Grudem on Selfishness
I think the following comments from Grudem’s Systematic Theology are very insightful—and needful for preachers. It’s easy to preach so hard against selfishness that one erases part of the image of God!
Other definitions of the essential character of sin have been suggested. Probably the most common definition is to say that the essence of sin is selfishness.1 However, such a definition is unsatisfactory because
- Scripture itself does not define sin this way.
- Much self-interest is good and approved by Scripture, as when Jesus commands us to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:20), or when we seek to grow in sanctification and Christian maturity (1 Thess. 4:3), or even when we come to God through Christ for salvation. God certainly appeals to the self-interest of sinful people when he says, “Turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek. 33:11). To define the essential character of sin as selfishness will lead many people to think that they should abandon all desire for their own personal benefit, which is certainly contrary to Scripture.
- Much sin is not selfishness in the ordinary sense of the term—people can show selfless devotion to a false religion or to secular and humanistic educational or political goals that are contrary to Scripture, yet these would not be due to “selfishness” in any ordinary sense of the word. Moreover, hatred of God, idolatry, and unbelief are not generally due to selfishness, but they are very serious sins.
- Such a definition could suggest that there was wrongdoing or sinfulness even on God’s part, since God’s highest goal is to seek his own glory (Isa. 42:8; 43:7, 21; Eph. 1:12).
Likewise, Jonathan Edwards asked, “[Why] make any promises of happiness, or denounce any threatenings of misery, to him who neither loved his own happiness nor hated his own misery?” (Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 in WJE (New Haven: Yale, 1989), 254–255.) In the same work, Charity and Its Fruits, Edwards lists multiple passages of Scripture in both testaments which motivate good deeds with offers of reward:
“What is bestowed in doing good to others is not lost, as if a man throws what he had into the sea. But see what Solomon says, Ecclesiastes 11:1, ‘Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it….’ What is so given is lent and committed … to the Lord, who no doubt will pay. Proverbs 19:17, ‘He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord; and that which he hath given will he pay him again.’ He will not only pay, but with great increase. Luke 6:38, ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you.’” Ibid., 216.
We who care about our own and others’ sanctification have to draw the line between selfishness and a biblically oriented self-interest, a self-interest which points ultimately to God, the only one who can satisfy the desires He created in us.
Our hearts are restless, until they find rest in Thee.
Truth and Beauty
Derek Kidner is a commentator who writes not just insightfully but beautifully. Don’t miss his commentaries on Genesis, Psalms (vol. 1 and vol. 2), Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. They are gifts to the church.
I’m not familiar with Stephen Motyer (a relation to J. Alec, I presume?), but perhaps there’s something in the British blood he shares with Kidner that adds beauty to his truth. I can’t think of easy American parallels…
While studying Jacob’s wrestling match with God this evening, I read the following from Motyer in the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology article entitled “Israel (Nation)” (emphasis mine):
Malachi is the saddest, as well as the latest, book in the OT. Malachi accuses the post-exilic community of the same sins which caused the exile 150 years previously: half-hearted worship conceived as mere performance of the cult (1:6–14); corruption among the priests (2:1–9); social and sexual unfaithfulness (2:10–17). The people have not changed (3:7). But Malachi insists also that Yahweh is unchanging: ‘I, Yahweh, do not change: therefore you, children of Jacob, are not finished!’ (3:6, author’s translation). Yahweh is still wrestling with Jacob, determined to make the new name stick. And Malachi looks forward to the coming of ‘the messenger of the covenant’, who will refine and purify Israel’s worship and bring judgment on the corrupt (3:1–5).
So the OT ends on a note of paradox: Israel is still Jacob, but Jacob is still Israel. The covenant stands, but the covenant promises both salvation and judgment, both a blessing and a curse (Deut. 28). How will Yahweh’s commitment to save Israel be realized, in the face of the nation’s constant failure to respond to him?
NIV Books of the Bible
Biblica now has an edition of The Books of the Bible set in the NIV, though it’s just the New Testament (at least I can’t find an entire Bible on their website). The new edition is set in a serif typeface rather than the odd, hybrid typeface used for the TNIV editions I blogged about some time ago. I’m assuming that this is the NIV2011, but I’m not certain.
