In last Saturday's classic Briefing snippet, John Woodhouse suggested that “Where you have the word of God creating faith in God (and nothing else can create real faith in God) there is all of biblical Christianity. Where the word of God is lacking there is no Christianity”.

The objection comes back: isn't this the problem with evangelical Christianity—that the emphasis on the Word produces a tediously arid religion of the mind?

John Woodhouse addresses precisely this in the second article in the series, ‘Word and Spirit’. Here's a tasty extract:

We will understand the work of the Spirit of God in the New Testament, and in our lives, only when we see the inseparable connection between God's Spirit and God's Word—when we see, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 6:17, that the sword of the Spirit is the word of God.

There are many statements in the New Testament where ‘Spirit’ and ‘Word’ are virtually interchangeable. When James says that God “brought us forth by the word of truth” (Jas 1:18), would he have been saying something very different if he had said, “God brought us forth by the work of his Spirit”?

Peter says:

You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living abiding word of God ... (1 Pet 1:23)

Is he speaking of something different from Jesus?

Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)

Jesus said of the Holy Spirit:

When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgement: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgement, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. (John 16:8-11)

Was he speaking of something other than what would happen through the proclamation of the gospel? The Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 16:13) who will lead us into all truth, and this truth is the gospel—as Jesus said “he will bear witness to me” (John 15:26).

Conclusion

Let me return to our proposition: Where there is the Word of God, and faith in God because of that word, there is the totality of Christianity.

There is a danger in this proposition. It can be misunderstood as: Where there are words about God and some kind of assent to the words, there is Christianity. And perhaps some of our Christianity has become like that. Certainly, you can have ten thousand words about God and not have Christianity. That is not what I am saying.

Where there is the word of God, there certainly is the Holy Spirit. After all, it is his sword. The Christian life is fully lived in the power of the Spirit, not when something additional to the word of God is discovered and called a spiritual gift, but when, and only when, the word of God is at work in you who believe—when God, by his Spirit, addresses us and we receive his word.

Add Comment »

Recipe for one parenting book

Take one favourite and fashionable parenting philosophy.

Add 10 sets of 10 steps, five guarantees and six dire warnings.

Mix with one heaped tablespoon each of anxiety, fear and uncertainty.

Sprinkle with Bible verses and/or psychological studies.

Decorate with a cover shot of a perfect family. Top with a catchy title.

It's done when it leaves a lingering taste of self-doubt.

Serve with lashings of guilt or pride.

I have far too many parenting books on my shelves. I have even read some of them. Like many educated parents, my motto is “When in doubt, research“.

I try not to read parenting books too often for, while some brim with biblical principles and wise advice, others should come with a health warning: “May produce unnecessary guilt and even despair in susceptible readers”.

My personal prize for ‘Parenting Book Title Most Likely to Produce Despair’ is awarded to any title including the words “If only we'd known”. Prize for ‘Parenting Book Most Likely to Induce Guilt’ goes to all those baby books which tell new parents how to care for their baby, right when they're at their most inexperienced and desperate, and predict long-term damage if you reject their methods.

Parenting books address us at our most vulnerable. They promise a solution to the intense uncertainty and inadequacy we feel as parents. Everything we read in a parenting book carries more weight because our children matter so much to us. We're left questioning our methods. Will our children be teen rebels or psychologically scarred adults if we choose the wrong strategies? Is it too late? Have we already ruined our children's lives?

If we're convinced by what we read, we look down on parents who raise their children differently. I know of one church which split over which parenting model to follow.

Here are some promises and threats found in well-known parenting books. You may recognize some of them. No doubt you can add your own:

• A baby who is left to cry himself/herself to sleep will be unable to form close emotional attachments when older.
• A baby who is not left to cry himself/herself to sleep will lack self-discipline when older.
• If you smack your child, you are abusing them, and they will learn to abuse others.
• Time-out will produce emotionally needy or distant children.
• Use modern reflective listening strategies or your children won't want to communicate with you as teenagers.
• Don't interfere when children fight or when they're facing difficulties, or they will never become independent and resilient.
• If you praise your children, they will be approval junkies as adults.

And then there are suggestions which, while not presented as rules, may leave us feeling like we have doomed our children to lives of insecurity and unfulfilled possibilities:

• Have a ‘family worship time’ every day.
• Each parent should take each child out for one-on-one time once a month.
• Create treasured memories for your children through special outings and scrapbooks.
• Expose your children to great literature, classical music and theatre.
• Mozart in the womb will make your child smarter.
• Buy your children open-ended toys, and provide a rich learning environment.
• Ensure that your children address all adults by their title.
• Decorate your table beautifully whenever you eat as a family.

