Dancing Words

In honor of National Poetry Month, which I just recently found out about, here are a couple of selections from one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Summa

THE BEST ideal is the true
And other truth is none.
All glory be ascribèd to
The holy Three in One.

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

The Examined Life

A sermon preached on April 23, 2006, in the evening service at Capitol Hill Baptist Church

Lamentations 3:40 – “Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.”

About two and a half millennia ago, while on trial for his life before the citizens of Athens, charged with atheism and corrupting the city’s youth, the Greek philosopher Socrates offered a defense of the life he had lived. His actions and his words, the things that had gotten him in trouble, he said were the product of his philosophical, contemplative way of life, of his pursuit of the truth. From this defense comes what may be his most famous statement: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He showed that he truly believed that statement, as he chose to have a death sentence carried out on him rather than go into exile or change his way of life.

Well, what do you think? Is Socrates right? Is self-examination the key to the good life, the only kind of life that is worth living? It certainly doesn’t seem that most people in our society today live as though this were the case. Among the things that we often turn to for meaning, fulfillment, and a happy life—money, possessions, pleasure, work, whatever—contemplation and self-examination probably doesn’t rate very high on the list. In some ways, one might say our society isn't altogether different from the one with which Socrates clashed so many years ago.

Read the rest of this post...

Christianity and Films

My friend Thomas, an aspiring filmmaker and one of the most creative men I know, often posts on a Christian approach to film and art over at his blog, Trinity Station. Examples here, here, and here. He always has good things to say (or at least interesting links).

Also of interest on this topic, and what prompted me to do this post, are a couple of episodes of the White Horse Inn radio show where the hosts interview Brian Godawa, a Reformed Christian screenwriter who did the film To End All Wars. Their conversation with Brian focuses mainly on how to engage with and interpret films as a Christian on a more substantive level than simply counting how many times the F-word occur in them. The interview is well worth your time, and can be found here and here. Godawa also appears to have a movie blog over at the Chalcedon Foundation's website, which I just discovered and haven't yet had time to browse much.

I may have posted this before, but it's worth doing again. Check out the Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism. It's a hoot.

Doctrine quiz

How well do you know basic Christian doctrine? Try your hand at this quiz from the White Horse Inn. Answers to follow later.

Questions About God and Christ (Answer True or False)
1. Jesus was God, but only appeared to be human.
2. Jesus was the first of all God’s created beings.
3. Jesus had a human body and divine soul.
4. In the Old Testament, God was known as the Father, in the New Testament, as the Son, and after Pentecost, as the Holy Spirit.
5. Mary is the mother of God.
6. God chooses people because he knows in advance they will choose him.

Questions About Salvation (Answer True or False)
7. The only way we can be saved is by the perfect conformity to the law of God.
8. We are saved by grace after all that we can do.
9. I am saved because of my decision to accept Christ.
10. God is so sovereign, he can change his mind.
11. The Bible teaches that there is an age of accountability, and that children who die before this age go to heaven because they are innocent.
12. If I die with unconfessed sin, I will not go to heaven.
13. The main motivation for holiness is fear of punishment and hope of reward.
14. God cannot hold someone guilty for the sins of another.
15. Justification is the process by which a person, through faith in Christ and sorrow for his sins, receives the gift of the Holy Spirit and so becomes a child of God.
16. God cannot require of us anything which cannot be performed.
17. True Christians believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible.
18. God helps those who help themselves is a biblically sound principle.
19. Though no one is perfect, the Lord looks on the heart to see who really loves him

John Piper, Thug Style

John Piper, Alistair Begg, and others get into the hip-hop scene. I'm gonna see if I can get Mark to do his next sermon to some beats. 2 Corinthians 8, anyone?

TL4L!

Calvinist?

"We would like to spell out what we believe the Scripture teaches on these five points. Our great desire is to honor God by understanding and believing his truth revealed in Scripture. We are open to changing any of our ideas which can be shown to contradict the truth of Scripture. We do not have any vested interest in John Calvin himself, and we find some of what he taught to be wrong. But in general we are willing to let ourselves be called Calvinists on the five points, because we find the Calvinist position to be Biblical.

"We share the sentiments of Jonathan Edwards who said in the Preface to his great book on THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL, 'I should not take it at all amiss, to be called a Calvinist, for distinction's sake: though I utterly disclaim a dependence on Calvin, or believing the doctrines which I hold, because he believed and taught them; and cannot justly be charged with believing in every thing just as he taught.'"

~Bethlehem Baptist Church staff, "What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism"

Evangelicals and C.S. Lewis

This evening on the way to the evening service at church, my friend who's from Northern Ireland asked my opinion of an interesting phenomenon he's noticed. Evangelicals in the U.S., he points out, generally love the writings of C.S. Lewis, and look to him in many respects as something of a spiritual mentor or guide. Lewis, however, was not himself an evangelical, and had some theological views that most evangelicals today would find troubling. In Britain, it seems, most evangelicals are aware of this, and while they might appreciate some of Lewis' works, they wouldn't nearly treat him as much of a patron saint as Americans do. Why, then, is it that your average American evangelical would probably tend to trust Lewis as someone whose writings are generally faithful to Scripture and trustworthy?

I have enjoyed several of Lewis' works myself, and I appreciate the gift of clear, thoughtful, imaginative communication that God clearly bestowed on him, but I'm curious about this. Is it that American Christians are generally fairly theologically ignorant and undiscriminating? Maybe the average member of Wherever Bible Church wouldn't expect to get along with an Episcopalian spiritually, but, not knowing much about Lewis' affiliation, doesn't know or care enough about theology to know problematic material when he or she reads it?

I'm just musing here, and I'm curious to know what others think. Why do you think American evangelicals regard Lewis so highly?

T4G Blog

I don't often plug others's blogs (I let my blogroll in the sidebar do that for me), but here's one you must see: the Together for the Gospel Blog. Mark Dever, Al Mohler, C.J. Mahaney, and Lig Duncan, all blogging together. Great stuff. Hanging out with any one of these men is quite an experience (well, I haven't met Lig yet), but get two or more of them in a room together, and buckle your seatbelts! Read this blog, and it'll be almost like spending time with them.

Honestly, I'm just amused by the fact that Mark Dever--who doesn't even own a cell phone--is now blogging.

A ministry opportunity for you (shameless begging)

Beloved readers, the internship that produced so much of the material you've seen in this space in recent months has come to a close. That means I'm hunting for a job at the moment, and it also means I'm flat broke. So, if you feel so inclined, donations in support of this blog and its author would be most welcome. You could be building the Kingdom of God, too, by supporting a would-be future pastor.

More on Elders and Baptists

My friend Randa asks a good question in the comments on my last post. Where do I find in scripture that elder leadership should be in a congregational context? Where does the Bible teach that the whole church ultimately has responsibility for issues of discipline and doctrine? I thought the answer was worth a blog post in its own right, as it's a bit more lengthy than would suit a comment.

I draw a distinction between normal leadership and ultimate authority. God has indeed given elders to his church to lead and shepherd the flock. Those who are Godly men, apt to teach, especially those who normally have the responsibility of publicly teaching the Word of God, are to be the ones who lead, shape and guide the church in its normal life. Church members, in turn, have an obligation to submit to and obey the leaders God has given them, so long as they don't teach or practice contra the Scriptures.

