Flannery O’Connor: mercy in extremis
March 26, 2009
Ralph C. Wood of Baylor University has written a splendid short piece in honor of Flannery O’Connor’s birthday (b.1925). Best paragraph this:
The key to comprehending Flannery O’Connor’s life and work is to remember that, in her lexicon, divine grace is never synonymous with human graciousness. On the contrary, it is often abrupt and rude and disrespectful of ordinary proprieties, for the skin of human resistance is exceedingly thick. When asked why her characters meet such violent self-awakenings, O’Connor replied that it’s because their heads are so hard. Grace must wound before it can heal, she declared, and her fiction is filled with both woundings and healings. O’Connor wittily consoled readers that, while a lot of folks get killed in her fiction, nobody gets hurt. In her unsentimental reckoning, there are states of thriving but damnable life far worse than a grisly but saving death.
John ‘Rabbi’ Duncan
February 26, 2009
Today marks the anniversary of the death John “Rabbi” Duncan (1796-February 26, 1870), Scottish Presbyterian missionary to the Jews in Budapest and much-loved professor in New College, Edinburgh. He was known for his pithy sayings, as well as his knowledge of Hebrew and his Christian love for the Jews. His deep love for the Jewish people and his eminence as a Hebrew scholar earned the nickname ‘Rabbi’ among his students.
It’s hard to read any Reformed writer of the late 19th or 20th century without finding Duncan quoted. The Banner of Truth published a nice short paperback compendium of Duncan’s aphorisms about a decade or so ago called Just a Talker: Saying of John (“Rabbi”) Duncan. Among his sayings:
“I’m first a Christian, next a catholic, then a Calvinist, fourth an evangelical, and fifth a Presbyterian. I cannot reverse this order.”
“Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or He was Himself deluded and self-deceived, or He was Divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.”
Thanks to the excellent blog, Scriptorium Daily, here are more samples of Duncan’s skill:
On Thomas Carlyle: Sham is a word often in the mouth of one who is a keen detector of other people’s shams, and a very earnest maker of his own.”
On Wesley’s Hymns: “I have a great liking for many of Wesley’s Hymns; but when I read some of them, I ask, ‘What’s become of your Free-will now, friend?’”
On Genius: “Genius lies very much in that region where the profound is simple, and the simple profound. The great thoughts of such men as Chalmers are very simple when expressed; but only a man of genius could think them.”
On Mysteries: “All the great mysteries are simple as well as unfathomably deep; and they are common to all men. Every Christian feels them less or more.”
Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism: “Hyper-Calvinism is all house and no door; Arminianism is all door and no house.”
Aesthetic Religion: “There is no entering into the kingdom of heaven by a mere sense of beauty.”
Terminology: “There is a curious connexion between the success of a teacher and his possession of a fine terminology –a good store of words to express shades of meaning. Much wisdom has been stored up in men, and never diffused for want of the gift of speech.”
Reason in God: “Transcendentally, it is true that God has reason, but He does not reason; He does not draw syllogisms.”
Love: “Individual love, per se, is a centrifugal force; universal, cosmopolitan love, per se, is centripetal: combine them, and the revolutions of love are orderly.”
How and What: “All questions as to the ‘How’ are best answered by a more extended knowledge of the ‘What.’”
Old and New Covenants: “We must not unsaint the Old Testament saints, but we must not make Pentecostal Christians of them.”
Trinity: “The Trinity is my highest Theologoumenon. I reach it, and find in it the supreme harmony of revealed things. But it is equally irrational and irreverent to speculate on the nexus between the distinct Persons. That is not revealed, and is not revealable.”
More on the Trinity: “I exceedingly dislike that expression of some divines, that Christ purchased for us the blessings of the Spirit. I cannot but believe that the three things –the Father’s love, the sacrifice of the Son, and the influence of the Spirit– are each and all the unpurchasable blessings of grace. And I am driven to this, to hold my ground against the Socinians.”
Fighting Theologians: “Now, every unrenewed Arminian is a Pelagian, and every unrenewed Calvinist is a fatalist.”
