Theology Central
Theology Central exists as a place of conversation and information for faculty and friends of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Posts include seminary news, information, and opinion pieces about ministry, theology, and scholarship.Distraction in Worship
[B]eing distracted is not sinful per se, and we may be tempted to dismiss deep contemplation as only the province of professional scholars. But in fact, there is at least one area of life in which focused attention and deep reflection are crucial for all Christians: worship and prayer. God is not honored (and we ourselves are little edified) by worship rendered with distracted hearts and minds unwilling—or even unable—to probe “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom 11:33). We saw in the previous chapter that Scripture on many occasions speaks about Christians glorifying God, and it envisions Christians doing so above all through worship. Thus, to the extent that our new technology pushes us to distraction and threatens to hinder our ability to concentrate and to dig deeply into worthy matters, it behooves us to be on guard against its encroachment into the whole of life.
VanDrunen, David. God’s Glory Alone—The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (p. 110). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
In the Nick of Time
Kevin Bauder writes about his most interesting reading during the 2016-2017 academic year.
Kenya in political turmoil
Today the Supreme Court of Kenya over turned the recent presidential election. Read about it here. I have numerous friends there since I teach in Nairobi in the summers. Things could get dicey.
Statues and the Confederacy – Time for Change?
John Fea and Warren Throckmorton both weigh in on the recent statement by the American Historical Association’s statement on monument removal. In a week of “statements” this is worth considering also.
The Nashville Statement on Biblical Sexuality
To date, the Nashville Statement is the best short statement addressing several current issues. It has been signed by a host of prominent evangelical leaders. You can download a PDF of the statement and the initial signers here.
Find Out Whether a School Is Accredited
US News and World Report tells you how.
There’s one bit of this article that needs qualification, however. Author Jordan Friedman states that regional accreditation is considered more rigorous than national accreditation. That is true of undergraduate institutions and of some graduate schools. For seminaries, however, regional accreditation is actually less desirable. The gold standard for seminary accreditation is (and has been for decades) a national accreditor, the Association of Theological Schools.
The Living Word
God’s word is not simply a collection of facts. It makes moral demands on people. It condemns their unrighteousness and points them toward the all-sufficiency of Christ, whose grace in itself is also a reminder of human insufficiency. Thus, Pharaoh is both hardened by the Lord via the word, and he chooses to harden himself by not responding in faith to that which is presented to him.
Trueman, Carl R. Grace Alone—Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (p. 186). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
More Than the Economy
ISI exerpts “The Economy Isn’t Everything” from Wilhelm Roepke’s book, The Humane Economy.
Economists have their typical deformation professionelle, their own occupational disease of the mind. Each of us speaks from personal experience when he admits that he does not find it easy to look beyond the circumscribed field of his own discipline and to acknowledge humbly that the sphere of the market, which it is his profession to explore, neither exhausts nor determines society as a whole. The market is only one section of society. It is a very important section, it is true, but still one whose existence is justifiable and possible only because it is part of a larger whole which concerns not economics but philosophy, history, and theology. We may be forgiven for misquoting Lichtenberg and saying: To know economics only is to know not even that. Man, in the words of the Gospel, does not live by bread alone.
God’s Delight in Worship
God truly does delight in worship. If God is more pleased by practices other than worship, then it is very odd that worship saturates biblical descriptions of heaven. These angelic declarations of glory to God remind us that through our own worship, we join with the angelic choirs and participate even now in the heavenly ascription of glory to our Lord. This is part of the wonder of the pillar of cloud settling upon Israel’s tabernacle and temple: the cloud, a replica of the heavenly court where God sits enthroned among the heavenly host, filled the place of worship on earth. The worship of the heavenly temple and the worship of the earthly temple in some marvelous way were united as one.
VanDrunen, David. God’s Glory Alone—The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (pp. 99-100). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
On Getting an Education After College
Eva Marie Hayne writes about the Great Books experience at Saint John’s College. It’s all the difference between liberal education and Liberal indoctrination. Perhaps our institutions could learn something from this model?
Unlike other graduate programs in the liberal arts, the St. John’s Graduate Institute has a set curriculum rather than a changing menu of elective courses, requiring that all students work through—and tutors teach—almost all of the same texts in philosophy, theology, literature, politics, mathematics, science, and history. After four semesters, these busy working students have read the likes of Homer, Aristotle, Euclid, Aquinas, Bacon, Rousseau, and Eliot.
This curriculum is the main reason why the graduate students are at St. John’s. Why? Because these students desire a truly literate intellectual life, characterized by an ongoing engagement with challenging books that grant them access to our great tradition of thought and imagination. The fixed curriculum ensures that they will have to read books (and poems) that have been tested by time and carefully chosen as representatives of that tradition. They don’t want an education that caters to their interests; they desire an education that shapes them.
The Distinct Activity of Worship
To clarify one matter initially, when I refer to “worship,” I am referring to a distinct activity. Sometimes people speak of all of life as worship, such that going to work is worship, playing basketball is worship, or practicing the piano is worship. It is indeed proper to honor God in all of our endeavors, as we’ll consider below, but worship is a distinct activity in which we set aside other tasks and set our minds and hearts fully upon the Lord, in order to receive his word and to respond to him with prayer and song—in private, in families, and especially in the corporate worship of the church on the Lord’s Day. In the many biblical texts about worship mentioned in the following paragraphs, and in several more discussed in the next chapter, the repeated exhortations to call upon the Lord, sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, and other similar practices provide abundant evidence that God takes special delight in the distinct activity of worship.
