These top ten lists are so fascinating to read, especially the lists that mingle great books with those admittedly not-so-great books that made a big dent on the list-maker at a certain age. Those lists are such quirky autobiographical documents.  They require an uncommon degree of self knowledge, and an unfalsified memory of early life, to compile. C.S. Lewis’ wonderful list was that sort. I think most of us would be surprised to see the list of the books that really did the most to make us who we are.  Perhaps that reckoning will be part of the opening of the books on judgment day?  Such a list, for me, would include a lot of Marvel comics, science fiction, Mad magazine, and whatever happened to be on the shelf of the library at the public school. For most of us it would include a large number of books we could no longer recommend as worthwhile, even books which in retrospect we can see as having more dangerous toxin than nutritious ideas. I can’t imagine making such a list without thinking through my autobiography, perhaps with some professional help!

Instead, what I’ve got is a list of favorites, inevitably emphasizing theology and unfortunately ignoring fiction. It’s basically the same list as the one on my home page, but with new commentary to incite you to read them.

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Joe Carter has his ten. Here is my list:

1. Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism. This is the place to start for anyone interested in cultivating a christian worldview. Kuyper delivered these lectures in 1898 as part of the ongoing Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, then the bastion of Reformed orthodoxy. Kuyper (1837-1920) was the towering figure in the Netherlands of his generation, founding the Free University of Amsterdam (1880) and the Anti-Revolutionary Party (1879), and serving as Prime Minister between 1901 and 1905. This book is not without defects (e.g., he misunderstands the origin of the Genevan Psalter melodies), but it is groundbreaking in alerting Christians in North America to the all-encompassing character of Christ’s claim on our lives.

2. Al Wolters, Creation Regained. Long before the recent spate of worldview books for Christians, there was this book, which has become a minor classic. I was privileged to sit under the author, now a personal friend and colleague, when he taught the material in its pages at Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies in the late 1970s. You had to be there.

3. Bob Goudzwaard, Idols of Our Time. Without this book and its perceptive linking of ideology with that ancient phenomenon of idolatry, I would not have written my own Political Visions and Illusions, which applies Goudzwaard’s interpretation to the classic modern political ideologies. Recently Goudzwaard, a retired Free University economist and former Dutch member of parliament, was on the campus of Redeemer University College, where I teach, and he was kind enough to sign my copy of this book.

4. James W. Skillen, The Scattered Voice: Christians At Odds In The Public Square. For some odd reason Zondervan allowed this gem of a book to go out of print. It was subsequently picked up by an obscure outfit, the Canadian Institute for Law, Theology & Public Policy, Inc. Here the author surveys the variety of alternative approaches to political life taken by American Christians. Some of the material is by now dated, but it is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the influences that fragment the Christian witness in the public square.

5. Herman Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought. Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) was a philosopher in the tradition of Kuyper who taught legal philosophy at the Free University. He founded a school of philosophical thought known in Dutch as De Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, or the Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea, as it has been inelegantly translated into English. Here he tackles the typically modern notion of the autonomy of human thought and the religious neutrality of reason. Dooyeweerd’s prose is not readily accessible to most readers, but his central insights into the orderly character of God’s creation richly repay any effort at comprehending his thought. Read more about his political theory here.

6. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture. What more could possibly be said about this 1951 book? It’s the one book, after the Bible, which I’ve read the most number of times. I can more easily see its flaws than when I first read it 35 years ago, yet Niebuhr’s five typologies – Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture, Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ transforming culture – have served to shape a conversation that has been going on for nearly six decades.

7. Yves René Simon, A General Theory of Authority. This is one of two essential books on the subject of authority. Simon (1903-1961) was a French neothomist philosopher who taught at the University of Notre Dame for ten years before taking a position at the University of Chicago. In this book the author attempts to rescue authority from its “bad name” by distinguishing amongst several functions of authority, the most essential of which are necessary, not because of human defect, but because of the very nature of life in community.

8. Richard De George, The Nature and Limits of Authority. This is the second must-read book on authority, in which the author carefully sets out a persuasive taxonomy of authority, distinguishing between, e.g., executive and nonexecutive, epistemic and exemplary, imperative and performatory manifestations of authority. Both De George and Simon have had an impact on the current book I am writing on authority and the imago Dei. The last sentence alone of this book is worth its price: “The enemy, however, is not authority but the abuse of authority” (p. 291).  Exactly right.

