The Poor Creatures Are Hardening Their Hearts

I have avoided reading John Owen for a long time. For two reasons: (1) He has been dead for 300 years, and (2) His English is so bad that getting anything from his writing requires monumental effort. For two reasons, however, I finally started reading Overcoming Sin and Temptation: (1) J.I. Packer calls Owen the best English-speaking theologian ever, and (2) Lately I have been struggling with perfectionism. That is, though I love Jesus and trust that he has paid the penalty for my sins, I am not always sure that I have done enough. Paul calls us to "obey the gospel." Am I actually obeying the gospel? Am I holy enough? Owen, in his first section of the book, soundly defeats this idea that we can be perfect. And yet, at the same time, calls vehemently for personal holiness like no other author I have read. Though Jesus has freed us from our bondage of sin, there still remains in us "indwelling sin," as Owen says. Our task then as believers is to "mortify," or "kill," that sin. He writes,

The choicest believers who are assuredly freed from the condemning power of sin, ought yet to make it their business all their days to mortify the indwelling power of sin.

It is a stunning appeal and one that is lacking not only in our culture but in our churches as well.

For what it's worth, Owen is not nearly as hard to read as I was led to believe (part of this owing to a great, new edited version). And, more important, he is incredibly helpful and uplifting. All of his exegetical and theological assertions are meant always to help Christians.

My favorite quote so far (perhaps all year) came on page 57. In a section on the necessity of the constant mortification of sin, he speaks to those Christians who have not taken it upon themselves to actually try and defeat the indwelling sin in their lives. For all intense and purposes, these are "elder brothers."

It hardens them, by begetting in them a persuasion that they are in as good condition as the best [professing Christians]. Whatever they see in them is so stained for want of this mortification that it is of no value with them. They have zeal for religion; but it is accompanies with [lack] of forbearance and universal righteousness. They deny [reckless extravagance, especially with money], but with worldliness they separate from the world, but live wholly to themselves, taking no care to exercise lovingkindness in the earth; or they talk spiritually, and live vainly; mention communion with God, and are everywhere conformed to the world; boasting of forgiveness of sin, and never forgiving others. And with such considerations do poor creatures harden their hearts in the unregeneracy.

Clearly Owen, a committed Calvinist, deems these people not actually Christians. And yet, I can't read that paragraph and not ashamedly relate to the "professors," as he calls them.

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Strident Critique of Christless Christianity

Inside baseball ahead.

I read a book a few months back called Christless Christianity by Michael Horton. I enjoyed it tremendously and quoted from it extensively on this blog. Perhaps I should have been more careful. John Frame has come out with a capacious critique of Horton, finding most of the work exaggerated, unfounded and, perhaps most brutally, unbiblical. Though he shoots sometimes where he need not (I sense he has little capacity for understanding pendulum swinging polemics), his objections seem true and important, especially insofar as we take stock of America and what she has become. Whereas Horton, the constant caviler, sees theological devastation, Frame, an optimist, sees growth. Frame writes:

For what it is worth, my own perception of American evangelicalism is very different from Horton’s. My observation is anecdotal (just like his, in the final analysis), but based on around 55 years of adult observation in many different kinds of churches including the much maligned mega-churches. In most every evangelical church I have visited or heard about, the “focus” is on God in Christ. There has been something of a shift over the years in what Horton would call a “subjective” direction. But that is best described not as unfaithfulness, but as a shift toward more application of Scripture to people’s external situations and inner life. There is a greater interest in sanctification (not just justification), on Christianity as a world view, on believers’ obligations to one another, on love within the body of Christ, and in the implications of Scripture for social justice.

