Entries Tagged 'Theology' ↓

Presented as a series of conversations between a seasoned pastor and a young man who is beginning to ask questions about what is popularly known as “Calvinism,” this book presents the doctrines of grace accurately and pastorally.  At only 150 pages this would be the perfect book to give to somebody who is working through the same questions in his own life without overwhelming him.  The fictional pastor, Martin Spenser, answers the anonymous young man’s questions about key doctrines in a forthright and humble manner.  Spenser (rightly) always points the young man to Scripture and encourages him to submit to the Bible.  He also provides warnings against pride and embracing caricatures that are especially pertinent to those who already embrace the doctrines of grace.  Because of its brevity and its date of publication (1991) it is largely silent on the current intramural controversies about the nature of the covenant.  Grade: A

Ever since the the first missionaries arrived on the British Isles almost two millennia ago, I don’t know if there has ever been a period of greater spiritual decline in the history of the English-speaking world than the Victorian Era.  Ryle lived in a period that was not devoid of religious profession, but where the religious character (much like that of first-century Israel) was characterized by whitewashed sepulchers and blind guides.  We are still dealing with the weeds that sprung up during this period of history, and they have proved difficult to eradicate.  J.C. Ryle was a beacon of light during this dark time.  Like Thoughts for Young Men, this volume is written with a pastoral tone and practical in nature.  While I don’t quite agree with Ryle on every particular point, I recommend this volume without reservation to all Christians.  Ryle advances a genuine and well-developed view of holiness over against the many contemporary counterfeits that were abundant in his day and ours.  Grade: A

I’m sure that you, like me, have had situations when you labored in vain.  It is part of the toil of living in a cursed world.  The ground produces thorns and thistles which are representative of the difficulties we encounter in every vocation.  Pests infest crops; data is lost on computers; thieves break in and steal; and moths and rust destroy our possessions.  When I lose something that I’ve worked hard on, my temptation to despair and give up is very great.  Few things, if any, in this world deal a fiercer blow to my morale than putting a great deal of work into something and then losing it.

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was tempted in every way and yet was without sin.  Prior to his explicit ministry, Jesus was a carpenter, apprenticed by his earthly father Joseph (see Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3).  As a carpenter, Jesus had to contend with the vanities inherent in labor under the sun.  Even if you “measure twice and cut once,” you still have to deal with bad nails and warped wood.  Every carpenter who has ever existed has had the frustrating experience of having to repeat work when a board split or when something wasn’t quite level.  Every carpenter has to make repairs; it’s part and parcel of the job.  What would Jesus the carpenter have done when he encountered situations such as these?

First, Jesus would give thanks.  It should go without saying that Jesus was better acquainted with the sovereignty of God the Father than any other man in the history of the world.  He knew better than Paul that God works all things (including our trials and the occasional futility of our labor) together for those who love Him.  As such, the first response from Jesus would be one of thanksgiving.

Second, Jesus would rectify the problem.  He wouldn’t just give up in frustration (as I am so apt to do), and he certainly wouldn’t make a shoddy attempt to cover it up and attempt to pass off substandard work as legitimate.  Jesus would make the necessary repairs and do so without grumbling or complaining.

We have been redeemed in Jesus Christ.  The man who repaired carpentry as a youth repaired mankind when he secured our salvation by making atonement for our sins.  And we are being conformed by the Holy Spirit into his likeness.  When we labor in futility, we need to realize that it isn’t futile if it’s in Christ.  We need to see it as a refining experience ordained by the Triune God before the foundation of the world for our good and his glory.  We ought to give thanks rather than tearing our clothes in despair and moping around in the ashes.  In persevering with thanksgiving through the trials of losing our work or the fruit of our labors, we are beating back the darkness in the name of Jesus Christ who came to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

I’m currently reading Holiness by J.C. Ryle.  It is a very good book.  One of the things I like about it is that it makes me think even when I disagree with him.  However, his chapter called “The Church Which Christ Builds” had me flabbergasted.  Here is one of the giants in the history of the English-speaking church whose shoes I am not worthy to untie, and yet he spends several pages trying to say that a phrase means almost the exact opposite of what it does.

“Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

Ryle states that “By that expression [the gates of hell] we are meant to understand the power of the prince of hell, even the devil.”  He then goes on to tell about how the history of the church is that of being constantly assailed by Satan.  The church “has always been a bush burning, though not consumed—a woman fleeing into the wilderness, but not swallowed up.”  Our goal is essentially to endure the assaults of Satan without apostatizing and all of our hope in heaven.  Most of what he says is okay as far as it goes, but there is one problem:

GATES ARE NOT AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON.

When have you ever seen gates advance upon somebody?  Unless you interpret this passage in a Macbeth-style “never vanquish’d be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him” fashion, there is no way to conclude that the gates represent an offensive onslaught.  That would be like saying that fire represents a waterfall or Michael Jackson represents masculinity.  To paraphrase C.S Lewis, we are apt to break out the fire extinguisher in a flood.  I don’t have a problem with stating that there are times that Satan attacks, but we need to keep in mind that they are desperate counter-attacks. Satan has been on the defensive ever since Jesus cried out “It is finished,” and the writing was on the wall long before that (Genesis 3:15).

Whether you see the life of the Church as one of hunkering down in a bunker and trying to merely survive while the world goes to hell in a hand-basket or whether you see it as one of plundering the strong man’s house and storming the very gates of hell will have a profound effect on your daily life. The boldness of great martyrs of the church throughout history has been a boldness that stormed the gates of hell, knowing that the gates would not prevail.

Every soul that is converted to Christ is a conquest over territory once held by the enemy.  Beyond that, your individual sanctification is offensive warfare against the powers of hell.  Every time you confess and forsake your sin, apologize without passing the blame or making excuses, and reconcile yourself with your brother, you are slamming a battering ram against the gates of hell.  If your wife has done something to upset you and you know exactly what you could say to make her burst into tears but refrain out of love for her and love for Christ (especially when you would have sinned in that manner a year ago), you are catapulting a boulder into a watchtower of Satan’s city.  When we assemble corporately on the Lord’s Day to worship the Triune God according to His word, how much more do we prevail!  Not only do we strike our most powerful blows against Satan’s principalities when we worship rightly, but we are also there equipped for our battle throughout the week ahead.

I know that things may look bleak at times.  You can look around and see the apparent demise of Western Civilization.  You can look to Washington and shudder.  You can look at our pulpits and see hucksters trying to manipulate people into signing a card and calling it a “conversion” or would-be gurus trying to lead you on a twelve step program to inner peace.  You can look to our congregations and see grown men shaking and barking to lyrics the Vogons would be ashamed of.  On the other side we have Calvinists who are right about the doctrines of grace (at least on paper), but are so preoccupied with intramural squabbles that we marginalize our influence on the world and the rest of the Church.  You can look at families where parents (at least the good ones that don’t commit infanticide) abandon their children to daycare at the age of six weeks and to government schools and latch-key lives at the age of six years.  There is certainly still much territory occupied by the enemy.  But do we get our theology from the six o’ clock news or the Bible?  If Jesus has said that He will build his church, we had better believe Him.

When the 12 spies went into the land of Canaan, 10 of them admitted that the land was good, but could only talk of the giants and the high walls, and the fortified cities.  Only Joshua and Caleb had enough faith to say “we can take ‘em.”  Certainly the principalities and fortified cities of Satan are more impressive than those of the Canaanites, but Jesus has said he will build His church.  He himself has said “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.  Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:18b-20).”  Now are we going to respond to this with a hearty “Amen!” or are we going to say “No, Lord,” and try to take the Lord of Glory aside and rebuke him?

Be encouraged and rejoice.  We have been winning; we are winning now; and we will win.  Let Christ be true and every man a liar!

This was a read-aloud book to my daughter, which I hope will become a yearly tradition.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  The book isn’t just a story about a Christmas pageant; it’s the gospel lived out.  Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners.   The Herdmans were the worst kids in the town: low class, disruptive, violent, thieving, destructive, disrespectful.  They were without God and without hope in the world, just like us Gentiles were.  But then they encountered Jesus.  The book is hilarious, but contains tremendous depth.   I got a little misty-eyed while reading the last chapter.  Grade: A+

He is the Lord our God; His judgments are in all the earth. Remember His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a thousand generations. The covenant which He made with Abraham, And His oath to Isaac, And confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, To Israel for an everlasting covenant, fulfilled not merely for the land of Canaan, but for the entire world in God the Son who was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary.

