Colson on Classical

Will Anyone Go To Hell?

Robert Peterson was my mentor at Covenant Theological Seminary,  and he has ably responded to Rob Bell's book Love Wins. Dr. Peterson has published several excellent books on eternal destinies and the Bible's teaching on salvation.

Like Dr. Peterson, we need to let God speak for himself through Scripture in dealing with questions of heaven and hell, especially at a time when our culture has no stomach for hard truth and real grace.

Big-leaguers, the Ball, and the Cross

My son gave me an article to read out of his Sports Illustrated called "Loving Baseball: What Keeps the Grand Game Great? Everything Old Is New Again." It's thesis is that baseball is timeless, at least compared to other modern sports. This is because it's about history as much as the current happenings. What other sport gives you as much opportunity to relish the present in light of the past?

Baseball is a game out of time.... Think about this for a moment: What else but baseball connects us to America of, say, 1891? What else has burned so long in our consciousness? The American population in 1891 was less than about one quarter of what it is now. That was before movies, before television, before radio before Hershey bars, before Wrigley gum, before even Brett Favre. America the Beautiful had not been written. Dracula did not exist [yes he means the novel by Bram Stoker], no Roosevelt had yet been president.... The Olympics, more than 1,500 years since their last staging, would not resume for another five years.

The author, Joe Posnanski, points out that baseball is also played without a clock, and for this it is ridiculed by its critics:

The people who do not love baseball feel its timelessness too. They lampoon a game that feels ... so ... yesterday. They mock baseball ... for its interminable pauses, for sparking so little violence and motion for struggling to adapt (No replay? Really?), for being measured by numbers well to the right of decimal points. "You made me love baseball," Lisa told Bart on  The Simpsons. "Not as a collection of numbers, but as an unpredictable, passionate game beaten in excitement only by every other sport."

Baseball falls on hard times in a culture where happiness is equated with excitement instead of patient obedience. You must wait for the drama. It will reward, you just don't know when. But to be there in the moment it happens is bliss. Those interminable pauses are really opportunities for historical repartee. Remember when Bruce Sutter lept into Daryl Porter's arms? Remember, "Go crazy folks! Go crazy!" Remember Adam Wainwright striking out Brandon Inge to win the 2006 World Series? Remember Brummer stealing home? That's Whitey Ball! Would you rather have Willie McGee or Jim Edmonds on your dream team? (I'm obviously a Cardinals fan). Thus the present is always drenched in the past. This makes baseball fans more than history buffs. The liturgies of baseball turns us into a historical community.

But football is different. Football is about looking ahead, betting on the future. Football is about recruiting and the draft and three-team parlays on Sunday. Sure football celebrates its history, but only as history, like a married couple that every now and then looks at the wedding album. In baseball, history is a living and breathing character. When Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs and then Barry Bonds hit 73 and 762 and both, one publicly, the other tacitly, later acknowledged having used steroids--well, that wasn't just an unhappy incident for many baseball fans. It was a crack in baseball's timeline. It broke up baseball's one hallowed connection to Hank Aaron and Roger Maris and Babe Ruth and the past. If football's history was wiped blank tomorrow the game would go on, as popular as ever. Not so baseball.

Baseball, in this way, illustrates something true about the church:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:1-2).

Each time we celebrate the Lord's Supper or hear the preacher proclaim the gospel or sing an ancient hymn "everything old is new again." Covenants are ancient but they are always being renewed. Christ is present in the Supper and "we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses." "Therefore ... let us also lay aside every weight ... and let us run with endurance the race." History is alive in the here and now, defining the true from the false, the orthodox from the heretical, and the living from the dead. We don't have to be slaves of the culture, bound to its fads by the shackles of cool. Just like baseball can keep Pete Rose out of the Hall, instant replay out of the calls, and put real grass back into stadiums, the church has its own culture that defines it in every age and keep it in fellowship with every Christian down through the ages.

Baseball's biggest problems, like those of us with thinning hair, seem to happen whenever it tries to act young. The All-Star Game in Phoenix feels to me like a three-day comb-over. Look, the All-Star Game will never be what it was.... Progress leaves behind casualties. The efforts to keep the All-Star game vibrant and cool--such as the interminable Home Run Derby, the baffling player-selection process and giving home field advanage in the World Series to the winning league--make baseball look as if it's wearing black socks with sandals and saying "dude" a lot. Many of the game's most popular players, including Jeter himself, were not at the game this year. And fewer people watch it on television than ever before.

