Books read September 2017

1. The Givenness Of Things by Marilynne Robinson 

I have enjoyed her novels and was pleased to find a writer not only identifying as Christian but Calvinist too. So I was keen to get to grips with some of her non-fiction. If her novels are slow moving, with this book the reader needs to go slow to take it all in and a dictionary is advisable too. 
   Christian, very much so but from a mail-line Congregational denomination. The basics of trinitarian orthodoxy and Christology are strongly presented as is a critique of anything reductionist or materialistic. The Enlightenment was not enlightened enough -not by the Light of the World. Universalism seems to be denied yet I detect hints of affirmation in a common fatherhood of God for all. Substitutionary propitiatory atonement is described and rejected. I am unsure about her views on sin, especially original sin. 
  Before I look at her Calvinism I will printout one blaring error on p 153 where she talks of a Bible written in 1892 with RSV text. IIRC the RSV did not appear until later century. The text should be Revised Version not RSV. I am not clever enough to find any other mistakes and can only marvel at her literary scholarship. It is her profession as a Shakespearean scholar. Was intrigued to learn the Calvin was the most influential author in England at the time of the Bard.
   But her Calvinism. She proclaims it all the time but does not define it in so many words. It is nothing it seems to do with the normal five point configuration. Only election in the form of predestination is given in depth treatment, and that really on predestination not election. She ofter alludes to or quotes Calvin but for a serious academic where are the references? I see there are some given in the end notes but they do not appear complete and footnotes would be more helpful. The same applies to Locke. Also, why no index? 
   On her politics, that is much easier to pin down. She is way left of centre IMO. Marriage equality is good. Concealed carry is cowardice. She really rails against US gun law, or lack of it. She laments the gravitation of conservative Christians to right wing politics. Having read Schaeffer on ugly orthodoxy I can have some sympathy with her but FAS was more concerned with ugly theological orthodoxy than with right of centre politics. So she is a curates egg of both theology and politics. But a very stimulating read.

2.  The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000 (Christianity and Society in the Modern World) by Callum G. Brown 

Another curate's egg. The description of Christian Britain up to the sixties is most revealing. Especially encouraging is to read of Chalmers as the pioneer of evangelism by pastoral visitation starting in early 19th century Glasgow and the birth of home missions. There is perhaps an unbalanced emphasis on evangelical conformity but one does learn a lot about a very different world of Christian culture. The later part of where we have gone downhill is not so gripping nor edifying. I do not see enough emphasis on liberal theology nor the growth of black churches and charismatics nor Christian lobby groups.

3. Samuel Rutherford in Aberdeen by John M Brentnall

I went to Aberdeen for a presbytery meeting and thought I would look to see where Rutherford was exiled in 1636 for writing against the Arminianism of the episcopalian established church. This book is rich on the spirituality of Rutherford in the city but says nothing of the relation of where he stayed to the geography of the modern city. Ones in need of a volume, "Travel with  Samuel Rutherford' as in the Day One series. One can but marvel at the grace of God seen in Rutherford's acceptance of being Christ's prisoner in Christ's palace. Joy triumphing amidst suffering was communicated to his correspondents. One also sees God's providence. Without persecution we would not have had Rutherford's letter s or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Rutherford also was blessed in theological disputations and in witness to local visitors. 

4. Book Of Fire: William Tyndale, Thomas More and the Bloody Birth of the English Bible by Brian Moynahan  (Author)

A remarkable book for it is the only Christian biography I have read which is like a thriller. William Tyndale wrote  ‘the most influential book there has ever been in the history of language, English or any other. - The Adventure of English, Melvyn Bragg quoted in Travel with William Tyndale. This is Bragg on Tyndale's New Testament. I would simply put Tyndale the man as the greatest Englishman ever for his contribution to our Christian culture. I have read other biographies on Tyndale but this one is the most detailed and I learnt many new things such as how Bible smuggling was a profitable big business when the mark up between Antwerp and London was 500%. A thriller for a spiritual thrill too.

