Tools of Truth

From the "Quodlibet" section of the July/August issue of Touchstone:

One of the most frustrating things about being a Christian is that we are not allowed to fight the devil with his own tools. We cannot lie and cheat when we're up against liars and cheaters. We're obliged to give the devil his due, and go about the slow and so often apparently fruitless task of undoing the destruction his vandals have done so quickly and easily: analyzing, explaining, and placing the truth against lies in appeals to ears that so often are deaf - ears we at first thought wanted the truth, but in the end do not. No shortcuts, quick fixes, or sleights of hand are allowed here, no rhetorical tricks or playing to the gallery. This work requires patience and is a trial of faith, but it has a great temporal reward in the enjoyment of a conscience clear of the accusation that we have become what we hate.

--S.M. Hutchens

Lamenting a Human Loss

I read Steve Baarendse's Why I'm Not on Facebook: An Open Letter to Christian College Students in Touchstone a few months ago and found it enjoyable and thought-provoking, though I admit I'm neither a Facebook user nor a college student.  Still, I thought it was a fair and reasonable critique of social media, without being completely negative or dismissive.

So now that Touchstone has made it available online (and since colleges are about to begin another academic year), I though I'd draw your attention to it for your own consideration.  After providing thirteen reasons why he's not on Facebook, Baarendse draws the following conclusion:

You may think I’ve exaggerated some of these points. Perhaps I have. Yet I’m not trying to be mean-spirited or a fear-monger. I’m not even urging you to give up Facebook. I can see how an active Facebook account may be necessary for thriving in today’s world. No doubt it’s futile to wish our culture back to the technological simplicity of the Little House on the Prairie or Walden Pond. So be it. Then the question for Christians becomes: How do we use social media responsibly, especially in view of our calling as students? Answering this will require great discernment. At the very least, I would be especially wary of using it to air your personal laundry, or for chatting with a friend two rooms down the hall.

Given the ever-greater share of our waking moments that today’s virtual media demand, I think it’s important to discuss this issue as a learning community. Let’s agree that the danger doesn’t necessarily lie in our tools, but in our lack of self-control, which can make us the slave of our tools. Just as we can overeat in the cafeteria, so we can over-consume in our use of technology. Our hearts, Calvin helpfully reminds us, are idol-factories. Even good things can become addictive if not used in moderation. Here in college, you have a unique opportunity to focus your attention on learning. It’s a time for you to grow deep character roots and develop the resources of mind you will use for the rest of your life. But this kind of rich development might require that, for extended periods, you turn away from the 24/7 chatter that’s roaring down the Facebook pipe, clamoring for your attention.

[...]

If Oxford’s halls had been rigged with Wi-Fi and Facebook sixty years ago, would we have Narnia or Middle Earth? Lewis and Tolkien had a wonderful social network: the Inklings. They had a chat room: the Eagle and Child, where you could run your finger along the wood grain of the benches, hear the tinkle of cutlery, smell the smoke from Jack’s pipe, and catch an elfin twinkle in Tollers’s eye as he clears his throat and reads: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” The Inklings were real friends with real faces discussing real books. Is it wrong to lament a human loss here?

To read the entire letter, click here. 

It's the Patience of God that Deafens and Blinds

From Peter Leithart in the "Quodlibet" section of the May/June 2012 issue of Touchstone:

Isaiah is told to prophesy in order to make deaf and blind Israel more deaf and blind.  How does that happen?

Perhaps it works like this: Prophets speak in extremes.  Prophets shout.  Prophets "draw large and startling figures" (Flannery O'Connor).  Yet nothing happens.  They keep shouting and drawing.  Still nothing happens.  They shout louder, their colors get bolder.  Years, then decades, pass.  Nothing happens.

Eventually, the prophetic shouts blend into the background, the white noise of traffic that we no longer hear.  Their startling figures begin to look normal, and we might even hang a few in museums.  It's the patience of God that deafens and blinds, that leaves the numb ever number.

Beware the knowing smile at the crazy wearing a "The End Is Near!" sandwich board.  Yours may be the smile of the deaf and blind.  For there is a God who judges in the earth.

Excited by History

Peter Leithart, from the "Quodlibet" section of the March/April issue of Touchstone, on being delighted in well told history:

History is a bore to many, but history well told is as exciting as an absorbing fiction. It's like handling the gizmos of science fiction or meeting the beasts of fantasy. It's a world of delights all the more delicious because it is my world, younger.

By the way, for those of you in and around Jackson, Tennessee, Leithart will be lecturing at Union University tonight and tomorrow night at 7pm, and he will be in chapel on Wednesday at 10am. All three addresses are free and open to the public. For more information, click here.