Click to see pages from the new "The Books of the Bible" NIV edition.
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Wikipedia’s Fundraising Scare Tactics
Okay, okay, Wikipedia! Just stop showing faces brim-full of opprobrium toward us cheapskate users and I’ll give you money!
I have actually given money to Wikipedia in the past, something that’s rare for me, I confess; do I really deserve this?
Maybe you readers should consider donating in my name. Even if each of you gives only one mite, you’ll at least equal what the widow gave in Mark 12.
Quick Thought on Social Media
I’ve been on Facebook pretty much since it became available to me. I tried MySpace briefly. I have an obligatory Google Plus account.
But the one piece of social media I most enjoy is Goodreads. Here’s why: in the world of book reading, things don’t happen fast. Even my most bibliophilic friends have real jobs, so they don’t read more than a book a week. Each of their posts—writing out thoughts on books they’ve read—marks a significant investment of time.
So I have fewer posts to deal with than on Facebook, and they’re all of higher quality. Goodreads marshals the power of social media to share information quickly, but helps me in my battle to keep my head above the cloud. It’s very structure makes it an information filter, which Neil Postman has wisely warned us that we will need as the speed limit on the information superhighway continues to rise into the stratosphere.
“God’s Purpose According to Election”
“Be not highminded, but fear” (Rom 11:20 KJV). That’s the verse I think of as I anticipate posting the following little thought that came to me as I studied Genesis for Bible Truths B, the 8th grade Bible textbook I’m now rewriting:
If you think about it, God could have easily given Abraham lots of sons. Seven would not be impossible. Seventy would not even be impossible for the God who gave a child to a woman past childbearing age. Instead, He gives both Abraham and Isaac two sons each. And in each set of two brothers, only one gets picked. It’s really as if God organized the family tree of the patriarchs to make a point: I choose Abraham, and no one else in the world. And even within Abraham’s line of descendants, I choose some and not others.
This is not going beyond the Scripture; this is exactly what Paul concludes in Romans 9. Neither Isaac nor Jacob earned their election by good works—Jacob wasn’t even born when he was elected.
Be not highminded, but fear.
Bible Typography Manifesto
I’ve released a manifesto, and I invite you to sign it. “Manifesto” sounds a whole lot nicer than “private opinion,” and that’s my only excuse for using such a grandiose word.
The format is slightly tongue in cheek, but the upshot is serious. I’m a Bible curriculum author by day and, often, a graphic designer by night. I care about the intersection of those two sciences/arts. And I decided to do something about a significant problem I see at that intersection—a ten-car pile-up caused by drivers too old to keep their licenses, if you ask me. So I’m offering a constructive solution.
Happy Belated Birth Announcement
When you go from zero kids to one, Daddy still gets extra time for blogging because the newborn needs to be bounced to sleep every night while Mommy rests.
But when you go from one to two, there’s no time for that. Or anything. Even finishing this senten
So I’m sorry this is so late! (But you both knew about this already, right?)
Here are some more pictures:
Review: Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’m hovering between three and four stars here, because I did enjoy the book. Quite a stirring narrative. But, to put it too bluntly, I don’t have a fundamental trust in the theological acumen and judgment of Eric Metaxas. He’s certainly a good writer who did his homework (more on that in a moment), but I’ve read some Bonhoeffer—and he just didn’t quite speak the language of evangelical Protestantism like Metaxas seems to assume.
Even within the book there are hints that Bonhoeffer probably shouldn’t be claimed as an evangelical patron saint, the guy who did, we’re sure, what we evangelicals would have done in the same Hitlerian circumstances. Bonhoeffer’s closeness with Barth, his appreciation for Roman Catholicism, his chumminess with Union Theological Seminary—all of these made me uneasy. Yes, he praised a fundamentalist preacher in NYC and made some incisive criticisms of Fosdick and Coffin—but I never felt comfortable with him theologically.
Metaxas defends Bonhoeffer by suggesting several times that he tended to overstate his case in order to shock people into listening. I have no reason to dispute that assessment. But I’m still stuck at three stars, because Bonhoeffer’s place on the evangelical-to-liberal spectrum seems all-important for the biography of a theologian.