5. Wonders of Grace by Converts during Spurgeon's early years (Author), Hannah Wyncoll (Editor)

This book gives testimonies of some of the 15,000 people recorded as converts under Spurgeon's London pastorate of 38 years. That is more than a convert each day added to his church. Revival seems the appropriate word. Some of the testimonies are wonderful works of grace rescuing hardened sinners who'd rejected the truth before. Among them wife beater and prostitutes with drunkards too many to count. Once a week elders examined enquirers to ascertain their genuineness before they were referred to the pastor or for baptism and membership. I was surprised to see these were elders not deacons assisting the pastor. I do though see that some testifying may have been regenerate before but now were awakened to a desire for baptism by immersion. So some of the converts are to becoming Baptist not new birth alone but even so it is a remarkable number and shows Spurgeon like Wesley was not only a great preacher but an organiser. I had enquired before as to whether the Metropolitan Tabernacle was a local church not a mere preaching centre as I had found Westminster Chapel. I conclude that the greatest preacher of the 19th century served better pastorally than did the 20th century top London preacher.

6. Travel with William Tyndale: England's Greatest Bible Translator (Day One Travel Guides) by Brian H. Edwards (Author)

My second reading of this as I was preparing a talk on Tyndale. My previous review said, 'Tyndale did more than anyone to influence our language for his Bible translation was to influence all subsequent translations. He suffered exile and death for his faith. Here are detailed his history and faith in the context of the Reformation. As much a history as a travel guide.' See Book of Fire for a more detailed biography.

7. Paper Money by Ken Follett
A gripping fast moving page turner. Quite a lot of characters to remember as one reads. As is his usual way the author puts in sexual titillation to sell his books. The ending I found to be a total surprise. On the way I do think the story stretches coincidence beyond credulity.

8. IPC Book of Liturgy - BCO Editorial Committee

I have been a member of this church since its start in England in 1969 and was installed as an elder 1983. Definitely the book we have been waiting for. I grew up Methodist with an antipathy to liturgy which was regarded as read prayers of the C of E, done by ministers lacking the spirituality for extempore prayers. One matures and hopefully grows wiser. This book will be a blessing in private devotion as well as public worship. One omission spotted is in infant baptism. Why have Schaeffer's questions on not grumbling if your child predeceases you or is called to serve in a far way place not been included? Thankfully this liturgy is not prescriptive. Spiral binding would have been helpful.

9. How Do Preaching and Corporate Prayer Work Together? (Cultivating Biblical Godliness) by Ryan M. McGraw by Ryan M. McGraw  (Author)

An excellent brief booklet emphasising the importance of expository preaching to build the church and the necessity of corporate prayer to empower that preaching. God uses means. His means of grace include the word preached and the spirit working in answer to corporate prayer. read it and benefit.

10. Fine Gold from Yorkshire by Faith Cook  (Author)

An excellent collection of biographical sketches all of the good ranging from the great, Wilberforce, to the unknown, a servant girl so loved as to be buried wither employer. I learnt someone names and was encouraged in faith and curiosity about some folk. In contrast to the foreword, some of us have no lie for Yorkshire terriers, snappy little wretches.

11. War and Faith by Don Stephens (Author)

An excellent collection of biographies of people in WW2 on both sides. Courage, bravery and faith in stories which give the readers encouragement and thrills. Ordinary people who were heroes.

12. One Good Owner: God is in the Driving Seat by Murdo Murchison (Author)

A man facing death in months writes a great book of Christian testimony. This is a very honest boson the experience of life instantly changed and cut short, a death sentence given, some reprieve but no easy ride. Miracles may be hoped for but even hoped for relief may not come. A story to encourage and challenge faith.

13. The Clash Of Civilizations: And The Remaking Of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington  (Author)

Written over twenty years ago  this remains an important analysis of the contemporary world though an up to date edition would be welcome. It is a tour de force through recent history. Civilisations have clashed through history and they clash now. The West versus the rest, in particular the Islamic rest is seen as the present clash.This was written before 9/11 but is most prescient. The big question is whether a West in decline can really survive far into the future as the dominant world civilisation. It is a great help in understanding how others see us.

14. Promise and Deliverance - Volume III - Christ's Ministry and Death by S. G. De Graaf (Author)

One of a select number of books I have read more than once. The theme of these volumes is the covenant fulfilled in Christ. Written to instruct Sunday Schoolteachers they are a mine of good commentary. This continues the outstanding insights earlier volumes.

H. L. MENCKEN'S OBITUARY OF MACHEN 1937

A great tribute from a non-christian.