It's Funny Because It's True

This humorous description of the growth of Baptists is sad but true:

Our numbers can be at least partially explained. Like cats, we multiply by fighting. One Baptist, a believer; two Baptists, a church; three Baptists, a church split.

--Ralph Wood, "My Water, His Wine" in July/August 2011 issue of Touchstone

Reasons for the KJV's Durability

The following excerpts are taken from Barton Swain's article, "God's English: The Making and Endurance of the King James Bible, 1611-2011," in the May/June issue of Touchstone:

First, they [the translators of the KJV] understood, far better than modern translators have, the importance of rhythm in language. This is partly because learned men of the seventeenth century were steeped in written languages - English and Latin, but also Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish - to a degree that even the best educated cannot match now. They understood the dynamics of poetry: Andrewes was himself a brilliant poet, but the others, too, would have been deeply familiar with ancient and modern meters.

Equally important is the fact that the King James translators knew that their renderings would be heard even more than they would be read. The great preponderance of parishioners in early seventeenth-century England were partly or wholly illiterate, and for that reason the translators were careful to make their sentences easy to read aloud. Time and again the KJV's language falls into a snappy iambic cadence that rolls off the tongue....

One of the principal reasons the King James Bible has achieved such astonishing durability is that its diction captures the gravity and splendor one feels God's words deserve....

The Signs (and Non-Signs) of the Times

"When Jesus' disciples ask him for signs of the end, Jesus does an odd thing. He spends a long paragraph telling them all the events that are not signs of the end.

Ever the subtle doctor of souls, Jesus knows what he is doing. When the world becomes chaotic and frightening, even the calmest people are tempted to go apocalyptic.

The Dow is down 2,000 points! China is catching up with the US! Global temperatures continue to climb! We face a health care crisis! Iran is getting nukes! Stars are falling from the sky, and the moon is turning to blood!

Jesus says, Calm down. Do not be afraid. Worlds do come to an end, and ultimately, this creation will yield to a new creation. But the end is not yet. That guy carrying the sign, 'The end is nigh' - he's the false prophet.

Reading the signs of the times is important. Knowing the non-signs is, however, a more basic skill."

--Peter Leithart, from the "Quodlibet" section of Touchstone

Poetry and Science

From the "Quodlibet" section of the most recent issue of Touchstone:

When the spring breeze comes through the window of my library and billows the curtains, or I see the breath of God make the trees outside dance, I wonder about wind. I think briefly about oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen, whatever. But when I reach for an explanation, I don't reach for science. I wish I were a poet. I feel poetic.

Poetry as a mode of explanation. That's an ancient and medieval instinct. Lucretius chose poetry as the vehicle for exploring the nature of things because it sweetened the hard doctrines of his Epicurean atomism. But he also thought poetry was a suitable, even revelatory, medium of explanation. Apparently, so did David, and Isaiah, and the author of Job, and Jesus, and John on Patmos.

Grateful for all the gains of science, I cannot help but wonder what we have lost in the several centuries since science secured its monopoly of explanation.

--Peter Leithart

Experiencing Wonder in the Ordinary

A great line from the conclusion of Nathan Schlueter's article, "The Romance of Domesticity: Marriage Thrives in Reality, Not in Our Dreams," in the recent issue of Touchstone:

The romance of domesticity must be rooted in a culture that nurtures our ability to experience wonder in the ordinary.

Russell Moore on "Christ and Katrina"

The feature article in the July/August issue of Touchstone is Russell Moore's "Christ and Katrina." It is a haunting yet hallowed reflection on the five-year anniversary of Katrina and how that "apocalyptic event" affected his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi - as well as his theology. You can read the entire article online here.

Poetic Excess

From the Quodlibet section of the July/August issue of Touchstone (by Peter Leithart):

Poetry is a concentrated excess of language. Concentrated, because it always means more than it says. Excessive, because it always says more than it needs to say, because in many cases it need not be said at all.

Concentration: "The Lord is my shepherd" is a simple declarative sentence, but it unlatches a window on an alternative world, in which God is a shepherd, men are sheep, lives are pathways, providential discipline is a rod, and so forth.

Excess: Andrew Marvell could have said: "It's late, and we're going to die, so let's make love now." What he said was, "Had we but world enough and time,/this coyness, Lady, were no crime," and then went on to speak of the Ganges, the conversion of the Jews, worms and decaying corpses, and the cherubic (or Apollonian) chariot of time pressing close.

No wonder God chose to write so much of his own book in poetry.

Russell Moore on "Preaching Like the Devil"

Russell Moore provides a good reputation for Baptists every time he writes for Touchstone (which readers of this blog will know is one of my favorite magazines/journals). His article in the May/June 2010 issue is no different. It is about preaching, but it deserves to be read not only by preachers, but also those who listen to preaching. It is titled "Preaching Like the Devil" (below is an excerpt).

