Eagle Lake

Cadillac Mountain

Chicago's Southern Soul

Chicagoans’ devotion to their city is mercifully devoid of the smugness so palpable in places like New York and San Francisco and pockets of Uptown New Orleans before the storm. There’s a sense of engagement and civic activism; people are smart without being self-consciously intellectual. By contrast Manhattan seems claustrophobic and cliquish, a place where being embraced in the way Chicago embraced Frances requires a certain amount of gamesmanship and ambition for something more than simply to do good and live a rich life.

http://gardenandgun.com/article/chicagos-southern-soul

Amen.

Second generation Reformed churches

Reformed doctrine had already shown a greater capacity to mobilize popular support than Lutheran ideas when the two were in direct competition in the cities of south Germany. Now it also offered compelling reasons for those drawn to it to separate themselves from the church of Rome. It offered a model derived from the Bible of how to form independent churches in the absence of governmental support. It was firmly ensconced in a number of enclaves that were well situated to serve as bases for wider expansion and that appeared to contemporaries to be admirable models of reformed communities. Its theologians had given expression to its basic tenets in a number of monuments of compelling exegesis. With its diversity of ecclesiologies, it could justify magisterial control of a state church as well as the formation of independent churches under the cross, making it appealing to rulers who had already assumed the supreme headship within their territories.  All of these considerations help to explain why the Reformed churches were poised for a dramatic period of expansion in 1555.

Philip Benedict, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed:  A Social History of Calvinism, 120, summarizing the second generation of the Reformed tradition.  "Churches under the cross" refers to illegal churches meeting in secret in northern Italy.

But there have always been more who began adult life as artists and intellectuals only to find themselves 25 years on somehow being mainly a teacher at a D-list college in a place they never wanted to live.

But there have always been more who began adult life as artists and intellectuals only to find themselves 25 years on somehow being mainly a teacher at a D-list college in a place they never wanted to live. 

--Garance Franke-Ruta, Everlasting Realities of the Bohemian Lifestyle

Chicago, unlike New York, has plenty of affordable housing, if you're willing to live in "up-and-coming" neighborhoods.  But my sense is that the city doesn't have a well-established intellectual class outside of Hyde Park.  Which isn't affordable.

Introducing Robert Murray M'Cheyne

A few quotes from Andrew Bonar's 1845 biography of the Scottish minister Robert Murray M'Cheyne.  M'Cheyne died at the age of 29.  He's best known today for the M'Cheyne Bible reading plan. 

Here's M'Cheyne reflecting on the death of his brother, whom he grieved for the rest of his life:

Pray for me, that I may be made holier and wiser--less like myself, and more like my heavenly Master; that I may not regard my life, if so be I may finish my course with joy.  This day eleven years ago, I lost my loved and loving brother, and began to seek a Brother who cannot die.

On his personal reading:

Read part of the Life of Jonathan Edwards.  How feeble does my spark of Christianity appear beside such a sun!  But even his was a borrowed light, and the same source is still open to me.

And now on his Bible reading at one stage of his life:

How formally and unheedingly the Bible was read,--how little was read--so little that even now I have not read it all!

And finally one more:

Had this evening a more complete understanding of that self-emptying and abasement with which it is necessary to come to Christ--a denying of self, trampling it under foot--a recognizing of the complete righteousness and justice of God, that could do nothing else with us but condemn us utterly, and thrust us down to lowest hell--a feeling that, even in hell, we should rejoice in his sovereignty, and say that all was rightly done.

More quotes might be forthcoming.  One thing that strikes me from such a young man was his intensity.  Perhaps he's too intense at times, but his quest for personal holiness (and doesn't the Bible require such a quest?) seems foreign in a time when the church seems to give more attention to other matters.

Summer List

My reading has slowed down a bit this summer, and I've let more pressing demands (and laziness) turn my attention away from the blog.  I'll try to rectify that with shorter, more frequent posts.  Until then here's a recap of my reading since Wendell Berry's magnificent Jayber Crow.

Alan Moore,Watchmen.  My first venture into graphic novels.  Time placed it on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century back when people made those kinds of lists.  I couldn't put it down.  It met my criteria of a good book:  I enjoyed the plot and cared about the characters.  The general premise:  what would happen if there were superheroes in the real world?

Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol 1, The Early Church to the Reformation.  This is one of the standards in church history introductions.  It felt too "textbookish," which maybe is an unfair criticism since it's been a textbook for who knows how many church history courses.