VanDrunen, David. God’s Glory Alone—The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (p. 99). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Reviewing and Being Reviewed
As an author who has been much reviewed, Joseph Epstein shares his frustrations over reviewers. This is an older essay, but well worth reading–particularly for students who have to write reviews.
What is a good book review? A first blush answer is, I suppose, the product of an interesting mind thinking about a book. But there is more to it than that. A reviewer has certain obligations to the book he’s reviewing and to his own readers: he must report what the book is saying; he must make a judgment about how well the author gets it said; and he must determine if what has been said was worth saying in the first place. Not to be dull, not to be fearful, not to scamp the duties of clear summary—these are the minimum requirements that a good book reviewer must meet.
What to Make of the SPLC?
What should we make of the Southern Poverty Law Center, now that it has started labeling traditionalist and Christian groups as “hate groups?” Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars offers an opinion.
The culture wars impinge ever closer on efforts to describe accurately and critique fairly American education. There is no avoiding this and no reason to run from it, but it is important to understand that SPLC is an active partisan in these matters. SPLC continues to benefit from a reputation as an honest arbiter of the character and motives of extremist groups in American life, but over the decades since its founding in 1971, it has devolved into a body that affixes that label to many mainstream groups simply because they espouse policy views at odds with progressive orthodoxy. Some thought SPLC hit bottom when it put the Family Research Council on its hate group list along with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Divine and Human Speech
Now, presumably speech is not predicated of God and humans in a univocal manner: God’s speech did not involve the use of vocal chords, for example, and until matter was created there could have been none of the vibrations we associate with physical sound. Yet by implication the Bible makes it clear that the closest analogy to God’s creative act is the human act of speech.
Trueman, Carl R. Grace Alone—Salvation as a Gift of God: What the Reformers Taughts…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (pp. 175-176). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
Jonathan Edwards and the American Republic
Writing for The Imaginative Conservative, Gordon Arnold argues that Jonathan Edwards was a founding father of American political thought.
Edwards offered a political philosophy which was simultaneously Augustinian and compatible with facets of the Enlightenment. He articulated a vision for an America grounded in political freedom, but cognizant of the religion’s indispensability. His eschatology avoided jingoism and instead informed America of its profound duty to live up to the standards that God had designed.
Warning Signs for Fake On-Line Programs
From US News and World Report: “10 Red Flags an Online Degree Program Is Fake.”
Seriously.
Only in Minnesota
Minnesota is the only state that lets you drive up the north shore of Lake Superior. Here’s a mile-by-mile guide of things to see as you drive.
Jesus’ Temptation and Impeccability
The purpose of the temptation was not to see if Christ could sin, but to show that He could not sin. The temptation came at a critical time: the beginning of Christ’s public ministry. The temptation was designed to show the nation what a unique Savior she had: the impeccable Son of God. It is also noteworthy that it was not Satan who initiated the temptation but the Holy Spirit (Matt. 4:1). If Christ could have sinned, then the Holy Spirit solicited Christ to sin, but that is something God does not do (James 1:13).
Christ’s peccability could relate only to His human nature; His divine nature was impeccable. Although Christ had two natures, He was nonetheless one Person and could not divorce Himself of His deity. Wherever He went, the divine nature was present. If the two natures could be separated then it could be said that He could sin in His humanity, but because the human and divine natures cannot be separated from the Person of Christ, and since the divine nature cannot sin, it must be affirmed that Christ could not have sinned.
Enns, Paul P. The Moody Handbook of Theology. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1989; p 237.
Machismo or Manhood?
Good words from Joseph Pearce at The Imaginative Conservative. Here’s a snippet, but take the time to read the whole essay.
The problem is that machismo is a mark of immaturity. It is the failure to grow into the fullness of what it means to be a man. The mark of machismo is the boast and braggadocio of the braggart. It is the mask of pride, worn by those who lack humility; it is the rant of one demanding his rights because he does not have the courage to face his responsibilities. It is the “manliness” of one who is not really a man.
In my own case, I would have to confess that I have spent most of my life as the macho man who was not really a man at all. It took marriage to make a man of me, which is to say that it took a woman to make a man of me. And not just a woman; it took a wife to make a man of me. And not just a wife, it took children to really make a man of me. I can say, therefore, echoing the words of Wordsworth, that the child is father of the man. My own children have been the fathers of my manhood. Without them, I would still be a pathetic macho man, making all sorts of masculine noise without having any of the real masculine substance.
VanDrunen on the Gospel
When we speak of “the gospel,” we often think of the basic good news of forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. This is not inaccurate, but it is helpful to remember that the gospel message is ultimately about God’s own glory and includes all the benefits of salvation, including the goal of God’s grace: our glorification with Christ in the new creation. Paul speaks of “the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me” (1 Tim 1:11), and this gospel of God’s glory entails our glorification: “He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 2:14). This expectation of glory was apparently at the center of Paul’s preaching: “God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He is the one we proclaim” (Col 1:27–28). Or as he puts it elsewhere: “What we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. . . . For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:5–6). The glory of God, the glory of Christ, the glorification of believers—all, it seems, are part of one grand gospel message.
VanDrunen, David. God’s Glory Alone—The Majestic Heart of Christian Faith and Life: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters (The Five Solas Series) (p. 89). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
APPLICATION & AID