The devil is a preacher. From the third chapter of the Bible onward, he is opening up God’s Word to people, seeking to interpret it, to apply it, to offer an invitation. So the old Serpent of Eden comes to the primeval woman not with a Black Mass and occult symbols, but with the Word she’d received from her God—with the snake’s peculiar spin on it. Throughout the rest of the canon he does the same, implicitly or explicitly.

Throughout the Old Testament, he preaches peace—just like the angels of Bethlehem do—except he does so when there is no peace. He points God’s people to the particulars of worship commanded by God—sacrifices and offerings and feast-days—just without the preeminent mandates of love, justice, and mercy. Satan even preaches to God—about the proper motives needed for godly discipleship on the part of God’s servants.

In the New Testament, the satanic deception leads the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees to pore endlessly over biblical texts, just missing the point of Christ Jesus therein. They come to conclusions that have partially biblical foundations—the devil’s messages are always expository; they just intentionally avoid Jesus.

So, the scoffers feel quite comfortable asking how a man from Nazareth could be the Messiah when the coming King is of Bethlehem. They find themselves wondering how the Son of Man can be crucified when the Bible says he lives forever. When Jesus says those who follow him should eat his flesh and drink his blood, there’s little doubt that the Adversary was there to point the crowds to Leviticus’s forbidding of the consumption of human blood. When the satanically inspired crowds crucified Jesus, they did so pointing to biblical texts that called for the execution of blasphemers and insurrectionists (Deut. 21).

When the early Church rockets out of the upper room in Jerusalem, Satan is there, with false teachers, to preach all kinds of things that seem to be straight from God’s Word—from libertinism to legalism to hyper-spirituality to carnality. He never stops preaching.

Read the whole thing here.

Creation's Worship

The following words were written (originally in prose form) by Peter Leithart in the "Quodlibet" section of the current issue of Touchstone. I found them to be worthy of poetic form and took the liberty of arranging them so (I hope Dr. Leithart won't mind).

Creation's Worship
Peter Leithart, 2010

Why do birds sing at daybreak?
Why does frosted gravel sparkle
like diamonds in the sun?
Why do spring lilacs
cast their aroma out on the air?

Hearing, sight, smell -
all are senses that receive their pleasures
at a distance. But why?
For whom or what?

For us, no doubt.
Smells, sounds, and sights
draw us from a distance,
inviting us to draw near
to taste and touch.

But not only for us.
For the Christian,
the ultimate answer is liturgical.
Creation exists to offer praise to the Creator,
and in her worship,
the Church participates in that cosmic liturgy -
humanly articulating the sounds, sights, and aromas
that already ascend to heaven.

Donald T. Williams on "The Power and the Suffering"

Every one of us has known a measure of suffering. The happiest and most successful person knows from experience the meaning of words like loneliness, fear, disappointment, rejection, and failure. If we live long enough, we will add the death of loved ones, betrayal, ill health, and the feeling of uselessness to the list.

Some people suffer bitterly; some pitifully; some grievously; some needlessly; all inevitably. You cannot avoid suffering. You can muddle through it blindly; you can make it worse by rebelling against it futilely; or you can understand it biblically and bear it redemptively. Therefore, we need to learn the joy and privilege of suffering for the gospel.

There is great power in suffering. There is no more irrefutable testimony to the truth of the gospel than the Christian who bears suffering and affliction joyfully, without bitterness, with love. For only God could provide this kind of spiritual reality, and without suffering, it could never be seen.

I pray that God will grant us continued peace and prosperity and protect us from all unnecessary suffering. But I also pray that when he does send us affliction, he will help us accept and understand it biblically, and bear it redemptively.

--Donald T. Williams, from the "Quodlibet" section of Touchstone (March/April 2010)

Peter Leithart on the Nativity Completed

Matthew's Gospel begins and ends with scenes of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In chapters 1-2, the Mary and Joseph are his parents; in chapter 27, there's Joseph of Arimathea and Mary has "doubled" into Mary Magdalene and the "other Mary."

The first story is a story of life, the second a story of death. The first tells about the miracle of the virgin conception, while the second tells of a burial. The first focuses on the child in the womb, the second on the crucified man in the tomb.

Overriding the contrasts, though, is a basic similarity: The first scene is about the coming of the Son of God, the second about his coming again from the tomb; the first presents him as the firstborn of Mary and Joseph, the second as the firstborn of the dead; the first is Jesus' birth story, the second a story of his rebirth, and the rebirth of creation.

As Matthew tells the gospel story, the incarnation at Christmas is wonderful but it is not completed until the resurrection story of Easter. The story of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Bethlehem is good news, but it's not yet the whole good news without the story of Jesus, two Marys, and the other Joseph in a garden near Jerusalem.

