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Archive | August, 2012

The Silence of God | Helmut Thielicke

By on August 27, 2012 in Book Reviews, Spiritual Formation 0

Pastors always have difficult situations to address—the death of a child, a natural disaster, or an incurable illness. There are times when the situation is so central to the life of the congregation that the pastor must address it from the pulpit. The difficulty here is perspective. The pastor, often in the middle of the situation, must rise beyond the situation and speak to the messiness of life from a divine perspective. It’s not easy to do. It’s almost impossible to do well.

Put yourself in the shoes of Helmut Thielicke during the Second World War. In light of the bombings, mass burials, and infiltration of demonic philosophy, he preached. In the preface to these sermons he admits that sermons at this time “have to be expressed before distracted people whose eyes still reflect the glare of the last air-raid and who thus have very accurate scales by which to assess the message” (ix).

Fortunately, you don’t have to live through the horrors of war to recognize that Thielicke’s words are solid truth. These messages are hard, always avoiding false hope while pointing the listener to the true light.

If you’ve read Thielicke before, you’ll recognize the way he transforms perceptive observations into a pithy phrase:

If the last hour belongs to us, we do not need to fear the next minute. (“I Am Not Alone with My Anxiety” 9)

Jesus is the one place in the world where we need not restrain our sorrows because He already knows them all. (“The Great Mercy” 36)

We cannot sink so low that God is not lower. (“The Message of Redeeming Light” 63)

Golgotha means pain in God. (“The Final Dereliction” 70)

The trouble is that we speak far too much about God in the third person. (“The Final Dereliction” 75)

When you take a minute to reflect on Thielicke’s pastoral setting, you can’t help but thank God that he still speaks to us through his servants in our struggles.

Loving What God Loves | William F. Orr & James A Walter

By on August 24, 2012 in Weekend Wisdom 0

When one loves God, all things are permissible; but when one loves God, one loves what He loves. This means love for all others, for they are loved by God; and conduct will be regulated by this love.”

—William F. Orr & James A. Walter, I Corinthians, 202 in Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians, 181.

The Process Perspective | John B. Cobb, Jr.

By on August 20, 2012 in Book Reviews, Theology 0

I’ve got to give them credit. Bo Sanders and Tripp Fuller over at Homebrewed Christianity have got me thinking about process theology. For a long time, all I knew about process theology came from one class in Bible College where I learned how mistaken Alfred North Whitehead was. After listening to a number of Homebrewed podcasts, I’ve started to think that the process people bring something valuable to the theological table. Thus, I’ve started to read Cobb, process theology’s chief modern evangelist.

This first of two volumes about The Process Perspective uses a question-and-answer format to engage the various implications of process theology, categorized roughly in five sections:

  1. God
  2. Christ
  3. The Church and the Bible
  4. Humankind
  5. Ethics and Society

These questions were curated by Jeanyne B. Slettom from processandfaith.org, a website where Cobb responds to a variety of questions.

While I’m no process theologian (or open theist, for that matter), I thought I’d point out a few areas highlighted in this book where other believers can learn from the process perspective:

  1. The decisions we make affect God. This affirmation from the process camp should be taken seriously be all theologians—at least if you’re going to take the OT language of divine repentance seriously.
  2. The church should accept truth and wisdom wherever they are found. If you believe that all truth is rooted in God, then this is an important perspective.
  3. “In every moment, we are being directed, called, or lured by God to that self-actualization that is best for that moment and also for future occasions in our own personal life and in the lives of other creatures, human and nonhuman. … What we need, of course, is to develop a habit of openness to God and readiness to respond even when this is somewhat costly in relation to our other appetites and desires” (100). I can’t think of a better description of what pentecostal spirituality should aim towards!
  4. When it comes to prayer, every event is connected to other events. We can not manipulate God by some strange magic into rewriting these events, naively viewing them in isolation from the whole.
  5. Patriotism is idolatry when we obey our government, “right or wrong.”

You don’t have to be a process thinker to benefit from a thoughtful reading of Cobb’s Process Perspective.

This God is Different | Thomas Cahill

By on August 17, 2012 in Weekend Wisdom 0

This God [of Abraham] is the initiator: he encounters them; they do not encounter him. He begins the dialogue, and he will see it through. This God is profoundly different from them, not their projection or their pet, not the usual mythological creature whose intentions can be read in auguries or who can be controlled by human rituals. This God gives and takes beyond human reasoning or justification. Because his motives are not interpretable and his thoughts and actions are not foreseeable, anything—and everything—is possible.

—Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, 93.