Similarly the church's biggest problems happen when it tries to be relevant. This is not because it is trying to be something it isn't. It's because the church is already more relevant than any of us can tell right now. Look how it has outlasted every ruler and philosopher that declared it dead from Nero to Mohammed, from Voltaire to Kant, from Nietzsche to Sartre, and it will certainly be here when Ditchkins is gone. C. S. Lewis once quipped, "All that is not eternal is eternally out of date" ("Charity," in The Four Loves). G. K. Chesterton wrote, ‎"The church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times" (The Ball and the Cross). If we, the church, would stop trying to be cool, and just be our God-given selves, we might realize how eschatologically cool we are! I see more baseball and Bible in the future.

Gospel Hinges

Deuteronomy 6:6, 9:

These words that I command you today ... You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The door is the gateway to the outside world and back into the home. It needs to turn on gospel hinges. It is the entry way to both realms because it must govern our interactions in both places. In My Life for Yours: A Walk Through the Christian Home, Douglas Wilson points out that the door is also a protection from the outside world. Sometimes the door needs to be firmly shut.

Comforting Sovereignty

Got this from a friend on FB:

Indeed the great point for our comfort in life, is to have a well grounded persuasion that we are where, all things considered, we ought to be. It is no great matter whether we are in public or private life, in a city or a village, in a palace or a cottage. The promise, My grace is sufficient, is necessary to support us in the smoothest scenes, and is equally able to support us in the most difficult. (John Newton)

God's sovereignty always has us where his grace is sufficient.

Curiosity and Kids

Deuteronomy 6:20-25:

When your son asks you in time to come, 'What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?' then you shall say to your son, 'We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.'

God's covenant culture was a culture of question asking. In other words, there should be in our homes an inculcation of curiosity. Not everything is taught. Some things are taught and other things are left for Q and A. This also means that we as parents need to be ready to take advantage of teachable moments.

Evolution Is So Impossible it Happened a Lot!

Here's a great interview with John C. Collins, my former professor at Covenant Seminary, about the controversy recently generated by geneticists concerning whether we are descended from an original couple (Genesis) or from a pool of separately evolving humans (polygenesis).

Sometimes it takes good science a long time to catch up to the Bible. How much "change over time" is necessary before we realize our ancestors were Adam and Eve and not the Adam's Family?

Is Worldview More Caught than Taught?

Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation by James K.A. Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom lays siege to the church’s current approach to  worldview training. He says our current fascination with worldview is  dominated by a philosophical emphasis that tends to overlook the body and the imagination. Man is treated like “a brain in a vat” rather than as the embodied lover God made him. This leads to an impoverishment of the church and the Christian life and surrender to the world, the flesh, and the devil. Smith seeks to redirect his readers into culture building through the church’s ancient liturgy. He argues that the liturgical practices of the church are full-bodied culture builders that can direct our desires, order our loves, and train our habits for fuller expressions of the kingdom. I think there is much to praise here but also some cautions that Smith shouldn’t have “thrown to the wind.” More about that below. One caution: I found Smith’s book is so provocative and challenging, I couldn’t help writing a longer review essay than a mere review of his ideas.


Smith specifically takes aim at his own reformed tradition which tends to be idea driven instead of practice driven. The reformed tradition tends to view the person as a container of ideas that issue forth in actions, rather than a passionate person formed by practices first and that issue in propositions later. Smith even sees in the reformed emphasis on “basic beliefs” that undergird ideas something more akin to propositions than passions. He fears that this approach, advocated by the highly respected Plantinga, Wolterstorff, and Dooyeweerd also reduces Christianity to a “belief system.” This reduction tends to ignore our the role of the body and makes the faith something that can be mediated outside the church (45). Smith argues that love is the basic human orientation to the world. Man is primarily a lover and secondarily a thinker or believer. Affections are more basic than thoughts, ideas, and propositions.


This is provocative for someone like me who was raised in a rebellion against liturgy. In my circles tradition was out and being "led by the Spirit" was in. This implied, of course, that either our forebears weren't led by the Spirit or the Holy Spirit was doing a new thing or both. I suspect it was both. I later moved toward the intellectual approach which could also denigrate the liturgical as a mindless “going through the motions.” I have since come to appreciate the benefit of time tested liturgy. Smith goes one further by arguing that all of life is liturgical. It is liturgical in that it consists of practices both thick and thin that train our desires. Thick ones are like the Lord's Supper, and thin ones are like brushing your teeth or checking for ticks. These direct our loves, and thus form us as people. The thick practices obviously have a greater impact on who we are. Smith argues that all of life is sacramental but the sacraments themselves are a God ordained intensification of the sacramental order into an act of special grace.


