J. I. Packer and Roger Nicole at ICRS

Tullian writes about our time with these two heroes of the faith:

Dr. Nicole and Dr. Packer have been close friends for exactly 50 years and being able to watch them together was (and Kim agrees with me) the most moving and meaningful exhibition of Christian friendship I have ever seen. They showed such deep love and respect for each other.

One quick story: Kim, Justin, Dr. Packer, Dr. Nicole, and I were walking from the Orlando Convention Center across the street to our hotel. It was the annual gathering of Christian authors and publishers and so as we were walking many people recognized Dr. Packer and stopped to say “hello.” Only one person stopped and recognized Dr. Nicole (who is not nearly as well known as Dr. Packer). However, after that one person stopped Dr. Nicole, Dr. Packer (wanting to make sure his friend knew that he was just as important as he was) said, “You have to expect that people are going to recognize you Roger and want to talk with you. You are a very important man.” It showed just how humble and sensitive to the Holy Spirit Dr. Packer is. He didn’t want Dr. Nicole to feel outshined by him so he made nothing of the many who recognized him, but everything of the one who recognized Dr. Nicole.

Do You Really Use Your Bible as Much as You Ought

Excellent exhortation here from Bishop J.C. Ryle, over a century ago:

You live in a world where your soul is in constant danger. Enemies are round you on every side. Your own heart is deceitful. Bad examples are numerous. Satan is always laboring to lead you astray. Above all false doctrine and false teachers of every kind abound. This is your great danger.

To be safe you must be well armed. You must provide yourself with the weapons which God has given you for your help. You must store your mind with Holy Scripture. This is to be well armed.

Arm yourself with a thorough knowledge of the written word of God. Read your Bible regularly. Become familiar with your Bible. . . . Neglect your Bible and nothing that I know of can prevent you from error if a plausible advocate of false teaching shall happen to meet you. Make it a rule to believe nothing except it can be proved from Scripture. The Bible alone is infallible. . . . Do you really use your Bible as much as you ought?

There are many today, who believe the Bible, yet read it very little. Does your conscience tell you that you are one of these persons?

If so, you are the man that is likely to get little help from the Bible in time of need. Trial is a sifting experience. . . . Your store of Bible consolations may one day run very low.

If so, you are the man that is unlikely to become established in the truth. I shall not be surprised to hear that you are troubled with doubts and questions about assurance, grace, faith, perseverance, etc. The devil is an old and cunning enemy. He can quote Scripture readily enough when he pleases. Now you are not sufficiently ready with your weapons to fight a good fight with him. . . . Your sword is held loosely in your hand.

If so, you are the man that is likely to make mistakes in life. I shall not wonder if I am told that you have problems in your marriage, problems with your children, problems about the conduct of your family and about the company you keep. The world you steer through is full of rocks, shoals and sandbanks. You are not sufficiently familiar either with lighthouses or charts.

If so, you are the man who is likely to be carried away by some false teacher for a time. It will not surprise me if I hear that one of these clever eloquent men who can make a convincing presentation is leading you into error. You are in need of ballast (truth); no wonder if you are tossed to and fro like a cork on the waves.

All these are uncomfortable situations. I want you to escape them all. Take the advice I offer you today. Do not merely read your Bible a little—but read it a great deal. . . . Remember your many enemies. Be armed!

Cited in J. I. Packer, 18 Words: The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know, pp. 40-41. (If anyone knows the location of the original Ryle quote--it's from a tract--let me know in the comments.)

Update: Norm writes: It is indeed from a tract, called "Bible Reading." It's available at the Bible Bulletin Board.

Me, Myself, and iPhone

Vern Poythress:

A capable cell phone today has more computing power than the computer that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. It gives instant access not only to your friends' voices but to all the information on the internet. Are you keeping up or falling behind in the race for the latest electronic fashions?