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Baptists and Elders

Another essay from my recently-completed internship at Capitol Hill Baptist Church


In today’s evangelical world, it seems most people don’t give a lot of thought to how the Bible says that the church should be governed and led. For those in established denominations, those conversations are several hundred years in the past. For those in non-denominational churches, the assumption seems to be that whatever works or is most effective is generally what should be done. As Mark Dever makes clear in the last chapter of Nine Marks of a Healthy Church, however, God has in fact given us a pattern for church leadership in His Word, the Bible. Those of us who value the Bible and intend to submit to its rule in all of faith and life would do well to understand and follow the Biblical model of church leadership.

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Theological humor

Hat tip to Kent Hendricks.

It just so happened one day that Karl Barth, Paul Tillich,
and Reinhold Niebuhr find themselves all at the same time
at Caesarea Philippi. And who should come along but Jesus,
and he asks these three famous theologians, "Who do you
say that I am?"

Karl Barth stands up and says: "You are the 'wholly other,'
the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality
of Christomonism."

Following this, Paul Tillich states: "You are he who heals
our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and
existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the
theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of
our being and the ground of all possibilities."

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one
breath: "You are the impossible possibility who brings to us,
your children of light and children of darkness, the
overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition
of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and
existential anxieties of our ontological relationships."

And Jesus looks at them and says, "What?"

Review: Evangelicalism Divided, by Iain Murray

The term “evangelical” is in a questionable position these days, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Many Reformed Protestants, Emergent Church folks, and others are reluctant to use the term to describe themselves, despite coming from ecclesiastical traditions that have historically had that label. Others take pride in using the term, finding it useful to locate themselves in the Protestant world, identifying themselves with supporters of a number of political, social, and cultural causes. Nonetheless, many (if not most) of those who use the term have a hard time defining just what an evangelical is. One case in point is a recent forum on evangelical involvement in foreign affairs where a panelist, head of a Texas evangelical association, was unable to provide any useful or satisfactory definition of evangelicalism.

Part of this inability to pin down what an evangelical is stems from the movement’s convoluted history over the last half-century, as its leading figures in Britain and the United States came to be deeply divided over what evangelicals are about and how they relate to other groups within professing Christianity. It is this history that Iain Murray chronicles in Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000.

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Ephesians 3:14-21: Two Perspectives

Christians have always understood prayer to be an important and powerful part of the Christian life. From the early days of the church to medieval monks to modern-day para-church “prayer ministries,” one can see evidence of Christians’ devotedness to prayer. Perhaps the best way that we can learn to pray better—which should be a focus of our discipleship—is to look at the prayers found in the Bible. Two sermons, one by Don Carson and the other by Roy Clements, look at Paul’s prayer for Christians in Ephesians 3:14-21, and they both basically do a good job of expositing the prayer.

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Review: Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church by Don Carson

Augustine of Hippo, in his essay De Mendacio (“On Lying”), wrote, “When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.” In that essay, as will appear by the title, Augustine illustrated the nature of lying and its evil effects, apparently addressing a problem that was widespread among Christians, and perhaps even pastors, at the time. In the intellectual framework in which many pastors today operate, however, lying is scarcely possible, because truth has ceased to be a meaningful category. As Augustine opined that evil was but the perversion of good, so lying is the perversion of truth—but if truth is denied, there is nothing to pervert. Such is the state of many people’s understanding of religion today, including many Evangelicals influenced by postmodern thought, some of whom are identified with a movement known as the Emerging (or Emergent) Church.

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Guy Fawkes Day

Today, November 5th, is the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day. On this day in 1605, the Protestant monarchy in England, and thus the Protestant faith in the English speaking world, was saved with the discovery and foiling of the Gunpowder Plot. In this plot, Guy and co-conspirator Thomas Winter, were caught in a cellar underneath the House of Lords in the wee hours of Nov. 5th, packed with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder. Their plan was to blow up the House of Lords later that day, when the King, Prince of Wales, and other MPs and Lords would be present. The foiling of the plot not only preserved the stability of the monarchy in the early years of a dynastic transition, but strengthened public opinion against Rome, further cementing England's loyalty to the international Protestant cause.

Folks in Britain and elsewhere remember Guy Fawkes day with this rhyme:

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
gunpowder, treason and plot,
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'twas his intent
to blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below,
Poor old England to overthrow:
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, make the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Hip hip hoorah!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!

So go build a bonfire, set off some fireworks, burn Fawkes in effigy, and raise a pint of beer to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day!

Review: A Generous Orthodoxy, by Brian McLaren

What is orthodoxy? What is the essence of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” for which we are to contend? Through much of church history Christians have understood “orthodox” to mean (as the word itself would suggest) right thinking—belief in a body of essential doctrine that the Bible reveals as the central message of Christianity. For some today, however, this definition does not suffice. Whether because of a postmodern aversion to doctrinal propositions or because of a desire not to be “divisive,” many today are redefining the essence of following Jesus as a mission, rather than a message. Brian McLaren is perhaps the most visible example of this. His book, “A Generous Orthodoxy,” seeks to paint a new vision for what orthodoxy ought to be in a postmodern world.

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Happy Reformation Day!

The Reformation Polka
by Robert Gebel

[Sung to the tune of "Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious"]

1. When I was just ein junger Mann I studied canon law;
While Erfurt was a challenge, it was just to please my Pa.
Then came the storm, the lightning struck, I called upon Saint Anne,
I shaved my head, I took my vows, an Augustinian! Oh...

Chorus:
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation
Speak your mind against them and face excommunication!
Nail your theses to the door, let's start a Reformation!
Papal bulls, indulgences, and transubstantiation!

2. When Tetzel came near Wittenberg, St. Peter's profits soared,
I wrote a little notice for the All Saints' Bull'tin board:
"You cannot purchase merits, for we're justified by grace!
Here's 95 more reasons, Brother Tetzel, in your face!" Oh...

[Chorus]

3. They loved my tracts, adored my wit, all were exempleror;
The Pope, however, hauled me up before the Emperor.
"Are these your books? Do you recant?" King Charles did demand,
"I will not change my Diet, Sir, God help me here I stand!" Oh...

[Chorus]

4. Duke Frederick took the Wise approach, responding to my words,
By knighting "George" as hostage in the Kingdom of the Birds.
Use Brother Martin's model if the languages you seek,
Stay locked inside a castle with your Hebrew and your Greek! Oh...

[Chorus]

5. Let's raise our steins and Concord Books while gathered in this place,
And spread the word that 'catholic' is spelled with lower case;
The Word remains unfettered when the Spirit gets his chance,
So come on, Katy, drop your lute, and join us in our dance! Oh...

[Chorus]

Politics

You are a Social Moderate (41% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (70% permissive) You are best described as a: Republican Link: The Politics Test

Where do YOU come down?

