Christian Freudom

No, that's not a misspelling. It's a clever phrase Carl Trueman develops in a characteristically winsome manner in a recent article for Reformation21 online. He begins by discussing the complexity of human motivation, and that sometimes even in "serious" theological discourse we can see Freud's insights at work. For example, a person writing a very critical appraisal of dispensational eschatology might also be trying to free himself from the clutches of his fundamentalist upbringing by exposing the shaky doctrine he was taught as a child. Next, Trueman goes to point out that many young Reformed folk have adopted practices they consider "Christian freedom" but are in fact only strong reactions to a legalistic background. Drinking or smoking then becomes the classic expression of Christian liberty. Here's part of the conclusion (I recommend reading the rest for yourself!):

"In closing, it is perhaps worth mentioning the most famous foul-mouthed Christian beer drinker of them all: Martin Luther. It is a well-known fact that his language was rough and ready, frequently obscene, and that it became more extreme and offensive the longer he lived. Over the years, scholars have wrestled with the reasons for this, from his dysfunctional relationship with his father to his chronic constipation to his desire to present himself as a man of the common people. Certainly, the extremity of his vocabulary raises all manner of interesting psychological questions. But what is interesting is that – to my knowledge – Luther does not make his foul-mouth the test case of Christian freedom and maturity; and beer drinking is only the most trivial instance for him of such liberty. Indeed, Luther actually emphasizes rather different elements in his understanding of Christian freedom...."

Gaffin on Union

If, then, we ask, what is the ground of the justification that is mine in union with Christ, the basis of my being justified in him, then, it seems, there are just three conceivable options in reading Paul: (a) Christ's own righteousness, complete and finished in his obedience culminating on the cross, the righteousness that he now is and embodies in his exaltation; (b) the union itself, the fact of the relationship, the existence the uniting bond, as such; or (c) the righteousness and obedience being produced by the transforming work of the Spirit in those in union with Christ. In short, in union with Christ, the ground of justification is resident either in Christ as distinct from the believer, in the bond between Christ and the believer itself, or in the believer as distinct from Christ.

It appears that the current readiness to dispense with imputation stems from taking either of the latter two factors just mentioned, whether or not intentionally, as in effect, the ground of justification. But neither is sustainable. The relationship as such, no matter how real and intimate, in distinction from the persons in that relationship, cannot be the basis of my justification. Clearly in Paul it is not a relationship as an entity, the relational bond in itself, but a person that justifies and saves, specifically the person of "the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). I suspect that position (b) above will inevitably gravitate to (c) in some form...

- Richard Gaffin, By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation, pg. 51

Alan Jacobs

One of my favorite writers these days (besides the aforementioned James Wood) is Alan Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College. He has begun a new column over at Books and Culture Online entitled "Rumors of Glory," which is from a 1980 song by Bruce Cockburn. This is Jacobs describing the inspiration he received from the track, and hinting at what the column will involve in the future:

"In the song, perhaps his best (which is saying a lot), Cockburn sees the "tension" between what we were made to be and what we in fact are; he sees that human culture is produced by that tension, which generates "energy surging like a storm." At once attracted and repelled by that energy, "you plunge your hand in; you draw it back, scorched." And the hand that has been plunged truly into the human world is always marked by that plunging: it's "scorched", yes, but beneath the wound "something is shining like gold—but better." The truth of who we are, given the extremes of divine image and savage depravity, is hard to discern; perhaps we can only achieve it in brief moments; perhaps we only catch rumors of the glory that is, and is to be. But even those rumors can sustain us as we walk the pilgrim path."

The Brothers Karamazov

...But Christ is not an idea. This is surely the only way to explain the intellectually nonsensical behavior of Dmitri, who, though innocent, is willing to be guilty for all and before all; or of Father Zosima's advice that we should ask forgiveness "even from the birds;" or of Alyosha's final words, which close the book, about how resurrection does indeed exist: "Certainly we shall rise, certainly we shall see, and gladly, joyfully tell one another all that has been!" Such notions have really fallen off the cliff of ideas and into the realm of illogical, beautiful, desperate exhortation. Belief has smothered knowledge. And this exchange - of the unreason of Christianity for the reason of atheism - means finally that there can be no "dialogism" in this novel, either of the kind Bakhtin proposed or of the kind that Dostoevsky so dearly desired. There is neither a circulation of ideas nor an "answering" of atheism by Christianity. For the answer - the unreason of Christian love - no longer belongs to the realm of worldly ideas, and thus no longer belongs to the novel itself. It exists in paradise, and in that other, finally unnovelistic book, the New Testament.

- James Wood, The Irresponsible Self, pg. 74.

