While the Gospel is Silenced

The same day he nailed his 95 theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Martin Luther wrote a letter to Cardinal Albrecht, the Archbishop of Mainz (October 31, 1517). In it he writes:

Works of piety and love are infinitely better than indulgences; and yet [the indulgence preachers] do not preach them with an equally big display and effort. What is even worse, [the preachers] are silent about them because they have to preach the sale of the indulgences. The first and only duty of the bishops, however, is to see that the people learn the gospel and the love of Christ. For on no occasion has Christ ordered that indulgences should be preached, but he forcefully commanded the gospel to be preached. What a horror, what a danger for a bishop to permit the loud noise of indulgences among his people, while the gospel is silenced, and to be more concerned with the sale of indulgences than with the gospel! Will not Christ say to [such bishops], “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel”?

[Source: Luther's Works, vol. 48, page 47.]

Here I Stand

When I think of Luther’s dramatic “here I stand” statement before the Diet of Worms in 1521, I think of …

… Roland Bainton’s excellent biography …

[When Luther concluded the statemet he] “threw up his arms in the gesture of a victorious knight, and slipped out of the darkened hall, amid the hisses of the Spainiards, and went to his lodging.” (181)

… Niall MacGinnis’ fired passion (1953) …

… Joseph Fiennes’ quiet resilience (2003) …

… and Curt Allen’s track off his album The Process of the Pardon. Listen here:

Here I Stand (lyrics)

Verse 1

Let my life be a wordsmith, the word is a gift
What I’ve heard made me observe every verb from my lips
When you come from the curbs, where nervous don’t exist
And your heart is just hard to your sin, it did this
You need a reality check, in actuality vexed is God’s person
When what’s out of His neck is treated like strep
To those that respect stand firm even if you squirm
Learn what’s correct, cause your Diet of Worms is next

Hook

Here I stand, the Bible in my hand, let my life testify Jesus Christ is a man
And fully God, in the cross it’s fully our declaration, legal justification
Here I stand, the Bible in my hand is God’s word, it’s infallible
Disagreement is laughable. Denying this authority is Scripture hating
Planting my flag, I ask: What is your reformation?

Verse 2

Now every so often a heresy will say
That it killed what we feel, putting nails in the coffin
For real, not an option. They all been contested
And next is Paul, and it’s called the new perspective
So here’s the perspective: It’s some that would say
That justification’s not what we know it today
It should blow you away, what they say is insanity
That justification means a part of God’s family
It doesn’t mean that you righteous despite this
Exegesis that strengthens many believers
It gets deeper and hostile, they say
That the gospel is not about how you are saved!
What a grave mistake that you make when
Righteousness imputed to what you did is fake
It undermines the very nature of truth
That grace has now declared us righteous when we see His face

Hook

Verse 3

Now just when you thought it was safe, some depict a negative view of Scriptures
That wrongly pictures God’s Word unreliable, filled with inconsistencies
Though inconsistently brought, it ought not to really be an item
But it’s sad that we gotta fight ‘em, dag what they brag
Affects the word as ad infinitum. Apparently, many find issues with inerrancy
That Scripture makes mistakes, the debate innately tears at the foundation of
Can we trust with our life and observe a word that we not even sure is right?
’Cause it might say something that is wrong is an accusation that is far too strong
What God breathed along through the men that would pen His works
Yeah, there are quirks, but trust in the whole Bible extends the church
Where problems in the Scriptures, search, be a Berean
’Cause the Word that’s infallible, inerrant we believe in

Hook

© 2008 Curt “Voice” Allen, posted here by permission of the artist.

A Sobering Reflection from a Lifelong Reader

Yesterday afternoon I grabbed Mike Bullmore and interviewed him about reading. My aim was to write an article on how he led his church through a year of reading biographies together, which I did and can be read here. But at one point in our interview he shared the following reflection:

A sobering thing happened to me recently, I looked around at the books on my office bookshelves and I realized I won’t get to read them all. I thought I was going to, and I’m not going to make it. So, that’s alright. But I had this cherished idea that I was going to master all this stuff. And now I realize that I won’t. So you’ve got to be selective anyway.