Sing to the LORD, all the earth; Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.  Declare His glory among the nations, His wonders among all peoples.  For the LORD is great and greatly to be praised; He is also to be feared above all gods.  For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the LORD made the heavens. Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and gladness are in His place.

Give to the LORD, O families of the peoples,  Give to the LORD glory and strength.  Give to the LORD the glory due His name;  Bring an offering, and come before Him. Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth. The world also is firmly established, It shall not be moved.

Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; And let them say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.”  Let the sea roar, and all its fullness; Let the field rejoice, and all that is in it.  Then the trees of the woods shall rejoice before the LORD, For He is coming to judge the earth.  Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good!  For His mercy endures forever.

For he fashioned dust from the earth into man, breathed life into his nostrils, and he became a living soul.  He fashioned the woman from his rib to be his help meet, creating both in the image of God.

You, O LORD, have confounded the wisdom of this world, humbling the proud and ordaining praise from the mouth of babes and suckling infants. You raise the poor out of the dust, and lift the needy out of the ash heap.  You, God Almighty, turn our mourning into dancing and our sorrow into joy!  Blessed be the LORD God of Israel From everlasting to everlasting!  From this time forth and forevermore, let everything that has breath praise the LORD in Jesus’ name through the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

At fifteen pages, I anticipate this will be the shortest book I will read for CRSC.  (Many magazine articles are longer.)  Warfield packs a lot of punch into his brief address originally delivered at the Autumn Conference at Princeton Theological Seminary on October 4, 1911.  He exhorts the seminarians regarding the type of spiritual lives they should have as theological students.  Excellent.  Grade: A

This is must reading for any young man.  Ryle’s exhortation to young men is timeless, succinct (62 pages in this edition), and wise.  The only real qualm that I have with Ryle is that he seems to have a latent gnostic streak with regards to the material world.  (The phrase “immortal soul” shows up quite frequently for such a short written work.)  This is a brief work, so I’ll know better once I start reading Holiness whether I have mischaracterized him.  Grade: A-

This little 41 page booklet is essentially an adaptation of the first lecture Thielicke would give to new students.  It warns new theological students of the “spiritual sicknesses” that frequently befall theology students.  He compares the period of theological training to puberty in that there are a lot of changes going on and the maturity of the student often fails to keep pace with their (at least imagined) level of  knowledge.  Doug Wilson often talks about the “quarantine period” that people (especially young men) should undergo after becoming Calvinists.  Thielicke’s advice is practical and he knew enough of these situations to be able to validate the concerns of many a congregation that has sent a young man off to seminary and not liked the result.  I’m not sure I digested everything fully.  I imagine I’ll read this again from time to time.  Grade: A-

Protestant Biblical Interpretation is a textbook of hermeneutics, which the author defines as the “science and art of Biblical interpretation.”  This was assigned reading as part of my “Thinking Biblically I” class at Christus Rex Study Center.  There is a lot of good material in this book, and there are only a couple of untranslated German quotations.  The book is conservative and protestant in nature.  As such, it is critical of liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism.  There are a couple of aspects of the book that I find questionable at points.  First, while Ramm defines hermeneutics as the “science and art” of Biblical interpretation, he seems to have little value for “the art.”  Again and again Ramm extols science and scientific interpretation.  I’m not sure that modern science is the best model for biblical interpretation.  Is it truly the case that engineers in general would make better interpreters of scripture than poets or chemists than musicians?  Ramm also tends to inflate the role of “scholars” relative to the interpretation of the Bible with a bit of a modernist chronological provincialism.  Scholarship is not the pillar and ground of the truth; the Church is.  Ramm seems to imply in a number of places that scholars are the ultimate arbiters of what is true (see p. 183).  God has made no promises about scholars, and the New Testament is very critical of the prideful Scribes.  In his wisdom, God has chosen to entrust his Word to the primary care of pastors and elders.  Again, there is a lot of good stuff here.  I found a paragraph in the Epilogue particularly wise and edifying: “There is a prevailing danger to let differences in interpretation interrupt the unity of the Spirit.  When differences are sharp, feelings are apt to run high.  With foreboding storm clouds of oppression billowing on the distant horizon, it is well for conservative Protestantism to discover bases of fellowship rather than divergence.  If we stand together in the great truths of the Trinity, of Jesus Christ, and of Salvation, let us then work out our interpretive differences in the bounds of Christian love and endeavor to preserve the unity of the Spirit.  A hermeneutical victory at the expense of Christian graciousness is hardly worth winning.”  Amen to that!  Grade: B+