St. Crispin's Day

Today is St. Crispin's Day, and the 590th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. We may remember it with the words of William Shakespeare:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Luke 15:11-32: Two Perspectives

The love with which God has loved his children through Christ is amazing, magnanimous, and over-generous. It is prodigal. He demonstrated that love most fully on the Cross, but Jesus also illustrated that love in his parables, particularly his story of the Lost Son. In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus responds to the criticisms of the Pharisees for his eating with sinners by telling three stories of seekers who rejoice when they find a lost thing they were looking for. The third, and most pointed, is the parable often called the Prodigal Son. Dr. Roy Clements, former pastor of Eden Baptist Church in Cambridge, and Dr. Philip Ryken, pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, each exposit this text well, for they both understand that the story is at least as much a lesson about the elder son as about the prodigal son.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 3 of 12)

This post is the third of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In Section III of The Reformation of the Church, Iain Murray begins the examination of “The Need for Reformation” with three excerpted articles, one on the many abuses in the Church of England in the sixteenth century and two on the relation of the state to the church. Thomas Wilcox, in “The Necessity of Reformation”, written to Parliament in 1572, lays out various ways in which the English church still resembled too much the Roman church and failed to reflect the standards of Scripture. Among the abuses he attacks are absenteeism, scarcity of preaching, lack of a plurality of elders, corruption of the office of deacons, and failure of “ecclesiastical discipline.” William Ames, writing in 1631, continues a dialogue “Concerning a National Church” by responding to an essay by Dr. John Burgess. In the excerpt, Ames argues that a state-run hierarchy ruling local churches is found nowhere in Scripture, and that unity among particular churches is found primarily in common confession, not in organizational rule. Finally, Charles Hodge, writing in 1863, surveys various ways in which state and church related to one another throughout history, showing that the separation of church and state that has characterized the United States is both biblical and a historical innovation.

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Corporate Worship and the People of God

For millennia, worship of God has been the fundamental act that characterizes His people. From the Old Testament distinction between the pagans who worship false gods and the Israelites who worship the true God to the New Testament division between the church and the world, worship has always defined the people of God, for it is fundamentally what God’s people are all about. Since the Reformation dispensed with the idea that the practice and pronouncement of the Church are inherently infallible, Christians have asked what worship is, and how Christians should go about doing it. They have answered these questions in many different ways. Ligon Duncan, in his two chapters in Give Praise to God, Don Carson, in his chapter in Worship By the Book, Terry Johnson, in Reformed Worship, and David Peterson, in Engaging with God, all address the topic in slightly different, yet helpful, ways.

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Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 2 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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The second section of Iain Murray’s The Reformation of the Church is titled “The Rule for Reformation—The Word of God.” Martin Luther argues, over against the Roman doctrine of the infallibility of the Church and the Pope, that all human men are sinners subject to error, and that therefore their writings must be submitted to the judgment of Scripture. William Cunningham lays out the Regulative Principle established by the reformers—the doctrine that all the Church’s practices in worship must be positively found Scripture, and he goes on to apply it to the matter of church government, arguing that the Scriptures set out a particular form of government to which we must hold. John Hooper, writing during the Vestment Controversy in England in the 1550s, gives four criteria which must be met for something to be considered a “thing indifferent,” and concludes that the wearing of special priestly garments does not meet the criteria and is therefore prohibited by Scripture. John a Lasco delves into the vestments issue more deeply, showing how their use is prohibited by the abolition of the Aaronic priesthood in Christ. Finally, an excerpt from the Geneva Service Book of 1556 gives several scriptural proofs for the Regulative principle.

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Meme

Time for a meme:

Go into your archive.
Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
-->"High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing " - From "The Windhover", September 13, 2004.

Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 1 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In his introduction to The Reformation of the Church: a collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues, Iain Murray lays out his reasons for publishing this volume of collected works. He outlines how questions of the internal life of the Church were being discussed widely in England at the time of the volume’s publication, driven largely by an ecumenical movement that raised these topics in an attempt to “burst the bands” of denominationalism (p. 7). Murray points out that the Reformers and Puritans wrote extensively on the Church, and that their works had virtually disappeared from the conversation by the early twentieth century. This volume is intended to remedy that deficiency, providing the perspective of the men who perhaps more than anyone else in history had to consider the nature of the Church as they dealt with the world-shaking implications of the recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

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Habakkuk 1:1-11: Two Perspectives

For as long as sin and its effect have been at work in the world, people have looked around them at the evil and misery they see, and asked the question “Why?” The people of God have often asked it of Him, and a similar one: “How long will you tolerate this?” This is precisely the question that the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk raises at the beginning of the book that bears his name. Two sermons, one by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and the other by Andrew Davis of First Baptist Church, Durham, NC, each look at Habakkuk 1:1-11 and seek to explain and apply it to the congregation. Each deals with the text, each applies the 2600-year-old story to modern life, and each presents the Gospel. One of them, however, explains the text in relation to the rest of the message of the Bible, and for this reason it is a better sermon.

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CD recommendation

If you like a capella choral music, and you like hymns, check out "Amazing Grace," by the Robert Shaw Chorale. It's far and away the best I've ever heard. You can find it on Amazon or download it from the iTunes Music Store.

Are there other albums of this type you enjoy?

GodBlogger meeting

If you're a God Blogger in the DC/MD/NoVA area, think about attending a meeting organized by David Wayne on the evening of Sept. 30. I personally won't be able to make it to this one, but it seems like a great opportunity for some of us in the Christian blogosphere to meet and be encouraged by one another.

More info here. If you're planning on going, leave a comment and let David know whether you'll be bringing anyone with you.

Review: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, is presented in Scripture as an inescapably fearful figure. The vision of Him that John records at the beginning of Revelation left John on his face as though dead, and considering Christ as the great Judge who will destroy His enemies at the last day has caused many more men to be utterly abased and driven to despair. But, strangely, gloriously, Jesus is also the Comforter, the Wonderful Counselor and Good Shepherd who is wondrously tender with His sheep. It is this tender, comforting side of Christ’s nature that Richard Sibbes is primarily concerned with meditating on in The Bruised Reed, and it is indeed a wonderful meditation.

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Review: The Worship of the American Puritans by Horton Davies

In The Worship of the American Puritans, Horton Davies provides an in-depth study of the theology and practice of the Puritans in New England in the seventeenth century that is useful as a historical study, as an aid for any Christian who wants better to understand the background for many Reformed worship practices today, and as a glimpse of the wholehearted devotion of a people perhaps more dedicated to Godliness than any other in American history. As he examines their religious calendar, sermons, singing, prayers, administration of the sacraments, marriages, funerals, ordinations, and even their architecture, several themes or beliefs emerge that pervaded Puritan life and shaped every area of their public worship. Among these are their belief in divine sovereignty and predestination, their concern for “visible sainthood” and maintaining a pure church, and their application of the regulative principle which resulted in a relentless determination to subject everything they did in worship to the rule of Scripture.

Davies seems to make much of what he regards as a paradox in Puritan theology. On one hand, they were rigorous Calvinists, with a firm belief in man’s natural depravity and the complete sovereignty of God in electing men to salvation. On the other hand, their extreme emphasis on holy living made it seem as though good works were an essential part of salvation. Furthermore, very few Puritans seem to have had much assurance of their salvation, as they often subjected themselves to intense soul-searching, wondering if their professed faith were true and they were indeed among the elect. To Davies, the very idea of a covenanting Calvinist—one who commits to live a life of visible sainthood in the community of believers—is somewhat paradoxical.

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The Reformation of the Church

The Protestant Reformation was a world-shaking event. It changed the structure of society wherever its doctrines took root, and the recovery of the Gospel which was its central focus brought millions of people out of spiritual darkness and into the light of Christ. The doctrine of justification by faith alone, which Luther called “the article by which the Church stands or falls”, was at the center of the radically different Protestant understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Three important areas of thought were particularly affected by sola fide: the understanding of the church, the pastor and his role, and the sacraments.

