First, this:

It is within the marriage covenant that our hearts deepest desires find their rest and peace: “At last,” says Adam, and when we reach that state, so too can we. It is our natural home, our resting place. And as poet T.S. Eliot says, “The end is where we start from.” If we are to make it safely home, we must know where we’re going. We must have a positive vision for marriage. Kass’s question-to marry or not to marry-demands an answer from us if we are to successfully navigate the rest of our romantic lives.

Then, this: 

While the absence of shame hints at the freedom Adam and Eve enjoyed, their ‘nakedness’ suggests that their relationship is oriented around intimacy. The idea of ‘nakedness’ implies that their entire person, body and soul, is open to the other’s exploration. But here again their experience is necessarily different than our own: there is no indication that they had to self-consciously uncover themselves. Instead, in their nakedness they seem delightfully unaware of their own selves. Upon seeing her, Adam’s first impulse is not to think of himself or his own state, but to praise Eve. Their intimacy is entirely unforced and natural.

The experience of intimacy, then, is not built on “self-revelation.” The phrase is too active for what Scripture communicates about their experience. Rather, it is built on the freedom to be themselves without fear of rejection or isolation. The activity comes not from their self-revelation, but from their inquiry into the garden and into each other. They become self-conscious only through their confrontation with the other and the world around them.

As the Preacher sayeth, of the making of many books and the shameless self-promotion that accompanies them, there is no end.  You can read all my thoughts on the topic here.

“Our culture does not suffer from the overabundance of leisure but, rather, its scarcity.”

Leisure...?

Thus begins Mathew Anger’s nice review of Joseph Pieper’s modern classic, Leisure: The Basis of Culture.

“Drawing on the Western sages, both pagan and Christian, Pieper is careful to make a clear distinction between leisure and idleness. The former refers to the contemplative side of man; the ability to passively receive knowledge and wisdom. This same sort of passivity is at work when we accept God’s grace.”

How many times in the last week has a friend (or have you?) complained of being “too busy”? If Pieper is right, this is not the result of too much activity, but not enough real rest.

“Cut off from the worship of the divine,” says Pieper, “leisure becomes laziness and work inhuman.”

Not only a lack of real rest, but an overabundance of irrational (read: non-teleological) business leaves modern Westerners with the infamous and ubiquitous undifferentied blah… The ‘empty self’ that is so quick to recognize that it feels crazy, but so reticent to conclude that its conditions actually are just that: insane.

Restoring the balance of the psyche necessarily involves (before, during, and after) the restoration of the context in which the self exists, ecological, aesthetic (go clean your room!), societal (you create your friendships and then your friends create you), occupational (read Ms Sayers’ essay “Why Work?”).

The idea of the Sabbath, “and on the seventh day the Lord rested,” is an example of how the Church extended the freedom from servile labor to the entire community. What had hitherto been the prerogative of a few free men in a slave-based society eventually became the privilege of all. Unfortunately, it is a privilege that has been severely undermined by a new paganism, which is far less respectful of reflection and contemplation than many pre-Christian societies.

Christianity, which is inherently democratic in elevating all people (especially the childlike) to self-responsibility, divine favor, and eternal glory, has always understood leisure, and has bestowed the correct understanding on the masses.

Historically or personally, when man in his perennial pride abandons the simple humility of trust in our Lord Jesus, he finds himself not merely back in the darkness of Persian pantheism or Greek atheism, but inexorably on to the deeper deadliness and red-fire torment of modern Vedanta self-worship or German Supermanism.

In contrast, Christian faith (and consequently Christian leisure)

means keeping inane distractions to a reasonable minimum and substituting for them things like reading, creative activities and, most of all, prayer.

In case you missed it, Church Relevance released their list of the top 60 Christian blogs.  Mere-O did not make the list (alas), but friends Justin Taylor, Joe Carter, and the guys over at Think Christian did (of course!).

Pyromaniacs made the list too, which prompted this from contributor Frank Turk:

Then last year, Crossway published a book “by John Mark Reynolds, Roger Overton, Hugh Hewitt, and Matthew Lee Anderson” called The New Media Frontier which I got from them for the sake of review, and I have politely passed over this book — because it is transparently an attempt by Hewitt et al. to repackage his earlier work. And I like Crossway — but this book is both boring and uninformative, especially in light of Hewitt’s past performance on this topic.

