Things to Think / Pray / Meditate / Consider during Lent

http://daddyroblog.blogs.com/daddyroblog/2009/02/a-short-course-on-lent.html

A Short Course On Lent

I've posted the following every year, I think, so no reason to break with tradition now.   It's still the best introduction to the season of Lent I've seen, and I've found that taking the time to thoughtfully answer the questions suggested is a very helpful exercise indeed.

In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves.

 If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why?

When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore?

If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less?

 Of all the things you have done in your life, which it the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?

 Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?

 To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sack-cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end. --Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark - An ABC Theologized [New York: Harper and Row] 1973, pp. 74-75

Darryl Hart on "Paleo- & Neo-Reformed" (The Scot McKnight "Neo-Reformed" Issue)

http://oldlife.org/2009/02/25/paleo-and-neo-reformed/

Paleo- and Neo-Reformed

February 25th, 2009 by Darryl G. Hart

We didn't ask for this but when a respected Protestant scholar invokes the category of Neo-Reformed (which implies a Paleo version), members of the Old Life Theological Society take the bait with relish (tabasco would help).

In a blog that has gotten far more attention than it likely deserves, Scot McKnight complains about the efforts of the Neo-Reformed to capture evangelicalism. He faults them for being traditionalist as opposed to following the Bible, accuses them of displaying fundamentalist belligerency as opposed to evangelical niceness, and fears they aim to take over evangelicalism and exclude the non-Reformed as opposed to just getting along.

The intriguing aspect of McKnight's blog is the way it has been received. The Neo-Reformed have taken offense, as if McKnight is accusing them of shady dealings and unloving behavior. The non-Reformed have registered several amens and point to their own experience with the Neo-Reformed meanies. Throughout the interaction with McKnight are references to the Reformed theologians, Mike Horton and John Frame. Some of McKnight's sympathizers point to a similar diagnosis of Reformed pugnacity in Frame's  much cited essay, "Machen's Warrior Children." Meanwhile, McKnight himself points with a measure of agreement to Horton's idea that evangelicalism functions best as a village green that allows folks from different perspectives to talk to each other; the converse point Horton makes is that evangelicalism functions worst when it tries to make the village green into a permanent residence.

By invoking Horton, McKnight unwittingly makes an important point about the differences between Neo- and Paleo-Reformed, or between Old Life and New Life Presbyterians. The Reformed Protestants who are most intentional about recovering confessional (or better, ecclesial) Presbyterianism, the Paleos, are the ones least interested in taking over evangelicalism and excluding anyone.  For them (and us), evangelicalism is over.  Meanwhile, the Neo-Reformed, the ones who are most invested in reaching a consensus between Reformed and evangelicals, are also the ones who are most inclined to view evangelicalism from a perspective of Reformed doctrinal litmus tests and so turn a blind eye to the concerns of Wesleyans, Arminians, and Anabaptists. In other words, Neo-Reformed care about being evangelical; Paleos don't.

It is not Machen's Warrior Children who want to evacuate the evangelical village green of non-Calvinists and other free will or openness types. Horton readily fits as one of Machen's Warrior Children, and Frame likely had ecclesial Reformed Protestants like Horton and the editors of the NTJ in mind when he wrote his provocative piece. Rather, it is the opponents of Machen's Warrior Children, the allegedly nice and tolerant Neo-Reformed, who have designs on commandeering evangelicalism and keeping it for themselves. The Neo-Reformed are the ones who still think evangelicalism is a useful category and a Christian reality that needs to be saved from those who do not adhere to biblical inerrancy, divine sovereignty, or the vicarious atonement. To use McKnight's own categories, it is Frame who defended something approaching biblicism and accused Horton of being a traditionalist. And it was Frame who wrote Evangelical Reunion, a book about finding a consensus among all conservative Protestants, not Horton whose last volume of Reformed dogmatics, People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology, vindicates the Paleo-Reformed high view of the church and its ministry.

Maybe McKnight had a point, even if he didn't know it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:25 am

P.T. Forsyth Book Downloads link

http://cruciality.wordpress.com/pt-forsyth-works/

Some of Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Maxims"

If you have time, don't wait for time.

 

Wish not so much to live long as to live well.

 

Observe all men; thyself the most.

 

Employ time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.

 

Learn of the skillful: he that teaches himself, hath a fool for a master.

 

Up Sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough.

 

Men differ daily, about things which are subject to Sense, is it likely then they should agree about things invisible?

 

Who is Strong? He that can conquer his bad Habits. Who is Rich? He that rejoices in his Portion.

 

'Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.

 

Dost thou love Life? then do not squander Time, for that's the Stuff Life is made of.

 

He that won't be counsell'd, can't be help'd.

 

A good example is the best sermon.

 

Lost Time is never found again.

 

"Liberality" is not giving much but giving wisely.

 

There are three things extremely hard, Steel, Diamond, and to know one's self.

 

He is a Governor who governs his Passions, and he a Servant that serves them.

 

The busy Man has few idle Visitors; to the boiling Pot the Flies come not.

 

Little Strokes, fell Great Oaks.

Classic Richard Niebuhr quote on Theological Liberalism

"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (1937)

Waltke quotes on Old Testament Theology

Two Quotes from Bruce Waltke about the nature of Old Testament Theology from his "Old Testament Theology" (Zondervan, 2007):

 

Nevertheless, biblical theologians aim to construct and formulate a theology that accords in some sense with the Bible, while essentially agreeing with James Barr's assertion: "What we are looking for is a 'theology' that existed back there and then" (James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology: An Old Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), 4) (Waltke, 29).

 

Brevard S. Childs adopts and defends a self-consciously confessional approach: "The role of the Bible is not being understood simply as a cultural expression of ancient peoples, but as a testimony pointing beyond itself to divine reality to which it bears witness. . . . Such an approach to the Bible is obviously confessional. Yet the Enlightenment's alternative proposal that was to confine the Bible solely to the arena of human experience is just as much a philosophical commitment. (Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology: A Proposal (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 12) (Waltke, 31).