Science and technology get a lot of attention because of the new gadgets they spin out. I love science, because it displays God's wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-31). I love technology, because it shows what great gifts God has given to us, and what great human capacity God has given us to exercise dominion (Genesis 1:28-30). But I see hopes placed in science and technology that they cannot fulfill. Science, it is said, will solve the problems of world hunger. It will bring world peace. And more and better technology will solve the problems introduced by lesser technology.

Well, sometimes; and in some ways. Maybe science will find an efficient way to harness nuclear fusion to produce clean power—or maybe not. But we can be awash in technology and still be hate-filled or lonely. You can have 200 friends on Facebook and have no one who really knows you, no one who loves you.

Sometimes science only increases the problem. If, instead of seeing the wisdom of God in it, you listen to the propaganda of scientism, it will solemnly assure you that you inhabit a faceless, lonely, materialistic universe that is heading only toward ultimate death. And the gadgets of technology become Band-Aids to cover spiritual wounds and empty hearts. One more electronic game or one more DVD movie or one more pop song holds back the slide into boredom and depression. We search for one entertainment after another to keep back the dread of facing the hollow inside.

Read the whole thing.

Interview with Packer

Kevin Boling interviews J.I. Packer on his book (with Mark Dever), In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement.

Thabiti on Jesse Jackson

He writes:

Jackson has run his race. He's run out of bounds set by Scripture. He should dignify the pastoral office and the men who give their lives to it by setting aside the title "reverend," for his actions do not warrant the honor.

We all should be watchful, lest we fall. Let's all pray that those who stand to proclaim the gospel of Christ would be kept and sanctified by the truth in the power of God's Spirit. That "Reverend" would mean something deep and beautiful and awesome and Christ-honoring and cross-embracing and holy and profound and gracious and trustworthy. That those who don the title would be wholly committed to Christ, not distracted by politics and studio lights, humbly working as slaves of Christ for the glory of Christ with the joy of Christ.

Read the whole thing.

Tribal-Minded vs. Mission-Minded

Tullian has an excellent blog post here, excerpted from the book he's working on (Unfashionable). Here's a part of his post:

There’s a major difference between having a tribal mindset and a missionary mindset. The highest value of a tribally minded person is self-protection. They ask questions like: Since I feel the safest around those who are just like me, how can I protect myself from those who are different than I am? So they intentionally surround themselves with people who think the way they think, like the things they like, and despise the things they despise. As a result, they live with a sense of superiority, looking down on those who are not like them (for half my life I was convinced that surfers like me were far cooler than anyone on the face of this earth).

In contrast to a tribal minded person, the highest value of a missionary minded person is not self-protection but self-sacrifice. A missionary minded person is a person that exists, not primarily for himself but for others. She is a person that is willing to set aside personal preferences in service to those whose preferences are different than hers. Missionaries are people who are willing to be inconvenienced, discomforted, and spent for the well-being of others. The Gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we be missionary minded, because the gospel is the story of God sacrificing himself for others.

Read the whole thing.

Packer: Top 5 Books

At breakfast the other day in Orlando (joined by Tullian and Kim Tchividjian), I told Dr. Packer I was thinking of building a basic theological library for each of my kids to give them some day. I asked him for his top 5 books he would recommend. Here were the ones he listed:

• J.C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots
• John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
  
• Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times
• C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

J.I. Packer on Homosexuality

Mark Driscoll relays a conversation he and some others had with J.I. Packer the other night in Orlando. The conversation included many more interesting insights on other topics, and I expect Mark will post those later, too.

Below is a video clip of an interview with Packer from earlier in the year, where he talks about Anglicanism and same-sex unions.

Neuhaus on the Evangelical Manifesto

Here's the closing of Richard John Neuhaus's reflections on the document:

There are many and complex dynamics involved in the production of something like “An Evangelical Manifesto.” Its theological affirmations are largely unexceptionable. Its call for cultural engagement and the cultivation of honesty and civility in argument is admirable and is always needed in our typically raucous public life. Whatever the good intentions of many of its signers, however, the manifesto is finally an appeal for the good opinion of the cultural despisers of evangelicalism. It is an election-year invitation for evangelicals to demonstrate, by embracing what is depicted as a more comprehensive and nuanced political agenda, that they are not that kind of evangelical.

