Of the Way

Doug Wilson on dragons

Michael Duchemin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 02:38:35 +0000

“The Bible refers repeatedly to the reality of dragons and winged serpents and indicates that the devil is one of their number. Modern translators are embarrassed by all of this and try to get by with renderings like jackel or crocodile. They have not gone so far as to translate the words for dragon as export or drain, but they would if they could.”

-Douglas Wilson, Future Men, Canon Press, 2001, p. 100, emphasis original

A brief review of On Christian Doctrine by Augustine of Hippo

Michael Duchemin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:22:04 +0000

I had to read this book for my Historical Theology class and present on Augustine as I did on Athanasius. (The outline of that lecture can be found here.) Augustine’s work provides a solid basis for “plundering the Egyptians” and appropriating the best of classical learning for the cause of the gospel, including an extended discussion of rhetoric. Augustine ably defends the Christian appropriation of the useful techniques and elements of classical rhetoric. In addition, Augustine discusses signs and symbols and lays out a hermeneutical framework for Biblical interpretation that was tremendously influential on Western Biblical interpretation. Grade: A

Jordan on Gnosticism versus History

Michael Duchemin — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:15:26 +0000

“Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs. Rather, gnosticism is a tendency: the tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas. Gnosticism is the tendency to de-historicize and de-physicalize the Christian religion. Gnosticism transforms history into ideology and facts into philosophy. Gnosticism tends to see religion as man’s reflections about God and reality instead of as God’s revelation of Himself and His Word to man. As a tendency, Gnosticism has always plagued the Church, and it is alive and well today, openly in “liberalism,” and in a more concealed fashion, in “evangelicalism.”

-James Jordan, Creation in Six Days, Canon Press, 1999, p. 71, emphasis original

Note: Chapter 4 “Gnosticism Versus History” should be required reading for every Protestant. Protestantism went dangerously gnostic in the nineteenth century, and we’re still trying to recover. See my earlier comments from my review of Holiness by Ryle.

I’ll just wear my glasses, then

Michael Duchemin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:01:55 +0000

In the course of listening to other sermons about Psalm 148 and meditating upon them, I thought of an illustration. I believe it is a powerful illustration that will put the obedience of the wind, hail, snow, and fire in the context of personal [sic ?] obedience to the decrees of God over against the ideas of “impersonal forces” and “natural laws.” The problem is that I fear I might not be able to maintain my composure while delivering the illustration. Here is my dilemma: do I include the illustration and risk breaking down and weeping in public, or do I leave it out and play it safe, seeing as how it’s my first sermon? What would my Master have me do?

Well, what did my Master do? What did His servants do during the early days of the church that are recorded in inspired history? When Lazarus died, Jesus wept. Jesus, who understands the Father’s glorious plan better than anybody, wept. Jesus, who knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead just a few moments later, wept. Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, wept. What about Paul, the hero of reformed and Calvinistic churches? Did he always preach (or write, for that matter) in a calm, cool, collected manner? Did he lecture? Nay, he often preached with tears. He even provided an apologetic for them: “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote unto you with many tears; not that ye should be grieved, but that ye might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you. (2 Cor 2:4).”

Indeed, God is sovereign. If he decrees that I shall break down in tears, no passage or illustration is safe. He can use the leprosy passages in Leviticus to bring me to my knees. He is sovereign over my emotions; I am not. I am but a servant; the Lord will feed his sheep as He sees fit. I must seek to be a faithful servant of Christ. If I maintain my composure–if I am in my right mind–let it be for the glory of Christ and His gospel! If I am to be a fool and choke back tears in public, let me be a fool for the sake of Christ and His gospel! If He sends tears, let them be a drink offering and a thank offering, poured out before his throne. Only let Him feed His sheep. He must increase; I must decrease. Here I am, Lord, send me. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

But I am an American evangelical. I have seen tears abused for wicked and manipulative pretexts by peddlers of the gospel. Ginning up crocodile tears to pad your wallet or to make a name for yourself is an abomination. God is not mocked; He will judge, and then the tears of those hucksters will be real. But should the counterfeit tears of the televangelist cause us to fall into the other ditch? There is good reason to oppose the syrupy, squishy, evangellyfishy, Jesus-is-my-boyfriend treacle that we see around us, but we need to follow scripture rather than reacting against the prevailing error. There is a certain aspect of American reformed and Calvinist culture that operates as if our bodies only exist to take our brains to and from church. I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been influenced in some way by this. We are Christians, not Vulcans. Christianity is incarnational. Both of these ditches have latent Gnostic assumptions and both of them are inconsistent with the Incarnation. If you think you can do theology without it erupting into doxology, your theology is wrong. Period. I don’t care how many fat books with small type you’ve read.

