The Power of Symbols, Christmas

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One of the best books I read this year was The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith by Peter Hitchens (who writes incredibly well, like his recently deceased brother). As we approach Christmas I was reminded of his discussion of the Communist attempt to suppress any vestige of Christmas in Russia. Drawing from written sources and his own experience living in Russia, Hitchens described the Communist concern especially to turn children away from religious interest. Then he provided the following quote from a pamphlet titled, “Against the Christmas Tree” which has been published in a series called “The Library of the Young Atheist”:

“Millions of little children are brought up by very religious grandmothers. For such children the Christmas tree represents a very great danger…. Not one Young Pioneer detachment, not one school and not one group of young and Atheists should leave children of pre-school age unattended during the Christmas holidays. The struggle against the Christmas tree is the struggle against religion and against our class enemies.” (181)

My point here is not trees but the value of symbols and traditions. When an atheistic regime sought to stamp out Christianity they were deeply concerned about the power of symbols to keep alive religious memory. Too often today Christians breezily dismiss “mere symbols” claiming to be concerned only with the “real idea.” This is short-sighted and ignorant of history and human nature- not to mention ignorant of the Bible since God saw fit to give us symbols.

The potential application of this point is broad, but, to speak of Christmas, we do much of our best teaching and discipling when we use good symbols, investing them with biblical meaning and incorporating them into meaningful, appropriate traditions. These things will stick with our children and our churches for years to come providing pegs for biblical truths and armor against cynicism. So as you prepare for and celebrate Christmas make the most of your traditions and symbols, enjoying and celebrating the appearing of God’s saving grace (Titus 2:11).

Thundering Knox Preached Grace

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John Knox is known as a thundering preacher, and he was. However, it is easy for us to associate “thundering” with condemnation. Douglas Bond, examining one of only two surviving sermons from Knox (on the temptations of Jesus), concludes:

“Knox labored to give confidence to his flock in their sanctification. There is no hint of sanctification being a condition of justification; he didn’t point his flock to fear and obedience to the law. Rather, he showed them their champion Jesus Christ, and he called them to ‘joy and bold courage.’ Because Christ their Victor had already triumphed over Satan, sin, and death.” (The Mighty Weakness of John Knox, 56)

Historical Examples as Spurs to Perseverance

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For me, there are times in ministry when I feel completely overwhelmed. The size, depth and number of the needs plus my own weakness and failures combine for a crushing despair. Many gospel  tools are needed for these situations, and one of these tools is the example of our forebears.

It is helpful for me to read John Knox writing to John Calvin:

“I am prevented from writing to you more amply by a fever which afflicts me, by the weight of labors which oppress me, and the cannon of the French which they have now brought over to crush us.”

One danger in times of difficulty is exaggerating our own challenges and throwing a pity party. It is helpful to be reminded what others have faced (and still do). Yes, our challenges are real, and we need not minimize them. We just ought not overrate them. So far, no foreign country has brought over artillery to bombard me. You may wonder if some deacons or particular members are searching for cheap canons on ebay, but I imagine you’re not being bombarded yet. The point here is not to shame us, but to remind us that we are a part of a long line of brothers and sisters who have labored for the faith and we are taking our place among them. This is ennobling, placing my struggles in the bigger picture of the outworking of God’s plan. (1 Pet 4:12)

It is, then, also helpful to me to read Knox concluding that same letter saying, “He whose cause we defend will come to the aid of his own.” The heroes of the faith persevered not by some unique ability available to them. They simply held fast to God in faith, just as we can. Their hope was the faithfulness of God. God has not changed. He is still faithful. You and I can trust him as well, hanging on, doggedly determined to be faithful to the task He has given us if it kills us- because God is faithful, his cause will not fail and we have the privilege of playing a part.

So, let us take our place in the line, knowing our labors are not in vain because our great and good God is working his purposes out and they will resound to our good and His glory (1 Cor 15:58; Rom 8:28).

(Quotes from Douglas Bond, The Mighty Weakness of John Knox, 81)

Bond-voyage! A Hymns Tour of England & Wales

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You may have noticed the ad recently inserted on the right hand side of this blog. It is for the tour led by my friend Douglas Bond covering great hymn writers in England & Wales. I can’t think of a better person to lead such a tour! My family has loved his Mr. Pipes books which are essentially such a tour in book form (you can see my reviews of these books, along with other Bond books, here). I would love, one day, to be able to take my family on one of these tours, so I wanted to make sure you knew about this opportunity.

And while we’re talking Bond, I have just begun reading his new book The Mighty Weakness of John Knox! It is good history written with the flair of a novel (as good history ought to be written!). Special deals on this book are also currently available at Bond’s website.

2011 Bibles and Bible Reference Annual Survey

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Each Fall I write an article for Preaching Magazine surveying the study Bibles and reference works that have come out in the past year. The 2011 version of the article has recently come out. Perhaps it will be useful as you make plans for sermon series in the coming year, and even as you request or purchase gifts this Christmas!

My top 6 picks of the year appear at the very end of the article.

