Teaching - a bad word?

Mike Reeves 'table talks' with Carl Trueman in the latest podcast from theologynetwork.org, on doctrine. Bad word? A few choice crumbs from the table:

Doctrine is an articulation of God's claim on us.
Doctrine should drive us to our knees - it leads to doxology (praise of God).
God's love is creative and prior - it has the first word. (Gen 1 & 2 Cor 4)
The gospel is a proclamation that Christ has died and risen: it does have practical implications, but it's not a technique. So read books which tell you about God and what he has done - not primarily about you and how your life can be better.

Mike and Carl also take time to consider that common contemporary assertion: doctrine divides (so let's not consider it) - and perhaps you've met people into doctrine who're all arrogant about it - they talk about that too, and the dangers involved.

Now take half an hour to listen over a cuppa / the ironing / making dinner.

Does Reformation doctrine really matter now?

So there was a rumpus and split in the church some hundreds of years ago, and people believe different things. Surely it's not important: we've learned to see past these petty differences, hm? In a wide-ranging conversation, Mike Reeves interviews Mark Dever on the personal and practical implications and value of the Biblical truths mostly rediscovered at the time now known as 'the Reformation', showing just how vital and pastoral these things are. 

The latest UCCF Table Talk, here - as usual, an excellent use of your listening time: easy listening with an edifying twist, an informative skip and a good shake of heart-warming.

Torrential timely truth

Clark Pinnock (1937-2010)

Theologian known most recently for his 'open theism', I wasn't aware of his much more helpful and orthodox contributions in the past. Justin Taylor brings a brief bio, with the news that Dr Pinnock died on Sunday. Read it here.

Quote of the Day: A new kind of ending

Dr Jeremy Begbie:

Death, of course, is the reality hovering over everything I've been saying. The ending of all endings. The reality which threatens every hope in a rich ending. The reality which makes us hesitant about hoping for anything too strongly. But this is how God gets our attention. He meets us here, where human false hopes meet their abyss, where all purely human hopes have died.

But from here also, a fresh kind of hope emerges. Three days pass, and the followers of Jesus find themselves with a new kind of hope, in a new kind of ending. Rumours of an empty tomb, and then the man himself, nailmarks in his side & hands, alive, newly alive, more alive than before. What kind of ending can they now look forward to?

Here is an ending we don't create but God gives.

Dr Begbie continues about the ending which breaks in in the middle and transforms. If you care anything for music or theology, watch The Sense of An Ending, below, and hear how the Christian life should be something like playing second violin in the middle of an improvising orchestra. Powerful and informative.

Theology Matters

I have no idea what the book's like, but the video's good!

[HT: Chris]

Symphonic Theology

Poythress' Symphonic Theology is a good little book - short chapters making an easy introduction to using various perspectives when reading the Bible: the validity, value and exemplification of the same. (That I enjoy reading Poythress is not entirely surprising, as he's a Presbyterian mathematician-theologian with an interest in linguistics and translation, and writes well.) I didn't so much find the book's ideas novel, as clarifying my thoughts. But I keep finding that if I think I've had a good idea, Poythress has already written a (much) better book on it. Next one I'm eager to get hold of is his new 'In the beginning was the Word: Language - A God-centred approach' from Crossway.

Studying theology with the Don

Tabletalk with Don Carson, on studying theology or preparing for future ministry. A helpful listen!

The allure of alliteration awry

When a TV programme on Calvin's influence on the Scottish psyche started with a pronouncement that Calvin's theology was, "Dark, dour, and all about discipline," I knew the programme wouldn't be worth watching. You'd think that they'd have read some Calvin for their research!

Joy and thanksgiving expressed in prayer and praise according to the Word of God are the heart of the Church's worship.

Christians rejoice even while they truly sorrow - because their rejoicing is in the hope of heaven... While joy overcomes sorrow, it does not put an end to it.

However many blessings we expect from God, His infinite liberality will always exceed all our wishes and our thoughts." [Commentary on Ephesians 3.]

Christianity is not a matter of the tongue but of the inmost heart. [The gospel] is not apprehended by the understanding and memory alone, as other disciplines are,
but it is received only when it possesses the whole soul and finds a seat and resting place in the inmost affection of the heart. Institutes III.vi.4.