--Peter Leithart, from the "Quodlibet" section of Touchstone (Nov/Dec 2009)

Ken Myers on "Our Accelerated Culture"

"We were created as beings intended to inhabit time well. We are so eager to defend the fact of Creation to skeptics and atheists that we often forget the instructive quality of the rhythm of Creation. God who is beyond time somehow takes time to create all things. And then a day of rest is established. Christian faith is thus not simply historical; it is also concerned with honoring the meaning of our temporality. Impatience is a deeply disordering vice, displaying at root a frustration with a God who uses time to accomplish his purposes, who has chosen not to do everything right away.

While there is nothing new about impatience, I think it's fair to say that no human culture has so institutionalized restlessness and a quest for immediacy as has our own. We expect that people will respond to our demands without delay and that circumstances will be altered (whether a website loading or traffic abating or a meal being prepared) in the blink of an eye.

More significantly, we expect to be able to adjust our own feelings quickly, to move emotionally from "zero to 60" in three seconds. The idea that any joys - whether sublime or mundane - might require disciplines of cultivation is increasingly foreign to our accelerated culture."

--Ken Myers, "Emotion Sickness," Touchstone (Nov/Dec 2009)

Mosaic Taskmasters

The "Quodlibet" section of Touchstone is always full of little gems. I particularly appreciated this one by Peter J. Leithart in the September/October 2009 issue. It is an excellent reminder to those of us who labor in pastoral ministry.

Surprisingly, Jesus begins his litany of woe (Matthew 23) by commending the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. They sit in the seat of Moses, and Jesus' disciples are to "do and observe" what they say.

They may sit in Moses' seat, but they are not Mosaic in their conduct. Moses came to break the yoke of oppression and free slaves, but the scribes and Pharisees "tie up heavy loads and lay them on men's shoulders" and refuse to lift a finger to help. Despite their teaching, they are more Pharaoh than Moses.

These are sobering words for pastors. We, too, "sit in the seat of Moses," but we are capable of turning the gospel of freedom into an instrument of oppression. We must beware the hypocrisy of announcing "Let my people go" with our lips while saying "bricks without straw" with our lives.

I know I have said it several times before on this blog, but I can't say it enough. I encourage you to subscribe to Touchstone if you don't already. To do so, click here.

Five Marks of Excellence That Could End the Worship Wars

There is a great article by Donald T. Williams in the July/August issue of Touchstone titled "Durable Hymns: Five Marks of Excellence That Could End the Worship Wars" (unfortunately, it is not yet available online). In it, he discusses five criteria that we should use to evaluate contemporary worship music (and these same criteria are the ones that characterize those songs and hymns that have stood the test of time). Here is an excerpt:

"... we cannot find, encourage, and preserve the best contemporary music without knowing those marks of excellence that made the best of the past stand out and survive so long.

What are those marks? There are at least five: (1) biblical truth; (2) theological profundity; (3) poetic richness; (4) musical beauty; and (5) the fitting of music to text in ways that enhance, rather than obscure or distort, its meaning.

These are the marks of excellence in any age. They are not arbitrary but are derived from biblical teaching about the nature of worship (it is to be in spirit and in truth, and it involves loving God with our whole person, including the mind) and from an understanding of the nature of music and how it can support those biblical goals."

In the rest of the article, Williams elaborates on each of the marks and gives specific examples (both good and bad). It is well worth getting a copy and reading it in its entirety.

And though I've said it on this blog before, I'll say it again. If you do not currently subscribe to Touchstone, you are depriving yourself of possibly the best current example of literary excellence among all Christian journals. Click here to subscribe.

Identifying and Confronting Heresy

In the May issue of Touchstone, S. M. Hutchens has a great editorial on a difficult subject - identifying and confronting heresy. He handles the subject with humility but also with courage. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he gives it an excellent title: "The War on Error." Here are a few brief excerpts:

Reading the last few weeks in the church fathers and reformers, I was struck by what we would call their rudeness. It is hard to go far in their writings without finding them bluntly identifying their opponents as heretics, perverts, madmen, liars, and tools of the devil.

Identifying heresy and falsehood and those who teach it is a duty which, if shirked, will subject the souls under one's influence to the tender mercy of the wolves and one's own soul to the judgment reserved for the shepherd who did not protect his flock. How many pastors and teachers I have known who have been called upon to decide whether to break with their peers by speaking the truth about doctrine or conduct, or with God, and how many appear to break with God.

One must be very sure the accusation is right. This means work: education to competence on what one is talking about.

--S. M. Hutchens

You can read the entire editorial here.

And by the way, if you don't currently subscribe to or read Touchstone, you are depriving yourself of one of the best publications in print.