Smith convincingly reveals the liturgies of the mall, media, and market for what they are: training grounds for a kingdom other than the Kingdom of God. Far from innocent, they are "secular liturgies," fine tuned and field tested by media elites and advertisers. They are designed to make us want to dispose of what we have in discontent and purchase the new and the novel. These liturgies tend to express our fallenness and often participate in the demonic. For instance, it is not so subtly suggested to young men that if they mist some axe body spray over themselves beautiful young girls will throw themselves at them. Not only must we be aware of our culture if we don't want to be manipulated by it, but we must also reform it so that we will be reformed in turn. It turns out that, according to Smith, the evangelical and Reformed churches haven’t been as effective as the consumer culture at speaking to the heart and shaping desire.


As mentioned, Smith targets the current evangelical approach to worldview education, because it treats man like a brain walking around in an earth-suit. Smith says our approach to Christian worldview development is overly intellectual and cognitive. Smith's critique is based upon his argument that man is primarily a lover and secondarily a philosopher. We feel, sense, and "love before we know" (70). We imagine before we theorize (66, 134).  One might say that worldview is "more caught than taught." Smith says worldview is visceral, running off of sense impressions from the body that fuel the imagination. Only a small percentage of worldview is usually processed by reason. It is also the case that while Christian truth forms Christian practice, our rational understanding and articulation of that truth comes later. Smith does not denigrate the cognitive mind. After all his book is an intellectual tour-de-force which aims to make us better appreciate what is going on in secular and sacred liturgies. His argument is that the teachings of the Christian faith are embedded in the practices and this is gradually discovered intellectually as reason matures. Thus God-ordained worship is the font of personal worldview (136). Visions of the kingdom are implicit in the liturgies (121). He argues that the proper use of the intellect is to deepen our understanding of the liturgical. We can reflect on and reform the liturgy as Smith encourages us to do. For instance, Smith asks us to consider what is going on when we go to the mall.


A walk through the mall presents one with sights, sounds, and smells. It also sends messages and puts us through motions that appeal to the whole person. The mall says fix it not through "confession but in consumption." Smith comments, "implicit in those visual icons of success, happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment is a stabbing albeit unarticulated recognition that that's not me" (96). But it can be me, if I proceed to the altar to complete my worship experience with transaction overseen by a high priest of consumerism professionally trained to pull it off with a smile and a tease for next time.


Smith argues that thick cultural practices, like going to the mall, train our hearts through casting a spell over our imaginations. The body is not unconnected to what we think, contra Kant and the Enlightenment. Smith asserts, and I think rightly, that bodily practices activate and animate our imagination. The heart is trained by the disciplines of the body. Meanwhile, Smith points out, the church tries to extinguish the lust consuming our hearts by pouring water on our heads. He says that we need to develop habits of daily worship in private, in our churches, schools, and families (211). Smith is giving us what he calls a "methodological jolt" by switching us from worldview beliefs to worldview practices and thus liturgies (93). He actually prefers the term "social imaginary" to worldview, but I'm afraid its not nearly as catchy.


Smith emphasizes, a la St. Augustine, that man is a lover and his loves need to be ordered. Smith understands liturgies as rituals that form and direct our loves. His recipe for reordered love through liturgical practices travels through three institutions: the church, the school, and the family. He points to the church as the cultural center of the kingdom that orders our loves under God. Quoting Witvliet, Smith refers to the Bible and worship as "God's language school" that "challenges us to practice forms of faithful speech to God that we are not likely to try on our own. Authentic worship, like toddler talk, expresses who we are and forms what we are becoming" (172). Smith is saying that if we want to love God with all our heart, soul, and strength we must do liturgy. We must kneel, fold our hands, confess, pray, stand, lift our arms, sing, dance, hear, see water trickle over an infant’s head, take, eat, touch,  smell, drink, open, read, write, reason, praise, smile, shake hands, hug, and give thanks.


With respect to education, Smith quotes Stanley Hauerwas who said that “every education is a moral formation.” This means that the idea of a secular education that conveys information without formation is a myth. Smith calls for the Christian university to be the ecclesial university. Medieval universities were founded by the church and served as extensions of the church into the world. Today's secular university is, quoting Hauerwas, "the great institution of legitimation in modernity whose task is to convince us that the way thing are is the way things have to be" (221). Smith is refreshing in calling for a radical reformation of Christian universities. “The Christian university should not only be born but also nourished ex corde ecclesiae, ‘from the heart of the church’.” This would include “baptismal renunciations of what the surrounding culture might consider 'excellence’ ” (221). This means the "ecclesial university curriculum" will not look like that of the secular state university "plus Jesus" (220-222). In fact, it might not even ensure its students' success in a world formed by secular liturgies. Smith wants us to consider whether we are willing to pay the price for a truly Christian education.