First, the Reformation turned upside down the doctrine of the church. In medieval Roman Catholicism (and in the Roman church to this day), the church was understood to be the visible structure of priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, nuns, and other ordained officials who all owed allegiance to the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ. The Nicean attributes of the church—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—were abused by Catholic theologians foundational to the claim that Rome’s visible structure was the only true church and that salvation could only be found in obedience to Rome and her dispensation of the sacraments.

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Fundamentalism

In 1922 in New York City, Harry Fosdick preached a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” At the time, Protestants were embroiled in a debate between liberal theology that had been on the rise for at least half a century and Fundamentalist theology, so named for its emphasis on “fundamentals of the faith” such as the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, divinity, resurrection, and second coming of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. In his sermon Fosdick rails against the supposed intolerance of the Fundamentalists, arguing that Christians on both ends of the spectrum should be tolerant of each others’ views and avoid breaking fellowship with those of different opinions on these matters.

Though Fosdick has many good things to say, and his seeming zeal for spreading the Gospel is admirable, he ultimately is guilty of a dangerously errant view of the Scriptures, the Christian faith, and the place of tolerance in the Church. First, he has a poor understanding of the doctrine of Scripture and the nature of God’s Word. Fosdick accuses Fundamentalists of believing that the entirety of the Bible was “inerrantly dictated by God to men.” While there may have been a very small minority of Fundamentalists who held to this view in Fosdick’s day, it has never been the dominant or orthodox understanding of the mode of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures. This is simply a caricature by Fosdick that has little to do with the true Protestant doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible..

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Coming posts

Since August, and through this December, deo volente, I am serving as a pastoral intern at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I'm reading quite a bit on ecclesiology, and writing 800-1000 words nearly every day, so I'm staying quite busy.

A friend encouraged me to post some of the papers I've been writing in this space, so I think I'm going to begin doing that. Not because I think many people will be particularly interested in what I have to say, but simply so that you all can see that I am keeping quite busy and writing regularly (which was, after all, the reason I started this blog).

St. Bartholomew's Day

Today, August 24, is known in much of the Christian world as St. Bartholomew's day. Bartholomew, also known as Nathanael, was one of Christ's Twelve Disciples. After Christ's resurrection and ascension, Christian tradition tells us that St. Bartholomew worked to carry out Jesus' Great Commission by going on a missionary trip to India, taking with him a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. He also is believed to have traveled in Asia Minor--modern-day Turkey--and in Armenia, where he is understood to have brought the first news of the Gospel.

Protestants have other reasons to remember St. Bartholomew's Day, as well. On this day in 1572 began the mass slaughter of thousands of French Huguenots. The Protestant influence of John Calvin's French-speaking Geneva had spread widely throughout Calvin's homeland, and France seemed about to follow England, much of Germany, and the Low countries in becoming mainly Protestant nations. Under the authority of Catherine de Medici, several important Protestants were assassinated, and as many as seventy thousand Huguenots were murdered in the mob violence that ensued.

Also, in 1662, the English Parliament passed the second great Act of Uniformity, requiring all ministers of the Church of England to subscribe to a narrow set of practices and doctrinal beliefs. Nearly a third of the clergy--nearly all of the Nonconformists--lost their posts for objecting to doctrines and practices they believed were not Reformed enough. This great expulsion resulted almost immediately in the coalescing of distinct Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Baptists. The American iterations of these denominations trace their history back to this time.

Church and College

It's that time of year again, and many of my friends are either heading back to college or attending for the first time. College can be a very fruitful time spiritually, or it can be very challenging, depending on how you approach it and what your priorities are. As I indicated in my last post, this often can have very little to do with whether you attend a "Christian" college or a secular school.

There are perhaps many things you can do to help ensure that your college years see growth rather than stagnation in your walk with God. Regular personal devotions and study of God's Word, for example. Or deep, Christ-centered relationships that provide mutual discipleship, accountability, and encouragement. One of the most essential, however, is membership in a healthy local church.

The church is, more than any other earthly institution, God's chosen arena for displaying His glory and working out His plan of redeeming a people for the praise of His name. God identifies Himself with the church to such a degree that when the risen Christ appears to Saul on the road to Damascus, he asks him, "Why are you persecuting me?" In a very real sense, to follow Jesus means to love His Body, the church.

For more on this, pick up a copy of Joshua Harris's book Stop Dating The Church!. For information on what to look for in a church, see Mark Dever's book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church or visit the website of 9Marks Ministries. Though 9Marks is primarily aimed at pastors and church leaders, it is also an invaluable tool for anyone who wants to know what a healthy church looks like. If you've just moved to a new place--such as for college--and are visiting different churches, these resources can give you ways to evaluate them.

"Christian" Colleges

There's an interesting discussion of Christian colleges going on over at the Zeitgeist blog of World Magazine.

Jack Crabtree has a long post on the phenomenon of many "Christian" young people losing their faith at college. Money quote: "Christian parents are being naïve and ignorant if they send their children to Christian colleges under the belief that there—at a Christian college—their children’s faith will be preserved." He also has a plug for Gutenberg College, a Christian school with a Great Books emphasis in Oregon. Gutenberg has an all-Christian faculty, but, interestingly, they don't require students to be Christians, they allow "complete freedom of thought and faith," and they have "few behavioral standards." This is pretty interesting, having graduated from Christian college where these are decidedly not the case. Without knowing anything more about the school, it seems on the whole to be a healthier way of constructing a Christian institution--though many in the culture out of which my alma mater arose would dismiss it as being too liberal, perhaps not really Christian at all.

There is a tremendous difference, as Crabtree points out, between faith in Christ and membership in a Christian sub-culture. A school where students are assumed to be Christians, where they are told what wonderful Christian young people they are, and where they are expected to live according to that sub-culture's idea of what the Christian life looks like is not necessarily the same thing as one that actually encourages students in their sanctification and pursuit of godliness. A college that zealously (some might say frighteningly) stresses conformity to The Christian Worldview is not necessarily the same thing as a college that encourages students to work through and work out their faith in the intellectual realm, helping them become men and women who can think critically to the glory of God.

PHC students and alumni: how do you think PHC fares in these areas? Is attending there actually a good thing for your faith? If not, why not? If so, is it simply because you developed good relationships or because the school played an active role in making the experience a good one?

Just how alone is faith alone?

(Finally found the blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago while at work.)

Sola Fide, or justification by faith alone, is often said to be the central tenet of the Protestant Reformation and the heart of the Gospel. Martin Luther said it is "the article by which the Church stands or falls" (articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae). Some writers have challenged the traditional Protestand soteriology that makes a distinction between justification and sanctification; others, like N.T. WRight, have challenged traditional ways of understanding jsutification. I'm not going to go into that here, though they're interesting questions. Assuming the traditional statement of sola fide to be accurate and true (forensic justification of the believer by the Father based on the imputed righteousness of Christ, the merits of which are appropriated by the believer through faith--or something like that), I'm interested in how one understands the "alone" part of faith alone.

Is it that we're saved by faith, alone, in Christ? Or is it faith in Christ alone? That is, am I saved by my faith in Christ, and any other belief is immaterial? Or must I believe that Christ alone (and nothing else)can save me? First of all, it is clear that we are saved, as Wright has so keenly observed, by faith in Christ, not faith in faith alone. The one who has never heard of the Reformation and doesn't know the difference in significance between "faith alone" and "go Yankees!" is still made righteous in God's sight and gains eternal life when he hears the gospel and trusts in Christ.