I don’t see this as wrong, or unbiblical. Indeed, I think this general trend is an improvement over the state of affairs fifty years ago. Scripture is certainly concerned about these matters, and we ought to teach and learn what it has to say. Indeed, a “focus on God” that neglects scrutiny of ourselves does not honor God at all. As Calvin says on the first page of his Institutes, we cannot know ourselves without knowing God, and we can’t know God without knowing ourselves. And Calvin (rather unlike Horton) says that he doesn’t know which comes first. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says as its answer to Question 1, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever.” (Emphasis mine.) So it is possible to have a God-centered view of human experience and subjectivity, a human “focus” that detracts not one bit from a biblical God-centeredness.

The review goes on at great length, most of which I don't have the time to comment on. One section, however, was especially challenging to me. Horton tries to show, in one part of the book, that preachers who preach without Christ at the forefront, without the gospel at the climax, without ultimately preaching Christ and him crucified, are preaching moralistically. That is, to the degree a preacher focuses on the moral implications of a Bible story (say, the call to be more like David who had the faith to slay the giant in his life), he is not representing the the true gospel. Frame quotes Horton:

Regardless of the official theology held on paper, moralistic preaching (the bane of conservatives and liberals alike) assumes that we are not really hopeless sinners who need to be rescues but decent folks who need good examples, exhortations, and instructions...

Frame responds:

This insult is quite undeserved. Horton says that to use a biblical character as an example for Christians today is a denial of the gospel. (Or is he again criticizing an “emphasis?” Hard to say.) That is nonsense. And it shows again that Horton has no ear for the complexity of biblical salvation, for the distinction between justification and sanctification. Obviously we are not justified by following anyone’s example, only by trusting in Christ. But in the process of sanctification we often have need of examples and, for that matter, exhortations and instructions as well. Scripture itself provides these, and we ought to be thankful for them.

I think what has happened here is that Horton has locked on to a certain theory of preaching and has neglected to look at what the Bible actually says. And at this point the theory is so unscriptural that Horton’s condemnations reflect back on himself rather than hitting his targets.

I agree with Horton that preachers sometimes refer to Bible characters without an adequate appreciation of their place in the history of redemption. Certainly it would be wrong to preach on David and Goliath and conclude that all believers have the power to kill literal giants (cf. Horton, 148-49). But that is just to say that Scripture passages must be understood in the context of the whole Bible. It certainly does not forbid all use of Bible characters as examples.

Horton should have thought about this enough to understand that there is an opposite extreme. I once had occasion to sit for some months under the preaching of a couple of Horton’s students. Their sermons typically developed some too-clever way at making their text “point to Christ.” Beyond that, they offered no illustrations, no applications except a general “repent and believe.” I hope Horton doesn’t regard this kind of preaching as ideal. But had he merely recognized that there were two extremes he would not have used rhetoric that condemned only one, but would have tried to do some careful analysis to define a middle position.

The implications of this, if you believe Frame, are quite profound right now in Reformed circles, and especially those who follow Tim Keller. Though Keller would never go to the lengths Horton does to castigate "moralists," he teaches similarly. How does one promote sanctification within his church body? is the question. Can you make clear that you should avoid adultery by pointing, say, to Jospeh fleeing from Potipher's wife, but not by pointing to the cross? Keller and Horton, I would suspect, would say no. Frame, it seems, says yes and no.

If there is common ground between Frame and Horton, I think it is blinded by Horton's language. He sounds almost legalistic in his gospel assertions, but I know he is not. Similar to Keller, I think he knows that sanctification stands upon justification, not vice versa. "Salvation by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone" as Martin Luther would say. And so Horton and Keller would say that the basis for understanding and emulating Joseph, for example, is the cross, is your justification (and I suspect Frame would be in agreement here). Where Horton, at least, disagrees with Frame is in the application of that. In every sermon, Horton would say, you must present Christ (which is quite similar to Luther's method). If you don't, if you make a moral proclamation based on some character in the bible without making clear the cross, you have left out the gospel entirely. Frame seems to be on to something when he says that it "nonsense." The real issue, and Frame makes this clear, is the preacher who understands this not at all. It is the preacher who preaches only sanctification by justification that we should be concerned with. And, in truth, I don't know if even Joel Osteen falls into that camp.

