Category Archive: Uncategorized
In the comments on the
In the comments on the last post, Chris asked for a list of the books I bought on my vacation. I’m not sure that list would make gripping reading for anyone besides me. It would also be one of the longer posts on this blog!
I did pick up some books I’d bought via Half.com and had shipped to my friend Chip, including Donald Howard’s The Idea of the Canterbury Tales, Jill Raitt’s The Colloquy of Montbeliard, about the debate between Jacobus Andreas (Lutheran) and Theodore Beza, and Gene Wolfe’s Bibliomen (hard to find) and The Book of the Short Sun (all three Short Sun novels in one volume!). And when I got home, I found that my copy of E. Brooks Holifield’s The Covenant Sealed had arrived. I paid an arm and a leg for it, but it looks very good.
Enough about books I bought. On to books I’ve read. While I was at my grandmother’s place, I read N. T. Wright’s New Heavens, New Earth. It’s a fairly short booklet, but it provides a very good discussion of the Christian’s future hope. “Christian hope,” Wright says, “is not simply for ‘going to heaven when we die,’ but for ‘new heavens and new earth, integrated together'” (p. 5). Along the way, Wright provides some helpful exegesis. 1 Peter 1:4 speaks of “an inheritance … kept in heaven for you,” but that passage doesn’t indicate that we must go to heaven to enter our inheritance.
The point is that salvation is being kept safe in heaven for you, in order then to be brought from heaven to where you are, so that you can enjoy it there. It is rather like a parent, in the run-up to Christmas, assuring a child that “there is indeed a present kept safe in the cupboard for you.” That does not mean that on Christmas Day and thereafter the child is going to have to go and live in the cupboard in order to enjoy the present there. Rather, it means that at the appropriate time the present will be brought forth out of its safe hiding-place, so that it can enrich the life of the child in the world of real life, not just in the cupboardly world (p. 7).
Nor does “Our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil. 3:19-21) mean that “heaven is our real home, the place to which we will eventually go” and that we are “just a-passin’ through” here.
The point of being a citizen of a mother city is not that when life gets really tough, or when you retire, you can go back home to the mother city. The people to whom Paul was writing in Philippi were Roman citizens, but they had no intention of going back to Rome. They were the means through which Roman civilization was being brought to the world of Northern Greece. If and when the going got tough there, the emperor would come from Rome to deliver them from their enemies in Philippi, and establish them as a true Roman presence right there. So, Paul says, “from heaven we await a saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (p. 8).
Wright doesn’t deny the reality of heaven (“God’s dimension of reality”), nor does he deny that believers who die before the day of resurrection continue to live with Christ. But he rightly stresses that living with Christ in a disembodied state in heaven isn’t our final goal.
“Departing and being with Christ,” or “living to God,” … are for the New Testament writers ways of expressing a temporary stage, ahead of the time when God will restore all things, and will renew his people to bodily life, in the midst of his new creation (p. 21).
Here’s Wright’s summary of the Christian’s hope:
Christian hope, therefore, is for a full, recreated life in the presence and love of God, a totally renewed creation, an integrated new heavens and new earth, and a complete humanness — complete not in and for itself as an isolated entity, but complete in worship and love for God, complete in love for one another as humans, complete in stewardship over God’s world, and so, and only in that complete context, a full humanness in itself (p. 24).
Good stuff!
Well, I’m finally back from
Well, I’m finally back from my vacation. As you’ve read in my last post (which, of course, you’ve read and re-read for the last month, judging by the comments on it), I left home on June 5 to attend Classis Western Canada of the United Reformed Churches. After the classis, I drove from Ponoka, Alberta, to Abbotsford, British Columbia — an 11-hour-or-so drive — for a classis-wide pulpit exchange. Which reminds me of a dialogue I once had, understandable perhaps only to those who know the Dutch word for “Reverend”:
TERRY: “So when you have a pulpit exchange, you come here and our pastor goes to another church and that pastor goes to another church…. It’s kind of a domino effect!”
ME: “No, Terry. It’s the dominee effect.”
On June 9, I led worship and preached for the Surrey Covenant Reformed Church (URC) in the morning and then for Maranatha Canadian Reformed Church in the afternoon. That was the first time I had preached in a Canadian Reformed Church. I was very well received. Several of the members came up to me afterward and told me that they were delighted that our churches had entered into ecclesiastical fellowship and that they were looking forward to closer relations in the future.
My grandmother lives in Abbotsford, so I figured I would start my vacation after the pulpit exchange. I did a lot of reading that week (June 10-15) and hit a few of my favourite used book stores. I also spent a lot of time with Rob Schouten, the pastor of the Abbotsford Canadian Reformed Church. We went into Vancouver to visit Regent College. I blew a lot of money in their bookstore. No surprise there, eh? On the 16th, I preached in the morning for the Langley Reformed Evangelical Church (CRE) and in the afternoon for Immanuel Covenant Reformed Church (URC) in Abbotsford. Call me Mr. Ecumenical: three denominations in two weeks.