Don't get me wrong, I love some of these suggestions, and have tried to implement them. But I have learned to regard them with caution. At their best, parenting books take biblical principles and apply them to real-life situations with self-deprecating wisdom. But the risk is always there: in a realm of life where we are so desperate for something—anything!—that will work, we turn their suggestions into rules, and their rules into grace-quelling legalism.

Even the best parenting book needs to be read with care.

Next: how should we read parenting books?

9 Comments »

I've often been intrigued by James 3:1. Here is a rather literal translation of the verse from the New King James version:

My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. (Jas 3:1 NKJV)

The question that intrigues me is this: who are the ‘we’ who shall receive a stricter judgment? The ESV and NIV both add an interpretative phrase “we who teach”. This resolves the ambiguity; it assumes that God will judge Christian teachers (e.g. James) more strictly than non-teachers (such as the majority of James' readers). This isn't an unreasonable assumption, given that James is clearly speaking about teachers in the first half of the verse. However, it is still an assumption. The words “who teach” are not in the original text. The NKJV (and some other translations) follow the original more closely by simply stating that “we shall receive a stricter judgment”. I want to suggest that the ESV and NIV are wrong in adding the words “who teach”, and that the ‘we’ who will receive stricter (or literally, a ‘greater’) judgment are not teachers, but Christians in general.

The first reason is the immediate context. In verse 2, James gives the reason for verse 1: “For we all stumble in many things”. He then goes on to speak about the dangers of speaking, seemingly for all Christians.

The second reason is that every time James speaks about ‘we’ or ‘us’ or ‘our’ in his letter (1:18, 2:1, 2:21, 4:5, 5:11, 5:17), he seems to be including all his readers. So it's less likely that ‘we’ in 3:1 refers to some group other than his readers.

And the third reason comes from a brief survey of what James teaches about judgment in the rest of his letter:

[H]ave you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (Jas 2:4)

So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (Jas 2:12-13)

Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? (Jas 4:11-12)

Do not grumble against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing at the door! (Jas 5:9)

But above all, my brethren, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath. But let your “Yes,” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No,” lest you fall into judgment. (Jas 5:12)

There is a pattern that quickly emerges from this brief survey: almost every reference to judgment in the book of James teaches us that God will hold all Christians accountable for the way we speak. In the gospel, we have been given new birth into God's pure and perfect will (cf. James 1:18-20). This gospel word is a message of mercy and forgiveness. But it also gives us a greater standard for behaviour. Gospel living is not just about external obedience to the law, but about honouring God's word in every area of life. And this is particularly shown in the way we speak. We must speak with mercy, as those who have been shown mercy. The gospel reveals that God cares deeply about the way we speak to one another.

It seems that James is echoing the teaching of Jesus, such as we find in Matthew 5:21-22:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. (Matt 5:21-22)

Doubtless you can think of a number of other sayings of Jesus that teach that our speech is very important to God.

In this way, the gospel gives us a far greater standard for behaviour than a Pharisaic interpretation, for example, that emphasizes external obedience. Forgiveness and mercy are central to God's word in Jesus, and the flipside of this is that we must now speak and treat others with forgiveness and mercy. And God will hold us accountable to this greater standard.

So when James says that ‘we’ shall receive stricter judgment, he is not simply saying that teachers will be judged more strictly than non-teachers; he is saying that Christians will be held to account for the way we respond to the standard of behaviour revealed in the gospel—which involves our speech and our attitudes, and which is far deeper than even the standard of beheaviour required by external conformity to the law of Moses.

This explains why the passage immediately following James 3:1 is about the awesome and often destructive power of the tongue, rather than instructions to teachers specifically.

The upshot of all this is that the application of James 3:1 is wider than is often assumed. It's not only a verse with application to Christian teachers, or those considering taking on such a role. Certainly, the first half of the verse contains a word to potential teachers. But why, according to James, shouldn't many of us become teachers? Not because teachers will be judged more strictly than non-teachers, but because, through the gospel, all Christians have a far greater standard of behaviour than just external conformity to the law: we will all be called to account for every little word that we speak. Teachers have greater opportunity to speak, and greater power to influence others for good or evil when they do speak, and so it is a huge responsibility that must be considered with great care. However, this doesn't let ‘non-teachers’ off the hook: all of us will be held to account for the way we speak to one another, and for the way that we have allowed the gospel of mercy to influence our attitude to others.

