Carl Trueman's recommendation in a recent Themelios was the final motivation I needed to pick up Christianity and Liberalism, Machen's plea for self-describing Christians to recognize the worlds-apart difference between (supernatural) Christianity and (de-supernaturalized) Liberalism/Modernism. Read it on a plane to and from Mexico and, though I would certainly not call it the second most important book a theological student could read, I loved it. Now I'm working through Ned Stonehouse's biography, the style of writing of which is not my taste, but is opening up Machen to me as, of course, no one else would be able to do (Stonehouse was a student and then colleague of Machen's at Westminster).
Here are a few of my favorite quotes.
[T]he things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are most worth defending. (8)
Indifferentism about doctrine makes no heroes of the faith. (51)
Human affection, apparently so simple, is really just bristling with dogma. (55)
Christian experience is rightly used when it helps to convince us that the events narrated in the New Testament actually did occur; but it can never enable us to be Christians whether the events occurred or not. (72)
When we come to see that it was no mere man who suffered on Calvary but the Lord of Glory, then we shall be willing to say that one drop of the precious blood of Jesus is of more value, for our salvation and for the hope of society, than all the rivers of blood that have flowed upon the battlefields of history. (128)
And finally, a statement that stands in direct contrast to some recent Christians writers emphasizing the love of God to neglect of God's wrath:
Religion cannot be made joyful simply by looking on the bright side of God. For a one-sided God is not a real God, and it is the real God alone who can satisfy the longing of our soul. (134)
28 October 2008
27 October 2008
Sacred Joking
It is absolutely useless and absurd to tell a man that he must not joke about sacred subjects. It is useless and absurd for a simple reason: because there are no subjects that are not sacred.
-G. K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters, quoted in R. F. Castleman, "Surprise, the Essential Nature of Grace," Them 31 (2006): 77
-G. K. Chesterton, Lunacy and Letters, quoted in R. F. Castleman, "Surprise, the Essential Nature of Grace," Them 31 (2006): 77
15 October 2008
14 October 2008
The Doctor: Life in the Spirit
Another musty volume inherited from my grandfather that I dusted off this week, reading it when I just can't bring myself to plow through the latest NT monograph convinced works of the law equals social boundary markers, is Lloyd-Jones' Life in the Spirit. It is a series of sermons on Eph 5 and 6 preached at Westminster Chapel in 1959-60. The first five sermons are on more general "life in the spirit," from 5:18, "do not get drunk on wine . . . but be filled with the Spirit." Then he goes into the more specific applications to husbands and wives, parents and children, and masters and slaves.
These opening sermons are dynamite. I have not myself been able to get much profit out of listening to Lloyd-Jones. Bores me to tears. I just can't pay attention. It's no one's fault but mine. But reading him is invariably profitable. I would even say exhilarating, at least at this point in my development. I find myself thinking this week, in fact, that I have been largely neglecting and sidelining the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life. God helping me, that ends here and now.
Here's one quote from the first message, entitled "The Stimulus of the Spirit." As applicable in 2008 Wheaton, Illinois as it was in 1959 London, England. Ponder this and apply it to your own heart.
[M]orality is in many ways the greatest enemy of Christianity. It is your good moral men who today are the greatest enemies of the Cross of Christ; and therefore they are to be denounced. Christianity is not mere morality, or the absence of certain things in the life of man. There is nothing, surely, that does greater harm to the Christian faith than just that view of it. I am emphasizing this point because I am increasingly convinced that so much in the state of the Christian church today is to be explained chiefly by the fact that for nearly a hundred years the church has been preaching morality and ethics, and not the Christian faith. It is this preaching of the 'good life', of being 'a good little gentleman', and of viewing religion as 'morality touched by emotion' . . . that has been the curse. Such men have shed the doctrines; they dislike any idea of atonement, they dismiss the whole notion of the miraculous and the supernatural, and ridicule talk about re-birth. Christianity to them is that which teaches a man to live a good life. . . . (p. 19)
These opening sermons are dynamite. I have not myself been able to get much profit out of listening to Lloyd-Jones. Bores me to tears. I just can't pay attention. It's no one's fault but mine. But reading him is invariably profitable. I would even say exhilarating, at least at this point in my development. I find myself thinking this week, in fact, that I have been largely neglecting and sidelining the reality of the Holy Spirit in my life. God helping me, that ends here and now.
Here's one quote from the first message, entitled "The Stimulus of the Spirit." As applicable in 2008 Wheaton, Illinois as it was in 1959 London, England. Ponder this and apply it to your own heart.
