What matters?

Well-known preach Timothy L. Brown, in an article in Reformed Worship, writes the following:

"The holy and ancient guild to which we preacher/pastors belong has never honored us for 'muchness' and 'manyness'-but more for depth and faithfulness."

Enough said.

Take that California!

"Among civilized peoples, cold is said to be the parent of frugality. Thus the Northern nations of Europe owe a portion of their prosperity to the rigor of their climate. Cold makes them save during summer, to provide food, coal, and clothing during winter. It encourages house-building and house-keeping. Hence Germany is more industrious than Sicily; Holland and Belgium than Andalusia..." And may I add, Michigan than California. Okay, okay, so maybe the economy doesn't reflect that...

(Quote from Samuel Smiles' Thrift, pg 45)

By the way, I thought this quote was incredibly interesting in light of a saying such as Proverbs 6:6-11. Smiles' quote shows (if it indeed can be explained in the right way) that one can learn wisdom from nature, which seems to be the entire point of Proverbs 6:6-11 on two levels: (1) the ant learns wise behavior from the seasons, (2) so we can learn wise behavior from seasons and from the ant who learns it from seasons!

This ability to learn from seasons and nature in general, of course, is no surprise to reformed thinkers who hold to a robust anthopology [cf. Anthony Hoeksema's phrase, 'psychosomatic (soul-body) unity' to describe the essential distinct feature of humanity]. The book, Dakota, by Kathleen Norris was an eye-opener to me in seeing how geography and climate affect the human spirit. Worth a careful read.

Only God is God

Tolkien, in a letter to his son, about government:

“…The proper study of man is anything but man. And the most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity…”

Updates

So a few updates - t-minus four days to our wedding! Staying very busy with that and anticipating the big day.
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Alright, my last post promised that I would finish the thought in the near future, which is clearly a falsity at this point! Though the intention was there, the time was not. I've read Margaret Farley's 'Just Love' and a collection of Meileander's essays the last couple of months so I'm ready to think about other things now!
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I've been reading 'To Live in Peace' by Mark Gornik. This is wonderful theological writing - very autobiographical (he "owns" the material), interacting with the grand theological frameworks (Moltmann on hope, Volf on church, Millbanks on sociology, etc), and oozing Scripture (especially Isaiah!).

I've thought about this book so far in this way: Tim Keller says that any passage of Scripture can be 'used' to speak towards 1) personal piety (individual human hearts), 2) faith (intellectual understanding of doctrine), or 3) social transformation (action in the community - ecclesial or secular). To be fair, Keller uses that framework to evaluate sermons, but he helpfully notes that preachers (and I think we could say writers as well) tend towards one of these three. The objective therefore is to force ourselves on occassion towards the other two as well. I think my weakest area here is the last one, and this is precisely where Gornik excels (though he certainly does not fail at the others). His uses of Isaiah are especially helpful to me so far, because he is showing me that Isaiah, for example, can be read as a missiological text for urban neighborhoods and community transformation.
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I should be back blogging here in a month or so. We'll see!

Augustine on Proper Sexual Desire

Augustine often uses the food appetite as an analogy to discussing proper sexual desire. He delineates two aspects of eating:

A1: The proper purpose or end of eating: nourishment
B1: The pleasure derived from eating

Augustine claims that seeking the pleasure beyond the proper end is sinful. We want to agree with this basic point. Meileander, however, wants to challenge what Augustine lists in “A1”. He asks, isn’t there more to eating than feeding to stay alive? Doesn’t it also cultivate human community and facilitate other important desires like symbolic representation and enjoyable conversation? Why else would we eat in heaven (see City of God, 13.22)?

Here is the parallel situation for sexual activity:
A2: The proper purpose or end of sexual activity between spouses: procreation
B2: The pleasure derived from sexual activity

To make the point again, when “B2” is pursued beyond “A2” then we have sinful sexual activity. In other words, according to Augustine, every time sexual desire is felt it must be for the purpose of procreation or else the desire is sinful. Augustine actually takes it even further in his commentary on Genesis. He notes that in the Garden (before the fall) Adam and Eve would have first desired children (“A2” would come first), and then they would desire to have sexual intercourse and enjoy it as a result (“B2” would follow as a decision of the will). In other words, the pleasure would be “a kind of bonus” (Meileander, pg 131) or side-effect and not part of the motivation towards intercourse.