Sophie Scholl

I recently saw a German film called Sophie Scholl: the Final Days. It was a dramatized historical documentary about Sophie and a small group of anti-Nazi campaigners known as the White Rose that distributed leaflets in the early 1940's suggesting the futility of fighting against the Allied Forces, and also describing the oppression of the German people under the fascist regime.
It was a well-done production, containing what so many Hollywood films lack: meaningful and thoughtful dialogue. Especially provocative is the exchange between Scholl and her interrogator, which is an ideological dialogue rather than the legal prosecution we might expect. In this discussion Sophie makes what is a most fitting criticism of Nazism: "No human, no matter what the circumstance, can exercise divine judgment."

I highly recommend it!

Christian liberty

Also worth noticing here is how far present-day notions of religious liberty are from those of historic Christianity. Some Christians feel that if they may not express their faith in public openly, they lack religious liberty. But if Christian freedom of the kind described by the Westminster divines is primarily a liberty to worship and serve God without fear of eternal condemnation, how is the liberty of American Christians restricted by not being able to pray in public schools, enjoy a creche in front of town hall, or appeal to the Bible in political debates? Or even if such Christian freedom involves liberty of conscience, so that a believer must have enough political liberty to worship in a way pleasing to God, when or where exactly have the secular authorities in the US attempted to regulate the worship services or private devotional exercises of Protestants and Roman Catholics?

- D.G. Hart, A Secular Faith, pg. 70

Monasticism and Poverty

In cities a body of men may hope to live on almsgiving, but even in a city it is not possible to live utterly without possessions. This raises a problem for anyone who wishes to be one of the poor. No one, and certainly no community, can for long be utterly poor. This is the paradox of poverty as an ideal: it is so easy to be poor by chance, so difficult by policy. The older monastic orders had solved the problem by adapting as their ideal individual poverty in the midst of corporate possessions. But it is evident that, in the face of real poverty, monastic poverty of this kind is only wealth under another name. On any ordinary interpretation of the phrase, long before the 13th cent., the claim made by monks and canons to be pauperes Christian pauperem sequentes, "the poor following Christ in poverty", had ceased to have any respectable meaning. It was a main part of the mission of St. Francis and his followers to give a new meaning to this well-worn phrase....

- R.W. Southern, The Middle Ages, pg. 288.

Atonement theology

The frequent representation met with today, as though a mere rehearsal of the bloody scene, a mere holding up of the martyred figure of the Savior, could have had the tremendous effects caused by the Gospel of the Cross, savors far more of modern sentimentality than it does of sound historical knowledge of the mentality of those to whom the evangel of the cross was first presented. Some theory must be put behind and into it (the cross), if its religious efficacy is to be made at all understandable. True history, worthy of the name, does not live without philosophy. Nor does Sacred History live without a fundamental theology incarnate to it.

- Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus, pg. 274

Koine

Until the late 19th cent. some considered the Greek of the NT to be a unique, heavenly language. This was thought to be the case because the style of the NT was very different from that found in Greek philosophical texts or in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. So some concluded that the Greek of the NT was a special "Holy Spirit language" prepared by God to convey his word. This was a maintainable position (although still conjectural) until archeologists began unearthing documents written in a Greek style similar to the NT. And these documents were not concerned with anything official, nor were they meant for public consumption. Rather they were written by everyday, insignificant people about things that were never intended to be handed down through the ages, such as letters and contracts. Even in the language of the Bible, God demonstrates that (in Christ) "he is one of us."

- Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, pg. 19.

Medieval history

We have become so accustomed to thinking of Christendom as an ideal body detached from all ties of political loyalty that it is well to be reminded that from the time of Constantine religious unity had stemmed in the first place from political unity. Religious unity could scarcely be thought of apart from political unity, if only because religious unity depended on some ultimate power of coercion. Hence all future medieval plans for the reunification of Christendom are fundamentally plans for political integration. (But) After the end of the eighth century Christendom was not longer politically united even in the most shadowy way...

- R.W. Southern, The Middle Ages, pg. 61

the book of Revelation

Revelation has a unique place in the Christian canon of Scripture. It is the only work of Christian prophecy that forms part of the canon. Moreover, it is a work of Christian prophecy which understands itself to be the culmination of the whole biblical prophetic tradition. Its continuity with OT prophecy is deliberate and impressively comprehensive...John is steeped in (the OT), not just as the medium in which he thinks, but as the Word of God which he is interpreting afresh for an age in which God's eschatological purpose has begun to be fulfilled. He gathers up all those strands of OT expectation which he understood to point to the eschatological future and focuses them in a fresh vision of the way they are to be fulfilled.

- Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the book of Revelation, pg. 144.