Edmund Clowney, The Church.  Clowney was a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.  A good book, but I noticed something in common with his book Called to the Ministry which I read a few years ago.  At times his exegesis is more "broad stroke" than rigorous and nuanced.  Similarly, his flow of thought feels jumpy at times too.  That being said, Clowney was a treasure to the church, and this book is worth reading.

David Goldblatt, The Ball is Round:  A Global History of Soccer.  I'm probably not going to finish this massive history of "football," but this foray into the world's most popular sport has been enjoyable and informative.  One interesting fact:  soccer is more or less the same age as baseball.  Kicking games have been around all over the world for thousands of years, but soccer as it exists today developed after British prep schools and the various associations of their alumni started to play each other and thus needed to codify the rules of the game.  This happened roughly mid-19th century, about the same time as baseball congealed into what it is today.

Jayber Crow

Just a taste of Wendell Berry's exceptionally beautiful novel Jayber Crow:

Some days, sitting here on my porch over the river, my memory seems to enclose entirely; I wander back in my reckoning among all of my own that have lived and died until I no longer remember where I am.  And then I lift my head and look about me at the river and the valley, the great, unearned beauty of this place, and I feel the memoryless joy of a man just risen from the grave. (24-25)

This grief had something in it of generosity, some nearness to joy.  In a strange way it added to me what I had lost.  I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, the living and the dead.  The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come. (132)

Sometimes, living right beside it [the river], I forget it.  Going about my various tasks, I don't think about it.  And then it seems just to flow back into my mind.  I stop and look at it.  I think of its parallel, never-meeting banks, which yet never part.  I think of it lying there in its long hollow, at the foot of all the landscape, a single opening from its springs in the mountains all the way to its mouth.  It is a beautiful thought, one of the most beautiful of all thoughts.  I think it not in my brain only but in my heart and in all the lengths of my bones. (310)

The List

I've neglected the blog for way too long.  To get me rolling again here's what I've been reading since last time I checked in:

J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel:  Building Believers the Old-Fashioned Way.  Pretty good argument for the reclamation of catechesis as an essential part of the church's ministry.  The section on training in the way, the truth, and the life was particularly helpful.

Handley C. G. Moule, Charles Simeon.  1892 biography of a highly influential pastor in Cambridge, England.  To give you an idea of his influence, my church is named after his church.

Hugh Hopkins, Charles Simeon of Cambridge.  A more modern and accessible biography of Simeon.  Less "hagiographical" than Moule's book.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.  The fourth reading of my favorite book in the world.  So many things to praise that I don't know where to start.  Maybe it deserves its own blog post.

D. A. Carson, Scandalous:  The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus.  I've decided to read a book on the atonement (or related themes) prior to each Easter.  This consisted of a few expositions of key New Testament texts.  I always learn from D. A. Carson.

Michael Lewis, The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.  I haven't seen the movie, but I loved the book.  Fascinating look at an attempt to run a baseball team based on careful statistical analysis rather than accepted wisdom.

An elm in a sequoyah forest

Last year I read my first P. G. Wodehouse book, Jeeves and the Tie That Binds.  It was brilliant and hilarious, everything I had heard Wodehouse to be.  Jill the Reckless, my second expedition into the immense Wodehouse forest, wasn't quite up to the same standards.  Bear this in mind though:  Jill the Reckless was published in 1920; Jeeves and the Tie That Binds came out in 1971, just a few years before he died.  He got better, is what I'm trying to say.

All that said, however, don't let me for a moment make you think that Jill the Reckless was a bad book.  It was actually quite enjoyable.  Jill is a feisty, vivacious English girl dumped by her Minister of Parliament, mama's boy fiance.  Immediately afterward her uncle loses all her money in the stock market.  So Jill moves to New York to make a new life.  She eventually meets the right guy, and everyone lived happily ever after (except perhaps the aforementioned MP).

Wodehouse does show his knack for crafting a pleasurable sentence:  "I have always thought it greatly to the credit of my parents that they let me grow up."  But these sentences don't occur with the same abundance as his later works.  I enjoyed this one, but especially look forward to what else he has to offer.

Helpful Contrarianism

I can't remember when I first came across Rodney Stark's name and work (probably a blog somewhere), but my enduring impression was of an irreverent and contrarian man.  And by irreverent and contrarian I mean in reference to academia.  Thus, contemporary intellectual dogma believes Theory A; Stark, therefore, will set out to prove that Theory A is a load of crock.

