Bully's Blog

The Son has promised to meet us two places: in our sin and in our weakness. He will rejoice in our glory, but only if we have first encountered Him in our humility. As sinners, we must meet Him in our sin, and as creatures, as newborn babies, as little children, we must meet Him in our weakness. Good works, maturity, and glory must be the outflow of that encounter, not the basis of it.

RITE REASONS No. 59: The Second Word V: On Images and Art, Part 3 
James B. Jordan  www.biblicalhorizons.com

This is the intro to one JBA’s Amazon booklist. Too good a quote to pass up:

“In recent years postliberal theology and certain strands of Reformed thought have seen typology and chiasm as an essential method of biblical study.

While some forms of postmodernity are helpful to the church, most are not as avant garde as they pretend.

Ironically, liberals and most conservatives have the same method of bible study: you the individual must learn as many facts about the text as possible, importing back into the text foreign paradigms (or more accurately, bad foreign paradigms).

Typology, however, provides a subtle but deadly maneuver against modernity: it challenges modernity’s use of reason and forces it to think in terms of story and symbol, which by definition it can’t do.”

Yes, conservatives, he means you.

(Pic: the optic chiasma)

Pray until you pray. That is Puritan advice. It does not simply mean that persistence should mark much of our praying—though admittedly that is a point the Scriptures repeatedly make. Even though he was praying in line with God’s promises, Elijah prayed for rain seven times before the first cloud appeared in the heavens. The Lord Jesus could tell parables urging persistence in prayer (Luke 11:5-13). If some generations needed to learn that God is not particularly impressed by long-winded prayers, and is not more disposed to help us just because we are garrulous, our generation needs to learn that God is not impressed by the kind of brevity that is nothing other than culpable negligence. Continue reading

Unfathomable Depths

“One of the great joys of studying Scripture is that there is plenty of low hanging fruit: food for the youngest and simplest believer; yet, at the same time there are unfathomable depths to enjoy. Let Augustine (certainly brighter than you or me, and a great student of Scripture) spur you on to be Bible crazy:

There is such depth in the Christian Scriptures that, even if I studied them, and nothing else, from early childhood to worn-out old age, with ample time and unflagging zeal, and with greater intellectual ability than I possess, I would still each day find new treasures within them. The basic truths necessary for salvation are easily found within the Scriptures. But even when a person has accepted these truths, and is both God-fearing and righteous in his actions, there remain so many things which lie under a great veil of mystery. Through reading the Scriptures, we can pierce this veil, and find the deepest wisdom in the words which express these mysteries, and in the mysteries themselves. The oldest, the ablest, and the most eager student of Scripture, will say at the end of each day: ‘I have studied hard, but my studies are only just beginning.’

Augustine, Letter 137.”

Pilfered from Matthew Mason’s blog.

Gospel For Asia President Calls India Election Results A Vote Against Extremism

The size of the vote against those advocating violence against Christians amazed the political pundits, who had predicted a close election with perhaps years of unstable and weak coalition governments in India’s future.

“No one expected this,” Dr. Yohannan noted. “The Congress party itself is surprised.”

But Dr. Yohannan said there was a clear explanation.

“Many political pundits are talking about the ‘X’ factor in this election, something unexpected that can turn the results. There was an ‘X’ factor, and I believe it was God.

“There are 1.2 billion people in India,” he explained. “They are very important to God, and He worked.

“So much prayer went up,” he added. “Christians have been praying, and God answered their prayers. That’s what happened.”

It’s interesting that in India a secular state will curb the persecution, while in the West it is the secular state that is increasingly becoming the instrument of persecution by litigation.

“Some things need to be nuanced, and some things need desperately not to be. Those with a sophisticated turn of mind need to talk to an intractable fundamentalist once a week or so — to keep them honest. ‘So how is this not fatal compromise?’ And fundamentalists need to talk regularly with someone who read a book once — to keep them honest too. ‘So how is this not a complete misrepresentation of Calvin’s view?’”

–Doug Wilson, A Vat of Heideggerian Goo

For a blast and a laugh, read all Doug’s penetrating and perceptive posts on postmodernism.

The Purpose of the Restoration Covenant

“The restoration period is the last era of Israel’s history as the people of God and the climactic period of old covenant. The kingdom of God has grown beyond Israel and spread to the nations, who are the God-appointed protectors of His priestly people. Israel’s loss of independence and submission to Gentile powers was not a backward movement in the kingdom program of God. Abraham had been chosen by God so that through him all the nations of the world could be blessed (Gen. 12:3). In the restoration era, this was fulfilled more than at any other time in Israel’s history. Through the dispersion Jews had spread all over the world and they brought with them the knowledge of the true God.

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Daily Dose of Doug

“…Another example of [the state] straining towards the divine attributes can be seen in the recent attempts by Obama through the U.S. Treasury to create wealth ex nihilo. But only God can create wealth that way. God spoke the word, and mind-boggling resources were instantly there. And God formed our first parents, and gave them the responsibility for stewarding those resources. That is the authority of the divine — He speaks, and it is. And blinkered statists want to be able to do that. They should be able to speak, and it is “there.” And so they speak, and what was there begins to vanish away. Jezebel brings in the fertility Baal to make Israel lush and green, and the first thing that happens is that Israel turns brown and crispy.”

Douglas Wilson, The Jitney Gods of Washington

Doug Wilson on Craig Blomberg’s review of N. T. Wright’s book-length response to John Piper’s book (breath):

“Then there is Blomberg’s misunderstanding of the relationship of the Reformers and culture.

‘Fixate on the Reformers’ (understandable) preoccupation with how an individual becomes right with God (crucial in its day against medieval Catholicism) and one may miss the bigger picture, in which the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham through the children of Israel as progenitor of the Messiah looms even larger.’

Notice what is being juxtaposed here. The Reformers had an individualistic fixation on getting individuals into heaven when they die. But we, upon whom the new perspective has shone, now understand that there is a “bigger picture.” I see. And what did the Reformers do with their narrow vision? Well, they toppled kings, transformed laws, overhauled cultures, settled a continent, built nations, founded schools and colleges, inspired musicians and painters, and we could continue in this vein for quite a while. And what do we do, entranced as we are by the new perspective? We write academic papers, download podcasts of academic lectures that we can listen to in the privacy of our ear buds, and we go white in the face if conservative Christians suggest that Jesus might have an opinion about the ongoing slaughter of the unborn. John Piper, with his preaching on the pro-life issue, challenges the principalities and powers. The soft statism that goes with trendy theology these days does nothing of the kind — it simply suggests (but not too loudly) that we need kinder, gentler principalities and powers.”

Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties. The church had to be careful, if only that the world might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses seeming to stoop this way and to sway that yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.

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