Tag: Christianity

CCEF Counseling Booklets on Sale

~ Bob Hayton

I’m a bit late in announcing this, but counseling booklets from the Christian Counseling Education Foundation bookets are on a special sale through Westminster Bookstore, through tomorrow. I’ve highlighted them before on my site. These are not your average psychology friendly fare. They are among the best biblical counseling tools available, and would be a great addition to your church lobby. The acrylic display stand is free with an order of 10 or more.

One of the bundles offered is 50 booklets plus the stand for just $100. Below are just some of the available titles. The links take you to where you can order five packs of these booklets, and many have sample pages available.

More details on the sale are here.

Quotes to Note 26: D.A. Carson on the Diminishing Authority of the Scriptures

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

Here is another jewel by D.A. Carson from his recent book, Collected Writings on Scripture (Crossway, 2010; compiled by Andrew Naselli). In the conclusion to his essay, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of Scripture”, Carson turns his sights on conservative Christianity and our own contribution to the diminishing authority of Scripture. The following excerpt is a bit lengthy, but I trust it will prove helpful. I found it painfully close to home as I think about many sectors of fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism.

Carson starts this section with, “A high view of Scripture is of little value to us if we do not enthusiastically embrace the Scripture’s authority.” He goes on to allege that we “reflect the antiauthoritarian stance that is currently endemic to the Western world.”

He continues:

This libertarianism has engendered two surprising children. The first is a new love of authoritarianism among some believers: they do not feel safe and orthodox unless some leader is telling them exactly what to say, do, and think. Inevitably this brings some power lovers to positions of religious leadership, supported sometimes by a theology that ascribes “apostleship” or some other special, charismatic enduement to them, sometimes by a theology of churchmanship that makes each pastor a pope. The authority of the Scriptures is in such instances almost always formally affirmed; but an observer may be forgiven if he or she senses that these self-promoted leaders characteristically so elevate their opinions over the Scripture, often in the name of the Scripture, that the Word of God becomes muted. The church cries out for those who proclaim the Scriptures with unction and authority while simultaneously demonstrating that they stand under that authority themselves.

The second is a fairly conservative mood, a reaction to the times, that some interpret as a great blessing. But this conservative swing does not appear to be characterized by brokenness and contrition. Far from it: it is imbued with a “can do” mentality not far removed from arrogance. Many of the most respected religious leaders among us are those who project an image of total command, endless competence, glorious success, formulaic cleverness. We are experts, and we live in a generation of experts. But the cost is high: we gradually lose our sense of indebtedness to grace, we no longer cherish our complete dependence on the God of all grace, and we begin to reject themes like self-sacrifice and discipleship in favor of courses on successful living and leadership in the church….

Mere conservatism must not be confused with godliness, mere discipline with discipleship, mere assent to orthodox doctrine with wholehearted delight in truth….

Along with the arrogance has come the exegetical and philosophical sophistication that enables us to make Scripture support almost anything we want….

…even some of us who would never dream of formally disentangling some parts of the Bible from the rest and declaring them less authoritative than other parts can by exegetical ingenuity get the Scriptures to say just about whatever we want–and this we thunder to the age as if it were a prophetic word, when it is little more than the message of the age bounced off Holy Scripture. To our shame, we have hungered to be masters of the Word much more than we have hungered to be mastered by it.

The pervasiveness of the problem erupts in the “Christian” merchant whose faith has no bearing on the integrity of his or her dealings, or in the way material possessions are assessed. It is reflected in an accelerating divorce rate in Christian homes and among the clergy themselves–with little sense of shame and no entailment in their “ministries.” It is seen in its most pathetic garb when considerable exegetical skill goes into proving, say, that the Bible condemns promiscuous homosexuality but not homosexuality itself (though careful handling of the evidence overturns the thesis), or that the Bible’s use of “head” in passages dealing with male/female relationships follows allegedly characteristic Greek usage, and therefore, means “source” (when close scrutiny of the primary evidence fails to turn up more than a handful of disputable instances of the meaning “source in over two thousand occurrences). It finds new lease when popular evangelicals publicly abandon any mention of “sin”–allegedly on the ground that the term no longer “communicates”-without recognizing that adjacent truths (e.g., those dealing with the fall, the law of God, the nature of transgression, the wrath of God, and even the gracious atonement itself) undergo telling transformation.