[M]orality is in many ways the greatest enemy of Christianity. It is your good moral men who today are the greatest enemies of the Cross of Christ; and therefore they are to be denounced. Christianity is not mere morality, or the absence of certain things in the life of man. There is nothing, surely, that does greater harm to the Christian faith than just that view of it. I am emphasizing this point because I am increasingly convinced that so much in the state of the Christian church today is to be explained chiefly by the fact that for nearly a hundred years the church has been preaching morality and ethics, and not the Christian faith. It is this preaching of the 'good life', of being 'a good little gentleman', and of viewing religion as 'morality touched by emotion' . . . that has been the curse. Such men have shed the doctrines; they dislike any idea of atonement, they dismiss the whole notion of the miraculous and the supernatural, and ridicule talk about re-birth. Christianity to them is that which teaches a man to live a good life. . . . (p. 19)
12 October 2008
Machen on (Post?)Modernism
This afternoon I picked up Machen's What Is Faith? - mainly because of the smell. It's the original 1925 edition, with a bland, dark blue cover, browning pages and the smell of a musty 1940s office in some conservative church. Which is exactly where it sat--I inherited it from my grandfather who was a pastor from the 40s to the 80s.
The striking thing is not how outdated the book is, though, but how relevant. It is remarkable how well-worn some trends within evangelicalism are despite the appearance of innovation, creativity, and freshness.
For instance, Machen describes Modernism like this:
Obviously this temper of mind is hostile to precise definitions. Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms. Anything, it seems, may be forgiven more readily than that. Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith; but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by these terms (13-14).
It is remarkable that the next snippet is describing not the postmodern but the modern mind. I've been taught that, with standout exceptions like Schleiermacher, this was most emphatically not what Modernism was, but here's a testimony from someone who lived and breathed it, having tasted it in both America and Germany (Marburg, no less!):
The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the place of it of the feelings or of the will, is, we think, a basic fact in modern life, which is rapidly leading to a condition in which men neither know anything nor care anything about the doctrinal content of the Christian religion . . . (23)
Or how about this one, remarkably similar to what we hear in today's pluralistic age:
Theology, it is said, is merely the necessarily changing expression of a unitary experience; doctrine can never be permanent, but is simply the clothing of religious experience in the forms of thought suitable to any particular generation. (28)
And finally, on the ecumenical ethos of the day that hates controversy and avoids it at all cost - the last sentence is the quote of the week for me:
Loyalty to church organizations was being substituted for loyalty to Christ; Church leaders who never even mentioned the centre of the gospel in their preaching were in undisputed charge of the resources of the Church; at board meetings or in the councils of the Church, it was considered bad form even to mention, at least in any definite and intelligible way, the Cross of Christ. A polite paganism, in other words, with reliance upon human resources, was being quietly and peacefully substituted for the heroism of devotion to the gospel. (40-41)
I conclude: postmodernism must be studied and understood by today's church leaders. But it must not be overemphasized. Fallen humanity probably errs in predictable historical cycles. Machen can help us here. In reading him, I not only understand his time better, I understand my time better.
The striking thing is not how outdated the book is, though, but how relevant. It is remarkable how well-worn some trends within evangelicalism are despite the appearance of innovation, creativity, and freshness.
For instance, Machen describes Modernism like this:
Obviously this temper of mind is hostile to precise definitions. Indeed nothing makes a man more unpopular in the controversies of the present day than an insistence upon definition of terms. Anything, it seems, may be forgiven more readily than that. Men discourse very eloquently today upon such subjects as God, religion, Christianity, atonement, redemption, faith; but are greatly incensed when they are asked to tell in simple language what they mean by these terms (13-14).
It is remarkable that the next snippet is describing not the postmodern but the modern mind. I've been taught that, with standout exceptions like Schleiermacher, this was most emphatically not what Modernism was, but here's a testimony from someone who lived and breathed it, having tasted it in both America and Germany (Marburg, no less!):
The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the place of it of the feelings or of the will, is, we think, a basic fact in modern life, which is rapidly leading to a condition in which men neither know anything nor care anything about the doctrinal content of the Christian religion . . . (23)
Or how about this one, remarkably similar to what we hear in today's pluralistic age:
Theology, it is said, is merely the necessarily changing expression of a unitary experience; doctrine can never be permanent, but is simply the clothing of religious experience in the forms of thought suitable to any particular generation. (28)
And finally, on the ecumenical ethos of the day that hates controversy and avoids it at all cost - the last sentence is the quote of the week for me:
Loyalty to church organizations was being substituted for loyalty to Christ; Church leaders who never even mentioned the centre of the gospel in their preaching were in undisputed charge of the resources of the Church; at board meetings or in the councils of the Church, it was considered bad form even to mention, at least in any definite and intelligible way, the Cross of Christ. A polite paganism, in other words, with reliance upon human resources, was being quietly and peacefully substituted for the heroism of devotion to the gospel. (40-41)
I conclude: postmodernism must be studied and understood by today's church leaders. But it must not be overemphasized. Fallen humanity probably errs in predictable historical cycles. Machen can help us here. In reading him, I not only understand his time better, I understand my time better.
11 October 2008
Edmund Clowney:
"You have to see, ultimately, the book of Lamentations as Christ's cry from the cross."
Wow.
--Q+A on redemptive-historical preaching
Wow.
--Q+A on redemptive-historical preaching
Gospel Coalition Conversation
Fascinating hour-long conversation, in 6 segments, between Carson, Piper and Keller posted this week at Facebook from the Gospel Coalition gathering this past April (don't need to be a facebook member to view).
10 October 2008
Third Use
The third use of the law sees the law--God's commands, the imperatives of Scripture--as a sign-post, not an engine.
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