In addition, Metaxas fails to delve much into the circumstances behind Bonhoeffer’s apparent conversion. He writes of one instance in Dietrich’s life, “What happened is unclear, but the results were obvious. For one thing, he now became a regular churchgoer for the first time in his life and took Communion as often as possible.” Really? He was already a theologian at this point and had done church work. This seems very important to ferret out, but Metaxas leaves it unclear.
Yes, Bonhoeffer said and did some evangelical things, and I surely hope he was regenerated. I simply don’t feel I can trust Metaxas to help me decide. I’m afraid he made Bonhoeffer into our evangelical image. Thankfully, I don’t have to decide Bonhoeffer’s eternal destiny. It’s in God’s good hands. And no matter where he is now, God’s grace (common or special?) was strong in him, and he did courageous and honorable things I’m not sure I could do, even on my best day.
Criticisms over—because Metaxas deserves a great deal of praise for this book. I couldn’t help liking the clever little wordplays he used frequently. For example:
Norway … had recently been handed over to Hitler by the Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, whose surname became an improper noun, meaning “traitor.”
Metaxas also has a flair for epithets. Nazi Reinhard Heydrich was alternately a “piscine ghoul,” an “albino stoat,” and a “waxy lamprey.” (He was also “cadaverous.”) A little much, perhaps, but it made for good reading.
So did the rest of the story—at least once the conflict between Bonhoeffer and the Nazis began. I had done some study of the man, but I had no idea how early, powerfully, confidently, prominently, and presciently Bonhoeffer opposed the Nazis. He really did seem to see what was coming as few others did. And instead of being an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, Bonhoeffer had access to real evidence of Nazi atrocities.
Metaxas gives sufficient detail, lets characters speak in their own words from actual letters, and yet keeps the story moving. One thing for which I will always be indebted to him is resurrecting the validity of Bonhoeffer’s relationship with 18-year-old Maria von Wedemeyer. Getting to read her letters makes the relationship plausible in a way it hadn’t been when I just watched the movie.
Bonhoeffer’s story is one that challenged me deeply, and yet I think evangelicals should not be quick to claim him or his brave actions as their own.
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When I’m Having a Bad Day
When I’m having a bad day, I just read my blog comment spam. Here’s a sample from an actual comment a spammer calling himself “Forrest Enget” tried to leave on my site just a few minutes ago:
This is the very first time I frequented your website page and so far? I amazed with the analysis you made to make this actual publish amazing. Great job!
I’m a bit puzzled by the second sentence, but overall this is a real encouragement in the dog-eat-dog world of blogging. It’s a thankless job, blogging—except when you hear from “Dominique Behunin”:
I would like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I’m hoping the same high-grade website post from you in the upcoming also. Actually your creative writing abilities has inspired me to get my own blog now. Really the blogging is spreading its wings rapidly. Your write up is a great example of it.
I don’t get a whole lot of spam. I guess most spammers feel that, in all honesty, they can’t say nice things about my particular blog, so they move on to another blog they can praise in good conscience. But it’s nice that a few squeak through. All you spammers out there in Nigeria, may I say a humble “thank you” for your much-needed support? Or let me put it in language you can better understand:
A spammer necessarily help to make helpfully posts I might state! It is much of them so excellent that a favourable impressions were had by all!
Review: The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism
The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism by Garth M. Rosell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Two friends, perhaps more than any others, were responsible for giving shape and direction to the kind of evangelicalism that took root in twentieth-century America and soon spread throughout the world. Despite their regional, cultural, and personal differences, Harold John Ockenga and Billy Graham’s friendship and deep personal regard each had for the other helped forge a movement that continues to thrive in scores of countries around the world" (222).
This paragraph from its penultimate page makes a good thesis statement for The Surprising Work of God: Harold John Ockenga, Billy Graham, and the Rebirth of Evangelicalism. Author Garth Rosell is an evangelical, the son of a leading evangelical (mass evangelist Merv Rosell), and he sat at the feet of many evangelical leaders in his formative years. The younger Rosell is now an older man himself, an experienced teacher of church history at center-left evangelical schools (Bethel and Gordon-Conwell).
Rosell’s perspective in The Surprising Work of God (the title borrows self-consciously from Jonathan Edwards) is warmly appreciative but still fairly objective and straightforward. The author rarely (and mainly near the end) offers much in the way of explicit criticism or evaluation, but instead lets his characters tell their story in their own words. Rosell keeps the story moving—and has a moving story to tell.