But what of, say, the Roman Catholic who does believe and trust in Christ for forgiveness of sins and salvation, but also thinks that works are necessary, who believes that the merits of Christ are obtained by the sacraments as well as faith? DOes the fact he does believe in Jesus make his faith a saving one? Or is he damned nonetheless because he doesn't believe in the right way? If the latter, what does that mean for those whose faith is less than pure and perfect (which group of course comprises all of us, sinful as we are)?

The answer, I think, is that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cover all sins--even impure faith. If the individual in question is the object of God's electing mercy, His grace is effectual to reward and perfect his faith. I suppose, then, that this means I must disagree with those who say that Roman Catholics cannot be saved if they believe their Church's official teachings. If the RCC teaches "Christ, plus" (as most Protestants claim, a claim many Catholics deny and about which I am skeptical), then the believing Catholic has met the the necessary and sufficient condition of salvation: faith in Jesus Christ. This doesn't mean that the RCC is any less wrong or its teachers in any lesser degree of sin for their distortion of the Gospel, but it does mean that evangelicals should be a little more careful in assuming that Roman Catholics aren't our Christian bretheren.

Review: When People Are Big and God Is Small by Edward Welch

The following is a book review I wrote a couple of weeks ago. It was the first assignment for the pastoral internship at Capitol Hill Baptist Church, which I'll be starting in a couple of weeks.

Edward Welch’s book When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man is an insightful, convicting, and thoroughly biblical treatment of a problem that affects every person and is of particular relevance for pastors and other Christians who are regularly involved in spiritual counseling. Welch does an excellent job of debunking many common unbiblical ideas about so-called “psychological issues” using a biblical perspective and showing that at the root of all self-esteem issues and relational difficulties lies one common problem: sin.
Welch describes a common issue that manifests itself in many ways, but generally involves a feeling of a lack of personal or relational fulfillment, a craving of love and attention from other people, and profound emotional trauma that results from rejection or stress in relationships. The common thread is that people affected by this problem—often called “codependency” or sometimes “peer pressure”—are all controlled by other people in their lives and emotions.

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AWOL

My blog is missing. I don't know where it went. It snuck off under cover of darkness one night, and hasn't been heard from in a couple of months. Maybe it's off summering on Nantucket. Maybe it's on safari in the Congo, or hiking the Andes. I don't know. At any rate, I hope my blog comes back soon.

Difficulties

If you've tried to visit my blog in the last couple of days, you will have noticed that it wasn't available. Somehow my template got corrupted and I had to redo it. This means that my customizations and sidebar are gone, so I'll have to think about how to re-create those. I'm thinking of switching to a different blog apparatus (perhaps Moveable Type or something like that), but for now I'll stick with Blogger 'cause it's free and relatively easy--even if it does do annoying things like randomly deleting your template.

Christ's Lordship and Christian Education

This is the text of the message I preached in PHC's chapel service this morning.

Patrick Henry College, for all the long years of its existence [Note: PHC was founded in 2000], and especially in recent months, has been at a point of institutional crisis—a crisis, you might say, of self-definition. What, we ask, is PHC supposed to be? What is its purpose, its role, and its goal as an educational institution? What does the “ideal” PHC student look like, and how do we go about producing him?

We can begin to formulate an answer to all of these questions, and some related questions that have not yet been raised, by thinking about what Wheaton College President Duane Litfin has called the challenge of the Christian college: to see more fully Whom we serve. If we begin to think together about what it means to be distinctively Christian, and just who this Christ whom we serve, it will put our thoughts about what PHC is and should be in the proper perspective. So, now, for a few minutes, let’s think first about who Christ is to us, and then apply those considerations to our experience here at PHC.

Consider the phrase “distinctively Christian education.” This shows up in the literature of scores or hundreds of self-defined Christian colleges, but what does it mean? What are we saying when we talk about a college or educational program being Christ-centered? I think this phrase has become something of a cliché, something we don’t really understand because we’re so familiar with it. When we say that an education is Christ-centered, do we really mean that it is focused upon the second person of the Trinity? Do we really just mean God-centered, or is there some real sense in which a Christian liberal arts education is specifically Son-centered?

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How to Read the Bible

[This essay first published in Notes on the Times, the journal of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society.]

How do you read the Bible? That may seem like an odd question. What do you think the Bible is? What is it for? Is it a collection of stories with a moral point? Is it a book of doctrine, the basis for a systematic articulation of what you believe? Is it a book of solutions to the problems you face from day to day? Or is it far more than all of these?

Most of us are familiar with all the Sunday School stories of the Old Testament. We’ve all heard the stories of biblical “heroes” like Joseph, Joshua, Gideon, Esther, David, Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego, and many others. All too often, however, these scriptural accounts are treated simply as stories, and the application drawn from them usually has something to do with how we’re supposed to follow the example of these brave people and be courageous, steadfast, faithful, and the like. The closest thing to a theme that most evangelicals see in these stories is “How to do great things for God.” This misses the point. The Bible is far, far more than a collection of stories. It is the record of what God has really done in history. There is one grand theme running throughout all of Scripture, and the point of the stories of the Old Testament can’t be properly grasped unless we understand the theme and read them with it in mind.


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I am a polytheistic idolator

I am a polytheistic idolator. No, really, I am. Not by confession--I believe firmly in the Trinity revealed in Scripture and confessed by the great creeds of the Christian faith. The Athanasian Creed is particularly good on this matter.
No, my problem is not that I don't know that God is one-in-three. I do. I just can't begin to comprehend that, and it affects my thinking about Him. I suppose there are two tendencies of the mind of finite man when he tries to think about the Trinity: either to think of God as one indivisible Being with no distiguishable parts or personalities (like the God of Judaism or Islam), or to think of three separate God beings, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who are each God, but more or less separate beings.
I find myself, when I'm not careful, slipping into the latter tendency. When I hear someone talk about "God," I usually, unthinkingly, assume he's speaking of God the Father. I never, for some reason, think of the Godhead. When I hear someone speak of "the Lord," I think of Jesus Christ. Whenever I'm not actively thinking about and affirming the particulars of the Trinitarian God, the three members of the Godhead are separate beings to me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can't reconcile using singular pronouns to describe three persons, as we often do when we say "He" and "Him" in reference to God.
I think this tendency is sinful. When you get down to brass tacks, it is idolatry, because it makes God out to be less than--or at least other than--He has revealed Himself to be in His Word. I don't know how to explain why I think this way, other than that my finite mind isn't able to understand the stunning truth of the Trinity. I don't know what to do about it, either--except simply to pray that God will reveal Himself to me more fully and open my mind to see the beauty of the truth of His divine perfections.

Christian Unity

The Nicene Creed says "I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church." What does the one here mean? What is the unity of the church supposed to look like? As a Baptist, I have been raised with a firmly congregationalist understanding that unity in the church is spiritual unity. Congregationalists usually speak of "the invisible Church" and "visible churches." One of the main themes in Christianity today is unity--unity of structure, unity of purpose and mission, and, to a much lesser degree, unity of doctrine. If the Church really is one, what does its unity mean?

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Community values, cultural institutions, and globalization

A thought struck me while sitting in class yesterday afternoon: How would it affect the character and institutions of our culture if society at large came to understand the vital importance of community? Many occupations today require frequent travel or relocation. If it were generally understood that every person should be connected to a family, a church, and a healthy community, how might these occupations be different?