I have no doubt that some who signed the statement simply wanted to affirm the important truth that evangelical Christianity is defined by the lordship of Christ and not by political partisanship. Issuing what is inevitably perceived as a politically partisan manifesto is an ill-chosen means for achieving that purpose. Only the naive or disingenuous among the signers will express surprise that the media depicted the manifesto as an election-year effort to drive a wedge between conservatives and what is portrayed as a more authentic evangelicalism. Whatever the good intentions of some signers, the reporters got the story right.

The Bible and Languages

From the book, Disciples of All Nations, by historian Lamin Sanneh:

More people pray and worship in more languages and with more differences in styles of worship in Christianity than in any other religion. Well over three thousand of the world’s languages are embraced by Christianity through Bible translation, prayer, liturgy, hymns, and literature. More than 90 percent of these languages have a grammar and a dictionary at all only because the Western missionary movement provided them, thus pioneering arguably the largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in history. (p. xx)

Cited in Harold Netland's essay for the ESV Study Bible, "Evangelical Protestantism and Global Christianity"

Truly Reformed

Ray Ortlund:

I believe in the sovereignty of God, the Five Points of Calvinism, the Solas of the Reformation, I believe that grace precedes faith in regeneration. Theologically, I am Reformed. Sociologically, I am simply a Christian – or at least I want to be. The tricky thing about our hearts is that they can turn even a good thing into an engine of oppression. It happens when our theological distinctives make us aloof from other Christians. That’s when, functionally, we relocate ourselves outside the gospel and inside Galatianism.

The Judaizers in Galatia did not see their distinctive – the rite of circumcision – as problematic. They could claim biblical authority for it in Genesis 17 and the Abrahamic covenant. But their distinctive functioned as an addition to the all-sufficiency of Jesus himself. Today the flash point is not circumcision. It can be Reformed theology. But no matter how well argued our position is biblically, if it functions in our hearts as an addition to Jesus, it ends up as a form of legalistic divisiveness.

Here's the conclusion:

My Reformed friend, can you move among other Christian groups and really enjoy them? Do you admire them? Even if you disagree with them in some ways, do you learn from them? What is the emotional tilt of your heart – toward them or away from them? If your Reformed theology has morphed functionally into Galatian sociology, the remedy is not to abandon your Reformed theology. The remedy is to take your Reformed theology to a deeper level. Let it reduce you to Jesus only. Let it humble you. Let this gracious doctrine make you a fun person to be around. The proof that we are Reformed will be all the wonderful Christians we discover around us who are not Reformed. Amazing people. Heroic people. Blood-bought people. People with whom we are eternally one – in Christ alone.

Read the whole thing.

HT: Z

Mahaney: Don't Waste Your Humor

Josh Harris:

In his message Don't Waste Your Humor C.J. shared a quote from Terry Lindvall's book, Surprised By Laughter: The Comic World of C.S. Lewis:

Laughter is a divine gift to the human who is humble. A proud man cannot laugh because he must watch his dignity; he cannot give himself over to the rocking and rolling of his belly. But a poor and happy man laughs heartily because he gives no serious attention to his ego. . . . Only the truly humble belong to this kingdom of divine laughter. . . Humor and humility should keep good company. Self deprecating humor can be a healthy reminder that we are not the center of the universe, that humility is our proper posture before our fellow humans as well as before almighty God. . . . "I suppose," wrote C.S. Lewis, "we should mind humiliation less if we were but humbler."

You can hear C.J.'s message here. I also posted on my church blog a list of questions for application that Brian Chesemore did for the message.

Return to Rome

Francis Beckwith's book describing his return to Rome will be published this winter by Brazos.