Smith cites David McCarthy who refers to the family the “domestic church” (212, n. 129). The church is the “first family” that defines our homes and opens them to those to whom Christ ministered. In most Christian traditions, as soon as a child is born into a Christian family, he is baptized by the church. Smith calls baptism a subversive sacrament that, in the words of McCarthy, "establishes a communion that qualifies our relationships of birth" (186). This flies in the face of the modern idols of choice and democracy. Smith points out that since the Enlightenment freedom has been increasingly defined in terms of the mere act of choosing. Historically and biblically freedom has more to do with the ability to choose the good. Modernity has reduced freedom to the mere exercise of the will, because moral authorities, like the church, which define the good have been pushed to the margins of society. The problem with the modern definition is that it ironically leaves us with much less freedom. Smith cites research indicating "that only about 5 percent of our daily activity is the product of conscious, intentional actions that we 'choose'" (81). We simply find ourselves immersed in a life already given to us. Most of us do not choose to live the life of a commuter. We simply accept that lifestyle as a fact of our modern existence. To choose otherwise requires a deliberate countercultural move. Similarly Baptism is an act of grace that says you have begun your formation as a child of God, and it puts the baptized in an antithetical relationship to the world. It shows us that we don't choose the church, but it chooses us as part of the saving arm of God. We can choose otherwise, but only after the fact.


Desiring the Kingdom is a rich mine of truth, but even the richest mines yield some dross when refined by the word of God. Smith seems to be drinking from the font of secular liturgy by using "she" instead of "he" when it could be either sex. Smith thus breaks with Scripture's practice of assuming that a female is not necessarily negated by the masculine pronoun but protected under male headship. So it is no surprise when he also refers to ordained ministers as "she" breaking with the Bible's prohibition of women exercising that office of authority over men. For all the honor Smith pays to Scripture, he doesn't permeate his own words with the Word like one might expect. While he does use the Bible he doesn’t avail himself of the abundance of biblical texts about culture building. The "Shema" of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 would make his point in spades, but Smith doesn't turn his points on that sturdy hinge. Smith is more of a philosopher, but if Scripture is supposed to be the standard, as he says, it ought to be raised a bit more and its habits of speech imitated.


Smith is clearly for more liturgy in worship not less. He shows us that we shouldn’t be afraid of this since life is inescapably liturgical. He also encourages us to embrace the imagination since the liturgical works on the imagination first and most. But he goes on to say that this happens “without having to kick into a mode of cerebral reflection” (167). He recognizes that some people may be scandalized by the implication that liturgies work “ex opere operato” or “by the mere performance of ritual.” He admits that he thinks this is true though not ideal. Indeed, I know of  many liturgical churches whose membership tends to have little passion for knowing and applying Scripture to their personal lives. They seem to assume that the liturgy takes care of all their spiritual needs, and their lives tend to resemble the world around them. I also know churches who aren’t known for being liturgical, and yet they have created a vibrant biblical culture where members personally apply the Bible to their lives and the world around them. Smith talks about those who wander into the world but are awakened by a liturgical memory and return to the church. Praise the Lord this happens, but nominal Christianity that issues in backsliding until the eleventh hour is FAR from ideal.


The goal of the Christian life is increasing levels of spiritual maturity as we mature physically and mentally. This means that as our rational capacities develop, rational understanding of what we love and believe should grow. Smith fails to emphasize that the intellectual appropriation of the liturgy represents a primary goal of Christian maturity. He also fails to use the intellectual appropriation of the liturgy as a safeguard against the nominal and passive Christianity that often attends highly liturgical churches. I agree that we need more liturgy, but we need to avoid the opposite error of being merely liturgical. The church must be vigilant in teaching the meaning of liturgy and that it must be personally received by a proactive, reasoning faith “until we all reach unity … in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).


All things considered, Smith's scholarship is good and his call for Christian scholarship to "emerge from the matrix of worship" is much needed. We do need to return to the liturgical without becoming passive. We must use it to invigorate our imaginations and develop our reason. He promises to take the conversation further in future works, and I must say that I'm looking forward to them with my heart, soul, mind, and strength.



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Knowing the World through the Word

Wow! It's been a long time since I've blogged. It's good to be back. Here's a sermon I preached last Sunday. Blessings to all my readers out there. I always covet your comments, questions, and most of all challengeez! ;-D



Knowing the World Through the Word or How to Introduce Covenant Culture into Your Home
M. Heckel, 6-24-11


I. Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9 & Ephesians 6:1-4.

II. Intro: We’ve had Mother’s Day and Father’s Day was last week. Well today I’ll be preaching on children and the family, so we might call this family day. The Bible has a lot to say about families and raising children.
I am far from an expert on these things. I am very much a father in training. I’m very glad we have God’s word, because I could not teach about this subject on my own expertise. So Let’s take a look at what God is saying to his people in our passage.