Consider a couple of examples: The globe-trotting journalist or foreign correspondent who works for a major news outlet spends most weeks of the year traveling between the various locations he covers. If he has a family, he's away from them for much of the year, and he certainly isn't able to be involved in a local church or a community. Or consider the career diplomat, who moves from country to country throughout his career, spending no more than a few years in each location. Even if his family is with him, they probably never have a chance to put down roots in a community with shared culture and values, and probably can't develop a sense of belonging to a particular home. These sorts of occupations are numerous. Members of the military usually move every few years. Businessmen who work for companies with branches across the country and around the world often spend much of their time traveling. These are just a few examples.

Some who do understand the importance of family, church, and community might say that Christians should just avoid these occupations as much as possible. If we want to see such values in society at large, however, I don't think we should simply leave these jobs to others. How would these jobs, and the institutions they support, change if community values became the norm and even the people in charge of the institutions tried to reflect them in their organizations' structures? How might this affect commerce and intercourse between various regions of a nation, and between countries in the international community? Would letting people stay at home necessarily result in less intercourse with other parts of the world? How might this affect the phenomenon of globalization that the world has seen in the last couple of decades?

If you know of anyone who's thought about, or even better, written about these issues, I'd love to hear about it.

Civil Religion

A while back I outlined my concerns with American Christians who too easily confuse the sacred and the secular, uncritically assuming America's moral superiority and divine favor as a "Christian nation."
In the latest edition of The New Pantagruel, Michael J. Baxter has written an article along much the same lines. He responds to a post-9/11 editorial by Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the journal First Things. Baxter critiques Neuhaus's assertions that America is a "Christian nation" and that America fights on the side of godly truth and justice in its war against terrorism. He also has some very interesting things to say about Neuhaus's handling of the anonymous, second-century Letter to Diognetus, a commentary on the character of Christians as citizens in the ancient Roman world.

He says:

On this (properly contextualized) reading of the Letter to Diognetus, the church is the one community in which the obligations of Christians to the cities of this world are properly ordered to the love of God. For this reason, the cities of this world are never “under God” in such a way that Christians may pledge their allegiance to them. Such an allegiance is proper only to Christ and the church. Indeed, in view of the entire Letter to Diognetus, it becomes apparent that the primary concern of its second-century author is to enjoin Christians to avoid worshipping the false gods of the world’s cities, gods whose patronage are presented in the city’s mythoi as essential to their security and flourishing. But this is always accomplished by shedding blood, the blood of those who protect the city from its enemies. Beyond the danger of worshipping the gods of various cities, there was also the danger of worshipping the gods of Rome, a particular concern in the Letter to Diognetus. These gods plausibly promised a peace that would reign throughout for the entire empire, the Pax Romana, and yet, like the many forms of civil peace in the ancient world, it was a “peace” founded on imperial violence that was, as the Christians saw it, not true peace at all, not the peace of Christ.

All this talk of Christians worshipping the false gods of the Roman Empire would be quaintly irrelevant were it not for the fact that Roman civil religion, or what Augustine called “civil theology,” has its counterparts in modern conceptions of civil religion, such as the one articulated by Neuhaus, which promises, in effect, a Pax Americana. But unlike the Christians living under pagan Rome, Christians in the United States face the more challenging temptation of living in an imperium that claims to be Christian....

What is lacking in Neuhaus’s vision is an ecclesiology that relativizes the notion of “one nation under God” with the principle, so to speak, of “one church under God.” Such an ecclesiology is evident in the Letter to Diognetus in the analogy of the church as a soul that gives the world with a unity it would otherwise not have. Like all analogies, this body/soul analogy must be carefully interpreted so as to underscore that the soul can never be detached from the body, but rather is the form of the body. In this sense, the church is a soul that gives form to a body whose members are united to Christ and to each other by the power of the Holy Spirit and whose communal life is marked by a bond of charity that extends throughout the world. This is why the Apostle Paul describes baptism as being engrafted into Christ’s body. This is why he stressed the intrinsic link between the Lord’s Supper and the unity that is a mark of the Christian community (I Cor 11:17–34). This is also why he exhorted the members of the church to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, dedicated and acceptable to God and not to conform to the world (Rom 12:1–2). The image here is of the priesthood of the Levites, the tribe designated by God to make animal or cereal offerings for the sake of the reconciliation of all Israel; but now Christians unite themselves with the offering of the Son to the Father, so that through the power of the Holy Spirit they become “a chosen race, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a people set apart” (1 Peter 2:10). But if Christians themselves are “a holy nation,” then at times they will not conform to the aims and purpose of the modern nations, particularly when they claim to be objects of Christian allegiance in a time of war.

Though Baxter's article critiques a Catholic and is written for Catholics, much of what he has to say remains true for Reformed Protestants. Though it is a good thing for Christians to seek to influence American culture and politics, we must be careful to proclaim the lordship of Jesus Christ, God as He has revealed Himself, over all areas of life--not the god of American civil religion. We must always remember that God's "holy nation" he has chosen is the community of the redeemed elect, not the United States or any other modern political entity.

Hmmm.

Testamental Hermeneutics

In his excellent Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace, by far the best articulation of a covenantal argument for believer baptism that I've yet come across, Paul K. Jewett outlines what he believes to be a serious hermeneutical error into which Reformed paedobaptists fall into. This error, in a nutshell, is that they fail to take sufficient account of the differences between the Old and New Covenants--or, more accurately, the Old and New administrations of the one everlasting covenant of grace--that arise out of the fulfillment and spiritualization of the covenant in Christ, and the extension of the covenant to the Gentiles with the establishment of the church. In this mode of thinking, the Paedobaptist Christianizes Old Testament Israel, focusing on the spiritual aspect of the covenant and its sign to the exclusion of the temporal, physical aspects of God's covenant with Israel. The Paedobaptist also, in some ways, Judaizes the New Testament Church, applying the Old Testament promise of a fleshly seed and deriving a concept of "covenant children." The Paedobaptist's hermeneutical structure causes him to read the Old Testament as though it were the New Testament (and vice versa), rather than properly reading the Old in lightof the new.

In a recent blog post, Douglas Wilson posts several points of a "Primer on Eschatology." Laying out some fundamentals of the postmillenial view (to which he subscribes), he describes preterism, the view that "Many of the prophecies of the Bible which premillennialists consider unfulfilled, postmillennialists believe have already been fulfilled." He says that we must look to the New Testament as a sort of "divine commentary" on the Old, telling us which Old Testament prophecies have already been fulfilled. As an example, he cites Isaiah 11:8-10 and Paul's commentary on the passage in Romans 15:8-12 and 15:15-18, about which he notes, "Paul places the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy squarely in the context of his mission and ministry to the Gentiles of the first century world. If the New Testament tells us that this is what Isaiah means, then this is what Isaiah means."