Harold John Ockenga
The first half of the book is mostly a biography of Harold John Ockenga, the young and dynamic intellectual leader of the new evangelicalism. Ockenga’s early life will sound a great deal like that of many BJU students. He was a theologically conservative, spiritually earnest young man who took his sanctification very seriously, yearned for personal and church-wide revival—and had a bit of trouble figuring out how to get a good spouse! (He once presented flowers and a marriage proposal to a girl he’d never met simply because his pastor recommended her!) One of his attempts at spouse-location resulted in a six-year correspondence with a young lady in Virginia (whom he did not in the end marry) that has been preserved to this day. This correspondence, along with everything else in the Ockenga Papers, allowed Rosell to tell great swathes of Ockenga’s story in his own words.
The biography transitions a summary of Dr. Ockenga’s major theological emphases: the centrality of the cross, the church, the authority of the Bible, the necessity of conversion, the importance of spiritual renewal, the task of worldwide evangelization, and—something that may surprise some readers—the corrosive influence of modernism (every one of these emphases is worded verbatim as Rosell words them). Ockenga clearly stood in the evangelical tradition going back to Edwards and Whitefield—and these emphases are still alive, if not always well, in American evangelicalism.
This summary, in turn, transitions nicely into a description of Ockenga’s rise as a leader, preeminently in his role as head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). Every American Christian who cares about his brothers in Christ should read pages 101-106 of this book, because it describes Ockenga’s incredibly influential philosophy, the one underlying the NAE and so much else in contemporary American Christianity. Ockenga defined himself both in comparison to earlier fundamentalists (he revered Clarence Macartney and worked as his assistant for a time; he also treasured the influence of J. Gresham Machen) and in contradistinction to them. Ockenga said what nearly all evangelicals still say about fundamentalism, that its major problems were withdrawal, isolationism, separatism, and "come-outism." Rosell reports quite straightforwardly and in Ockenga’s own words that the “Park Street Prophet” advocated another strategy: infiltration (see es105, 162). The fundamentalists had failed to retain the major institutions of American Christianity; the evangelicals would go on the offensive and retake them. (Financier of evangelical works John Bolten called this philosophy of infiltration a "biblical principle," though I kept hoping for and never found Ockenga’s elaboration of the biblical rationale for it.)
The Band of Brothers
But none of these early evangelicals denied that individual conversions were necessary before real change could take place, and the next phase of Rosell’s story tells of the evangelists whose goal it was to work and preach hard for those individual conversions. Billy Graham is the focus here. Graham doesn’t get a biographical treatment like Ockenga; his life is already quite well known. Instead, Rosell zoom out a bit to the whole group of evangelists who formed a "band of brothers" during the last era of American city-wide crusades. (Bob Jones Sr appears several times as a senior evangelist who takes great interest in the success and progress of the younger ones.) These men—including Graham, Chuck Templeton, Torrey Johnson, Merv Rosell, and others—come off as earnest and energetic, if a bit naive. They worked hard to stay humble and prayerful, taking no credit for themselves for gathering the huge crowds they were seeing all across America and even in Britain. But they were still sometimes immature in their reaction to all the fervor they found themselves at the center of. They were all quite young, Rosell points out, and could get a little carried away: Graham told a group at Ockenga’s church that the next twelve months would "determine the destiny of America" (137), and Rosell at least records no awareness among them of the sad fact that not all professions at a public altar are genuine conversions. (It’s also very interesting to see the vintage advertisements for the rallies Rosell includes; they look impossibly hokey today because Graham and his compatriots were using then-cutting-edge Madison Avenue techniques—an example which evangelicalism still follows assiduously.) Graham and his fellows also united Christianity and patriotism in ways that might make contemporary Christians nervous. Graham, for example, declaimed that the U.S. "must maintain strong military power for defense" and "must strengthen organizations like the F.B.I. for internal protection" (145). Rosell points out that few Christians till the 1960s questioned the tight wedding of God and country.
