One Book...

Last week I saw a book meme on Gideon Strauss' blog, and wondered if it would make it around to me. Looks like it has--I've been tagged byThabiti Anyabwile.

1. One book that changed your life: Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, R.C. Sproul. Credit for this one goes to my dad, who lent me the book when I asked him as a teenager what this "Reformed" thing that I'd been hearing about meant.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: 1984, George Orwell

3. One book I’d want on a desert island: The biggest collection of Spurgeon's sermons available

4. One book that made me laugh: Right Behind, Nathan Wilson

5. One book that made me cry: A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis

6. One book that you wish had been written: On Baptism, by Polycarp (a disciple of the Apostle John)--in which he explicitly settles the question of whether the church under and immediately following the Apostles baptized infants or not

7. One book you wish had never been written: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes

8. One book that you are currently reading: The Reformation: A History, Diarmid McCullough

9. One book that you’ve been meaning to read: Biblical Theology, Geerhardus Vos. Own it, read the first few chapters last summer, never finished it.

Now I tag...Emily O'Neal, Kyle Newcomer, and John Letoto.

Broken

This has got to be one of the greatest sites ever: This Is Broken

Generosity Added to Love

"She went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love--which is always a tremendous task, dear friends, a mammoth task."

~ O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi.

That phrase--"the ravages made by generosity added to love"--is one of the most beautiful and profound things I've heard in a long time. It stopped me in my tracks when I heard it, and I was so startled by its simple beauty that forgot what I was doing. O. Henry's short story about a young husband and wife who each sacrifice what is most dear to them so they can show generosity to one another is, likewise, one of the more delightful things I've read recently. It's an amazing picture of the generosity and wisdom of love, and a tremendous encouragement to display the sacrificial love of Christ. You can find the text of the story online here, and an audio recording here.

Seersucker Style

At the risk of being censured for self-promotion, I refer you here for a story in the Washington Times on the popularity of seersucker suits in Washington which quotes me. It's not a bad article, all things considered.

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.


And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

~ GMH.

Bavinck on Calvin on Common Grace

"[Because of God's common grace], not only is an orderly civil society made possible among men, but arts and sciences develop, which are not to be despised. For these should be considered gifts of the Holy Spirit. It is true the Holy Spirit as a spirit of sanctification dwells in believers only, but as a spirit of life, of wisdom and of power He works also in those who do not believe. No Christian, therefore, should despise these gifts; on the contrary, he should honor art and science, music and philosophy and various other products of the human mind as praestantissima Spiritus dona [most outstanding gifts of the Spirit], and make the most of them for his own personal use."

~ Herman Bavinck, Calvin and Common Grace, tr. Geerhardus Vos

Consumer Worship

John Parker, a priest in the Orthodox Church in America, has an excellent article on church worship services in this month's issue of Touchstone Magazine. Therein, he discusses the increasing market-driven commodification of many modern Christian worship services. Churches today are determining what they do in their public services (and when and where they hold the services) by what the consumers--baptized, believing members or not--want, rather than by the Word of God and tradition. As a result, they have forgotten that the audience of worship is the triune God, and that the purpose of the church's public gatherings is primarily for God's people to worship Him corporately and to be built up in faith by Word and sacrament. Though Rev. Parker and I would undoubtedly come to significantly different conclusions regarding the details of the worship service, we share the fundamental perspective that it is for the Church, not "seekers" or "consumers" or "the unchurched." And it is God who determines how his people are to approach him--not the latest fad or gimmick that will get people in the doors.

Redemption Through Christ

THE second Adam, sov'reign Lord of all,
Did, by his Father's authorizing call,
From bosom of eternal love descend,
To save the guilty race that him offend;
To treat an everlasting peace with those,
Who were, and ever would have been his foes.
His errand, never-ending life to give
To them, whose malice would not let him live;
To make a match with rebels, and espouse
The brat which at his love her spite avows.
Himself he humbled, to depress her pride,
And make his mortal foe his loving bride.
But, ere there marriage can be solemniz'd,
All lets must be remov'd, all parties pleas'd.
Law-righteousness requir'd, must be procur'd,
Law-vengeance threatned, must be full endur'd,
Stern justice must have credit by the match,
Sweet mercy by the heart the bride must catch.
Poor Bankrupt! all her debt must first be paid,
Her former husband in the grave be laid:
Her present Lover must be at the cost,
To save and ransom to the uttermost.
If all these things this Suitor kind can do,
Then he may win her, and her blessing too.
Hard terms indeed! while death's the first demand:
But love is strong as death, to take the upper hand
To carry on the suit, and make it good,
Though at the dearest rate of wounds and blood.
The burden's heavy, but the back is broad,
The glorious Lover is the mighty God.