And I bring it up because, in spite of Hewitt’s promotion of the blogger he sort of headlines who are the co-authors of this book (Joe Carter excepted, btw — Joe is an interesting blogger and an extraordinarily gracious guy), these characters and their view of blogging underperforms.

Alas, we can’t win them all.  Don’t say we don’t link to our critics, though.

While Frank’s point that the people who edited the book (I am not one of them–simply a lowly contributor who somehow ended up on Amazon’s list of co-authors when you search for it) are not on the list of the top 60 blogs, two authors in the book did make the list (David Wayne and Mark Roberts).  Additionally, the “how to” chapters were written by Joe, while many of the rest of the chapters either set the intellectual context for Christian engagement of new media or help Christians learn how to blog well within their respective niches (pastors, youth leaders, apologetics, academics, etc).  Not really the sort of topics that would land someone on the list of top 60 blogs, or that being on the list of top 60 blogs automatically qualifies one to write about.

But lurking within my response is the old argument regarding the relevance of statistics.  Inevitably, smaller guys like me spurn statistics as useless to justify our own mediocre (online) existence our correspondingly miniature (though quite thoughtful!) audiences, which allows us to cultivate a superficial purity of soul since we have managed to keep ourselves free from the pursuit of “a following.” 

Whatever.  I’m just disappointed I didn’t make the list.  Maybe next year.

According to John Calvin, the knowledge of God “is that by which we not only conceive that there is a God but also grasp what befits us and is proper to his glory, in fine, what is to our advantage to know of Him.”  

Calvin’s definition is masterful.  Allow me to tease out two sides to it:

The knowledge of God is that by which we grasp “what befits us.”   Calvin is perfectly clear that there are limits on our pursuits of knowledge.  Speculation, wherein we reach too highly, leads to idolatry, for we seek to know that which is no longer fitting for us to know.  For Calvin, the knowledge of God carries within it limitations.  We do not know God as he is in himself, but only as he manifests Himself.

The knowledge of God is that by which we grasp “what is proper to his glory, in fine, what is to our advantage to know of Him.”   Here we see the second aspect to the knowledge of God.  For humans, to know God is to know that He is good.  Calvin writes in the next paragraph, “It will not suffice simply to hold that there is One whom all ought to honor and adore, unless we are also persuaded that he is the fountain of every good, and that we must seek nothing elsewhere than in Him.”  

Calvin does not reach the knowledge of God as summum bonum–the medieval characterization of God as “supreme good”–through a methodological abstraction.   I am tempted to say that Calvin is frontloading his theology here;  he is building in a doctrine of God that necessarily has methodological implications.   

Regardless, it is clear that Calvin thinks that the God who we know is the God who is for us.  It is tempting to mimic Barth here:  the God we know is the God for us.  He is a God whose being is good.  But the God we know is the God for us.  Not only is he good–he is good in ways that that specifically benefit us, and if we do not see him as such, we do not see him at all.

It’s hard to disagree with Carl Trueman on this point:    

Second, I am also struck by how Christian talk of cultural engagement has coincided with a watering-down of Christian standards of behavior and, ironically, thought.  I have lost count of how many times I have been told in recent years that Christians should be able to watch any movie, providing they do so with a critical, Christian eye.  There are several obvious problems with that kind of statement.  For a start, such a categorical, sweeping statement has little, if any, scriptural or exegetical foundation and indeed seems not to take any account of texts such as Mt. 5: 27-30, Eph. 5: 1-3, Phil. 4: 8, etc.   Second, even those making the case rarely mean exactly what they say: ask them if Christians can therefore watch child pornography, and none that I have spoken to have been prepared to go that far, except in the necessary cases of those professionally involved in the detection and prosecution of paedophile crime.  No, Christians shouldn’t watch child porn, they’ll say; but the problem, of course, is that definitions of what is and is not pornography, even child pornography, are changing all the time and are driven, by and large, by the wider culture which increasingly mainstreams such material.  Witness the new Kate Winslet movie, involving a sex scene between her character and a fifteen year old boy.  Specious distinctions involving the actual age of the actor notwithstanding, it is arguably child pornography.   Frankly, there are films rated PG-13 today which my grandparents would have considered as porn.  Is the standard of what is and is not obscene set by biblical truth or by cultural accommodation?  Talk of `Christians can watch anything as long as they do it critically’ is as daft, unbiblical, soft-headed, ill-thought-out, and confused  as anything one is likely to come across.  In fact, I have a suspicion that for some it might simply function as a rationalization for watching whatever they like and not having to feel guilty about it, the Christian voyeur’s equivalent of the `I only do screen nudity and sex when the script demands it’ excuse of so many `serious’ actresses whose bank balances have been boosted by the occasional flash of on-screen flesh.