C. H. Dodd on Paul’s Poor Writing & Defective Imagination

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The Apostle Peter tells us that in Paul’s letters “there are some things … that are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:16). We are not surprised then to find passages which require work to understand. In these cases it becomes particularly clear whether one approaches the Scripture expecting it to conform to one’s own understanding (Does this passage fit life as I understand it?) or whether one approaches the Scripture as the true Word of God to which we must conform (it is true, how must my understanding adjust to appropriate this teaching).

I stumbled upon a very clear example of this this week in C. H. Dodd’s commentary on Romans (The Epistle of Paul to the Romans. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932). In discussing Paul’s use of a marriage analogy in Romans 7 about the law, Dodd states, “The illustration, however, is confused from the outset” (100). He goes on to say, “We shall do best to ignore the illustration as far as may be, and ask what it is that Paul is really talking about in the realm of fact and experience” (101).

I am aware that Dodd did not share my view of the Scripture, but this level of condescension was still surprising. It only gets worse. Dodd’s concluding paragraph on this passage is below:

The two lines of illustration, then, which Paul offers, have not proved very felicitous.  He lacks the gift for sustained illustration of ideas through concrete images (though he is capable of a brief, illuminating metaphor).  It is probably a defect of imagination.  We cannot help contrasting his labored and blundering allegories with the masterly parables of Jesus, unerring in their immediate translation of ideas into pictures, or rather their recognition of the idea in the picture which life itself presents.  Paul flounders among the images he has tried to evoke, and then with unconscious humour pleads that he is trying to stoop to the weak nature of his correspondents.  We are relieved when he tires of his unmanageable puppets and talks about real things (103 – emphasis original).

Too bad for Paul. It is a shame he had a defective imagination and blundered so poorly in these letters which have shaped the Western world and have impacted millions of people the world over (believers and unbelievers). Dodd’s comments remind me of a retort Howard Marshall once gave in a seminar where someone presented an argument similar to Dodd’s (on a different passage)-  “I now have a new exam question for first year students, ‘Rewrite Paul’s argument in order to more faithfully communicate his point’.”

Yes, commentators note the challenge of this passage, but across the centuries they have not landed on Dodd’s counsel of despair.

Of course someone with a high view of the Bible’s inspiration cannot brook Dodd’s approach. However, even apart from inspiration, this dismissive condescension is foolhardy. It reminds of C. S. Lewis’ apt phrase, “chronological snobbery”- the ancients were obviously less intelligent than we are and we can explain how it really ought to have been done.

We ought beware of the hubris of assuming we- whose writings have not yet endured a generation, much less a couple of millennia- can stand in judgment over writing which has been read, understood, appreciated and applied for 2,000 years in various cultures and translations. Simple historical awareness and cognizance of our own smallness should give pause.

One suspects the defective imagination was Dodd’s.

Mark Galli “Why We Need More ‘Chaplains’ and Fewer Leaders : What’s a pastor for?”

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Mark Galli’s recent article in Christianity Today by this title is well done and resonates with the concerns of this blog. He begins by noting a typical website which suggested “chaplain” type pastors led to church decline and instead encouraged us to look for pastors with innovative ideas which would lead to “growth.” In fact it was claimed of these high energy guys, “they’ll grow it [the church] without a doubt.” The “chaplain” mindset was criticized for being concerned with bringing “healing to hurting souls.”

Of course things can be overstated, but Galli makes an important point about how our view of church has shifted. He writes:

We find ourselves in an odd period of church history when many people have become so used to large, impersonal institutions that they want that in their church as well. Thus the attraction of megachurches, where people can blend in and not be seen if they want. Many thought leaders who ponder church life naturally end up championing massive institutions and denigrating (inadvertently, to be sure) the healing of hurting souls. And this in a community whose theology is supposedly grounded in the universal and cosmic love of God who gives attention to each of us as individuals.
…
One wonders where we got our other ideas about the pastorate. For centuries, the pastorate was thought to be about “the cure of souls”souls being understood not as the spiritual part of us, but as the fullness of our humanity. The pastor has traditionally been thought of as one who does ministry in the midst of a people who are sick and dying, and who administers in word and sacrament, in Scripture and in prayer, the healing balm of the Lord.

So who told us that the pastor is primarily a leader/entrepreneur/change agent and anything but a curer of souls? And why do we believe them?

Galli defends the “chaplain” picture of the pastorate stating:

To say that a pastor is first and foremost a chaplain – someone who is the Lord’s means of healing – is not to suggest that his or her role is primarily therapeutic. It includes therapy-like moments, for example, in helping parishioners deal with their ordinary fears and worries. But it is fundamentally about the healing of souls – helping men and women, boys and girls, to become right with God, and therefore, right with others.

All I can say is Amen.

Galli closes with his own experience:

I’ve been a parishioner in many churches over many years. In each church, the pastor has been tempted, as I was, to become the great leader, to shape himself in our culture’s image of success. To be sure, the modern pastor does have to “run a church”; he or she is, in fact, the head of an institution that has prosaic institutional needs. I’ve been thankful when my pastor carries out these institutional responsibilities with efficiency and joy.

