Reprint of the 1891 edition; Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 744 pgs. 

Summary: The letters of the pious, devoted, lover of Christ, Samuel Rutherford. Rutherford was entranced by Christ and had a moral imagination capable of allowing him to exhaustively incorporate the language of the Song of Solomon to describe his devotion for Christ: 

I would desire no more for my heaven beneath the moon, while I am sighing in this house of clay, but daily renewed feast of love with Christ, and liberty now and then to feed my hunger with a kiss of that fairest face. . . . have no other exercise than to lie on a love-bed with Christ, and fill this hungered and famished soul with kissing, embracing, and real enjoying of the Son of God (341-342). 

Yet, the reader cannot be distracted either by our eroticized imaginations or Rutherford’s stretched allegories. He writes with devotional power:

The Paternoster Press, 1964, pgs. 220

Summary: A brief overview and assessment of the history and theology of the Scottish Covenanters by J. D. Douglas (1923-2003), a Scotchman and former editor of “Christianity Today” under Carl F. H. Henry.

Douglas argues that the Presbyterians in Scotland, when faced with the absolutism of the political theory of divine right of the house of Stuart (James VI, Charles I, Charles II, James VII), adopted “the Divine Right of Presbytery” (60).  Divine right for both kings and churches—Rome or the Scottish Presbyter—establishes an earthly authority as a little god. As James VI wrote to his son, that God had made Charles I, “a little God to sit on his throne, and rule over other men” (17). This god cannot be disobeyed in its realm of authority. 

The house of Stuart held to an Erastian policy that the king was the absolute head of the state and the church. And they were wont to require their subjects take oaths like the Test Act of 1661:

London: The Athlone Press, 1990, 247 pgs. 

Summary: A concise consideration of the history and activity of John Thurloe (1616-1668), a Puritan lawyer and member of parliament, who became Secretary of State successively under the Rump Parliament, the Nominated Assembly, the Protectorate of Oliver and then Richard Cromwell, brought back as Secretary under Monck, and did some work for the restored Charles the II. 

His position as Secretary of State and Postmaster General also led to him being the head of domestic and international intelligence collection through both agents and the interception and monitor of the mail. Thurloe also had code breakers. For instance mathematician and pastor John Wallis (1616-1703), who helped develop infinitesimal calculus and the infinity sign, seems to have broken some of the codes “after supper” as a favor for friends (28). 

His success in intelligence gathering can be drawn from the following narrative:

And the reason why a natural man is not always perpetually in the pursuit of some one lust, night and day, is because he hath many to serve, every one crying to be satisfied; thence he is carried on with great variety, but still in general he lies towards the satisfaction of self. John Owen, Mortification of Sin in Believers, in The Works of John Owen, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 24.

Those of us who have walked long in the church are often horrified at the eruptions of sin within the church both among the laity and clergy. We look across at the orderliness and often even kindness of the world with jealousy and frustration. 

Our generation is not alone in this experience. The Apostle Paul and the church throughout history cries out, “there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans” (1 Cor. 5:1). Too often we can say the same of greed, backbiting, gossiping, and pettiness.

• Bruce B. Barto, et al., Life Application Bible Commentary: 1 & 2 Peter and Jude
• Gerald Bray, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude
• John Calvin, Commentaries on the First Epistle of Peter
• Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter
• Peter H. Davids, NICNT, The First Epistle of Peter
• John Gill, First General Epistle of Peter
• Alexander Nisbet, 1 & 2 Peter
• Thomas R. Schreiner, NAC: 1,2 Peter, Jude

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 1991, pgs. 69

Summary: Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928-2014) was an Enlightenment theologian who worked to preserve much of the language of traditional theology while attempting to provide an academically acceptable explanation of Christian doctrine. 

An Introduction to Systematic Theology is a part of the M. Eugene Osterhaven Lectureship at Western Theological Seminary—a broadly evangelical school.  

Pannenberg establishes that Jesus is a historical person who is also in some sense the Son of God. And he defines the task of systematic theology as presenting a coherent explanation of the truth of Christianity:  “Whatever is true must finally be consistent with all other truth, so that truth is only one, but all-embracing, closely related to the concept of the one God” (6).

In The Works of John Owen, vol. 6, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1967, pgs. 1-86.

Summary: John Owen (1616-1683) is the prince of Puritans. His works are often dense, but decidedly evangelical and desire “universal obedience” to our Lord Jesus. Of the Mortification of Sin is a wholesome, practical, and academically sound consideration and development of the biblical doctrine of the mortification of sin.

Owen presents the argument from Romans 8:13, “If you through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live,” that “The choicest believers, who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin” (7).

This is necessary because while saving grace can never die, sanctifying grace must be renewed through the means of grace. “The vigour, and power, and comfort of our spiritual life depends on the mortification of the deeds of the flesh.” (9).

The Modern Library, New York, 1941, 620 pgs.

Summary: Pascal (1623-1662) was a savant who made contributions in mechanical calculators, vacuum research, geometry, probability, and apologetics. He was a younger contemporary and antagonist of Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes somewhat purposely contributed to the rising skepticism of his age through modification of his Jesuit training. 

Pascal’s family, early in his life, had attached themselves to Jansenism within the French Roman Catholic Church. Jansenism was the last gasp of the Augustinian understanding of total depravity after the Council of Trent (1545-1563). They were also extreme rigorist in exhaustive confession in preparation for the mass, personal ethics, and separation from worldliness. 

The Jansenist and Jesuits tended to compete among the wealthy and the nobles in France as personal confessors. The Jesuits practiced a lax discipline that came to be known as probabilism.

Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1983, 316 pgs.

Summary: Thomas Watson (c. 1620 – 1686) was a Puritan, non-conformist, and godly preacher who co-pastored with Stephen  Charnock  (1628–1680). He preached a series of sermons on the Westminster Shorter Catechism which were then published after he is death as A Body of Practical Divinity.   

Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892) with the principal of his Pastors’ College, George Rogers, republished the work as the basic systematic theology of his college with an appendix on believer’s baptism. Banner of Truth republished the theology in three volumes: A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments, and The Lord’s Prayer. 

A Body of Divinity book is divided into sections following the order of the catechism and extends to question 38, “What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?”  Each section begins with a statement of the subject being considered—i.e. “Christ the Mediator of the Covenant—a proof text, biblical explanation, theological development, responses to critiques, and then uses.

The Library of Liberal Arts Press, Inc, 1965, 162 pgs. 

Summary: Four basic, short, and fundamental works of Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1225-1274). Thomas in many ways developed the current Roman Catholic explanation of their practice and continues to frame conservative and moderate papal theologians’ thought. Thomas’ influence on Protestant and Reformed thought remains significant. 

Thomas’ main effort was to bring the defense of current religious practice within the forms of Aristotelian insight. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, and a natural and speculative philosopher. His work influenced all subsequent academic theology and philosophy in the West. 

The translator and editor Robert P. Goodwin provides a competent introduction to Thomas’ life and thought. Further, he reduced the complexity of On the Virtues in General and On Free Choice by removing Thomas’ collection and discussion of past authorities, including I assume Scripture references. The Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence are monographs on the stated topic. 

Reprint, Kessinger Publishing, nd; Edinburgh, Charles Elliot: 1781 

Summary: A basic undergraduate level introduction to traditional or formal logic by the pastor and hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748). The book was used in colleges up until the mid to late 1800s. 

Logic is the movement of ideas from apprehension to the relationship of ideas as judgment to deductive inferences that are repeatable and testable by others. Formal deductive logic allows us to learn or confirm new truth from already established truths.

The formal system was developed by Aristotle and was the norm in the West until mid-1800s. The system remains a powerful tool for analysis. Watts offers a helpful introduction to logic by showing us how to move from simple apprehension to definitions or terms, from terms to judgments written as the four propositions (All S is P; Some S is P; No S is P; Some S is not P) to deductive inferences. 

I will at a later date attempt a more careful explanation of deductive logic, but for the purposes of this review I will highlight some of the theological/philosophical issues within Watts’ Logic.

• Daniel to Malachi, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary
• Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, TOTC
• John Calvin, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum
• John Gill, Ezekiel to Malachi
• Hugh Martin, Jonah
• Baruch Maoz, Prophet on the Run

Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2009, 204 pgs.

Summary: John N. Oswalt (1940-     ) is distinguished professor of Old Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. He has a written a careful assessment of the uniqueness of the biblical conception of God and how this distinguishes the Bible from similar forms of ancient near-eastern religious texts.

The Bible unlike any other ancient source views God as absolutely independent and transcendent of the cosmos and any other order. There is then no non-personal congruence between the created reality and God. He is God not a man. 

Oswalt, following Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) in The Religion of Israel, then defines myth and mythological thinking as finding continuity between the deity and the cosmos. The gods of the pagans are produced and to some degree controlled by the material world or a power above them, because they are of the same process or controlled by the same ultimately impersonal force. Thus the Bible exists as a text that describes a unique relationship between God and creation in opposition to that described in mythological literature.

Translated and abridged by Mosehe Greenberg (1928-2010).

The University of Chicago Press, 1963, 451 pgs.

Summary: Yehezkel Kaufmann (1889-1963) was an Israeli philosopher and biblical scholar. The majority of his publications were in modern Hebrew and remain untranslated.

Kaufmann sets out and as far as I am able to discern succeeds in creating a completely secular and academic framework for the uniqueness of the Jewish conception of the relationship of the divine with creation over and against the pagan religions. The Deity of the Jews is not contingent on nature or any process unlike all other known examples.

He may provide the most powerful possible academically palatable argument for the uniqueness of a worldview springing from such a conception of deity.

• Gerald Bray, ed. James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. 11 -- Mostly of historical interest.
• John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of James -- Solid and helpful.
• Daniel M. Doriani, James, REC -- Dropped as it lacked significant value academically or homiletically. Evangelical.
• John Gill, The General Epistle of James -- Solid and helpful. A bit dry.
• Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, PNTC​ -- Became the main commentary in the series. Moo has apparently matured in his understanding of the law to a more historically Reformed rather than Lutheran position. Excellent grammatical and lexicographical help. Moo does not reference the ESV at all.
• Ralph Wardlaw, The Lectures on the Epistle of James -- Of value homiletically.

Penguin Books India, 2003, 205 pgs. 

Summary: The book is a critical introduction to the basic sources of the modern Hindutva movement: Dayananda Saraswati (1824-1883), Siri Auronbindo (1872-1950) , Swami Vivekanda (1863-1902), Vinayak Damadar Svarkar (1883-1966). The author Jyotrimaya Sharma is a professor of political science at the University of Hyderabad. 

Hindutva is political philosophy and way of life for the purpose of establishing the hegemony of the Hindus. Sharma describes it as an odd mixture of 19th century nationalism as expounded by an Italian revolutionary Mazzini (1805-1872), and British and German liberalism from about 1870, enframing the Veda.  

The Veda are the four most basic and ancient Hindu texts. Sharma argues that Hindutva sidelines the pacifist texts in addition to the Veda and suggests that the movement is a threat to Jainist and Buddhist.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife” (Luke 20:27-33).

In the Jewish world of Jesus’ day, the Sadducees were the most skeptical. Their understanding of the Old Testament focused on the “literal” or normal meaning of the words and prioritized the first five books as more authoritative then the rest of the Old Testament.

Their method of interpreting the Bible led them to “deny that there is a resurrection” (Luke 20:27) and reject angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). We are informed by the Pharisee and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37-c. 100) that they rejected the “belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades,” and the sovereignty of God (The Wars of the Jews, 2.8.14).

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Two of Jesus’ disciples were walking along the road to Emmaus on the first resurrection Sunday, and they were distraught: “Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God” was dead (ESV, Luke 24:19). They “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (v. 21), but now he was dead. Their grief touches us even across the years.

A stranger appears and walks besides them and berates them by saying, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken!” (Luke 25:26). And then Luke describes what the stranger, who was Jesus, said to them, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”

Jesus on the Emmaus road did not add to Scripture. He did not give them a new revelation like what we have from John in the book of Revelation, but rather he explained or interpreted the Scriptures to prove that the Old Testament requires that it be “necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory” (v. 26).

Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1985 reprint 1849, 306 pgs.

Summary: Samuel Miller (1769-1850), one of the founding professors of Princeton, was a godly and strident Presbyterian. The book lays out the history and theological development of public and cooperate prayer. Miller is adamantly against Roman Catholic forms of prayer and Protestant liturgies. 

Chapter 2 covers the history of public prayer. It includes the explanation as to why many churches are designed so that worshipers face east. The Septuagint translated the Hebrew word for Branch in Zechariah 6:12 with a word “strictly speaking. . .applied to the rising and appearance of the sun, and by metonymy, it is applied to the East, because the sun rises in the East” (87).

The habit of closing eyes in prayer was known in Origen’s day (c. 185-254): “We learn also from Origen, that ministers in his day were accustomed in public prayer, to officiate with closed eyes. . . ‘Closing,’ says he, ‘the eyes of the body, but lifting up those of the mind.’” (63) [Cf. Contra Celsum, Lib. viii.]

Translated by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnson

Fleming H. Revell, 2004, pgs. 320.

Summary: At the behest of the Pope and the Catholic party, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/9-1536) wrote a little book called Diatribe de Libero Arbitrio defending a semi-Pelagian to Pelagian view of the will (cf. Pelagius, Roman Commentary review) in 1524. According to Erasmus the fallen human will has enough residual goodness within itself to cooperate with grace or perhaps to do some small good without grace.

Erasmus was latitudinarian on salvation. He wasn’t terribly concerned if people believed the Catholic gospel, Luther’s gospel, or whatever Erasmus held as his private beliefs, as long as there was civil peace. The Diatribe is an attempt to establish peace—private leisure for Erasmus to study and European religious accord.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) responded with The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio) in 1525. Luther was stringent on the gospel: believing the wrong gospel sent one to hell. And Luther was willing to overturn the whole world so that some might believe and be saved.

The Bondage of the Will is Luther’s master piece. He speaks, fights, and thinks with fire that warms, burns, and delights in turn. Nowhere is he more brilliant, earnest, more systematic, or more careful in his exegesis of Scripture. Luther argues with the Bible in hand, his scholastic credentials fully exposed and exhibited, his native Saxon wit sharpened by wide classical reading, and a heart softened by the Spirit.

Phillipsburg: P and R Publishing, 2012, pgs. 254

Summary: A friendly critique of Messianic Judaism by Baruch Maoz, former pastor of Grace and Truth Congregation near Tel Aviv, Israel. Strongly recommended by John MacArthur. 

Maoz converted from Judaism to Christianity as a young man and became a pastor. His basic critique of Messianic Judaism is that they are attempting to incorporate rabbinical tradition as a normative means of evangelism and sanctification for Christians of Jewish extraction.  To make his case, Maoz suggests a distinction between being Jewish and Judaism. Judaism is following the rabbinical tradition and Jewishness is a national or cultural identification:

[T]he movement has confused cultural mores with religious duties, insisted upon maintaining the Jewishness of its adherents by degrees of obedience to rabbinic religious dictum, and according the rabbis a legitimacy to which they have no right. Attributing to the rabbis the authority to determine what constitutes Jewishness, Messianics have undermined their own position because the rabbis have determined that faith in Jesus exceeds the boundaries of Jewishness (185). 

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

As far as I can tell the Roman Catholic Church now teaches that the most likely way to go to hell is to believe Roman Catholic doctrine. Allow me to support this from a series of quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).

The CCC teaches that Protestants who disbelieve the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church are likely saved:

CCC-818: However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ … . All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ. (Brackets in original.)

CCC-819: Christ’s Spirit uses these Churches and ecclesial communities as means of salvation, whose power derives from the fullness of grace and truth that Christ has entrusted to the Catholic Church.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Among Roman Catholics, Vatican II, and thus the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), is interpreted across a spectrum from essential rejection to continuity with the past to rupture.

Essential rejection is the position of extremely traditional Catholics who remain in communion with the Pope but who continue to give or take the Mass in the wafer alone and who gravitate toward the Latin Mass. Their interpretation of CCC has the greatest continuity with pre-Vatican II statements and tends to minimize the discontinuity.

Continuity with the past is the mainstream interpretation of serious Catholics. “Serious” does not include politicos who claim Augustine supported abortion or who have purchased multiple annulments. Pope Benedict XVI, now emeritus, appears to me to be a very conservative proponent of the continuity view, and he is the mind behind the current universal Catechism. This view is represented by Catholic voices like the magazine First Things.

Crossway, 2014, 493 pgs. 

Summary: A summation and chapter by chapter assessment of the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Dr. Gregg R. Allison, professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and former Cru missionary to Italy and Notre Dame university in Indiana.  

His basic analysis is founded on the fundamental difference between Roman Catholic and Protestants on the issue of nature-grace interdependence and the Christ-church interconnectedness. He draws this distinction from Leonardo De Chirico’s Evangelical Theological Perspectives on Post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. 