It’s still a few weeks until I preach. I may find as I write the sermon that the illustration doesn’t fit with my overall theme, or that it distracts from it. The Lord may take me in another direction. That would be a valid reason to exclude it. A fear of looking foolish is not valid. As for now, it stays in. I’ll just make sure to wear my glasses instead of my contact lenses when I preach.

Prayer of praise for July 11

Michael Duchemin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 23:45:51 +0000

“I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined to me and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of a horrible pit, Out of the miry clay.”

Our Father, we thank You for wondrous love that raised us out of the very dust of death. You did not withhold Your Son, Your only Son Jesus, whom You love, but sent our great Redeemer to rescue us and turn Your well-deserved wrath away from us . We praise you for the obedience of our Good Shepherd Who laid down His life for us, the sheep of His pasture. No one took it from Him, but He laid it down of His own accord. We rejoice that the grave could not hold Him, and that in Him neither will it be able to hold us.

Let us come and behold the works that have been wrought by you! You have made great desolations in the earth. You make wars cease to the ends of the earth; You break the bow and cut the spear in two; You burn the chariot in the fire. You smote Pharaoh and Sennacherib with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. You shattered Sihon and Og with a rod of iron. You crushed the serpentine heads of Sisera and Abimelech under Your foot, using godly women to accomplish the feat for Your glory. You avenged the betrayals of Ahithophel and Judas. You outwitted Ahab, and hanged Haman on his own gallows. So shall all Your enemies perish!

You are a consuming fire. You broke out against the sacrilege of Nadab, Abihu, and Uzzah. You struck down Ananias and Sapphira and caused Simon Magus to perish with his money, but You did not consume the bush when you spoke to Moses, neither did you consume your servants Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego when they were cast into the fiery furnace. In your mercy, you rescued Joseph out of the miry depths of the dungeon and delivered Daniel out of the den of the lions. Who is like you, O Lord? You alone are worthy of our praise, which we offer to you in Jesus’ name through the power of the Holy Spirit, both now and forevermore, world without end. Amen.

Autobiographical update, new look and name for the Blog

Michael Duchemin — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 22:08:26 +0000

Because my studies at Christus Rex Study Center have kept me busy, I haven’t had the opportunity to do much in terms of posting.

Blog changes

Last night I decided to redesign the look of my blog and rename it. It is now called “Of the Way” which is a possible English translation of my last name. I borrowed the structure of Chris Pearson’s press row theme and customized it. I created the banner myself in GIMP while Shelley (an accomplished graphic designer and proprietor of Purple Line Design) only mocked my profound lack of skills a little bit.

Life

In the past couple of months we’ve gone on a couple of long-weekend trips. Memorial Day weekend we decided on a whim to go see Shelley’s brother’s Jake’s family and her sister Amy in Carbondale, IL. I got home from work and Shelley jokingly mentioned going to see them. I thought it would be an adventure, and within a couple of hours we were on the road. We drove all night and arrived at about 8:0o Saturday morning. Janelle had a ball playing with her cousins and we thoroughly enjoyed the visit.

Because we’re gluttons for punishment, we took another “ground red-eye” trip (departing at 6:oo p.m. and arriving at 10:00 a.m.) a couple of weeks ago to visit my family in New Hampshire. The visit went well. My mom’s side of the family had a reunion, so I was able to see nearly all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. The night before we went back home, my grandparents came over and we played forty-fives. The return trip was brutal. We got to Cary at 3:30 a.m. and slept in the driveway of our friends’ vacant home. Then I had class for the Study Center at 6:30 a.m. and work at 8.

Speaking of the Study Center, I just completed my first year there. My last class was this past Wednesday. I am very thankful to Christ Church of North Carolina for their investment in me. The average cost (tuition and fees only) for an independent seminary’s M-Div program was $12,267 per year (and they are cheaper than university-affiliated and college affiliated seminaries). I paid $300 plus books, which is about 2.4% of the average seminary. Christ Church obviously didn’t profit monetarily from this. I am grateful for the work of Gene Liechty, Dell Cook, and especially Gregory Soderberg, who serves as the director of the study center. All of these people worked for far less than the going seminary professor rate.