From Baker's website:

What does it mean to be evangelical? What does it mean to be Catholic? Can one consider oneself both simultaneously? Francis Beckwith has wrestled with these questions personally and professionally. He was baptized a Catholic, but his faith journey led him to Protestant evangelicalism. He became a philosophy professor at Baylor University and president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). And then, in 2007, after much prayer, counsel, and consideration, Beckwith decided to return to the Catholic church and step down as ETS president.

This provocative book details Beckwith's journey, focusing on his internal dialogue between the Protestant theology he embraced for most of his adult life and Catholicism. He seeks to explain what prompted his decision and offers theological reflection on whether one can be evangelical and Catholic, affirming his belief that one can be both.

HT: First Things

Gospel Coalition Conference: Registration Open

Registration for the Gospel Coalition National Conference is now open.

You can read an overview and also view the speakers and the schedule.

ESV Study Bible: Introduction to the Psalms

From Crossway:

We invite you to download the latest sample from the ESV Study Bible: the Introduction to the Psalms, along with the notes for Psalm 1. This pre-release PDF provides you a glimpse of what the ESV Study Bible is designed to deliver—namely, tools and information to help you understand God’s Word more deeply.

In this pre-release PDF you’ll find the following sections related to the Psalter:

• Title
• Theme
• Authorship, Occasion, and Date
• Key Themes
• History of Salvation Summary
• Musical Terms
• Curses in the Psalms
• The Psalms as Scripture
• Literary Features
• Structure

Three charts are also included, helping you to see (1) how certain Psalms relate to the historical narrative of 1–2 Samuel; (2) some of the literary features of the Psalter; and (3) how each of the five “books” of the Psalms fit together.

Our hope is that resources like this will provide you with a concise and informative overview of the Psalms (the hymnbook for God’s people at worship), enabling you to understand God’s Word in a deeper way.

You can learn more about the ESV Study Bible and get a pre-order discount at www.ESVStudyBible.org.

Reminder: the 30% pre-order discount ends today, July 15, 2008.

If you are a pastor or Christian leader, email esvsb@crossway.org to request free informational brochures for your church or ministry (while supplies last; U.S. residents only).

We are grateful for your interest in the ESV Study Bible!

I'd especially encourage you to read the section on the Psalms as Scripture. I personally found it to be very insightful and edifying.

Here's a comment from James Grant:

Along with these introductions, each Psalm includes an outline in the comment section that is distinguished by the same darkened box or highlight used for the introductions. This helps in seeing the literary flow of each Psalm. In my opinion, this is not only the best Psalm section of any study Bible that I have seen, but it is also the best short introduction to the Psalms. I can use this introduction and the comments for each Psalm to teach my church how to read this improtant and often neglected section of God’s word.

EFCA Statement of Faith

Collin Hansen writes about the new statement of faith for the Evangelical Free Church of America.

Prodigal

Those who think the title of Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God, will lead to the erosion of biblical fidelity (!!) may find this sermon title a tad uncomfortable to read.

HT: Alex Chediak

Why God Doesn't Fully Explain Pain

John Piper:

God cannot make plain all he is doing, because there are millions and millions and millions and millions of effects of every event in your life, the good and the bad. God guides them all. They all have micro purposes and macro purposes. He cannot tell you all of them because your brain can’t hold all of them.

Trust does not demand more than God has told us. And he has given us immeasurably precious promises that he is in control of all things and only does good to his children. And he has given us a very thick book where we can read story after story after story about how he rules for the good of his people.

Let’s trust him and not ask for what our brains cannot contain

Read the whole thing to see an illustration on this theme.

sub•text

Steve McCoy and Joe Thorn are launching a new blog and ministry called sub•text, which focuses on ministering the gospel in the suburban context:

The blog includes new articles we are writing on suburban mission, quick hits on the latest relevant news and information, interviews with pastors, theologians, church planters and authors concerning suburban mission, and more. We are also planning a forum for fall 2008 with Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian. More forums are in the works for early 2009. Head over to sub•text and join the conversation.

