More faithful men with the Lord

Most readers of this blog will have heard of the deaths of the founder of OM, George Verwer (b 1938) back in April and more recently of pastor and writer Tim Keller (b 1950) and now we hear that two Scots ministers have also died. Gordon Keddie has died in America and Donald Macleod (b 1940) in Scotland. I never heard Gordon Keddie (b 1944) but I read some of his very helpful exegetical work. He published several books. I know of his death through his brother John. I can see no online obituary at the moment. The other three I heard on different occasions, Verwer just once and the other two several times and always with profit. What blessings we have received from such men but now they are with the Lord which is far better.

You can find obituaries for these men as follows:

George Verwer

Tim Keller

Donald Macleod

Of course, early in March Ted Donnelly died in Ireland - another man from whose ministry I have benefitted.

See here for Ted Donnelly.

Antinomianism, Legalism, Arminianism and Hyper-Calvinism

I noticed this quotation in Tim Keller's new book on preaching

Referring to legalism and antinomianism he says

 

“Both come from the belief that God does not really love us or will our joy, and from a failure to see that “both the law and the gospel are expressions of God’s grace.” For both the legalist and the antinomian, obedience to the law is simply the way to get things from God, not a way to get God, not a way to resemble, know, delight, and love him for his sake.” (p 55)

 

It reminded me of the way John MacLeod in Scottish Theology (recently republished by Banner of Truth) also sees two opposite errors having a surprisingly similar source. This time Hyper-Calvinism and Arminianism.

 

In regard to the claims of God, each of these extremes worked from a common principle which they turned to opposite ends. The Hyper Calvinistic brethren held that there is no worldwide call to Christ sent out to all sinners to whom in the letter the Gospel comes, neither are all bidden to take Him as their Saviour. On the other hand, they maintained that Christ is held forth or offered as Saviour to those only whom God effectually calls. They reasoned that man, as a bankrupt in spiritual resources, cannot be called upon to do what is out of the compass of his power. He can neither repent nor believe. So it was out of place to call upon him to do what he cannot do.

In this, when we look into it, we find the common Arminian position that man’s responsibility is limited by his ability. The Arminian holds to the presence of a certain ability in those that are called; otherwise sinners could not be called upon to repent and believe the Gospel.

Each side takes up the principle from its own end. They fail together to recognise that the sinner is responsible for his spiritual impotence. It is the fruit of sin; and man’s sin does not destroy nor put out of court God’s right to ask for an obedience alike in service and repentance and faith that His sinful creatures have disabled themselves from yielding to Him. His title to make His demand is entirely and absolutely unimpaired. He claims but His own when He bids man, made in His likeness and for His glory, serve Him and be the doer of His will as He makes it known. When He calls upon him to repent He but asks what He is entitled to. When He bids the sinner who needs the Saviour receive Him, as His own, He is altogether within His rights in doing so. There is a glorious superiority to man’s reasonings shown by Him who bids the deaf to hear and the blind to look that they may see.

Summer reading Christian books

I was glad to see the new book Engaging with Keller a book of essays by mainly British based Presbyterians giving a critique of the popular preacher. I was glad to see it as I have read and heard Keller with profit but am still a little nervous about him. This book which is irenic throughout gives chapter and verse on a number of issues - ie Keller's views on sin (I D Campbell) hell (Bill Schweitzer) the Trinity (Kevin Bidwell) the church's mission (Peter Naylor) hermeneutics (Richard Holst) evolution (Schweitzer again) the church ( D G Hart). The authors have done us all a favour by setting out exactly where they think Keller might be wrong. The book is also useful for all pastors as however orthodox we may endeavour to be, it is very easy to fall into an error of one sort or another and here is a gentle warning and, if necessary, a corrective. Well done EP for publishing it and to all the contributors for putting in the work necessary.

I also read Packer's latest Weakness is the Way which is written out of long experience, well informed theological thought and with thorough and careful exegesis (of 2 Corinthians) but in a gentle and well written style. I fell in love with the book from the start, had a brief struggle when we got onto the subject of money, which didn't make me feel quite so warm inside and then was just moved with thankfulness for the book as a whole which is such a good one. (My one slight criticism, observation really, would be that it is a very short book, the texts expounded also being reproduced in its pages). May be this video will whet your appetite.

EMA 2011 Final Sessions

The second half of the morning of the final day of EMA featured Vaughan Roberts, who spoke very positively about Francis Schaeffer. He focused on what he called two contents and two realities, the contents being the truth of Scripture and engagement with society, the realities true spirituality and prayer. I didn't catch the beginning of this talk but after I had found my place it was slightly disconcerting to be followed in by Francis Schaeffer himself. It could have just been someone who looked like him, I guess.

