'. . . their joy was like swords . . .'

A great post from Tyler Kenney at DG on what he calls the best paragraph in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Desire + Action: 2 Corinthians 8:10

In an almost backhanded way, in a clause I normally read right over, Paul comments to the Corinthians (as he tries to awaken their hearts and their checkbooks in 2 Cor 8-9) regarding their generosity that "a year ago you started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it" (8:10).

Two things Paul detects in healthy obedience: action and desire.

Action without desire = moralism. Desire without action = antinomianism. Desire + action = gospel obedience.

Westerholm: Understanding Paul

One of my favorite NT scholars is Steve Westerholm at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (a school to which I applied for doc. work due to his presence--and was rejected!). Though he's a bit "too Lutheran" for me at points, I find his exegesis careful, his humor refreshing, and his historical breadth rare (for a neutestamentler). His Perspectives Old and New on Paul is probably the first mid-level intro to Paul and the New Perspective I would recommend.

Anyway, I just got his little book Understanding Paul: The Early Christian Worldview of the Letter to the Romans (2004; previously published as Preface to the Study of Paul, 1997). It's a very short intro to Paul that sets as its template Romans. The last paragraph of the book is:

If human existence is an accident, if the functioning of the cosmos is merely mechanical, if the language of right and wrong is rooted in nothing deeper than human convention, if the world is but the indifferent stage on which we give shape to our lives, then we may as well resent any attempt to curtail our freedom and self-determination. If, on the other hand, human existence is a gift of love, if the functioning of the cosmos is providential, if language of right and wrong reflects our appropriate and inappropriate responses to reality, and human existence--indeed, all creation--has been cursed by human self-assertion; and if, moreover, Jesus Christ represents God's refusal to abandon his willful creatures to their sin; if Christ demonstrates the goodness of a life lived in obedience to God, his self-sacrificial death atones for human wrongdoing, and his resurrection makes possible eternal life in communion with God as a member of his redeemed people: if all these basic convictions of Paul are true, then (perhaps even people today would agree) there can be no prouder title than that claimed by the apostle--a "servant of Jesus Christ."

--p. 162

Letters to an American Lady

I picked up C. S. Lewis' Letters to an American Lady today (for 25 cents), a book I had seen but never owned or opened. It is not, as I thought, letters to Joy, his future wife, but to a southern aristocrat who had fallen on hard finanical times and suffered from numerous physical difficulties, who remains anonymous, and to whom Lewis wrote over 100 letters despite never meeting her.

A few of my favorite extracts thus far--

Aug 1, 1953, making me long to be happier to the mailman:
How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world's population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year's end?

Aug 10, 1953, expressing such delightful childlikeness:
I'm a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord's words) and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs: one is sometimes even tempted to say that if God wanted us to live like the lilies of the field He might have given us an organism more like theirs! But of course He is right. And when you meet anyone who does live like the lilies, one sees that He is.

(According to Clyde Kilby, it was discovered after his death that Lewis gave away more than two thirds of his income.)

Deliverance through Affliction?

I'm trying to figure out Elihu's role in Job, and the more I consider, the more I think he is a voice of truth speaking into Job's life, not in continuity with but in contrast to, Job's others three "friends." Elihu still, I think, retains some of the problematic assumptions of the other friends--such as in 36:8-9--but in light of 32:1-5 and the fact that he is omitted from God's rebuke at the end of the book, and that much of what he says does seem to provide a healthy corrective to what Job has listened to (and contributed himself) thus far, I do think he is generally a voice of truth, not folly.

Anyhow, I noticed the following verse today (from the mouth of Elihu), which, I think, encapsulates the core of the paradox driving Paul in 2 Corinthians. A lesson contrary to the mindset in ancient Corinth, modern America, and one I feel like an infant in.

He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity. (36:15)

There is a deliverance in this fallen world that comes not by avoiding or overcoming affliction but by going through it.

The ultimate instance: Christ's cross.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply
The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design
Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine

Sayers: Theology unto Morality

Dorothy Sayers on strawberry-rhubarb theology (i.e. recognizing the importance of both getting the [theological] recipe right as well as enjoying, not just analyzing, what comes out of the [theological] oven):

It is worse than useless for Christian to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter: it matters enormously.

--"Creed or Chaos?" in Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World, p. 31

HT: David Calhoun

Schlatter: Gal 1:15

Commenting on Galatians 1:15 ("God was pleased to reveal his Son to me"), Adolf Schlatter (1852-1938), professor of NT at Tubingen for 100 straight semesters and author of over 430 works, writes:

The critical turn came through this, that God called Paul. At this point we must think of the experience on the way to Damascus. There God’s call penetrated into his ear, and what called him was God’s grace. When God directed no word of punishment at the persecutor of his church, but rather the call of invitation, which placed him in peace with him and gave him a share in his free gifts, then and only then was grace free. The root of such a call cannot be in those who ascend out of sheer mercy and for whom divine grace bursts through sin.

Luke 14 and 16

Luke 14 is about, in a word, invitations. If I were to teach on it in the near future (which I'm not), I think it would look something like:

1) 14:7-11 - cashing in an invitation
2) 14:12-14 - giving an invitation
3) 14:25-33 - the cost of the Invitation

Luke 16 is about, in a word, money. If I were to teach on it in the near future (which I'm not), I think it would look something like:

1) 16:1-9 - the usefulness of money
2) 16:10-13 - the dethroning nature of money
3) 16:14-15 - the irrelevance of money
4) 16:19-31 - the deceitfulness of money

Arraigned by Mortal Worms

Read this today:

How astonishing is it, that a person who is blessed forever, and is infinitely and essentially happy, should endure the greatest sufferings that ever were endured on earth! That a person who is the supreme Lord and judge of the world, should be arraigned, and should stand at the judgment seat of mortal worms, and then be condemned. That a person who is the living God, and the fountain of life, should be put to death. That a person who created the world, and gives life to all his creatures, should be put to death by his own creatures. That a person of infinite majesty and glory, and so the object of the love, praises, and adorations of angels, should be mocked and spit upon by the vilest of men. That a person, infinitely good, and who is love itself, should suffer the greatest cruelty. That a person who is infinitely beloved of the Father, should be put to inexpressible anguish under his own Father's wrath. That he who is King of heaven, who hath heaven for his throne, and the earth for his footstool, should be buried in the prison of the grave. How wonderful is this! And yet this is the way that God's wisdom hath fixed upon, as the way of sinners' salvation . . .

--J. Edwards, 'The Wisdom of God Displayed in the Way of Salvation'

One of the reasons Edwards helps us so much is that he asks and answers questions most of us would never think to consider. He spends a chunk of this sermon, for example, exploring what profit there is to the angels in the redemption of humans, trying to squeeze out as deeply as possible the unsearchable wisdom of God in the manner of redemption. !

Luther

The more familiar I become with Luther the more convinced I am that he has insights into the Bible and the human heart that are more satisfying than many contemporary writers are acknowledging. In the years ahead I want to spend regular time in Luther; I find him both head-illuminating and heart-igniting. Yet today, confessed proximity to Luther by any Paul scholar is one step shy of anathema. It ought not to be.

In his Galatians commentary, for instance, he writes:

There is no difference at all between a papist, a Jew, a Turk, or a sectarian. Their persons, locations, rituals, religions, works, and forms of worship are, of course, diverse; but they all have the same reason, the same heart, the same opinion and idea. . . . "If I do this or that, I have a God who is favorably disposed toward me; if I do not, I have a God who is wrathful."

HT: Steve Westerholm