III. Historical Context:
A. Israel is about to enter the promised land. Moses has led God’s people out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, entered into covenant with them on Mt. Sinai, given them the Ten Commandments, and they have just wandered in the dessert for forty years. They wandered in the dessert because of their disbelief. They did not believe that they could destroy the inhabitants of the land, even though God was sending Israel as his instrument of judgment. God had given them into Israel’s hand, but ten out of the twelve spies said “There are giants in the land.” They rejected the Word of God and so God rejected that generation. They all died in the dessert except the two believing spies, Joshua and Caleb, and their families.
B. Now they are on the border of the promised land again, and God is about to renew the  covenant with his people.
C. After the fall of Adam, God reestablishes relationship with his people through a covenant. In a covenant God makes promises to Israel and calls his people to obey. In this section, God is calling his people to keep the covenant.
D. (Application) Like Israel, we too are God’s people. The church is God’s New Covenant people. So God is addressing us in this passage as well.

IV. God is One, 6:4
A. In verse 4 God solemnly calls his people to attention. Whatever follows is of the utmost importance. The Jews understood this, and made it their great confession of faith that they recite every morning and evening.
B. The Lord, who is Israel’s God is one God. This is know as monotheism and it made Israel unique. All other ancient religions worshipped many gods and were thus polytheistic. The oneness of God also means that his people can trust him. A polytheistic god cannot be trusted because the gods are in conflict.
C. (Application) But this means that we can trust God today no matter what the gods of the market and media do. The market may plummet but God is still on his throne. Brittany may have lost custody, but the Lord never loses custody of us.

V. Loving God, 6:5
A. Israel is told, “You shall love Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
B. This shows us that we are to love God with our whole being. He isn’t just part of our lives, he must be our lives.
C. This shows us that love can be commanded. Love is a feeling but it is also a commitment. God commands us to love him. Loving God is a commitment. I’m sure that Israel didn’t always feel like obeying God, but she was commanded to love him.
D. (App) Similarly, we don’t always feel like loving our spouses. We don’t feel in love. But if we love our spouse in spite of our selfish feelings the deepest feelings will eventually spring from our hearts. C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves says that we expect being in love to be like falling in love. But falling in love is only the incentive. It is like the dive into the pool. But once we are in the pool, swimming, not diving, is the thing.
E. Loving God also makes Israel unique. All other ancient religions related to their gods primarily through fear. You did not love Zeus. You might have feared him, but you did not have a personal relationship with him. You sacrificed to him so that he would not be angry; so that you would stay off of his radar. But Israel is unique. Listen to these verses:
i. Gen. 15:6, Abraham “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” We have a right relationship with God based on faith not works.
ii. Genesis 6:8, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” God’s grace is the basis of our relationship with him.

VI. God’s Word, 6:6-7
A. God’s word is to be on our hearts.
B. We are to teach it diligently to our children.
C. How do we do this you ask? We are to “talk” the word of God:
i. “when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way.” This covers the private and the public realms. This means we are to discuss the word of God everywhere we go.
ii. “and when you lie down, and when you rise.” This is a common Hebrew way of saying “all day.” We are to discuss the word of God at all times.
iii. We get the word of God into our hearts and into the hearts of our children by discussing all of life in relation to the word of God. This is the divine curriculum.
D. (App) Even 2 + 2 = 4 needs to be discussed in relation to God. This reflects the nature of an orderly and logical God who made a creation that can be described mathematically. We can penetrate the mathematical nature of the world because we are made in God’s image. Though they like four bones better than two, dogs don’t understand that 2 + 2 = 4. Now think about discussing politics, philosophy, history, literature, economics, business, art, sports, and relationships in relation to the word of God! That’s a marvelous thing, but it’s only possible if we know the word of God.
E. Before the time of print culture, the people of god would have heard and memorized God’s word in worship and in the family. Today each of us can afford a Bible of our own. We can sit down, open it up, smooth out the pages and read what God has said about these things.
F. (App) A few years ago I realized that my Bible knowledge was slipping. I noticed that worldly influences we’re creeping in upon me. I had three degrees in divinity, and I had begun to take the Bible for granted. I had quite reading. I was reading plenty of other theology, but there is no substitute for the word of God. I had to get back into it, so I started by reading a Proverb a day. There are thirty-one chapters, one for each day of the month. I must have read through Proverbs five times, stopping, restarting, and faltering many times until I reformed the habit. Then I started reading Acts and then the Psalms at the same time. I started reading the books I was reading to my family after supper and then the kids started reading them. We’ve still have a long way to go but we’re going.
G. (App) Douglass Wilson says that there are three kinds of culture we can have in the home. We can leave a cultural void that the media is only too happy to fill with television, internet, materialism, and consumerism. Or we can create a culture of rebellion when we preach on thing but live another in front of our family. Or we can build a Christ centered culture with the word of God (Standing on the Promises).