While I fear that evangelicalism is heading for another severe conflict on the doctrine of Scripture, and while it is necessary to face these impending debates with humility and courage, what is far more alarming is the diminishing authority of the Scriptures in the churches. This is taking place not only among those who depreciate the consistent truthfulness of Scripture but also (if for different reasons) among those who most vociferously defend it. To some extent we are all part of the problem; and perhaps we can do most to salvage something of value from the growing fragmentation by pledging ourselves in repentance and faith to learning and obeying God’s most holy Word. Then we shall also be reminded that the challenge to preserve and articulate a fully self-consistent and orthodox doctrine of Scripture cannot be met by intellectual powers alone, but only on our knees and by the power of God.

(D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture [Crossway, 2010], compiled by Andrew Naselli, pg. 106-109; originally part of a chapter in Hermeneutics, Authority, and Canon [Zondervan, 1986], ed. by D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge. Emphasis added.)

Doran, Minnick & Bauder Discuss Fundamentalism and Conservative Evangelicalism

~ Bob Hayton ~ 33 Comments

The following is an enlightening discussion among some of the leaders of today’s fundamentalism. The participants in this discussion are: Dave Doran, pastor of Inter-City Baptist Church and president of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary in Allen Park, MI; Mark Minnick, pastor of Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and long-time professor at Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC; Chris Anderson, pastor of Tri-County Bible Church in Madison, OH; and Kevin Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis, MN. The panel included some other members too, but only these and the moderator (who I assume was host pastor Mike Harding) were participants in the following exchange.

The panel discussion is from the Preserving the Truth Conference, and available as a free MP3 download there. This question and the ensuing discussion can be found at 8:33 – 26:38 on the MP3. I did the transcription below myself, so any errors or inconsistencies in punctuation are my fault. Anything within brackets was added for explanation. I thought having this transcribed would be of interest to many, as otherwise it is buried in an audio download that not everyone would take time to listen to.

This is a bit lengthy, but regular readers of my blog should find it interesting. For those wondering what fundamentalists think of evangelicals, this would be good reading too. I’ll reserve my comments until after the exchange.

———————————

Moderator: Much has been written about the differences between fundamentalism and conservative evangelicalism. What do you consider to be the most significant differences and why? I’m going to address that to Dr. Doran.

[laughter]

Dave Doran (D): Well, let me begin by saying… that I… implied in what I said in my session is, that I think those are defective categories. Uh… So, I don’t think they are helpful for the discussion. They operate with a sense of us and them. When if I could just… My thought on it is… We’re not sure who “us” is, we’re not sure who “them” is. We’re not sure what makes us, “us”; and what makes them, “them”. So to… to have the conversation seems inevitably to run into significant ditches, and… and that’s the tension. Now if… if I could… uh… if I could go back to what was just being said. If we wanted to take a distinctive that I think must control our relationships and say what is a church’s and, for lack of a better term, minister’s belief and practice with regard to the defense of the faith. Do they believe that we cannot extend Christian recognition and fellowship to those who have denied the faith? And that in fact to do that is a disobedience of such a high order that we must withdraw fellowship or withhold it from them? If that becomes the… the… the ah, umbrella within which we can have fellowship, then I think you’re going to have a people who have a lot of different distinctives and you’re going to have people who are closer, more closely aligned with each other at various spots inside there. But it won’t be ah… we can’t have any connection to all of these, or else the rip cord side of it would be… I personally believe, that there are people who are accepted by fundamentalists with whom we should not, ah… we should not accept. And if people are part of associations or fellowships that accept them, do I have to now pull out of my fellowship with those people? And we’ve not done it to that direction. We’ve only done it to the other side. And my point would be to say, uh… that’s why I think it ceases to function well for us to have those 2 categories at this point. Because the “us” category, the “fundamentalist” category is such a mixed breed right now, personally. And, and… every time, like even, and I thought Matt did a great job in the creation thing but, when he was trying to ask the question… conservative evangelicals and young earth creation… he starts naming names. And they believe it, they don’t believe it; they believe it, they don’t believe it. So… so, is there actually a conservative evangelical position on it? Because we don’t even know who those are, like Tremper Longman. I wouldn’t necessarily even put [him] in a conservative evangelical [position], but some people might… But so that’s the tension. Who is “them”? And… so, I just think… I am personally of the view, that… um, that… that as long as we’re thinking of those categories and we’re trying to think of what distinguishes us from them… uh… we’re running into a wall, because we’re coming up with things that we wouldn’t separate from fundamentalists who think those things. That’s my thoughts.

