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.

——————

[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

.

.

.

.

.

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.

.

.

.

.

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.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

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.

Publishers frequently catch me by surprise. Sometimes (though thankfully not frequently) I’m surprised by my disappointment. But often publishers surprise me in a good way and that was the case very recently when a friend showed me his reprinted copy of Ned Stonehouse’s classic biography J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Willow Grove, PA: Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 2004).

I was immediately struck by the similarities it had to my original 1954 Eerdmans edition. Most obvious (and as you can see from the following photos) is the OPC’s attention to fashioning an updated, but similar, dust jacket to the original. That’s a nice touch. And I was surprised by the improvements, too. The text was retypeset and given a new subject index in the back. The most noteworthy upgrade is to see the bio published in a genuine cloth cover–a nice improvement over the Eerdmans faux cloth/paper cover that’s frayed on the bottom from shelfware. So let’s hear it for the new-ish OPC edition of Stonehouse–a classic work with a retro feel and nice upgrades well suited to carry the legacy of Machen for another 50 years.

Yesterday may family spent the day at the new Civil War museum and driving through various battlefields in Gettysburg. It was an excellent opportunity to reflect on the war and especially the role these rocky battlefields (like Little Round Top) played in the outcome. It was a sobering reminder of the 620,000 young men and boys that died in the war and of haunting sounds that once filled this little town as thousands of men groaned from the pain of battle.

Leaving the battlefields left a sorrow in the heart and a residual question in the mind—what is the eternal purpose of wars like this one?

As we drove from battlefield to battlefield viewing thousands of memorials littered all over what is, in my mind, the worlds largest cemetery, the words of John Piper in his second and final message at the Resolved conference in Palm Springs were ever-present.

In his message on Monday evening—The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth—Dr. Piper said the following:

Every human has died. Animals suffer. Rivers overflow an inundate hundreds of city bocks in Cedar Rapids. Avalanches bury skiers. Tornados suck the life out of little Boy Scouts. Tsunamis kill 250,000 in a night. Philippine ferries capsize killing 800 people in a moment. AIDs, malaria, cancer, and heart disease kill millions. A monster tornado rip through cities. Droughts and famines bring people to the brink, and over the brink, of starvation. Freak accidents happen in ways you would not want to describe. Little babies are born with no eyes, six legs, horrible deformities. That is because of ONE SIN! The universe was subjected to futility and corruption in hope (Romans 8:20).

This is very important for you to answer: Why did God subject the natural order to such horrific realities when nature did nothing wrong? Souls did something wrong. Adam and Eve’s volition did something wrong. The earth didn’t do anything wrong. Why is the earth bursting with volcanoes and earthquakes? Animals didn’t do anything wrong. What’s the deal with this universal subjection to corruption, when one man and one woman sinned one time, and the whole natural order goes wrong? Disorder everywhere in the most horrible ways, a kaleidoscope of suffering in this world, century after century.

Here is my answer—and I don’t know any other possible answer biblically—God put the natural world under a curse so that physical horrors would become vivid pictures of the horror of moral evil.

Cancer, tuberculosis, malformations, floods, and car accidents happen so that we would get some dim idea of the outrage of moral evil flowing from our hearts. Why did he do it that way? Ask yourself an honest question: How intensely outraged are you over your belittling of God compared to the engagement of your emotion when your child is hurt, or your leg is cut off, or you lose your job, or some physical thing happens? Everything in you rises to say, “No!”

How often does your heart say “No!” with the same emotional engagement at your own sin? Not very often. Therefore, what God says, “Alright, I know that about fallen man, therefore I will display the horror of his sin in a way that he can feel.” That’s why Jesus, when the tower fell on the 18, said simply “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” The point of the falling of the tower and killing of 18 people was your moral evil (Luke 13:4). That was the point.

All physical evil has one point—sin is like that morally, we don’t have the wherewithal to feel it appropriately, therefore were going to get some help from the physical order. That’s the point of the world we live in, it’s pointing to the horror of moral evil. O, that we would see and feel how repugnant and offensive and abominable it is to prefer anything to God—and we do it everyday.