Dark, dour and all about discipline, my foot. That probably just comes from a lack of sunshine.

Quote of the day: Christian counsel

David Powlinson, interviewed by C.J.Mahaney, made the following comment on his exploration / teaching of the dynamics of Biblical change:

"It makes the high truths that we confess walk on the ground where we live."

That could be said of any one of the books recently written from that school - Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands, When People are Big and God is small, Seeing through new eyes, You Can Change, The Ordinary Hero, etc. It could also be said of the New Testament... Given that the Bible is about Jesus, whom we confess as Truth, who walked on the ground where we live. That's Christian theology.

Trueman on Owen

Tramping the streets of Bournville this evening to deliver evangelistic church newsletters, I had as a soundtrack a series of 5 lectures on John Owen, by Carl Trueman. Definitely made the evening pass more interestingly and I recommend them to anyone interested in the man, the theology, or his times.

God's heart and ours

The latest Theologynetwork table talk is out and well worth a listen: Mike Reeves in conversation with Ron Frost about Richard Sibbes, God as Father and our hearts. Not to be restricted to the table - this is to be taken outside and enjoyed, in a family walk (below)! Sibbes' The Bruised Reed is my current train / flight reading, interspersed with Owen on the Mortification of Sin: highly recommended!

Just victory

Mike Reeves talks with Mike Ovey and Andrew Sach about the cross of Christ in the latest Theology Network tabletalk including how Christ is victor - justly.

Quote of the day: to be or not to be

"A Baptist, two Reformed people and a Lutheran..." walk into the White Horse Inn.

"...and we're sitting here talking about what we hold in common. This represents a spectrum which you never would have seen represented in the same room 200-300 years ago. I think that's actually a really good thing, that we're able to talk about the gospel and what we hold in common, and not just talk about it but to share it with people so they can hear: at its best, Evangelicalism has been like that. The people at the table knew that they were Baptists or Presbyterians or Lutherans or Episcopalians. The problem as I see it today is, there are no confessional Presbyterians, confessional Lutherans, confessional Anglicans who either want to be at the table or who are invited to be at the table. Everything has become generic and Evangelicalism has become its own denomination."

"And it's been defined by something other than theology. That's at the heart of it and that's why it's fading. It's always been defined - there was a time when it was far more robust."

I thought I should be clearer on how I am and am not Evangelical, from the previous post - just as our churches and so on should be clearer. And the men at White Horse Inn happened to mention it in today's podcast - above. The Problem is not so much Evangelicalism - that is good. The problem is when evangelicalism becomes all, and not just a partnership between those who know what they and their churches hold to more than the minimal theological ties of Evangelicalism.

Not interested in the unpreachable

Some have recently suggested that academic theologians are not motivated by the gospel on the ground - the local church and church planting. Better, they say, not to attend a theological college / seminary for a few years, but to be trained up in the local church. Now leaving aside the practical questions (Is every minister equipped with time and gifts to train young men to be ministers in every regard? Is the Bible college student really in a bubble unconnected with local churches?), this struck me as having some genuine concerns, but vastly unfair and uncharitable to many academic theologians I know, or of whom I know, who are very much pastorally and evangelistically motivated, and entirely engaged in serving their local church. I have already mentioned one such (Pete Williams), and have just come across a good interview of Derek Thomas, who baptised me when he was a humble minister and now is a humble seminary lecturer and church minister: on The Pastor and the Academy. "Too often, a rift obtains between the work of the church and theological study. Pastors and seminary students often feel the need to choose between one or the other. Derek Thomas, both pastor and professor, joins us to talk about the relationship between the pastor and the academy." Much of use to listen to.