9. David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation. Schindler has to be my favourite Catholic philosopher, and this one book is more than enough to support my assessment. Schindler’s critique of liberalism is a radical one in that it gets to the root of this ideology rather than trying to defend it against its supposed latter-day distortions. After reading it, I found myself wondering whether the author had read Kuyper or Dooyeweerd, who would understand exactly what Schindler is doing here.

10. Herbert Lindemann, The Daily Office. I wrote last month of this book, which, more than anything else, reshaped my practice of daily prayer.

11. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev, Fathers and Sons. Yes, I know there are supposed to be only ten, but I couldn’t resist sneaking in one more. This 1861 book is one of those great Russian novels that have taken their place within the canon of world literature. But, unlike Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which is on everyone’s shelf but which few have actually read, Turgenev’s book is comparatively short and easily digested. The author’s portrait of Bazarov, the young “nihilist” (a word which seems to have originated here), is little short of prophetic in that it anticipates the generation of revolutionaries who would remake Russia and the world half a century later.

I have quite a few bad habits, but here is one that can be told on this blog and not just in the confessional: I sometimes use too many adjectives.

This week I was reminded of this problem when I became irritated with a description on this blog of a political commentator as a Mormon. “What in the world does his Mormonism have to do with anything? Isn’t the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints exceptionally generous to the poor? ” I thought. It reminded me of people who put “extreme right” in front of everything a Republican says or use “teabagging” as a description of a senator. (more…)

Some critics of Intelligent Design conflate the movement with creationism. Of course forms of Intelligent Design can be creationist, but arguably others (like that of Aristotle on some readings of the philosopher) are not. I am both a creationist and one who believes there exists evidence for Intelligent Design in nature. (more…)

This is primarily to the Lutherans out there, although I think the question pertinent to many Evangelicals as well: What think ye of the Sabbath rest today? Even though we lay under a new dispensation, are we still not instructed to rest from our labors on the Lord’s Day, the new Sabbath for a new people? Is the New Covenant one that abrogates Sabbath-keeping so as to inflict on us a seven-day workweek or a new Son’s Day that looks like the old Monday?

Is it law to keep the Sabbath, to refrain from work, to refrain even from, say, shopping for ephemera or going to a ballgame or a movie?

I ask because I grew up with the idea that Sunday was simply that day in which you jammed a one-hour and twenty-minute liturgy into your schedule and you were good to go. Strict church attendance was emphasized to an almost legalistic degree, but preparation for receiving Holy Communion or what we were to do after the service was almost never addressed.

Luther, in his Large Catechism, addresses the Sabbath in his explication of the Fourth Commandment, and in so doing seems to interpret Sunday “observance” as little more than an accommodation to the poor and working classes, and for the purpose of maintaining some kind of “order”:

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To our shame, most evangelical Protestants tend to think of Saint Patrick as a leprechaun. As we watch the annual drunken parades and pop-culture consumerism of the March holiday, no one could seem more removed from biblical Christianity than Patrick. And yet, Patrick’s life was closer to a revival meeting than to a shamrock-decorated drinking party named in his honor.

In his volume, St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography, Philip Freeman, a professor of classics at Washington University in St. Louis, lays out a compelling portrait of Patrick, the theologian-evangelist. In accomplishing this, Freeman attempts to reconstruct Patrick’s cultural milieu—that of a world that had “ended” with the fall of Rome in 410 A.D. This collapse of Roman power had unleashed savagery in the British Isles, as thieves and slave-traders were unhinged from the restraining power of Caesar’s sword. Patrick’s ministry was shaped by this new world, not least of which by Patrick’s capture and escape from slavery.

Freeman helpfully retells Patrick’s conversion story, one of a mocking young hedonist to a repentant evangelist. The story sounds remarkably similar to that of Augustine—and, in the most significant of ways, both mirror the first-century conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Freeman helpfully reconstructs the context of local religion as a “business relationship” in which sacrifice to pagan gods was seen as a transaction for the material prosperity of the worshippers. Against this, Patrick’s conversion to Christianity was noticed quickly, when his prayers of devotion—then almost always articulated out loud—were overheard by his neighbors.

The rest of the narrative demonstrates the ways in which Patrick carried the Christian mission into the frontiers of the British Isles—confronting a hostile culture and institutionalized heresy along the way. With this the case, the life of Patrick is a testimony to Great Commission fervor, not to the Irish nationalism most often associated with the saint. As a matter of fact, Freeman points out that Patrick’s love for the Irish was an act of obedience to Jesus’ command to love enemies and to pray for persecutors.

This biography gives contemporary evangelicals more than a pious evangelist to emulate. It also reconstructs a Christian engagement with a pagan culture, in ways that are strikingly contemporary to evangelicals seeking to engage a post-Christian America.