HT: James Grant

The Graduate Junction

This looks like a great idea and resource--a global research network called the Graduate Junction:

The Graduate Junction is a brand new website designed to help early career researchers make contact with others with similar research interests, regardless of which department, institution or country they work in. Designed by two graduate researchers at the University of Durham, The Graduate Junction has proved very popular with research students and academics alike. Within the first two weeks after our launch in early May 2008 over 2000 researchers in the UK had registered and the news had spread across 40 countries.

Currently research students have two main sources of information, published literature and academic conferences. Whilst published literature is essential, it can only ever reveal completed work. Relevant academic conferences provide a forum for students with similar research interest to interact but occur infrequently. It is very easy to become isolated, overly focused on the specifics of one's own work and lose a sense of what other related work is being done.

The Graduate Junction hopes to prevent that isolation and allow early career researchers to start forming the networks which can stay with them throughout their careers. The Graduate Junction aims to provide an atmosphere similar to that at academic events and through the use of the internet aims to establish an on-line worldwide graduate research community.

HT: Todd Bolen

Tony Snow (1955-2008)

Tony Snow, conservative commentator and former press secretary to President Bush (2006-2007), died this morning.

Snow, an evangelical, wrote an article for Christianity Today in 2007 entitled Cancer's Unexpected Blessings. Here is an excerpt, the ending of his essay:

I sat by my best friend's bedside a few years ago as a wasting cancer took him away. He kept at his table a worn Bible and a 1928 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. A shattering grief disabled his family, many of his old friends, and at least one priest. Here was a humble and very good guy, someone who apologized when he winced with pain because he thought it made his guest uncomfortable. He retained his equanimity and good humor literally until his last conscious moment. "I'm going to try to beat [this cancer]," he told me several months before he died. "But if I don't, I'll see you on the other side."

His gift was to remind everyone around him that even though God doesn't promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity—filled with life and love we cannot comprehend—and that one can in the throes of sickness point the rest of us toward timeless truths that will help us weather future storms.

Through such trials, God bids us to choose: Do we believe, or do we not? Will we be bold enough to love, daring enough to serve, humble enough to submit, and strong enough to acknowledge our limitations? Can we surrender our concern in things that don't matter so that we might devote our remaining days to things that do?

Culture Making

One book I'm looking forward to reading is Andy Crouch's Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, soon to be released from IVP.

Tim Keller writes:

Culture Making is one of the few books taking the discussion about Christianity and culture to a new level. It is a rare mix of the theoretical and the practical, its definitions are nuanced but not abstract, and it strikes all kinds of fine balances. I highly recommend it.

Christian Smith provides an apt summary in his blurb:

American evangelicals in the last hundred years have found it easy to condemn culture, critique culture, copy culture and consume culture. It has been much harder for them to actively and imaginatively create culture. Andy Crouch is out to change that.

You can read the opening chapters online.

Tullian Tchividjian recently linked to a critical interaction with the book:

The Bible makes it clear that Christians need to be people of double listening — listening both to the questions of the world and the answers of the Word. We’re responsible to be good interpreters not only of Scripture, but also of culture. God calls us to be like the men of Issachar, “who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). We’re called to think long and hard, deep and wide about “our times” and all the issues surrounding the mission of the church — its proper relationship to this world as well as its proper place in it.

With this in mind, John Seel offers a critical review of Andy Crouch’s forthcoming book Culture Making. This is no ordinary review. Reading it is like listening in on a conversation between two top notch Christian thinkers who understand the complexities involved in the relationship between Christians and culture. If you are a Christian who wants to get better at “double listening”, this is a must read review.

This review will be featured in Critique magazine (in the next several weeks). It will also be posted on the Ransom Fellowship website as well (a ministry you would be wise to become familiar with).

Again, I think Crouch's book looks like it could be very helpful in many ways, and that Seel offers some good iron-sharpening-iron along the way.