Now. As a general principle, we must always be careful to let Scripture interpret Scripture, trying as much as possible not to bring presuppositions or pre-conceived notions to the table when we seek to understand Scripture. However, I wonder if Wilson is perhaps exercising the same flawed hermeneutic in relation to eschatology that he does in relation to baptism and the Covenant (having read his To a Thousand Generations on infant baptism, I can say with some confidence that he thinks like the subject of Jewett's criticism). Is he reading the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, or as though it were the New Testament? Wilson contrasts his essentially literal, preterist understanding of New Testament passages about the end times being "now" or "soon," wherein one says that "the writers of the New Testament expected to see these things come to pass in their day, and that they were correct" with the view that "spiritualizes" the apostles' words and understand them as indicating that the end of times is unknown and to be expected at any time, rather than literally-temporally "soon." If Wilson (et al.) fail properly to understand the "spiritualization" of the covenant with regard to baptism, could not his cracked hermeneutical glasses also cause him to overlook the spiritual nature of New Testament end-times-related passages?

I confess I am not as skillful or practiced as Jewett in wielding the hermeneutical scalpel, so I can't adequately say whether I'm onto something here or trying to serve soup with a fork. I hope I'm wrong about Wilson, because postmillennialism is attractive and I'd like to believe it if it's Scripturally warranted.

Herman Dooyeweerd

Yeah, it's been a while. I've been busy.

Following up on my last post, in which I determined to learn more about Neo-Calvinism and what motivates it, I've just started reading Herman Dooyeweerd's In the Twilight of Western Though: Studies in the Pretended Autonomy of Theoretical Thought. His thesis is that only Christian philosophical theory can truly be critical. All non-Christian theory is limited to being dogmatical. All culture, particularly philosophy, is based on fundamental assumptions that are essentially religious in nature. A non-Christian thinker makes his own thought or experience absolute and everything else, including God, relative. The non-Christian, therefore, must consider everything from his own vantage point--which he knows he cannot maintain is absolute--and he has no objective or even consistent point from which to critique. He is reduced to skepticism about the existence of anything, including himself, and skepticism about his ability to know anything at all. The "pretended autonomy" of his thought--its ostensibly non-religious character and ability to critique--is the dogma he is reduced to asserting vainly.

This theory is interesting to me, and promises to be very insightful.

Neo-Calvinism and Cultural Engagement

I am indebted to Gideon Strauss for a sizeable and ever-growing number of things. The most important, however, is the philosophical-theological system known as Neo-Calvinism. It has its origins in aDutch Reformed tradition of which Abraham Kuyper is perhaps the most famous, and is essentially a Reformed Protestant way of thinking about how to apply sound doctrine beyond the church to the rest of life and culture. Derek Melleby has written a good introduction to Neo-Calvinism on his blog, in which he writes, "Neo-Calvinism is not just reformed, it is reformational. Where as reformed theology tends to emphasis the reformation and purity of the Church, reformational theology, while based on solid doctrine, uses this doctrinal basis to be about the reformation of all areas of life."

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On Advent

We're in the second week of Advent now, and I think it's appropriate to meditate on the meaning of the season. Advent is a season of anticipation and longing, which has meaning for Christians in the past, present, and future.

The whole of the Old Testament, from God's promise of redemption after the fall, to the covenant he established with Abram and his seed, through all the history of the nation of Israel, is the story of the people of God waiting in eager--sometimes bitter--anticipation of the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the Kingdom of God. The Israelites tasted this anticipation each time they observed the feasts and celebrations of the covenant, and each time the sacrifice of atonement was offered up on their behalf. Even in the glorious days of David and Solomon, when Israel prospered most, still there was an understanding of a greater King to come, a King who would establish his everlasting kingdom. Psalm 45 is a magnificent Christological song of praise that is full of the tension of anticipating the Lord's Anointed One. As we sing the Psalms in praise today, and as we read the other Old Testament passages anticipating the coming of the Kingdom of God, we do so as they are fulfilled in Christ, the King who initiated His Kingdom through His incarnation, death, and resurrection.

Today, we who have been grafted into God's covenant people know this longing, as well. We know that the Old Testament's Messianic prophecies and promises were fulfilled in Christ, and we know that He has already inaugurated His kingdom, which will have no end. We therefore are a people who always look back to Christ's completed work on our behalf, knowing that he has regenerated us through His Spirit and brought us to new life in Him. We also, however, know that we live in a time when the Kingdom has not yet been consummated, when all the world has not yet been brought under the dominion of the King. Because we live in this already-not yet time when two ages overlap, we feel the tension of longing and anticipation of which the advent season is a type. As Charles Biggs put it, "Christians presently experience joy, but we also experience persecution; we experience strength from the Spirit, but also experience weakness; we have the life of Christ within, but unless Christ returns first, we will die and our bodies return to dust; we have confidence of being renewed, but we still suffer. The overlapping of the present age characterized by sin, death, and devil, and the age to come with the dawn of a new creation, a new age, and we as new creations experience the conflict of these two ages as we live by the Spirit each day of our lives."

Advent is the Church's time of celebrating and focusing on the anticipation of the coming King. As the building liturgical tension mounts, the people of God come more and more to focus on the light about to shine "on the people walking in darkness." (Isaiah 9:2) In these few weeks, we get a taste of what it means to live eschatologically--in the end times, in anticipation of the return of the Lord. We hear the admonition: "Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when [the Lord's return] will come."

Finally, on Christmas, the tension is resolved: "Christ is born today! The King is come! Glory to God in the highest!" The Word has become flesh, and has dwelt among us. The exultation we feel as we look back to the miracle of the Incarnation points us to the day when we, and the whole world, will again say "The King is come!" In the Advent season, and its Christmas fulfillment, it seems that we perhaps have a means of grace that God uses to keep the imminence of Christ's return fresh for us. We have such short attention spans, and we are so apt to get caught up in daily life, that we forget our duty to "Take heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is." (Mark 13:33) Each year, when we come to Advent and remember the anticipation of the Messiah's birth, we are reminded to anticipate an even greater event--the final, consummating, coming of the King.

I'm ashamed--I haven't posted anything but regurgitation of other folks' thoughts in a while, and not even that for the last two weeks. I hope to get my blogging act back together after finals are over next week.

To a Time Gone By

Arm & Hammer

Pure Baking Soda
The Standard of Purity and Quality for over 150 Years

And in the time of cakes and pies
When the kneaded day would rise
Miraculous as dough in the blue-rimmed heaven,
When every kitchen was a home
Where the Arm & Hammer stayed
And the grateful prayer was made
And the daily bread was given

I believed without a doubt
When the orange box came out
(Its bullseye was the arm of a white John Henry)
That as the mixing bowl grew warm
With the spilling of that sun,
Every day would be well done
And would taste as great as any.

In every kitchen I could think
Of where I’d gone to get a drink,
While searching for a glass I’d find baking soda;
And that was just the way it was
For the hammer in the hand
And the funny ampersand–
That every home must have its quota.

I guess our faith began to fail
As our homemade day grew stale,
So we turned to buying pie in a pre-wrapped package,
Then all the aprons fell away
And in a calendar of weeks
Flour sifters were antiques:
Arm & Hammer lost its magic.

Oh everybody knows its name
And its logo’s still the same
But it’s hardly been beseeched since the old gas oven,
Except as grit for cleaning teeth
Or a box absorbing smells
On refrigerator shelves–
Work that has no use for leaven.

Now in the time of pies and cakes
Made by Hostess and by Drakes,
I spread my Smuckers on a slice of split-top Wonder;
The day of rising bread is gone
When the Hammer & the Arm
Was no quaint, nostalgic charm
But our pure and baking standard.

Mark Stevick

The Lovely Dragon of Choice

Check out this essay by Dr. Anthony Esolen, contributing editor for Touchstone Magazine. In his usual wonderfully elegant, literary style, Dr. Esolen shows us why planning and scheming is not usually a soul-building way to live.