Consider Her Ways and Others | John Wyndham

By on August 13, 2012 in Book Reviews, Science Fiction 0

If your only experience with Wyndham was being forced to read The Crysalids in high school, it’s time to pay this science fiction master another visit. In addition to rereading all of his major books (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids, The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, and The Midwich Cukoos), I’ve been reading through his lesser known forays such as Chocky, The Outward Urge and Web. I recently continued this journey with his collection of short stories entitled,Consider Her Ways and Others.

As with most collections, there are highlights and lowlights. The novella, “Consider Her Ways” is the shining light here. It’s a disorienting horror story about the future of men and women with a distinctive Wyndham twist at the end. Many of the stories in this collection deal with time travel, Wyndham’s bread and butter, in some form.

Wyndham falls short when he stretches too far from his base such as “Oh, Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty?”, a cultural satire where prospective movie starlets are groomed and modified to the point where they are all indiscernible.

The final story, “A Long Spoon,” was a clever surprise. It’s quite a twist on the old idea of selling your soul!

These stories are well worth reading.

Ecclesiastes | Peter Enns

By on August 6, 2012 in Book Reviews, Theology 0

Death makes life absurd.

This is the message of Ecclesiastes in four words. Enns does a great job clarifying and emphasizing this point in his Two Horizons commentary.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a sandwich:

  1. Frame Narrator (1:1-11)
  2. Qohelet (preacher) (1:12-12:7)
  3. Frame Narrator (12:8-14)

The Frame Narrator begins by summarizing the Qohelet’s words (Life is absurd). Next, the Qohelet himself, assuming a royal persona, reaffirms the declaration that life is absurd since death levels the playing field.

The message of Ecclesiastes can be clarified when we look at the phrase, “the end of man,” repeated four times:

  1. The end of man is to be happy and do good while he lives (3:13)
  2. The end of man is to enjoy the prosperity God gives (5:19)
  3. The end of man is to die (7:2)

In the end, the Frame Narrator picks up on this key phrase and gently reminds the reader:

  • The end of man is to fear God and to keep his commandments (12:13)

The Narrator doesn’t deny or undermine the observations of the Qohelet. Instead, he agrees. Sure, live is absurd and death robs life of its meaning. In light of this, what can we do but serve God?

Enns’ commentary is a paragraph by paragraph reading of the text. This style of commentary makes it easy for the important themes to shine through. It also helps to guard against false isolated readings. Perhaps the greatest example of a wrongheaded reading of Ecclesiastes is the “Time” meditation in chapter 3. The Byrds transformed a statement of hopelessness into zen-like tranquility. The Qohelet was far more frustrated than Pete Seeger was at life!

The commentary proper is only half of the book. After a thorough reading of the text, Enns reflects on in in the following ways:

  1. Theological Horizons of Ecclesiastes: Here Enns reflects on whether or not Ecclesiastes is Wisdom literature since the Qohelet has some negative things to say about wisdom itself. He also emphasizes the Qohelet’s negative view of God as well as how death makes life meaningless. “Ecclesiastes is a brutally honest book, and we will not profit from it if we tame it according to another standard, be it one gleaned from elsewhere in Scripture or of our own devising” (135).
  2. The Contribution of Ecclesiastes to Biblical Theology: Here Enns clarifies the relationship between Ecclesiastes and Job, Psalms, and Proverbs. Expanding outward from there, he reflects on Ecclesiastes as Second Temple theology—what if God himself is the problem? As the horizon broadens to the New Testament, Enns examines how Jesus embodies the one abandoned by God. The Qohelet’s words “give believers a glimpse—only a glimpse—of the hopelessness and despair of Christ’s passion” (171). Jesus also embodies the figure of wisdom himself.
  3. The Significance of Ecclesiastes for Theology and Praxis Today: Enns concludes with two ways that Ecclesiastes can influence theology and life today. The first concerns our understanding of the nature of Scripture. Ecclesiastes proves that contrary voices are welcomed by God. Enns evokes Brueggemann’s “countertestimony” to describe Ecclesiastes’ contribution. This welcoming of contrary voices is important for us to understand today. “If our model of Scripture is defined by too restrictive articulations of divine authority, infallibility, or even polyphony, we may run afoul of the contrastive power of books like Ecclesiastes” (198). The second contribution Ecclesiastes has to offer us is a renewed emphasis on honesty in the faith journey. If nothing else, the Qohelet proves that God honours honesty over propriety!

I’ve read Longman and Fox on Ecclesiastes. While they both have deep philosophical and linguistic insight, I found Enns commentary more helpful in understanding the overall force of the book. Enns allows the Qohelet to speak in all his quasi-blasphemous anger and frustration without trying to force him into a modern theological position. If you want one book to help understand the book of Ecclesiastes, this is it.

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