That's why I picked up his 1996 book The Rise of Christianity:  A Sociologist Reconsiders History.  And as the title suggests, Stark is in fact a sociologist (currently at Baylor University).  This time he's stepping into the realm of early Christian history.  Here are a few conclusions, many of which fly in the face of established academic wisdom, from this very readable and compelling book:

• The church grew at a rate at about 40% for the first several centuries.  This is roughly equivalent to modern growth rates in Mormonism and statistically doesn't require lots of mass conversions to eventually become a dominant religion.
• The early church was more middle class than lower class.
• Lots of Jews were converted to Christianity.
• Christians cared for the dying during the many devastating plagues whereas pagans abandoned to the hills.  This self-sacrificial care actually gave them higher survival rates, which increased their numbers in relation to the overall population in the Roman Empire.
• Women were valued in the church to a much greater extent than among pagans.  Pagans often killed their newborn girls because boys had such greater value in their eyes.  Christians never did this.  More women meant more marriages which meant more babies which meant more growth.
• Urban life in the Roman Empire was chaotic and unstable.  The church provided stability through neighborly love and thus increased its attractiveness to converts.
• There weren't that many martyrs in the early church, at least as compared to the overall number of Christians.  The martyrs, however, did give powerful testimony to the value of Christianity in the eyes of potential converts.
• Ultimately, though, the reason Christians cared for the dying; valued women, marriage, and children; loved their neighbors in the urban chaos; and were willing to die for their faith was because of what Christianity taught.  In other words, Stark says, the final cause for the remarkable growth of the church in the early centuries was Christian teaching.

I didn't agree with everything he said (e.g. he downplays the record of mass conversions in the book of Acts), but I found most of his arguments convincing.  Not only did he employ sophisticated sociological analysis (which at times gets a little too heavy for the uninitiated like myself) but plain common sense as well.  I enjoyed The Rise of Christianity very much and look forward to reading his other works.

Side note:  This book was also published by Harper Collins under a different subtitle.  The link above goes to the Harper Collins edition.

Theology of the Reformers

If anyone would feel like the greatness of sin he would not be able to go on living another moment; so great is the power of sin. (68)

If you believe, then you have it [justification]! (70)

Thus spake Martin Luther.  Such quotes and ideas (and fine, scholarly, accessible analysis of those quotes and ideas) abound in Timothy George's 1988 book Theology of the Reformers.  George devotes a chapter each to Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and Menno Simmons.  Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin always make the list of the most important magisterial Reformers, so it's no surprise that they got their own chapters.  Menno is included because of the historical importance for Anabaptism and the Radical Reformation.

Truth be told, though, I would have been just as happy if the book was only on Calvin and Luther.  The other two are immensely important for historical reasons.  Theologically, on the other hand, Zwingli and Menno Simmons just can't measure up to Luther and Calvin (and that's in no way meant to be a shot against Zwingli and Simmons; hardly anybody in the history of the church can measure up to those two).

Perhaps my enjoyment of the book lies mostly in my fondness for Reformation theology.  For example, take this anecdote from a debate between Luther and Erasmus on the doctrine of predestination:

"Let God be good," cried Erasmus the moralist. "Let God be God," replied Luther the theologian. (77)

The doctrines of the Reformation (of which predestination is only a part) are perpetually urgent for the church and for the world.  That's why I'm thankful for books like this.  I'm sure there are more up-to-date books on the Reformation than this one.  But surely not many are better.

A Bewildering History of England

I should like G. K. Chesterton.  C. S. Lewis liked him.  He graces Wheaton College's wonderful Wade Center along with Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, and James MacDonald.  But despite his reputation as a brilliant writer and a great public intellectual (neither one of which I am actually challenging) I just don't think I care for his writing.

Or at least his writing in A Short History of England, the first book I read on my new Kindle Touch (thanks mom and dad!).  He does say some very good things.  For example:

We must put ourselves in the posture of men who thought that almost every good thing came from outside--like good news. . . . I do not, in my private capacity, believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking his soul, and denying its dependence on God or other good things.  I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. (38)

In modern romances this is treated as a mere hypocrisy; but the man who treats every human inconsistency as a hypocrisy is himself a hypocrite about his own inconsistencies. (85)

Christianity is not a creed for good men, but for men. (85)

A dogma of equal duties implies that of equal rights. (121)

But as far as actually teaching me something about English history (a subject of some personal interest) it's not so helpful.  It's more of an idiosyncratic analysis of English history, a moral lesson of some sort.  But what annoys me the most is how nearly every sentence contains some paradox, some double meaning, some clever reference to something too obscure for me to know what in the name of Her Majesty Elizabeth II he's talking about.  This sentence is fairly typical:

And he remains the incarnation of a spirit in the English that is purely poetic; so poetic that it fancies itself a thousand things, and sometimes even fancies itself prosaic. (121)

The meaning of this sentence is beyond me, as was much of the book.  I may return to Chesterton in the future, but (if I can summon my inner Chesterton) we make of the future in the present only what we make of the present in the future.