VII. Experiencing God’s World through God’s Word, 6:8-9
A. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand.” We touch the world with our hands and we are to touch the world with God’s word. This brings healing to a sick world. It mends the brokenness.
B. “They shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” We see the world through our eyes. We are to see the world through God’s word like a pair of glasses if you will. In order to see the world the way God does, he needs to adjust our prescription.
C. “On the doorposts of your house.” Even the rooms in our house are to reflect the gospel. Do our rooms glory God? Do they point us to family time, play time, feasting, festivity, celebration, orderliness, rest, and quiet time in his word? Or are our rooms permeated with worldliness and distraction?
D. “On your gates.” The gate is the way to the outside world and the way back in to the home. This gate is to be guarded by the word of God. In all our comings and goings we are to experience the world through God’s word.


VIII. Conclusion: People of God, we must remember that our God is one, he’s consistent, and can be trusted. We are to love him with our whole being, committed to him no matter what. His word is to be on our hearts and taught diligently into the hearts of our children all the time, everywhere we go, and thus in relation to all of life. We are to experience God’s world through his Word. So let’s open the word, smooth out the pages, read, and let God write it on our hearts. Let’s be transformed by the word and let the word transform the world around us. It won’t be easy. There will be set backs, but God can build a Christ centered culture around us. For nothing is impossible with our God.

Eastern Orthodoxy Rebuking the PCUSA

Saving the World According to the Word

Stanley Fish's Save the World on your Own Time is a call to secular compartmentalization. Teaching is teaching and that's all. Saving the world doesn't belong. You can aspire to teaching for teaching's sake, but don't aim higher unless you are off the clock.

What?

It's true that the academy can't save the world, but the world is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. Christians should laugh at Fish's paltry view of life and heed Christ's call to be "fishers of men."

Being Right for the Wrong Reason

In the parable known as the prodigal son, we celebrate with the younger brother and rightly so. He who was lost is now found! We don't want to be like the older brother who rejected the mercy of the father.

But we may forget that the older brother didn't sin in staying with his father. Unlike his younger brother, he had been faithful to their father. He did right, but he did it for the wrong reason. This was exposed when his younger brother came home:

Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!

His sin lay in his not having his father's heart for the lost. By choice he stayed outside the party his father was throwing for his brother's homecoming. The older brother's self-righteousness consoled him. That good-for-nothing brother was back and was given a heroes' welcome. What's wrong with the world! Am I the only one who sees this injustice?!

Would we rather feel superior or feel forgiveness? The parable makes us count the cost of the gospel. We should want to be faithful, but in being faithful their is a temptation to be prideful. Let's be faithful but love mercy, because we all need both.

Does Freedom of Religion Require the Separation of Church and State?

We assume that the only way to have religious freedom is to separate church and state, but we've had very mixed results. See a recent example here in St. Louis.

Peter Leithart, in his Defending Constantine, argues that Constantine achieved true religious freedom for pagans and Christians. He did this while cooperating with the Christian church to produce a Roman republic with ethical standards and moral development.

Constantine outlawed an ancient version of "no fault divorce," which led to the abandonment of women, gladiatorial games, which littered arenas with bodies, and the exposure of children, which usually resulted in infanticide. He also passed laws that would provide welfare for poor people who couldn't afford to raise a new baby. He reformed the justice system by eliminating they buying and selling of judgeships, and allowed those who couldn't afford an attorney to appeal to an ecclesiastical court.

It appears that the true pax Romana did not occur under Caesar Augustus but under Constantine, and that we often look positively barbaric next to the first Christian Emperor.

No Purpose for Plato's World

One of my students recently pointed out that the debate between Plato and Aristotle was over whether reality is essentially one or many. Plato argued that it is essentially one because all of the particulars of the created world come from the One and the Forms in His mind. Thus reality exists ante rem or before the things of the created realm. Aristotle argued that reality exists in re or in the things of the created realm. Thus ultimate reality isn't one thing but has many expressions in the things of the physical world. In other words, "treeness" doesn't exist before the oak, ash, and elm, as in Plato's understanding, but in them. In fact, according to Aristotle, the Form or ultimate reality is the cause of the particulars of this realm. It is what makes an oak a tree, an ash a tree, and an elm a tree.