The nature-grace interdependence allows grace within the Roman system to function as a spiritual substance that can be stored, traded, purchased, infused, and earned. Further, nature, including the human will, is considered receptive to grace without regeneration. The Christ-church interconnectedness allows the papal system to grant the attributes of deity to saints, clergy, and the church (Chapter 2). 

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

It was a warm spring day in DC, and my Catholic friend explained with great earnestness that if I were to be ordained prior to converting to Catholicism, then I might be able to be a priest and keep my wife and kids. Dispensations can be obtained.

My heart and mind toyed with the thoughts: the great creaking beauty of the medieval liturgy, the pageantry and fancy dress, the history, architecture, the universities, libraries, philosophy, and Latin. The specter of the Mass rose before me. Worshiping bread and the wine, bowing and kissing statues of saints excused with the thinnest of theological distinctions, Pilipino adherents nailing themselves to crosses. No, this is not the Way.

And I said, “The problem is that one of us is a blasphemer. Either I blaspheme Christ by not worshiping him at every available Mass, or you commit an act of idolatry by worshiping bread and wine. There is no middle ground. In heaven if allowed or required I will kiss and pray to Mary; in heaven I will adore the body of Christ, but until heaven or when Christ returns I will trust the Bible and my conscience.”

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

My intent in this article is to show from the Catechism of the Catholic Church a radically different understanding of nature and grace than what is taught by the Bible and held by Protestants. The Catholic view of grace and nature, along its view of Christ-Church interconnectedness, leads to a different gospel than found in the Bible. Lord willing, next week we will consider the Christ-church issue.

Our three main sources are the Bible, Allison’s Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).

We are entering into the Byzantine substructures of Roman Catholic theology. And while I am attempting to make sure each article in the series can stand alone, the reader will be greatly assisted by reading the first article in this series.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

A few years ago, I stopped by a friend’s church in Washington, D.C. to walk to lunch with him. He had just finished a gut-wrenching meeting where a recent church member explained he had converted to Roman Catholicism without informing the pastors of the church.

The church member’s main justification for the conversion was the intellectual dearth among Protestants and particularly Baptists. And he held this out as the force that drove him to cross the Tiber.

My friend valiantly attempted to share the gospel with the young man from God’s Word and to pull him back to the true faith. But the deed was done, and the excuse was that Baptists lack intellectual and academic validity. And this excuse was given to a pastor with a doctorate in church history from Cambridge.

Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 1243 pgs. 

Summary: Augustine (354-430 AD) wrote The City of God against the Pagans in response to pagan apologists arguing that the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 was caused by the Romans embracing Christianity. 

Augustine responded by: 

• Proving the irrational nature of pagan theology and the inadequacy of speculative philosophy.
• Coordinating secular “universal history” with biblical history.
• Developing a basic biblical theology and Christian view of history.
• Developing and expounding a systematic theology with a clear anthropology, eschatology, epistemology, soteriology, doctrine of nature and grace, and theology proper.
• Arguing for the trustworthiness and necessity of biblical revelation.
• Developing a Christian political philosophy.
• Arguing for the superiority of Christian ethics with historical examples.

In all of his argumentation Augustine proves familiar with both the academic and general practice of the pagans, the natural and speculative philosophers, and Christian sources in both Latin and Greek. (Augustine’s supposed ignorance of both Greek and Aristotle is often over stated.) 

Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1972, 301pgs. 

Summary: The volume translated by Philip Hefner was designed to introduce the basic theological framework of Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889). 

Ritschl is in the line of German theologians and philosophers beginning with Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) continuing through Schleiermacher (1768-1834, cf. review), and Barth (1886-1968, cf. reviews). His basic concern is to reformulate Christianity around the self-consciousness of humanity embodied in Kantian philosophy and Spinoza’s conclusions of the dependence orthodox Christian and Jewish theology on Greek philosophy (cf. review). There is also a steady pressure from Hegel (1770-1831) and his dialectic to see history as progressing towards “modern” conclusions in contradiction to the “primitive” past. 

Standing against Ritschl within the Lutheran and German Calvinists churches were two conservative opponents the pietists and the creedalist. The pietists were essentially folks who retreated from scholastic debate and dogmatism into fideism and mysticism.  The creedalist were those who attempted to maintain historic orthodoxy through maintaining creedal markers. Ritschl’s liberal audience were those who had or were removing themselves from Christianity due to the implications of Kant, Hegel, and Spinoza’s philosophy. 

Ritschl’s goal was to save Christianity in the modern era by assuming the truth contemporary philosophical conclusion and accommodating Christian doctrine to the new natural and metaphysical philosophy.   

Edinburgh: Canongate Publishing, 1987, 152 pgs.

Summary: A non-academic biography of the writer George MacDonald (1824-1905). MacDonald was a Scottish fiction writer whose works of Christian fantasy influenced C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. He appears as the protagonist’s guide to heaven in Lewis’ The Great Divorce.  

The book traces MacDonald’s major geographic movements from birth to death, theological developments, friends and sources of revenue. There is very little critical engagement with his theological progress, but Saintsbury does explore contemporary influences of friends, artists, and pastors. The most unique effort is to coordinate the geography of his fiction canon with many of the places he lived.

MacDonald grew up Presbyterian, attempted becoming a Congregationalist pastor, was rejected because he taught universalism and the immortality of individual animals (57-58), and subsided into a doctrinally irregular membership in the Church of England (101). He expected that non-believers would die and be purged of their sins to join believers in heaven and placed the personal revelation of conscience above Scripture.

One has sinned, Another has made satisfaction. The sinner does not make satisfaction; the Satisfier does not sin. This is an astounding doctrine. 

Lectures on Isaiah Chapters 40-66 in Luther’s Works, vol. 17 (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1972), 99.

There is much to be said both for and against Luther (1483-1546), but he speaks to us of Jesus and he treasures the only gospel. 

We have sinned against an infinite God. Infinite in power. Eternal in wisdom. A burning fire of holiness; if the universe was sacrificed to appease the wrath of God (Isa. 40:14-18), it would be as nothing. The eternal duration of hell is merely the just approximation of our infinite debt. Eternal punishment in the scales of justice is merely just. It is the least possible and the only possible punishment.

Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015, 272 pgs.

Summary: Evangelical apologist Os Guinness (1941-    ) has written a book laying out a framework of Christian apologetics as a form persuasive speech or rhetoric.

Dr. Guinness believes that it is particularly important that we recover the art of rhetoric in a way that both maintains biblical truth and yet establishes bridges and avenues of communication to those who reject Christianity, are ignorant of it, or are considering the claims of Christ.

The author positions himself within the school of faith seeking understanding (49) and seems to be a Anglicized Calvinist—“Deep down, the unbelieving heart is active, willful, deliberate, . . .” (93).

He defines apologetics as:

It is a form of pre-evangelism that precedes evangelism for those who are not open to God and the gospel. We must never distinguish apologetics and evangelism too neatly. But in broad terms, evangelism is the sharing of the good news, and it addresses the needs and desires of those who know they are in a bad situation. And broadly, apologetics is pre-evangelism in that it addresses those who do not realize they are in a bad situation, and therefore do not see the gospel as the good news that it is (110).

• John Calvin, Commentary on the Book of Isaiah -- Solid and helpful mediation on the text.
• John Gill, The Book of the Prophet Isaiah -- Interesting and edifying.
• Martin Luther, Lectures on Isaiah -- Homiletically and historically helpful.
• J. Alex Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah -- While not a bad commentary, I was surprised to find myself not using it much. I suspect Motyer has over analyzed the structure and relies too much on his assessment of structure for the meaning rather than the text.
• John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, NICOT -- Became the backbone of my sermon series. Oswalt is Arminian, but incredibly helpful. Please also see my review of his The Bible among the Myths: Unique or Just Different?

Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1970, 328 pgs. 

Summary: Ernest R. Sandeen (1931-1982) wrote careful and academic history of Fundamentalism tracing the resurgence and development of millenarianism, particularly the Dispensational variant, to the Fundamentalist movement in the United States. His theological perspective and assessment were mainline Protestant, but his facts and the tracing of historical trajectory are generally accurate. Sandeen grew up in a conservative/fundamentalist home and graduated from Wheaton and then University of Chicago. 

Sandeen saw three categories of Christians involved in the maintenance and continuance of the church: Fundamentalist who were also Dispensational millennialist, conservatives, and moderate liberals (269). The conservatives were represented by the likes of Machen and Westminster Seminary, portions of the Southern Baptist Convention (264), and one would assume the Missouri and Lutheran Synod. 

The founder of Dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) in creating and promoting a unique understanding of the church as wholly separate from Israel and functioning within an un-prophesied church age redefined the visible church, history, and to a great degree preaching. Further, Darby’s theological system tended to both explain and respond to the cultural changes caused by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought and the Industrial Revolution; thus offered a ready solution to the confusion and upheaval of the era.

Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (reprint, 2004; New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1908), 50. 

Above we have a clever quote; it sparkles with Chesterton’s wit and smashes with his blunt force; the statement is pregnant with great truth and some terrible lies. 

Oscar Wilde was an early public homosexual and defender of pedophilia on the Greek model (post-pubescent boys). He died young in part because of the punishment for his use of rent-boys, the notoriety of his crime, and in part through an artistic listlessness. He was also a brilliant writer and wit, but neither as clever nor wholesome as Chesterton. 

Rather than exposing the repugnant nature of Chesterton’s rhetoric and theology, I’d like to make the statement exhaustively true with some additions and changes:

Oxford University Press, 2012, pgs. 130.

Summary:  Thomas Nagal (1937-     ) is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University and has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard. He is an avid atheist (12).

According to Nagal, consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and realist values (values based on a standard outside of the self) require that the materialism of Neo-Darwinism is very likely false. Evolution is true, but reductionist materialism is false, and the Neo-Darwinian juggernaut really needs to get over this and come up with a better theory.

He even says shocking things like:

I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science (7).

The active immutability of God, the ever-living and eternally unchanging interpenetration of the divine persons, translates into the divine willingness, without a shadow of turning, to make us partakers of that gloriously inalterable and living incorruptibility. We are most fortunate that in the incarnation God is not engaged in a work of self-realization but in the redemptive working-out of his eternal glory: incarnation is, in its immutable purpose, God with us and for us. Such doctrine, I would hope, will never be viewed as “subevangelical.” Our piety must not falter before the first paradox, the involvement of immutable God, because on the first rest the second, the transformation of death into life, of corruptibility into incorruptibility. 

Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism, Westminster Theological Journal, 45 (1983), 40.

Richard Muller is here responding to an essay by Clark Pinnock, “The Need for a Scriptural, and therefore Neo-Classical Theism.” Pinnock’s argument is that the traditional conception of God as immutability, atemporal, and so forth are pagan philosophical imports.

For many Bible-believing Christians there is a ring of truth to Pinnock’s statements. The God of systematic theology can appear a cold and distance deity. He may, especially when the vocabulary is unfamiliar, poorly defined, and not applied to worship seem dead. 

Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and the New Testaments. The events in the Old Testament are ‘types’ or ‘figures’ of events in the New Testament. In The Song of Solomon, for instance, Solomon is a ‘type’ of Christ and the Queen of Sheba represents the Church: later explained by Matthew (12:42). The Paschal Lamb was a ‘type’ of Christ.

Scriptural allegory was mostly based on a vision of the universe. There were two worlds: the spiritual and the physical. These corresponded because they had been made by God. The visible world was a revelation of the invisible, but the revelation could only be brought about by divine action. Thus, interpretation of this kind of allegory was theological. 

J. A. Cuddon, s.v. allegory, in Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Group, 1998), 22.

The above quote has some flaws, but the source is not a biased ‘Christian’ but a rather an important writer and scholar. Considering the worldview of the writers of both the Old and New Testament, he concludes that typology is a necessary hermeneutical device for understanding the authors. 

Let’s see if we can prove portions of his definition from Scripture. 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

CXXXIX

The expense of the spirit in a waste of shame

                       Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

                       Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight;

                       Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the maker mad;

                       Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof,--and proved, a very woe;

                       Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

                       To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.  

Comment:

I doubt that Shakespeare was born again, though I would be delighted if he knew and walked with Christ. Even so, there are two great benefits to this poem:

The first is a biblically informed, beautiful, and accurate meditation on the destructive nature of the passions and the conscience’s knowledge of lust. Each of us is aware that we want things that we ought not to want. 

These desires are liars from the moment we contemplate them; they are the foundation of all lies, murder, and cause wholesome shame. Civilization and all of its benefits are undermined by the pursuit of them, and they endanger all human relationships. 

Penguin Books, 1955, 272 pages.

Summary: A sound, lucid, and accurate description of Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical system by the Jesuit scholar F. C. Copleston (1907-1994). The book is strictly limited to Thomas’ philosophical system and suggests that Thomism is a perennial philosophy. 

Thomas denied that humans have innate ideas and attempted to develop a system that allowed Christian philosophers to remain in the church while philosophizing. Or as Copelston summarizes Pope Leo XIII encyclical letter Aeterni Patris:

[Leo XIII] was not asking them to shut their eyes to all thought since the thirteenth century but rather to penetrate and develop the synthesis of a thinker who combined a profound and living belief in the Christian religion with a real trust in the power of the human mind and in the value of philosophic reflection, uniting in readiness to see truth wherever it might be found with a fidelity to fundamental rational insights which prevented any surrender to passing fashion just because it was fashionable (246).

Reprint of the 1887 edition; Naphtali Press, 2003, 304 pgs.

Summary: A thoughtful and essentially accurate critique of materialistic philosophy and theology of the 19th Century by Robert L. Dabney (1820-1898).

Dabney’s modern fame rests on his having been Stonewall Jackson’s chaplain during the Civil War and as the author of the book A Defense of Virginia and Through Her the South. Not having read the book, I understand that it espouses at least a paternal racism similar to modern liberalism and likely very much worse as he defends the institution of American race slavery.

Dabney’s racism aside, The Sensualistic Philosophy points out over and over again that materialism as a philosophical theory only works if materialism is assumed as the only possible system.

The Sensualistic philosophy is that theory, which resolves all the powers of the human spirit into the functions of the five senses, and modifications thereof. It is the philosophy, which finds all it rudiments in sensation. It not only denies to the spirit of man all innate ideas, but all innate powers of originating ideas, save those given from our senses. It consequently attempts to account for every general and every abstract judgment, as an empirical result of our sensations, and consistently denies the validity of any a priori (11).

Yale University Press, 1997, 366 pgs.

Summary: A consideration of the psychological and political causes of paranoia within the public square. The book was written by Robert S. Robins, professor of political science, and Jerrold M. Post, M.D. “professor of psychiatry, political psychology, and international affairs.”

The book lists out seven elements of paranoia: extreme suspiciousness—“things are not what they seem to be” (8). Centrality—“the belief that the paranoid himself is the target of malevolent intent” (9). Grandiosity—“he knows the truth and conveys a sense of contempt for those so foolish as to differ” (10). Hostility—“generally hostile attitude toward the world” (10). Fear of loss of autonomy—“constantly wary of attempts by a superior force or by outside individuals to impose their will upon him, and he manifests an exaggerated independence” (11). Projection—“to presume that internal states or changes are due to external causes. . .the paranoid projector is concerned not with the observable obvious but with the hidden motives of others that are behind the observable. The projection is a compromise with reality. . .” (12). Delusional thinking—“false beliefs held in the presence of strong contradictory evidence” (12).

in Luther’s Works, vol. 54, Fortress Press, 1967, 476 pgs.

Summary: An edited collation of various records of Luther’s table talk. It’s essentially a collection of extemporaneous comments, asides, and dialogs by Luther with his wife and many visitors on topics spanning the human experience. Each entry is numbered.

Includes everything from bawdy jokes with a translation of the German term scheise (“A Story about a Dog Who Was a Lutheran,” No. 5418), and mildly profound statements. Thus we learn in No. 5230 that Luther was a traducianist on the matter of the soul and his opinion of women with small breasts ability to nurse children.

Luther’s stupidity in supporting bigamy for Landgrave Philip of Hesse is batted back and forth. And there is a brief suggestion on how to preach: “First, you must learn to go up to the pulpit. Second, you must know that you should stay for a time. Third, you must learn to get down again” (No. 5171b).

Benefits/Detriments: Interesting, lively, and entertaining. More for grasping Luther’s personality than any profound insight into Luther’s thought. Katie proves herself to be a witty and careful theologian in her own right.

Definition of Fear: “fear bears on two things, namely, the evil from which someone flees through fear, and whatever seems to be the source of that evil” (215).

Worldly fear: “sometimes it happens that the evil from which someone recoils is contrary to a bodily or temporal good which a person sometimes loves inordinately and recoils from having it injured or destroyed by a mere man. This is human or worldly fear and is not from the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Lord forbids such fear: do not fear those who kill the body (Matt 10:28).”

Fear of punishment: “There is a second type of fear which recoils from an evil contrary to created nature, namely, the evil of being punished, and shrinks from having this evil inflicted by a spiritual cause, namely, by God. Such fear is praiseworthy in at least one respect, namely, that it fears God. . . But insofar as such fear does not recoil from an evil opposed to one’s spiritual good, namely, sin, but only punishment, it is not praiseworthy. It has this short coming not from the Holy Spirit, but from man’s guilt.” (215-17).