1 Comment »

Gordon's stirring and encouraging piece on Spurgeon finished with a typically Chengian twist of the knife: do we work hard enough these days in ministry? Has the pendulum swung too far towards stress-relief and self-maintenance? Do we worry too much about ‘overdoing it’, and thus fail to take up opportunities that come to hand?

The Chengster was even so ungrateful as to bite (or at least nibble) the hand that feedeth him by suggesting that Spurgeon's attitude to his prodigious labours may be at odds with Matthias Media's Going the Distance, which recommends that ministers learn to take care of themselves so that they can keep going for a life-time of ministry.

(By the way, Gordon, I am stunned at the tactical error you have made here. With my MM Publishing Director's hat on, you do realize that I now have no choice but to double your workload and halve your deadlines. Come on, man! I want five new Bible studies by the end of next weak, and no lily-livered excuses!)

It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I fancy that Spurgeon would have liked Going the Distance, judging, at least, by his advice to his student ministers. Here's a quote from his famous lecture, ‘The Minister's Fainting Fits’, on depression and exhaustion in the ministry:

There can be little doubt that sedentary habits have a tendency to create despondency in some constitutions. Burton, in his “Anatomy of Melancholy,” has a chapter upon this cause of sadness; and, quoting from one of the myriad authors whom he lays under contribution, he says—“Students are negligent of their bodies. Other men look to their tools; a painter will wash his pencils; a smith will look to his hammer, anvil, forge; a husbandman will mend his plough-irons, and grind his hatchet if it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, &c.; a musician will string and unstring his lute; only scholars neglect that instrument (their brain and spirits I mean) which they daily use.” Well saith Lucan, “See thou twist not the rope so hard that it break.” To sit long in one posture, poring over a book, or driving a quill, is in itself a taxing of nature; but add to this a badly-ventilated chamber, a body which has long been without muscular exercise, and a heart burdened with many cares, and we have all the elements for preparing a seething cauldron of despair, especially in the dim months of fog—

“When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamped in clay.”

Let a man be naturally as blithe as a bird, he will hardly be able to bear up year after year against such a suicidal process; he will make his study a prison and his books the warders of a gaol, while nature lies outside his window calling him to health and beckoning him to joy. He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day's breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours, ramble in the beech woods' umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind's face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.

“Heaviest the heart is in a heavy air,
Ev'ry wind that rises blows away despair.“

The ferns and the rabbits, the streams and the trouts, the fir trees and the squirrels, the primroses and the violets, the farm-yard, the new-mown hay, and the fragrant hops—these are the best medicine for hypochondriacs, the surest tonics for the declining, the best refreshments for the weary. For lack of opportunity, or inclination, these great remedies are neglected, and the student becomes a self-immolated victim.

If I may summarize both Spurgeon and Peter Brain (author of Going the Distance): work hard, play hard. The body needs its rest and exercise as surely as it needs food and drink. The minister who neglects these is “a self-immolated victim”.

4 Comments »

I've appreciated reading the sermons of 19th-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon over the years, and have quoted him on my blog a number of times (not as much as the Pyromaniacs, but still a bit).

So when I came down with the flu and found myself in bed for three days straight, I thought it would be encouraging to pick up Arnold Dallimore's short, well-researched biography of the man himself. Sick Calvinists of the world, unite. Spurgeon, so it happens, was a lot sicker than me for most of his life. He was seriously and often crippingly and painfully ill, both mentally (with depression) and physically, from his mid-30s until his death from illnesses at age 57. The same went for his wife Susannah who, because of chronic illness, was more often than not unable to attend the meetings where he preached.

If you haven't ever read any Spurgeon, do yourself a favour and pick up a book of his sermons where you can, or click through on some of the links in the first paragraph of this post to get just a small taste for his straight-talking, gospel-centred style. Of his Calvinism, Dallimore quotes him (p. 67 of my 1991 Banner of Truth edition) saying

We only use the term ‘Calvinism’ for shortness. That doctrine we call ‘Calvinism’ did not spring from Calvin; we believe that it sprang from the great founder of all truth.

Spurgeon never received any formal theological training, although he'd begun reading Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs from the age of six, and progressed on to later Puritan writers such as John Owen and Richard Sibbes by the time he was 10.