I am a senior in college. Therefore, the most common question I am asked (roughly 87,524 times a day) is "What are you going to do after you graduate?" Now, I have several possibilities. Most of them don't involve anything directly tied to my major (Intelligence and Foreign Policy), which I am quickly growing tired of explaining. I really have no idea what I'm going to be doing after May 14, and I'm not all that worried about it. To be sure, I'm making provisions, like applying to grad schools and various jobs, but I'm not set on any of them, and the lack of a definite plan doesn't bother me, because I know that whatever I do, I am in God's hands, and I will go where He leads me. I have been chosen by Him, and I'm content in His choosing.

Happy St. Crispin's Day

Today is St. Crispin's Day, and the 589th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Well do we remember it with the words of William Shakespeare:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Things I Love

St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote to Laurentius, a young Roman Christian, "For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves."

In this spirit, and at the prompting of Gideon Strauss, I have made a list of fifty things I love. Some are grand, and some are insignificant. This list is nowhere near exhaustive, and, after the first, is in no particular order.


1. Christ, my Lord.
2. Ethiopia Harrar coffee.
3. Walking a golf course in the cool of the morning.
4. Steve, my father.
5. Singing.
6. The Confessions of Saint Augustine.
7. Taking, and admiring, beautiful pictures.
8. Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
9. Bach’s Cello Suites.
10. OSU vs. Michigan.
11. Cris, my mother.
12. Poetry.
13. Washington, D.C.
14. Shakespeare’s plays.
15. Flying.
16. Emily, Abby, and Stephanie, my sisters.
17. The Dutch and Flemish gallery at the National Gallery of Art.
18. A good pipe.
19. A roaring fire.
20. E-mail.
21. Buying old books.
22. Snow.
23. Well-designed web sites.
24. The Religious Affections, by Jonathan Edwards.
25. Looking good.
26. Playing the piano.
27. Vergil’s Aeneid.
28. Good food and good conversation, especially when combined.
29. Justice.
30. Hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains.
31. Professors of enormous intellect who deign to educate undergrads, with humility.
32. Orthodoxy.
33. La Boheme, by Puccini.
34. Blogging.
35. Wool sweaters.
36. The San Francisco Bay.
37. Calvin’s Institutes.
38. Altoids.
39. Autumn leaves.
40. Riverby Books.
41. Rembrandt’s paintings.
42. Dancing.
43. Johnny Cash’s music.
44. Too much sleep.
45. A well-seasoned, medium-rare ribeye steak.
46. “Woman Holding a Balance,” by Vermeer.
47. General Tso’s Chicken, especially from Lucky China.
48. Singing the Psalms.
49. A cold Coke.
50. Romans 8.

A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

As a refreshing contrast to the sickly, modern, pseudo-Christian culture outlined in the last article to which I linked, I recommend to you a little book called Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, by Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson.

Therein, the authors propose a vision for how one lives out the Gospel, and they call it "Protestant medievalism". It's a broad vision, and one whose main feature is that it is unabashedly and fiercely anti-modern. Not postmodern, which is simply a reaction to modernity and so can't escape the modernist project--it's non-modern. They note that the Middle Ages, from Augustine to the Renaissance, though a much-maligned period by moderns, was in fact a remarkable period of Christian piety and faithfulness, with a concern for truth, beauty, and goodness that has not been seen since. Jones and Wilson propose a cultural return to medievalism, led by Christians informed by the doctrinal advances of the Reformation. This medievalism they flesh out in several ways--renewed understanding of the beauty of God's holiness, a culture of celebration that manifests itself in feasting and lovemaking, a transformed love for the Church, wife, children, education, agrarian virtues, and much, much more.

I recommend this book to you because it is the most worthwhile reading I've found in a long time, and because it squarely addresses many of the topics I've thought about and discussed with other PHC students recently: beauty and aesthetics, laughter, poetry, and the Gospel as the only possible means of real social change. This book has, among other things, changed my view of the Church and possibly put me on the road away from being a Baptist (I think); sharpened my antipathy toward modernity; killed any desire I once had for political power; given me true hope for cultural renewal; and, I hope, made me a more joyful person. Not bad for 160 pages.

If this sounds interesting, read the foreword and introduction here. It's worth your time.

"Christian" culture

Check out this story by Walter Kirn on today's pop Christian culture. It's devastating, incisive--and brilliant. Kirn accurately describes the content--or lack thereof--of the Christian pop culture today, and cunningly lampoons it. I, for one, am glad that the power of the Gospel does not depend on this hogwash to save, and can even reach men's hearts despite the off-putting effect this stuff has. Hat tip to David Cooper for the link.

Want Gmail?

Check out Google's new email program, Gmail. It's pretty cool--an innovative new interface, new way of archiving mail, and, best of all, 1000 MB of storage space, so you never have to delete an email again. It's in beta right now and you can only get an account by invitation. Some folks are actually selling these invitations on Ebay. I have five new account invitations available right now, and I'll gladly give them, free, to whomever asks. Email me and I'll send you an invitation.

Review of Taming the Prince

Harvey Mansfield, professor of Government at Harvard, is one of the nation's foremost Straussian political philosophers. Among his many excellent works is Taming the Prince: The Ambivalence of Modern Executive Power. My review of the book is here. I commend it to you, with the caveat that I understand the audacity of trying to critique the work of a man whose mind is many times greater than mine.

Liberalism's Dying Credibility

Victor Davis Hanson of National Review has a masterful piece on the problems with the national liberal establishment and its waning credibility.

Money quote:
"If we wonder why CBS is in trouble, why no one trusts the universities or the U.N., or why the Democrats may soon lose the Senate, the House, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, the answer has a lot to do with arrogant hypocrisy — the idea that how one lives need have nothing to do with what one professes, that idealistic rhetoric can provide psychological cover for privilege and preference, and that rules need not apply for those self-proclaimed as smarter and nicer than the rest of us. But none of us — none — get a pass simply because we claim that we are more moral, educated, or sophisticated than most."


In their new book, The Right Nation: Conservative Power In America, Economist writers John Mickelthwait and Adrian Wooldridge show how America is a mostly conservative nation, and how that conservatism is unique in the world. It promises to be an excellet read--I had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Wooldridge deliver a lecture on the book this week for the Alexis De Tocqueville Society at Patrick Henry College.

Police State?

The Boston Globe did a story today on Massachusett's new GPS tracking system for sex offenders on probation or parole. The subjects will wear an electronic bracelet that the state's system will use to monitor their movements and alert law enforcement officers when the subject enters an "exclusion zone," like a school or playground. This raises an interesting question: how to balance privacy with the need to protect the public? The GPS system is just the latest step in an evolving debate on methods of tracking registered sex offenders. Already their information is available to the public in most states, often on a web site. State officials argue that the importance of protecting the public from this most dangerous class of criminals outweighs any interest in privacy that the sex offenders may have. Critics, on the other hand, worry that this is a step down the road to a pervasive police state, and that it opens the door a little wider to the subjugation of liberty to security.

The Windhover

To Christ our Lord

I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Civil Religion vs. Biblical Christianity

In light of this fall's political races, and considerable socio-political angst in the Christian right of late, I decided to write a post on the relation of faith and politics. For more on the topic, check out the latest issue of Modern Reformation.