I am scheduled to preach my first sermon on Sunday August 1, 2010 on Psalm 148. I’m not especially nervous in terms of the public speaking aspect of it, but I am a bit daunted by the weight of the responsibility. The session of Christ Church is calling upon me, a sheep, to feed the sheep. Who is sufficient for these things? May the Holy Spirit provide illumination that I may speak truth in the sight of God in Christ and that I might be used as an instrument to feed the sheep of His pasture.

A brief review of Readings in the History of Christian Theology (vol. 1) ed. William C. Placher

Michael Duchemin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:49:00 +0000

Required for my Historical Theology class. It can’t be easy to attempt to distill the primary sources of Christian writing from the generation following the apostles to the eve of the reformation into a 150 page anthology. Given the difficulty of the task, Placher does an admirable job choosing excerpts from some of the most important works of Christian theology, organizing them and catching enough of the writers in their own words that you can get a taste of who they were and what they believed. Grade: A-

A brief review of Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs by Howard F. Vos

Michael Duchemin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:42:46 +0000

I chipped away at this big, fat green tome for the better part of the academic year. While there is a great deal of useful information in the book and the author is a conservative, some of his inclusions, omissions, and conclusions were perplexing. For example, Jonah is not mentioned once. There is an entire chapter on Assyria, and not a mention of Jonah. Vos mentions several times that the Assyrian empire was weak in the first half of the eighth century, but never considers that Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh might have had an effect on the renaissance of the Assyrian empire. It’s not as if Vos refrains from speculating elsewhere. The book generally gets better as it gets closer to the cross. I think he’s more reliable on the Selucids, Ptolomies, and Romans than he is on the Babylonians, Egyptians, or Canaanites. Vos goes through each culture explaining the government, warfare, architecture, diet, and family life. Also my earlier critiques of Bernard Ramm’s Protestant Biblical Interpretation about the scholar being the final arbiter of truth apply equally to Vos. It’s a useful resource to have, but left me wanting something more. Grade: B-

Prayer of Thanksgiving for Ascension Sunday

Michael Duchemin — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:11:46 +0000

“Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” Hebrews 13:5

Our most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for your abundant provisions for us. We, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, but how much more do You give good things to us who ask you!

Thank you Father, for our King Jesus whose rule extends to the ends of the earth and whose reign is eternal. Of the increase of His government on earth there will be no end. The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved; He uttered His voice, the earth melted. This was the LORD’s doing, accomplished by the zeal of the Lord of Hosts; it is marvelous in our eyes.

We thank You for this Sabbath Day, the Lord’s Day, in which we rest from our labors in thanksgiving and jubilee; You have given us one-seventh of our lives for free. Especially, we thank You for worship on this day when we ascend into Your throne room in Christ. It is our highest duty and our greatest joy.

We thank You for the privilege of prayer and the work of Christ that makes our prayers efficacious as they ascend like incense, a sweet savor unto the Lord.

We thank You for our marriages, where we are able to model and reflect the bond between Christ and the church. May we become ever more faithful in preaching the gospel in this manner.

Thank you Father, for the ministry of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA and their pastor Steve Wilkins. Grant them strength, according to the riches of Your glory, with might through Your Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may increasingly dwell in their hearts through faith; that they, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that they may be filled with all the fullness of God.

To You who are able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to You be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Arthur St. Clair on the U.S. Constitution

Michael Duchemin — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 01:06:18 +0000

Arthur St. Clair was one of the Presidents of the United States who served before the current Constitution went into effect. The presidents before Washington have been [intentionally?] neglected in conventional studies of history. St. Clair, like fellow Anti-Federalist Patrick Henry, was a vocal critic of the Constitution, and has been proven right by history:

“I foresee the day when rights will subsume responsibilities, where the poor and the despised will become wage slaves of the elites; and the mercantilism that we have fought against and the tyranny that we have stood against will be swallowed by the average American citizen. And they will call that ‘freedom’.”

Update: This has been pinged a couple of times. I realized that I forgot to cite the source I gleaned this from. It comes from a lecture by George Grant from the 1999 Association of Classical and Christians Schools (ACCS) Conference titled “Dumb and Dumber: The Desperate Need for Covenantal and Christian Education.” It is available from Word MP3 here.