Old Brazey: “Hezekiah broke in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, because the children of Israel had made an idol of it; and he called it ‘Nehushtan’ –literally ‘Old Brazey.’ … There was no harm in keeping the brazen serpent; bu when they began to turn it to idolatry, it was proper to break it in pieces. ‘What! will you break in pieces a relic connected with our history –a historic memorial?’ ‘Yes, I’ll break it in pieces,’ and he called it ‘Old Brazey.’””
On the communion of saints: “Does no news go between earth and heaven? and if news goes, must there not be knowledge of events? God has put there a veil; Popery tries to bring us within it, and Protestants will not look at it for Papistical abuse.”
Pilgrim’s Progress anniversary
February 18, 2009
On this day in 1678 John Bunyan published the first edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Next to the Bible, Bunyan’s 
Pilgrim’s Progress is the best-selling Christian book of all time. It has never been out of print. In a decade when the fantasy genre has gained popularity in a “hip-to-be-square” kind of way in Christian circles, Bunyan’s work certainly deserves an honored place (if not a higher place) alongside the work of Tolkein and Lewis. J.I. Packer wrote in a conclusion to an analysis of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is right for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again. Certainly it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day.
I did not read until compelled to do so in a Restoration Literature class in college. I was then devouring most any Reformed work I could get my hands on. During the 1990′s I read it nearly every year and have read through it again every two or three years during this decade. The book never loses its charms or its convicting power. Someone told me that Charles Spurgeon said that when he was tired and depressed to the point of utter exhaustion, Pilgrim’s Progress was the only book he could stand to have read to him. As the years go by, I am beginning to agree.
I’ll let English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge raise the final note of praise for Bunyan’s work. Coleridge appreciated both its theological and literary powers:
It is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision… This wonderful book is one of the few books which may be read repeatedly, at different times, and each time with a new and different pleasure. I read it once as a theologian, and let me assure you that there is great theological acument in the work; once with devotional feeling; and once as a poet. I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.
Calvin birthday cake
January 20, 2009
As noted earlier, this year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin. Bryan Lopez shows us a fitting birthday cake idea.
John Piper e-books for free
December 29, 2008
Desiring God has made 46 English titles (and a few foreign language titles) by John Piper available for free pdf download here. This is a tremendous resource, especially if your book budget is small.
Book review: Death by Love
December 2, 2008
But far be it from me
to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world (Galatians 6:14). Jesus’ death on the cross is the place where the justice, love, mercy and wisdom of God are most clearly displayed. The depth of our sin and the heights of God’s love cannot be grasped apart from the cross. Mark Driscoll, founding pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington, and Gerry Breshears, professor of theology at Western Seminary, have co-authored a book that seeks to apply the work of Christ to the real-life mess of people’s lives in their new book Death by Love: Letters from the Cross (Crossway, 2008).
Death by Love has an intriguing format. Each chapter begins with a brief profile of a real person whom Driscoll has counselled. Then follows a pastoral letter to that person in which Driscoll and Breshears apply biblical teaching about the person and work of Christ to the issues of sin and grace in that his/her life. The chapter concludes with an “Answers to Common Questions” about the theology presented in the letter. A look through the table of contents reveals a list of painful sins and problems:
Introduction: We Killed God: Jesus Is Our Substitutionary Atonement
“Demons Are Tormenting Me”: Jesus Is Katie’s Christus Victor
“Lust Is My God”: Jesus Is Thomas’s Redemption
“My Wife Slept with My Friend”: Jesus Is Luke’s New Covenant Sacrifice
“I Am a ‘Good’ Christian”: Jesus Is David’s Gift Righteousness
“I Molested a Child”: Jesus Is John’s Justification
“My Dad Used to Beat Me”: Jesus Is Bill’s Propitiation
“He Raped Me”: Jesus Is Mary’s Expiation
“My Daddy Is a Pastor”: Jesus Is Gideon’s Unlimited Limited Atonement
“I Am Going to Hell”: Jesus Is Hank’s Ransom
“My Wife Has a Brain Tumor”: Jesus Is Caleb’s Christus Exemplar
“I Hate My Brother”: Jesus Is Kurt’s Reconciliation
“I Want to Know God”: Jesus Is Susan’s Revelation
Appendix: Recommended Reading on the Cross
Driscoll speaks to each situation with candor and compassion. He is not afraid to say hard things. Best of all, he skillfully applies the person and work of Christ to each person’s needs: overcoming bitterness, rejecting self-righteousness, dealing with heinous sins of others, putting away malice and bitterness, turning away from sexual sin and addictions. The one theological objection I have is in “My Daddy is a Pastor,” a chapter written to his youngest son Gideon. He encourages his son not to take faith for granted (which is good) but does so in the context of a doctrine he calls “unlimited limited atonement.” Driscoll confuses the question of the power of the atonement with question of its design. He wants to safeguard the Reformed doctrine of “limited atonement” from the charge that it leaves no room for a sincere offer of the gospel to everyone without distinction or for a reconciliation of the world by the cross, but his explanation seems more confusing than enlightening.