On June 17, I left Abbotsford and drove to Moscow, Idaho, where I spent most of the next week, staying at the home of Chip and Janet Lind. Janet was away, so Chip and I were batching — and I have to say that Chip can cook better than I can! We had company over for a couple of nights in a row, and Chip made some pretty good food. I also caught up on my movie watching: I saw Being There, Waking Ned Devine, and Strictly Ballroom, all a lot of fun.
While in Moscow, I spent some time at Bucer’s Coffeehouse Pub, sipping Guinness and reading John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and P. G. Wodehouse’s Piccadilly Jim. Ahhh…..
On Thursday, June 20, I had lunch and a good talk with Doug Wilson. I also chatted with Doug Jones. It sounds as if Canon Press has a lot of great stuff lined up. Peter Leithart has just finished a book entitled Against Christianity (see his great essay, “Against Christianity; For the Church“). Steve Wilkins has a book coming out soon (on celebration, if I recall my glance at the cover correctly). And they’re hoping to publish books on worship by Leithart and Jeff Meyers and on the Trinity by Ralph Alan Smith and Jeff Meyers sometime next year. I’m looking forward to them eagerly!
On Friday morning, I drove up to Spokane and caught a flight to Chicago, where I was picked up, housed, fed, and automobiled by Wes White, a student at Mid-America Reformed Seminary and an e-mail correspondent of mine. I hadn’t met him before in person, but it was great to be able to get to know him in person. Chicago was extremely hot and humid, especially after Lethbridge (dry and windy as a rule, but rainy to the point of flooding the week I was in Abbotsford) and Idaho (warm but dry).
The primary reason I flew out to Chicago was to attend the wedding of Sarah Smith and Tim Boer. When I was in seminary, I spend a lot of time at Sarah’s parents’ place and it was great to be able to witness Sarah’s wedding and to visit old friends (in particular, Sarah’s older brother, Nick and his new wife). I also had coffee with some classmates from seminary who are pastoring in the area.
On the 27th, I was back in the air, arriving back in Spokane by about 10:30 in the evening. I spent that weekend with Peter and Noel Leithart. Peter and I did a lot of talking, and I spent some time with him and several of his sons at the ball diamond on Saturday morning. That evening, we watched Run Lola Run, a rather odd movie (Peter: “What just happened there?” Me: “I have no idea”).
I worshipped with Christ Church that Sunday: great music, weekly communion, raised hands for the Gloria Patri, congregational Amens, and all kinds of other enjoyable things, as well as a helpful sermon in Wilson’s “Reformed Is Not Enough” series. I spent that afternoon with Roy and Bev Atwood, a home where the food is always good (to say nothing of the wine!). Then I attended the “Men’s Forum” in the evening before returning to the Leitharts.
The next day — Monday, in fact — I drove the eight hours or so back to Lethbridge where I found waiting for me, among other things, a birthday present from some online friends (who appear to have been surfing my Amazon wishlist: many thanks, Chris and Sydney!) and over 400 e-mails.
In other news, as some of you probably know from the blogs by Mark and Davey, I’ve been officially declared a heretic. The Covenant Presbytery (RPCUS) has adopted some resolutions (confusingly identified as a response to the “New Perspective on Paul,” though they have little or nothing to do with what normally goes by that name) and has made a statement about the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church’s Ministerial Conference this January at which I spoke along with Steve Wilkins, Doug Wilson, and Steve Schlissel. Interestingly enough, the presbytery never contacted any of us to discuss our views with us nor did they document any of their charges. In fact, they never quote any of us. And some of their conclusions flow from leaps of (il)logic I’m having a hard time following. Andrew Sandlin has written a good response. Tapes of that conference are still available.
And now I’ve caught up on most of that e-mail and put away the trunkload of books I bought (you think I exaggerate?). I should probably clean up the living room a bit — one of my elders is coming over tomorrow — and read a little more Wodehouse before bed, my own bed, the bed I’ve missed. It was a good vacation and I enjoyed visiting all my friends, but it’s great to be home again.
Another bit from N. T.
Another bit from N. T. Wright’s Reflecting the Glory:
John goes on [in 1:14] to say that we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, the perfect reflection of the glory of God. As we continue to read through the Gospel, we shall see that, for John, this glory was revealed not in a blaze of majesty, not in Jesus’ sweeping all before him in some triumphal earthly procession. This glory was revealed supremely in Jesus’ giving of his own life as the sacrifice for the sins of the world, enthroned on the cross outside Jerusalem and crowned with cruel thorns. It is in the light of that knowledge that John writes verse 18: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” In other words, when we look at this Jesus, and above all at Jesus crucified for the sins of the world, then we see the true nature of the Father’s heart. It is a heart of glory, the glory of self-giving love.