For a finite book lover like me, that is quite sobering.

Wooing to Christ

Puritan Richard Sibbes on the end and aim of gospel preaching (Works, 2:232):

When the beauty of Christ is unfolded, it draws the wounded, hungry soul unto him. The preaching of the word doth that that shows the sweet love of God in Jesus Christ. This makes the ordinance of the ministry so sweet. The ordinance of the ministry is that that distributes the portion to every child of God. The ministers of God are stewards, as it were, to distribute comfort and reproof to whom it belongs. Now where there is a convenient distributing of the portion to every one, that makes the ordinance of God so beautiful, when the waters of life are derived from the spring of the Scripture to every particular man’s use.

The word, in the application of it, is a sweet thing. For good things, the nearer they are brought home, the more delightful they are. This ordinance of preaching, it lays open the ‘riches of Christ.’ There may be a great deal of riches wrapped up in a treasury, but this opens the treasury, as St Paul says, ‘ to lay open the unsearchable riches of Christ’ (Eph 3:8). The ministry of the word is ordained to lay open the treasure to God’s people, that they may know what riches they have by Christ; and the end of the ministry is to win the people’s love to Christ.

Therefore they come between the bride and bridegroom to procure the marriage; therefore they lay open that that procures the contract here, and the consummation in heaven; so to woo for Christ, and ‘beseech them to be reconciled to God’ (2 Cor 5:20). This is the end of the ministry. This makes the church of God so beautiful, that it hath this ordinance in it [preaching], to bring God, and Christ, and his people together: to contract them together. There be rich mines in the Scripture, but they must be digged up. The ministry serves to dig up those mines.

The Enchanted Forest

From John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress:

… I then saw in my dream, that they went on until they came into a certain country whose air naturally tended to make one drowsy, if he came a stranger into it. And here Hopeful began to be very dull, and heavy to sleep: wherefore he said unto Christian, I do now begin to grow so drowsy that I can scarcely hold open mine eyes; let us lie down here, and take one nap.

Christian: By no means, said the other; lest, sleeping, we never awake more.

Hopeful: Why, my brother? Sleep is sweet to the laboring man; we may be refreshed, if we take a nap.

Christian: Do you not remember that one of the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground? He meant by that, that we should beware of sleeping; wherefore “let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thess. 5:6).

Hopeful: I acknowledge myself in a fault; and had I been here alone, I had by sleeping run the danger of death. I see it is true that the wise man saith, “Two are better than one” (Ecc. 4:9).

Christian: Now, then, said Christian, to prevent drowsiness in this place, let us fall into good discourse.

Hopeful: With all my heart, said the other.

Christian: Where shall we begin?

Hopeful: Where God began with us. But do you begin, if you please. …

Storing and Cashing Book Gold

To experience long-term benefit from my book reading I have discovered that I need a keen eye for what’s important on a given page and a good storage system to retain and to later find what I’ve read over the years. These are important practices for any book reader, and it’s a point that A.G. Sertillanges captures well in his book The Intellectual Life (1934). [Note: I rarely quote from the book because it makes me (a blue-collar grunt from Nebraska) appear pretentious, or more so than normal.]

Sertillanges writes:

If we had to trust memory to keep intact and ready for use all that we have come upon or found out in the course of our life of study, it would be perfectly disastrous. Memory is an unreliable servant; it loses things, it buries them, it does not answer at call. We refuse to overload it, to cumber the mind; we prefer liberty of soul to a wealth of unusable ideas. The notebook gets us out of the difficulty. …

To remember the right thing at the right moment would take a degree of self-mastery that no mortal possesses. Here again notebooks and pigeonholes will help us. We must organize our reserves, lodge our savings in the bank where, it is true, they will yield no interest, but where they will at any rate be safe and ready at call. We ourselves shall be the cashiers. (186–­187)

Now of course there’s a place for Scripture memorization. We must not forget it! But for all other books his point is a very important one. So in Lit! I devote some ink to briefly explaining the importance of locating golden nuggets of truth on the pages of our books (pages 115–116), the importance of marking the gold (148–149), and then I explain how I use a computer database to store the gold for future use (117–118). I commend these three practices to every reader, whether you prefer printed books or ebooks, and whether you’re an intellectual or just a dufus like me.