I don't know what that sentence means either.

A test of endurance

Finally, after two years of sporadic reading, I have finished Augustine's The City of God.  I'm actually more satisfied at having completed the book than I am with any benefit from reading it.  Maybe that's why I shouldn't have kept reading it, as Alan Jacobs would say.

Still, it's a remarkable book, even if much of it isn't accessible as, say, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.  Augustine states his theme right away:

The glorious city of God is my theme in this work, which you, my dearest son Marcellinus, suggested, and which is due to you by my promise.  I have undertaken its defense against those who prefer their own gods to the Founder of this city -- a city surpassingly glorious, whether we view it as it still lives by faith in this fleeting course of time, and sojourns as a stranger in the midst of the ungodly, or as it shall dwell in the fixed stability of its eternal seat, which it now with patience waits for, expecting until 'righteousness shall return unto judgment,' and it obtain, by virtue of its excellence, final victory and perfect peace.

There isn't much he doesn't cover.  One of the tricky things about Augustine is that there's so much good (the Protestant Reformers appealed to him again and again in their polemics against the Roman Catholics), yet there's still plenty that we can't quite go along with.  His theology of the sacraments comes to mind in this latter regard.

But if it wasn't for him people like Luther and Calvin would have had so much more work to do to reclaim the gospel.  We all stand on the shoulder of giants to see more clearly than they did.  Augustine was one such giant, maybe the most gigantic of all.

Young Adults in Post-Apocalyptic America

Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy has hit on something.  People really like reading about teenagers sticking it to the man in a future America that is no longer America.  In a Barnes and Noble the other day a whole booth was dedicated to the Hunger Games.  With the first movie coming out in a few months who can blame them?  One of the items was a journal with "Down with the Capitol!" on the front.  I have to say it was kind of cool, if journals can be cool.

Now it seems Collins has spawned a veritable sub-genre of science fiction dystopian young adult fiction.  I've never coined a term before, so I coin it SFDYAF (pronounced "Sphid-yaf").  I'm almost positive it will catch on.

Anyway, more books are popping up in the SFDYAF category.  As I write my wife is reading Marie Lu's Legend.  I haven't gotten to that one yet, but I did recently finish Veronica Roth's Divergent.  I can't say that I enjoyed it as much as The Hunger Games, nor was it as crisply and economically written.  But I still enjoyed it.

Here's the premise:  It's Chicago, sometime in the future.  There is no United States, and the city (which is largely abandoned and falling apart) is surrounded by a fence, though it is unclear what the fence is actually for.  But this is but one detail that I'm sure will be resolved further in the trilogy.  Yes, it appears that SFDYAF books come in threes.  The city is divided into five factions, each of which are united around a specific virtue they believe is necessary for peace.  These five factions are Amity, Erudite, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless.

When Beatrice, our heroine, comes of age and must choose her faction for life she leaves Abnegation, her family's faction, for Dauntless.  But before I give too much away of the plot, I merely note two central points.  First, Beatrice doesn't exactly fit into any faction, which she finds is quite a sticky place to find oneself.  Second, things aren't as peaceful between the factions as they seem.

I hope Chicago doesn't turn into the city of Divergent (though the zip line from the top of the Hancock Tower would be cool), but I am looking forward to the next book in the series.  Unless, that is, SFDYAF prophecies turn true and I have to fight off monsters and totalitarian governments in the mean time.

Top Ten of 2011

Here are my favorite books of 2011.  Two qualifications:  (1) I've not included perennial favorites that I've already read; (2) these are listed in the order that I read them rather than the order that I enjoyed them.

1.  Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games trilogy.  Technically three books, but whatever.  Dark, violent, compelling, and relentlessly intense.

2.  D. A. Carson, The God Who is There:  Finding Your Place in God's Story.  Great overview of the Bible's central story line with a view to a biblically illiterate audience.

3.  Richard Russo, Straight Man.  Very funny.  Not my favorite Russo but still enjoyable.

4.  P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Tie That Binds.  Brilliant and hilarious.  The first Wodehouse I've read.  I'll read more.

