Out And About 11/28/2011

Theology

Science

Literature

Foreign Policy

Various Things

Booklog (November 17 – November 28, 2011)

In this period I’ve completed:

  • Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting by Marva Dawn (204 pages):     Enjoyed it. I wouldn’t follow it in everything nor agree with everything said, but its full of helpful thoughts on theory and practice regarding setting apart the Lord’s day as a day of rest, refreshment, and feasting. 
  • Family Fang by Kevin Wilson (320 pages): Conflicted about this one, I can’t recommend it but also can’t dismiss it either.  

This places the running total for books(*)  completed in 2011 at 94.

* Note: I regard paper, audio, and electronic books to be rightfully considered books.

Some Quotes I’ve Come Across

I’m on vacation and so haven’t been posting otherwise, but I’ve recently come across these quotes from various sources and thought they would be profitable to pass on.

  • Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience, is usually odd.” – C.S. Lewis
  • “You will treat the weaknesses and failures of others with grace when you humbly admit that you’re more like them than unlike them.” – Paul Tripp on Twitter
  • “Observing the Sabbath includes…the fun and festivity of a weekly eschatalogical party.” – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “Theologians especially need Sabbath worship to avoid scientific religiosity and to experience being enveloped in the embrace of God.” – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “God’s design of the Sabbath rhythm was never meant to impose a legalistic duty.” – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “as we have…seen in the case of the death of Tolkien’s father, orphans have been…highly represented in creative fields.” – Mark Horne in J.R.R. Tolkien
  • “We need to learn again the psalmists’ delight in the law [of God] as God’s instruction for true blessing in our lives.”   – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.”  – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “Men cannot bind what God has set free.” – Burk Parsons on Twitter
  • “Time is not a countdown to doom, rather it is a countdown to restoration.” – Uri Brito on Twitter
  • “The big problem of 17thC Antinomians was making Christ’s work for us (impetration) overrule his work in us (application). Both are needed.” – Mark Jones on Twitter
  • “in the attempt to end gender discrimination, we have largely lost many genuine values of masculinity and femininity.” – Marva Dawn in Keeping The Sabbath Wholly
  • “What a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.” – C.S. Lewis

One Thousand Thoughts About Church…#732

“[M]embers of churches should be subject to their pastors, not in the same sense as they are to Christ, the head, nor are they obliged to believe or do everything they say, right or wrong; yet honour and esteem are due to them, and submission and obedience should be yielded to their doctrines, precepts, and exhortations, when they are agreeably to the word of God; since God has set them in the highest place in the church, called them to the highest service, and most honourable work, and bestowed on them the greatest gifts; the younger members should also submit to the elder, and the minority to the majority; one member should submit to another, to the superior judgment of another, and to the weakness of another, and to the admonitions of others, and so as to perform all offices of love: and the manner in which this duty is to be performed, isin the fear of God; which may be considered as the moving cause of submission, or, as the rule of it; submission should be on account of the fear of God, and so far as is consistent with it; and indeed, the fear of God is that which should influence and engage to every duty” – John Gill

Vos on “Reformed” and “Lutheran” Differences

“The Christian knows that he is a party in God’s covenant and as such he has all things and spans at any one moment the whole orbit of grace, both in time and for eternity. By faith he is a member of the covenant, and that faith has a wide outlook, a comprehensive character, which not only points to justification but also to all the benefits which are his in Christ. Whereas the Lutheran tends to view faith one-sidedly – only in its connection with justification – for the Reformed Christian it is saving faith in all the magnitude of the word. According to the Lutheran, the Holy Spirit first generates faith in the sinner who temporarily still remains outside of union with Christ; then justification follows faith and only then, in turn does the mystical union with the Mediator take place. Everything depends on this justification, which is losable, so that the believer only gets to see a little of the glory of grace and lives for the day, so to speak. The covenant outlook is the reverse. One is first united to Christ, the Mediator of the covenant, by a mystical union, which finds its conscious recognition in faith. By this union with Christ all that is in Christ is simultaneously given. Faith embraces all this too; it not only grasps the instantaneous justification, but lays hold of Christ as Prophet, Priest and King, as his rich and full Messiah….Therefore faith may not be confined within the limited circle of one piece of the truth and its gaze fixed on that all the time; it must have in view, freely and broadly, the whole plan of salvation.” – Geerhardus Vos