The immense energy of those days, and preeminently the work of Billy Graham, launched a worldwide movement, so Rosell turns to the important evangelical institutions that arose out of that era—many of them founded and/or led by Graham and Ockenga. The National Association of Evangelicals and Fuller Seminary are the two most prominent, but a vast subculture of parachurch organizations also developed. This is where Rosell does ask one question that is critical of his subjects: if Ockenga and Graham, et al., were so opposed to "come-outism," why did they invest so much energy in creating new, transdenominational evangelical institutions? Why not simply work within existing denominational machinery? (see 178, 185-186).
The life of the mind was important to the early new-evangelicals. Rosell devotes a chapter to the topic, and he quotes Carl F. H. Henry and Ockenga saying several times that they hoped to bring intellectual respectability back to evangelicalism. Graham, Ockenga, and others even considered seriously the possibility of founding "Crusade University," an East-Coast institution that might rival the Ivies. (That name would of course be a public embarrassment today.)
Conclusion
Rosell’s story does a bit of rambling, perhaps. It’s unclear why the Ockenga biography takes up so much space, for example. But the rambling is appropriate, because the movement called new evangelicalism was, like any, a mixture of persons, occurrences, and institutions. (Rosell notes that by the late 50s, leaders such as Ockenga and Carnell had dropped the moniker they invented, "new evangelicalism," opting for "evangelicalism," "biblical Christianity," or "historic orthodoxy." [13 n.10].)
Fundamentalism plays a major role in this story. Ockenga, especially, but also leading thinkers like Carl F. H. Henry, defined themselves frequently in contradistinction to fundamentalism. They pointed specifically, of course, to separation (see 162). But not only separation. Henry wrote a few more criticisms in his landmark little book, The Uneasy Conscience of a Modern Fundamentalist. Rosell writes,
While affirming fundamentalism’s theological orthodoxy,realistic assessment of a fallen human nature, and commitment to the supernatural work of God, Henry criticized the movement for “its spirit of independent isolationism,” “overly-emotional type of revivalism,” “tendency to replace great church music by a barn-dance variety of semi-religious choruses,” and, most especially, “ethical irresponsibility." "It is not fair to say that the ethical platform of all conservative churches has clustered about such platitudes as ‘abstain from intoxicating beverages, movies, dancing, card-playing and smoking,’" Henry remarked, “but there are multitudes of Fundamentalist congregations in which these are the main points of reference for ethical speculation."
Almost 65 years on, some of Henry’s remarks still hit home—self-described fundamentalists now regularly hear the same criticisms from other self-described fundamentalists! And yet, of course, the movement Henry helped found is not immune to critique. Has success or failure come from the philosophy of infiltration that Ockenga explicitly recommended? Rosell is probably right in saying that evangelicals created their own subculture like the fundamentalists had; if that is the case, how has that fared? Rosell provides little in the way of evaluation; his is a historical book focusing on a limited time frame. But readers should not fail to ask these questions.
Rosell has written a valuable and interesting little book, one that is often edifying—and never fails to be instructive.
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Spotify: Not Sharpest Knife in Drawer, But Close
This review was supplied by little Mikey Wood, a ten-year-old technology reviewer I have hired to do kid-appropriate reviews of new tech. Mikey is a distant cousin of Rodney Trotter, of Reformation 21 fame.
I like Spotify. It is good.
It’s kind of weird, though, because, like, it advertises rap music. And doesn’t it sort of know by now that my musical tastes run the gamut from mainstream choral music to arcane choral music?
And it stops my choral music. For RAP MUSIC ads! Crazy!!!!!!
But it reads your iTunes library. That’s pretty cool.
And if you’re willing to pay most of your allowance (five dollars a month), you can listen on your computer.
And if you’re even more willing to pay even more of your allowance (ten dollars a month), you can listen on your smart phone if you have those kinds of parents who get you that kind of thing.
But I still miss LaLa. From when I was like 7 and 8. The social networking on there was cooler. It helped me figure out good music from my friends better than Spotify. But Spotify does that, too, I guess. Through Facebook. Just not as easily. You have to go to Facebook to see what your friends are listening to. And it’s not easy to find.
And Spotify is in the end better for some people. Because you can listen to music over and over and not just once.
But the constant rap and pop commercials ruin it for me. The people on those things just sound so scuzzy. It’s distracting.
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