Here are some other facts and figures I picked up on the way:

• His father and his father's father were ministers, but he himself was converted through a poorly preached sermon by a layman in another church at the age of 15. Spurgeon at the time said,

  Now it is well that preachers be instructed, but this man was really stupid. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text was ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’ There was, I thought, a glimmer of hope for me in that text.

  It was enough, it turns out, for Spurgeon to put his trust in Jesus.
• He became pastor of Waterbeach Baptist church at age 17.
• He next became pastor at the London church (which became the Metropolitan Tabernacle) from age 19 until his death at age 57. By age 20-21, he was preaching regularly to 2000 people (before microphones and the electric light had been invented).
• He married Susannah at age 21, and had twin sons who later followed him into ministry.
• When asked for the secret of his ‘ success’, he replied “My people pray for me” (p. 49). He not only said it, but appeared to believe it.
• He was known in London for his pastoral visits to the houses of people dying during the cholera epidemic of the 1850s (cholera being, at the time, untreatable, and of unknown cause).
• He had a weekly time set aside to meet individually with people who wanted to become church members because they had become Christians. In this way, he came to know at least 6000 church members by name, together with knowing how they had come to receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour.
• Nevertheless, he was bitterly opposed by many newspaper editors, both secular and religious. His wife kept a scrapbook of such opposition, and filled a huge volume with clippings, and produced a framed wall text quoting Matthew 5:11-12.
• He preached at Crystal Palace at a service of National Humiliation over the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The size of the crowd, counted by turnstile, was 23,654.
• He began and ran a pastor's college offering a two year course. (For a sample of what he taught them, see Lectures to my Students.)
• By 1866, his trainees had begun 18 new churches in London alone.
• His largest work was his seven-volume commentary on the Psalms, The Treasury of David. It sold 148,000 copies during Spurgeon's lifetime.
• He began a door-to-door book-and-tract-sellers (colporteurs) organization to sell Bibles, as well as books, magazines and tracts produced by him. In the year 1878 alone, 94 colporteurs made 926,290 home visits. Their aim was not merely to sell books, but to talk about spiritual questions with the people they met.
• When the Metropolitan Tabernacle was under repair in 1867, the church hired the Agricultural Hall in another part of London for regular meetings. 20,000 turned up to hear him preach on a regular basis.
• Most weeks, and as just a sample of some of his regular duties, Spurgeon wrote, delivered and published a weekly sermon; looked after an orphanage, a pastor's college and an almshouse; read and responded personally to 500 letters; and preached up to 10 times in churches that he had started.
• Susannah Spurgeon became permanently semi-invalid after a serious illness. Although not able to attend church frequently, she found that she was able to begin and maintain a book fund to buy and supply free books for poor pastors, including books from Spurgeon and several Puritan writers. She spoke of sending books to missionaries in “Patna, Bengal, Ceylon, Transvaal, Samoa, China, Oregon, Jamaica, Kir Moab, India, Trinidad, Equatorial Africa, Russia, Natal, Canada, the Congo, Buenos Aires, Cayman, Damascus, Madrid, Lagos and Timbuctoo”.
• The Metropolitan Tabernacle was a place of constant activity, open from 7 in the morning until 11 at night seven days a week, hosting spiritually focused or welfare programmes run by people who lived and worked in the area.
• The busyness of the building is not surprising, since Spurgeon began and maintained 65 different institutions, ranging from welfare organizations through to mission organizations, preacher training colleges, and organizations for the distribution of literature.
• As well as a monthly magazine and many tracts, Spurgeon wrote 140 books.
• For his work on the book Commenting and Commentaries, he read 3-4000 volumes and chose 1437 of them to express an opinion on.
• From 1870, Spurgeon began the practice of, once every three months, asking all Metropolitan Tabernacle members to stay away from church the following Sunday evening in order to allow unconverted people to attend. The members co-operated, yet the Tabernacle was invariably fuller on those Sundays.
• In 1884, at Spurgeon's Jubilee celebration, Deacon Olney of the Metropolitan Tabernacle claimed that on Sunday evenings, there were 1000 members of the Tabernacle regularly involved in conducting meetings outside the Tabernacle.
• I could go on.
• I choose not to.

Despite what may appear, the book is not a hagiography, and records with disappointment Spurgeon's moderate drinking, smoking and use of a church fete to raise money for the completion (debt free) of the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

I have to trust to God's providence that this was the right book for me to read while I was lying sick in bed over the last four days or so. But let me say that Spurgeon's attitude to his own labours do not fit easily with our recommendations in Going the Distance, which we put out for the help of those in long-term ministry.