Lafayette, Sovereign Grace Publisher, Inc, 2001, pg. 136.

Summary: Walter Marshall (1628-1679) was a little-known Puritan/Congregationalist writer who struggled to have a sense security in his salvation because of the prevailing articulation of the gospel by the Roman Catholics, Quakers, the Anglicans, and his fellow Puritans. In attempting to halt the rise of antinomianism and social discord many Christians had begun to preach moralism. Ultimately, Marshall concluded that a religion of moralism is the default setting of the flesh:

The most of men, that have any sense of religion, are prone to imagine, that the sure way to establish the practice of holiness and righteousness, is to make it the procuring condition of the favor of God, and all happiness. This may appear by the various false religions that have prevailed most in the world. In this way the Heathens were brought to their best devotion and morality, by the knowledge of the judgment of God, that those that violate of the great duties to God and their neighbor, are worthy of death; and by their consciences accusing or excusing them, according to the practice of them (Rom. 1:32; 2:14, 15). . . .Yet, because our own consciences testify, that we often fail in the performance of these duties, we are inclined by self-love to persuade ourselves, that our sincere endeavors to do the best that we can, shall be sufficient to procure the favor of God and pardon for all our failings. . . .it is very difficult to persuade men out of a way that they are naturally addicted to, and that has forestalled and captivated their judgments, and is bred in their bone, and therefore cannot easily be gotten out of the flesh (Dir. 6, 1st para., pg. 40).

• Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans -- An interesting attempt to recreate biblical theology inside the confines of modernity. Already passé. Cf. Richard A. Muller, “The Barth Legacy: New Athanasius or Origen Redivivus?” A Response to T. F. Torrance, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review; Oct. 1, 1990: 54, 4, 673. See also reviews of Barth's works Evangelical Theology: An Introduction and The Theology of Schleiermacher.
• John Calvin, Romans -- Helpful, wholesome, and solid.
• C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans -- Dodd tells us when he disagrees with Paul and the Holy Spirit. Much of it is tripe.
• Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans -- Reformed, evangelical, helpful.
• John Gill, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans -- Bit dense, but helpful.
• Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans -- Written before 1517, Luther shows himself a careful Augustinian. Most helpful for homiletical and historical background.
• Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans -- A modern, evangelical, commentary on Romans. I was a bit overwhelmed as to exhausting refutation of modern writers. His view of the law concerns me.
• Pelagius, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans -- Pelagius proves himself Pelagian. (full review)
• Thomas Schreiner, Romans -- Wholesome, thoughtful, evangelical.
• William G. T. Shedd, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans -- Insightful, technical but a bit dated, always theologically interesting. See also reviews of Shedd's works Theological Essays and Calvinism: Pure and Mixed.

Anchor Books, 1962, 510 pgs.

Summary: Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922 -   ) is an historian of the Victorian period. She is especially concerned with promoting the virtues of the Victorian era in the political and public square and correcting Freudian, Relativistic, and wrongheaded historical research. She and her husband Irving Kristol worked to help develop neo-conservatism in political and academic thought in America. Dr. Himmelfarb is a socially conservative Jew.

Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution is a biography of both Darwin and the Darwinian revolution. The material is laid out with great personal sympathy for Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and should be of much value for those interested in the personality, habits, and family of Darwin.

At the same time Himmelfarb is obliviously not amused by Darwin’s philosophical commitments, his persuasive methods, or the common historical narrative that an onrush of new facts caused the current acquiescence to Darwinism.

According to Himmelfarb, there are deep rational problems with Darwin’s theory. Darwin openly “‘defended the procedure’ of inventing a theory and seeing how many classes of fact the theory could explain” (157).  The correspondence to reality was secondary to explanatory power. The most accurate theory in Darwin’s conception was the one that could explain the most facts under his assumed conditions.

London: J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1958, 429 pgs.

Summary: Richard Hooker (1554-1600) in 1584 became the master or rector of the Temple in London. The Temple was a prominent church that was Puritan friendly because of the patronage of a prominent noble and a diplomat. Prior to the coming of Hooker a simpler worship service had been allowed and maintained by Walter Travers (1548-1635). Travers’ ordination was through a continental presbyter, and he refused to be ordained under Anglican orders. He was thus disqualified by the Anglican hierarchy from becoming rector. Travers was left on as a lecturer or reader.

Hooker quickly established the worship of the main church services along the lines of the Anglican prayer book. Travers and the Puritans attempted for a time to run a parallel church service. Hooker and Travers soon began preaching against each other in opposing services leading to charges and counter charges of sin and incompetence. Archbishop Whitgift (1530-1604) silenced Travers and was supported by the Privy Council in 1586.

The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity was the fruit of the public dispute between the Puritans and the Anglican over church polity, the Book of Common of Prayer, and the entailed ceremonies. The main focus of the first four books is epistemology, hermeneutics, and inconsistencies in the Puritan/Presbyterian critique. The three issues are intermixed and the editors have provided citations of Hooker’s quotes and allusions from Travers and Thomas Cartwright’s (1535-1603) defense of Presbyterian practice and government; the critical apparatus from Keble’s Hooker’s Works is also included.

Riverhead Books, New York: New York, 2008, pgs. 310.

The Reason for God is an urbane and winsome defense of orthodox Christian belief by Timothy Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church of Manhattan. The church has “six thousand regular attendees at five services, a host of daughter churches, and is planting churches in large cities throughout the world” (quoted from the back cover).

Keller’s very laudable goal is to limit unnecessary stumbling blocks to the gospel. And this is a wholesome and godly goal shared by every responsible Christian in the world. We don’t want people to reject Christianity because they don’t understand it or have been misinformed about what following Christ is.

C. S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga provide the philosophical backbone of the apologetics within the book. Keller also mentions the importance of Jonathan Edwards (253) in his theological development. (I must admit, I don’t see much Edwards here.)

London, G. Bell and Sons, Ltd, 1913, 381 pgs.

Summary: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, recovered from his opium addiction and recorded his insights of traveling from a pantheistic Unitarian as a young man to an evangelical Anglican at the end of his life.

Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection was designed to assist young philosophically orientated pastors and lay leaders in the church of England to overcome modernity and believe and teach “the faith once handed down to the saints.” He organized the book as an unfolding series of aphorisms which introduce the necessary philosophical concepts, reinforces them, and then introduces the theological distinctions necessary for the faith and salvation.

He has four basic insights: ethics from a Christian perspective are found in an ascending chain of prudence, morality, and spiritual religion; understanding and reason are different; the human will is supernatural and therefore outside of natural chains of causation; there is an absolute difference between the material and the spiritual. The latter is the most primary insight.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 8: All applications must include the sure knowledge that we can’t separate perfectly because we are still sinners living in the regime of sin and death. Thus part of the grace we extend to others must include the possibility that we ourselves are too narrow or too loose.

In seminary, a friend of mine from the Midwest told me that his father, who was a fundamentalist pastor, received a letter from a brother in Christ practicing strict separation. The letter informed him that he was being separated from. It was polite and earnest, established the chain of separation between the author and the recipient, and closed pleading that he separate from the closest of the offending parties. The only odd thing about the letter was that my friend’s father had no idea who the author was. They had never met.

My memory of the conversation is that the fellow writing the letter was practicing 5th degree separation, but the memory is hazy, so perhaps it was only 3rd or 4th. But if we were to imagine a chain of 5th degree separation, it would look something like this: the Roman Catholic Church (1st), J. I. Packer who signed Evangelicals and Catholics Together (2nd), prominent evangelical pastor who disagrees with Packer but does not separate from him (3rd), me who also disagrees with Packer, but who will not separate from him or my former pastor who is a friend of Packer’s (4th), anyone who remains in fellowship with me (5th).

James Clarke and Co. Ltd, 1971, 131 pgs.

Summary: A collection of important, but somewhat rare scholastic works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) which tend to correct misunderstandings about Edward’s Trinitarianism and adherence to covenantal thought. These works were not included in the most available collection of Edwards’ writings.

Edited by and with an introduction by Paul Helm, but first printed and collected in the United States by E. C. Smyth in 1903. Helm’s introduction is, as always, clarifying and helpful.

The volume contains the “Treatise on Grace,” “Observations Concerning the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption,” Appendix, and “An Essay on the Trinity.”

All of the works display Edwards’ understanding of the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The Father thinks of himself and begets the Son, the Son and the Father love each other thus spirating the Spirit.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 7: Our patterns of application of separation today must include the grace we allow the godly of the past.

Gurnall’s work is peerless and priceless; every line is full of wisdom; every sentence suggestive. This “Complete Armour” is beyond all others a preacher’s book: I should think that more discourses have been suggested by it than by any other uninspired volume. I have often resorted to it when my own fire has been burning low, and I have seldom failed to find a glowing coal upon Gurnall’s hearth. (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1834-1892, quoted in The Christian in Complete Armour abridgment and modernization printed by The Banner of Truth Trust)

I am in full agreement with Spurgeon. The Christian in Complete Armour is a spiritual delight and treasure trove. Much of my preaching and illustrating from Scripture relies heavily on Gurnall’s example and even remembering his sermons warms my heart to Christ.

Let’s consider a little background on William Gurnall (1616-1679). He signed the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which imposed The Book of Common Prayer, required episcopal ordination, and made the crypto-Catholic Charles II the “only supreme governor” of the Anglican Church. At least 2,000 ministers refused to sign the act and lost their churches. Men like Bunyan, Owen, Howe, and Baxter were persecuted because of the act.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 6: Our patterns of application of separation need to include people to the left and the right on the group boundary markers—our “friends” and those who make us uncomfortable. Grace on believers who are like us or provide advantages to us but no or little grace on believers who are different is a sin (James 2:1; Luke 6:32-33).

Seven years ago, I became the pastor of a church that had a history of practicing second-degree separation. My exposure to the defense of such doctrine and the organizations enforcing it had been rather limited. And so I began reading, watching, and asking questions. Many of the conversations that I’ve had were decidedly cordial—some less so.

Allow me to share how one conversation about separatism with a representatives of a mission board went:

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 5: No one knows when Jesus is coming back or how long it will be before Jesus comes back, and so application of separation passages cannot be dependent on how close or far the return of Christ is.

The words are startlingly clear—“the Pope of Rome … is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” This statement is found in The London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (26.4) as well as in unmodified versions of the Westminster Confession of Faith (25.6). Currently most modern Presbyterians and Baptists using these confessions have changed the wording or do not enforce this section. However, some stalwarts still remain.

Let’s unfold the exegesis a bit. There are about a dozen passages of Scripture in play, and application has been made. The “man of sin [has been] revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thess. 2:3, KJV). The “falling away” has occurred and the person bearing the title “the Pope of Rome” is the end time’s figure of the final antichrist (cf. 1 John 2:18). Of the 7 billion people on the planet currently, only one man or his successor can be the antichrist. There is now no possibility of salvation for some future pope, because he is the antichrist. And there is no point in continued exploration of the meaning of Daniel, Matthew 24, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Revelation on this issue.

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 4: None of the commands of Scripture contradict the other commands when rightly understood, and to be correctly applied and interpreted all of the commands of Scripture must work together.

Eight hundred feet below the surface of the water, in a cramped nuclear submarine armed with ballistic missiles, my friend and newly minted lieutenant felt like he was faced with an impossible decision. On Sunday morning would he meet and worship with the dozen or so sailors on the boat that professed Christ but belonged to compromised groups (American Baptist, United Methodist, etc.) or quietly pray by himself in his bunk? Would he “be separate” (ESV, 2 Cor. 6:17) or neglect “to meet together” (Heb. 10:25)? Would he “[b]ear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2) or would he “[p]urge the evil person” (1 Cor. 5:13)?

My friend had grown up under the teaching of Axioms of Separation which required separation from disobedient brethren. And disobedient brethren were by definition anyone who did not separate from other disobedient brethren. Thus the conundrum. How does one obey the commands to separate and the commands to be unified?

• Bonaventure, Commentary on Ecclesiastes (Works, vol. 7) -- A solid biblical exegesis of Ecclesiastes. He does use the Apocrypha, but his biblical theology is sufficient to overcome such deficiencies.  Augustinian with minor modifications using Aristotle’s natural philosophy.
• Charles Bridges, Ecclesiastes (Geneva Commentary) -- Helpful. Biblical and pastoral.
• Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon (NAC) -- More balanced than his Proverbs and generally edifying.
• John Gill, Ecclesiastes, in Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, vol. 4 -- Solid biblical exegesis informed by ancient and medieval Jewish sources.
• Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Last Words of David (Luther’s Works, vol. 15) -- Very helpful mediation on Ecclesiastes. (Luther at one point appears to defend soul sleep.)
• Roland Murphy, Ecclesiastes (WBC) -- Highly technical. I did not end up using it sufficiently to comment on its technical value. Extremely low view of Scripture: “The king fiction, which it is generally agreed does not extend beyond chap. 2...” (12).

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 3: Applications of the commands of separation must take into account Jesus’ and Paul’s application of these same commands as recorded in the Gospels, Acts, and the epistles.

Was Jesus a separatist? Given that Jesus acted according to some of the same commands He requires His church to obey, the answer must be yes.

Let consider some of the examples: “Purge the evil person from among you” (ESV). This phrase is from the LXX and is used six times in Deuteronomy (17:7, 19:19, 21:21, 22:21, 22:24, 24:27).The Apostle Paul uses this phrase and demands obedience to it of the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 5:12. The Greek verb behind “purge” is only used here in the New Testament, “suggesting Paul’s intentional and explicit use of the formula from Deuteronomy” (Beale and Carson, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, 709).

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 2: All applications of the commands of Scripture are based on a particular context outside the Bible. Therefore unless the context is identical to what was intended by the Bible, an application cannot be as normative as Scripture itself.

Allow me to share an explicit command of Scripture, repeated five times in the New Testament which is patently ignored at least in literal obedience by almost all churches in the United States: “Greet one another with the kiss of love” (ESV, 1 Peter 5:14; cf. 1 Thess. 5:26, 2 Cor. 13:12, 1 Cor. 16:20, Rom. 16:16).

I hope you obey this command of Scripture by greeting all Christians in a culturally appropriate way. But my guess is that your church does not practice a literal kiss of love but replaces it with a handshake, shoulder squeeze, or hug. We look through the culturally decided symbolism of a kiss and replace it with our culture’s symbolic synonym of a warm greeting.

Obedience to the command is then based on our cultural context. The trans-contextual aspect is that we must greet all Christians in a friendly way. We must obey the command or we are sinning.

(This article is published on SharperIron.org)

Some time ago I had a long talk and walk with an older, godly, academic separatist about the history of separatism. By separatist, I mean someone who separates not only from apostasy but also separates from those who do not separate from apostasy. (I am being vague on the timing and details as the conversation was a friendly courtesy to me.)

About an hour or so into our talk, I played my rhetorical trump card—the original word for Pharisee means separatist. It cut him deep. And for first time we moved from theory to life. I looked into the eyes of a godly, thoughtful man and recognized the truth of what he next said with tears welling up in his eyes, “I am not trying to be a Pharisee; I am just trying to serve Jesus.”

I backpedalled a bit and tried to draw out the sting of my words. We recovered the emotional balance of the conversation and moved on. Yet the Holy Spirit has used the conversation and the moment of deeply hurting a servant of my Lord as a helpful reminder to speak and write carefully on this issue.

When I became a pastor about 7 years ago, I held to a rejection of all holidays in the Sunday morning service. And I came to this conclusion from three, I hope, godly influences: the first was to not wield a coercive authority over a tender and biblically informed conscience in obedience to Scripture (Rom. 14:21) at a required meeting of the church. The second was responding to open idolatry in evangelical church services that I had attended, and the inability of the pastors of these churches to comprehend that what they were doing was idolatrous. The third was a desire to conform my practice to the Spirit inspired practice of the godly throughout history.

The difficulty or the tension that I see in this now is: first, that as an elder my authority to select the text is coercive. I force the members and attenders at my church to celebrate the nativity of Christ when the text requires it or the resurrection, or accession. This authority was given to me by God to be used in wisdom. I think it would be a sin for me to spend 20 years preaching on say Esther though it is in my authority as an elder to do so. My authority in this regard includes preaching topical sermons on Sunday morning or selecting particular texts for the health of the congregation based on events outside of the church.

The point that I am reaching towards is that Andover Baptist, our church, has a church calendar. Outside events, my vacation—scheduled by the way around historical church or secular holidays and providentially my birthday—illnesses, theological events, and the like, all influence what is preached on. Often times while the text is selected sequentially the application is driven by current events as well.

Moody Press, 2011, 197 pgs.

Summary: An encouraging word about the sufficiency and efficacy of God’s Word in the local church. Accessible, biblical, bold, transparent, and thoughtful.