During lunch an Anglican society was launched - The Anglican Mission in England. You can read more here. We also sat at different points through video adverts for Christianity Explored (poor) and  Cornhill (quite good). At least the band were not there today so there was less singing. I also enjoyed the rap about the conference from Robert Prendergast of Calvary Chapel before the final session of the day. As with most conferences I attend the EMA was overwhelmingly white (and male and with a good sprinkling of double barrelled names, which I don't always see).

After lunch Roberts interviewed the main speakers (Goligher, Wells and Keller). This was okay. We often seem to get back to the question of "how do I get a big church?" and none of them were as foolish as to suppose that they really knew how. I'm not quite sure why it was not opened to the floor or at least an opportunity for written questions given.

Anyway, the final session was with Tim Keller. He began by admitting that much of what he is saying is just good pastoring and there is a danger in his approach of sounding too theoretical, which was good to hear.
Speaking again of "entering" he spoke of beliefs that a culture finds plausible. Their culture predisposes them to find certain biblical doctrines acceptable or more acceptable. On the other hand, there are other doctrines that ones culture predisposes one to reject. The A doctrines we can think of as logs and the B ones as rocks. Keller's idea is that we float the rocks using the logs. He suggests that this can be discerned from Acts.
We therefore need to know which is which. For example, when the average westerner hears that God is a jealous God they are concerned. Of course, when we see it is love that refuses to be extinguished then it makes sense. C S Lewis argues for the wrath of God from the fact that God is love.
He then told a story that Harvie Conn told him about reaching prostitutes in Korea. They all thought they were too bad for God. So he began with predestination! Keller slipped in another nice story here of how R C Sproul answered a young girl's objections to predestination and that led to Keller himself accepting it. A higher person's authority to do what he wishes would be a real A doctrine in Korea.
and saying that it is helpfully the latter that westerners today appreciate most. There was also talk of how westerners commodify sex and make it a salesman vendor situation rather than a covenant one, etc, and mentioning his sin as idolatry argument and finishing with a great summary of the atonement based on Roger Nicole. Keller has said elsewhere in the same vein
"My prof at Gordon-Conwell, Roger Nicole, used to say that there were many perspectives on the atonement, but the one theme that ran through them all was substitution. Christus Victor, for example, means Jesus fought for us, in our place, we didn’t do it, he did it. And so ‘penal’ substitution is the perspective of the law court, and ‘ransom’ substitution is the perspective of the marketplace, and ‘Christus Victor’ substitution is the perspective of the battlefield, and ‘sacrificial’ substitution is the perspective of the temple/tabernacle. They all get at it differently, but the one commonality is substitution. God came and substituted himself for us–so we could be saved from sin. Nicole wrote this up in a little afterword to his festschrift The Glory of the Atonement."

EMA 2011 Afternoon Session 02

This afternoon Adrian Reynolds interviewed Tim Keller for a while, which was interesting. I was struck by a number of things especially the emphasis on prayer.

Later, he carried on with his message on the need to be flexible in our dealings with different cultures while we are careful not to compromise the gospel itself. He took us first to Paul's speeches in Acts and outlined an unchanging content in

• The epistemological challenge (God)
• The sin challenge (Law and sin)
• The Jesus element
• Repentance and faith

He also drew on a Themelios article by Don Carson that can be found here. In this article he notes different scriptural motives for repentance and faith.

The final section of Keller's paper spoke of the need with cultures we want to reach to

• Enter
• Challenge
• Appeal/Console

By way of illustration he spoke of drilling and blasting being necessary in order to break through and of "A beliefs" and defeaters which Keller fans are no doubt familiar with. Plenty of things to learn here even if one doesn't take it all on board.

EMA 2011 Afternoon sessions 01

So after a wet lunch hour we proceeded to oru seminars. I'm not sure what else was on offer but I

ended up in the main one in St Helens itself with David Robertson, author of the Darwin Letters. Robertson has a rather strange accent (Scots but occasionally Aussie or London is it?) is a Free Church minister in Dundee at the church where M'Cheyne was once the pastor (he has written a biography of his predecessor). He kept assuring us he was an ordinary pator as he told us anecdote after anecdote mostly of debates in secular bookshops. I would say, rathe he is a gifted communicator who has worked hard and seen soem blessing and his session was useful for provoking thought about reaching people today in perhaps less orthodox ways. He mentioned the free church website but his big thing is Solas. Ian Rees commended his "fleabytes" to me.