Even with that bit of theological quibbling, I would recommend Death by Love without hesitation. It has given me fresh courage to speak of Christ and his finished work with greater boldness into the mess of people’s lives. It has refreshed my personal communion with God by enlarging the shadow of the cross in my own life. Take, and read, my friends.
Coffee with Lewis: to love or not to love?
September 8, 2008
From The Four Loves:
To love anything at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to amke sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket–safe, dark motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. the only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. [121]
Review: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction
August 28, 2008
Eugene Peterson’s books are either deeply loved or studiously avoided by Reformed folk. I’ve found him to be a thoughtful, literate writer who shares many of my concerns and passions about pastoral ministry. I read The Contemplative Pastor about three months after I finished seminary, and that book helped me avoid many snares and keep my wits about me. I don’t always agree with Peterson, but he is such a gracious and edifying author that I enjoy disagreeing with him more than I enjoy agreeing with many others. Someone once quipped, “I prefer Uriah drunk to David sober.”
I recently read one of Peterson’s first books, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, first published in 1980 and the released in a revised and expanded version by IVP in 2000. The title is drawn from a surprising place: Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil (‘The essential thing “in heaven and earth” is…that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living.’) Peterson takes us to the “Psalms of Ascent” (Psalms 120-134) as a guide and metaphor for following Christ over the long haul. He writes in the introduction:
I knew that following Jesus could never develop into a “long obedience” without a deepening life of prayer and that the Psalms had always been the primary means by which Christians learned to pray everything they lived, and live everything they prayed over the long haul…But the people I was around didn’t pray the Psalms. That puzzled me; Christians have always prayed the Psalms; why didn’t my friends and neighbors?
God has used Peterson’s teaching on Psalms 120-134 to knead them into my imagination again and into my vocabulary of prayer and conversation to speak in practical ways about joy, repentance, service, work, humility, obedience, community and blessing. Here are some samples of Peterson’s work that will give you a sense of the deep, biblical wisdom of A Long Obedience:
On worship: ‘We live in what one writer has called the “age of sensation.” We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.’ [54]
On the past: ‘The psalmist is not an antiquarian reveling in the past for its own sake but a traveler using what he knows of the past to get to where he is going–to God. For all its interest in history the Bible never refers to the past as “the good old times.” The past is not, for the person of faith, a restored historical site that we tour when we are on vacation; it is a field that we plow and harrow and plant and fertilize and work for a harvest.’ [168]
On joy: ‘A common but futile strategy for achieving joy is trying to eliminate things that hurt: get rid of pain by numbing the nerve ends, get rid of insecurity by eliminating risks, get rid of disappointment by depersonalizing your relationships. And then try to to lighten the boredom of such a life by buying joy in the form of vacations and entertainment. There isn’t a hint of that in Psalm 126.’ [100]
On security: ‘Discipleship is not a contract in which if we break our part of the agreement he is free to break his; it is a covenant in which he establishes the conditions and guarantees the results.’ [90]
On hope: ‘Hoping does not mean doing nothing…It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions…It is imagination put in the harness of faith. it is a willingness to let God to it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it.’ [144]
On repentance: ‘Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god; it is deciding that you were wrong in thinking that you had, or could get, the strength, education and training to make it on your own; it is deciding that you have been told a pack of lies about yourself and your neighbors and your world. And it is deciding that God in Jesus Christ is telling you the truth. Repentance is a realization that what God wants from you and what you want from God are not going to be achieved by doing the same old things, thinking the same old thoughts. Repentance is a decision to follow Jesus Christ and become his pilgrim in the path of peace.’ [29-30]
Peterson includes in the revised edition the Psalms of Ascent in his translation/paraphrase, The Message. This is a plus in the eyes of author and publisher and many readers, but not in mine.