Adam and Eve brought the universe into this present horrific condition by preferring their own way and fruit to God. All the physical evil the universe is not as bad as that one act of treason. …

The ultimate reason that there is a new heavens and a new earth is not that there might be new bodies for saints. That’s true. That’s just one of the reasons. The reason there is a new heaven and a new earth is because when God conceived of a universe of material things he conceived of everything: It will be created perfect. It will, by my decree, fall. I will labor patiently for thousands of years with a people recalcitrant showing the depth of human sin and I will at the center and apex of my purpose, send my Son to bear my wrath on my people. And then I will gather a people who believe in him for myself. And then I will return and I will cast all of the unbelievers into hell, which will demonstrate the infinite worth of my glory and the infinite value of my Son’s sacrifice, which they have rejected. And I will renew the earth and I will make my people so beautiful and then tailor this universe for them with this purpose—that when my Son is lifted up with his wounds, they will sing the song of the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world in the mind of God who planned it all.

Therefore, be it resolved: We will endure any suffering. We will endure any assault, any slander, any reviling, any disease, precisely because we have a great reward in heaven, namely, Jesus Christ crucified.

-John Piper, sermon transcript, “The Triumph of the Gospel in the New Heavens and the New Earth” taken from the 11:20-19:20 and 44:09-47:00 markers. You can listen to the entire message delivered at the Resolved conference here ( June 16, 2008 ) and you can listen to an earlier version of this message delivered at the Gospel Coalition here ( May 24, 2007 ).

Today I fly across the country to Palm Springs, California for the start of the 2008 Resolved conference. The conference topic is on Heaven & Hell. It will be sobering to spend the week contemplating eternity under the palm tree shaded and mountain-framed surroundings of southern California.

While there I hope to whittle out a little time to finish two blog posts: (1) I want to explain why I posted the provocative John Calvin quote on the cross, what it means, and why it speaks to our understanding of the church’s cultural engagement and social activity in light of the finished work of Christ. (2) Secondly, I hope to answer a question that’s come up in the SATC controversy: Is it sin to enjoy watching sin? I believe the bible speaks to the issue in a number of indirect ways (though I think the absence of a direct answer to the question reveals the inherent folly to the question itself). But it’s a historically important question. Augustine, for example, was forced to write an answer in light of those tempted to enjoy the brutal violence of the coliseum. It should be an interesting discussion, no doubt.

Before I head out the door I want you to see the visual art in the Resolved conference trailer. This is a precious and rare video because—while not uncommon to find “Christian” art—very rarely does it seem Christian artists use their gifts to communicate the gospel. [To echo a friend, “I love art, but what lasting contribution has art made to the spread of the gospel?” Hmmm. Good question.]

Enjoy the video:

Here’s an update on the Sex and the City and Christianity Today movie review ordeal…

Sex and the City was an HBO television series (1998-2004) that won 7 Emmy Awards.

The SATC movie (rated R) was released on May 30 with more of the same, what the Chicago Tribune labels “outré fashion, casual sex and dubious cocktails” and “plenty of eye candy for the ladies (think naked men and haute couture).” Not your typical Christian movie.

However, Christianity Today’s Camerin Courtney wrote a fairly explicit and positive review, giving SATC 3 stars (CT gave Prince Caspian 2.5 stars).

People criticized CT for positively reviewing a “pornographic movie.”

Carolyn McCulley (a CT contributor herself) writes an exceptional response to the CT review: “the pot with the proverbial frog has boiled over. The changes that have come about with the introduction of ’sex positive’ or ‘porn positive’ third-wave feminism, beginning in the early 1990s, have now so thoroughly permeated our culture that even evangelicals fail to see the trend or the danger.”

CT responded to the swarm of criticism by defending the original review.

Then yesterday Ted Slater of Boundless called CT to *repent* over the review (and the defense of the review) in an article simply titled “Christianity Today Relishes Sexual Perversion.”

Then this, a letter from a friend to CT yesterday. This letter models important discernment, but is also helpful in showing that non-Christian reviewers have no problem letting moral flaws in a film sink the film. Posted by permission.

Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 3:06 PM
To: ctmovies@christianitytoday.com
Subject: SATC Review

My greatest hesitancy in writing this e-mail is that it will prove irrelevant, both in CT’s disregard for it, and in it being simply a drop in the bucket of critique that you will no doubt receive.

I’m not sure exactly what your policy is in assigning movie reviews, but it seems your qualifications include neither doctrinal discernment nor artistic objectivity. Where to begin? I’ll make this brief, given my misgivings about the time investment in this e-mail. Most simply, the review sounds like little more than the giddy babblings of a TV fan whose favorite show finally made it to the silver screen. When there is an attempt to be “Christian,” all we hear are criticisms of superficial, intelligence-insulting “Christian circles.” Hooray for the balm of SATC, which ministers to my deepest needs by speaking to “the complexities of relationships in a postmodern age”! Boy, do I feel better.