Counting Others More Significant

Jeremiah Burroughs (c. 1600–1646) was an outstanding Puritan preacher and writer. He wrote the following in his book Excellency of a Gracious Spirit, a quote that made its way inside a very good new biography on the man by Phillip Simpson, A Life of Gospel Peace (RHB, 2011):

Rejoice in the good of others, though it eclipses your light, though it makes your parts, your abilities, and your excellencies dimmer in the eyes of others. Were it not for the eminence of some above you, your parts perhaps would shine more brightly and be of high esteem. Yet to rejoice in this from the heart, to bless God from the soul for His gifts and graces in others, that His name may be glorified more by others than I can glorify it myself; to be able to truly say, ‘Though I can do little, yet blessed be God there are some who can do more for God than I, and in this I do and will rejoice’—this is indeed to be able to do much more than others. This shows a great eminence of spirit.

Top 10 P.G. Wodehouse Titles

British humorist P.G. Wodehouse penned close to 100 books in his prolific career. That’s great for him, but it also means I find myself up against the dashed difficult problem of determining where to begin. So to help me navigate the options I contacted the man who introduced me to Wodehouse a number of years back, Douglas Wilson. “As a general rule, the Blandings Castle books and the Jeeves books are the best,” he told me. And then followed that summary with “a rough and ready list” of 10 titles that take the biscuit:

1. Joy in the Morning
2. Leave it to Psmith
3. Galahad at Blandings
4. Uncle Dynamite
5. Uncle Fred in the Springtime
6. The Code of the Woosters
7. Meet Mr. Mulliner
8. Right Ho, Jeeves
9. Lord Emsworth and Others
10. Heavy Weather

Now that’s a bit more manageable.

Any other Wodehouse fans out there? What are your favorites?

[Note: the character sketches were pinched from this blog.]

More Book Updates

The book is now out and many of you are reading it or have recently completed it. Thank you for all the emails and comments and Twitter encouragements over the last week. Watching pithy quotes from the book spread on Twitter is really neat way to see what statements struck a chord with readers. I appreciate the emails telling me stories of families reading Lit! together, homeschool families looking to incorporate the book into their curriculum, pastors buying up copies to give out to people in their churches who struggle with reading, and college ministry directors leading discipleship reading groups through the book. This is exactly why I wrote it in the first place, so you can imagine how those notes warm my heart! Thank you for them and please keep them coming.

Here are a couple of book updates. On Tuesday two interviews were published online. My written interview with John Starke, “Death to Dostoevsky by Angry Birds,” was published on the TGC website. And my 12-minute video interview recorded with Justin Taylor in June went live as well. You can watch it here:

As Arthur Krystal wrote, “Like most writers, I seem to be smarter in print than in person.” Yes, and thinner and handsomer, too.

Some other fun interviews are in the works. I’ll let you know when they’re up.

Blessings!

Tony

Lit! Class Audio

Happy October everyone!

As you may recall, back in September I taught a 3-week course on reading at Covenant Life Church and the class content amounted to a very brief adaptation of four chapters from Lit!. There’s never enough time. The audio is now available along with the handout pdfs.

Class 1: A Theology of Books and Reading
58:41 | download mp3 (28.3 MB) | download pdf handout | listen here:

Class 2: Deciding What Book To Read
59:29 | download mp3 (28.7 MB) | download pdf handout | listen here:

Class 3: How To Read A (Nonfiction) Book
52:33 | download mp3 (25.4 MB) | download pdf handout | listen here:

Note: Since teaching this brief class at CovLife I’ve been asked to teach this material in other church settings and at a local college. I’m happy to do that. If you would like to make a request please leave a comment with your email address and I’ll be in touch. Thanks. Tony