In contrast, Spurgeon wrote in 1876:

If I have any message to give from my own bed of sickness it would be this—if you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are obliged to lie still, work while you can. If you desire to make a sick bed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with the mournful reflection that you wasted time while you were in health and strength. People said to me years ago, “You will break your constitution down with preaching ten times a week,” and the like. Well, if I have done so, I am glad of it. I would do the same again. If I had fifty constitutions I would rejoice to break them down in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. You young men that are strong, overcome the wicked one and fight for the Lord while you can. You will never regret having done all that lies in you for our blessed Lord and Master. Crowd as much as you can into every day, and postpone no work till to-morrow. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” (Ecc 9:10).

(From ‘For the Sick and Afflicted’.)

My uncomfortable feeling is that Spurgeon's advice to the sick minister is rather closer to that of the Apostle Paul than the advice that I would offer. What do others think?

12 Comments »

The word ‘classic’ is bandied around far too much these days—especially by people like me. Today, however, I bring you a snippet from a Briefing article that actually deserves the title. In fact, it's not one article but a series of three by John Woodhouse called ‘The God of Word’, published back when the world was young (in 1988). Here are the concluding paragraphs of part 1:

We might crystallize the point of all this in a simple proposition: Where you have the word of God created faith in God (and nothing else can create real faith in God) there is all of biblical Christianity. Where the word of God is lacking there is no Christianity.

What does this mean for the accusation that evangelical Christianity with its emphasis on words has become an intellectual's religion? There is, I suspect, some truth in the accusation. However, it is one thing to recognize that our faith and life are less than they ought to be. It is another thing to blame that inadequacy on a particular doctrinal emphasis. Noticing symptoms is one thing; diagnosis is another, and prescription is another again.

If our Christianity has become too cerebral it is not because of an emphasis on words. Words are not the property of intellectuals. To quote Moses:

For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it ... (Deut 30:11-14)

What was true of the word of God then is true of the gospel word. It is not the prerogative of intellectuals. It is near to all of us.

But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom 10:6-9)

The answer to the error of intellectualizing Christianity is not to change its fundamental word character, but to ensure that we do not obscure or complicate or add to the word of God. We must not seek a level of experience other than faith in God crafted by the Word of God. We need to preach and teach God's word so that every obstacle to the knowledge of God is destroyed (even the obstacle of anti-intellectualism), and every thought taken captive to obey Christ (cf. 2 Cor 10:5).

Evangelical ministry must be flexible and adaptable and imaginative and inventive as far as manner and style goes. But there is simply no liberty for it to be other than ministry of the Word of God:

Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ. For this I toil, striving with all the energy which he mightily inspires within me. (Col 1:28-29)

Conclusion

It is this that distinguishes evangelical Christianity from all other forms of Christianity. It is what makes evangelical Christianity not one Christian party among many, but authentic Christianity. Giving due emphasis to the Word of God is not only the touchstone for evangelical ministry, it is the point of reference for all our failings.

If our Christianity has become dry and dull and dead, it will be because the Word of God does not occupy the place it should. If our churches have become closed cliques with no concern for society and the world around us, it will be because the Word of God does not occupy the place it should. If we have become prayerless, it will be because the Word of God does not occupy the place it should.

It is not that evangelicals emphasize the Word of God while Catholics emphasize sacraments and charismatics emphasize the Holy Spirit and liberals emphasize good works and Anglicans keep it all in balance! The Word of God is not just the evangelical party flag, some arbitrary element that is our particular hobby horse.

Our whole practice and experience of Christianity flows from this reality: that God has spoken. Everything—and I mean everything—is a consequence of that reality.

(From ‘The God of Word’, Briefing #10, Sept 1, 1988.)

Next Saturday, we'll snip something juicy out of Part 2 of the series: ‘Word and Spirit’.

Add Comment »

Further to Lionel's excellent post about ‘nowism’ (on the insidious Christian tendency to live for this world rather than the next), here is a fascinating snippet from Ross Douhat at The Atlantic Monthly.