Patrick’s context was a Celtic culture deeply entrenched in paganism, led by the native earth religion of the Druid priests. This is especially relevant in an era when pseudo-Celtic paganism is increasingly en vogue in American and European pagan movements. Freeman sweeps away the revisionist historical claims of the Druid revivalists: there was no “golden age” of equality among the sexes within the Druid cult, for example. Instead, Freeman shows that Patrick’s Christianity actually brought harmony among the genders with his teaching that women were joint-heirs with Christ.

Any evangelical seeking to kindle a love for missions among the people of God will benefit from this volume’s demonstration that the Great Commission did not lie dormant between the apostle Paul and William Carey. Patrick’s love and zeal for the Irish may also inspire American evangelicals to repent of our hopelessness for the conversion of, say, the radical Islamic world—which is, after all, no more “hopeless” than the Irish barbarians of Patrick’s era.

Note to Joel Osteen: When you get called out for not preaching the gospel by Benny Hinn—yes, Benny Hinn—it might be time to consider a new profession.

Benny sounds a bit like Mark Driscoll in this video (and that’s a good thing).

(Via: Rae Whitlock)

So I was driving in to work today, and the news/traffic/weather station I listen to on the commute every day comes up with this story about the 9-1-1 call Corey Haim’s mom made to the police when she found her son unconscious and not breathing. They actually played the tape the police released.

I turned the radio off. That’s not news: it’s voyeurism.

I could turn this into a post about justice vs. liberty, but that’s just being part of the problem. I’m not interested in being part of the problem.

Several years ago I wrote a short piece on this topic which appeared in Comment, the publication of the Canadian think tank Cardus. Here is an excerpt:

Must the pursuit of social justice be tethered to statist solutions? Not necessarily. This is where I believe neocalvinism has much to offer as an alternative. To be sure, recognizing that there are systemic causes to the social question undoubtedly entails a strong government willing and able to intervene on behalf of the poor. Provided they are fine-tuned so as not inadvertently to subsidize personal irresponsibility, the programs of the welfare state have a legitimate role to play as a social safety net shielding citizens from the worst of the market’s deficiencies. Returning to the era of unfettered markets, the night-watchman state, and no labour unions would be a historically regressive move to say the least.

At the same time, the notion that government can solve the social question outright is misguided. There is a certain persuasiveness to the libertarian argument that social responsibility is a misnomer because society as such is not a responsible agent. Indeed, policies aimed at ameliorating poverty should recognize the pluriformity of society, including the multiplicity of responsible agents therein. The full complexity of society cannot be reduced to state and market, as if these were the only two factors to be accounted for. Much of the current debate pits political parties that would strengthen the state at the expense of the market in opposition to parties that would enhance the market at the state’s expense. What is missing on both sides is an acknowledgment that a healthy society consists of much more than these two constituent elements.

Read the entire article here.

There has been much talk on Evangel lately about social justice. Here is an upcoming book from Moody Publishers that sounds promising.

Humanitarian Jesus
Social Justice and the Cross

by Ryan Dobson

A resurgence of the Social Gospel is energizing many evangelicals, but what does the Bible say about the role of humanitarian works in the Christian life? As new covenant believers, Christians are called to a specific central task: to be ministers of God’s message of salvation for sinners. At the same time, the New Testament justifies nearly every concern of the revitalized Social Gospel. Care for the poor and needy, reconciliation of social and racial divisions, and nurture for the sick and abused — all can be biblical and Christ-honoring activities.

Ryan Dobson and Christian Buckley have a message for believers on either side of the battle lines hardening around today’s Social Gospel. To those on the Religious Left, they say: “Don’t forget that Jesus Christ died to save sinners, not to bring about political change.” To those on the Religious Right, they say: “Don’t forget that Jesus spent much of his time helping the sick, the poor, and the needy.” A corrective and a call to action all in one, Humanitarian Jesus shows that evangelism and good works coexist harmoniously when social investment is subservient to and supportive of the church’s primary mission of worship, evangelism, and discipleship. In accessible and non-academic style, Dobson and Buckley outline the biblical case for humanitarian concern. They also engage the topic through interviews with leading Christian thinkers, activists, and humanitarian workers — including James Dobson, Rick Warren, Franklin Graham, Gary Haugen, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, and many more – seeking to define a broadly biblical approach to good works that all Christians can join hands around.

Download an excerpt.