~The first part of one of several "Gospel Sonnets" by Ralph Erskine [1685-1752], an 18th-century Scottish preacher and pastor. The son of a Puritan minister who was forced out of his living by the 1662 Act of Uniformity, Erskine pastored--first Dumferline Abbey, then Queen Street Church--for over forty years. Throughout his life, Erskine was dedicated to expositional preaching and considered it the most important work of his ministry. He was also a gifted poet, and was fond of setting forth systems of divinity and engaging false doctrine in verse.

Visually Speaking

This is my blog's source code, rendered graphically. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but it looks pretty cool. Get your own here.

Hymn

Come, let us join our cheerful songs
with angels round the throne.
ten thousand thousand are their tongues,
but all their joys are one.

"Worthy the Lamb that died," they cry,
"to be exalted thus!"
"Worthy the Lamb," our hearts reply,
"for he was slain for us!"

Jesus is worthy to receive
honor and power divine;
and blessings more than we can give,
be, Lord, forever thine.

Let all that dwell above the sky,
and air, and earth, and seas,
conspire to lift thy glories high,
and speak thine endless praise!

The whole creation join in one,
to bless the sacred Name
of him who sits upon the throne,
and to adore the Lamb.

~ Isaac Watts, 1674-1748

Watts’ fa­ther was Non­con­form­ist im­pris­oned twice for his re­li­gious views. Isaac learned Greek, Latin, and He­brew un­der Mr. Pin­horn, Rec­tor of All Saints, and head­mas­ter of the Gram­mar School in South­amp­ton. Isaac’s taste for verse showed it­self in ear­ly child­hood, and his prom­ise caused a lo­cal doc­tor and other friends to of­fer him a un­i­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion, as­sum­ing he would be or­dained in the Church of Eng­land. How­ev­er, Isaac de­clined and in­stead en­tered a Non­con­for­mist Acad­e­my...

Writing

When you write copy you have the right to copyright the copy you write, if the copy is right. If however, your copy falls over, you must right your copy. If you write religious services you write rite, and have the right to copyright the rite you write. Very conservative people write right copy, and have the right to copyright the right copy they write. A right wing cleric would write right rite, and has the right to copyright the right rite he has the right to write. His editor has the job of making the right rite copy right before the copyright can be right. Should Jim Wright decide to write right rite, then Wright would write right rite, which Wright has the right to copyright. Duplicating that rite would copy Wright right rite, and violate copyright, which Wright would have the right to right. Right?

Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore

Whew. 

Blogging Apostasy?

A disgrace to humanity no more, David Cooper is back on the blogging wagon. He's covering events within the Episcopal Church (USA), which in the last couple of weeks has been continuing to pursue apostasy hand over fist at its annual General Convention. It seems the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians (USA) are competing for the honor of being the least recognizably Christian denomination in the US.

My heart and prayers go out to all the local churches (to say nothing of individual members) who are fighting to preserve an orthodox witness to the Gospel within their denominations. Don't stop fighting heresy--whether you elect to do it from within or without.

Hymn

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly hosts;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Praise God, to Whom all blessings be;
Praise Him, who stand on His decree;
Praise Him Who hath redeemed thy soul;
Praise God, His virtues now extol.

Praise God, in Whom all blessings rest;
Praise Him, His faithfulness attest;
Praise Him with joyful, rev'rent tune;
Praise Holy Godhead, all triune.

~First verse, Thomas Ken, 1837-1711. Ken trained at Win­ches­ter and New Coll­ege, Ox­ford, and was or­dained an Ang­li­can priest in 1662. In 1663, he be­came Rec­tor of Lit­tle East­on, and Rec­tor of Wood­hay and Pre­ben­da­ry of Win­ches­ter in 1669. He pub­lished a Man­u­al of Pray­ers, for the use of the schol­ars of Win­ches­ter Coll­ege, in 1674. He was brief­ly chap­lain to Prin­cess Ma­ry, and lat­er to the Brit­ish fleet. He be­came Bi­shop of Bath and Wells in 1685. He was one of sev­er­al bi­shops im­pris­oned in the Tow­er of Lon­don for re­fus­ing to sign James II’s “De­clar­a­tion of In­dul­gence” (hop­ing to re­store Ca­thol­i­cism in Eng­land); he was tried and ac­quit­ted. Ken wrote much po­e­try, pu­blished post­hu­mous­ly in 1721.

