Something I Read...

"From Creation onward, God intended that the human race should develop with a diversity of individuals.  Even apart from the Fall, different people would have had different gifts and different experiences, so that one person's insights into the truth would compliment those of another.  The introduction of sin did not create diversity but rather made it contentious.

Our true unity and diversity is restored in principle in our union with Christ.  Being united to Christ and conformed to his image destroys only the bad forms of diversity.  The diversity of gifts in the body of Christ (Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12:7-31; Eph. 4:7-16) does not threaten unity in the truth but reinforces it.  Growing up into the full understanding of the truth requires the full exercise of the diverse roles of the body (Eph. 4:11-16).

No one human being has all the fullness of Christ's gifts.  All of us are to learn from others who have insights and contributions we could not easily achieve ourselves.  When we listen to other people sympathetically, we obtain perspectives on the truth different from our own.  Of course, we do not accept everyone else's ideas uncritically.  But we make an effort to listen lovingly and to take the other person's point of view.  In doing so, we achieve a kind of second perspective on the truth.

The use of multiple perspectives in our own thinking is thus a way of trying to reproduce and strengthen some of the effects that have always occurred in the growth of the church.  Using multiple perspectives ourselves does not eliminate the importance of listening to others but strengthens our ability to do so (because we have had practice shifting points of view)."

                     - Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology:  The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology, p. 53.

With a pipe in the teeth and a pencil in the hand...

There is a passage in C.S. Lewis’s introduction to St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, which I think speaks great wisdom on the subject of devotional material. Note that he is not negating all devotional works, and for the record, neither am I:

“For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that "nothing happens" when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”

I personally have found the same to be true. Most recently, as I’ve been preaching through Matthew and working my way through the Sermon on the Mount, I’ve found my heart bursting at Calvin’s exposition of the Lord’s Prayer in the Institutes. There is much light but it is accompanied by warmth; it is red meat but seasoned well and with a gracious aroma. John Stott's expositional commentary on the Sermon on the Mount is also great. 

In fairness, I have found some very good devotional books as well, but they are typically the ones which are based on exposition of biblical passages or on pondering the implications of various doctrines or attributes of God taught in Scripture or events recorded in Scripture. Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and John Piper’s A Godward Life, immediately come to mind as good devotionals. However, if I were to compare, I’d say that both Spurgeon’s and Piper’s works of theology or exposition have done more than their works of devotion to fire the faith of the saints.

Some works which have caused my heart to sing and which I would highly recommend:  

J.I. Packer's Knowing God, and his Growing in Christ; John Piper's Desiring God, and his Future Grace; R.C. Sproul's The Holiness of God, and his Chosen by God; A.W. Tozer's The Knowledge of the Holy; Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship; Jerry Bridges' The Pursuit of Holiness. 

Of course, none of these works would be considered "a tough bit of theology", but are rather all pretty accessible.  However, each of them deals with bits of tough theology and will stretch any honest believer's mind and soul.

Horton hears it true

Justin Taylor has posted an excerpt of Michael Horton’s review of popular devotional bestseller, Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young. Horton critiques not only the overall message of Young’s book, but the method of delivery as well. In fact, the method of this type of spirituality, and the assumptions which underlie it, inevitably leads to the type of message it delivers, and that message in turn, fosters further encouragement of the method. The whole review may be found at White Horse Inn, here.

Some may be upset by Horton’s negative critique. However, not only do I think he is right, but, in light of the problems he points out with this book, I think he shows amazing restraint. I must admit to not reading the book myself, but I trust Horton and I recommend this review and caution to anyone who may be reading or considering this devotional. Horton’s review gives occasion for some additional thoughts on the use of devotional books.

Many devotional guides encourage the reader to closeness with God by dwelling on the emotional level of sentiments, passions and desires, and of mentally working up deeper feelings. Very often such works don’t focus (or not much) on the actual works of God in redemptive history, culminating with God’s saving work in Christ. It is Scripture’s record of God’s mighty acts in history, things like God’s covenant and gracious dealings with the patriarchs, the Exodus, the leaders God puts over Israel which pre-figure Christ, the exiles and returns, the prophetic pronouncements of judgment for idolatry and passionate calls to repentance and promise of restoration, and of course the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension and present reign of Christ and indwelling of the Holy Spirit…it is things like this which teach us who God really is and what he is like. Through these things we really get to know who God is. But in focusing on the emotions and feelings of the reader, many modern devotionals miss all this and so give us a very warped picture of who God actually is and how he interacts with people. We end up thinking of God as someone who is primarily concerned with our own inner spiritual and emotional self-image, which is an image that could be called one of the prevailing idols in the church today.

