Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: pages 93-95

As he defends the absolute necessity and sufficiency of Scripture, Calvin offers some critiques of anabaptist excesses in his own day (Book 1, chapter 9) which apply equally well to the current Pentecostal and charismatic obsession with receiving a direct revelation from God. "Furthermore, those who, having forsaken Scripture, imagine some way or other of reaching God, ought to be thought of as not so much gripped by error as carried away with frenzy." In my experience, it can be very difficult to talk reasonably about the sufficiency of Scripture with someone who believes he has received a direct revelation from God. The supposed reception of such has long seemed to me more a function of one's psychology than one's theology.

Calvin closes the question in this way: "[The Holy Spirit] is the Author of the Scriptures: he cannot vary and differ from himself. Hence he must ever remain just as he once revealed himself there. This is no affront to him, unless perchance we consider it honorable for him to decline or degenerate from himself."

Not emergent, but emerging adults

byFaith, the web magazine of the Presbyterian Church in America, has an insightful article on working with "emerging adults" which draws heavily on the work of sociologist Christian Smith. One revealing quote:

Ruling Elder Bob Baldwin at GraceDC commented that when it comes to biblical sexuality, “If the rules don’t fit their cultural expectations, they mentally find a way around them, ignoring what they know to be true scripturally. What surprises me most is how carefully they have thought through their work-arounds.”

Less less, still a word

Turns out "ruth" can be used by itself, in the sense of the opposite of "ruthless." Who knew?

Thanks, Dictionary.com's word of the day!

Grace & mercy

In Proverbs 11:16, we encounter the gracious woman, and in its thematic partner, 11:17, the man of lovingkindness. By pointing to both a man and a woman, the Proverbs indicate that the fruit of the Spirit are accessible to all people, and implicitly point to the whole of the new humanity renewed in Christ.

Island Time

is the name of the most recent episode of This American Life, which you can still download here for free, for at least a couple more days. The entire episode in on Haiti, but I found the third act most compelling with Ben Fountain's apocalyptic vision of the earthquake and its aftermath. My own experience in two earthquakes in 1992 was echoed here: when the ground and everything else start moving, one's own insanity can seem the most readily plausible explanation.

R.R. Reno gets optimistic

in this insightful review essay on Dakotas culture on the First Things website. Here's the payoff:

Thus my optimism, encouraged by my experience on the Great Plains. Most of us do not want to live in the political equivalent of a housing project administered by remote bureaucrats. Nor do we want to live in the political equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange where every dimension of civic life has a selling price. And because we don’t, if we are reasonably vigilant and energetic, odds are we won’t.

The structure of 1 Corinthians 8-10

Whilst preaching on 1 Corinthians 8, I had occasion to comment on the unusual way in which the Apostle Paul deals with the sin of idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8-10. I wrote on the implications of his argument's structure in the October 2002 issue of New Horizons in an essay titled "On Charity."

Michael Erard's Pledge to his Readers

I first came across this essay when it was read on the "World in Words" podcast, and since have been trying to figure out why it's so funny. Of course, the notion of growing and transporting words and figures of speech is intrinsically ridiculous, and hence amusing. More substantively, though, Erard here takes a typical bit of locavore/environmentalist doggerel and, by substituting nonsense for all its valid points, exposes the arrogance and self-congratulation so typical of the genre.

In this way, it's a model bit of satire: funny, subtle, and ultimately substantive.

Theses on preaching: For even if he be evil and a sinner

"If?"

I have so had it with all the puritan-reading hi-falutin' the-pastoral-ministry-is-a-high-calling-therefore-pastors-must-always-be-on-some-kind-of-spiritual-high types. Thank God for the Second Helvetic Confession, particularly the paragraph in chapter one which says, "Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed...: and that now the Word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister that preaches; for even if he be evil and a sinner, nevertheless the Word of God remains still true and good."

Not "if." I be evil and a sinner. Nonetheless, the Spirit of God makes my preaching of the Word an efficacious means of convincing and converting sinners. If my confidence in my work rested on my own personal piety, I'd have none. Since it rests not on me at all, but on the Spirit himself, it is boundless.

Not personal charisma. Not profound eloquence. Not exciting schemes for saving western civilization. The Holy Spirit. The reformed, not the pentecostalists or the other enthusiasts, are the genuinely Spiritual.

On the Air

To all you East Coast sophisticates: the cowtown isn't Denver, it's Greeley, way up north from here. When the wind is just right, you can smell Greeley, and believe me, you don't want to. Greeley's saving grace is the University of Northern Colorado, or, more specifically, its radio station, KUNC. It's notable for its offering of "eclectic music:" classical, jazz, pop, and treacly folk which appears to be straight out of the free-to-be-you-and-me 70s. Despite the last, it beats the snot out of most of the FM offerings in Denver, so that's what I turn to when the new's not on and I'm not in the mood for jazz. (For the record, Denver does have one of the objectively best jazz stations in these United States, KUVO. But I digress.)

And so it was that one Wednesday morning I heard "On the Air" by Girlyman. An instantaneous 5 stars in my iTunes. The extended metaphor is an aging actor looking back on the early part of his career as an actor in a TV comedy in the 1950s, a show from which he wanted to break out for bigger things, but now realizes was really as good as his life ever got. At first, I thought it was (like all pop songs) about romantic regret, but upon obsessive relistening, realized is a metaphor for life itself, for our insistent refusal to be satisfied with the good we have because we've deluded ourselves into thinking there's something better. Maybe there is, but often there's not. Rock music often keeps us from seeing this; who'd have thought pop could bring everything into focus?

Girlyman's label, Daemon Records, will let you download this pop masterpiece here. Do so. Immediately. Girlyman may never create anything this astounding again, but they can go to their graves knowing they did it once.

Not a bad way to die.