Whatever the case, Frame calls Horton to the carpet. He concludes the review:

I usually don’t review books at this length. But I have noticed that the theology of this book is becoming more influential in evangelical and Reformed circles, and I believe there is danger in that. I say that despite the fact that I agree with the book about many things. Most relevantly, I agree with Horton that the evangelical church needs to put more emphasis on man’s sin and the saving grace of Christ, less emphasis on what Horton regards as other things and what I regard as the lower-priority applications of Christ’s work. But he thinks this wrong emphasis is so bad as to put the church in immediate danger of Christless apostasy. I do not.

Horton’s alarmism is persuasive to many people, and I have been moved to try to show them their persuasion is premature. The problem is that the yardstick Horton uses to measure the American church’s allegiance to Christ is not an accurate yardstick. Or, to drop the metaphor, Horton measures the American church with a defective theology.

He comes on to the reader as a generic Protestant Christian with a passion for the historic doctrines of the atonement and of justification by faith alone. He writes engagingly. Naturally, then, other Protestants tend to resonate to his arguments. But Horton is not just a generic Protestant or even a generic Reformed theologian. He holds certain positions that are not warranted by the Reformed Confessions and which in my mind are not even Scriptural. To review, he advocates the following:

1. Attention to ourselves necessarily detracts from attention to Christ.

2. We should not give attention to the way we communicate the gospel, or to making it relevant to its hearers.

3. God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are a zero-sum game. The idea that man must do something compromises the absolute sovereignty of God.

4. God’s work of salvation is completely objective, external to us, and not at all subjective, internal to us. (Here he backtracks some.)

5. God promises us no earthly blessings, only heavenly ones, and to desire earthly blessings is a “theology of glory,” deserving condemnation.

6. Law and gospel should be utterly separate. There should be no good news in the bad news and no bad news in the good news.

7. Preaching of the gospel must never use biblical characters as moral or spiritual examples. Nor must it address practical ethical issues in the Christian life.

8. A focus on redemption excludes a focus on anything else.

9. In worship and in the general ministry of the church, God gives and does not receive; the congregation receives and does not give.

10. Analysts of the church must compare the Church’s focus on Christ with its focus on other things, rather than considering that many of these other things are in fact applications of Christ’s own person and work.

Horton considers adherence to these principles essential, so that departing from them constitutes Christlessness, and failure to emphasize them sufficiently leads to a false gospel. But not one of these principles is found in any Reformed confession. (#6 is found in the Lutheran confessions, but it is controversial among other Protestants.) And in my view, none of them are Scriptural.

So Christless Christianity is essentially an evaluation of the American church, not from the standpoint of a generic Protestant theology, but from what I must regard as a narrow, factional, even sectarian perspective. Readers need to understand this. If we remove #1-10 as measuring sticks for the American church, the church does not look nearly as bad as Horton presents it.

There is great danger here of further division within the body of Christ, as if there were not already enough. Arguments over redemptive-historical preaching (#7) have already split congregations apart. When one group presents these principles as the only orthodox position, but others (understandably) are not convinced, and the principles themselves are often unclear, we have a recipe for disaster.

And the church would do well, in my judgment, not to add principles 1-10 to its creed. The results could include intentional irrelevance (1-2), especially on social matters (5, 7, 8), Christian passivity (3, 9), intellectualism and impersonalism in our relation to God (4, 9), artificiality in preaching, not drawing on the richness of Scripture (2, 6-8), elimination of lay ministry (9), and poor theological analyses and evaluations of the church (10).

So I must render a negative verdict on this book, though commending the author’s passion for the purity of the church and for the gospel. In doing this, I must disagree with many friends and respected colleagues, who have commended this volume lavishly. They should have known better.

For those of you interested, the whole thing is worth your time, even if you haven't read Christless Christianity.

New Tim Keller Book: Introduction

Here, for free.