 

To grow deeper in our relationship with Christ by perpetually focusing on the level of feelings is like trying to swim in a kiddie pool. It doesn’t matter whether you lie on your face or your back in the kiddie pool, the water is still only ankle deep. You can’t make it deeper by repeatedly scooping the water up and pouring it over yourself. If you want deep water, go over to the big pool with the diving boards at one end. Climb the ladder and dive in. It will be over your head, but you can learn to swim there.

Finally, any work that purports to record the direct messages of Jesus, as Jesus Calling does, ought to raise red flags immediately. There are enough quotes in Horton’s review to convince me that this book’s overall emphasis, the direction is leads, and the assumptions it makes about how God speaks to his people, are not biblical and therefore it ought to be avoided. The kind of spirituality that this book will engender in the Church is the kind we already have way too much of.

The dope on the Pope...

Over at Mere Orthodoxy, Kevin White has written the best article I've seen about the new Pope.  Helpful for anyone who wants to get a bit of an idea about what kind of a person Pope Francis I is.

Something I Read...

"He made this nephew think himself finer than he was by judicious praise, yet more foolish then he was by minimizing the value of the evidence.  Like many another materialist, that is, he lied cleverly on the basis of insufficient knowledge, because the knowledge supplied seemed to his own particular intelligence inadmissible."

"It was so easy to be wise in the explanation of an experience one has not personally witnessed."

                                                                                            - Algernon Blackwood, The Wendigo

Something I Read...

Commenting on Matthew 7:1-5...

"We have a fatal tendency to exaggerate the faults of others and minimize the gravity of our own.  We seem to find it impossible, when comparing ourselves with others, to be strictly objective and impartial.  On the contrary, we have a rosy view of ourselves and a jaundiced view of others.  Indeed, what we are often doing is seeing our own faults in others and judging them vicariously.  That way, we experience the pleasure of self-righteousness without the pain of penitence."

                                      - John Stott, Christian Counter-Culture:  The Message of the Sermon on the Mount, p. 178  

Brief exchange with an Atheist Evolutionist

Below are some brief replies I made to someone who was arguing that biblical creationism is anti-scientific and anti-intellectual:

Atheist Evolutionist, you said: “There was no Adam or Eve. Humans evolved from lower forms of life. It is written in the genetic code of every eukayrotic (sic) cell in your body. You simply refuse to accept it.”

No one commenting here would argue with the scientifically observable fact that human genetic material and that of animals is very similar. However, to observe this fact and then deduce that this similarity of genetic material is due to evolution from a common source is not fact but theory, pure and simple, as it has never been observed. Another plausible theory is that the genetic material of humans and other species are similar because they were designed by the same Creator who chose to use the same building materials. My living room floor and my kitchen cabinets are both made of oak but it doesn’t necessarily follow that they both evolved ultimately from my neighbour’s book shelf. I tend to think they are similar because they are different products that were all made from the same type of tree.

Atheist Evolutionist, you also said: “Every day, science reveals more evidence that evolution is a fact.”

 

This statement has become a slogan or creed of evolutionism, and most people who pronounce it are just accepting on faith and repeating something they heard a prominent evolutionist say…I’m guessing this is so in your case as well, AE, but I may be wrong. This is a common assertion made by evolutionists, but these so-called “evidences” for evolution are only evidences to those with the requisite intellectual precommitments and who hold to atheistic and anti-creationist presuppositions. A creationist could just as easily look at new facts and interpret them through our lens as evidences for our own position. Your come-back would be that we are just blind to the facts.  But we are looking at the very same facts, just interpreting them differently. Let’s take the fossil record, for example. An evolutionist comes across a fossil of a species that no longer exists and sees evidence for an intermediate or transition species, something between what used to be and what we have now.  He/she has no way of proving this assertion, however, because the actual process of transition has not been and cannot be observed. A creationist looks at the very same fossil of a species that no longer exists and sees evidence for a species that God designed and created but which is now extinct. The evolutionist and the creationist can agree on the fact that the fossil represents a species that has died out. However, the evolutionist has a much harder time because he has to further prove that it was a transition species whereas the creationist can stop at saying that it is evidence for a species that is no longer in existence.

Whenever I listen to Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, etc., their arguments are not from evidences to conclusions but from conclusions to evidences. Dawkins begins with the assumption there is no God and then reads all the data (and pseudo-data) through that lens. That isn’t science, that’s philosophy and it is philosophy poorly done. Examining the world around us, there is reasonable warrant for belief in a Designer or Creator since our experience of reality teaches us that complexity, order, high functionality and interdependency don’t normally occur by accident or ultimately come out of nothing.