In comment #23 of his blog post, “On the Bible and Civil Government,” John Mark Reynolds says:

I have never been sure what the phrase “social justice” means.

I am for justice.

Like him, I am also for justice. I suspect that Professor Reynolds and other conservative Christians are reluctant to use the expression “social justice” because it has been co-opted by progressive Christians (think Jim Wallis), academic elites (think Martha Nussbaum, author of Sex and Social Justice), and radical activists (think William Ayers, who edited a book called Handbook of Social Justice in Education). I sympathize with this reluctance, but we should not be afraid to reclaim “social justice” as a biblical principle and theme.

For a definition, go no further than my selected reading of scripture for today:

‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen’ (Deut. 27:19).

Cross-reference:

[God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing (Deut. 10:18).

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world (James 1:27).

Recently radio and television host Glenn Beck instructed Christians to abandon their churches if they hear the code word of “social justice.” I, for one, expect to hear this biblical principle and theme sounded out in Christian colleges and churches, as Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says in his clear-sighted commentary, “Glenn Beck, Social Justice, and the Limits of Public Discourse“:

To assert that a call for social justice is reason for faithful Christians to flee their churches is nonsense, given the Bible’s overwhelming affirmation that justice is one of God’s own foremost concerns.

What we should oppose, as Mohler says, is the political captivity of the Gospel from the Christian Right or the Christian Left, although “social justice” tends to be the province of the Christian Left:

The last century has seen many churches and denominations embrace the social gospel in some form, trading the Gospel of Christ for a liberal vision of social change, revolution, economic liberation, and, yes, social justice. Liberal Protestantism has largely embraced this agenda as its central message.

The urgency for any faithful Christian is this — flee any church that for any reason or in any form has abandoned the Gospel of Christ for any other gospel.

I share Mohler’s well-articulated concern:

As I read the statements of Glenn Beck, it seems that his primary concern is political. Speaking to a national audience, he warned of “code words” that betray a leftist political agenda of big government, liberal social action, economic redistribution, and the confiscation of wealth. In that context, his loyal audience almost surely understood his point.

My concern is very different. As an evangelical Christian, my concern is the primacy of the Gospel of Christ – the Gospel that reveals the power of God in the salvation of sinners through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church’s main message must be that Gospel. The New Testament is stunningly silent on any plan for governmental or social action. The apostles launched no social reform movement. Instead, they preached the Gospel of Christ and planted Gospel churches. Our task is to follow Christ’s command and the example of the apostles.There is more to that story, however. The church is not to adopt a social reform platform as its message, but the faithful church, wherever it is found, is itself a social reform movement precisely because it is populated by redeemed sinners who are called to faithfulness in following Christ. The Gospel is not a message of social salvation, but it does have social implications.

Faithful Christians can debate the proper and most effective means of organizing the political structure and the economic markets. Bringing all these things into submission to Christ is no easy task, and the Gospel must not be tied to any political system, regime, or platform. Justice is our concern because it is God’s concern, but it is no easy task to know how best to seek justice in this fallen world.

And that brings us to the fact that the Bible is absolutely clear that injustice will not exist forever. There is a perfect social order coming, but it is not of this world. The coming of the Kingdom of Christ in its fullness spells the end of injustice and every cause and consequence of human sin. We have much work to do in this world, but true justice will be achieved only by the consummation of God’s purposes and the perfection of God’s own judgment.

Until then, the church must preach the Gospel, and Christians must live out its implications. We must resist and reject every false gospel and tell sinners of salvation in Christ. And, knowing that God’s judgment is coming, we must strive to be on the right side of justice.

Books that are worth checking out:

• Michael Sandel (editor), Justice: A Reader
• Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs
• Karen Labacqz, Six Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics
  
• Robert Solomon & Mark Murphy, What Is Justice? Classic and Contemporary Readings
• Christian Buckley & Ryan Dobson, Humanitarian Jesus: Social Justice and the Cross

San Lorenzo del Escorial: the palace complex of King Philip II of Spain, late sixteenth century. Architects: Juan Bautista de Toledo and Juan de Herrera.