Exemplar Quotes:

Let me sum up all of this in four points: God created Adam, you, and me to image Himself. To image God, we must listen to God. God’s people, by definition, are those who listen . . .(John 10:2, 25-26). God’s Word, therefore, divides. It divides the Christian from the non-Christian. It divides the Christian in half, separating the “old man” and the “new man” (35).

In the last chapter, we saw that the Word sets us free as individuals. The electric current of the Word and Spirit enters through our ears, jolts our hearts to a pulse, and bursts the iron shackles of sin. The Word saves us. Yet its work does doesn’t stop there. It doesn’t leave us as detached individuals. Rather, the Word gathers the church. Or, to say it the other way around, the church on earth is the fruit of the Word, just like a plant is the fruit of a seed that’s been sown (Mark 4:14). (95)

Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2014, 120 pgs.

Summary: Hercules Collins (1646/7-1702) a godly Baptist pastor in London took the venerable Heidelberg Catechism (1562) and brought it into line with The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689. His purpose was to provide the Calvinistic Baptist of England a catechism reflecting the orthodox Reformed tradition of the continent. He was especially concerned to prove that Baptists were Trinitarian and mainstream Reformed with the exception of their understanding of believers baptism and church and state issues.

The catechism has been modernized by Michael A. G. Haykin and G. Stephen Weaver, Jr.

Exemplar quote: Q. 1. What is your only comfort in life and death?

A. That both soul and body, whether I live or die, I am not my own, but belong wholly unto my most faithful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. By His most precious blood fully satisfying for all my sins, He has delivered me from all the power of the devil, and so preserves me, that without the will of my heavenly Father not so much as a hair may fall from my head. Yes, all things must serve for my safety and by His Spirit, also He assures me of everlasting life, and makes me ready and prepared, that from now on I may live to Him (pg. 41).

Image Books, 1993, 614 pgs.

Summary: Frederick Copleston (1907-1994) was a Jesuit historian and philosopher appalled by the lack of philosophical knowledge of Roman Catholic seminarians and textbooks, and so he conceived and wrote the multivolume A History of Philosophy.

Volume two briefly touches on the patristic fathers and then summarizes the teaching of Augustine (47 pages) and then purposely builds towards a summary of Thomas of Aquinas’ system (132 pages) and concludes with Duns Scotus (69 pages). On the way to Thomas, Boethius, Anselm, the Muslim Aristotelian commentators—Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes—, Dante’s Averroianism, Bonaventure’s modified Augustinianism (61 pages), and a cast of other philosophers and scholastic theologians are mentioned and summarized. The interrelationship between all the scholars are considered and traced.

Copleston sees the height of Christian philosophy, a philosophical system that does not contradict revelation, as being reached in the Thomist framework. Thus his historical narrative unfolds Christian philosophy as maturing into Thomism through the introduction of “new” secular sources into Christian theology.

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951, 504 pgs.

Summary: A paragraph by paragraph commentary by the theologian Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1224-1274) of the philosopher Aristotle’s (384-322) De Anima or On the Soul. The book is arranged with Aristotle’s text and then Thomas’ commentary. Differences and deficiencies in Thomas’ translation by Moerbeke are compared to other Latin translations and the Greek text.

According to Aristotle the soul is the non-material substance that provides the form of living things. Or as Thomas summarizes “the soul is a certain actuality and formal principle of that which exists accordingly, namely as potentially animate” (2.2.278).

This conception allows Aristotle and then Thomas to view the soul as neither wholly dualistic (absolutely separate physical and spiritual parts) nor monistic (only physical or only spiritual parts), but instead provides holism with internal distinctions.

• Paul Barnett, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT) -- Somewhat moderate evangelical. Helpful insights into the Greek and cultural context.
• John Calvin, Second Corinthians -- Solid. Does a great job summarizing the overall argument of the letter.
• John Gill, Second Corinthians -- Solid.
• Charles Hodge, 1 and 2 Corinthians -- Interesting and helpful.
• Colin G. Kruse, Second Corinthians (TNTC) -- Very helpful overview
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians -- Really interesting and often insightful. Please note that portions of the commentary on 1 Corinthians are from Peter of Tarentaise (d. 1175). Published by The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine.

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985, 253 pgs.

Summary: A solid and non-critical biography of the great Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892). Warmly evangelical, accessible, and historically accurate.

Benefits/ Detriments: The embarrassment over Spurgeon not being a teetotaler and his smoking is palatable and the discussion of Spurgeon’s theological disputes often lacks nuisance. Recommended as an introduction to the great and godly preacher.

Multnomah Books, 2012, 309 pgs.

Summary: A warm thoughtful meditation on what delights God. Piper carefully exegetes dozens of verses to prove God delights in being a triune, speaking, creating, holy, saving, just, sustaining, prayer answering, King. The hoped for reader’s response to God’s delight is to worship him.

Benefits/ Detriments: A delight. Accessible. Includes a careful and scholarly response to those who reject God’s sovereignty in creation and salvation in the foot notes. Twice Piper’s habit of absolutizing a single metaphor (prayer is “a wartime walkie-talkie and not a domestic intercom” [214] and “grace is power, not just pardon” [233]) could lead to confusion if applied consistently. Coming soon to Andover’s bookshelf.

• Daniel I. Block, Judges, Ruth (NAC) -- Must be handled with care. Caustic reading of Judges and Ruth.
• Arthur E. Cundall and Leon Morris, Judges and Ruth -- Competent on the technical issues but finds a sub-Christian ethic in Old Testament law.
• Dale Ralph Davis, Judges: Such a Great Salvation -- An incredibly helpful commentary for working with the overall themes of Judges and placing the book in a Christian context. Highly recommended for pastors and devotional reading.
• Iain M. Duguid, Esther and Ruth -- Seemed to lack sympathy with the biblical characters.
• Andrew Fausset, Judges -- A bit dated technically and some of the suggested applications tend toward allegory.
• John R. Franke, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel -- Some helpful insights. Lots of lacunae from lack of historical comment.
• John Gill, Deuteronomy to Kings -- Helpful background in rabbinical interpretation. Recommended.

• James Montgomery Boice, Joshua -- Solid but basically his sermons. Relies heavily on Schaeffer's Joshua and the Flow of Biblical History.
• John Calvin, Joshua -- Recommended.
• Dale Ralph Davis, Joshua: No Falling Words -- Recommended for devotional reading and for sermon helps for pastors.
• John Gill, Deuteronomy to Kings -- Recommended.
• Richard S. Hess, Joshua (TOTC) -- Didn't interact with this one enough to recommend or critique.
• David Howard, Joshua (NAC) -- Solid but staid.
• Marten H. Woudstra, The Book of Joshua (NICOT) -- Very helpful, highly recommended, became the commentary backbone of the series.

2003, HarperCollins, 281 pgs.

Summary: A non-academic history of the King James Version of the Bible which attempts to describe the religious, cultural, and philosophical ambiance behind the translation. The personalities of the main translators and historical actors are also described with an almost bipolar sympathy or causticness.

Exemplar Quotes:

The deep décolletage of Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, is a mark not of her own degeneracy but of a Jacobean court fashion in an age which valued lusciousness (description of a photo 172-173).

Shakespeare’s great tragedies and the King James Bible are each other’s mirror-twin. Both emerge from the ambitions and terrors of the Jacobean world. They are, from their radically diverging cores, the great what-ifs of the age. King Lear pursues the implications of a singular and disastrous decision to divide a kingdom; the King James Bible embraces the full breadth of absorbed and inherited wisdom in order to unite one; Lear contemplates, more fearlessly than any text had ever done or has ever done, the falling away of meaning; the King James Bible enshrines what is understands as the guarantee of all meaning; the rhetoric of King Lear breaks and shivers into multi-faceted shards of songs, madness, grandeur, argument, pathos; the King James Bible masks its immensely various sources under one certain, all-over musical sonority; everything in Lear falls apart, everything in the King James Bible pulls together; one is a nightmare of dissolution, the other a dream of wholeness (239-240).

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 304 pgs.

In On the Doctrine of Signs we come to the bulk of the theological conclusions that were rejected in the Reformation by Protestants and to a great degree maintained by the post-Tridentine Roman Church.

Currently, the Roman Church teaches that Jesus’ human body upon the cross “participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all” (CCC-1085). Christ’s atemporal body is obviously an ad hoc, extra-biblical, and mildly bizarre means of explaining a problem that Peter attempted to explain this way:

As for the body, he gave [the disciples at the first Lord’s Supper] such a one as he then had, that is, a mortal one, capable of suffering. But now we receive his immortal and impassible body; yet it does not have greater efficacy (4.11. 6.1, pg. 60).

Rather than an atemporal body summed into time, Peter’s solution was three sacrifices. Jesus sacrificed his temporal body at the first Lord’s Supper, his temporal body was sacrificed on the cross, and now his “immortal and impassable” is the current sacrifice of the mass.

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 189 pgs.

Summary: In 3.6.3.2 (pg. 27), he quotes as Augustine (354-430) Lanfranc (1010-1089) as found in Berengar (c.1010-1080) in defense of essentially transubstantiation. Here we have simply reached the point of no return as to Peter accidentally misquoting from bad notes or quotations. Peter is correcting Augustine according to current church practice. Augustine ought to have taught the current practice of the church and so he is spoken of as if he did.

At the same time, we find that Peter is defending Augustine’s view of God’s sovereignty and man’s free will as compatible: “The work of Christ and the Father was good, because the will of Christ and the Father was good; the work of Judas and the Jews was evil, because their intention was evil. The deeds or works there differed, that is, the acts were different; but there was one thing or deed, namely the passion itself” (3.20.5.2-3, pg. 87).

Peter also follows Augustine in non-egalitarian love or ordered love: [God] loved some of them for greater goods and others for lesser goods, some for better uses and others for less good ones. For all our goods come to us from his love. And so, from all of eternity and even now, he loved and loves some of the elect more and others less, because out of his love he prepared greater goods for the first and lesser ones for the second, just as in time he confers greater goods on some and lesser ones on others, and as a result of this he is said to love these more and those less” (3.32.2.3, pg. 133). . .Yet it is not to be simply said that he loved [the reprobate], lest they be understood to be predestined, but with this qualification: he loved them insofar as they were to be his work, that is, he loved what and of what kind he was going to make them” (3.32.5, pg. 134).

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989, 262 pgs.

Summary: A carefully written and researched defense of the traditional view of the soul over and against anthropological monism. Monism refers to the body and the soul being the same thing and dualism refers to the soul continuing to exist independently of an earthly body.

Under a variety of pressures, Christian scholars have been moving away from understanding the Bible to teach dualism in anthropology.  In some circles dualism has become the supposed cause of almost all ills. The more academically palatable view is now monism.

Among Christians who have a high view of Scripture, the pressure comes from a concern to decouple biblical theology from Platonic or philosophical influences, an unfortunate confusion about proper inference and speculation in developing theological outcomes from the Bible, and confusing the historical literalism of Augustine and the Reformation with Spinoza’s literalism.
Among liberals the theological pressure includes a similar mix but also a bias towards materialism and against the supernatural. The materialistic bias is so ambient as to influence all parties.

Reformation Heritage Books, 2010, 112 pgs.

Summary: David P. Murray, former pastor and current professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary gives biblical, practical, balanced and pastoral insights on a subject that has often failed to receive such treatment.  Dr. Murray writes as one who has seen depression first-hand in friends and those whom he loves most in this world and as one who pastored twelve years in areas in the northwest of Scotland that have some of the highest rates of depression in the world.  This immensely practical book is divided into six chapters:  The Crisis, The Complexity, The Condition, The Causes, The Cures, and The Caregivers, with an appendix on the Sufficiency of Scripture.

“The Crisis” gives eight reasons why it is important for Christians to study depression.

“The Complexity” gives two helpful “avoid-seek” principles for interacting with depression:  Avoid dogmatism and seek humility and avoid extremes and seek balance.  The dogmatism and extremes Murray advises against are assuming that the causes of depression are all physical, all spiritual, or all mental.  It is here that he offers an evaluation of the Nouthetic Counseling Movement (as represented by Jay Adams) and the Modern Biblical Counseling Movement (as represented by CCEF).

Luke 20:27-33—There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

In the Jewish world of Jesus’ day, the Sadducees were the most skeptical. Their understanding of the Old Testament focused on the “literal” or normal meaning of the words (cf. The Problem of Literalism: Spinoza) and prioritized the first five books as more authoritative then the rest of the Old Testament.

Their method of interpreting the Bible lead them to “deny that there is a resurrection” (Luke 20:27) and reject angels and spirits (Acts 23:8). We are informed by the Pharisee and Jewish historian Josephus (c. 37- c. 100) that they rejected the “belief of the immortal duration of the soul, and the punishments and rewards in Hades,” and the sovereignty of God (The Wars of the Jews, 2.8.14).

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 236 pgs.

Summary: Peter Lombard presents a confused understanding of Augustine’s view of creation and anthropology modified to a semi-Pelagian to almost Pelagian theology either purposely or through ignorance of Augustine’s authentic works.

According to Peter, “For there is in the rational soul a natural will, by which it naturally wills what is good, although weakly and feebly, unless grace assists. . .” (2.24.1.3, pg. 109). This free will is described as such “because, without compulsion or necessity, it is able to desire or elect what it has decreed by reason” (2.25.4.2, pg. 118). “And yet we do not deny that there are many good things which are done by man through free choice before this grace and apart from grace” (2.26.7.2, pg. 130).

And then this lovely quote which he attributes to Jerome, but since the Renaissance is now recognized as Pelagius:

Jerome teaches in his Explanation of the Catholic Faith to Pope Damascus, where he strikes at the errors of Jovinian, Manichaeus, and Pelagius, saying: “We acknowledge that choice is free so as to say that we are always in need of God’s aid; and that both those are in error who say with Manichaeus that man cannot avoid sin, and those who assert with Jovinian that man cannot sin. Each of them takes away freedom of choice. But we say that man is always able to sin and not to sin, so that we confess ourselves to be ever free in our choice. This is the faith which we learned in the Catholic Church and which we have always held.”

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010, 278 pgs.

Summary: Peter Lombard (1100-1160) or the Master of the Sentences wrote the basic theological compendium of the Middle Ages. He was a student of Abelard (1079-1142/3)—the founder of “understanding seeking faith.” Peter’s essential task was to harmonize the church authorities—the fathers and the Bible—with each other over and against heterodoxy.

The Sentences are a review of past theological debates, organized as lecture notes, for the purpose of assisting priests, canon lawyers, and theologians in developing current applications and to maintain orthodoxy. Silano, the translator, argues that The Sentences need to be read as a theological “casebook.”

In The Mystery of the Trinity, the first book of four, Peter Lombard presents a clear defense and review of the early church’s position on the Trinity. He generally follows Augustine on the issue of God’s grace, predestination, and foreknowledge in salvation and within the being of God.

Paternoster Press, 1981, 148 pgs.

Summary: A careful introduction on how to interpret and apply the Bible by Graeme Goldsworthy, former Lecturer in Old Testament Studies at Moore Theological College in Australia.

Goldsworthy opens by showing how conservative Christians often unintentionally interpret and apply the Bible through an allegorical method especially in Old Testament narratives. For instance, Christians are encouraged by the example of David to kill the giants in their life with the five stones of faith, hope, love, trust, and repentance. The difficulty with this interpretation is that it was not the intent of the authors nor can it be recreated outside of the preacher’s imagination.

To thwart such interpretations Goldsworthy takes two steps: the first is to center interpretation on the kingdom of God and how God establishes and maintains that kingdom first in Eden and then as God unfolds the plan of salvation after humanity’s rebellion. The kingdom of God is advanced through the history of salvation until it is finalized by the “kingdom of the world” becoming “the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15).

Baker Academic, 2006, 358 pgs.

Summary: An exceedingly helpful book for Christians attempting to understand modernity written by Dr. John W. Cooper of Calvin College and recommended by Paul Helm. It draws together the historical strings of modernity and Christian liberalism with alacrity.

Traditional Christian and Jewish theology have argued that while God is immanent creation remains wholly separate from God. God categorically transcends creation even as he remains present everywhere. God’s Being is separate from the universe. At the same time there has been a minority view among Christian theologians called panentheism. Panentheism is the view that while God is greater than the universe, God’s Being is in every part of the universe. In pantheism God’s being is the universe.

The philosophical roots of panentheism can be found in Plato’s most careful theological dialogue called the Timaeus as well as in other scattered references. In this openly speculative dialogue, Plato locates “the world in the World-Soul” (35). Thus a stream of interpretation concluded that “the Soul of eternal divine Reason can be identified with the World-Soul of Timaeus, then the World-Soul is an aspect of God, and Plato is a panenetheist” (Ibid.).

Greenville, Journey Forth: 2008, 194 pgs.

Summary: A brief, eloquent meditation on God’s use of the emotions within the human heart for sanctification, maturation, and edification. The book is gentle, wise and balanced. It takes its place in Christian literature somewhere between Lewis’ A Grief Observed and Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy.