Aristotle pointed out that there is no cause and effect relationship between Plato's concept of God, the One, and the created world (Metaphysics, 1.988.a-b; 1.991a-b). He overlooked Plato's Demiurge from the Timaeus who fashions the created particulars based on the Forms in the mind of the One. But Aristotle points out a problem with Plato's thought nonetheless.

The Demiurge is an independent contractor. Plato invented him for his "likely story" in order to keep the One from getting his hands dirty with physical matter. For Plato, the material realm is the lowest order of reality and unworthy of the pure spirit of the One.

The problem with this, from a Christian perspective, is that there is no purposeful link between this world and the One. People may correspond to the Form of the Human, but this is a far cry from being created by God, in his image, in order "to glorify him by enjoying him forever," to use John Piper's phrase.

Charles Murray in his Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950,  points out that in the ancient world, only Christianity gave people a divine purpose for their lives. The image of God lends dignity and his will gives purpose. But the One in Plato's philosophy lends no purpose to mankind except to give him something to contemplate, and only the philosophers were capable of doing this in a purpose driven way. Murray argues that it was Christianity that inspired the Western world with a sense of purpose that led to experimentation with the God given creation and the development of science and critical thinking.

Praying and Paying

The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shlaes uses William Graham Sumner's "forgotten man" to expose the problems with FDR's New Deal. To paraphrase Sumner, A sees the plight of X and says to B, "Let's pass some legislation to help X," and C gets the bill. Sumner wrote about C: "He works, he votes, generally he prays - but he always pays - yes, above all, he pays." The identity of A is the progressives and B is Congress. It is laudable that A wants to help X but tinkering with the economy at the expense of C only exacerbates the problem. Shlaes is not a shrill conservative on the rampage but a classic liberal.

Shlaes argues that FDR's intervention in the private sphere made the Depression worse, encouraged the government to bully and harass its citizens (see the Schecter case!), and introduced special interest politics. This messianic view of government is still with us and has come home to roost with Obama.

Ancient peoples established governments to stop people from taking too much land and gobbling up resources at the expense of others. Regulation is one thing, intervention is another, and the private sphere has got to be put into the hands of as many private citizens as possible, if we are going to be great again.


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Kurt Cameron's Mouth

As one who agrees with most of Lutheran theology, I simply adore this:

Did Peace in 1919 Lead to War in 1939?

Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good read about the wrap up of WWI. MacMillan tries to revise the accepted wisdom that the Allies botched the peace, which lead directly to the second world war. It's true that Hitler would play to the German people's wounded pride and resentment after the war. It came to be known as the "Dictat" or "dictated peace." The Germans especially hated the "war guilt clause" of article 231, which laid all responsibility for the war at the doorstep of German "aggression."  Ulrich Brockdorff-Rantzau blew up and refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles. When the allies rearmed, the Germans sent two representatives to pen their names to the treaty. Did this lead directly to WWII? MacMillan says this is too simplistic.

MacMillian argues that the Germans deceived themselves into thinking that they hadn't lost the war. MacMillan points out that it wasn't a mere armistice or cease fire. The Germans gave up all occupied lands and surrendered their navy. The Germans also allowed themselves to believe that Woodrow Wilson could deliver a non-punitive peace. Germany had taken Wilson's advice and become a republic. But Wilson was one of four on the supreme council, and he had to compromise to get anywhere. David Lloyd George, prime-minister of England, and Georges Clemanceau, prime-minister of France, were out for reparations, revenge, and security. Their people had lost more than America, and they stood to lose more in future elections. They convinced Wilson to shrink Germany and give the rhineland to France as a neutral zone. Wilson would compromise as long as he could get the League of Nations. Meanwhile the league was loosing ground in the US, and Wilson's own country would never join.

Lloyd George did change his mind about some of the reparations. "Treat them like the enemy and they won't disappoint." But Wilson had already reached his compromise limit. The treaty would have to stand as is. John Maynard Keynes famously said, "It was harder to de-bamboozle this old Presbyterian than it had been to bamboozle him.” Keynes wanted to rehabilitate Germany economically. A prosperous Germany would be a peaceful Germany.

The big four were more realistic than they've been given credit for. Lloyd George said: "The English public like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression. When this is done we come to the question of Germany's capacity to pay; we all think she will be unable to pay more than this document requires of her."

MacMillan argues that the German sense of betrayal cannot account for the rise of Nazi Germany. Prior to the Great Depression, the German people wouldn't give the Hitler the time of day. He was too radical. Once they hit rock bottom, radical solutions were given a hearing and Hitler got his chance. MacMillan can write well and she shows how so much of modern history, including the formation of Iraq, goes back to Paris 1919.