The Rev. J. Gresham Machen, D. D., who died out in North Dakota on New Year's Day, got, on the whole, a bad press while he lived, and even his obituaries did much less than justice to him. To newspaper reporters, as to other antinomians, a combat between Christians over a matter of dogma is essentially a comic affair, and in consequence Dr. Machen's heroic struggles to save Calvinism in the Republic were usually depicted in ribald, or, at all events, in somewhat skeptical terms. The generality of readers, I suppose, gathered thereby the notion that he was simply another Fundamentalist on the order of William Jennings Bryan and the simian faithful of Appalachia. But he was actually a man of great learning, and, what is more, of sharp intelligence.

What caused him to quit the Princeton Theological Seminary and found a seminary of his own was his complete inability, as a theologian, to square the disingenuous evasions of Modernism with the fundamentals of Christian doctrine. He saw clearly that the only effects that could follow diluting and polluting Christianity in the Modernist manner would be its complete abandonment and ruin. Either it was true or it was not true. If, as he believed, it was true, then there could be no compromise with persons who sought to whittle away its essential postulates, however respectable their motives.

Thus he fell out with the reformers who have been trying, in late years, to convert the Presbyterian Church into a kind of literary and social club, devoted vaguely to good works. Most of the other Protestant churches have gone the same way, but Dr. Machen's attention, as a Presbyterian, was naturally concentrated upon his own connection. His one and only purpose was to hold it [the Church] resolutely to what he conceived to be the true faith. When that enterprise met with opposition he fought vigorously, and though he lost in the end and was forced out of Princeton it must be manifest that he marched off to Philadelphia with all the honors of war.

My interest in Dr. Machen while he lived, though it was large, was not personal, for I never had the honor of meeting him. Moreover, the doctrine that he preached seemed to me, and still seems to me, to be excessively dubious. I stand much more chance of being converted to spiritualism, to Christian Science or even to the New Deal than to Calvinism, which occupies a place, in my cabinet of private horrors, but little removed from that of cannibalism. But Dr. Machen had the same clear right to believe in it that I have to disbelieve in it, and though I could not yield to his reasoning I could at least admire, and did greatly admire, his remarkable clarity and cogency as an apologist, allowing him his primary assumptions.

These assumptions were also made, at least in theory, by his opponents, and thereby he had them by the ear. Claiming to be Christians as he was, and of the Calvinish persuasion, they endeavored fatuously to get rid of all the inescapable implications of their position. On the one hand they sought to retain membership in the fellowship of the faithful, but on the other hand they presumed to repeal and reenact with amendments the body of doctrine on which that fellowship rested. In particular, they essayed to overhaul the scriptural authority which lay at the bottom of the whole matter, retaining what coincided with their private notions and rejecting whatever upset them.

Upon this contumacy Dr. Machen fell with loud shouts of alarm. He denied absolutely that anyone had a right to revise and sophisticate Holy Writ. Either it was the Word of God or it was not the Word of God, and if it was, then it was equally authoritative in all its details, and had to be accepted or rejected as a whole. Anyone was free to reject it, but no one was free to mutilate it or to read things into it that were not there. Thus the issue with the Modernists was clearly joined, and Dr. Machen argued them quite out of court, and sent them scurrying back to their literary and sociological Kaffeeklatsche. His operations, to be sure, did not prove that Holy Writ was infallible either as history or as theology, but they at least disposed of those who proposed to read it as they might read a newspaper, believing what they chose and rejecting what they chose.
In his own position there was never the least shadow of inconsistency. When the Prohibition imbecility fell upon the country, and a multitude of theological quacks, including not a few eminent Presbyterians, sought to read support for it into the New Testament, he attacked them with great vigor, and routed them easily. He not only proved that there was nothing in the teachings of Jesus to support so monstrous a folly; he proved abundantly that the known teachings of Jesus were unalterably against it. And having set forth that proof, he refused, as a convinced and honest Christian, to have anything to do with the dry jehad.

This rebellion against a craze that now seems so incredible and so far away was not the chief cause of his break with his ecclesiastical superiors, but it was probably responsible for a large part of their extraordinary dudgeon against him. The Presbyterian Church, like the other evangelical churches, was taken for a dizzy ride by Prohibition. Led into the heresy by fanatics of low mental visibility, it presently found itself cheek by jowl with all sorts of criminals, and fast losing the respect of sensible people. Its bigwigs thus became extremely jumpy on the subject, and resented bitterly every exposure of their lamentable folly.