Nevertheless, if you are drawn toward instant, polished-smile, give-me-patience-now Christianity, be warned: there will be little in this book to soothe and cherish your desires. But Peterson’s aged wine is much better than the Zima of contemporary spirituality. Take, read, drink deeply.
Exegesis and lovers
April 22, 2008
Exegesis is what I do. I bring the text of Scripture to bear upon my life and upon the lives of others. A dictionary definition of exegesis looks something like this:
explanation, critical analysis, or interpretation of a word, literary passage, etc., esp. of the Bible
I strongly prefer Eugene Peterson’s definition from Eat This Book:
Exegesis is the furthest thing from pedantry; exegesis is an act of love. It loves the one who speaks the words enough to want to get the words right. It respects the words enough to use every means we have to get the words right. Exegesis is loving God enough to stop and listen carefully to what he says. It follows that we bring the leisure and attentiveness of lovers to this text, cherishing every comma and semicolon, relishing the oddness of this preposition, delighting in the surprising placement of this noun. Lovers don’t take a quick look, get a “message” or a “meaning,” and then run off and talk endlessly with their friends about how they feel.
I love the title Eat This Book. My children, unaware of the allusion to Ezekiel 3 and Revelation 10, look at me quizzically as I read it, with a look that says, “If you decide to do what the title says, I want to be there to watch.”
Book review: The Dawkins Letters
October 18, 2007
After spending days sifting through all the kind comments from my birthday last week, it’s time to get back to blogging…today a book review:
There is a resurgent, muscular, in-your-face brand of atheism running about these days, especially evident on the bookshelves and best-sellers lists, where one can find Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Bennett. But the ideological alpha male amongst today’s atheist authors is Richard Dawkins, whose book The God Delusion has enjoyed a lengthy stay on the New York Times’ Bestsellers List.
Now perhaps you’re not dealing with aggressive atheists in your life right now. I must admit that Kosciusko is no hotbed of such ideas (In fact, at a county ministerial association meeting earlier this week, I discovered that no one at the meeting had even heard of any of the aforementioned books!) . Having said that, let me recommend a short book (125 pages in pocket-sized paperback) that lets you in on the discussion with intelligent, thoughtful Christian responses to the atheistic arguments (specifically interacting with Dawkins’ The God Delusion): David Robertson’s The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths (Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2007).
David Robertson is minister of St. Peter’s Free Church, Dundee, Scotland (the same church Robert Murray M’Cheyne pastored in the 19th century). Robertson read The God Delusion and then decided to post an open letter to Richard Dawkins on the St. Peter’s website. Soon Robertson’s letter found its way onto Dawkins’ own website, where it elicited an enormous amount of response. As a result, Robertson expanded his critique into the ten letters which compose The Dawkins Letters.
Each of the ten letters addresses a myth that forms the basis for Dawkins’ appeals. What makes Dawkins’ arguments especially contemptible is that these myths (such as the “cruel” Old Testament God, the inherent evil of religion, the immoral Bible, the conflict between science and religion, higher consciousness among atheists) are presented under the guise of science, rationalism and empirical study. What is presented as reason is actually an appeal to anti-religious prejudice. Again and again Robertson points out the contradictions and hypocrisy evident in the atheists’ claims. Particularly strong is his response to Dawkins’ accusation that the religious education of children is a form of child abuse more harmful than the sexual abuse of children.
The final chapter in the book is a wonderful, serious, and warm-hearted explanation of why he believes that Christianity is true and why you should believe. Reading The Dawkins Letters will open your mind to some current issues and equip you to answer challenges without fear or embarrassment.
You can view a ten-minute video Robertson has produced which summarizes his point of view here.