Douhat is writing about the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katherine Jefferts-Schori, and the extent to which her “theological premises are shared across the culture-war divide, by Christians who oppose gay marriage and abortion and voted eagerly for George W. Bush as well as by liberal Protestants who consider the contemporary GOP an abomination”. He says:

The people who read Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer and The Prayer of Jabez may be more politically conservative then the people who read A Wing and a Prayer [Schori's book], and read certain passages of Genesis and Leviticus more literally, but the theology they're imbibing is roughly the same sort of therapeutic mush. Indeed, the big difference between the prosperity gospel that Osteen and his ilk are peddling and Schori's liberal Episcopalianism has less to do with any theological principle and more to do with what aspect of American life they want God to validate. And this difference, I suspect, has a great deal to do with social class. Osteen and Co.'s God wants us to pursue financial fulfillment because they're largely preaching to entrepreneurial, upwardly-mobile members of the middle class, whereas Schori's God wants us to pursue a more personal fulfillment—sexually, emotionally, philanthropically—because she's preaching to a demographic that, financially speaking, has already got it made.

Douhat is quite right: social-gospel Liberalism and prosperity-gospel Pentecostalism have this in common: they both seek God's validation for their programmes of ‘nowist’ improvement. Their gospel is a set of aspirations for this world—either soft-left liberal hopes for a better society, or capitalist, middle class aspirations for a better life for me.

How different this is from the apostolic gospel of Paul who preached a “hope laid up in heaven” (Col 1:4-5), or of Peter who blessed God for causing us to be “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Pet 1:3-4).

We need to be wary of ‘nowist’ insurgencies—from the left and the right!

Add Comment »

One of the reasons I so much like Colin Buchanan's kid's music is that he clearly agrees with me that no-one is ever too young to grasp the doctrine of the Trinity. My oldest daughter, now nine, is a bit past Colin these days, but my five-year-old and seven-year-old love listening to him. So the other day when our eldest was sick at home, I had the other two in the car and put on Colin's Follow the Saviour. Track 15 says:

Kids: In how many persons does God exist?

Colin: In three persons!

Kids: Who are they?

Colin: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Kids: Prove it!

Colin: Ah well, in Matthew [the sound of pages rustling] chapter 28 verses 18 to 20, “Jesus came to his friends and said ‘God has made me the boss of everything and everyone, so everywhere you go, urge everybody to follow me and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have told you. And remember this: I am going to be with you forever and ever and ever and ever!’”

I'm reasonably sure that Colin adapted this question and answer from the Westminster Shorter Catechism with proof texts, as found here. Or he could have got it from Broughton Knox, who says in his book The Everlasting God,

... if it had not been recorded in Matthew 28:19 that Jesus taught the disciples the doctrine of the Trinity, we would have to postulate that he had done so. These words of Jesus in Matthew 28:19 encapsulate the doctrine of the Trinity. The name of the Lord remains one name, yet now God is to be known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit—distinct, personal and equal.

(You can find that on page 154 of Knox's Selected Works (Volume 1).)

Colin riffs this Trinitarian truth, based on Matthew 28:19, into a song that reassures us about God's presence with us. The song, with a strong four-four beat, goes “Matthew 18:20, Matthew 18:20, Matthew 18:20, For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them!” (repeat three times). So Colin takes the doctrine of the Trinity to underlie our personal relationship, and our relationship with God himself. Interestingly, this is exactly what Broughton Knox also does, for in The Everlasting God, Broughton continues:

The fact that God is Trinity shows that personal relationship is basic reality, that is, that:

1. There is nothing more ultimate than personal relationship. Being, considered in itself, is an abstraction. Ultimate, true and real being is and always has been being-in-personal-relationship.
2. It follows that metaphysics of the Absolute or a theology of an impersonal God, such as Aristotle's and any theology of Being which is not thought of as being-in relationship has an error at its centre.
3. It follows that the subject matter of theology is not God, but God in his relationship, for the essence of God is in eternal relationship. Relationship with God and with one another is the subject matter of Scripture. It teaches the infallible truth inerrantly on these matters. God is Trinity eternally. The first words of the Bible are “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”, that is, revelation begins with a statement of God in relationship with our environment and ourselves.

So I am not completely sure whether Colin worked out his Trinitarian teaching by reading Broughton, by contemplating the Westminster Shorter Catechism, by thinking hard about the Athanasian Creed, or just by reading Matthew's Gospel. But I am impressed that he thought it appropriate to fit such Trinitarian truths into 1 minute and 54 seconds in a way that my girls can enjoy, recite and sing along with. It's a little bit Ned Flanders, but we all drove along singing it together.

7 Comments »

SG: Today we interview Mark Thompson.

Mark, how did you come to Christ?

I first heard the gospel in a Sunday School class at the local Baptist Church. However, my faith was nurtured by an ISCF group at high school, during a period when none of my family went to church at all. In the year of my HSC, I began to attend the local Anglican church, and the adventure took off from there.