5.  Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed:  At Peleliu and Okinawa.  A first-hand account of the American assault on two Japanese-held islands.  While war may be necessary at times, there is no glory in it.

6.  Alan Jacobs, Wayfaring:  Essays Pleasant and Unpleasant.  A collection of essays from a great essayist.

7.  Mike McKinley, Church Planting is for Wimps:  How God Uses Messed-Up People to Plant Ordinary Churches That Do Extraordinary Things.  Very encouraging book on church planting and church revitalization.

8.  David Dickson, The Elder and His Work.  A 19th century book on the elder's pastoral work.  It's brevity is a plus.

9.  Michael Korda, Hero:  The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.  Great biography of a fascinating man.

10.  Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  Jacob's second mention on this list.  A book for people who love books.

Honorable mention:  Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Two-thirds through at the moment.  Otherwise probably would have made it on the list.

Reading Update

I've let too many full book reviews pass by, and it's too late to catch up.  You'll have to make do with these short summaries.

Michael Korda, Hero:  The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia.  T. E. Lawrence was the type of renaissance man that I find fascinating.  He was brilliant at everything he put his hand to:  historical research on medieval fortifications, archaeology, writing, diplomacy, and (I know I'm forgetting something . . . Oh, yeah) uniting the Arab tribes and leading them in military revolt against the Turks in World War I.  Korda's well-written biography shows how so much of his life--his discovery that he was illegitimate, his distant relationship with his mother, his perpetual collection of father figures, his almost fanatical asceticism, and his desire to do something great in the world--prepared him to become a hero.  And by "hero" Korda means in the classical sense rather than in the modern, sentimental sense.  I especially enjoyed Korda's take on Lawrence's immensely complicated personality as well as three events in Lawrence's warfare experience that would have surely made many men lose their minds:  personally executing one of his men (to forestall an inner-tribal vendetta), his rape and torture as a prisoner of war by his Turkish captives, and witnessing the immediate aftermath of a hideous massacre of an Arab village by fleeing Turkish troops.  Korda has made produced a literary work worthy of its subject.  If you enjoy biographies you'll enjoy this one.

G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday:  A Nightmare.  A very strange book about an undercover cop infiltrating an anarchist group who discovers that all the members of the anarchist group are all undercover cops.  I enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I got it.

Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  Jacobs is one of my favorite authors, and once again he did not disappoint.  His latest book is all about embracing reading for fun rather than reading for duty or personal betterment (contra the likes of How to Read a Book and other advocates of "must read" books or "great book" lists).  Jacobs has convinced me to abandon my goal to read one "classic" book per quarter (not like I was making much progress anyway).  Book snobs should stay away from this one.

For my next post I'll have my top ten reads of 2011.

The C. S. Lewis Code

C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia are simple, fun, and theologically instructive.  Millions of children and adults adore them.  I'm suspicious of people who don't like them, like people who don't enjoy the Cosby Show.  Who doesn't like the Cosby Show?  People you shouldn't trust, I'm sure.

The allegory (or is it allegory?) is straight-forward and powerful:  Aslan, the allegorical Christ, the great lion who dies for another's sin and is raised from the dead by "a deeper magic from before the dawn of time."  And there is the "conversion" of Eustace, a mean little boy with the personality like a dragon.  When he actually is turned into a dragon he discovers that can't heal himself; he can only by restored by the terrible grace of Aslan's ripping claws.

And, symbolism aside, there is that beautiful, oft-quoted final sentence of the series which never fails to move me:

All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page:  now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has ever read:  which goes on for ever:  in which every chapter is better than the one before.

But what if there was a unifying theme to the entire series that Lewis managed to keep hidden for over fifty years?  Michael Ward's Planet Narnia:  The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis makes this bold claim.  Ward argues (convincingly in my opinion) that each book in the series corresponds to one of the seven heavens or planets in the Medieval cosmology.  Think of Dante's seven heavens in Paradiso.  Here is the breakdown:

1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe = Jupiter
2. Prince Caspian = Mars
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader = Sun
4. The Silver Chair = Moon
5. The Horse and His Boy = Mercury
6. The Magician's Nephew = Venus
7. The Last Battle = Saturn

Ward makes his case methodically.  He begins by looking at Lewis' own research and views on Medieval cosmology.  Lewis was a professor of Medieval literature, and his scholarly research into the field was quite extensive, as Ward thoroughly quotes and references.  He then moves to Lewis' poetry and fiction prior to Chronicles in which the seven heavens come to prominence.  Anyone who has read his space trilogy should recall that the seven planets (who are angelic personalities rather than balls of rocks and gas) are quite explicit at the end of That Hideous Strength.

