Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Systematic Theology

Theology That Wounds Rather Than Heals

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Reflecting on Job 16–17, D. A. Carson observes,

There is a way of using theology and theological arguments that wounds rather than heals. This is not the fault of theology and theological arguments; it is the fault of the “miserable comforter” who fastens on an inappropriate fragment of truth, or whose timing is off, or whose attitude is condescending, or whose application is insensitive, or whose true theology is couched in such culture-laden clichés that they grate rather than comfort. In times of extraordinary stress and loss, I have sometimes received great encouragement and wisdom from other believers; I have also sometimes received extraordinary blows from them, without any recognition on their part that that was what they were delivering. Miserable comforters were they all.

Such experiences, of course, drive me to wonder when I have wrongly handled the Word and caused similar pain. It is not that there is never a place for administering the kind of scriptural admonition that rightly induces pain: justified discipline is godly (Heb. 12:5–11). The tragic fact, however, is that when we cause pain by our application of theology to someone else, we naturally assume the pain owes everything to the obtuseness of the other party. It may, it may—but at the very least we ought to examine ourselves, our attitudes, and our arguments very closely lest we simultaneously delude ourselves and oppress others.

–D. A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word (vol. 2; Wheaton: Crossway, 1999), entry for February 17. (This book is available for free as a PDF from TGC.)

I compiled lists of what to say and not to say to people who are suffering in an address on the logical and emotional problems of evil. Abbreviated forms of those two lists occur at the end of this four-page essay. Would you add anything to those lists?

Bruce Ware on (1) God and (2) Parenting

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Bruce Ware preached two superb sermons at my church on Sunday:

1. The morning sermon was on God, primarily as described in Isaiah 40–46: “‘There Is No One Besides Me: Biblical Foundations for the Centrality of God.” Towards the end he insightfully and clearly explains a very hard text: Isaiah 45:7.

2. The evening sermon was on parenting: “How to Bring Big Truths about God to the Young Hearts of Our Children” (outline included). There’s lots of wisdom here to supplement Ware’s Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God, which Jenni and I reviewed last year.

Festschrift for John Frame

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This massive 1,232-page book honoring John Frame is now available (WTS Books | Amazon):

John J. Hughes, ed. Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John Frame. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2009.

More information on the book is available here, which includes a 31-page PDF. I’d recommend browsing the 5-page Table of Contents. There are about forty contributors, including J. I. Packer, Vern Poythress, James Grant & Justin Taylor, Paul Helm, Derek Thomas, Bruce Waltke, David Powlison, Wayne Grudem, and John Frame himself.

The Prodigal God

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Last May I listened to seven short sermons by Tim Keller on Luke 15 that convey the message of this book:

Timothy Keller. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith. New York: Dutton, 2008.

This weekend I read the book and watched the corresponding DVD. The main feature of the DVD is Keller’s creative 40-minute readers-theater-style summary of the book. Both the book and DVD are first-class. And convicting.

Update: Cf. my brief review.

Collision

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collisionLast night Jenni and I watched Collision: Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson (DVD | stream on Canon+), an 87-minute film in which two witty public intellectuals debate whether Christianity is good for the world.

As we expected, the debate is fascinating, fast-paced, evenhanded, and edifying. The creative camera angles and other non-verbal aspects of the film make it even more provocative (and kind of strange).

Related:

  1. The film is based on the book Is Christianity Good for the World? A Debate (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2008).
  2. The book grew out of a six-part exchange in Christianity Today.
  3. Justin Taylor shared some thoughts after viewing the film in March.
  4. John Piper interviewed Doug Wilson for 16 minutes after showing the film at the Desiring God conference last weekend. One of Piper’s questions goes like this: “In the video you speak about having ‘copiousness.’ Describe what that is and whether you think it is important for pastors to cultivate.” I think Wilson personifies these two proverbs: “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, / and a word in season, how good it is!” (Proverbs 15:23). “A word fitly spoken / is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). Wilson’s copiousness is inspiring.

Updates:

1. John Piper evaluates Doug Wilson in the first 15.5 minutes of this video (early 2013, I think).

2. Doug Wilson reviewed Larry Alex Taunton’s The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World’s Most Notorious Atheist (Nashville: Nelson, 2016). Superlative review.

Did Jesus Believe in the Bible’s Inerrancy?

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WTS Books just stocked this book:

John Wenham. Christ and the Bible. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994. Repr., Wipf and Stock, 2009.

Here’s what Mark Dever says about it in the last paragraph of his essay “Inerrancy of the Bible: An Annotated Bibliography“:

I’ve saved the best for last. If I could just recommend one book on the inerrancy of the Bible it would undoubtedly be this one—John Wenham, Christ and the Bible (Tyndale Press, 1972 [UK]; IVP, 1973 [US]). Wenham’s book has been through three editions and makes the simple point that our trust in Scripture is to be a part of our following Christ, because that is the way that He treated Scripture—as true, and therefore authoritative. (Robert Lightner, a professor of Systematic Theology at Dallas Seminary published a similar book a few years later, A Biblical Case for Total Inerrancy: How Jesus Viewed the Old Testament [Kregel, 1978].) Wenham had first put these ideas in print with a little Tyndale pamphlet in 1953 called Our Lord’s View of the Old Testament. In Christ and the Bible, Wenham, who taught Greek for many years at Oxford, an Anglican evangelical, has done us all a great service in providing us with a book which understands that we do not come by our adherence to Scripture fundamentally from the inductive resolutions of discrepancies, but from the teaching of the Lord Jesus. Only because of the Living Word may we finally know to trust the Written Word. May God use these resources of those who’ve gone before us to equip and encourage us in so trusting.

Dever concludes by giving Wenham his top recommendation:

To get up to speed on this issue, and to help you with your ministry, consider the following recommendations.

MUST READ: Wenham

SHOULD READ: Warfield, Packer’s “Fundamentalism” and the Word of God, Lindsell [The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in the Balance], any one of the edited volumes of your choosing!

Defending the Bible Is Like Defending a Lion

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authorityDavid Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authority (Chicago: IVP, 1958), 41:

The authority of the Scriptures is not a matter to be defended, so much as to be asserted. I address this remark particularly to Conservative Evangelicals. I am reminded of what the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said in this connection: “There is no need for you to defend a lion when he is being attacked. All you need to do is to open the gate and let him out.” We need to remind ourselves frequently that it is the preaching and exposition of the Bible that really establish its truth and authority.

Antinomy

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Is antinomy a good word to describe the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility? It depends what you mean by antinomy.

D. A. Carson, How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 201n13:

Owing to the popularity of the little book by J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, it has become common to designate the two truths, that God is utterly sovereign and human beings are morally responsible, as an antinomy. [Cf. my summary and outline of Packer’s Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God.] But there is some confusion over the term, and a comment may help.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an antinomy is: (1) “a contradiction in a law, or between two equally binding laws”; (2) “a contradictory law, statute, or principle; an authoritative contradiction”—and here an illustration is drawn from Jeremy Taylor, who in 1649 wrote that certain signs of grace “are direct antinomies to the lusts of the flesh”; (3) “a contradiction between conclusions which seem equally logical, reasonable, or necessary; a paradox; intellectual contrariness”—and this last meaning OED attributes to Kant.

Packer means none of these things. [Read more…] about Antinomy