Miscellanies

I recently completed The Road by Cormac McCarthy. What do I think of the book? Well, the dust has yet to settle.

I’ve learned to take a day or a month to step back from a book, go about normal business, and let “the dust settle.” This patient wait for clarity is a lesson I learned in college from the writings of Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).

I’m no fan of Virginia Woolf, but her understanding of how the mind evaluates books—especially novels and poetry—has taught me patience when I find myself surrounded by the blizzard of details to wait until all has settled on the floor of my mind. Resisting the impulse of immediate critique allows a critical brain-simmer between the period a book is competed and when the book’s value becomes clear. This wait allows for a constructive subconscious process where fragmented thoughts are reshaped into a unified whole.

And Woolf encourages us to critique slowly because this process provides the necessary continuity to evaluate new books to the very best old books. Such is logical. Why would we ever read new books without reference to the superior books of the past?

Enough of me. Here’s how Woolf articulates these ideas:

The first process, to receive impressions with the utmost understanding, is only half the process of reading; it must be completed, if we are to get the whole pleasure from a book, by another. We must pass judgment upon these multitudinous impressions; we must make of these fleeting shapes one that is hard and lasting. But not directly. Wait for the dust of reading to settle; for the conflict and the questioning to die down; walk, talk, pull the dead petals from a rose, or fall asleep. Then suddenly without our willing it, for it is thus that Nature undertakes these transitions, the book will return, but differently. It will float to the top of the mind as a whole. And the book as a whole is different from the book received currently in separate phrases. Details now fit themselves into their places. We see the shape from start to finish; it is a barn, a pigsty, or a cathedral. Now then we can compare book with book as we compare building with building.

But this act of comparison means that our attitude has changed; we are no longer the friends of the writer, but his judges; and just as we cannot be too sympathetic as friends, so as judges we cannot be too severe. Are they not criminals, books that have wasted our time and sympathy; are they not the most insidious enemies of society, corrupters, defilers, the writers of false books, faked books, books that fill the air with decay and disease? Let us then be severe in our judgments; let us compare each book with the greatest of its kind. There they hang in the mind the shapes of the books we have read solidified by the judgments we have passed on them— Robinson Crusoe, Emma, The Return of the Native. Compare the novels with these—even the latest and least of novels has a right to be judged with the best.

And so with poetry—when the intoxication of rhythm has died down and the splendour of words has faded, a visionary shape will return to us and this must be compared with Lear, with Phèdre, with The Prelude; or if not with these, with whatever is the best or seems to us to be the best in its own kind. And we may be sure that the newness of new poetry and fiction is its most superficial quality and that we have only to alter slightly, not to recast, the standards by which we have judged the old.

-Virginia Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?”

Two tidbits I learned today about the burnt beans …

(1) From Claudia Roden’s book Coffee: A Connoisseur’s Companion:

In Italy it was the priests who appealed to Pope Clement VIII to have the use of coffee forbidden among Christians. Satan, they said, had forbidden his followers, the infidel Moslems, the use of wine because it was used in the Holy Communion, and given them instead his “hellish black brew.” It seems the Pope liked the drink, for his reply was: “Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall cheat Satan by baptizing it.” Thus coffee was declared a truly Christian beverage by a farsighted Pope. (p. 14)

More here. [HT: Cranach]

(2) J.S. Bach wrote Coffee Cantata (c. 1734) a comic opera about a father concerned over his daughter’s coffee consumption:

Oh! How sweet the coffee tastes,
Lovelier than a thousand kisses,
Mellower than muscatel wine.
Coffee, coffee I must have,
And if someone wants to refresh me,
Ah, let him give me coffee!

Learn more about it here. Read the full text here. Funny stuff.

(3) UPDATE … Dean, a faithful blog reader in NC, recommends sipping java with david m. bailey’s album Coffee With The Angels playing in the background. Check out track 3, Java Junkie. “The Cubans drink it sweet. The Turkish drink it strong. Me? I just drink it all day long.”

Two years ago I launched “The Shepherd’s Scrapbook” into the blogosphere. It was intended to be a place to serve a few pastor friends with useful quotes I read. It was to be a scrapbook for shepherds. Gauging from emails I receive from pastors who sift through the right-hand categories for sermon quotes, it appears this little blog has been useful as a shepherd’s scrapbook. As I began reviewing books and writing short essays this blog became a lot more.