Moderator: And it’s open up for discussion.

Mark Minnick (M): Yea… I… here’s… and I really understand what Dave is saying. Part of my way of trying to get at an answer is to ask what… what, do those people say about themselves in distinction from us. And when I’ve had opportunity of interchange with them, that’s what I try to get at. Because… because the distance here, is… is two way. It isn’t just that we have distanced ourselves, but they are self-identified as well. So when they look at us, what do they say is not true of them, that is true of us and important to us? What are those things?

D: I’ve not heard any. Because… because the people… the people they say that about, I say you’re right.

M: Oh, you mean… when… when they say, that’s not me.

D: Well, when they say… If I say to them, “What about fundamentalism…”

M: …and you say it’s not you either…

D: Right.

M: Yea. Right. [signifying agreement]

D: “…What do you do you reject about fundamentalism?” When I hear them describe it, I go, “I don’t believe that”.

Chris Anderson (?): Well, you add… you add to that… The conservative evangelicals are more likely to speak in ways to disassociate themselves from broad evangelicalism. You know… they’re they’re actually looking at evangelicalism saying, “We’re not that; we’re opposed to that; let’s you know…” Our church when we go through an orientation class… we kind of teach “Here’s where we stand historically”. We’ll go through “Fundamentalism and modernism have had their controversy, and we’re on the fundamentalism side of that”. “Fundamentalism and new evangelicalism had their controversy and so the pie gets cut again and we’re on the fundamentalism side of that”. And when we started that with a church plant, I would just stop there, “so… we’re on the… you know, that’s… that’s us”. And now I actually… you know go further… and say, “Now within this group of fundamentalists that separated, at least you know historically, they’re following those who separated from new evangelicalism… now there are so many other issues within this piece of the pie that we don’t agree with…” “And there’s actually some of the evangelical piece of the pie that is more like us than they are like the evangelicals, and that I agree with them more than I agree with…” It’s just become very complicated… And… uh, I agree… I agree that the “us” and “them” and… and those kind of categories… It’s probably simpler to say let’s take just one issue like music, and how do we relate to… you know… how do we differ on that issue. Well, within evangelicalism you’re going to have Sovereign Grace [Music] and you’re going to have Paula S. Jones. It… everything is just complicated and it needs attention on one issue, one person at a time, I think.

D: If if I could just… add one thing. My point would be to say, I don’t think we obliterate the categories so that we can cooperate with each other. Mine is to say, those categories are not functioning well. So let’s go to what was the category that preceded these categories, and that is about the defense of the gospel, the purity of the church. Where… where does a person come down on those issues? And this is where I would affirm, what I’ve always said, Do they agree with and demonstrate through application that agreement… So if somebody tells me “Yea, I’m a separatist”, and if they’ve never actually done it, then I’m not sure that… you know… So if they agree and apply with what seems… what seems to be a good… good conscience effort to apply it, then… then I know there’s at least something something there, to use a Bauderism, that we have in common, about which we can fellowship. But if we don’t, at that point… There’s share, share, there’s something we share…

[laughter]

Kevin Bauder (B): Um, Dave, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, Dave.

D: Sure you do.