This is a great summary of Biblical Christianity (a.k.a. “Calvinism”).  There are four sections of this book.  “Back to Conversion” is written by Doug Wilson, an able and concise presentation of the reformed view of soteriology (the doctrine of salvation).  “Back to the Covenant” is written by Doug Jones and presents the basics of thinking covenantally and an overview of redemptive history.  Although not as detailed, it is basically in line with Jordan’s Through New Eyes.  Roger Wagner wrote “Back to the Church” which essentially presents the Presbyterian view of ecclesiology.  Wagner (I believe rightly) prefers John Murray’s distinction between the historical and eschatological church to the Westminster Confession’s distinction between the visible and invisible church.  When he treats the sacraments he defends paedobaptism and is essentially agnostic on the subject of paedocommunion.  The final section “Back to the Christian Life” is written by David Hagopian, who also edited the volume.  deals with justification, glorification,  and calling/vocation.  This book would be a great book study for a church group or a book to recommend to somebody who is curious about reformed Christianity.  Grade: A-

“Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights.

Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.

Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.

Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.

Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created.

He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass.

Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:

Fire, and hail; snow, and vapours; stormy wind fulfilling his word:

Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars:

Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:

Kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth:

Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children:

Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven.

He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise ye the LORD.”

I love that the KJV translation commands “dragons” to praise the LORD.  I’m not of the “King James Only” variety, but I’m in the process of reading this translation for the first time from cover to cover.  I really like the fact that the KJV is a pre-modern translation and doesn’t buy into the contemporary biases of modern translation.  All other English translations (except for the Geneva Bible, which is probably better than the KJV but harder to find) are post-Victorian.  The Victorian Era was by-and-large a time of woeful regression of the English-speaking Church that we’re still trying to recover from.  Could you imagine a contemporary translation of the Bible saying “will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall [1 Kings 14:10]” as a quotation of God?  Several thousand Victorian-influenced church ladies would write letters scolding the translators for their “ungodly” accurate translation of the Hebrew.

This is a book of several essays on church life on topics ranging from the character of a minister to outreach to the sacraments.  Beyond containing several memorable quotes, the book is quite practical.  It deals directly with issues that come up again and again in the life of the church.  Wilson ably advances the reformed faith as a living and vibrant model for all churches to emulate rather than a museum piece of the frozen chosen.  Our friends at Canon Press have made this title available in its entirety here.   Grade: A

Peter Leithart preached at our church this past Sunday.  As I don’t believe he ordinarily records the sermons he preaches, this is a rare treat.  It can be found here.   While you’re at it, you can also catch the last time he preached at our church (before I was there) about Naboth’s vineyard.  Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.

My first Christus Rex Study Center (CRSC) book.  Jordan attempts to develop a Biblical worldview based on the symbolism of the Bible.  He looks at stars, trees, rocks, animals, etc., in terms of their symbolic significance in the Bible and then looks at the different “worlds” of Noah, the Patriarchs, the Mosaic establishment, the Davidic establishment, the worlds of exile and restoration, and the New Creation showing how these symbols are transformed from glory to glory.  There is a lot to mine out of this book and could stand to be read several times.  In a sense, Jordan’s book is Van Tilianism applied at a “rhetoric” or “poetic” level.  Jordan makes and cites many of the Old Testament observations that Meredith G. Kline makes, but without falling into the trap of believing that because these things are types, symbols, and poetry they don’t apply to us today.  It also has an interesting footnote trail and a brief bibliography that I would like to have  followed if I didn’t have to get on to my next book.  You can tell that Jordan has done his homework (and then some), but the presentation of the book is quite readable and accessible to the layman.  The brilliant connections and keen observations Jordan makes left me wishing the book would never end.  Grade: A+