Archive for the ‘Shameless Selves Promotion’ Category

Some bloggers use their page as a clearance house for what others are saying – sort of like Matt Drudge does the news. So if you want to know what John MacArthur thinks about the Manhattan Declaration, you could go here. Such places allow you to keep tabs on the doings and whereabouts of certain evangelicals with star power.

Others use the blog to promote their own appearances, merchandise, and ideas published elsewhere. Of course, Oldlife promotes the views of its editors and sometimes reprints material first published in the Nicotine Theological Journal (a subscription would make a nice stocking stuffer, by the way). But we have resisted using this e-space to publicize current activities and duties. This is supposed to be a place to discuss what it means to be Reformed – not a vehicle to learn about the Muether or Hart family vacation plans.

All of this is a way of explaining the awkwardness of what follows: I have posted a piece over at Front Porch Republic on the Manhattan Declaration. Because some of the comments in recent weeks have asked for my impressions of the statement, this notice is a tad more understandable. And because the specter of J. Gresham Machen hovers over the keyboards of the NTJ’s editors, and because my study of Machen has clearly informed my take on the Declaration, mentioning that post here also makes sense. But self-promotion still feels odd.

And so to complete the circle, readers may also be interested to know that I will be dining today (dv) at lunch on hot pork sandwiches purchased at Reading Terminal Market while watching – I haven’t yet decided – either Barton Fink or Blood Simple. This is less a Thank-God-It’s-Friday moment than it is a reaction to the end of the semester at Temple University. Later today, my wife and I will be watching films from Temple’s city archives at the program of Secret Cinema, a wonderful cultural resource in Philadelphia. On Sunday, we will be worshiping with the saints a Calvary OPC, Glenside.

Question: Who cares? Answer: I do and my wife does sometimes. It’s hard to tell if our cats, Isabelle and Cordelia, even think.

The good folks at Christ Reformed Church (URC) in Washington, D.C. are sponsoring a lecture series on — you guessed it — John Calvin. “Calvin in the Capital” is a free speaker series exploring the life and work of John Calvin. Events will be held on Thursday evenings at 7:00 pm, running each week from October 8 – November 12.

Each presentation will be preceded by musical entertainment, and will be followed by a time of cocktails and conversation. The goal is to provide an ample opportunity for guests to interact with speakers and each other in an informal setting.

Speakers include, Rob Norris, Ken Jones, Brian Lee, Glen Hoburg, Darryl Hart, and Robert Godfrey.

These are just some of the words used to describe this pilgrim’s efforts to explain, defend, and promote a Reformed understanding of two-kingdom theology and the spirituality of the church. Thanks to David Strain, I get another chance and readers have an opportunity to expand my vocabulary.

I first met Pastor Strain at a Reformation Day conference in Douglasville, Georgia. He was then a Free Church minister to a congregation in London. Now he is a PCA pastor in a setting even more southern. His background, outlook, and location are reasons for keeping up with his posts at Letters from Mississippi.

Kevin DeYoung, over at DeYoung, Restless, and Reformed, has weighed two-kingdom theology and Kuyperianism in the balance and hopes for a middle ground in the following way:

I am loathe to be an apologist for the status quo, or to throw cold water on young people who want to see abortion eradicated or dream of kids in Africa having clean water. I don’t think it’s wrong for a church to have an adoption ministry or an addiction recovery program. I think changing structures, institutions, and ideas not only helps people but can pave the way for gospel reception.

Perhaps there is a–I can’t believe I’m going to say it–a middle ground. I say, let’s not lose the heart of the gospel, divine self-satisfaction through self-substitution. And let’s not apologize for challenging Christians to show this same kind of dying love to others. Let’s not be embarrassed by the doctrine of hell and the necessity of repentance and regeneration. And let’s not be afraid to do good to all people, especially to the household of faith. Let’s work against the injustices and suffering in our day, and let’s be realistic that the poor, as Jesus said, will always be among us. Bottom line: let’s work for change where God calls us and gifts us, but let’s not forget that the Great Commission is go into the world and make disciples, not go into the world and build the kingdom.

Is recovering the dignity of the sacred office (as opposed to every member ministry), returning to psalm-singing (as opposed to hymns or praise songs), or restoring the Sunday evening worship service simply preserving the status quo? Or is judging a Christian profession by one’s quiet and ordinary work rather than whether you are making a difference really so widely accepted that Kuyperian transformationalism is a welcome relief? If so, beam me up, Kevin.

For what it’s worth, White Horse Inn has posted responses to DeYoung and Kevin himself gets the last word.

“I don’t read books, I write them.” The first time I said that I knew it didn’t sound good. And that was the point because it was actually more a joke on me than on those who haven’t written books. Historians do not write because they are necessarily wise. And the way historians write means that they have less time to read books they would prefer to ponder. Too often I’ve spent an evening with an Edwards, Buswell, Bushnell, or Beecher and had to pass on Epstein, Berry, Machen or Meilaender. Even worse, sometimes I’ve had to read what I’ve written.