If you’ve ever seen Jonathan Edwards’s octagonal hexagonal desk, you know he used a number of notebooks and resources in his personal study. But each of his notebooks were strategic. He used his blank bible, his collection of miscellanies, and his other notebooks as places to collect his thoughts. Later, he developed these thoughts into sermons and books [see diagram from the Yale works].

Edwards’s vision for the various components of his study is helpful for those of us in the electronic age, who find our personal reflections can become disjointed and scattered into various emails, blog posts, journals, etc. For me, Edwards gives clarity to where this blog fits into my personal growth and reflection.

So as you can see, I’ve decided to change the name of this blog to “Miscellanies.” It is, for me, the empty web space between my blank bible and other projects, a place for me to write about what I learn and learn from your input in the comments.

This blog will continue to be what it is—reviews, essays, a few random pictures and notes, with the overall goal of maintaining a cross-centered emphasis. It will retain the same web address and format.

Thanks for reading!

Tony

Tom left a portion of this quote in the comments to a previous post. It’s worth pulling out.

This originates from Thomas Goodwin’s [1600-1680] excellent book, Christ the Mediator. Note how carefully his cross-centerness focuses both on what Christ has done and what he continues to do. Beautiful in balance!

Rest on Christ alone, especially as crucified. Paul desired to know Christ, and him crucified especially. As they preached so are we to believe. It is the serpent as lifted up that is the object of faith, so Christ present in the sacrament, not simply the person of Christ, but Christ as crucified and as broken for our sins. Otherwise Christ, considered in the excellency of his person, so he might be an object for the faith of angels, who would have been glad of such a husband; but Christ, as crucified, so he is fitted for sinners, and he becomes not an object of love for the excellency of his person, but of faith and confidence as a means and ordinance for the salvation of sinners; and though we are to look on him as glorified, yet withal as once crucified. So that faith is to look at once with one eye to heaven, to Christ there as risen, ascended, interceding, so to look down with another eye to that Christ as once crucified and hanging on the cross, as made sin and a curse.

-Thomas Goodwin, Christ the Mediator in The Works: Volume 5 (RHB) p. 292.

The entire chapter—the uses of the cross—is worth reading. See pages 286-295 here. Thank you TB for this gem of a quote from an often neglected cross-centered puritan!

For the music lover, Shazam is the single greatest iPhone application I’ve seen to date. If you’re in Starbucks and you hear a song being played, you open this program, it listens for 10 seconds or so, and then tells you the artist and song title. And it’s free!

Download app for iPhone 2.0 here (iTunes).

Shazam!

One unmistakable indication that a preacher has placed the cross at the center of his life and preaching is when the cross remains central to successfully living out the Christian life. A cross-centered preacher extends the gospel’s centrality beyond the conveyance of salvation to all the sin struggles of the Christian life. He injects the gospel into parenting, marriage, and counseling—and brings the hope of the cross to all of life’s experiences.

And the cross-centered preacher understands that the gospel substantiates one of the deepest levels of Christian experience–God’s love to the Christian. As Jonathan Edwards aptly taught in a sermon,

So with what inexpressible joy may those that love Christ think of his bowing the heavens and coming down in the form of a servant: of his lying in a manger, of his suffering the reproach of men, of his agony and bloody sweat, of his dying on the cross for their sakes. How pleasing must it be to read over the history of all those wonderful [things] that their well-beloved has done for them while on earth, as it is recorded in the Scriptures, and to think that Christ has done all this for him: that he was born for his sake and lived for his sake, sweat blood for his sake and died for his sake. This must needs beget an uncommon delight.[1]

To take the cross of Christ and show a congregation that those were tears of sweat dripping down Christ’s face for them individually—for you! for me!—is enough to beget uncommon delight. The cross, truly understood personally, will fill your heart with joys that the fleeting offerings of this world cannot match.

Here on display is the cross-centered worldview of Edwards.

Earlier in the week I posted a cross-centered excerpt from a letter by Edwards written at the very end of his life to the trustees of Princeton. He attempted (unsuccessfully) to shake the possibility of presidential duties for a life of writing, and specifically to write a book to prove that all of God’s thoughts, actions, and intents center in the cross. He died soon thereafter.

But if we rewind his life to the warm summer of 1722 in New York City we peek into the early months of Edwards’s preaching career and see there a young, cross-centered teenager. It was during this summer in NYC that he penned his sermon “Glorious Grace,” a wonderful sermon centered based upon Zechariah 4:7. Edwards closes the message with these words of application:

Let those who have been made partakers of this free and glorious grace of God, spend their lives much in praises and hallelujahs to God, for the wonders of his mercy in their redemption. To you, O redeemed of the Lord, doth this doctrine most directly apply itself; you are those who have been made partakers of all this glorious grace of which you have now heard.