Given the prominence of this theme in John’s Gospel (and elsewhere in Scripture), why don’t most systematic theology textbooks emphasize God’s self-giving love in their discussions of His glory?
Yesterday afternoon, I wrote a
Yesterday afternoon, I wrote a sermon on Philippians 1:12-18a. The challenge there is figuring out the identity of the people who are proclaiming Christ out of ill-will toward Paul. They aren’t heretics. As Galatians 1 makes clear, Paul doesn’t rejoice when heretics preach a different gospel. Most likely, they are Christians who are preaching the true gospel but who are doing it out of rivalry. They envied Paul’s popularity, and they’re hoping to get a following now that Paul is in prison.
N. T. Wright, in his lectures on Philippians offers another suggestion, however. Paul isn’t speaking about Christian preachers. He’s speaking about pagans (as in Acts 19) who are jealous for their religion. They know that if people believe what Paul is preaching, they’re going to stop worshipping the old gods — and some people will even be out of business. So they’re going around “proclaiming Christ” — talking about Christ, describing Paul’s message — in the hope that they can discredit him: “Do you know what that guy Paul is preaching? He’s saying that there’s another king, Jesus. Isn’t that treason? He’s saying that some Jew who died on a Roman cross is the Lord of the world and that he’s conquered our gods and that he’s the only way to be reconciled to the true God. People shouldn’t be allowed to talk like that. It’s bad for business, bad for morale, bad for civic unity. I hope they tie him up a little tighter.” It’s an attractive proposal. Wright admits, however, that though his arguments did convince the other people in his Bible study, they didn’t convince his wife. And in the end, I suspect that this is the less likely of the two options.
After finishing the sermon and having supper, I went with Theo Lodder, the pastor of Taber Canadian Reformed Church, and John van Popta, the pastor of Coaldale Canadian Reformed Church, along with their families, to the University of Lethbridge for a concert by their Jazz Ensemble. They played a mixture of straightforward big band music and some “outside” pieces, one of which, “The Legend of Christophe Dorian,” was written by their bassist — a creative piece, which (I think) occasionally shifted into 5/4 time.
It was an enjoyable evening. We went out afterward for a bite to eat, and then I went over to the home of some friends whose cat I’m feeding while they’re on vacation. To my surprise (not to mention: pleasure), I discovered that they’d left me a six pack of Guinness.
Last Words
Here‘s an article from The Vocabula Review on last words. I think my favourite is this one, from a pedant after my own heart:
And you have to admire the single-mindedness of purpose in the last words of French grammarian Dominique Bouhours: “I am about to — or I am going to — die; either expression is used.”
Yay! Bill and his family
Yay! Bill and his family are finally home. Thanks be to God!
I used to think that
I used to think that I was the kind of person who made a lot of lists. Even as a child, I’d make lists of books I thought I might like to read. In fact, apart from my “Things To Do” lists, I suppose almost all the lists I’ve ever made are lists of books. By my previous standards, I was definitely a list person. But then, thanks to Aaron Belz, I came upon this site. No, I don’t make a lot of lists. But these people do. And some are even quite fun to read.
I’m finally close to finishing
I’m finally close to finishing Schmemann’s For the Life of the World, which I’ve been enjoying (judiciously, of course). Here’s his very helpful analysis of secularism:
Secularism, I submit, is above all a negation of worship. I stress: — not of God’s existence, not of some kind of transcendence and therefore of some kind of religion. If secularism in theological terms is a heresy, it is primarily a heresy about man. It is the negation of man as a worshiping being, as homo adorans: the one for whom worship is the essential act which both “posits” his humanity and fulfills it. It is the rejection as ontologically and epistemologically “decisive,” of the words which “always, everywhere and for all” were the true “epiphany” of man’s relation to God, to the world and to himself: “It is meet and right to sing of Thee, to bless Thee, to praise Thee, to give thanks to Thee, and to worship Thee in every place of Thy dominion….”
His subsequent discussion of secularism presents it as the result of the medieval theologians’ radical disconnection of the “symbolic” from the “real,” so that the two were set in opposition to each other, a move which led to the division of life into the “sacred” and the “profane.”
Another Update on the DeJongs
Another update on the DeJongs. As I mentioned in my last post, after the first lump on Jacob’s neck drained, the doctors detected a second lump. This week, they did some more tests and determined that the second lump is also an infection. They treated it, but aren’t satisfied yet with the results. The lump is still harder than they’d like and so they’re thinking of opening it and cleaning it out. They hope he’ll be able to return home after the weekend. More praying to do….
Here’s something Doug Wilson wrote
Here’s something Doug Wilson wrote in the latest Credenda/Agenda:
We need to run periodic worldview tests on ourselves, looking primarily for the residuum of Gnosticism. Many times we will find more than just residue. Call this process diagnostics. We have bodies. God likes matter. Our bodies are not disposable casings for cerebral events. But ask a typical Reformed church to have the congregation raise their hands during the Gloria Patri and see what happens.
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