Thankfully, my piece had gone to the printer–and no, there is no end to my shameless self-promotion– before Trueman had posted this, as we touch on a few of the same themes.  One of the points that Trueman hits on is that the emphasis on culture among evangelicals is grounded in a desire to “hyper-spiritualize” everything.  He writes:  

Third, I am convinced that much culture talk is driven by the need to hyper-spiritualise everything.  Of course, I believe everything should be done to the glory of God; but that doesn’t mean I believe we need a Christian theory of movies any more than we need a Christian theory of cake baking, homebrewing, or street sweeping.  When I arrive home at night, I sometimes just want to sit down, have a drink, and relax while listening to a piece of music or watching a movie or reading a good book.  Pascal was right when he saw that such entertainment was perfectly legitimate in and of itself, when it helped one recover from the drudge and dreariness of the daily grind; when such things become an obsession, an idol, then, of course, they become a problem; but there was no need to specifically Christianise them at a theoretical or epistemological level.  Strange to tell, the contemporary evangelical urge to Christianise everything is in itself arguably a form of the very pietism it seeks to reject, where only specifically and consciously Christian things have any legitimate place.  Pietism has simply been broadened, not abolished.

Trueman is right to see the (re)new(ed) emphasis on culture as an expansion of pietism (though I might instead characterize it as a reintroduction of the idea of ‘Christendom’).  Ironically, it is the lack of a robust natural theology and doctrine of creation that inhibits evangelicals from simply enjoying artworks or movies or culture without any other agenda or end.  If we grant the point that evangelicals have been held captive by their political idols, it would be because their doctrine of creation is amiss, which prompts them to put too much emphasis–or not enough–on anything touching the created realm.  That new evangelicals now do so with culture instead of politics does not mean they have solved the problem–they’ve simply transferred their allegiances to a different idol.

But then, I’ve said this all elsewhere.  (At some point my sense of modesty and limitations will kick in, but not yet!)

This past week, The City published my article, “The New Evangelical Scandal,” which they had graciously allowed me to write.  The piece has prompted a number of responses, primarily at InternetMonk, who graciously called it a “must read.”  And then there’s “Wenatchee the Hatchet,” who has been prompted to take his tool to the piece.  Somehow he found enough interesting things to write a 10 post series on the article.  Or rather, he found enough errors and omissions to justify a 10 post skewering of the article (to mix metaphors).    

While I won’t be able to respond to every criticism or clarify every point–I have the sort of job that really only affords me weekends to read and write–I did want to offer a few reflections on the article and its reception.