But the times I remember most, the times when my troubled soul has been most deeply affected and moved – outside of preaching and receiving the sacraments – have been when my pastor acted like a chaplain. When he pulled me aside in the narthex, put his arm around me, and prayed with me about some matter. When he visited me in the hospital. When in unhurried conversation I felt less alone, because I knew in a deeper way that God was present.

Brothers, let us be faithful in all our tasks. But let us be clear that our primary task is the care of souls. Fail in this area and we fail completely. This sort of service is not typically flashy but it does please the Great Shepherd of the sheep to whom we will give account.

Thanksgiving Thoughts, William Bradford & The Pilgrims

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As part of our thinking about Thanksgiving this year, following a suggestion from Doug Phillips, I read to our older boys chapter 4 from William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation: Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement, 1608-1650. They had read through the book this year, but this gave me an opportunity to emphasize a certain aspect of it. In chapter 4 Bradford tells how the congregation came to the decision to leave Holland for America and explains their reasons. This is especially compelling as it is a firsthand account of the group who came to Plymouth.

This was a moving read for me as a husband, father, and pastor as we observed men wrestling with weighty decisions which they knew were fraught with significance not only for themselves and their children, but for generations to come. They knew- and were reminded by their critics- that lives were resting on their decision, one way or the other. They were wasting away physically and spiritually in Holland. They suffered and labored in hardship, and though willing to endure, they hated to see their children “decrepit” in their youth from the labor. They also worried about the numbers of their children being drawn away to sinful lives. Yet, when they considered the move to America, others pointed out in graphic detail the likelihood of many of their number perishing in the difficult journey oversea, others dying of disease, the hardships of an uncivilized land, and the likelihood (as they understood it) of being tortured and eaten alive by natives.

In the end they, of course, decided to lead their people to America. Bradford first states that this weighty decision was reached:

“Not out of any newfangledness, or other such like giddy humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger, but for sundry weighty and solid reasons.”

Indeed. Men of gravitas making the hard decisions, bearing the responsibility. This is something to be thankful for.

There were others around them not willing to face hardship:

“For many, though they desired to enjoy the ordinances of God in their purity, and the liberty of the gospel with them, yet, alas, they admitted of bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure these hardships.”

As they considered oven more hardship in the move to America, they responded in this way:

“It was answered, that all great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages.”

“. . . their condition was not ordinary; their ends were good and honourable; their calling lawful, and urgent; and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honourable.”

Furthermore, they were thinking of the future, of Gospel advance:

“Lastly, (and which was not least), a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.”

We are grateful to God for leaders with such gospel-inspired courage, foresight and vision and hope to learn from their example. Our setting encourages thinking only of your own lifetime, rather than seeking to lay a foundation for the future. As we enjoy so many blessings from the labors of those who have gone before us, may we hold fast to the gospel despite the suffering required. May we undertake to advance the gospel, and have in mind not only what we might see in our own lifetime but how we might lay a foundation for generations to come.

Give to the Winds Thy Fears

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My poem of the week this week is this wonderful hymn on perseverance rooted in knowledge of God’s sovereign love and care. May it be as encouraging to you as it is to me.

Give to the Winds Thy Fears
by Paul Gerhardt (translated from German to English by John Wesley in his Collection, 1737)

Give to the winds thy fears,
Hope and be undismayed.
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,
God shall lift up thy head.

Through waves and clouds and storms,
He gently clears thy way;
Wait thou His time; so shall this night
Soon end in joyous day.

Still heavy is thy heart?
Still sinks thy spirit down?
Cast off the world, let fear depart
Bid every care be gone.

What though Thou rulest not;
Yet heaven, and earth, and hell
Proclaim, God sitteth on the throne,
And ruleth all things well.

And whatsoe’er Thou will’st,
Thou dost, O King of kings;
What Thine unerring wisdom chose,
Thy power to being brings.

Leave to His sovereign sway
To choose and to command;
So shalt thou, wondering, own that way,
How wise, how strong this hand.

Far, far above thy thought,
His counsel shall appear,
When fully He the work hath wrought,
That caused thy needless fear.

Thou seest our weakness, Lord;
Our hearts are known to Thee;
O lift Thou up the sinking hand,
Confirm the feeble knee!

Let us in life, in death,
Thy steadfast truth declare,
And publish with our latest breath
Thy love and guardian care.

The Reformation Commentary Series

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This Fall InterVarsity Press has launched their new Reformation Commentary Series, edited by Timothy George. This series collects key comments from the Reformers for each biblical book in order to help us read the Bible along with the church through the ages. In this respect this series is a companion to the Ancient Christian Commentary Series which focused on the church fathers. I am honored to be working on a volume in this series along with Brad Green.

Here is a nicely done trailer in which Timothy George explains the purpose and vision of the series.

As part of the launch IVP is offering a special deal for those who sign up to receive each volume of the series as it is published. Those who sign up get the inaugural volume (Gerald Bray, Galatians, Ephesians) for $9.99 (regular $50) and Timothy George’s Reading Scripture with the Reformers absolutely free! You will also get each volume as it appears for $29.99 instead of the regular $50.00.

This promises to be a helpful resource for engaging with key voices from the past, helping to rescue us from what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.”