Tis you that God entertained thoughts of restoring after your miserable fall into dreadful depravity and corruption, and into danger of the dreadful misery that unavoidably follows upon it; ’tis for you in particular that God gave his Son, yea, his only Son, and sent him into the world; ’tis for you that the Son of God so freely gave himself; ’tis for you that he was born, died, rose again and ascended, and intercedes; ’tis to you that there the free application of the fruit of these things is made: all this is done perfectly and altogether freely, without any of your desert, without any of your righteousness or strength; wherefore, let your life be spent in praises to God.

When you praise him in prayer, let it not be with coldness and indifferency; when you praise him in your closet, let your whole soul be active therein; when you praise him in singing, don’t barely make a noise, without any stirring of affection in the heart, without any internal melody. … Surely, if the angels are so astonished at God’s mercy to you, and do even shout with joy and admiration at the sight of God’s grace to you, you yourself, on whom this grace is bestowed, have much more reason to shout.

Consider that great part of your happiness in heaven, to all eternity, will consist in this: in praising of God, for his free and glorious grace in redeeming you; and if you would spend more time about it on earth, you would find this world would be much more of a heaven to you than it is. Wherefore, do nothing while you are alive, but speak and think and live God’s praises.[2]

This second excerpt models the importance of the cross in the experience of the individual Christian. Grateful cross-centeredness should shape our prayers, our private worship, our public worship, and our lives in every way.

And Edwards models here a robust cross-centeredness, careful not to neglect important themes of the Father’s love, the incarnation, humiliation, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercessory role of Christ.

As I read more sermons by Edwards, I’m increasingly impressed with Edwards’s cross-centeredness–his ability to balance the work of Christ (what he accomplished on the cross in the past) with the person of Christ (where he is now and that we are going to see him in the future). This cross-centered balance on the work and person of Christ is quite obvious in Edwards’s sermons, even as a teenager.

Overall, Edwards is one of the finest examples of Puritan cross-centered preaching. He displayed his emphasis on the centrality of the death of Christ from the beginning of his ministry to the very end of his life. He is a man who believed a true understanding of the cross would (in experience) bring heaven down to us until the day we would be taken up to enter the eternal praise of Lamb.

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[1] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 10, Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723 (Yale, 1992) p. 616.
[2] Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 10, Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723 (Yale, 1992) p. 399.

Our discussion over evaluating the cross-centered-ness of the Puritans reminds me of a precious quote delivered at the 2007 Banner of Truth conference (one of the best conferences I’ve attended).

After reading Titus 2:11-13 (“For the grace of God has appeared … training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions”). Sinclair Ferguson said,

“The great gospel imperatives to holiness are ever rooted in indicatives of grace that are able to sustain the weight of those imperatives. The Apostles do not make the mistake that’s often made in Christian ministry. [For the Apostles] the indicatives are more powerful than the imperatives in gospel preaching. So often in our preaching our indicatives are not strong enough, great enough, holy enough, or gracious enough to sustain the power of the imperatives. And so our teaching on holiness becomes a whip or a rod to beat our people’s backs because we’ve looked at the New Testament and that’s all we ourselves have seen. We’ve seen our own failure and we’ve seen the imperatives to holiness and we’ve lost sight of the great indicatives of the gospel that sustain those imperatives. … Woven into the warp and woof of the New Testament’s exposition of what it means for us to be holy is the great groundwork that the self-existent, thrice holy, triune God has — in Himself, by Himself and for Himself — committed Himself and all three Persons of His being to bringing about the holiness of His own people. This is the Father’s purpose, the Son’s purchase and the Spirit’s ministry.”

- Sinclair Ferguson, message from the 2007 Banner of Truth Conference, Our Holiness: The Father’s Purpose and the Son’s Purchase.

Along with Titus 2:11-13, Ferguson cited 1 Peter 1:1-2, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, Romans 8:28-29 and 15:16. Ferguson preached from John 15:9 the next day where Jesus’ call for fruitful disciples is wrapped in His call for them to “Abide in my love.” Ferguson challenges preachers to root the commands to be holy in the grace of our electing Father, the work of His Son on the Cross and the ongoing work of the indwelling and filling Spirit towards our holiness. The challenge is not to avoid the commands, but make certain our indicatives are strong enough to support them. Preaching from the indicatives assumes the preacher is first living daily in the indicatives of God in his private study.