In his pursuit of balance Dr. Horton creates a unique theological framework which embraces an Augustinian view of human love as ordered loves or eudemonic love (70-74), while shying away from Augustine’s view of human freedom (44) by drawing the veil of mystery over it. At the same time, Horton's view of God’s love toward humanity is most similar to Arminius’ construction—God’s love toward humanity can be thwarted (77) while God remains sovereign.

He very carefully and biblically corrects reactionary responses among conservative Christians to Freud, the self-esteem movement, secular psychology, and psychiatric medicine. Further, he provides edifying guidance on how to cope with high and low emotions and experiences.

Baker Academics, 2006, 240 pgs.

Summary: Suffering will come. For most of us grotesque and horrifying events will unfold in excruciating slowness or with the suddenness of a lightning strike. The suffering that enters our life will have a palatable weight in our hearts. It will feel as if the very ground has opened its mouth to hell; we are not yet immersed in the fire, but blasts of trauma will belch forth from the pit, and we will be shaken.

Having written so dramatically, allow me an anti-climatic suggestion. Prepare for future suffering, process past trauma, and be ready to counsel others by having a robustly biblical understanding of suffering and the problem of evil. The first step in preparation and processing is relentlessly striving to not be conformed to this world but to have your mind transformed by Scripture and the Spirit. The next step is likely to read How Long, O Lord?

The book is a clear, biblically and academically informed mediation on the problem of evil and suffering in this world. Concise, godly and covering the main philosophical and theological objections against compatibilism (God is exhaustively sovereign and man is responsible for his sin) at a thoughtful layman’s reading level.

Unusual Publications, Greenville: 1986, 457 pgs.

Summary: A clear, well-researched and documented history of Fundamentalism from the perspective of a scholarly separatist at Bob Jones University. The basic argument is that nonconformist Fundamentalism (1857-1920) progressed into separatist Fundamentalism (1920s to present) as the true Fundamentalists discovered that “a full-orbed holiness includes both personal and ecclesiastical aspects” (6). Thus the best Christians are separatists and the suspect Christians are New Evangelicals, Neo-fundamentalist, and Broad Evangelicals. There is a tentative admittance in a footnote that godliness exists among a category of conservative Christians that are neither Fundamentalist nor New Evangelicals (270) but who strictly maintain a confessional position through a doctrinal statement and denominational associations.

In Pursuit of Purity has the only academic introduction to the Free Presbyterians of Northern Ireland of which I am aware and contains a large amount original research from primary sources on the development of Dispensationalism in the United States and its relationship to separatist Fundamentalism. There is also a chapter on the Canadian Baptist Shields’ attempt to turn Des Moines University into a Fundamentalist Bible College and the resulting riot.

Christians speak much of the armor of God: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:13-15). The armor of  God prepares us “to withstand in the evil day” (v. 13) and  “extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (v. 16).

Yet Christians forget that the Bible teaches that Satan has “armor in which he trusted” (Luke 11:22). Satan has a faith or a system of beliefs which protects from God. And he shares these beliefs with his spiritual children. Satan’s defense mechanisms range from bold proclamation of atheism (Psalm 10:4), to magical spells (Isa. 47:9), to misinterpreting the Bible for a sinful earthly advantage (Mark 10:7-13) and self-righteousness (Luke 18:10-13) before God. For his followers, for instance the Pharisees, it includes spiritual disciplines like prayer (Matt. 6:5) and fasting (v. 16), and reading and applying the Bible (Mark 12:24; Matt. 9:13).

The belt of lies, the breastplate of wickedness, shield of disbelief, and a heart of stone all defend Satan and his followers from comprehending their doom and repenting. Satan’s armor functions as an explanation of spiritual and earthly events that defends against the witness of nature, the conscience, the Spirit, and God’s Word.

Bethany House Publishers, 2012, pgs. 220

Allow me to give a thumbnail sketch of an historical event, and then I’ll pull in some dates and names, and spin the whole thing about to a review of Dr. Mohler’s The Conviction to Lead.

There once was a reasonably sophisticated politician with some decidedly mediocre theology. He was a decent man who gave popular speeches that moved the masses. He recognized that the political and cultural elite were leading the people away from the wholesome traditions of the past. He began to poke about and discovered part of the intellectual source of the decline. It was a combination of English Epicureanism and a German philosopher. And so in all earnestness he began the public battle.

He bloodied his enemies enough through citation and critique that they took notice of him. Two in particular plotted against him—a lawyer and newspaperman. The lawyer had defended two rich wastrels who had read the German philosopher and murdered a youth in response. The newspaperman had written extensively on English Epicureanism and translated the German philosopher as well as wrote the first American introduction to his canon.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publising Company, 1923, 189 pgs.

Summary: Dr. Machen’s (1881-1937) trenchant review of Christian liberalism and a defense of historical orthodoxy written in 1923. Machen was born and buried in Baltimore. His grave is at Greenmount Cemetery.

Liberalism as a theological construct is an attempt to split the difference between the religion revealed in the Bible and modern Epicurean or materialistic interpretations of nature. Machen taught that liberalism was simply not “the faith once handed down to the saints.”

“The liberal preacher is really rejecting the whole basis of Christianity, which is a religion founded not on aspirations, but on facts. Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity—liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood, while Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God” (47).

Christian Focus Publications, 2011, 127 pgs.

Summary: Four chapters originally delivered as lectures by Professor Trueman at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales in 2000. He lays out the importance of Luther’s theological insight at the Reformation and its relevance for today. Trueman is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Trueman argues that Luther brought Jesus Christ back into the center of theological discussion by recognizing that Roman Catholic theology was “cheapening God’s grace, trivializing sin and misleading the laity” (20). Further, “[c]orrupt belief and corrupt practice went hand-in-hand, and one could not be reformed without the reformation of the other” (21).

The lesson that the modern church must recognize is that the flesh is constantly attempting to drag good and even wicked things into the center of our doctrine and practice. The process of “cheapening God’s grace” and “trivializing sin” is a constant battle and not merely a onetime event. To overcome the pull of bad doctrine and practice, we must return to Paul, and Luther’s, theology of the cross that places Christ in the center.

P and R Publishing, 2003, 189 pgs.

Summary: A careful overview of popular Christian means for discerning the will of God and an accurate focus on wisdom and individual responsibility over and against personal revelation through fleeces, signs, emotions, or personal words from God.

Decisions is basically a summary of Garry Friesen’s work, Decision Making and the Will of God. It’s less academic and more accessible and theologically coherent.

Benefits/Detriments: The tone leaves a bit to be desired, but the content is edifying. Decisions should help anyone considering a future spouse, college, job change, or when to retire.

Recommended for all.  On the bookstall.

"But neither to the good angels do these things, except as far as God commands, nor do the evil ones do them wrongfully, except as far as He righteously permits. For the malignity of the wicked one makes his own will wrongful; but the power to do so, he receives rightfully, whether for his own punishment, or, in the case of others, for the punishment of the wicked, or for the praise of the good." Augustine, On the Trinity, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), pg 61, 3.8.13.

If God punishes willing sin with sin and purifies the saved through suffering, God is then just in empowering and maintaining the conditions whereby sin can exist so that willing sin can be punished and the saved purified. In both the case of the sinner and the righteous something good is happening, because the wicked are being punished by sinning and the righteous are purified by being sinned against.

God’s justice requires that he only empower or maintain that which is good and empowering sinners to sin is their punishment and is therefore just. By empowering we (Augustine and I) don’t mean direct action but energizing or maintaining the conditions whereby Satan or a wicked person can act. God establishes the good by grace (unmerited Divine intervention for good) and allows evil by withdrawing grace. God softens the heart with grace and justly hardens the heart by withdrawing grace.

Content from 1908, E-Book

Summary: An intelligent review and summary of Nietzsche’s canon, by the autodidact, debunker, and newspaperman H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). Fredrick Nietzsche (1844-1900) is the father of the most popular form of nihilism. His adherents include the likes of Adolf Hitler and David Brookes, and he has influenced everyone from Heidegger to Leo Strauss. The book includes a dated but accessible biography and history of Nietzsche’s work. Mencken’s purpose in writing the book was not as an academic review but to offer nihilism as a way of life for his readers.

According to Mencken and Nietzsche (1844-1900), human beings are driven by the “ever-dominant and only inherent impulse in all living beings, including man, . . the will to remain alive—the will, that is to attain power over those forces which make life difficult or impossible” (Loc. 42-44).

There are essentially two strategies for remaining alive; the first is as a collective parasite on the powerful and the second is as the powerful. The parasites function as those who limit the powerful from enjoying all that their intrinsic powers will allow. The parasites must have social order, morality, and peace to live; but they maintain this peace by subjecting the great and the great’s impulse to obtain power.

Brazo Press, 2013.

Summary: A consideration of video games within a loose framework of the Reformed understanding of general grace and creation modified by a post-modern strain of epistemological humility/coolness/antinomianism.

The book is likely best summarized by Schut’s: “So, taking all the stuff we’ve just discussed, here’s what I think” (67). “But to my way of thinking. . .” (122). “I get the feeling from some Christian reviews and essays that there can only be one right way for a follower of Christ to think about an issue. I’m not at all convinced this is the case when we talk about something like, say, gender in video games. In any case, even if there is a right and wrong interpretation of a video game, I believe strongly in the notion of grace—if we get something wrong, it is covered” (176).

In other words, Dr. Schut’s understanding of theology allows him to play games along these lines: “The chain-mail bikini is very revealing. In Fantasy RPG artwork, a shapely woman warrior stereotypically wears her armor like a beer commercial model. She either leaves her glorious torso exposed to slashing swords of enemies. . .(see the unavoidable image on p. 94)—or wears a skintight, suffocating suit of armor. . . (93)

Mentor Books, 1953, 213 pgs.

Summary: Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) is billed by the cover as “one of the twentieth century’s greatest men.” He was brilliant. His accomplishments in interpreting Bach, the construction and preservations of pipe organs, theological publications, and as a medical philanthropist in Africa are extraordinary. Much of this is traced in Out of My Life and Thought.

Schweitzer had realized that modern liberalism or the emerging Post-Enlightenment thought destroyed the possibility for positive culture. The driving impetus of his philosophy was first to be nice and second to give other people a reason to be nice. Corporate niceness allowed for the possibility of an environment where Bach, Mozart, philosophy, architecture, and human health could be appreciated and preserved. Positive culture was the social space necessary for Schweitzer and his friends to enjoy the finer things. Schweitzer was also rather fond of Jesus, not so fond as to suggest that Jesus was God, but at least a likeable and important teacher (48).

Yet having accepted that the Bible can’t be true in the details, Schweitzer could find no universal platform to build culture. The other great teachers—Confucius, the Brahmans, the Stoics couldn’t be really true either because their teaching was culturally bound and therefore not universal: but then he had an epiphany:

The University of Chicago Press, 1969, 117 pgs.

Summary: Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) was a French physicist and developer of the history of the philosophy of science. He was also a strong Roman Catholic and a humbling thorn in the flesh for his contemporaries in the French academy. Apparently, he delighted in piquing them.

The common historical narrative is that Galileo was an enlightened scientist who was censored and cowed by the bigoted and reactionary Catholic Church. There is of course some truth to the myth or it wouldn’t have stuck. Galileo was a brilliant scientist and the Catholic Church was often bigoted and reactionary, but. . . and it’s a significant conjunction, Galileo (1564-1642) and his cohorts were making some claims about natural philosophy or science that were irrational, and Bellarmine (1542-1621), other Catholics, and Osiander (a mostly Protestant—c.1496-1552) attempted to correct their unreasonableness.

The basic issue is that the Greek philosophers had “proved” there were two forms of physics—earthly and celestial. The celestial sphere was unchanging and the earthly sphere allowed for change and flux. While the rules that governed these two physics were analogues, they operated differently. Plato’s system was the most rigid, but Aristotle’s was similar. This philosophical doctrine cohered to Christian theology, because the Bible clearly teaches a difference between heaven and earth. Greek physics was then modified and incorporated into Christian hermeneutics and theology with little or no ado for about a thousand years (cf. review of the Lewis’ Discarded Image).  Aristotle would not have claimed and likely barely recognized the system that developed.

Paternoster, 2007, 183 pgs.

Summary: Oliver D. Crisp, a former student of Paul Helm and now professor at Fuller Seminary, has written a philosophical/theological consideration and critique of Shedd’s views on salvation and sin. The book is especially focused on his Augustinian realism as it relates to ensoulment, the atonement, and salvation.

Shedd was a convinced realist of the Augustinian school rather than a federalist like many other Reformed theologians. Thus, he understood 1 Corinthians 15:22 “in Adam all die” to mean that all of humanity was in some real way in Adam at the fall. He defends this view on the ground that to be human is to be related to Adam in both body and soul. Shedd’s convictions led him to all sorts of interesting outcomes within the general framework of Reformed orthodoxy.

Crisp’s main concern is to bridge Shedd’s work to the contemporary philosophical/theological conversation by teasing out the possible logical contradictions, creating modern defenses of Shedd’s thought, and suggesting avenues of use in a modern context. Crisp is sympathetic to many of Shedd’s theological outcomes and has done yeoman’s work in turning up the weakness in his arguments and bolstering some of the best of Shedd’s insights.

Kregel, 2011, 201 pgs.

Summary: A historical tracing of the prosperity “gospel” from European mystic Swedenborg (1688-1772) up to the current day. The authors then move to a theological analysis of modern proponents like T. D. Jakes, Joyce Meyers, and the ubiquitous Osteen. They conclude with a theological discussion of what the Bible teaches on health, wealth, prosperity, and giving.

Benefits/Detriments: It might be too academic for the bulk of those attracted to prosperity teaching, but an extremely helpful overview.

Recommended for all, but likely most helpful for pastors and those who are well read.

Pandora Press, 2000, 277 pgs.

Summary: Stuart Murray (1956-  ) is an Anabaptist theologian who has been a church planter and a director of  Spurgeon’s College church-planting program in London. He has a PhD in Anabaptist hermeneutics.

Biblical Interpretation is my favorite sort of book. It’s historically grounded but presents the argument that the past may serve to assist if not correct the present. The author is at his strongest when he is describing and analyzing the historical Anabaptist interpretation methods with one exception to be noted below. His use of Anabaptist sources is a fascinating consideration of the general attributes of Anabaptist hermeneutics in response to Roman Catholic and Reformed polemics from about 1515 to the mid-1600s.

Much of Murray’s arguments about the contours of Anabaptist hermeneutics can be collapsed into the fact that the Anabaptists he embraces (i.e. the non-violent ones) took a first thought reading of the Sermon on the Mount and made it their fundamental method for understanding the life of Jesus and the rest of the Bible (74). Some Anabaptist even lacked the Old Testament to assist them in understanding Jesus’ historical context (109).

• Augustine, Harmony of Luke -- Somewhat helpful. Recommended if interested in Augustine.
• John Calvin, Harmony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- Calvin is too prone to assume a single theological referent for a historical event in all three of the gospels instead of allowing for multiple referents using the same event. Otherwise very helpful. Recommended.
• John Gill, Mathew to John -- Very helpful development of Jewish background from primary sources. See above on Calvin. Recommended.
• Walter L. Liefeld, The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Luke -- Some very helpful insights. Recommended.
• I. Howard Marshall, The Gospel of Luke (NIGTC) -- Basically orthodox but too prone to assume higher criticism. Some good work in the Greek.
• J. C. Ryle, Luke -- Highly recommended for all.
  

1952, The English Universities Press, Ltd., 188 pgs.

Summary: A brief, unflattering and unsympathetic overview of Wycliffe’s history and doctrine and the Lollards. As an example of his analysis:

The feverish but ill-directed activity of the last half-decade of [Wycliffe’s] life, the confident assumption of infallibility in the face of diminishing support, the bad tactical judgment that robbed him of even minor success may all be accounted for as symptoms of that high blood-pressure from which he died (72-73).

Benefits/Detriments: My mind is divided as to whether the book should be considered Catholic or Epicurean propaganda.

Interesting only in its brevity, general historical accuracy of the dates and persons, and information on the Oldcastle rising or Lollard Rebellion of 1414. (Oldcastle was likely Shakespeare’s model for Falstaff, but McFarlane doesn’t mention this.)

Utterly devoid of humor, human interest, or sympathy for anyone not burning heretics.

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963, pgs. 206.

Summary: Karl Barth (1886-1968) made a stringent effort to pull Christianity out of the liberal malaise caused by theological compromise with the Enlightenment tradition. The book contains a series of lectures given by Barth at the close of his academic life in Basel and then in the United States.

The book is divided up into four sections: the place of theology, theological existence, the threat to theology, and theological work. Each section is then subdivided into four chapters. It’s tightly organized and intentionally vague in some places while narrowly focused and defined at others.

Barth has recognized the dangers of Christians compromising with Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment (a.k.a. post-modernism) thought. The way he escapes the conclusions and corrosive effect of modernity is by grounding his theology in the existential experience of the theologian through the Spirit and the Word.

Crossway, 2012, 142 pgs.