Defending the Faith

John Gresham Machen. My Dad was almost named for Machen... until my grandmother overruled - he ended up with only the John part. Having studied under Machen in Princeton, before Westminster was founded, my Grandfather returned to Northern Ireland and found himself, as a final year student at seminary, fighting liberalism in his own denomination as Machen had been fighting it in the USA as a college professor. So Hart's account of J. Gresham Machen and his role in the "crisis of conservative protestantism in modern America was of particular interest to me - but more generally, it's a fascinating history for anyone who has an interest in Protestantism, fundamentalism, Presbyterianism, dispensationalism or politics - in America and anywhere else we may, puzzled, feel its influence! Machen was thoroughly orthodox, not fundamentalist, yet often prized by the fundamentalists for his scholarship and commitment to orthodoxy. (I still recommend that all undergraduate theology students read his Christanity and Liberalism.) He fought liberalism with the truth, but tried foremost to have a proper Presbyterian denomination and missions, confessionally committed to the truth as expressed in the Presbyterian standards, rather than giving up hope on the denomination and gathering with other evangelicals primarily. He baffled and annoyed fundamentalists by being liberal in practice where he wasn't in doctrine: unlike much of America, he wasn't for banning alcohol and smoking, and didn't mind a trip to the cinema. This liberal stance was political: being a convinced Presbyterian, whereas he believed in strict discipline in church rule, he opposed government control, not agreeing with the idea of a Christian America and seeking autonomy to preserve Christian faith and practice. Leaving the last word to Hart:

In the end, Machen's thought and career is a reminder that the relationship between religion and modern culture is not as clear-cut or unambiguous as commonly thought. In the sense that he defended historic Christianity at a time when much of the intellectual world was turning secular, Machen by all means displayed "anti-modern" views. But according to a definition that makes modernity inherently antithetical to religious faith, any belief, no matter how well adapted to the modern world, is "anti-modern." The larger sense of modernity, the assumed bête noire of Protestant conservatives, entails tolerance of cultural and religious diversity. Here Machen showed a remarkable willingness to defend religious freedom and cultural pluralism while fundamentalist and modernist Protestants continued to cling, though differing over specifics, to the idea of a Christian America. Indeed, at the same time that secular intellectuals attacked the Protestant ethos of American culture, Machen argued that the churches' involvement in cultural and social life was harmful because it undermined faithful witnessing to Christian truth. Unfortunately for Machen, that twin commitment - to Presbyterian orthodoxy and religious pluralism - went largely unheeded in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. Yet his outlook may still prove instructive to believers and secularists... today who through a series of culture wars struggle to reconcile the demands of faith with the realities of modernity.

Millstones and theology for kids

Just finished Thielicke's "A Little Exercise for Young Theologians", which is aptly named, and very helpful. As with most translations from German, it's not the snappiest read, but it is short, and should be read by every student of theology, whether one enrolled in a university degree, or simply discovering the wonders of theology in books.

It also made me smile as I thought of one tonic to take against the side-effects of studying theology as sinners: teach Sunday School. Give children's talks. Pride just doesn't have a place when you're trying to communicate eternal divinely-revealed truths to children in such a way that they'll see Jesus and know what it means to trust Him. These small people make you very aware of the short-comings of the technical vocabularly with which you could make grown people feel small. They make you very aware of the joy of the Father sending the Holy Spirit to open blind eyes to see the light of knowing God's glory in seeing Jesus. They make you humbled before Him as you plead for wisdom to answer huge theological questions from a 4 year old: wisdom from the Father who delights to hide these things from the wise and reveal them to children. Ah, theology is in the service of the church and Thielicke says the theologian should be pastored by the church. I'm inclined to think that being 'pastored' by the children is a good start...

To be or to do, that is the question

In discussions of systematic and biblical theology, of justification, covenant and N.T.Wright, Helm highlights Piper:

The first is to draw attention to what I believe is one of the most significant methodological points that Piper makes, but one which may, in the flurry of interest about justification, and the dust raised by it, get overlooked. The second thing is to underline what Piper says about the ambiguity of some of Bishop Wright’s language about imputation and justification. What both of these have in common is that Piper shows us the need to observe theological distinctions.

Piper claims that 'Wright’s definition of righteousness does not go deep enough' (62) What he means is that Wright’s account of divine righteousness starts and stops with his account of divine actions.(62-4) He treats righteousness in terms of actions. Piper asks, 'What is it abut God’s righteousness that inclines him to act in these ways? Behind each of those actions is the assumption that there is something about God’s righteousness that explains why he acts as he dos. What is that? That is the question, so far as I can see, that Wright does not ask.'

Read the rest of Helm's analysis.