• In a moment of unintentional irony, InternetMonk originally attributed the article to “Matthew Lee Arnold.”  While Arnold and I share cultural conservatism, I suspect we would have little else in common.
• Who knew that “From whence” would prove so amusing?  I must say, though, that I did not mean to be condescending with it–as readers of this blog know, a bit of a rhetorical flourish here and there is simply my style.  And by “rhetorical flourish” I mean forgotten words from the 18th century. 
• It seems like what I did NOT say is just as important as what I did say.  The article was long enough–too long, I suspect–but apparently did not include everything it should have.  I knew when I was writing it that I would have to leave off very interesting and important questions about evangelicalism, and that such deficiencies would inevitably be pointed out.  If someone would like to commission me to write a book, I’d be more than happy to fill the gaps.
• The definition of “evangelicalism” is always a problem, and many of InternetMonk’s commenters point out my shortcomings in that arena.  I had originally written a footnote (that apparently did not make the cut) identifying my narrow segmentation of evangelicalism:  white, largely college educated evangelicals.  I focused on that simply because that is primarily the segment the news media has focused on, and because that is where many of the shifts are currently transpiring.  Unfortunately, this meant I had to leave aside the very interesting movements among the young Reformed crowds (which has clear overlap with the trends I identified) and the black evangelical community. 
• Not mentioning NT Wright’s redefinition of “apocalyptic” was clearly problematic and something I very much regret.  I would point out, however, that while Wright is careful enough to keep eschatology at the center of his theology, many of those who popularize and adopt his work are not.  As a result, it seems eschatology has taken a muted–though not necessarily absent–role among those who follow him.  
• Many of the commenters seem to suggest that they know what I think about a lot of these issues (dispensationalist eschatology=good!, old evangelicalism=perfect!).  In fact, as readers of this blog know, I have expressed many reservations about evangelicalism in the past, not least of which has been my criticism that evangelicals have implicitly gnostic tendencies.  I too can play the “beat up evangelicals” game.  However, few people seem willing to also defend that which they criticize.  Left Behind is embarrasing.  However, it is an irony that for as lamentable the series is as a work of fiction, evangelicals have been correct in moving eschatology near the center of their theologizing.  They may have gotten some of the details wrong, and those details have consequences, but what I perceive as the young evangelical minimization of eschatology also has negative consequences that I rarely hear young evangelicals talk about.  Would that young evangelicals spend less time criticizing the old guard and spend more time examining the theological specks in their own eye (insert requisite, “And yes, I should do that too!” here). 
• I don’t think of myself as a sociologist.  In fact, I have often criticized the discipline of sociology (especially when it is confused with theology).  I am inclined to think of the essay as a piece of cultural pathology.  My hope was to illuminate some of the deeper ideas and sentiments that I think are undergirding the various trends I identified.  Of course, this necessitates painting in broad strokes.  Not every young evangelical will fit the description.  In fact, the most I had hoped for was that those who read the article would recognize in it trends that they might have seen, even if they had not articulated them. 
• I understand even more Chesterton’s line about the division of labor with respect to writing:  I have written the article and am no longer really interested in reading it.  
• It’s funny to me to be talked about on other people’s blogs, as if I didn’t really exist and couldn’t respond to questions or comments.  It’s also amusing to have one article treated like it is the sum and total of my thoughts on evangelicalism, especially when I have four years of such thoughts written here.  Thanks to those of you who emailed me directly or commented here–I appreciate your feedback enormously, and I do hope you’ll keep reading. 

Rock n’ roll,

Virtual reality, on screen and cardboard diorama,

Refreshing self-deprecation,

80’s retro,

Buster from Arrested Development,

Longing fulfilled, and childhood dreams,

Ironic reversals,

John Foreman singing his God-lovin’ guts out,

The secret solidarity and sudden revelation of friendship…

Just a few of the inspired elements of this stylishly simple Switchfoot music video.

Switchfoot is still unlike any group out there… Quality, varied, emotionally honesty, excellent rock music that doesn’t take itself too seriously, proving, along with Eden Espinosa of Wicked that Evangelical Christians have something that the ‘Culture of Death‘ wants but cannot produce on its own: innocence.

For you Switchfoot fans, visit (or re-visit) this clever, playful, and generally refreshingly non-MTV music video.

Bonus: Do you know about their Nov. ‘08 release compilation album, “Switchfoot: The Best Yet”?

My second publication is now available online at The City, the new (and free!) journal from the up-and-coming Houston Baptist University. 

I have much more to say about the piece later–including commenting on related events that have occurred since I wrote it–but for now I thought Mere-O readers would be interested in reading the piece itself.  As always, comments and questions are welcome.

From the beginning, then:

In the 2008 Presidential campaign, the dominant story once again focused on how the evangelical voting bloc would align itself. In late 2007, amidst stories that the influence of the so-called “values voters” was waning, evangelicals launched Mike Huckabee’s previously struggling campaign into the national limelight. Though Huckabee’s inability to move beyond his evangelical base ensured his influence would not last, his politics and campaign drove a wedge not only between the evangelical public and the evangelical elite, but between the evangelical public and the Republican intelligentsia, most of whom offered nothing but loathing for the Arkansas governor.