Summary: Leeman makes the biblical argument that local congregations are embassies and gathering spots of the kingdom of heaven (Eph. 2:19; 6:18-20; 2 Cor. 5:20; Phil. 3:20). Thus, for the Christian church membership is not a voluntary association, because we are commanded to be a part of the local church by our Lord.

As representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church has the responsibility to identify Christians and assist them in obeying the laws of the kingdom. The order of the church, who is recognized as a representative of Christ, and how Christians submit to the church are all carefully defined and explained from the Bible.

Penguin Books, 2005, 304 pgs.

Summary: An extended Christian critique of the secular forms of the code chivalry through a popular fable written in about 1200 AD.  The knights of King Arthur’s Round Table are joined by Lancelot’s illegitimate son Galahad and set out on the quest for the holy grail. The story follows Lancelot’s discovery that he is not a true knight of Jesus Christ but rather a servant of the devil because of his mortal sin with Guinevere. It chronicles his conviction, repentance, and restoration to the faith.

The three knights who discover the grail are Galahad, Perceval, and Bors. Galahad serves as the holy foil to Lancelot in the quest. All the strange adventures and visions of the knights are interpreted by monks, priests, and an angel. The adventure is a spiritual journey, so the fisticuffs and jousts are minimal.

Perhaps the most edifying quote in the books occurs in an exchange between Galahad and Lancelot:

Lancelot said, ‘Son, since it is for ever that I leave you, do you beseech the Master in my name not to let me quit His service, but so to keep me close that I may be His servant in this life and the next.’ And Galahad answered him: ‘Sir, there is no prayer so efficacious as your own. Be therefore mindful of yourself’ (259).

The folk wisdom proverb, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” requires us first to identify the difference between the baby and the bathwater. So let’s begin by considering how to separate the baby and bathwater in childrearing books.

Every book I mentioned has some really helpful things: Tedd Tripp’s aiming for the heart in discipline is manna from heaven; Baby Wise teaches that infants need a structure besides their wants, MacArthur and Beeke’s commonsense applications are often helpful. The problem is placing their wisdom into your situation and recognizing the limits of their suggestions and interpretation.

The Bathwater in Shepherding a Child’s Heart

Let’s start with an example from Tedd Tripp under his terrible-sounding category of emotional privation. As far as I can ascertain, “emotional privation” is the isolation and temporary withdraw of communication, fellowship, and comfort by an authority figure until repentance occurs. Tripp describes it in a family this way:

[The parents] place their misbehaving daughter in a chair alone in the middle of the living room for a specified period of time. As long as the child is being punished in the chair, no one in the family may speak to her or have any contact with her. She is isolated from the family. . . This approach is not only cruel, but ineffective in addressing the heart biblically. This young girl is not learning to understand her behavior biblically. . . . What she is learning is to avoid the emotional privation of being on the chair. Her heart is being trained, but not to know and love God. She is being trained to respond to the crippling fear of emotional privation (65).

One of the sticks that Christians tend to whack each other with is the biblical club. One group of Christians defines their understanding of parenting as biblical parenting. By necessity then, everyone who disagrees with them is practicing “un-biblical” parenting. Rhetorically this tends to work out in language that denigrates anything anyone tries that does not agree with the biblical “principles” discovered or promoted by so and so. Perhaps, you thought rewarding your children for good behavior was similar to God rewarding his people? Depends on who you ask. One author might call that bribery or manipulation. Another might call it godly wisdom.

Mind the Gap in Charity

Part of the problem arises from two sorts of being “unbiblical”: The first way is that the Bible must be bridged from its original language and situation to our context.  We don’t speak Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. We don’t live in Corinth or Bethlehem. Our language, cultural patterns, habits of mind and so forth are not identical to the original writers or recipients of the Bible. Modesty in Corinth in about 60 A.D. has overlap with Baltimore in 2012, but they are not identical. I am unbiblical in that I am wearing kakis rather than a toga, but biblical in that I am attempting to please God.

Let me illustrate this from yesterday and today: Richard Baxter (1615-1691) saw the susceptibility to sin in terms of body temperature. We tend to see susceptibility in terms of genetic predispositions. In as much as neither Baxter nor we use the current thought patterns to excuse sin or violate the Bible, we aren’t sinning. Yet we are both thinking and applying God’s words using thought patterns that are somewhat foreign to the Bible and to situations to a degree different then found in the biblical record.

The “unbiblical” nature of application means that we all must have the proper humility when speaking to other Christians about applications of Scripture. Applications can’t be as normative as God’s Word unless the biblical situation and current application are identical.  Biblical principles on child rearing can never become the Bible.

Vol. 2, 2nd ed., Baker Books, 2006, 537 pgs.

Summary: A carefully researched overview of the development of the doctrine of Scripture within the Reformation and through the Orthodox era.

The Reformers by grounding their theological system within Scripture alone were completing and formalizing the exegetical insights of men like Andrew of St. Victor (d. 1175) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The insistence on Scripture alone also created a more precise definition of inspiration and more carefully fencing of the canon. The men who completed the codification of inspiration within Protestant doctrinal statements were the Reformed Orthodox.

The Orthodox’s task was polemical—against the Socinians, Catholics, and Anabaptist—and churchly within their own communions. This led to the careful development of the following hermeneutic in general agreement with the Reformers:

[A] fundamental emphasis on the unitary character of the literal sense, the recognition of allegorical or tropological meanings only when they belong to literal intention of the passage itself, and the control of typology by means of the hermeneutic of promise and fulfillment . . .(521).

Most of the modern parenting books that I’ve come across have at least a tone of anxiousness if not hysteria. Many of the Christian parents I’ve meet are anxious as well—and that includes me in my worst moments. The general consensus of modern writers is that things are getting worse in the church and in the wider culture.

The fear and trembling may have some legitimacy: a bunch of historical events including technology, secularism, and capitalism, means that godly folk wisdom and beneficial cultural structures have faded away while at the same time our exposures to possible “wisdoms” has increased. So instead of just attempting to correct the mistakes and sins of our parents and potentially our childhood pastor and follow them in what was godly, we must analyze and respond to Rousseau, Dr. Spock, Oprah, Gothard, Trip, MacArthur, and Plowman. Modernity has dislocated us. Capitalism has created the childrearing juggernaut of books and videos, and we are suddenly having serious conversations about “nipple confusion” among infants and facing the fact that spanking is now illegal in places.  It is scary and it seems unmanageable.

The second grounds for fear is that we are responsible to teach our children the gospel, to do our best to make sure they survive childhood, and to train them to become productive citizens. It’s a big and scary job.

And this brings us to the sin issue: part of our fear and trembling is over the fact that we don’t trust God and we aren’t listening to him. God’s word says in Ecclesiastes 7:10, “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.” Modern life has its problems, but fundamentally it’s no worse or no better than the past. There were and are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Several weeks ago, I went into a good Christian book store—in fact one of the most trustworthy that I am aware of in the nation—and I asked for their best books on parenting. Here’s what I got.

• Ginger Plowman, “Don’t Make Me Count to Three!” A Mom’s Look at Heart-Oriented Discipline
• John MacArthur, What the Bible Says about Parenting: God’s Plan for Rearing Your Child
• Bruce A. Ray, Withhold Not Correction
• Joel R. Beeke, Parenting by God’s Promises: How to Raise Children in the Covenant of Grace
• C. H. Spurgeon, Spiritual Parenting—Updated Edition

And they recommended, but I already had:

• Tedd Trip, Shepherding a Child’s Heart
• Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson, Give Them Grace
• J. C. Ryle, The Duties of Parents

All of these books are by Christians. I expect to see every one of the authors in glory and perhaps all of them are or were more productive servants of Christ than I will ever be. Several of them say things that I find wrongheaded and a few mishandle God’s Word badly. For the rest of this series when material is quoted, I will often not give a citation; the point of this blog is not beat anyone up. But I do want us to think carefully about what is being taught in these books.

An Adventure in Parenting by Christians Books

Let me begin with a testimony. Prior to becoming a parent, I had read two parenting books: On Becoming Baby Wise and Shepherding a Child’s Heart. They were both popular 11 years ago when Kimberly, my wife, was pregnant with our first child.

Penguin Books, 1999, 155 pgs.

Summary: Written by the Christian Boethius (c. 480-524) just before his execution by bludgeoning. It is a mix of prose and poems in a dialogue between Lady Philosophy and himself about free will, the sovereignty of God, Fortune, sanctification, and the role of reason in theology.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Boethius’ writings on philosophy, logic, and Plato and Aristotle to Medieval and early Renaissance theology and philosophy. He clearly articulates the medieval belief that the world was round and almost infinitely small in comparison to the universe (41, II.vii) and takes an Augustinian stance on the freedom of the will (118).

Benefits/Detriments: Often times both Christians and scholars in general step in to a conversation that’s been going for a long time without going back and carefully reviewing how the conversation has unfolded. In the same way that a group of friends might laugh at someone mentioning “the Dairy Zone,” because of a shared experience, so the study of theology and philosophy have a developed vocabulary and history. Boethius is one of the key components of the later conversation in the Reformation and modernity, and he needs to be read to fully participate in the conversation. He helps us understand why Machiavelli’s Prince is so blatantly anti-Christian and to grasp the significance of Reepicheep’s comments to Eustace about the wheel of Fortune in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

B & H Publishing, 2010, 207 pgs.

Summary: Written in response to Mark Noll’s Is the Reformation Over? Reeves responds with a careful and often witty assessment of the history and theology of the Reformation. He begins with medieval theology, and works through Luther, Zwingli and the radical Reformation, Calvin, and the Puritans. He includes a helpful critique of Puritan introspection and how it can lead away from Christ.

Near the end of the book he writes:

The closer one looks, the clearer it becomes: the Reformation was not, principally, a negative movement, about moving away from Rome; it was a positive movement, about moving towards the gospel. . .Unfortunately for us moderns, obsessed with innovation, that means we cannot simply enrol the Reformation into the cause of ‘progress’. For, if anything, the Reformers were not after progress but regress: they were never mesmerized by novelty as we are, nor impatient of what was old, just because it was old; instead, their intent was to unearth original, old Christianity, a Christianity that had been buried under centuries of human tradition. That, though, is what preserves the validity of the Reformation for today. . .[because] as a programme to move ever closer to the gospel, it cannot be [over]” (190).

Recommended for all, but especially for high school students and home schoolers as a introduction to historical theology.

Wm. B. Eerdmmans Publishing Company, 1965, 300 pgs.

Summary: A theologically sound exposition of Scripture on spiritual depression and how to cure it. Spiritual depression is defined as not rejoicing always in the Lord (Phil. 4:2). This malaise leads to two basic issues for the church; the first is that it reduces the glory of God in the individual Christian’s life, and it undermines Christian witness to the world. Or as Llyod-Jones puts it:

Christian people too often seem to be perpetually in the doldrums and too often give this appearance of unhappiness and of lack of freedom and of absence of joy. There is no question at all but that this is the main reason why large numbers of people have ceased to be interested in Christianity (12).

The causes spiritual depression are discussed in individual chapters: false teachings, sin, vain regrets, fear of the future, feelings, weariness in well doing, trials, and the like. The final chapter concludes with “the final cure,” which is understanding what “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 4:13) means:“‘That is it,’ says Paul, ‘and therefore I am able for all things through the One who is constantly infusing strength into me.’ That, then, is the prescription” (300).

Highly recommended for all.

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980, 484 pgs.

Summary: A brilliant overview and critique of the philosophical description of hermeneutics from Heidegger (cf. review s.v.), Gadamer (1900-2002), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Thiselton includes brief overviews of Kant and the secondary writers that influenced the authors. He also reviews the work of the major interpreters—critical and admiring—with a close summary and critique of Bultmann (1884-1976) as the most public synthesizer of Heidegger’s thought.  The theologian Panneberg (1928-  ) tends to reside in the background providing Thiselton his epistemological foundation. Thiselton then argues for the acceptance of portions of Heidegger and Wittgenstein’s insights as corrected by Panneneberg, Gadamer, and others as a part of New Testament hermeneutics.

From Heidegger he draws the recognition that the writers of the Bible had different horizons from ours and that we must be aware of the horizons or pre-understandings and the authors’ as we approach the text. Panneneberg’s insight that the part cannot be known separately from the whole allows Thiselton to avoid the passive relativism of Heidegger. He clearly finds Wittgenstein’s descriptions more useful in Christian hermeneutics than Heidegger.

Sam Torode Books Arts, reprint, n.d.; 1933, 110 pgs.

Summary: A brief biography of Thomas Aquinas and overview of his philosophy, written by a Roman Catholic apologist and critic of modernity G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936).

In Chesterton’s view there are two enemies facing his readers: modernism and the “old Augustinian Puritanism” (1). Augustinianism as understood and taught by Luther “in a very real sense made the modern world” (109). Thus modernism and Augustinianism are collapsed into a single problem including the Manicheans (106), Buddhists, and Nihilists.  Both modernism and Protestantism/Plato can only be cured by returning to the common sense position of Thomas who baptized Aristotle. The problem with Augustine is that he essentially creates two realities: the one that can be seen and the one that is thought or believed. Thomas’ common sense grounds epistemology in the five senses and the intrinsic goodness of God’s creation including the goodness of the human intellect, will, and affections and then works towards God through logic thus unifying reality. Creation used correctly leads to salvation, because there is no absolute division between God and man. The only thing that keeps people from submitting to Thomas’ arguments is a lack of time to consider the arguments carefully. Religion is then necessitated by the lack of leisure for most people and the ignorance of the masses.

Bowes and Bowes, 1957, 128 pgs.

Summary: A brief and devastating critique of the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and existentialism in general. Heidegger somehow managed to be an unrepentant Nazi and the philosopher of post-modernity. His early training was as a Catholic and his dissertation was on the medieval scholastic Duns Scotus.

Dr. Grene thoroughly and competently shows in what sense he asks and answers some important perennial questions about human existence or existential experience, and how he fails completely to do anything significant in ontology. His greatest contribution seems to be located in taking Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism and attempting to make it an atheist system.

Heidegger defines the human experience as: “facticity; being-always-already-in –a-world; existentiality: being always in advance of itself in essential relation to its own possibilities; forfeitures: distraction by the insistent claims of everyday moods and everyday interests and everyday companions, are the essential aspects of human being. But the three aspects are not separable. They form, as we have seen, one unified structure. It is to this single, indissoluble nature that Heidegger gives the name Sorge, cura, concern or care” (26).

• Raymond Brown, The Message Deuteronomy (BST) -- Edifying.
• Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (NICOT) -- Served as the grammatical-historical backbone of my Deuteronomy series.
• Martin Luther, Lectures on Deuteronomy -- Offers some interesting insights; Luther is always refreshing.
  
• J. Gary Millar, Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics Deuteronomy (NSBT) -- Very academic in outlook, but with some helpful insights as to how to bridge the text to a modern audience.
• Edward J. Woods, Deuteronomy (TOTC) -- Useful, but badly organized for reference.
• Telford Work, Deuteronomy-Brazo Theological Commentary -- Mildly bizarre and experimental, perhaps neo-orthodox in outlook; it was sent to me by accident by Baker books. Some edifying comments.
• Christopher Wright, Deuteronomy (NIBC) -- Edifying.

Cambridge Publishing, 1964, 231 pgs.

Summary: Lewis gave a series of lectures at Oxford on the cosmological model or the understanding of reality as it was generally understood in the Medieval and Renaissance period. The textual source of the model was the Bible and classical sources synthesized into a single mostly non-contradictory system. Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the others all participated in building the model through the writings of men like Pseudo-Dionysius (c. 500) and Boethius (c. 480-524). Lewis defends the later two as Christian writers.

It must be stressed that the model is not anthropocentric or even Terra centric if correctly understood. Instead the model was “anthropoperipheral.” “Earth is in fact the ‘offsourings of creation’, the cosmic dust-bin” (63). The weighty and the gross, the dross, descends to the center: in the intelligible universe, “the Earth is the rim, the outside edge where being falls on the border of nonentity (116). The earth was widely understood as round and insignificant “as a mathematical point—puncti habere rationem” (83) through the work of Boethius.

Love in English is flexible. As a noun it can refer to a tennis score, several positive sexual meanings, a beloved, and a positive emotion towards some object. The verb form is much the same. There is also a host of synonyms and near synonyms for love that share the general meaning or have a degree of overlap: charity, delight, affection, loyalty, fondness, devotion, attraction, and so forth. It’s much the same in the Greek text of the Bible; both the Septuagint and the New Testament use a variety of words with a range of meaning limited by the context to express the idea of love. The basic issue is that love is a positive emotion towards something.

