In Light of the Gospel

The Counter-Cultural Church

JHG — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:10:59 +0000

Ken Myers on the areas where the church must be counter-cultural in our current cultural environment:

Language
Music
Food
Time
Inter-Generational Relationships

Ken Myers on the “Two-Kingdom” Social Theory

JHG — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:45:08 +0000

In the recent interview with Ken Myers at Ordinary Means, one of the questions they asked Ken had to do with the two kingdom view of culture and the church. I thought Myers response was helpful for getting at one of the concerns some people have with certain strands of the two-kingdom theory. Here is the question and Myers’ answer:

Question: One of the arguments out there by what I am going to call a “high two-kingdoms view,” is that there is not a distinctively Christian way of doing “X” vocation, even that we should resist that because that would be to mix the kingdoms, and if you were to, for example (this would be the anti-Abraham Kuyper position), be a politician, your Christian thought should not come in. Could you interact with that a little?

Myers: First of all I would agree…I am a believer in natural law. Let me put it this way. Let me say for the sake of the argument that I’ll agree with that, there isn’t a distinctively Christian view of politics and art, or anything. But there is a distinctively human view; that is there are de-humanizing possibilities in those spheres; Christians we are necessarily humanists. That is, Christians are necessarily interested in sustaining the best for human beings as human beings.

Now, having said that, I also do believe that any effort to understand the human apart from Christ falls short. Not that it is wrong, but I do think that we only understand our humanity fully by understanding [Christ]…I think that the biblical account of life helps us understand our humanity. So I think there are insights into humanity that come from all sorts of cultural sources through general revelation, but I do think that there are correctives that Scripture offers to understanding our humanity that are just not available elsewhere. Again, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is distinctively Christian.

Let me put it the other way. What does Paul mean when he says in Colossians 1 that all things are through him and for him and to him in. That whole passage, that whole hymn from Paul seems to be that creation cannot be properly understood unless you understand it in a Christocentric form. And I think that it has as much to do with Christ’s identity as creator as it does Christ’s identity as redeemer.

This is where I challenge my two-kingdom friends. I think there is a danger in two kingdom thought of separating Christ as creator and Christ as redeemer, at least more than the New Testament does. I think that the New Testament speaks, just as the Old Testament, about the identity of God as creator and redeemer in a non-modalistic way. God is both creator and redeemer at once, and Christ is both creator and redeemer at once. In fact, redemption is a recovery of creation; redemption is a restoration of creation. So I think that we need to be careful from separating creation and redemption too starkly.

So I would say that there ought to be a Christocentric politic and aesthetic. Christians will not be the only ones who can recognize properly human and hence Christocentric realities. I think that is what the Reformed idea of common grace means. That non-believers will have the capacity to see that because they perceive things that are built into the structure of creation, built in there by Christ. So there is no getting away from Christ.

I became excited by this when I read Colin Gunton, who points out that there has long been a tendency by Christians to view creation as Unitarians, in other words, an impersonal and non-Trinitarian view of creation. So we think that God the Father made everything, things got screwed up, God the Son came and paid the penalty, and God the Spirit comes along and affirms it. So there is a type of sequential Trinitarianism. But Scripture affirms over and over that creation is a Trinitarian act, and so we don’t separate Christ from the fact of creation and the ordering of creation. To do that too starkly is to make a mistake.

Tim Keller Audio from 2007 Evangelists Conference

JHG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:08:41 +0000

The Gospel Coalition has added three new Tim Keller sermons from the 2007 Evangelists Conference:

Cross Talk: Where Life and Scripture Meet

JHG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:56:03 +0000

“Rather than offer you a prescription “to get you through the next few weeks,” Dr. Emlet writes one that transforms deeply and lasts a whole lifetime.”

