride is an attempted escape from God — and that’s futile. “For the dominion of the Almighty cannot be eluded; and he who will not piously submit himself to things as they are, proudly feigns, and mocks himself with a state of things that does not exist” (City of God, 11.13). God is, thereby making it impossible to live separate from His presence or authority. Thus Satan is forever caught in the vortex of self-mockery, living only for himself and yet forever unable to escape God’s authority and sovereign influence. Therefore, Augustine says, the life of pride is a life of self-destructive fakery, an entrapment to a false and self-created matrix of twisted un-reality. “To exist in himself, that is, to be his own satisfaction after abandoning God, is not quite to become a nonentity, but approximate to that” (ibid 14.13.1). Pride turns a man inward to find his purpose, it makes him feed on himself in the search for satisfaction, pride folds the soul over onto itself, shrivels it, causes the soul to fade and then to nearly disappear like Tolkien’s Nazgûl. The life of pride is a living lie and entrapment to self-mockery. Oh dear God help us! “Who can unravel that twisted and tangled knottiness? It is foul. I hate to reflect on it. I hate to look on it. But thee do I long for” (Confessions 3.8.16). Our only solution is to be found by fixing our eyes on the humble One and by washing in the divine blood that flows from God’s self-humbling (Trinity, 4.2.4).

Perseus Classics Collection (Logos 4)

On Friday I downloaded a pre-release of the Perseus Classics Collection into my Logos 4 library. The new collection is the largest single batch of books I’ve downloaded since I began using Logos nearly two years ago. The collection is a library in itself of over 1,100 ancient Greek and Latin titles and includes many corresponding English translations and helpful commentaries. Authors include Aristotle, Cicero, Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Demosthenes, and many others.

The release of this massive collection is significant step for New Testament studies since many of the Greek titles are referenced in technical Greek reference works and lexicons like TDNT, BDAG, and EDNT. The folks at Logos have announced on their website that over time they plan to add lemma tags to all the Greek books and add hyperlinks to the lexical reference to correspond to the original books in the Perseus Classics Collection. So when you see a reference in TDNT to, say, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the reference will be hyperlinked and a click will land you in Aristotle’s work to read the context for yourself.

Skilled Greek exegetes will benefit from the collection because of the tags and hyperlinks, but what about those who want to engage the classic Greek works on a less technical level? Most of the books are available as English translations. With these English translations the collection is quite accessible to all readers and offers many key books that can help sharpen your communication skills.

Last month I read Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner (Princeton, 2011). This book was an inspiring and helpful guide to understanding the persuasive power of writing in the classic style, a style that seeks to persuade by presenting truth as clearly as possible by a writer whose style builds symmetry with his reader. Write Thomas and Turner:

[The] sense of shared competence is characteristic of the relationship between writer and reader in classic style. There is always a tacit appeal to a standard of perception and judgment that is assumed to be general, rather than special. There is no need for the writer to make appeals to his sincerity, for example, or to some special insight or competence, to arcane or technical knowledge, or to a lifetime of experience obviously not available to anyone else. …

The classic symmetry between writer and reader is broken whenever the writer presents distinctions as if they are the product of her exceptional insight or temper, distinctions the reader could not have been trusted to see on his own in the right circumstances. (50–51)

If you have read the nonfiction works of C.S. Lewis you have been exposed to the classic style. Of all styles, the classic style is powerful one, but it’s also a subtle one that requires interested writers to do a lot of reading in the classics. Thomas and Turner motivated me to read more classic Greek literature and introduced me to many of the best-written ancient models of classic style. The classics that come highly recommended by Thomas and Turner are here available in readable English translations in the Logos collection. These include titles like:

• Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
• Euclid, The Elements of Geometry
• Aristotle, Poetics
• Aristotle, Rhetoric
• Plato, Apology
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, books 1-3
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, books 4-6
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, books 7-9
• Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, books 10-12

A wide range of readers will equally benefit from this collection, from skilled technicians of ancient Greek and to readers who engage the classics only in English translations.

So what is the cost of this library of classics?

Nothing.

The Perseus Classics Collection is free for Logos 4 users who simply need to place a pre-order. When it’s ready to download, the entire collection (over 600 MB of text!) will be added to your Logos library.

Pre-order the Perseus Classics Collection and find a full list of titles here.

Many thanks to our friends at Logos!

Lit! Radio Interview

Last night I introduced my new book on The Paul Edwards Program (WLQV Detroit). Our 23-minute conversation is online and you can download it here or listen online here:

PS: Arthur Krystal: “Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person.”

PPS:

Law and Gospel

The purposes behind the OT Law are various and complex and often debated. But one of its main functions is articulated beautifully by my favorite theologian (Herman Bavinck) writing in an often overlooked, but outstanding, volume on theology (Our Reasonable Faith). These are his words on page 81:

So far from being opposed to the promise, the law serves precisely as the means in God’s hand to bring the promise constantly nearer to its fulfillment. The law put Israel under restrictions, as a prisoner is put under restraint and denied the freedom of movement. Like a ‘pedagogue’ the law took Israel by the hand, accompanied her always and everywhere, and never for a moment left her out of its sight. As a guardian and supporter, the law maintained a strict watch over Israel in order that Israel might learn to know and to love the promise in its necessity and its glory.

Without the law, so to speak, the promise and its fulfillment would have come to nothing. Then Israel would quickly have fallen back into paganism, and would have lost both her revelation of God with its promise and her own religion and her place among the nations.

But now the law has fenced Israel in, segregated her, maintained her in isolation, guarded her against dissolution, and has thus created an area and defined a sphere in which God could preserve His promise purely, give it wider scope, develop it, increase it, and bring it always closer to its fulfillment. The law was serviceable to the fulfillment of the promise. It placed everybody under the wrath of God and under the sentence of death, it comprehended everybody within the pale of sin in order that the promise, given to Abraham and fulfilled in Christ, should be given to all believers, and that these all should attain to the inheritance as children (Gal. 3:21 and 4:7).

Cheerful Labor

Charles Spurgeon said the following in sermon #537 delivered on October 18, 1863:

Labor is light to a man of cheerful spirit!

You can work all day and almost all night, when the spirits are right. But once let the heart sink and your soul lack encouragement, and then you grow weary, and cry, “Would God it were evening, and the shadows were drawn out, that we might rest from our toil.”

Success waits upon cheerfulness.

The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed.

He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.

He who trusts in the Lord and laughs at impossibilities, shall soon find that there are no impossibilities to laugh at, for to the man who is confident in Jehovah, all things are possible. It is thus of paramount importance that the spirits of the Christian should be constantly kept up.