Sometimes among Christians, we conceptualize love with the Greek terms of agape (self-giving love), philia (friend love), and eros (sexual love). These may be somewhat helpful distinctions in conversations with other Christians, but it breaks down very quickly in doctrine, practice, and meaning. From a merely lexical perspective, John uses the Greek agape love and philia love to describe God the Father’s love for Jesus (John 3:35; John 5:20): the intended meaning of both agape and philia is identical. Paul requires that self-giving among married couples include erotic love (1 Cor. 7:2-3), but eros does not appear in the Septuagint or the New Testament. Further, we find agape love for both Christian and non-Christian love for instance in Luke 6:32, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” Love is then varied and diverse. Stand alone Greek words representing Christian or non-Christian love are no help to us, because love must be enframed.

Having cleared away the issue of Christian talk about love, we must now deal with the issue of the human experience of love.  We can love something for use—a good steak which is destroyed by love; we can love something for enjoyment without diminishing it, but with benefits to us—Bach’s Oboe Concerto in D minor, a sunset, God.  And then there is a love of enjoyment and use combined together—drawing out the beauty of wood grain on a board for a table top and the physical changes and threats attendant to carrying, delivering, and nurturing a child. The wood and our spouse, and ourselves are transformed—increased and decreased—by love.

in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: the Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, vol. 1, 2nd ed.

Baker Books, 2006, 463 pgs.

Summary: An analysis of the Protestant Scholastic prolegomena in Reformed dogmatics. Muller traces the interaction between the medieval sources (Lombard, Thomas, Duns Scotus, Henry of Ghent, etc.), the first generation of Reformers (i.e. Luther, Bullinger, Zwingli, Calvin) and the scholastics Protestants (Ames, Turretin, Owen, Heidegger, etc.).

His basic argument is that scholasticism is a method of developing and teaching a theological system appropriate for the schools. The Reformers, many of whom were scholasticly trained, were forced by polemical and practical necessity to develop theological systems and schools designed for creating and maintaining the Protestant movement. The next generation of the reformed then developed theological systems that were designed to maintain reformed churches through academic training and analysis. The second generation became the Protestant scholastics or the Reformed orthodox. Conceptually both the Reformers and the reformed scholastics were drawing on the theological tradition of the Middle Ages with its rich theological and biblical reflection.

Oxford University Press, 236 pgs.

Summary: Pelagius’ verse by verse commentary on Romans.

Fundamentally, Pelagius reads the text as if there is no original sin or inherited sin from Adam. The Fall caused no internal change to humanity. Each person is born innocent and sins only as they gain the habit of sin from following the example others. When Paul speaks of a sin nature or the flesh as in Romans 8, Pelagius reads the habit of sin. Neither creation nor humanity has been fundamentally corrupted or changed by the Fall. The “creation groaning” in Romans 8 refers to the angels mourning the humans’ misuse of their will to do ill.

Each decision by a human being must be free in the sense of no prior proclivity to sin. Even the habit of sin can be broken by the free will alone. Pelagius is of two minds as to if all have sinned. He makes statements that allow if not require that some have not sinned or have overcome sin on their own, but he also speaks of the universal need for salvation. Sin creates a debt that must be paid, and Christ has paid that debt. Baptism washes away the debt that occurred through sins prior to baptism, but then the forgiven and baptized sinner must begin to merit his salvation and follow Christ’s example perfectly. Justification or salvation is a process that begins at baptism, but must be maintained by good works.

1996, 342 pgs.

Summary: Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) was a former Augustinian monk and contemporary of John Calvin who joined the Reformed after careful study of the Bible. He taught at Oxford, Strasburg, and Zurich. He like Luther had received the scholastic training of the day.

This work is a compilation of his comments on locus classicus from his commentaries on the Bible and his lectures on “philosophical” topics—free will, natural religion, philosophy and the theology, revelation, and etc.

Exemplar Quotes:

“So it seems that philosophy should be defined as a capacity given by God to human minds, developed through effort and exercise, by which all existing things perceived as surely and logically as possible, to enable us to attain happiness” (7).

Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008, 235 pgs.

Summary: Muller argues that the Reformed scholastics were not rationalists and did not organize their doctrine around a central doctrine, such as predestination. Further, he shows the continuity and discontinuity between Calvin and the third and fourth generation Reformers.

The essential history of Reformed thought begins with the response of Luther to the sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church via his interpretation of Paul. Paul placed Christ at the very center of salvation and history. Luther and the Reformers concluded that the “medieval system was christocentric only in a formal sense” (73). Christ merited the grace, but God as the first mover and the Church bestowed the grace through the sacraments ex opera operato. Christ as the current mediator and the meeting place of God and man was severely compromised by the Church’s view of itself as the mediator and dispenser of grace. The recipient of sacramental grace must not hinder the work of God and the Church, but faith in Christ was secondary. Christ’s merit was further eroded by the addition the saints’ merit to the process of salvation and sanctification.

Grace and Truth Books, n.d., 34 pgs.

Summary: Ryle teaches that parenting is about Christians fulfilling their duty to God and their children by raising them in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Because wisdom is a learned skill about applying the word of God to particular situations (cf. Prov. 26:4-5), Ryle provides general guidelines within a biblical framework:

“As to the best way of punishing a child, no general rule can be laid down. The characters of children are so exceedingly different, that what would be severe punishment to one child, would be no punishment at all to another. . . .Doubtless some parents use bodily correction far too much, and far too violently; but many others, I fear, use it far too little” (24).

Benefits/Determents: An incredible helpful reminder that childrearing is about wisdom and not about following a list of quasi-biblical principles as additions to God’s moral law.

Baker Book House Company, 1991, 309 pgs.

Summary: A scholarly assessment of the development of Arminius’ theology. Muller’s basic argument is that Arminius is part of the third wave of Protestant theologians who attempted to systematize the earlier exegesis of Scripture by the first wave of the Reformers. In so doing, Arminius attempts to appropriate medieval scholastic and Jesuit tools in vocabulary and theological distinctions to help explain some of the inherent theological tension in theology. His greatest difference with his Reformed counterparts was not biblicism or scholasticism but how he understands God’s being and psychology and God’s relationship to creation.

Arminius adopts and modifies Thomas of Aquinas’ (1225-1274) understanding of the sovereignty of God in his relation to creation using his own modification of the doctrine of middle knowledge, which was developed and embraced by the Jesuits. Arminius’ hybrid theology teaches that God limits himself by his relationship to the order of creation so that God’s actions are contingent on the foreseen decisions of human beings. Thus God and creation are in a mutually reciprocal relationship and to a degree God’s actions are determined by human actions (cf. 135, 165). Arminius also defines the grace of salvation and the grace of creation in such a way as to require that the grace of salvation be universal in nature though limited by human freedom. Because Arminius’ theology allows for God and man to have a reciprocal relationship, Arminianism is more open to the materialistic rationalism of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophy (cf. 284-285).

Crossway, 2011, 213 pgs.

Summary: Mrs. Fitzpatrick and Thompson argue that most Christian parenting books and strategies tend to create moralistic Pharisees and angry rebels rather than Christians. The reason for this is our (meaning you, me, and our kid’s) tendency to trust in our own strength rather than God’s grace.

Instead of encouraging our children to rely on their own strength to please us and ultimately God, the authors suggest we speak candidly to them about God’s law and their inability to obey it from the heart and the need for God’s grace. They do this by considering parental guidance in five categories: management is teaching the basic rules of life (eat broccoli-don’t hit your brother) and outward conformity to God’s law; nurture (love them and show them how Christ loves them); train them (show them how Christ’s death resurrection answers the problem); correct them (in the context of Christ’s work); and remind them of God’s promises. All of this has to be done within a framework of gospel wisdom rather than moralism or guaranteed “biblical” principles.

John Lennon’s lyrics “All you need is love. Love is all you need,” are either the truest words ever penned or the most perverse. They are either criminally trivial or deeply profound. The significance of the lyrics is not found in the letters of the word love but by what is intended by love. And Lennon understood this to the degree that he rejected patriotism as love of a nation, tyranny as the love of detrimental power and embraced the love of non-violence and art. Even entertainers at least suspect that we are saved and we are damned by love.

Our salvation or reprobation and love are clearly linked in Scripture; “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:8).  He is not merely love and yet he is love. Further, man is created in the image of God and so in some sense man is love, though again not merely love. The great summary of the duty of man is to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor as ourself. We cannot move away from God without a love, and we cannot turn to God without love. Thus both theology proper (the study of God) and anthropology (the study of man) are dependent on what love is or is not. A definitional misstep on the issue of love damages both our worship and our ethics; the greater the error the less true our worship and the more confused and detrimental our relationships. False love when “fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15).

God is love, and because God is the greatest possible being (Heb. 6:13, 16-18), God must love perfectly: further God is “blessed forever” (Rom. 9:5, 2 Cor. 2:11), and so God has always loved and been fulfilled or blessed in that love “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). To love requires an object of love. The infinitely perfect object of God’s love is himself in the mutual admiration of the Trinity.  The Father loves and so begets the Son, the Son in turn loves the Father and both the Father and Son are conscious of this mutual love, leading to the spiration of the Holy Spirit.

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1972, 327 pgs.

Summary: A series of lectures on counterfeit miracles given in 1917 to 1918. The book is divided up into six chapters: the cessation of the charismata, patristic and mediaeval marvels, Roman Catholic miracles, Irvingite gifts (cf. review of The Life of Edward Irving), faith-healing, and mind cure.

Warfield’s basic argument is that with the passing of the apostles and those on whom the apostles laid their hands the charismata subsided in history. He believes that the purpose of the miraculous gifts was to confirm the truthfulness of the apostles’ gospel.  Once the apostolic message was written the the miracles ceased.

Or as Warfield notes with approval, “It is unreasonable to ask miracles, says John Calvin—or to find them—where there is no new gospel. By as much as the one gospel suffices for all lands and all peoples and all times, by so much does the miraculous attestation of that one single gospel suffice for all lands and all times, and no further miracles are to be expected in connection with it” (27).

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1982, 287 pgs.

Summary: A careful consideration and critique of Schleiermacher’s canon and theological system by Karl Barth (1886-1968), delivered as lectures in 1924.

The lectures are divided into two chapters: the first discussing the theology of Schleiermacher as a preacher, working particularly with his early sermons, Easter and Christmas sermons, and household sermons. The second chapter considers the content of Schleiermacher’s Encyclopedia, Hermeneutics, The Christian Faith, and The Speeches on Religion (cf. my review).

Schleiermacher’s basic goal and failure are described in this way by Barth: “The task that he set himself . . . was to demonstrate that heresy and heterodoxy are not the same thing and to indicate how much friendly agreement is possible within the space inhabited in common by the orthodox and the heterodox” (204). (Heresy is essentially defined by Schleiermacher as rejecting the feeling of absolute dependence on the infinite as germinated by Christ.)

Crossway, 2010, 125 pgs.

Summary: John Calvin’s former friend Sebastian Castellio (1515-1563) wrote, privately published, and circulated among Protestants a letter attacking Calvin’s articulation of the decrees of God. (Calvin divides God’s will into the revealed will of God and the secret will of God or the published and secret decrees [cf. Deut. 29:29]). The letter is rhetorically sophisticated and claims to summarize Calvin’s teachings into 14 articles drawn from his writings. Castellio, or the calumniator, then makes a show of defending Calvin and his careful theological distinctions before collapsing into accusing Calvin of erecting Satan as the God of the Bible (53), because God is the ultimate cause of evil.

Castellio sets the attitude and the framework of the later developments of Arminianism egalitarian love and libertarian free will. There is also the use of a “normal” hermeneutic used to shield Castellio’s  first premises: “When Christ taught divine thing he followed common sense. If common sense is taken away, then all the parables of Christ will be nullified, for we interpret these parables by means of common sense” (43).

Crossway, 2008, 160 pgs, $15.99.

Summary: One of the most brilliant-evangelical theologians in the United States writes of the life and efforts of his father, Tom Carson. Tom Carson for about fifteen years (1948-1963) struggled to pastor a small English speaking Baptist church while simultaneously working as a missionary to the French speaking population of Quebec. He then became a civil servant, but remained in French speaking Quebec to continue serving as a lay pastor. After mandatory retirement from the civil service, he again returned to fulltime ministry until his wife’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

Tom Carson and the other pioneer Baptist missionaries to French speaking and Catholic Canada laid the groundwork for the revival of the 1970s. By God’s grace Pastor Carson was able to participate in those momentous events from the early work of the ‘40s to the late ‘80s. Pastor Carson’s godliness, sobriety and industry are exemplary, and his son does not hide his weakness, confusion, and sin. I would be greatly blessed to live, preach, and die as Tom Carson did.

The Image of the City and Other Essays, Reprint: The Aporcyphile Press, 2007; Oxford University Press, 1958, 199 pgs.

War in Heaven, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982, 256 pgs.

Summary: The philosophical, theological, and poetic musings of a moderately brilliant poet who wrote histories, popular journal articles, fiction novels (War in Heaven), and gave lectures to the developing middle class on art and culture to pay the bills. Williams apparently wandered in and then out of genteel British occult (The Image, xxiii) practice and decided to stick with an eccentric but mostly orthodox Anglicanism.  He was a member of the Inklings.

As a poet his imagery is more powerful than his ability for the nuanced logic necessary for theological and philosophical reflection. The reader gets the feeling that the argument is more the mental aroma, or perhaps the colors in the shades of the word pictures. Williams might be right in the end, but the difference between the smell of burnt banana peels and dirty socks is too fine a distinction for most readers to live by or to organize a church around.

Harper Torch Book, 1958, 287 pgs.

Summary: Schleiermacher (1768-1834) attempts to preserve Protestant Christianity from the corrosive effects of materialism by mixing Lutheran pietism with Spinoza and Platonism. He is obviously influenced by dialectic thought but does not appear to be a strict Hegelian. He begins with the following presuppositions: human beings are evolving and maturing, God’s work with humanity must be universal, true piety is the positive emotional response of the finite to the Infinite. On the issue of universalism, there seems to be a synergy between Spinoza’s pantheism (all that is is God) and the egalitarian love of much medieval and Lutheran mysticism.

The book is divided up into five speeches to the cultured Germans of his day who are rejecting Christianity. Schleiermacher wrote the speeches as a rhetorical argument against despising Christianity. Because he was often more concerned about the rhetorical effect rather than clarity, there are about 60 pages of explanations required to explain to his readers exactly what he meant.  Many times he points his reader to his Glaubenslehre or systematic theology to clarify what his intentions were. Because he defines piety as an emotional response to the Infinite, truth is secondary to the emotional experience.

• D. A. Carson, Showing the Spirit: A Theological Exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14 -- Generally very helpful. Very odd defense of speaking in tongues in the current church.
• John Calvin, 1 Corinthians -- Very helpful.
• Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT) -- Acceptable.
• Roy E. Ciampa, Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (PNTC) -- Very helpful.
• Charles Hodge, 1 & 2 Corinthians (Geneva Series) -- Very helpful, especially for preachers.
• Leon Morris, 1 Corinthians (TNTC) -- Acceptable.
• David Prior, The Message of 1 Corinthians (The Bible Speaks Today) -- Didn't really use.
• Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC) -- Brilliant, a bit quirky, and to be handled with care.

For these several months we have discussed the problem of literalism, which is essentially that there are two almost opposite uses of the idea of literalism. For Augustine literalism meant attempting to understand the intent of the author and the historical reality expressed in the text. For Spinoza literalism meant attacking the very possibility of revelation. We also discussed that the “rationalizing” of religion around a philosophical or scientific consensus was an ancient project reinvigorated by Spinoza’s work. Having considered all of these pieces, let’s draw them all together to consider how the church should respond to the current state of affairs.

I have an obscure book called Spinoza Dictionary, published by a small press called the Philosophical Library. It’s not a terribly interesting book, but it has a short foreword by Albert Einstein. Here we learn that Einstein “read the Spinoza Dictionary with great care” and that he had obviously read Spinoza’s canon with greater care. He makes a gentle jibe reminding the astute reader to read Spinoza’s works, establishes himself as an interpreter of Spinoza, and mocks sin and the soul and closes. Perhaps, one of the greatest scientific minds in history flashes his philosophical membership card, hides it a way with a smile, and goes back to his physics.

The other day as I sat on the train returning from Washington, DC, the man behind me was loudly counseling his reluctant friend over a cell phone about the need to despoil his new girlfriend. The basic argument was that human beings are essentially animals, and as animals we have sexual needs; if these sexual needs are not fulfilled, we can break down in rage. If the girlfriend refused to submit to his needs, then she was unnatural or likely cheating on him. And thus, we find materialistic philosophy or Epicureanism disseminated throughout our culture at all levels.

Note: If you haven’t read the first four articles in this series, please do so. We are in the midst of a cumulative argument about literalism within biblical hermeneutics and the best way to understand and practice interpreting the Bible.

I have attempted to lay out the argument that Spinoza’s literalism is incompatible with Christianity, but this leads us to the difficulty that a large group of Christians promote a system of hermeneutics which has the appearance of being identical to the Epicurean belief policy.  Their definition of literalism, “interpretation that gives to every word the same meaning it would have in normal usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking” [Charles Ryrie, Dispensationalism: Revised and Updated (Chicago: Moody Press, 2007), 91], sounds very much like Spinoza’s.