Those are the words of Sinclair B. Ferguson about Michael R. Emlet’s new book Cross Talk: Where Life and Scripture Meet. Emlet is a counselor and faculty member at CCEF and lecturer in Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, and Westminster Bookstore is selling the book at a special introductory price of $4.97 (which is 69% off the normal price of $15.99). The special price on lasts for 48 hours, expiring at 3 PM (EST) on Thursday, November 12th. You can get the book here, as well as read some sample pages.

Ken Myers Interview on Culture

JHG — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:47:25 +0000

The guys at Ordinary Means podcast had the opportunity to interview Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio Journal, on the topic of culture and the ordinary means of grace. I listed to the interview, and although the whole interview is helpful, the discussion on music is well worth your time. You can hear it here.

Music, Singing, & the Reformation

JHG — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:54:01 +0000

Grace Presbyterian Church in Douglasville, GA, holds a Reformation Heritage Conference each year. I have mentioned some of their previous lectures given by D. G. Hart, Mike Horton, Carl Trueman, and others. This year Paul S. Jones from Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA, lectured on Music, Singing, & the Reformation. Here are the links:

[HT: David Strain]

Horton on the Virgin Mary & ECT

JHG — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:47:28 +0000

First Things recently posted the current statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together called “Do Whatever He Tells You: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Christian Faith and Life.” Mike Horton posted a response to it at the White Horse Inn Blog. He concludes:

I applaud the evangelical participants for offering renewed reflection on the mother of our Lord. She ought to be honored as the chief of saints for her unique role in redemptive history. Nevertheless, as Calvin argued so long ago in making this same point, the greatest significance of her example for us is that she, though a sinner, was the recipient of God’s free grace and blessing in the Son whom she bore for the salvation of us all. Let us, with her, embrace that Good News so that we, with her, may be blessed forever.

Read the whole post.

An Introduction to B. B. Warfield

JHG — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 03:32:45 +0000

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was born 158 years ago today, and Justin Taylor points out that next year Crossway will publish a “systematic theology” of Warfield titled The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary, written by Fred Zaspel. Justin asked Zaspe to provide a guest post on Warfield, and you can read it here.

The Literary Calvinism of Marilynne Robinson

JHG — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:58:24 +0000

That is the title of an essay by Peter Leithart at the newly revised and updated Credenda Agenda website. Leithart explains how Marilynne Robinson’s clarity and simplicity place her within this tradition of American literary Calvinism. This “familiar American simplicity,” as James Woods notes in his book How Fiction Works, is found in “the Puritan sermon, in Jonathan Edwards, in Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs, in Mark Twain, in Willa Cather, in Hemingway,” and Robinson is continuing this tradition.

This literary simplicity is a debt of Robinson’s Calvinism as well, and Leithart sees it in a quote from Calvin in Robinson’s essay on Puritanism. Calvin is explaining who is a neighbor:

We ought to embrace the whole human race without exception in a single feeling of love; here there is no distinction between barbarian and Greek, worthy and unworthy, friend and enemy, since all should be contemplated in God, not in themselves. When we turn aside from such contemplation, it is no wonder we become entangled in many errors. Therefore, if we rightly direct our love, we must first turn our eyes not to man, the sight of whom would more often engender hate than love, but to God, who bids us extend to all men the love we bear to him, that this may be an unchanging principle: Whatever the character of the man, we must yet love him because we love God.

Leithart immediately concludes:

In short, “no one is so contemptible or worthless ‘but the Lord shows him to be one to whom he has deigned to give the beauty of his image.” Universal sympathy is not a sentiment usually associated with Calvin, but there it is, in Calvin’s lovely exhortation to imitate the Father who sends rain on the just and the unjust, the elect and the reprobate, the prodigal, the elder sister, and their doting father. And few writers are so skillfully Calvinistic as Marilynne Robinson.

Read the whole article. And if you are interested in Robinson, here are a few places to start:

Free Audio: John Piper’s Desiring God

JHG — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:39:42 +0000

ChristianAudio.com is offering John Piper’s Desiring God as the free audio download for November. Click here to take advantage of this special offer, and use the coupon code DG2009.