B: No, I’m…

[laughter]

B: No, I get it.

D: Come on, just cut right to the chase.

B: I don’t disagree with the point. But, here we are, we’re us and none of them are here.

[laughter]

Moderator (?): There’s a few of them out there.

D: Yea I was saying… I think based on what I said… Some of them are thinking they are.

B: And when it comes to T4G and the Gospel Coalition there they are. And I don’t know, Mark, have you… have you been invited to preach at T4G, Gospel Coalition?

M: No.

B: Dave, have you?

D: No.

[laughter]

D: But… but I don’t think that’s because of my fundamentalism. They, ah…

Moderator (?): It’s your goatee.

B: We’d like the list!

D: No, I’m just… I mean… who’s?.. They’re not going to ask me to speak it, they’re going to look at the list, and go “Dave Doran, who is that?” You know…

M: No but… but listen… that’s part of my viewpoint on this. I really share this with Kevin. Almost… almost all of the overtures in the last 10 years have been made from our side. In other words, we… we have been the ones…

D: I think you… you were invited to preach at Capitol Hill Baptist Church [Mark Dever’s church], weren’t you?

M: Yes.

D: So was I. So there’s at least one overture that…

M: Yea, but that was after we made the overture to him. In other words..

D: Not, not in my case.

M: And I would only use that…

D: He sought me out. We were in the same place, and he sought me out because he was trying to figure out fundamentalists.

B: Now, I’d be interested to know in both your cases, did you do it, and why or why not.

M: Yea… well, yea… but… but, the background on this…

[laughter]

D: You know that light… that buzzer that goes out when you’re backing into something? You just heard it. “Me-me-me-me-me.”

[laughter]

M: No… I mean, the broader background to this is… I know that for 10 or 15 years here… that men within our movement have made an effort to try to get some of these men together occasionally in private settings, and say “Let’s talk, we don’t really understand”, or “We don’t think you understand us, and we know we don’t… maybe understand your heart”. Um… And I think… I think we have been the initiators in general for that kind of thing. And in those talks there are differences that come out on the principial level. Um… and so… when those things are there, even though we in some cases have found we’re pretty close, when it comes to the consistency of application, it breaks down. And puts me, I know, in a position, where I would end up giving a very uncertain sound to the people that God has entrusted some responsibility of example to. Um… if I then join together with their glaring inconsistency of practice of the principle they agreed with, in private, with me. Because publicly, they’re not enunciating that principle, and they’re not known for articulating it publicly and they’re not known for consistently practicing it. Where, I am. I’m not saying this approving of myself. I’m just saying as part of the movement I am… I’m in. I’m known for being willing publicly to go to the mat on that principle, articulate it, and try to consistently practice it. So that’s… just what I run into.

D: And I would say in large measure I agree with you. The places where I would potentially disagree would be: I’m not certain that we have actually gone to the mat on our principles to the degree that we claim we have. Because we have tolerated aberrant doctrine and immoral behavior in the larger movement, in a way that, in times parallels what they have tolerated for greater good causes.

M: But have we? When you say we have…

D: Jack Hyles preached…

M: but he

D: …in the pulpit in Greenville [SC, near BJU]…

M: Ok.

D: …well after he had preached the eternal humanity of Jesus Christ. Well after people had suspicions about his moral behavior. So I would say yes. We have. Now I don’t think we’re all culpable for that.

M: Right.

D: But my point is to say… but we hold them all culpable for the glitches on the other side.

M: But are our glitches aberrations to what we try to consistently practice. Or, are they frankly what we are known for? At… at… actually…

D: But known to who? To ourselves?

M: No. I would say known to the world.

D: But see, and this would go back to the question of the invitations…

M: You guys on the right need to jump in here!

[laughter]

D: But I mean, but… and… and I’m not… I’m just simply…

B: You can forget about it, Bubba! This is really interesting.

[laughter]

D: You see, I’m… And honestly, I’m just saying if… If you… If we had, for instance… Let’s… let’s, look at this way. There has been for 12 to 14 years a consistent orbit of people who have criticized me on the translation issue.