Gollum Plays Screwtape

AKA, Andy Serkis. So cool (and creepy):

HT: JT

Whatever You Read, Read That First

J.C. Ryle:

Do not let newspapers, novels, and romances be read, while the prophets and Apostles be despised. Do not let the exciting and sensual swallow up your attention, while the edifying and the sanctifying can find no place in your mind.

Young men, give the Bible the honor due to it every day you live. Whatever you read, read that first.

Review of The Shack by Wax

Though I failed miserably at my attempt to get a review of The Shack done (I might pick it up again when things calm down), Trevin Wax does a decent job highlighting the good things and bad things about the book.

In the end, I found that The Shack wasn’t nearly as good as some had said, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as others had charged. It has everything positive about contemporary evangelicalism, and yet it has all the drawbacks of current evangelical expression too.

Read it.

Paul Was Not the Founder of Christianity, Thank You Very Much

It is a common assumption among liberal biblical scholars that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity, Paul was. They contend that Jesus' goal and Paul's were/are at odds. Jesus had no intention of founding a new religion, but Paul did. Robert Wright propounds similarly in his new book, The Evolution of God. Greg Easterbrook, in review of Wright, writes,

Paul wanted Christianity to become a global faith, appealing to anyone from any land or ethnic group. So he offered something no faith had offered to that point -- universal brotherhood. Did Jesus intend to start a new, broader-based religion? That's hardly clear -- Christ never used the word "Christian" or instructed his disciples to promote a new faith. Paul, by contrast, actively wished to start a cross-borders, proselytizing system of belief.

Now you must understand that this sort of claim is specious at best, and delusive at worst. In formulating such theses, preconceived notions are much more important than historical truth. Accordingly, large parts of the Bible must be dismissed in order that the intended theses remain accurate. In a letter to the editor this morning, Dave Reed deftly responds:

Amazing! Did neither the book's author nor its reviewer consult the Bible? After all, the Bible describes the unfolding plan in great detail.

Even Sunday schoolers know Jesus's final words on earth in the Great Commission, "Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19, ESV). They also know about his personal conversion of Paul. In Acts 9:15, Jesus says of Paul, ". . . he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the gentiles [non-Jews] and kings and the children of Israel."

The Old Testament, throughout, points to "a righteous God and a Savior" for "all the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 45:22, 23). Jesus further reveals, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14).

Perhaps Mr. Wright shall pen many anthropologic theories, and Mr. Easterbrook many nonfiction reviews, before the end arrives. Meanwhile, for those interested in the facts on the outreach of grace through faith, please consult a Bible.

Jesus at the Center

Michael Horton, in Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church, p. 142-143:

Apart from Christ, the Bible is a closed book. Read with him at the center, it is the greatest story ever told. The Bible is trivialized when it is reduced to life 's instruction manual. What is the point of the historical books, the Psalms, the wisdom literature, and the Prophets? According to the apostles—and Jesus himself—the Bible is an unfolding drama with Jesus Christ as its central character. As the narratives themselves make plain enough, the Old Testament saints were not heroes of faith and obedience but sinners who, despite their own wavering, were given the faith to cling to God's promise. According to the apostle Paul, the Old Testament itself proclaimed this gospel of free justification in Christ alone through faith alone: "But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify" (Rom. 3:21 NIV).

He continues:

Isn't it amazing that, according to Jesus, the whole Bible is about him and Peter says that the angels long to understand the Good News that is (or should be) brought weekly by heralds, but we decide that someone or something else should be the focus of our sermon and worship this week? "Yes, but we already understand all of that," I hear someone saying. Do we? Not if we are by nature self-righteous and self-confident, answering the law with the oath of the Israelites at Mount Sinai, "All this we will do."