No doubt there are severe limitations to text searches. Research methods (like the one I’m showing you today) can be too mechanical and overly simplistic and therefore lacking in accuracy. However, I have found them to sometimes illuminate interesting themes and their prominence in literature.

Recently I ran a text search on Richard Baxter’s massive book, Christian Directory to try and discover which terms he employs (and thereby create a wordle of sorts). Here is a sampling of words and phrases I searched for and the number of individual references within the book itself:

7,687 > “sin”
1,111 > “grace” [updated]
714 > “repent”
496 > “sanctif*”
479 > “wicked*”
366 > “hypocrit*”
123 > “forgive*”
58 > “wash*”
43 > “cleanse”
40 > “blood of Christ”
38 > “his blood”
18 > “the blood”
13 > “cross of Christ”
6 > “death of Christ”
1 > “atone*”

[It should be noted that since the word "cross" can be used simultaneously for the work of Christ and the hardship endured by the Christian I did not run a search on this term.]

I’m interested to hear from the TSS gallery.

What, if anything, does this chart tell us? Are there other more accurate terms to search? Even more broadly–and more importantly–what constitutes cross-centered preaching and writing? Merely the saturation of the terms? What other factors must be considered?

Thanks for the input!

Tony

Add contact juggling to the list.

I’ll be the first to admit that the 17-18th century Puritans were not the most cross-centered bunch. They most certainly understood the gospel, preached on the gospel, and called sinners to embrace the gospel. But too frequently the gospel was pushed out to a remote and peripheral place in the Christian life. For example, one can read many pages from Richard Baxter’s gigantic Christian Directory on virtually all areas of the Christian life, and not see any connection made between the daily pursuit of holiness and the cross.

So I think a fair and healthy question to ask is this: How cross-centered was American Puritan Jonathan Edwards?

In 1756 Samuel Hopkins published The Life and character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, and as part of the biography Hopkins included a reprinting of a “Letter to the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, Oct. 19, 1757.” The letter was Edwards’s response to the trustee request to consider becoming the new college president (of what we now know as Princeton). In the response to the opportunity, Edwards pens several objections to the appointment trying to convince the trustees that they could find a better suited, more broadly educated, and a healthier presidential appointee.

As part of his argument against his own appointment Edwards wrote in this letter that he hoped to write several books and a move to lead the college would—by Edwards’s estimation—limit his freedom to write theology. In the letter Edwards reveals one particular project he hoped to write.

“… a Body of Divinity in an entire new method, being thrown in the form of a history, considering the affair of Christian theology, as the whole of it, in each part, stands in reference to the great work of redemption by Jesus Christ; which I suppose is to be the grand design, of all God’s designs, and the summum and ultimum of all the divine operations and degrees; particularly considering all parts of the grand scheme in their historical order.”

Five months after writing these words to the trustees at Princeton, Edwards would be dead from a smallpox inoculation gone bad. And in a field to the north of Princeton, the hope of Edwards’s book on the centrality of the gospel was buried, too. Had he lived, Edwards would have embraced the full demands of leading the college. Whether in life or death the book was unlikely.

The short excerpt from this letter gives us a glimpse into Edwards’s priorities in theology and reveals to us a man who understood the centrality of the cross in the full scope of God’s plans and purposes.

The glorious sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice is a golden theme woven by God throughout the New Testament. The list of passages rejoicing in this sufficiency—and warning us not to forget it—is a lengthy list. A small sampling of my favorite passages would include Gal. 1:6-9, 2:16, 21, 5:2-4, 6:14, 1 Cor. 2:1-2, Col. 2:5-19, 3:1-4, Heb. 7:11, 10:1-14, Rev. 5:1-14.

Rather than some optional, ornate fixture hung on Christianity, understanding of the sufficiency of Christ’s work is very central to saving faith. At the most fundamental level “there is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12). Not Abraham, not angels, not the Mosaic Law, not the blood of bulls and goats, not the merits of Mary, nowhere but in Christ do we find hope of justification before our holy Father and freedom from the clutches of death.

On the flip side of this cross-sufficiency, the Scriptural warnings are also very clear. If we misunderstand the sufficiency of the cross we misunderstand the very heart of saving faith. Paul told the Galatians—a church lured by a ‘gospel’ of Christ + self-righteousness—that to believe Christ’s death was insufficient to secure eternal salvation was comparable to “deserting” God himself, to completely chucking the true gospel, a tragic “falling away from grace” (1:6, 5:4). Had Christ’s death been deemed insufficient—or if there was another means to salvation outside of Christ—then he died in vain (2:21). Given the high priority of Christ’s sufficiency, Paul persuades the Church to pronounce “condemnation” on teachers, angels, and apostles who teach anything to the contrary (1:8-9).