Second and third verses, my own.

Well Said

Judah gets it.  So does Kevin.  So do Missy and Galen. There's a pattern here.

Why doesn't Patrick Henry College's administration get it?

Alma Mater Cecidit

Recent events at Patrick Henry College, whence I graduated last year, have sparked quite a bit of media coverage. I will refrain from commenting for now, but here are some of the stories for your perusal:

Chronicle of Higher Education

Christianity Today

Leesburg Today

Andrew Sullivan

Marc Fisher (Wash. Post)

More About This Blog

I have more thoughts related to my earlier musings on what to do with this blog. As I am someone who intends to go to seminary in the not-too-distant future and hopes to be the main preaching elder at a church someday, it would seem obvious that this space would be a good place for me to develop my skills in biblical exposition and sermonizing. After all, that's what lots of pastors and aspiring pastors do with their blogs. Pick a text, and write on it. To some folks, it might seem odd that I would choose to write on they might consider lesser subjects than the Bible.

Continue reading this post...

Nostalgia

Remember the good old days when Napster was free, and you could tie up your home phone line for hours at a time downloading music at what now seems like a snail's pace?  Well, the good old days are back, sorta.  In an effort to break into Apple's stranglehold on the music-downloading business, Napster now allows registered users to listen to a song five times for free, after which you can buy it or pay Napster's subscription fee for unlimited access to music.  Not quite as good as the days before RIAA went crazy, but that's still a lot of free music.  Check it out.

 

Hat tip: Stephen & Sarah.

Science (fiction) and faith

If you like science fiction, check out Arthur C. Clarke's short story, The Star.  Clarke explores the centuries old-question of the relationship between science and faith, in a story that is as powerful and startling as it is brief.  Clarke won a Hugo Award in 1956 for this story.

 

Sci-fi has never made much of an impact among the great works of western literature, with only the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne available in the "classics" section of your local library or bookstore.  Nonetheless, I think the genre has gotten short shrift and is capable of carrying the same literary weight as other forms of fiction.  Though lots of the sci-fi that is out there is written purely for entertainment and in that respect aspires little higher than a Harlequin romance, many sci-fi novels are quite well written and explore important social, philosophical, and personal issues.  One good example is my favorite modern sci-fi author, Timothy Zahn, who in his recent novels has explored marriage and irony.

Currently reading

There are in fact quite a number of things I'm currently reading, including Preachers and Preaching, Mind: A Brief Introduction, The Cross-Centered Life, Beyond the Fall of Night, and From Embers to a Flame: How God Can Revitalize Your Church, just to name a few. I have a habit of starting a book before I finish the one(s) I was already working through, and sometimes it makes it seem like quite a triumph to actually finish one.

At any rate, a smaller work I've discovered recently is an article by Herman Bavinck called Calvin and Common Grace. I've long been interested in the doctrine of common grace and what various theologians and Christian authors think of its importance, and this is, so far, an interesting treatment of the subject in manageable size. Bavinck takes a high view of the value of learning from the wisdom of so-called pagans:

The good philosophical thoughts and ethical precepts found scattered through the pagan world receive in Christ their unity and center. They stand for the desire which in Christ finds its satisfaction; they represent the question to which Christ gives the answer; they are the idea of which Christ furnishes the reality. The pagan world, especially in its philosophy, is a pedagogy unto Christ; Aristotle, like John the Baptist, is the forerunner of Christ. It behooves the Christians to enrich their temple with the vessels of the Egyptians and to adorn the crown of Christ, their king, with the pearls brought up from the sea of paganism.

Hymn

O day of rest and gladness, of day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright:
On Thee, the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing holy, holy, holy, to the great God Triune.

On Thee, at the creation, the light first had its birth;
On Thee, for our salvation, Christ rose from depths of earth;
On Thee, our Lord, victorious, the Spirit sent from heaven,
And thus on Thee, most glorious, a triple light was given.

Thou art a port, protected from storms that round us rise;
A garden, intersected with streams of paradise;
Thou art a cooling fountain in life’s dry, dreary sand;
From thee, like Pisgah’s mountain, we view our promised land.

Thou art a holy ladder, where angels go and come;
Each Sunday finds us gladder, nearer to heaven, our home;
A day of sweet refection, thou art a day of love,
A day of resurrection from earth to things above.