M: I haven’t.

D: No, I know that.

M: I’m with you.

D: And I was glad you came along because then they jumped on you! So… but, but… so here’s the deal. Um… Let’s say one of those guys decides that they want to come over and say. “Hey, I really want to understand what you believe here”. And then he goes back to his friends and said, “Do you realize we’re the only ones that go talk to Doran and Minnick? Doran and Minnick never invite us over to talk to them.”

M: Who, who’s the…

D: These King James people.

M: Oh, okay.

D: We don’t invite them over. “Hey come on over and learn what we’re thinking here”.

M: I’ve never had one of them do that.

D: Right, but what I’m saying though… The reason would be… is, because we assume they are so hostile to us that they’re not going to… that we’re not going to seek them out. And… and, here are these guys that for twenty or thirty years we’ve been ripping the shreds out of them… And we wonder why they don’t invite us to ask what we think about them! I mean that’s the problem. So… so… so, the reality of it is…

M: I don’t know. I’ve had the shreds ripped out of me!

D: Right.

M: …from people that don’t even know me. So…

D: Right, ok.

M: …on the other side I’m talking about.

D: Yes, I agree. I agree but… what I’m saying though… is that I think logistically, that there’s conversations happening and us going and saying “I think you’re not representing what we believe properly”… is not that they have no interest in it. I don’t think that can be used against them, because we have had… uh… I mean I’ve had… you’ve had conversations, I’ve had conversations with these guys. And… and, all they know about… and I”ll say us… is the the stuff where they’re having their salvation questioned. They’re being accused of… of, apostasy, of aiding apostasy… of all that stuff. And we’re not talking about Billy Graham, and I mean… I’ve never had a conversation with Billy Graham. I’m assuming you haven’t. Maybe you have, I don’t know.

M: [laughs] No.

D: We’re not talking about those guys. We’re talking about the guys that generationally are our age… our age…

[laughter]

D: …and… and all they’ve done is… they’ve grown up… They’ve grown up hearing certain things, and have misconceptions. It doesn’t mean… My answer, to go back to Kevin’s . My answer was to Mark [Dever], “No”. “No I won’t come and preach, and the reason I won’t come and preach is because I don’t agree with stances that you’ve taken. And your church might be an anomaly in the fellowship that it’s in. But it’s not the the rest and… and I… I’m not comfortable with that.” Now obviously…

M: You took a harder line than I did.

D: Yes, I think I did actually. I mean, and… and that’s I… ah, and I’ll say it the bad way: everyone knows you’re a better Christian than I am.

[laughter]

M: So you are to the right of me!

D: I am. Honestly, I think that’s sort of the weirdness of this thing… it’s that, uh… I actually have, very conservative positions. But those are not, ah… I… What I believe, and what everyone must believe are not exactly the same. And… and, therefore… therefore, I feel like I have to give some latitude for others that disagree with me on some points… ah… that I wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable with, ah… for a variety of reasons that… that we would wrestle through principially and leadership-wise and everything connected to that.

———————————

This marks the end of the answer to that particular question, and the discussion goes on to other questions. I highly recommend you download the audio from the panel discussion.

I thought this section of the discussion was eye-opening and refreshing at the same time. It is a sneak peek at what’s going on as the leaders of today’s fundamentalism think through how to interact and relate with those who don’t claim the label fundamentalism. I think Doran’s explanations were helpful, but I can also see where Minnick is coming from. The best line of it all, I thought, was about how the fundamentalists hold non-fundamentalists culpable for all the bad decisions in their movement, but don’t want to be taken to task for the black sheep among them.

Take a listen to the entire discussion for a fuller sense of what went on, and drop a line to let me know what you think! You can also see a clarification from Doran on what he was getting at in this discussion.

“Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching” edited by Kent, Kissling & Turner

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

Over the last few decades, a revival of interest in the Old Testament seems to have come over the evangelical church. Numerous resources for preaching the Old Testament and for understanding the various genres we find in the first two thirds of our Bibles have been produced. The tide is turning, and more and more we hear of careful preaching through the Old Testament again.