Our final session of the day was with Tim Keller who spoke on preaching that connects. He also said several helpful though familiar things about communicating the gospel as he looked at this whole controversial area of contextualisation. He quoted David Wells and Don Carson (“No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way– but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.”) and took us to 1 Corinthians 9 and 1 and Romans 1 and 2. I thought his idea that all cultures exhibit good and bad traits and sometimes both at the same time was helpful. His main example was the way Hispanics will wait until everyone is present  whereas the average WASP says it starts when the time stated says it starts.

Book Buys December

With the coming of Christmas book numbers have gone up. I bought a copy of Tony Lane's Concise history of Christian thought in the Borders sale early on. Then, for Christmas I got hold of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and had from my wife some nice books - a Welsh phrase book and a book called Why is Q always followed by u a collection of articles on the English language by Michael Quinion
I also made a visit to my favourite Christian bookshop where I bought several books. These were
A biography of Katherine Parr by a Christian called Brandon Withrow

The new Banner collection of letters from John Newton to John Ryland "Wise Counsel"
Keller on Counterfeit gods
The festschrift for Dick Gaffin Resurrection and Eschatology
Hugh Martin's Abiding Presence
I also bought a Family Pilgrim's Progress. We have it in Welsh but not English and I want to use it for a series with the children next year.

Oh yes, I should add that one of my sons bought me the very enjoyable Judy Parkinson book Remember, Remember (The Fifth of November): The History of Britain in Bite-Sized Chunks and someone else bought me My God is True! by Paul D Wolfe a testimony to God's goodness in a time of cancer.

Book Buys August

It has been a very busy month as far as book buying is concerned.

I bought three books over the net in connection with the John Owen Centre course

Francis Schaeffer An Authentic Life by Colin Duriez
Cornelius Van Til Reformed Apologist and Churchman by John Muether
Christian Apologetics by Cornelius Van Til (ed Bill Edgar)

In the EMW bookstall and the Alfred Place Bookshop I bought several volumes including

John Calvin Pilgrim and Pastor by Robert Godfrey
Living for God's Glory An Introduction to Calvinism by Joel Beeke
John Calvin a heart for Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology by Burk Parsons (ed)
Calvin's Teaching on Job by Derek Thomas
The Sovereign Spirit by Gwyn Walters

Why Johnny can't preach by T David Gordon
The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller
Letters of Geerhardus Vos
The Family at Church by Joel Beeke
Heirs with Christ: The Puritans on Adoption by Joel Beeke

I also picked up the much praised Bruce Gordon on Calvin in Ystwyth Books

Then there was also a book on the British Empire and The invention of Dr Cake by Andrew Motion second hand in Aberaeron, and 3 Wordsworth Classics for £5 in Aber - Life's Little Ironies (Thomas Hardy), The Professor (Charlotte Bronte), The Three Hostages (John Buchan).

Bad Christians 02

As noted, I'm working through Keller's book The Reason for God and have reached his section on how come Christians are so obnoxious. I'd like to add a second observation on this.

Another unhelpful trait found in some Christians is freeloading - taking advantage of the generosity of other Christians. As with divisiveness, it was something not unknown in New Testament days. Again there are probably various reasons for his but again I think it is something that often goes back to how one becomes a Christian. Given that forgiveness is all of grace and can't be won or earned, there is always a temptation to think that everything else ought to be grace too. And yet rightly not everything is by grace. Clearly Christians ought to be kind to each other and everyone else but they are under no obligation to provide everything gratis or near to that. Some Christians can't see this and are mortified at the idea of not getting things free or at least at a knock down price. Again it is a mindset problem and once we see our way through it then there aren't too many problems. We cannot assume anything is gratis or free but for God's grace itself.

Bad Christians 01

I'm working through Keller's book The Reason for God and have reached his section on how come Christians are so obnoxious. I'd like to add an observation on this.

One trait found in some Christians is their divisiveness. Given that we are to work at unity and show Christ by our love, this is not always easy to defend. Paul even warns against tolerating divisive Christians. Why does it happen so frequently then?

I think that part of the answer lies in the very process of becoming a Christian in the first place. When you become a Christian you are pretty much saying that most people are wrong - it's a difficult moment but when you've done it once it can get easier with time. First you say most of the world is wrong, then many or most Christians are wrong, then a few more. Before you know where you are everyone's wrong but me and thee (and I'm not sure about thee).

And my point? This is one of the traits we can see in others and to some extent we may understand it. We also ought to beware of getting into such a compulsive way of thinking.