The Perfect Book

I think I have read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods about five times. It could be, in all seriousness, the perfect book. No, Bryson is not a theologian (far from it), but he is one of the world's best living writers and is, quite possibly, the funniest. Erudition usually detracts. Not so here. Bryson has me gleefully looking up in a dictionary a good five or six words a page, just so I can get more immersed in his world. He writes in such a way that brings about quite a conundrum. His narrative is crafted so well that you want quickly to move to the next page, but at the same time begs you to linger amidst the long, perfectly structured sentences for fear you will miss some beautiful piece of prose. And, again, he is funny. And not kinda funny. The funniest. As I try and read sections out loud to my wife, I constantly have to stop to gather myself. I would be embarrassed if I were not so happy.

A Walk in the Woods is about his expedition on the great Appalachian Trail (running up the East Coast, it covers some 2200 miles). Along with his friend "Katz," he takes one of the most memorable journeys I haven't actually been on. And as I read it again, I do see some theology in it. No, nothing overt. But it is there. The grandness of God in his design of the earth, the subtleties of society and psychology, the ineffable nature of good friendship. The perfect book, I say.

For your enjoyment, here is the retelling of Bryson and Katz and their happening upon a woman named Mary Ellen:

On the fourth evening, we made a friend. We were sitting in a nice little clearing beside the trail, our tents pitched, eating our noodles, savoring the exquisite pleasure of just sitting, when a plumpish, bespectacled young woman in a red jacket and the customary outsized pack came along. She regarded us with the crinkled squint of someone who is either chronically confused or can't see very well. We exchanged hellos and the usual banalities about the weather and where we were. Then she squinted at the gathering gloom and announced she would camp with us.

Her name was Mary Ellen. She was from Florida, and she was, as Katz forever after termed her in a special tone of awe, a piece of work. She talked nonstop, except when she was clearing our her eustachian tubes (which she did frequently) by pinching her nose and blowing out with a series of violent and alarming snorts of a sort that would make a dog leave the sofa and get under a table in the next room. I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth, and Mary Ellen was proof that even in the Appalachian woods I would not be spared. It became evident from the first moment that she was a rarity.

"So what are you guys eating?" she said, plonking herself down on a spare log and lifting her head to peer into our bowls. "Noo¬dles? Big mistake. Noodles have got like no energy. I mean like zero." She unblocked her ears. "Is that a Sarship tent?”

I looked at my tent. "I don't know."
"Big mistake. They must have seen you coming at the camping store. What did you pay for it?"
"I don't know."
"Too much, that's how much. You should have got a three-season tent."
"It is a three-season tent."
"Pardon me saying so, but it is like seriously dumb to come out here in March without a three-season tent." She unblocked her ears.
"It is a three-season tent."
"You're lucky you haven't froze yet. You should go back and like punch out the guy that sold it to you because he's been like, you know, negligible selling you that."
"Believe me, it is a three-season tent."
She unblocked her ears and shook her head impatiently. "That's a three-season tent." She indicated Katz's tent.
"That's exactly the same tent."

WARNING: A Walk in the Woods is full of brilliantly 'colorful language' and should not be confused with 'Christian' works of fiction.

From Killer to Kinkade, A Review of the Shack, Part 2

Killer

I won't go into a lot of details about the book's plot. It is horrendously sad and I cried several times as it forced me to think about my own daughter. In truth, there is probably no worse thing on the planet than having your tiny child ripped from your protection by a psychopath and being needlessly abused and probably murdered (the 'probably' lighting the pain on fire). And so Young makes his task ambitious: he's gonna take The Problem of Evil to the shed, or The Shack, as it were. That is either incredibly hubristic, painfully dumb or rightly ambitious.

But I have to admit, he hooked me. I want to know that there is some sort of emancipation at the end of Mack's hell. I want to know what glory awaits those who persevere despite the suffering. Though the whole premise is exceedingly fantastical (read=unbelievable), you don't really care because you want answers. I want answers.