How do you occupy your time?

I spend a lot of my time teaching theology at Moore College. Apart from my time as a husband and father, almost all my other involvements spring, in one way or another, from my role at college. I am currently committed to far too many writing projects, and I'm involved in the life of the Diocese of Sydney and Anglican evangelicalism more widely.

Tell us a bit about your background and other interests

I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney, and worked in churches in northern Sydney and the Illawarra. For three years, Kathryn and I lived in the UK, and we made many great friends there. But for the past 20 years or so, my life has been focussed in the inner city and the work of Moore College. Our family attends St Matthew's Anglican Church, Ashbury.

My biggest interest and concern remains seeking to be a godly husband and a godly father to our four little girls.

What are five books that really helped you grow as a Christian?

Very early on John Stott's little study Your Confirmation helped to put some important building blocks in place.

Jim Packer's Knowing God and John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion helped me to see the contours of evangelical systematic theology.

Heiko Oberman's biography of Luther, Martin Luther: Man between God and the Devil, while a little idiosyncratic at points, fuelled a longstanding interest in the German Reformer, and helped me to see in fresh ways why urgency and passion are integral parts of being a theologian.

While not a book, a series of talks from a Katoomba Youth Convention in the early 1980s—John Chapman's series on guidance—provided a brilliant model of biblical theology and its practical import. When I first heard them, they revolutionized the way I read the Bible. (Buy the MP3s here: Talk 1; Talk 2; Talk 3; Talk 4.)

I should add that my time as a student at Moore College was life-changing as well.

What are you reading now?

An assortment:

• Mark Driscoll's Radical Reformission.
• David Hall & Peter Lilliback, Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis.

It's been a while since I read a good spy thriller.

And what books would you recommend as must-reads right now?

• J Piper, The Future of Justification: it's an important engagement with a very popular challenge to a core Reformation doctrine.
• L Ryken & T Wilson (eds), Preach the Word: these are important essays on expository preaching by people who know how (including David Jackman, Wayne Grudem, John MacArthur, Bruce Winter, Wallace Benn and JI Packer).
• J Woodhouse, 1 Samuel: it will do your soul some good.

What would your friends say are your hobbyhorses?

My friends would undoubtedly say I am focussed on the doctrines of Scripture, the cross and justification by faith alone. Some would also come back to Luther. More widely, though, I'm sure some have not missed my obsession with the critical marriage of clarity and profundity in Christian theology, rather than the far more common habit of thinking only what is hard to understand is really worthwhile.

What's something that makes you angry?

Betrayal of the gospel by those who ought to be defending it (church leaders in particular). There's enough of it going about at the moment to keep me angry a lot of the time if I concentrated on it.

Who inspires you?

• John Stott for faithfulness and perseverance.
• John Chapman for 50 plus years of bold, clear and compelling Bible teaching.
• Billy Graham for just keeping on saying “The Bible says”.
• John Webster for rigorous and confident theological thinking.

What's your ideal day off?

A mountain verandah, good coffee, a good book and my family to drag me away from it all.

Give us your top five chocolate biscuits!

• Westons (now Arnotts) Chocolate Wheaten
• Arnotts TV Snacks
• Arnotts Tim Tams
• Arnotts Monte
• McVities Plain Chocolate HobNobs.

Thanks Mark!

2 Comments »

Thanks to everyone who contributed comments in answer to the question that I raised in my previous post about Paul and his fellow apostles in 1 Corinthians 4 and the woman described in Proverbs 31. The particular, concrete detail that I zeroed in on was the contrast between how they dress (“poorly dressed” versus “fine linen and purple”), but I also had in mind the broader contrast between how they live and how they are seen by others (“held in disrepute” versus “praised in the gates”).

I promised in the earlier post that I had “a few thoughts coming together”, which I would share, so here they are. I'm very conscious as I do this that many of you have far, far more experience than I do in reading the Bible and thinking through how to apply it in the details of life. Please don't think for a moment that I'm offering up these few quick thoughts as the last word in the conversation!