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The Demise of Community, the Demise of Character

I recently listened again to a Mars Hill Audio interview with James Davison Hunter on his book The Death of Character: On the Moral Education of America's Children. He argues that the demise of character stems from the demise of moral communities like church and family. This has proceeded on the modern assumption that we are inherently good from childhood and Christianity is bad because it has taught us that we are sinners in need of redemption.

All we really need, it's dogmatically asserted, it a good self-esteem and an opportunity to define ourselves as children, teenagers, or adults. The rest will take care of itself. All parents and teachers need to do is facilitate this moral revelation by calling it out with psychological techniques like values clarification.  We think we can develop moral character in the young without wielding moral authority. We are reaping the whirlwind and shrugging our shoulders, "What can you do?"

On the adult level, radical individualism continues to sever ties between people and their God given authorities.

"Hey teacher! Leave us kids alone!" 

"Tell my mother, tell my father; I've done the best I can; to make them realize, this is my life; I'm not angry, I'm just saying; Sometimes goodbye is a second chance." 

It's true that some communities abuse their moral authority or exercise it hypocritically and ties must be cut. But this has become an excuse to define the self apart from Christ's moral order. Like Joshua, we must be "strong and courageous" again and again and again (Joshua 1). Children do not respect what they can kick around, even if we think we're being their friend. Parents are called to teach the word of God diligently to their children:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:6-7). 

This is part of loving God and loving our children and our neighbor as ourselves. Rule apart from relationship will breed hatred. Relationship without any rules will breed disrespect. Rules revealed by God and applied in a loving relationship will bring order. Love covers a multitude of sins.

Sophocles Rex

The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oedipus Rex is both the best and the worst tragedy ever told. The plot and its execution show a master at work. It's also the worst in that it's the most tragic tragedy of all. But don't stop there. Read Oedipus at Colonus. Just when you thought it was impossible to help Oedipus, he has a redemption of sorts. You haven't understood Sophocles if you stop at Oedipus Rex. Antigone is not to be missed either. She is pro-family at a time when her uncle was trying to replace family and religion with the state. Sophocles is more relevant than ever.

Fagles translation is both accessible to the modern reader and compelling, which is no small feat. Bernard Knox's introduction to Oedipus Rex is worth the price of the book. Here's my take: The older generation represented by Herodotus still believed in the gods and prophecy, while the younger generation represented by Thucydides and Euripedes mocked it. Jocasta tells Oedipus that we make our own way in a world of chance. The chorus says: "If the prophecies don't come to pass ... the gods, the gods go down." No more trips to Delphi. We'll go back to homo mensura (man is the measure of all things) and Protagoras.  Well, guess whose side Sophocles is on? He gives the ancient secularists what they want: a play where the gods do not make an appearance. And yet he  frustrates them by vindicating prophecy. Who needs the Deus ex machina? Man knows the god who is there whether he's willing to admit it or not.


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Bottum's Up or the Forgotten Reformation

Joseph Bottum has reviewed Pascal Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy in the recent Books and Culture (March/April 2011). Here's Bruckner:

From existentialism to deconstructionsim, all of modern thought can be reduced to a mechanical denunciation of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypcrysy, violence, and abomination.... The whole world hates us and we deserve it. That is what most Europeans think.

Bottum comments:

Much of Europe--much of America, as well--has simply lost its nerve, unable to maintain the delicate balance of self-critique and self-confidence that was the gift of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. 

The Middle Ages was not perfect and it knew it. The medievals knew enough however to accept the claims of Christ that all things hold together in him. The Renaissance was diverse, but every humanist agreed on going ad fontes (to the sources). The Enlightenment agreed on one thing--the church was out. They chanted aude sapere (dare to know) to each other, but it was Eden all over again: "Hath God said ... ? ... He knows that in the day that you eat, you will be like him knowing both good and evil."

Dare to know the difference between good and evil for yourself. Protagorus returned with a vengeance. The familiar homo mensura (man the measure) was shouted from the rooftops. Man is the measure of all things "visible and invisible." Dare to be your own god. That's confidence, but terribly misplaced. Where's the self-critique? What about semper reformanda (always reforming)? Who came up with that? Oh ya! That pesky little movement called the Reformation. Self confidence? Who spoke truth to power? Wasn't it Luther who told Charles V and the papal nuncio:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen

Always reforming? Why not? The Word of God must have its say no matter how imperfectly we read it.  How could Bottum have forgotten that? The Enlightenment idols of Darwinism and rationalism die hard and slow, but they are dying.

Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria takes a shot at our happiness entitlement program. He thinks it's about the  right to pursue happiness rather than demanding to have it. That's not bad, and we should even give two cheers for Mr. Bottum. But there's so much more offered by the one who came so that we might have life, and "have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).