The spiritual immaturity revealed by this review is stunning. Even as Ms. Courtney excoriates benighted (presumably evangelical) Christians, she reveals her own superficiality, bringing not a whiff of discernment to her entire review beyond her warning of sex and nudity (thanks for that, Camerin!). Fine—“the movie wrestles with complex realities of life.” Can you, trusted reviewer, evaluate just how it so wrestles? What answers it provides? How Scripture might evaluate these questions (and the movie’s handling of them)? It appears that Ms. Courtney’s evaluative bar is no higher than having “a single woman’s sexuality acknowledged.” I have no real hope of finding in a CT movie review a sense of sorrow, indignation—even a blush or two?—over the depiction and glorification of things that Scripture calls “sin.” I would have at least hoped for a biblical worldview to have somehow colored the perspective given in the review. Instead, I read praise for SATC’s “smart dialogue … heart … Not to mention eye-candy galore in the leading men and odd-yet-fabulous fashions.” Astonishing (c’mon, Camerin, really—“eye candy”?).

One could find more intelligence and discernment in the secular press than in the pages of CT. In fact, I did. Quoting from a review in the Washington Post, the movie version of SATC “succeeds just as well” as the TV show in “its unapologetic materialism, raunchiness and heroines who managed to be sympathetic even in the midst of almost pathological self-absorption …” What Ms. Courtney labels “well-developed characters,” the Post’s review calls “appallingly shallow and narcissistic; their friendship often seems based on the fact that they’re simply each other’s best mirrors.”

Hmmm … I wonder which review I’d rather young Christian women read?

———

PS- So what connection does this blog post have to the cross?

Philippians 3:18-19 “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.”

It’s helpful to discern the centrality of the cross in all things. But we must simultaneously discern the worldliness that stands in direct contradistinction to the cross.

Given the literary forte of Chesterton and attention shown the author by the ever-impressive TSS readers, I’m opening the blog up this weekend for you to post your favorite Chesterton quotes in the comments. You may choose to quote from an essay, a poem, or a work of fiction.

Please remember all comments on this blog are moderated and may not immediately appear (unless you’re on our list of trusted commentators, then it will). The name “Chesterton” attracts a lot of outside web traffic, so if you’ve come here for the first time please remember TSS is a reformed blog and post accordingly.

Never read Chesterton? No problem. Many of his books are a click away and can be read online for free. Start here and read Orthodoxy or Heretics. Try reading one chapter of one book and see if you don’t get hooked.

To kick of this “Quotable G.K. Chesterton Weekend” I’ll begin by posting one TSS reader’s quote from earlier in the week.

A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. [G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter 4]

Great quote! Looking forward to hearing from you.

Happy weekend reading.

Tony

Dr Joel Beeke’s latest book Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption closes with these sweet words:

[Samuel] Willard concludes: “Be always comforting of your selves with the thoughts of your Adoption: Draw your comforts at this tap, fetch your consolations from this relation; be therefore often chewing upon the precious priviledges of it, and make them your rejoicing. Let this joy out-strip the verdure of every other joy. Let this joy dispel the mists of every sorrow, and clear up your souls in the midst of all troubles and difficulties” as you await heavenly glory, where you will live out your perfect adoption by forever communing with the Triune God. There you will “dwell at the fountain, and swim for ever in those bankless, and bottomless Oceans of Glory.”

-Dr Joel R Beeke, Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2008), 109-110

Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chesterton (1874-1936) was a firmly committed Roman Catholic, an unashamed anti-Calvinist, and a richly gifted writer. Yet Chesterton made John Piper more of a Calvinist.

Given John Piper’s excellent thoughts on Chesterton’s famous book Orthodoxy, I returned to the book last night. The power at home was out from 4 PM until about midnight thanks to a massive storm that rumbled through the D.C. area knocking down huge trees (+100,000 people are still without power as I write). Last night, illuminated by the faint blue glow of a battery-powered LED lamp, I opened Orthodoxy. Here’s one excerpt:

“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. …

The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. …

Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.”

-Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Radford, VA: Wilder Pubs, 1908/2007) 17-18.