The fantastic William Jennings Bryan, in his day the country's most distinguished Presbyterian layman, was against Dr. Machen on the issue of Prohibition but with him on the issue of Modernism. But Bryan's support, of course, was of little value or consolation to so intelligent a man. Bryan was a Fundamentalist of the Tennessee or barnyard school. His theological ideas were those of a somewhat backward child of 8, and his defense of Holy Writ at Dayton during the Scopes trial was so ignorant and stupid that it must have given Dr. Machen a great deal of pain. Dr. Machen himself was to Bryan as the Matterhorn is to a wart. His Biblical studies had been wide and deep, and he was familiar with the almost interminable literature of the subject. Moreover, he was an adept theologian, and had a wealth of professional knowledge to support his ideas. Bryan could only bawl.

It is my belief, as a friendly neutral in all such high and ghostly matters, that the body of doctrine known as Modernism is completely incompatible, not only with anything rationally describable as Christianity, but also with anything deserving to pass as religion in general. Religion, if it is to retain any genuine significance, can never be reduced to a series of sweet attitudes, possible to anyone not actually in jail for felony. It is, on the contrary, a corpus of powerful and profound convictions, many of them not open to logical analysis. Its inherent improbabilities are not sources of weakness to it, but of strength. It is potent in a man in proportion as he is willing to reject all overt evidences, and accept its fundamental postulates, however unprovable they may be by secular means, as massive and incontrovertible facts.

These postulates, at least in the Western world, have been challenged in recent years on many grounds, and in consequence there has been a considerable decline in religious belief. There was a time, two or three centuries ago, when the overwhelming majority of educated men were believers, but that is apparently true no longer. Indeed, it is my impression that at least two-thirds of them are now frank skeptics. But it is one thing to reject religion altogether, and quite another thing to try to save it by pumping out of it all its essential substance, leaving it in the equivocal position of a sort of pseudo-science, comparable to graphology, "education," or osteopathy.

That, it seems to me, is what the Modernists have done, no doubt with the best intentions in the world. They have tried to get rid of all the logical difficulties of religion, and yet preserve a generally pious cast of mind. It is a vain enterprise. What they have left, once they have achieved their imprudent scavenging, is hardly more than a row of hollow platitudes, as empty as [of] psychological force and effect as so many nursery rhymes. They may be good people and they may even be contented and happy, but they are no more religious than Dr. Einstein. Religion is something else again--in Henrik Ibsen's phrase, something far more deep-down-diving and mudupbringing, Dr. Machen tried to impress that obvious fact upon his fellow adherents of the Geneva Mohammed. He failed--but he was undoubtedly right.

[H.L. Mencken's eulogy for Dr. J. Gresham Machen originally appeared in The Baltimore Evening Sun on January 18, 1937, second section, page 15.]

IM - I R K Paisley

I am a five point Calvinist and all the points are sharp! -- Ian Paisley

There's no doubt about it, the Jesuits in England are flying a kite testing the temperature of the water. - I R K Paisley quoted in Christians in Ulster. E Gallagher p 22

The Sovereignty of God and Human Responsibility

Synod Statement of the International Presbyterian Church 7.11.1981
The Sovereignty of God and Human Responsibility

1. We believe that the existence and character of the infinite and personal God is the only basis for
affirming human responsibility.

2. We reject any statement of the doctrine of God's sovereignty which makes it seem that an emphasis
on the real significance of man's choice is a denial of God's sovereignty or vice versa.

3. We believe that the difficulty of this question is one which is true of all of our knowledge.
For example, in science, even though our understanding increases with increased information,
we will never comprehend the infinite. Similarly in thinking about God and man we have simply
to affirm that man is fully responsible and that God is fully sovereign.

4. We reject all statements that affirm or imply that God is the author of evil, or wills human sin,
or that history is the unrolling of a divine determinism.

The Five Points of Calvinism and Arminianism

The following is a comparison of the five points of Calvinism and the five points of Arminianism arising out
of the Dutch Remonstrance controversy. The "Five Points" of Calvinism can be easily remembered by the acronym
TULIP. Admittedly, this discussion favours the Calvinist side. This material originally appeared in "Romans:
An Interpretative Outline (pp. 144-147), by David N. Steele and Curtis C. Thomas.
Quoted from Loraine Boettner's "The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination." Permission to reproduce granted in
the book.

Cut and paste did not space this well. so click on the title to see the article on http://www.christiansquoting.org.uk/page6.html#The%20Five%20Points%20of%20Calvinism%20and%20Arminianism