1. As I said in my first post, I don't have the option of ignoring either passage in the way I live my life. Both are Scripture, both are breathed out by God, both are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”. Not only that, both are, in their own way, descriptions that are held out as exemplary in some way. One is a kind of identikit picture of “the woman who fears the Lord”; she lives a life that is to be admired and praised and (presumably, as far as one is able) imitated. The other is a real life, unique, flesh-and-blood individual—an apostle, no less, but still one who holds himself out explicitly as an example to be imitated.
2. As a number of people have said, there are some important differences between the times and the places in which the Proverbs 31 woman and the Apostle Paul lived:
   • The city that gives the Proverbs 31 woman and her husband all that respect at the gate is (I think!) the city of the people of God, and possibly an idealized people of God at that, behaving as they ought to behave. (Notice the shift from the description in verse 23 (“her husband is known in the gates ...”) to the command in verse 31 (“Let her works praise her in the gates”). The city that holds the Corinthians in honour and despises people like Paul is the pagan city of Corinth.
   • The time in which the Proverbs 31 woman lives is one in which the people of God are still a nation, called to live out before a watching world the blessedness and the wisdom of fearing the Lord. The time that Paul lived in is one in which the gospel of Jesus was going out with urgency and costly sacrifice into a world hostile to God: as several people pointed out, the time Paul describes is a ‘wartime’ setting. (I wonder whether it is significant, by way of contrast, that the whole exercise of wisdom-collection in the Old Testament is associated with the time of Solomon, when Israel enjoyed “rest from all their enemies” and the king could spend his days entertaining the Queen of Sheba and swapping proverbs.)
   In both of these respects, of course, it is Paul and the Corinthians that I have more in common with than the Proverbs 31 woman: my time is the last days and my city is Corinth (well, Sydney, but there's not a lot of difference!).
3. But the differences are not so absolute that I should ignore Proverbs 31 altogether. I may live in a different time and a different city, but I still live in the same creation, and I fear the same God. So I should still be wise enough to see that forethought and prudence and family and faithfulness and productiveness are deeply respect-worthy, compared with the selfish, individualistic, short-term, wasteful fads and fashions of the world. It's not a bad thing to aspire to all the virtues of the wonder-woman of Proverbs 31, even if my own frailty and folly and the unfairness of a sinful world mean I probably won't always get the sort of success and respect that she gets. (Compare the way that Proverbs-style wisdom works—kinda!—for Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon, and the way that the wisdom of Proverbs and the lifestyle of the last days are put together in 1 Peter 3-4.)
4. Nor am I to imitate every single detail of 1 Corinthians 4. When Paul tells the Corinthians to imitate him, the details do matter, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered putting them in. He doesn't just give them an abstract principle, he gives them a real, tangible example of a lifestyle, and how it is seen and responded to by the world. But the details of how that lifestyle worked out in Paul's life may well be different, in some respects, from the details of how it works out for the people in Corinth. When he holds out himself as an example to them, he still tells them to take into account the various life situations that they were in when God called them to follow Christ (cf. 1 Cor 7:17). So, for example, while the description of Paul in 1 Corinthians 4 is of a ‘homeless’, itinerant missionary, he knows that imitating him won't mean suddenly abandoning home and family, and becoming similarly homeless. (In fact, when he writes to Timothy, even his advice to young widows is not a blanket command to head off and become cross-cultural missionaries, but a very Proverbs 31-ish word about “marrying, bearing children and managing a household”[1 Tim 5:14].)
5. The core of what I am to imitate in Paul's example is his devotion to humble service rather than the competitive pursuit of worldly status (1 Cor 3-4), his other-person-centred love that seeks the good of others and their salvation (1 Cor 10:33—11:1), and, underneath all that, his fear of God rather than the opinions of people (cf. Proverbs 31:30!), and his desire for God's glory rather than his own (1 Cor 10:31).

Will that make a difference to how I live the details of my life—including how I dress—in this wartime context—in this pagan, greedy, fashion-obsessed city? Surely it has to—not in an artificial, attention-seeking, ‘Gibeonite’ kind of way, as if Paul ‘muddied his suit’ to cultivate an appearance of being poorly dressed—not in a self-righteous, superior, legalistic kind of way, inwardly glorying in how much daggier I am than my more materialistic Christian brothers and sisters—not in a foolish, short-term, wasteful kind of way, buying stuff that falls apart after a few weeks, just because it was cheaper at the checkout—but in a real, practical, sacrificial, deliberate way that often (but not always) makes a visible difference in how I and my family look—in a thousand decisions to keep and mend rather than throw away and replace; to choose Op Shops over fashion shops; to cultivate “strength and dignity” and the “fear of the Lord” over deceptive, fleeting outward appearance; to save more money and give more away, instead of hoarding it and spending it; to take more risks for the gospel in my school-gate conversations, rather than staying trapped in my self-protective anxieties about how I am perceived.

It seems to me that I have some changes to work on!

11 Comments »