Da Plot

Anyway, you should know that upon the disappearance and determined death of his daughter, Mack gets a note, beckoning him to hang with 'Papa' (his family's word for God) at the shack, where they found the only remnants of the tiny girl. Now that is, by far, the creepiest part of the book. It reminds of that horrible Silent Hill video game where a dead wife sends a note to her husband to meet her in a godforsaken location. And, yet, Mack decides that it would be a grand idea to go.

Mack, we had come to find out at this point, was seminary trained but kind of non-religious. I.e., he was normal. He knew a lot but didn't "know" a lot, if you catch my drift. And yet, he was a conscientious family man who loved his wife and kids desperately. That was until he had entered The Great Sadness, as it is referred to throughout the book. And that is, of course, understandable. It is honestly surprising that Young didn't have him fall further. Though he experienced deep pain, he seemed to be holding up quite well. But not well enough, I guess. And so he heads out to the shack with a gun.

Kinkade

Now you know how the story goes. When Mack finally returns to the malevolent shack, he gets teleported, or transported, or something, to a new world. Think Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 70's version, of course) where the kids descend into fantasy, a sugar laden utopia. What was there is now gone. The snow, the cold, the ominously evil shack. The scene Young depicts is really what you see in any Kinkade painting. And this is exactly what is needed. This is exactly what you want to happen, to feel. Warmth, safety, grace.

Soon Mack is inside the boisterous log cabin, conversing with God.

From Killer to Kinkade, A Review of The Shack: Part 1

I readily admit that I have read a good number of the Left Behind books. I started reading Mr. Jenkins and Mr. LaHaye long before I had actually read Revelation, and definitely before I had read Hoekema. I passed their books out at Christmas, quipped in theological conversations about who the anti-christ would be, debated whether or not our clothes would be neatly folded upon our rapture, and thought it was good common sense to slap a "Car Will be Unmanned in Case of Rapture" sticker on bumpers.

When I got to seminary, I heard a different story. "The worst piece of fiction in the history of earth" "So theologically unsound that one might gain more insight into the mind of God by drinking acetone" "I don't know about you, but Jerry B. Jenkins' prose makes me want to unlearn English". What had happened to me is quite common. I believed that, for no good reason, popularity equaled rightness. I believed that because Left Behind was evangelical, because it was heralded by some churches, and because it was always sitting in the front bookshelves of bookstores, it must have been the truth and nothing but the truth. But of course the syllogism 'if popular, then true' is about as fallacious as it gets. Fortunately, I know now that pre-tribulational/pre-millenial eschatological theology is, technically speaking, crap-o-la.

And yet I continue to admit to people, unashamedly, that I read and listened to all but the last two Left Behind novels. Why? Simply, because they were fun and partially true. Yes, Jenkins is about a good a writer as I am a trapeze artist, but he knows a thing or two about plot development, suspense and people. And that makes for some interesting reading. Moreover, there was a good amount of biblical Christianity there. While their notions of Israel and the end were all wrong, the more basic stuff about God and the gospel were fine. So what am I saying? Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, of course.

And that's the case, too, with The Shack. I just finished it over the weekend and had two reactions: (1) It is better than I thought it would be, and (2) It is worse than I thought it would be. But that is just the thing William P. Young wants to elicit from his readers: Your preconceived notions limit you, especially when it comes to relating to God. And that sort of overarching proposition makes for fun reviewing. Though I will take Young to "the shack" on some issues, I will praise others. His polarizing work is quite interesting and brings to the forefront the issue of art and accuracy in biblical theology. I hope that it will help us engage this issue and our own beliefs on a new level.

Part 2 coming soon...

Books for 2008

Just in time for Christmas, writers and bloggers are coming out with their best books of the year lists. Tim Challies, a prominent reformed Christian blogger and book reviewer, came out with his today. Here.

I hope to have a list up within a few days too.

Christmas is Today

'Cause I got my ESV Study Bible in the mail. Now I will learn how to be a real Christian.

Seriously, it is great. And once you get it, you get access to the online version which might even be better than the hard copy.

ESV Study Bible

Order it today.