Unfair slur 01

I am currently reading a book by Tim Keller. In a remark that has nothing to do with his main thesis Keller says he has often preached on Joseph. He calls him "an arrogant young man who was hated by his brothers". I know this is a common view (the majority view?) but I have also preached on Joseph and I beg to differ. Naive, yes; arrogant, no. Certainly Moses never says that Joseph was arrogant and we should be slow to assume he was.

A quick look reveals that certainly R T Kendall and Achille Blaize don't take this view. Blaize says "We have no evidence to show that Joseph was either cocky, proud or too sure of himself". Kendall: "It was not that he was arrogant or cocky; it was simply that he knew something of the ways of God and had no fear whatsoever of being contradicted". Also see on my side J G Vos, the NET Bible (in a footnote on page 86) and A W Pink.

More on EMA

See here for a good intro.

EMA Day 3

At this time of the year I usually pop down to the Evangelical Ministry Assembly at St Helen's organised by the Proclamation Trust. I mostly enjoy being there because I don't know 90% of the people there even by sight (I guess they are Anglicans and others in the mixed denominations). If they are willing to listen to the sort of things you get there then there's more of us than I tend to think there are. Some things wind me up, of course, like the fact the bookstall never stocks my books; the saxophone and the poor drum fills; the parochialness of some of it; the accents now and again; the in jokes I don't get.

I was only able to be present for the final less well attended day this year. There were four sessions of varying quality. One surprising but encouraging thing was that Dr Lloyd-Jones got a (may be unprecedented) positive mention in the first two. It was wonderful to hear people at last saying that preaching is more than simply explaining the text. I have noticed this trend and trust this is a sign of growing maturity.

Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, is always worth listening to - warm, practical, original, well thought through. (More here). Others spoke highly of his two previous messages although his failure to understand the British scene was noted. His subject on the Friday was 'What is an evangelical ministry?'. He spoke (counter-intuitively) first about the practice then the principles.

Practically, preaching is central in the overall ministry, doxological in its end and Christocentric in its content. More generally, one needs to keep working on evangelism, discipleship, social justice and the integration of your members' faith and work.

His three principles were that the ministry must reflect the balance of God's wrath and love as seen in the cross; it should reflect that contextual balance seen in the incarnation and, thirdly, it should be based more on grace than gifts. This last point was the best and much appreciated by everyone I spoke to. We all know that godliness is more important than gifts in the ministry, however, Keller actually argued the case, which I've never heard done before. His main point was that no-one is going to be brilliant at every aspect of ministry, the only hope then is that you are at least godly. Without that you are sunk. You are an accident waiting to happen. I'm afraid I could identify very much with that and knew exactly what he was talking about. It was a timely reminder of the need for re-ordered priorities.

After such a blistering start it was difficult to sustain that but Vaughan Roberts didn't do too badly with his second survey of Daniel (covering the much more difficult Chapter 7ff). He chimed in well with what Keller had been saying. It's difficult to say anything useful in such brief compass but I'm sure younger men will have been helped.

Over lunch I bought some books, chatted, ate and listened to men from Delhi, Accra and Havana being interviewed.

The patriarch Dick Lucas did the last session (on Philippians again). Every movement needs its older men and Dick always says something useful. At the beginning he remarked in passing that men sometimes try to put too much in their sermons - that's worth chewing on. I'm afraid I was rather distracted after that. He was still banging on about the horrors of the Keswick movement as I began to drift. At least he kept to time.

In between these two was a sort of question time when Keller, Roberts and Richard Cunningham who had spoken the day before were asked about various things not very much related to their subjects but more on what they were doing. Cunningham was asked about the fall out between Spring Harvest and Word Alive ( a rapprochement originally broached many years before by Roy Clements) over Steve Chalke leading to a separate Word Alive this year, which was eagerly being plugged. (They have Don Carson, John Piper and Terry Virgo (!) speaking).

It is at this point that I get completely lost. Cunningham goes to an Anglican church and so, like Chalke and many more there is up to his neck in the mixed denominations. Last April I believe there was a conference that took place in April in Cambridge. An advert says -

A number of ministers from Great Britain and Australia will be on the program, including Wright and McGrath; David Jackman of Proclamation Trust; Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Trust and senior pastor of Christ Church, London; and Gordon Moyes of Wesley Mission, the largest evangelical congregation in Australia. See here.

I know it's difficult but at least you can see what some men are aiming at. Anyway I don't want to end negatively the conference did me good and I plan to go again as the more you listen the better you understand. More info here.