Current duties – a volume on the history of the OPC to commemorate the denomination’s 75th anniversary – forced me to take a look at a piece written about a decade ago on Orthodox Presbyterians and secularization. It was entitled, “Reconciling Two Kingdoms and One Lord: Twentieth-Century Conservative Presbyterians and Political Liberalism in the United States,” and presented at a conference at the Vrijgemaakt seminary in Kampen sponsored by the Archives of the Free University.

The conclusion is reprinted below may complicate perceptions that the editors of the NTJ are not sufficiently on board with Vos and Van Til. What is even more interesting than the views of the editors is that Vos and Van Til can be read against each other, at least when it comes to understanding the saeculum.

Which is another way of saying that back issues of the NTJ have been carefully pdf’ed and are beginning to be posted at the Back Issues page of this blog.  Many thanks to James H. Grant for this work, with an assist or two from Camden Bucey.

Why isolation may be more in keeping with Calvinism than domination.

This was the proposed title for the piece (below) responding to Nelson Kloosterman’s series on Christ and culture for Christian Renewal in which he brands a Klinean two-kingdom outlook as “religious secularism.”  The essay appeared as a letter to the editor in the May 27th issue of CR on pages 5 and 9.  Thanks to the editors for giving so much space for a response.

The Reformed faith is an inspiring one. For this writer, few stories are as noble as that of J. Gresham Machen. Nor are death bed utterances as inspiring as his – “isn’t the Reformed faith grand!” Yet, the Reformed faith is not without its bumps in the road. Machen himself issued those inspiring words while under great pain from the pneumonia that took his life. No amount of inspiration could overcome that lethal disease short of penicillin – which had yet to be discovered. Nor could all the inspiration in the world overcome the repeated difficulties and set backs that Machen endured while trying to maintain and defend the Reformed faith in a liberal Presbyterian church.

Nelson Kloosterman would apparently have the readers of Christian Renewal believe they can have all the Reformed faith’s inspiration without any set backs. In his series, “The Pilgrim’s Pathway,” he has been particularly critical of what he terms “religious secularism” and highlights the views of Misty Irons, Meredith Kline and myself. “Religious secularism” is an unfortunate phrase that appears to be designed to alarm. Speaking for myself, “Reformed confessionalism” or “paleo-Calvinism” work much better for designating those who hold a two-kingdom point of view. Whatever terms are used, Kloosterman leaves readers with the impression that those who tell Christians that Christ’s lordship over their lives will be difficult, and will not achieve uniformity among Christians, let alone in a society consisting of believers and un-believers, is simply betraying the genius and heart of Reformed Christianity. Kloosterman defends an integrated morality, a unified world view, a comprehensive understanding of Christianity, all in attempt to do justice to Christ’s lordship. For him, the Bible has the Christian’s solutions, and Scripture equips believers to go into any arena with a Christian answer. Kloosterman admits that Reformed Christianity can sound triumphalist, but he does little to restrain it. (more…)

I do not do Facebook, though I might sign up for MyFace. I am happily uninterested in Twitter, which as T. David Gordon has suggested, is what twits do. So using a blog to tell others about what I’m doing seems silly if not narcisistic.

With those qualifications out of the way, a recent speaking engagement at Grove City College (where I heard Gordon make a very compelling presentation on the need for caution in using technology that requires batteries and plugs) got me thinking about the world-and-life-viewitis that has reached epidemic proportions among Protestants. Most evangelical Protestant colleges these days are justifying their existence and identity by saying they provide a wholistic vision on learning that is grounded in the Christian faith. The Lordship of Christ, the authority of Scripture, even the cultural mandate come in for aid and comfort.

This ideal is an honorable one and springs from generally wholesome motives. Who would not want to see Christ honored in all aspects of the created order, and who would want to be unfaithful where Scripture has revealed God’s holy will?

There’s just one problem: the Bible doesn’t speak to all the arts and sciences, let alone whether incoming freshmen should receive a laptop or whether it should be an Apple or an IBM machine. In fact, the one place where Christ is revealed, the Bible, has very little to say about the curriculum of an undergraduate education. If we say that it does, we are in danger of putting the imaginations of men above the Word of God — that is, making the Bible say what we want it to say. (more…)

The editors of the NTJ are big baseball fans.  They also root for teams that are rivals and whose fans generally hate each other.  For that reason it is profitable and even Christian to feel the love that National Review Online has assembled before the animosity of MLB’s season begins.  “For the Love of the Game” includes a brief tribute from one adoring fan to the Major League’s thirty franchises.  (BTW, the Mets bleep.)