Once he has established that Lewis was quite interested in the seven heavens and had already explored them in his own poetry and fiction, Ward then moves to make his case for their hidden presence in The Chronicles of Narnia.  Sometimes this presence is extraordinarily subtle.  In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for instance, the characters frequently say "By Jove."  Over and over again in The Silver Chair we see water and wetness, since water is associated with the Lunar idea.  The Horse and His Boy, the book corresponding to Mercury, is filled with scenes of speed and speech-making, (Mercury was the messenger god after all).  

Other times it's more overt (but not so overt that anyone noticed before now).  Prince Caspian, the "martial" book, is all about war.  When Aslan arrives to redeem Narnia from the White Witch in the first book the unending winter finally ends and spring returns.  It is no coincidence that Jupiter is associated with spring and rebirth.  And so it goes with each book.

After showing the hidden presence of these themes in each of the books Ward then makes some judgments as to what the themes are saying theologically.  This is where Planet Narnia was most difficult for me.  Side note:  it was published by Oxford University Press; this is a serious work of literary criticism.  I can't remember all the theological nuances of each book, but Ward argues nonetheless that they are there, and I think he's pretty much right.

So why did Lewis have this secret unifying theme?  Once again, Ward has done his homework.  He shows that Lewis believed that good writing shouldn't expose all it has to offer at first glance.  In this case he hid it so well that no one noticed for a half century after Lewis' death.  Lewis fans should take Ward's case seriously, and go back with renewed joy to Lewis' seven wonderful books.

The Archer and the Arrow

Phillip Jensen and Paul Grimmond have written a very helpful little book on preaching called The Archer and Arrow:  Preaching the Very Words of God.  Two bits of clarification:

First, as explained in the preface, Paul Grimmond did the actual writing, but all the ideas are basically Jensen's (a seasoned preacher).  Second, the "archer" of the title refers to the preacher, and the "arrow" refers to the sermon.

It would probably be tedious to summarize everything Jensen and Grimmond say.  I'd rather share a few of my favorite quotes and a very helpful illustration.

On the ministry of all believers (which the Sydney evangelicals emphasize a lot):

For all of God's people, everywhere, the challenge is to speak to each other as those who speak the very truths of God and nothing less.  Whether we speak one to another over a meal or one to a thousand from the pulpit on Sunday morning, the aim for all Christians is to speak God's truth in order that we might all be encouraged to live for the glory of Christ as we await his return. (14)

 On the essence of preaching:

What, then, is the essence of preaching?  It is not related to the number of people we speak to, nor is it related to our ability to communicate.  The essence of preaching is passing on the message as we have received it--that is what it means to speak the very oracles of God. (14)

The preacher's mission statement:

My aim is to preach the gospel by faithfully expounding the Bible to the people God has given me to love. (22)

On the preacher's motivations:

If we are preaching for the sake of God's honour, then we will long for our hearers to say, "Jesus is a great saviour" not "He is a great preacher". (92)

I found the arrow illustration very helpful.  An arrow is composed of three sections:  the arrowhead, the shaft, and the feathers.  The arrowhead corresponds to the gospel.  The preacher should preach the gospel in every sermon (though he should not feel obligated to preach every component of the gospel in every sermon), and thus he tries to pierce the heart of his people with the gospel.  The shaft corresponds to the exegesis of the particular text being preached.  The better the exegesis/shaft and deeper the gospel/arrowhead will pierce the heart.  The feathers correspond to the biblical and systematic theology (and other broader disciplines) the keep the arrow/sermon flying straight rather than veering off into heresy or error because of our bad exegesis.  It's a simple illustration, but I found it helpful.

I discovered many other gems in The Archer and the Arrow.  Any preacher or preacher-in-training would be wise to read it.

Augustine on the City

In yesterday's post one of my ideas for writing was on the Reformers' view(s) of the city.  A nice bit of timing today as I came across this from Augustine in The City of God:

If, then, home, the natural refuge from the ills of life, is itself not safe, what shall we say of the city, which, as it is larger, is so much the more filled with lawsuits civil and criminal, and is never free from the fear, if sometimes the actual outbreak, of disturbing and bloody insurrections and civil wars? (19.5)

Augustine predated the Reformers by over a millennium, but since they counted him one of their own I wonder if they shared such sentiments.