Poythress on Kinds of Biblical Theology

Vern Poythress writes in the Spring 2008 issue of the Westminster Theological Journal

In 1976 Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., published a programmatic article on "Systematic Theology and Biblical Theology," building especially on the work of Geerhardus Vos and John Murray. Much has happened since then in developments in biblical theology. So I propose to reassess the present-day possibilities for biblical theology's relation to systematic theology.

Read the whole article. (You can also read Gaffin's article from 1976 online.)

Here's the last paragraph:

In the end, one of the best arguments for not conforming systematic theology to a single "structural" model deriving from NT biblical theology is that Paul's own example counts against it. In addition to stability in his adherence to truth, Paul's exhibited flexibility in his mode of delivery of the truth. Therefore it is surely permissible for systematic theology to do the same. Biblical theology and systematic theology both need robust interaction with one another for the sake of deepening their methodological and doctrinal soundness. But each may legitimately adopt a variety of structures in communication, and not feel bound to copy in its macrostructure the structures typical of its companion.

Warfield: "One Productive Life" (and One Beautiful Marriage)

Kim Riddlebarger posts an excerpt from his dissertation giving an overview of B.B. Warfield's life.

Here are a couple of extracts about his marriage:

Soon after marrying Annie Pearce Kinkead, who was also from noble stock, the newlyweds journeyed to Leipzig. . . .

During their stay in Europe an event occurred that would forever change the Warfield's lives. While walking together in the Harz mountains, Mr. and Mrs. Warfield were caught in a violent thunderstorm. Annie Warfield suffered a severe trauma to her nervous system from which she never fully recovered. She was so severely traumatized that she would spend the rest of her life as an invalid of sorts, becoming increasingly more incapacitated as the years went by. Her husband was to spend the rest of their lives together giving her "his constant attention and care" until her death in 1915 (Allis, "Personal Impressions of Dr Warfield," 10). B. B. Warfield could not have foreseen just how constant and difficult a demand this was to become, and how, in the providence of God, this would impact his entire career.

. . . Warfield's remarkable literary output is, no doubt, in large measure due to the frail condition of his wife and his amazing devotion to her. With the pen he was a formidable foe, but as O. T. Allis recalls, "I used to see them walking together and the gentleness of his manner was striking proof of the loving care with which he surrounded her. They had no children. During the years spent at Princeton, he rarely if ever was absent for any length of time" (Allis, "Personal Impressions of Dr Warfield," 10). Machen recalled that Mrs. Warfield was a brilliant woman and that Dr. Warfield would read to her several hours each day. Machen dimly recalled seeing Mrs. Warfield in her yard a number of years earlier during his own student days, but notes that she had been long since bed-ridden (Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 220).

According to most accounts, Dr. Warfield almost never ventured away from her side for more than two hours at a time. In fact, he left the confines of Princeton only one time during a ten-year period, and that for a trip designed to alleviate his wife's suffering which ultimately failed (Bamberg, "Our Image of Warfield Must Go," 229). As Colin Brown incisively notes, Warfield's lectures on the cessation of the charismata, given at Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina shortly after her death, are quite remarkable and demonstrate "a certain poignancy [which] attaches itself to Warfield's work in view of the debilitating illness of his wife throughout their married life" (Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind, Eerdmans, 1984, 199). Though Warfield may have been known to many as a tenacious fighter, the compassion he directed toward his wife, Annie Kinkead Warfield, demonstrates a capacity for tenderness and caring that is in its own right quite remarkable.

In the mysterious providence of God, it was the nature of his wife's illness and his devotion to her, that ironically provided the greatest impetus for his massive literary output. Personally vital and energetic, "he did not allow" his wife's illness "to hinder him in his work. He was intensely active with voice and pen" (Allis, "Personal Impressions of Dr Warfield," 11). Thus his creative energies were focused in two directions: his writing and the classroom. As caretaker for an invalid wife, Warfield spent many hours each day in the confines of his study.

HT: James Grant

Update: Tony Reinke has some photos of the Warfields' tombs here.

Only in Minnesota

Al Franken vs. Jesse Ventura for senator.

Minnesota politics are always entertaining!