Today on weary nations the heavenly manna falls;
To holy convocations the silver trumpet calls,
Where Gospel light is glowing with pure and radiant beams,
And living water flowing, with soul refreshing streams.

New graces ever gaining from this our day of rest,
We reach the rest remaining to spirits of the blessed.
To Holy Ghost be praises, to Father, and to Son;
The church her voice upraises to Thee, blessed Three in One.

~ Christopher Wordsworth, 1807-1885

Nephew of po­et William Wordsworth, Christ­o­pher was both a schol­ar and ath­lete in his stu­dent days. La­ter, he served as head­mas­ter of Har­row Boys School (1836-1850), which Winston Churchill would at­tend a cen­tu­ry or so lat­er. Words­worth was al­so Vicar at Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berk­shire (1850-1869), and Arch­dea­con of West­minster, and be­came Bi­shop of Lincoln in 1868. A rec­og­nized Greek scholar, he al­so wrote the­o­log­ic­al and other works. Of his hymns, he said, “It is the first du­ty of a hymn to teach sound doc­trine and thence to save souls.”

Two-year review

You may have noticed that things have been somewhat quiescent here on my blog for the last few months. Part of the reason for that, I'm sure, is simple laziness. A great deal of it, however, is the fact that I'm sort of at a loss as to what I should be doing with this project.

I started it two years ago in hopes that it would do for me something no journal has ever done: exercise and develop my writing skills by giving me a space in which to publish things I write. While the blog has therefore been for myself as much as anyone else, I had hoped that the semi-public nature of the thing would motivate me to keep it up and write regularly.

Well, it's been two years now, and I think the results have been mixed. There have been periods when I posted rather frequently. Working an overnight security shift for a semester and needing something to keep me awake helped that. So did my internship at the church in which I wrote 3000-5000 words a week. There have also been periods, though, where posting was much less frequent and substantially less substantial.

I want to keep the blog going, because it has been a good exercise for me, even if I haven't always kept it updated frequently. I certainly have written more than I would have without it. The trouble is that I'm not sure what to do with it. I've never been comfortable with using it as an online diary, the way some folks do with their blogs. Anyone who has been around the blogosphere for very long is familiar with the divide between linkers and thinkers--that is, between those who mainly link to interesting work produced by others and those who mainly write down their own thoughts. I've tried to be mainly a thinker, but consistently producing interesting original material is hard work. My respect for those who write regular columns has risen immensely since I started blogging.

Over the last two years, I've covered a wide range of subjects with my posts, including politics, philosophy, theology, ecclesiology, book and film reviews, poetry and literature, and more. Though it reflects the broad range of my interests, I'm not quite satisfied with this, and I think I would benefit from focusing my writing more narrowly on a specific discipline, topic, or field of interest. It might give me an incentive to do more specific, focused study and research than I've done before. I think it would also make my blog more interesting, at least to some people, than the average ramblings of an armchair philosopher--which you can find on literally thousands of personal blogs. I guess I need a thesis for my blog. Trouble is, I'm not sure what that should be.

So, until I solve this problem and figure out what exactly to do with this thing that occupies my free time and doesn't make me any money, I suspect it'll continue mostly as it has up to this point--a somewhat meandering window on the things I'm thinking, reading, and writing.

Hymn

Poor sinner, dejected with fear,
Unbosom thy mind to the Lamb;
No wrath on His brow He does wear,
Nor will He poor mourners condemn;
His arm of omnipotent grace
Is able and willing to save;
A sweet and a permanent peace
He’ll freely and faithfully give.

Come just as thou art, with thy woe,
Fall down at the feet of the Lamb;
He will not, He cannot say, “Go”,
But surely will take out thy stain
A fountain is opened for sin,
And thousands its virtues have proved
He’ll take thee, and plunge thee therein,
And wash thee from filth in His blood.

The soul that on Jesus relies,
He’ll never, no never deceive;
He freely and faithfully gives
More blessings than we can conceive;
Yea, down to old age He will keep,
Nor will He forsake us at last;
He knows and is known by His sheep;
They’re His, and He will hold them fast.

~William Gadsby, 1773-1844

In 1793, Gadsby joined the Baptist Church at Coventry, and in 1798 began to preach. In 1800, a chapel was built for him at Desford, Leicestershire, and two years later another in the town of Hinckley. In 1805, he moved to Manchester, becoming minister of a chapel in Rochdale Road, where he continued until his death. (source: cyberhymnal.org)

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.

Continue reading this post...

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.

Continue reading...

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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