We still have a long way to go, however. Most conservative pulpits major on the New Testament. After all, the relevance of NT books to the Christian living today is much more apparent. Popular expositors have even given us commentary after commentary on the New Testament, to the almost complete exclusion of the Old Testament. Theology-heavy sermons from the doctrinal portions of the New Testament can serve to keep people out of touch with the reality of the story of Scripture. And ironically, in an age where everybody’s story has value, the grand overarching storyline of the Bible is silenced by the Church’s neglect of the first 39 books of her Bible.

Many of the resources being published that are seeking to revive a focus on the Old Testament are locked away in scholarly tomes or couched in some liberal theological garb, effectively kept away from the average pastor’s and Bible teacher’s reach. A new book by InterVarsity Press aims to bring scholarly resources into an accessible and highly useful format. Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, edited by Grenville J.R. Kent, Paul J. Kissling and Laurence A. Turner, actually manages to live up to its title’s bold claim. In an accessible and user-friendly format, the book brings together contributions from a wide array of OT scholars.

After a brief introduction, the book moves on to cover OT narrative plot, OT narrative characters, the Law, Lament, Praise Poetry, Wisdom literature, the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Apocalyptic literature, and the Minor Prophets. It also has a chapter on preaching from difficult texts and another on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. The chapters aren’t too long or overly detailed; instead, they are delightfully readable. They are structured in such a way as to clearly convey the primary difficulties and recommended approaches for the particular genre surveyed. Almost all the chapters include helpful footnotes and recommendations for further study. And each concludes with an example sermon which puts the theory into practice.

As I read through this book, I kept earmarking page after page where helpful insights were shared about the various parts of the Old Testament. The sections covering narrative plot and characters were especially helpful and full of examples. Laurence Turner stressed placing each narrative in context to its larger narrative, and on sticking to the flow of the author as much as possible when developing a sermon. Paul Kissling discussed a unique strategy of comparing the speech of the characters over and against the narrator’s account, as a way of finding the main point of a given story. Christopher J.H. Wright’s chapter on preaching the Law was also superb. He stressed the connection Law has with grace as seen in the historical setting given in the Pentateuch. He also unpacked the lesser-known missiological aspects of the Law: namely, Israel living out God’s Law as a testimony to the nations, and the application this has to the Church today.

Federico Villanueva’s chapter on Lament was particularly insightful as he writes from the standpoint of a non-Westerner (he ministers in Manila). Tremper Longman’s chapter on wisdom literature, particularly his discussion of Ecclesiastes and Job, was also very helpful in finding ways to grasp the main point of these books and how best to apply it to today’s Christians. Similarly, Grenville Kent’s discussion on the Song of Solomon was also very helpful. Even though he steers clear of a direct allegorical interpretation, he finds value in analogy and metaphor. His discussion of where God makes an appearance in the Song, and why, is worth quoting here:

So if Yahweh had appeared directly in the Song, the culture may well have misunderstood him as condoning fertility religion or even as just another fertility god. The Song clearly separates worship and sex. it is ‘a non-mythological, non-cultic, non-idolatrous, outright, open celebration of God-given sexual love’. (pg. 130, quote from John G. Snaith The Song of Songs (Eerdmans, 1993), pg. 5.)

The chapter on Isaiah, by H.G.M. Williamson did a great job stressing the literary unity of Isaiah. He traced the theme of righteousness and justice showing how such wide themes inform the specific context of any given passage in the book. Daniel Block challenges us to preach Ezekiel, and offers several helpful charts and analyses of the book and its central message. Alison Lo gave a wonderful, yet brief treatment of the Minor Prophets. She excelled at relating the context and themes of those books to today’s world and its problems. She also discussed the interrelation of the books as a wider whole (the “book of the twelve”), and provided a fascinating outline of Zephaniah.