Read the rest here.

From the beginning of his career as a movie director, Eastwood has addressed fundamental questions… placing his iconic identity of ruthless masculinity in tension with a broader vision of individual and social wholeness. How should we live together? How do we define the good?”

Since Gran Torino is out and is doing rather well at the box offices (Have you seen the film? How is it?), it’s time for a (lengthy but well-written) retrospective on the career and — more interestingly — theological underpinnings of this remarkable artist.  Sara Anson Vaux at Common Review provides the goods:

It will not be lost on seekers of spiritual wisdom that this… disposition to wrest power from the mighty and elevate the weak, comes from the Bible…  “He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree” (Luke 1:52–53). In interviews with Michael Henry Wilson, Eastwood has commented on his fascination with “the biblical stories and their correspondence with the mythology of the Western.”

Eastwood who (thinking especially of Unforgiven) deliberately and delightfully subverts the Christian message of humility is at least aware of and in careful dialog with it. In this way he both foments and rides the wave of “post-Christianity” roaring across Western Europe and the Americas.

Yet while critics talk about the Christ figure in George Stevens’s 1953 western Shane, Eastwood never attempts to construct the hero as a savior. He distinctly challenges that time-honored though now-formulaic cliché.”

CS Lewis has suggested that the Evolutionary Myth — that timeless struggle of the unlikely hero against the overwhelming forces of chaos, chance, and nature — is only the most compelling modern version of the classic structure of the Illiad, the Prose Edda, and Wagner’s The Ring. What is the good man: Either the sacrificial and humble Christ or the exulting and glorious Superman… The Knight of Faith or the Knight of Infinite Resignation… Are there any other options?

The Outlaw Josey Wales provides a powerful example of Eastwood’s willingness not only to tamper with the formulas of the western, even to outrightly subvert them, but also to offer playful correctives to his Hollywood macho killer persona. Far more boldly, though, through this movie the director ennobles men and women… This signals a rejection of the culture of death in favor of new life. It may seem a stretch, but this choice puts him solidly in a religious tradition that would have to include the book of Micah, Boethius, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, and the beloved community celebrated by Eastwood’s contemporary Martin Luther King Jr. The theological company Eastwood keeps offers a distinct way to help to better understand his cinematic vision.”

Vatican City, Feb 29, 2008 / 11:19 am (CNA).- The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a correction to those who use feminist-inspired non-Trinitarian formulas for baptizing children, declaring that those baptized in this way are, in fact, not baptized.

Update: Per Andrew’s comment, I amended the below to include the footnote and clarify the editors’ position.

For John Calvin, the knowledge of God is necessarily tied to the experience of piety, by which Calvin means “that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of his benefits induces.”

The relationship, however, between our knowledge of God and our piety is less clear than it initially seems.  In the most readable translation of Calvin’s Institutes, Ford Lewis Battles and John T. McNeill insert as a heading to the first paragraph of Book I, Chapter 2, “Piety is requisite for the knowledge of God.”  They are so intent, in fact, on this point that they reinforce the exact same point in a footnote:  “It is a favorite emphasis in Calvin that pietas, piety, in which reverence and love fo God are joined, is prerequisite to any true knowledge of God.”

The only problem with this, however, is that Calvin nowhere suggests that piety is a prerequisite to the knowledge of God.  While Calvin is careful to point out that our mind cannot apprehend God without honoring him, he does not suggest that honor must precede apprehension.  While piety is necessarily tied to our knowledge of God, it is the fruit of our knowledge of Him, not the precursor to it.

The point is crucial:  the notion that piety is a precursor to our knowledge of God commits Calvin to something like “prevenient grace.”  Calvin is careful to point out later on in the text that true piety does not exist on the earth.  If piety was a pre-requisite to the knowledge of God, then there would have to be a regenerative action by God in humans prior to his self-revelation to us.

I suggest that McNeill and Battle’s emphasis on piety as a prerequiste is mistaken, then.