The temple

The latter-day goal all along of the heavenly temple was that it descend to earth and permeate every part of it. That did not happen during the epoch of Israel because of the nation's disobedience. Until the time of Christ, God's special revelatory presence extended only to the borders of the holy of holies. Then Christ came and did what Adam should have done, and in so doing he began to expand the temple even during his earthly ministry. When he ascended into the heavenly temple, he then sent his Spirit to create God's people as a part of that extending heavenly temple. But since the church represents only a remnant of the earth's inhabitants who accept the gospel, God's unique presence does not spread throughout the world, so that the universal extent of the temple has not yet been achieved, and will not during this age. Only when Jesus Christ returns a final time will he destroy the old cosmos and create a new one, wherein God's presence will dwell completely.

- G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church's Mission, pg. 387.

The gospel of Mark

And so the radical newness brought by Jesus spells the end of Judaism - not just first century Judaism, with its various abuses, but the OT system of life set down by God's own law. The coming of the bridegroom abolished even God's own religion. The religion of the OT was an elaborate system that effectively taught that God kept his distance from sinners. Even though Israel rejoiced at the presence of God among them, that presence was paradoxically, at one and the same time, a reminder of God's distance. (For example, notice how the Shekinah, perhaps the supreme token of God's presence with Israel, also demonstrated that God dwelt in both 'unapproachable light' and 'deep darkness.') The coming of Jesus abolishes this distance, and so, in another of God's great paradoxes, the Messiah's fulfillment of the law means that OT religion is superceded.

- Peter Bolt, The Cross from a Distance: Atonement in Mark's Gospel, pg. 29.

Typology

Careful study of the individual passages reveals that the NT use of Scripture, whenever it is not directly literal, should be considered typological rather than allegorical. An allegory is a narrative that was composed originally for the single purpose of presenting certain higher truths than are found in the literal sense, or when facts are reported for that same reason. Allegorical interpretation, therefore, is not concerned with the truthfulness or factuality of the things described. For typological interpretation, however, the reality of the things described is indispensable. The typical meaning is not really a different or higher meaning, but a different or higher use of the same meaning that is comprehended in type and antitype.

- Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the OT in the NT, pg. 13.

Paul

What is so remarkable about Paul's eschatology is that although he avails himself of all kinds of traditional terms and ideas, yet it is distinguished from all forms of the contemporaneous Jewish eschatological expectation and bears and completely independent character. Now this has its origin in the fact that Paul's eschatological is not determined by any traditional eschatological schema, but by the actual acting of God in Christ. This is the fundamental christological character of his eschatology.

Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of his Theology, pg. 52

Kinkade

My argument then is that Thomas Kinkade's attempt to sidestep modernity in behalf of nostalgia is a genuine attempt - however misguided - to return to a broader tradition of Western art, when art did not so much challenge as serve its public, when light itself, not yet dissected by Newton's prism, was holy. If it is true that light has become increasingly secularized, demystified, refracted into its parts in the Western tradition, we have yet a further explanation for Kinkade's fascination with the quality of pre- rather than post- modern light.

Luke Reinsma, "Thomas Kinkade's Paradise Lost" from Christian Scholars Review 34.2 (Winter 2005), pg. 243.

Reading notes

Modern discussions of the infralapsarian definition as less 'harsh' than the supralapsarian form often miss the point that the results of the two definitions are identical: the infralapsarian form does not argue that more human beings are brought into the kingdom, nor does it leave any opening for the human will in matters of salvation. It merely identifies the human objects of the eternal decree differently - as created and fallen rather than as creatable and liable.

- Richard Muller, "Beza's Tabula Praedestinationis" from Protestant Scholasticism, pg. 59.

Reading notes

A few months before (T.S.) Eliot's conversion, he defined what alone constitutes life for a poet: it is the struggle to 'transmute his personal and private agonies' into something universal and holy...as he said, "what every poet starts from is his own emotions, which may be his nostalgia, his bitter regrets for past happiness." These regrets might become, for a 'brave' poet, the basis of an attempt to "fabricate something permanent and holy out of his personal animal feelings - as in the Vita Nuova."

- Lyndall Gordon, Eliot's New Life, pg. 3

Reading notes

The fundamental change brought into religion by the Reformation was the abolition of the 'penitential cycle' - the rhythmic progress through sin, confession, absolution, penance, grace, and further sin - which was at the heart of late medieval pastoral theory. The spiritual 'core' of the Reformation was the change from a justification through a great sequence of little atonements, to a justification 'draped' over the believer in a single, once for all act of redemption.

- Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, pg. 306.

Reading notes

It was the order of the world that the shell should fall away and that I, the nub, the sleeping germ, should swell and expand. Say that water lapped over the gunwales, and I swelled and swelled into I burst Sylvie's coat. Say that the water and I bore the rowboat down to the bottom, and I, miraculously, monstrously, drank water into all my pores until the last black cranny of my brain was a trickle, a spillet.

- Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping, pg. 162