Carlos Eire, author of A Brief History of Eternity (Princeton, 2009), examines how “Catholics embraced their dead even more tightly than before” in response to the Protestant Reformation. Here is a breathtaking account of morbidity from the sixteenth century:

In Spain, arguably the most influential Catholic nation on earth at the time, a prime exemplar of this renewed Tridentine piety was the king himself, Philip II, who worked very hard at reifying not only his role as a Catholic monarch but also the church’s power over the dead, and the bond between the living and the dead. For starters, King Philip built for himself and his successors a palace-monastery complex unlike any other on earth, the axis of which was the cult of the dead. Built between 1563 and 1596, at the cost of an entire year’s worth of treasure from the New World, the immense structure of San Lorenzo del Escorial was in its day the largest building in the world. Within its perimeter, Philip crammed a palace, monastery, basilica, library, and seminary, along with 8,000 relics of the saints, the world’s largest and most meticulously catalogued collection, to which were assigned tens of millions of years of indulgences. Staffed by Hieronymite monks, whose sole purpose was to pray for the king and the royal family, both living and dead, the monastery at San Lorenzo was a veritable ritual machine, where masses were offered constantly at numerous altars–except when the Hieronymite rule forced the monks to sleep–and where hundreds of monks chanted the entire psalter day after day, ceaselessly.

Not content with merely living with his monks and priests, King Philip also build his private chambers as close as possible to heaven, directly behind the main altar of the basilica, which was flanked on all sides by the 8,000 relics, and he positioned his room in such a way as to be able to see the main altar from his bed. Directly below the altar, and therefore also beneath his bed, Philip built an immense crypt for the entire Hapsburg dynasty, including his father, himself, and all his future successors to the throne. Whenever Philip stayed at the Escorial, which was as often as he possibly could, he lived and worked and slept directly over his father’s corpse and the grave he himself would soon occupy, as well as the grave of his son and of all descendants not yet born.

In his will, Philip addressed so many saintly intercessors that his list of advocates matched name for name the total list of saints invoked in every will written in Madrid. He also pulled out all the stops when it came to suffrages, consigning the Hieronymite fathers to perpetual labor and laying heavy demands on priests elsewhere. Even the Escorial was not enough. First, Philip wanted masses to be said by every single priest at the Escorial for nine days following his death. Then he asked for 30,000 masses to be said “as quickly as possible” by Franciscans throughout the realm, “with the greatest devotion.” Not content with this, Philip also requested that a High Mass be said for his soul at the main altar of the Escorial basilica every single day until Christ’s second coming, and added a special prayer for his soul to the Hieronymites’ daily canonical hours. Let us not even consider how many tens of thousands of other masses he requested for his relatives, or how he dwelt on every detail of his funeral, or how he practiced dying, or how many memorial services were held throughout the realm after his death and how many hundreds of thousands of candles were used. It might make us lose all our bearings.

Lest this hallucinatory tour of the Escorial prove unimpressive, given that extravagance befits a king, let us consider that Philip and his prayer factory-cum-city of the dead were just the tip of the iceberg. What we find when we examine the wills of his subjects are thousands upon hundreds of thousands, even millions of mirrors reflecting the same sort of obsession, only at a relatively smaller scale. Taken as a whole, the masses and prayers requested by Spaniards during the time of Philip II and his successors, Philip III and Philip IV, would dwarf the efforts at the Escorial and make them seem like a mere period at the end of one sentence in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. When the cost is finally tallied some time in the future, as I am sure it will be, chances are that the amount of money spent by the subjects of these three Philips on their souls and those of their dead could easily dwarf the amount spent by the monarchs and add up to much more than several years’ worth of treasure from the New World.

Providence, I believe, compelled the Protestant Reformers to bury this cult of the dead so that Christians could return to the land of the living.

David:

Michael New, a political scientist specializing in abortion statistics, explains why T.R. Reid’s “analysis is superficial and unconvincing.”

Ramesh Ponnuru calls Reid’s op-ed “absurd,” says that Professor New’s critique is “too kind,” and shows that the only two pieces of evidence offered in support of this view are both “pathetically weak.”

Follow the links to see their counter-arguments.

This is just sort of an excursis, given the progress of my discussion with Dr. John Mark Reynolds. As I was reading today here at Evangel about this and that, the point about abortion seemed to be very well made by Dr. Beckwith in the comments — and good on him for getting it essentially right.

But here’s what I’m thinking: when we make the case regarding what to think about abortion politically, is the more-formidable case against abortion, “We deplore abortion because it is an abrogation of the liberty of the fetus?” Or is our case — the right case for the sake of the life of the child — “We deplore abortion because it is injustice against the innocent, and it is the state’s role in this life to protect those who are innocent from violence?”

It seems clear to me that the “liberty” argument is plainly the pro-choice argument, and the “flourishing” argument is the pro-choice argument. The argument for justice and for the sake of rightly dealing with those who are both innocent and helpless is the case for the life and protection of the unborn child.

This is an issue we all agree on, isn’t it?

We’ll see.