But if we could include the good of human community, symbolic enactment, and edifying conversation in "A1" then maybe we could similarly include more in “A2” than merely procreation. Catholic theology itself has added in a very official way the sacramental good or, as Baptists would have it, symbolic enactment, to “A2”. But maybe enrichment of a marriage relationship (what some Catholic ethicists are now calling “the unitive good of marriage”) could also be added to “A2”. If we add these other two proper ends to sexual activity between spouses, we would have the following:

A2: The proper purposes or ends of sexual activity between spouses: procreation, symbolism of Christ and the church, and enrichment of the relationship

Meileander then turns (pg 136ff) to show how these three goods in “A2” must interrelate. More on this in the next post.

[These points are largely taken from 'The Way that Leads There' by Gilbert Meileander]

[In Margaret Farley's profound work 'Just Love', she makes the startling observation that the 'unitive good' and 'procreative good' may not be too far apart - if properly experienced, they both may be collapsed into the latter. I'll be quiet now and let her speak: "...it is possible that meanings of sexuality [what we've called 'purposes' in this post] come together - in passion, tenderness, and a love so full that sexuality mediates new being." (pg 163)]

The City of God

Peter Leithart, Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature (ix):

"Viewed as a whole . . . the Christian account of history is eschatological not only in the sense that it comes to a definitive and everlasting end, but in the sense that the end is a glorified beginning, not merely a return to origins. The Christian Bible moves not from garden lost to garden restored, but from garden to garden-city. God gives with interest."

(Thanks to - here - for this quote)

Wisdom and Trust

The two terms above could be understood as a hendiadys; so this post could be entitled: "Trustful Wisdom" or "Dependent Wisdom".

Of all the books in the Bible, Proverbs holds a special place in my mind and heart. Probably, this is because I've read this book more than any other. For many years I read the chapter of Proverbs that corresponded to each day of the month. I still go back to this on occassion, since it is so easy to pick up at any point. In addition to reading the book, two commentaries especially opened my eyes to depths I never would have seen on my own - Van Leeuwen's commentary and articles and William McKane's commentary. The motivation for studying Proverbs, and more importantly for seeking wisdom, began when I read through Proverbs 2 one morning. Here, a choice is laid before a young man - pursue money with all your might or pursue wisdom with all your might. Both will require late hours and constant attention. But the yield which comes from wisdom will far exceed monetary blessings.

However, a couple of years ago a mentor of mine gave me a warning (I don't think he knew it was a warning, but God's Spirit impressed it upon me in that way). He mentioned that Solomon's life shows that wisdom alone will not save. He was noting the necessity of Christ's sacrificial love in addition to wisdom.

As I was studying Isaiah 29 last week and Isaiah 30 this afternoon I noticed another quality that must be added to wisdom. In Isaiah 30:9 the words "ben" (translated "sons" or "children") and "torah" (translated as "instruction") take us back to Proverbs 2:1. Here, it seems that Isaiah is addressing a situation where wisdom teachers (those that were probably even quoting Scriptures like Proverbs 2!) were counseling Judah to a course of action that was contrary to God's ways. They were not disagreeing with God that He should save them. But they disagreed with God over how they should be saved. They were the clay speaking back to the potter, saying that the form is all wrong (29:16). In the historical context, some political counselors suggested making an alliance with Egypt. But God said, no. This was not the form of salvation He had chosen.

This shows that two things are true, though they appear contradictory - 1) according to Proverbs 2 we should pursue wisdom with the vigor of a young investment banker trying to work his way up the ladder of success, and 2) we should not rely upon our own wisdom in making big decisions. It's almost like God is saying 'get it but don't rely upon it'. In other words, it is possible to know how to make your ideas stick and to make big things happen in this world that God has created and yet still miss God's pathway of salvation. The problem with the leaders in Judah during Isaiah's time was that they were overusing their wisdom.

In addition to pursuing wisdom, we must maintain a deep sense of the fact that God's Wisdom is always higher than ours. The danger always exists for misusing wisdom (that's why we need sacrificial love). But there is also a danger of overusing wisdom (that's why we need trust/dependence also). We must consistently pursue keeping our spirits humble before God, knowing that He is the One who controls the future. This should not make us timid but trusting, acknowledging Him in all of the steps that we take. We need a trustful wisdom, a spirit that is both dependent and wise.

(Footnote on wisdom literature: I was delighted to see that in the well-known book Made to Stick they make significant references to proverbial conventions...they note that what made proverbs so useful was that they were so easy to remember since they were stated in a pithy way. They were the "Just Do It" phrases of the day that everyone knew. But people also remembered proverbs because they were considered helpful and true. I wish the authors would have explored the connections between truth and the "stickiness" of an idea - Augustine explores this in detail in 'On Christian Doctrine'.)