The above quote comes from Charles Ryrie, an august proponent of a doctrinal system called Dispensationalism. He holds two secular academic degrees, including a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. He is a sophisticated and academic defender who has written a Dispensational systematic theology—Basic Theology. Obviously, godly Dispensationalists are not Epicureans, and it would be a gross injustice to call them such—especially, given their contribution in maintaining the gospel against encroaching modernity in the last century.  Let’s see if we can’t clarify the situation.

Dispensationalism as a system is a relative newcomer to theology, dating from about the 1840s with some of its unique components beginning to appear on the historical horizons in the mid-1700s. (By theology, I mean a systematic understanding of the biblical canon.) It is different from Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed theology in that its proponents are united around an understanding of the end times, but not around their understanding of salvation, and polity.

Baker Academic Books, 2000, 180 pgs.

Summary: The basic argument of the book is that the “Old Testament narrative books do have a didactic purpose, that is, they are trying to instill both theological truths and ethical ideals into their readers” (3). The ethical ideal of the Old Testament is not merely found in bare conformity to the letter of the law, but is found in the characters imitating God. Since, the characters so often fail at meeting the requirements of the law or the ethical ideal, God must then be a gracious and forgiving God.

The ethics of the Old Testament narrative can be recovered by constructing the “implied author” and the “implied reader.” (Both of these concepts are literary terms that help scholars discuss the authors’ intended purpose.) Once the author and reader have been placed, then Wenham creates a three point criteria for recognizing whether or not the “actor’s behavior in a particular situation is regarded as virtuous” (88):  the behavior is “repeated in a number of contexts”; “it should be exhibited in a positive context”; “remarks in the legal codes, psalms and wisdom books often shed light on Old Testament attitudes” (89).

The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989, 161 pgs.

Summary: Shedd’s response to the latitudinarian, liberal, and synergistic revisions suggested to the Westminster Confession among Presbyterians in the United States in the late 1800s.

A brilliant description, definition, and defense of some of the thorny points of Calvinism: preterition, the decrees of God, infant salvation, common and special grace, and the like.

From the section on Preterition and the Divine Decrees: “It is an objection of the sceptics, and sometimes of those who are not sceptics, that this perpetual assertion in the Scriptures that God is the chief end of creation, and this perpetual demand that the creature glorify him, is only a species of infinite egotism. . .But this objection overlooks the fact that God is an infinitely greater and higher being than any or all of his creatures; and that from the very nature of the case the less must be subordinated to the greater. Is it egotism, when man employs in his service his ox or his ass? Is it selfishness, when the rose or the lily takes up into its own fabric and tissue the inanimate qualities of matter, and converts the dull and colorless elements of the clod into hues and odors, into beauty and bloom” (82-83).

reprint: Gale Ecco, 2011; London, Thomas Parkhurst, 1702.

Summary: Howe was a brilliant Puritan non-conformist, much admired by Shedd. The first volume of the Living Temple closely argues the ontological argument in its Anselmic form, likely in response to Descartes’ flawed reformulation. In the second book, he then takes Spinoza to task for his pantheism. Essentially, the issue is that if God is not a person than Spinoza should not be a person or as Howe summarizes:

Pg. 87, “You must also know, that whatever Being is not of it self, hath no Excellency in it, but what was in that Being that was of it self before. And therefore, it had in it, all the Excellency that is in such things as proceeded from it (unabated because in it necessarily) together with the proper Excellency of its own Being, whereas the other sort of Beings, have but their own deriv’d Excellency only. Wherefore this, also, is most evident, that , this World had a Maker distinct from, and more excellent than it self, that changes not, and whereto that Name most properly agrees, I AM THAT I AM.”

• Philip J. Budd, Numbers (WBC)--a compilation of Dr. Budd’s speculation.
• Raymond Brown, The Message of Numbers (The Bible Speaks Today)--orthodox but not terribly helpful
• John Calvin, Harmony of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy
• Gorden J. Wenham, Numbers (TOTC)--a solid, thought provoking, but modern commentary.

Ambassador Internal, Greenville, 2001.

Summary: A solid, scholarly, and conservative introduction to interpreting the Old Testament from a Christocentric perspective:

From Final Thoughts: “My contention is that there is a relevant message in the Old Testament that is discernible and discoverable by sound and sensible methods of interpretation that consider the full, not just the surface, meaning of the text. Although not in every line and perhaps not on every page, the message of Christ overshadows the entire Old Testament. Finding Christ is the key that both unlocks and locks in the message of the whole Word of God. Jesus Christ is God’s final, perfect, incomparable Word. In the final analysis, it is safe to say that Jesus is God’s only Word for man” (327).

“But we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense. . . . If we do not find it signifying anything else in normal linguistic usage, that is how we must interpret the expression, however much it may conflict with reason. . . . For, as we have already shown, we are not permitted to adjust meaning of Scripture to the dictates of our reason or our preconceived opinions; all explanations of the Bible must be sought from the Bible alone.” Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 10.

I once started a sermon with the above quote. The regular church members nodded their heads in assent and approval until I informed them that the quote was written by one of the most vicious modern enemies of Christianity, Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677). He used literal sense as a devastating weapon against even the possibility of revealed religion. And he did so as a theist.

We live in world enframed by Spinoza’s system of interpretation and his materialistic philosophy. Men such as Dawkins (a biologist) and Ehrman (a biblical text critic) use his interpretive method without thought or apology. Even within the church, this system of materialism influences our minds in such a way that we accept the vocabulary of this theory of interpretation without thought.

Solid Ground Christian Books; reprint, Scribner, Armstrong & Co., 1877.

Summary: Seven articles developing an Augustinian response to modernity (note the publishing date).

• The Method, and Influence of Theological Studies:

“He who would obtain correct views in political or natural science, as well as he who would be a mind of power and depth in the sphere of literature; in short, the student generally; has a vital interest in the truths of supernatural science” (48).

• The Nature, and Influence of the Historic Spirit:

“It begins to be seen that the harmony between philosophy and Christianity is not to be brought about, by first assuming that the infallibility is on the side of the human reason; and that, too, as it appears in a single and particular philosophical system; and then insisting that all the adjustments, conformity, and coalescence, shall be on the side of the Divine revelation” (101).

Fenestra Books, 2003.

Summary: The author argues that Darby’s development of Dispensational theology was due to his assuming an absolute dualism between heaven and earth. The presupposition of dualism then became his hermeneutical key for understanding the Scriptures and led to his development of an earthly people, the Jews, and a heavenly people, the church. It also enforced an absolute distinction between law (earthly) and grace (heavenly), New Testament/Old etc.

As Darby developed a theological system around this duality, he created a rubric for interpreting prophecy: prophecy must be interpreted dualistically (heavenly/earthly); prophecy only concerns the earth; the church is never mentioned in prophecy; the prophetic clock does not run while the church is on earth. Henzel notes the logical contradictions between the first statement and the second.

Moody Publishers, 2007.

Summary: An update of the earlier “Dispensationalism Today,” it has been expanded and in many ways improved. (I don’t have a copy of the earlier work and must rely on my memory.)

The author argues that Dispensationalism springs from a normal or literal hermeneutic. “The nonliteralist is the nonpremillennialist, the less specific and less consistent literalists are covenant premillennialist and the progressive dispensationalist, and the consistent literalist is a dispensationaslist” (102). He then attempts to defend normative or historical Dispensationalism, against progressive dispensationalists, non-premillennialists, and covenant premillennialists.

The marks of a Dispensationalist are then teaching a separation between Israel and the Church and literalism.

In our last article, we established that Augustine rejected the possibility of the Bible containing myth, any attempt to interpret nature independently of the Bible, and any attempt to interpret the Bible based solely on nature. He came to these conclusions because the Bible claims to be a revealed account of God and man. As the modern church is beset by both enemies and intended friends pressing natural and mythological accounts of God upon us, it is extremely important that we understand Augustine’s “historical literalism.” The importance of this is heightened by the modern problem of literalism and the rhetorical weight of the term literal among modern Christians.

Let us, return to Augustine’s understanding of literalism:

I have started here to discuss Sacred Scripture according to the plain meaning of the historical facts, not according to future events which they foreshadow. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, in Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 41, trans. John Hammond Taylor (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1982) 39, 1.17.34.

He believed that the Bible’s meaning was “the precise meaning [the author] intended to express (On Christian Doctrine, 1.36.40). The Bible then teaches historical facts when the author represents them as such. And he accepts the book of Genesis as providing such facts. To understand what the Bible teaches about reality is to have its literal meaning. He rejects the possibility of Genesis being mythical, but what he does not reject is that it takes effort to understand what the historical or literal significance of the text is.

Originally, I had intended to consider Spinoza’s caustic literalism, but events and more study suggest that we should begin in chronological order with our friend Augustine’s “historical literalism.” Given the overarching theme of our series, we will have to develop a bit of context to better understand the sophistication and relevance of his view to our wider discussion. So, let’s begin by considering the interpretive systems that Augustine rejected; what we shall discover is that Augustine anticipated the “modern” attempt to reinterpret the Bible as salvageable myth

In The City of God, Augustine demolished the arguments of both contemporary pagans and philosophers that the fall of Rome was caused by the introduction of Christianity into the Roman Empire. The traditionalists argued that the popularity of Christianity had led to the abandonment of the old gods, and these gods then withdrew their protection from the Roman people, leading to the victory of the Goths.

Augustine attacked the pagan apologetic by arguing that the worship of the pagan gods was sub-rational and beneath the dignity of both Divinity and man.  His main pagan source for the critique was the work of a historian and philosopher by the name of Marcus Varreo (116-27 B.C.). Varreo had attempted to rationalize the Roman religious traditions, histories, and practices into a coherent system that would serve both the philosophers and the civil religious needs of the Roman people. And he did this by developing a threefold distinction for the source of theology or the accounts of the gods.

• Derek Tidball, The Message of Leviticus
• Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (NICOT)
• John E. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC)

• James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and Its History
• Tremper Longman, Reading the Psalms
• Willem A. VanGemeren, Psalms, in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary
• Augustine, Exposition on the Book of the Psalms
• John Calvin, Psalms
• Derek Kidner, Psalms, in The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries
• Charles H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David

Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989.

Summary: A thoughtful establishment of a hermeneutical process for developing biblical application of the Bible to modern politics and ethics.

The process looks like this:

1. Identify what the text meant to the initial audience.
2. Determine the differences between the initial audience and believers today.
3. Develop universal principles from the text.
4. Correlate the principle with New Testament teaching.
5. Apply the modified universal principle to life today.

(The process summary is drawn from Tidball, The Message of Leviticus, 29).

Edinburgh, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1983.

Summary: The book records and explains the rise of speaking in tongues, prophecy, and the continuation of the apostolic office under the ministry of Edward Irving (1792-1834). Irving unintentionally established the framework of both Dispensationalism and the Charismatic Movement by being a catalysis for the popularization of a variety of unique views on the end times and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Irving translated “The Coming of Christ in Glory and Majesty” by the Jesuit Lacunza and adopted his view of the end times whereby Christ’s work with the biological seed of Abraham is different than his work with the Gentile Church. Further, he clearly establishes the Charismatic explanations for inaccurate prophecy, the fact that tongues speaking is not a known language, and the failure of faith healers.

For the purpose of illustration, let me state something confusing: Spinoza is a biblical literalist and so are Ryrie and Augustine.  It’s also true that Spinoza is not a literalist and neither are Ryrie and Augustine.

Let’s introduce ourselves to the cast of theologians. Augustine (354-430 AD) was a theologian in North Africa and perhaps the most influential of the Church Fathers. His theological reflections were the foundation of the Reformation. Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677 AD) was a Dutch philosopher who attacked both Jewish and Christian orthodoxy through a hermeneutical system. And Charles Ryrie is an elder statesman for Dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism is a view of the end times requiring almost absolute separation between Israel and the Church and is widely held by conservative Christians in the U.S.

These three men each held to a form of biblical literalism, and they illustrate for us what I am calling the problem of literalism. Literalism in our context is a belief policy about how to read the Bible. So Spinoza thought the Bible should be read literally as did Augustine and Ryrie, but each meant something quite different.

vol. 3 in Foundations for Contemporary Interpretation, Zondervan, 1987.

Summary: An introduction to literary approaches in biblical interpretation by a conservative Christian who maintained a high view of Scripture. [My understanding is that his view of Scripture has dropped considerably in later publications. Added--03/08/12] Longman engages with literary critics secular, liberal, and orthodox and attempts to draw insights from their work.

Longmen’s own summary “We have recognized a tendency among some scholars to reduce the Bible to literature and to deny history. Other scholars, particularly those of us whose doctrine of Scripture is conservative, must resist the temptation to ignore the literary aspect of divine revelation by reducing the Scripture to history and theology. I have intended this book to stimulate all of us to a more balanced reading of the Bible” (152).

Bethany House, 2010.

Summary: Yarhouse explicitly rejects homosexual activity as sin while finding many aspects of homosexual practice social constructions. He divides the homosexual experience into three tiers: same-sex attraction, homosexual orientation (long-term same-sex attraction accepted as a personal norm), gay identity (a cultural construction of self and group identification).  He argues that while “same sex attraction” can be independent of behavior, orientation and gay identity requires cognitive acquiescence and maintenance.

He challenges both the church and those who would like to obey the Bible yet who experience same sex attraction to focus on finding orientation and identity in Jesus Christ. This is especially the case, because the cause or causes of same sex attraction are not clear: nature and nurture both appear to play a role. Since individuals give different significance to internal (nature) and external (nurture) stimuli and events, a single cause or set of causes for same sex attraction may never be found.

• The Irresistible Revolution, by Shane Claiborne
• The Great Exchange, by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington
• Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller
• Turning to God, by David F. Wells

• Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews
• Martin Luther, Lectures on Hebrews
• John Calvin
• John Owen
• John Brown of Edinburgh, Hebrews in The Geneva Series of Commentaries
• Geerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews
• F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews: Revised
• Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews
• William L. Lane, Hebrews 9-13

• John Calvin
• John Stott, 1 and 2 Thessalonians
• Gene L. Green, The Letters to the Thessalonians
• Leon Morris, The First and Second Epistle to the Thessalonians
• D. Michael Martin, 1, 2 Thessalonians

Oxford University Press, 2004.

Summary: Fundamentalism is a response to Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment and includes particularly religious people of all conservative stripes. Fundamentalists behave as if will-to-power is necessary to establish the regimes or the public space they feel is necessary for them to practice their faith. Individual Fundamentalists may not be stupid, but their behavior leads to stupid outcomes—“they are selfish, greedy and stupid” (pg. 217). “Protestant fundamentalism is a dangerous religion” (ibid.) as are all other forms of fundamentalism.

Malise Ruthven lacks any sense of epistemological or philosophical humility or irony. As far as I can tell, he is what he loathes in “fundamentalists,” only well-educated, sophisticated, and published by Oxford Press.

Marquette University Press, 2002.

Summary: Rousselot argues from the primary sources that in the Middle Ages there were three basic positions on love: Augustine, Thomas, and Abelard or eudemonistic, natural, and ecstatic. Thomas view is natural because love seeks the “natural unity” provided by the source of being. The ecstatic view is found in the medieval mystics and Abelard and Duns Scotus. This view is irrational, violent, and egalitarian. Oliver O’Donovan teaches that “ecstatic” and “natural” love both require a corrosion of self and lead to pietism and mysticism, but Rousselot believes that the self can be maintained in natural love if a neo-Thomist understanding of the part’s participation in the whole is maintained. Because a Christian’s view of love helps define both his theology proper and anthropology, this is an incredible important discussion.

The book appears to be competently translated, but the reviewer lacks the language skills to make a judgment—readable and scholarly.  Latin quotes are kept in text and footnotes, but translated.

Allow me to share with you three passages of Scripture which I find astounding: The Creation account in Genesis 1-2, the “I AM” statement in Exodus 3, and John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

These three passages of Scripture fascinate me because they seem misplaced. They shouldn’t be there. A fisherman with simplistic Greek, attempting to maintain a religion among slaves and Jewish exiles, should not have spoken of the Logos. And an itinerant Jewish rabbi by the name of Jesus, shouldn’t have said anything like, “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).

Exodus 3 is shocking as well. “I AM the I AM” is perhaps the most philosophically sublime statement in history, and it comes to us in a narrative about an exiled member of the Egyptian royal family working as a shepherd for the priest of Midan talking to a burning bush in the desert. Plato refers to God as “the Being,” which is a more than responsible translation of the Hebrew and identical to the Septuagint’s translation and Revelation 1:8. And if you don’t find it shocking, read a bit of Heidegger as he tries to work around Being-in-itself.

Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006.

Summary: O’Donovan carefully discusses the theological tensions and developments in Augustine’s efforts to understand the biblical and natural revelation on the two great commandments. (The problem is balancing the love of God, self, and neighbor.) Augustine comes to a Christian eudemonistic solution in contrast to Thomas and Abelard. A helpful early work by O’Donovan that sets the foundation for his later works like “Common Objects of Love.”