Gordon Wenham’s discussion of various “difficult texts” in the Old Testament was in the whole, masterful. Some may disagree with his stance on Gen. 1 — explaining the wider context of the ideas about the world of the time (and thus not getting into a discussion of whether the six days are literal 24 hour days), but his comments on the imprecatory psalms, the “eye for an eye” law, apparent divine-sanctioned genocides, and OT slavery are both helpful and wise. R.W.L. Moberly’s chapter on preaching Christ from the Old Testament cites a lot of material that applies to this concern. He stresses that the wider context of the Old Testament includes the canonical grouping of the books and their use by the Church. He sees a second narrative (the NT) interpreting the original narrative in a sense similar to a detective story where at the end, all the initial elements of the plot make perfect sense. He also allows for imagination to impact interpretation and helpfully walks through some examples in how to think through this in a practical manner.

The chapters in the book are not all of equal value. The praise poetry, and apocalyptic literature sections were not as helpful to me. Some of the contributors may not be as immediately accessible as others. But the beauty of this book is how it offers a manual for the preacher who is choosing an OT text to preach. This book won’t be the only resource consulted, but it offers a sensible approach and several helpful points for encountering just about any text in the Old Testament. Throughout, it stresses a literary and canonical approach that focuses on the Old Testament we have, not imagined historical reconstructions. This ensures the book’s usefulness by people of a variety of particular persuasions within evangelicalism.

I trust tools such as Reclaiming the Old Testament for Christian Preaching, will encourage many pastors to pick an OT book for their next sermon series. This book will prove useful for any Bible student, and I highly recommend it. May the beauty of the Old Testament captivate the hearts and minds of more teachers and preachers, and be preached with power to the congregations that God has entrusted to their care.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Inter-Varsity Press for review. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.

Pick up a copy of this book at Amazon.com or through IVP direct.

Quotes to Note 25: Dorothy Sayers on the Necessity of Fundamental Christian Doctrine

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

I recently finished reading through Collected Writings on Scripture by D.A. Carson (compiled by Andrew Naselli; Crossway, 2010). The book includes not a few technical essays where Carson defends orthodox Christian doctrine on Scripture from innovative theological liberalism. In the conclusion to his essay, “Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: The Possibility of Systematic Theology”, Carson shares a lengthy quote from Dorothy Sayers that is pertinent to his defenses of orthodox doctrine. I intend to share the quote by Sayers here, as well as some of Carson’s remarks which follow it.

“The one thing I am here to say to you is this: that it is worse than useless for Christians to talk about the importance of Christian morality, unless they are prepared to take their stand upon the fundamentals of Christian theology. It is a lie to say that dogma does not matter; it matters enormously. It is fatal to let people suppose that Christianity is only a mode of feeling; it is virtually necessary to insist that it is first and foremost a rational explanation of the universe. It is hopeless to offer Christianity as a vaguely idealistic aspiration of a simple and consoling kind; it is, on the contrary, a hard, tough, exacting, and complex doctrine, steeped in a drastic and uncompromising realism. And it is fatal to imagine that everybody knows quite well what Christianity is and needs only a little encouragement to practice it. The brutal fact is that in this Christian country not one person in a hundred has the faintest notion about what the church teaches about God or man or society or the person of Jesus Christ.” (emphasis mine, quote from Dorothy L. Sayers, “Creed or Chaos?” in The Necessity of Systematic Theology, ed. Davis, 15-32)

So writes Dorothy Sayers, and I think she is basically right. This chapter has dealt with technical articles and critical judgments, but in the final analysis what is at stake is not some purely academic dispute, but what we preach. (D.A. Carson, Collected Writings on Scripture, pg. 148-149)

The wider American church needs to hear Sayers (and Carson) on this point. It does matter what you believe. The fundamentals of the faith are extremely important. All the warm-hearted feelings and emotion in the world, all the Christian morality and love for mankind, none of this means a hill of beans without clinging to the rock of Christian doctrine which has been revealed to us in Scripture.

In the next few weeks I’ll be sharing another quote or two from Carson’s work and then reviewing the book. I plan on giving away a copy too, so stay tuned!