By accumulating the force of these biblical passages we begin to see that the sufficiency of Christ’s atoning work on the cross is no fringe truth but pulls back the soil to reveal the root of saving faith. To believe—to really believe—requires a resignation of the soul to the complete, all-satisfying work of Christ.

As a 24-year old writing in the early months of 1727, Jonathan Edwards penned a few words in a notebook as he contemplated the links between the pleasure of the Father in the sacrifice of the Son, the sufficiency of Christ’s work, and the nature of genuine saving faith. That God would ordain that the redeemed would keep their eyes focused on the sufficient work of Christ is not only biblical (Rev. 5:1-14) but quite rational, too. Edwards explains why:

“If any person that was greatly obliged to me, that was dependent on me and that I loved, should exceedingly abuse me, and should go on in an obstinate course of it from one year to another, notwithstanding all I could say to him, and all new obligations continually repeated; though at length he should leave it off, I should not forgive him (except upon gospel considerations). But if any person that was a much dearer friend to me, and one that had always been true to me and constant to the utmost, and that was a very near friend of him that offended me, should intercede for him, and out of the entire love he had to him should put himself to very hard labors and difficulties, and undergo great pains and miseries to procure him satisfaction; and the person that had offended should with a changed mind fly to this mediator and should seek favor in his name, with a sense in his own mind how much his meditor had done and suffered for him, I should be satisfied, and feel myself inclined without any difficulty to receive him into my entire friendship again. But not without the last mentioned condition, that he should have a sense how much his mediator had done and suffered. For if he was ignorant of most of it, and thought he had done only some small matter, I should not be easy nor satisfied. So a sense of Christ’s sufficiency seems necessary in faith.”

-Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards: The “Miscellanies” a-500 (Yale, 1994), pp. 359-360.

Yesterday the family and I hiked Cunningham Falls State Park in Thurmont, Maryland. It was a great day and the mountain scenery and falls did not disappoint. Here are some pictures from the day. … On the topic of photography (and to answer the emails I’ve received over the past week), I plan to write a brief post on the camera equipment I use in the field. Until then have a blessed day! Tony

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Occasionally TSS readers are forced to put up with some photographs. Photography is my hobby and this weekend was fruitful, especially when it comes to photographic old houses. I’m a writer by education but really most of my life been in carpentry so viewing the handicraft of long passed carpenters is something that catches my photographic attention.

During our day trip on the 4th I saw two old homes. This first house is located somewhere on a rural pass. Even looking back on our travel routes I’m really not sure where it was located, but driving through a wooded area we came upon it in a hilly road and pulled over to take a picture.

And this second home, located in the entrance road to Harpers Ferry National Park was a great photo subject. You can see on the right side of the home has been removed (note the second floor doorway). This home faces the river to the south with a mountain for a back yard–literally snug against rock. I love the stone texture of the exterior, the broken concrete finish, the old cracked door, the stone porch. It’s really a great home to view.

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We’re off again for another road trip. Provided it doesn’t rain too much I hope to share one more collection of photographs Tuesday. Blessing!

For a Nebraska farm boy who likes road trips it’s fun to now live in the epicenter of tourist destinations. Like twelve numbers on a clock, we can drive in any direction and hit major landmarks in less than a 2 hour drive: downtown D.C. (5 o’clock), Baltimore (2:30), Annapolis (4:00), and Gettysburg (12:00) are all places we are now familiar.

But yesterday (under the threat of rain that dampened the fireworks prospects) my wife and I loaded up the family and drove west to explore 9 o’clock. We eventually ended up in a beautiful valley surrounded by the Appalachian mountains where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers converge at Harpers Ferry National Park in West Virginia. This was the spot where many say the Civil War began (John Brown’s raid).

Our overcast day was spent enjoying our destination (Harpers Ferry) but also enjoying the tree-canopied roads and historic sites, bridges, and rivers stumbled upon as we traveled west. It was a great way to spend the fourth of July. Here are some pictures from the day.

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Happy July 4th! … My kiddos love to run around at the pool all summer and my wife–a former competitive swimmer herself–must have passed this on genetically. It’s a lot of fun but also includes sun burns and what we call “pool feet” where the harsh, hot concrete chafes like sandpaper on the bottom of little feet. One fine pool day I returned home from work to see my daughter’s feet covered in Dora bandaids and had to capture this on film.