Catechising

I'm rather excited to have started on the catechism with the 11-15 year olds in church. In Bournville we try to have a programme that helps this age-group get used to listening well to a sermon, knowing how to follow it, understand the Bible, and apply it. It works like this for them on a Sunday morning, over 4 weeks (not necessarily in this order!):
Week 1 - Sermon Search: they stay in for the sermon, and fill in a sheet prepared by the preacher with questions on the sermon.
Week 2 - Senior Bible Class: they go out during the sermon and look at the Sermon Search from the previous week, being helped to further understand and apply it.
Week 3 - Family service, they stay in for the sermon which is integrated into the service.
Week 4 - Senior Bible Class - they go out during the sermon and are helped to consider some other aspect of Christian doctrine and life.

If a church has a Sunday Club type thing for the children to go to during the sermon, I think this is a good transition for them. Of course, it's quite do-able not to have kids going out during the sermon, but that's another thing.

And I'm quite excited that in the 'week 4' session, above, I've just started on a catechism with the children. It sounds like an old, sterile thing, and I can hear some alarm bells start to ring!

- What's the value of learning off words by rote when you don't know what they mean?
Aha, but in the Senior Bible Class, we have whole sessions chatting about what they mean, giving illustrations, etc.

- So children learn off doctrines? What use is that in life?!
Much in every way. Doctrine forms life: right doctrine forms right practice. See Titus. But for example, much of the Christian life involves knowing the difference between justification and sanctification. Not that it's often said like that, but many issues of Christian living, attitude and worship are solved by a proper understanding of justification and not confusing it with sanctification! Now, when I was a teen I was given a wonderful foundation by learning that justification and adoption are acts of God's grace, whereas sanctification is the work of God's free grace. Difference? Once you've learned that:

Justification is the act of God's free grace by which He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight. He does so only because He counts the righteousness of Christ as ours. Justification is received by faith alone.

Adoption is the act of God's free grace by which we become His sons with all the rights and privileges of being His.

Sanctification is the work of God's free grace by which our whole person is made new in the image of God, and we are made more and more able to become dead to sin and alive to righteousness.

...then you spot the difference between an act of God's grace and a work of God's grace! You know that you are justified for ever no matter what - and that God continues to work in you by his grace (not just by your own efforts).

- Children shouldn't be learning off non-Biblical things: they should learn Bible verses.
Either or? They do learn Bible verses. Indeed, in the Sermon Searches, they learn how to study a passage of the Bible, understand it, and apply it. But then a friend in school asks (in a fit of existential despair or teenage angst?!), "What's the point to life?" And as soon as they start to answer that question, they're doing systematic theology. They're giving their friend a summary of what the Bible says, from what they can remember. Will it be accurate? Will it reflect the whole teaching of Scripture? Now, we could give them a series of 20 verses and passages to learn for each question. Or we could give them a Systematic Theology, tell them to look up the appropriate chapter, and they read 20 pages. Or, we could equip them with easy-to-learn summaries of the Bible's teaching, to have to mind.

Today, we looked at man's primary purpose (which is, by the way, to glorify God and enjoy him forever). We thought about the various different purposes other people might say we have (selfish gene, anyone?) We saw where we see in Scripture that our ultimate purpose is to glorify and enjoy God. We saw a few things in Scripture which help us see why glorifying and enjoying God is the wise and right ultimate goal for humans! We thought about what it means to magnify (or glorify) God - expressing how glorious He is (not adding to His glory!) We thought about how we could glorify and enjoy God in daily life. One of the boys said, "That's good - I'd wondered what the point is, to human beings!" And I pondered - his wondering was probably influenced by the recent unexpected death of their foster baby.

What's the point to life? To a human being? A pointless question? Unpractical catechising? Not a bit of it. In fact, learning and studying through the catechism will help these young people to glorify and enjoy God in the ups & downs of life.

See also John Piper's reasons for catechising, and Bish's celebration of a 16 year old's clear testimony to justification, in the 16th century.

[If you're interested, I'm using the Westminster Shorter Catechism in Modern English, which I learned, but for the paedobaptistic bits will probably adapt using the 1689 / Piper's adaptation, put into modern English... I'll get the other Senior Bible Class leader to do those, if we reach those questions - in several years' time possibly!]

Quote of the day: My only comfort

What is your only comfort? That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him. - Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Qu.1