The New Atheism and the Endgame of Secularism
March 20, 2009
Dr. Mohler’s lecture last year at Dallas Theological Seminary. I plan on quoting it in my final paper for the class entitled The Victorian Period. He speaks of “the Victorian Loss of Faith.” My working title is: “The Ebb of Faith’s Sea: Doubt and Modernism in Tennyson and Arnold.”
“The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.” -From Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold
What is Christian Eloquence? Thoughts on John Piper’s Message at the Desiring God National Conference 2008
October 2, 2008
Hearing John Piper speak on Christian eloquence at the Desiring God National Conference 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota elated my soul. He spoke of assonance, consonance, iambic pentameter, cadence, and parallelism. What a mighty call to use words to their fullest effect in order to describe Jesus Christ indeed as he who has surpassing worth and excellencies! He is worthy of all our language convention that works to present him as the Supreme and Glorious King. We are speaking creatures who are called out of darkness to proclaim the excellencies of him who called us to his marvelous light.
I never forgot the words of my pastor at home: “Don’t speak with the spirit of persuasion: Speak with the Spirit of God.”
Here is how I would define and differentiate between Christian eloquence and lofty, arrogant eloquence.
Christian eloquence is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit through the Christ-centered direction of language convention in proclamations which magnify and exalt the excellencies of Christ and the finality and meaning of the cross.
Lofty arrogant eloquence is the manifestation of the sinful nature through the self-centered direction of language convention in proclamations which magnify man and exalt the false excellencies of the human peformance over and against the crucified Lord.
James Dennie said this:
“No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save.”
The Bible eloquently demonstrates this truth in 1 Corinthians:
“But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being may boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’” 1 Corinthians 1:27-31
Check out this sermon that cemented my soul and confirmed my calling. Don’t waste your eloquence; make much of Him with every word that exalts his name and proclaims his cross.
Working with you to proclaim the excellencies of Christ with all unction and demonstration of Spirit,
Vince R.
Viewing “The Shack” through the Lense of Truth
August 10, 2008
Perhaps you have heard of the book The Shack by William Young. Apparently, there are Christians who are going completely ga-ga about it. Here’s how Eugene Peterson (the sole author of The Message) endorses it:
“When the imagination of a writer and the passion of a theologian cross-fertilize the result is a novel on the order of The Shack. This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his. It’s that good!”
Really?! Are you really making that assertion, Mr. Peterson? John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is a cross-generational work of art because it contains cross-generational truth. Does this book contain truth?
Here’s Jay Leno, exemplifying the pagan culture, giving it a shrugging endorsement:
I have never read it. I might in the future. But many men for whom I have great respect because of their godly, biblical, Christ-exalting committment have given it a big thumbs-down.
Dr. Russell Moore, for example, in one of the Albert Mohler programs during late July, said that he was about 100 pages into it, and he couldn’t help but think that he could spend his time much better than reading “this heresy.”
Tim Challies, a Christian Reviewer whom I respect has released his review of the book.
This person posts Challies’ defense of that review after receiving his responses from those who disagreed.
Lastly, Mark Driscoll let’s us know what he thinks about the book:
You know, I completely understand the argument that says that I have no right to endorse these critiques of a book of which I have not read. Yet the idea remains: Could your time be spent better? Does it deliver what it promises? Does it deliver what it promises in a God-exalting, Christ-centered, biblically faithful way?
I guess that you will have to decide that, but I exhort you to understand how quickly Satan can use anything to turn your eyes from the truth. I DO NOT give you a recommendation to read the book. In fact, I will quickly say that I can give you a great onslaught of titles to read which I believe will serve you far better.
Nevertheless, I have read some reviews who have favored the book (swing a dead cat and you’ll hit a thumbs-up review for this book), and I am mostly amazed at many who loved it because of their intimate and personal identification with suffering. That is the very subject which prompted the writing of the book, and also chronicles the book’s main subject. (It’s Job without the four friends and the one true God.)
It’s just one man who faced tragedy speaking directly to a god called the God of Christianity inside a Shack. USA Today gives us some insight here about that issue.
I am deeply moved to empathy by the way Mr. Young faced tragedy in his own life. I am not distant or cold to that truth, yet I cannot say that I would be responding in love if I were, maybe as his pastor, to respond to his situation in a way that compromises truth. This is not love. “Love…rejoices with the truth.”
The only way to minister to a weary soul facing tragedy is not through allegory or symbolism. It’s through God’s revealed word which tells us this:
“For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Hebrews 2:18
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:14-16
The Lord is not distant from your suffering. He’s been through it before, and his suffering was the worst there could be. Most of all, by this suffering, we are brought near to God by grace through faith in Christ.
People like Mr. Young who face the tragic realities of a fallen world will do better for themselves if they find faithful loving pastors and teachers who stay true to Scripture and the one true God. It is far better than any “fiction” because it is eternal truth that calls us to reconcile and fellowship intimately with the Most High God. That’s the lense through which we must view any suffering.
Working with you to consider carefully what you read,
Vince R.
“Don’t Waste Your Thesis; Make Much of Me”
August 10, 2008
As you might have noticed, I’ve not been as bloggingly productive these past few days, especially considering I’m on ‘vacation.’
I have six reasons for this:
1.) Writing a semester’s worth of Sunday School Curriculum
2.) Two sermons, Lord willing, to be preached August 17, 2008
3.) Time I want to spend with family.
4.) Cleaning and organizing the junk of the dwelling place.
5.) To avoid the usual physical slump found when one “goes home” for a break from college, I’ve been trying to make it to the track, listening to the New Attitude 2008 sermons for a second time during my crepuscular jogs.
6.) Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
All of these activities have put humble pursuits (the blog site, not the practice) on the backburner. Except today.
The Only Picture from My Vacation in Knoxville
In my laborious, albiet fascinating, journey through Knoxville, Tennessee in McCarthy’s Suttree, I have learned three things:
1.) McCarthy is probably a earthy genius.
2.) McCarthy is probably insane, in an earthy way.
3.) I love the South.
So that is where my mind has been as of late, yet I am once again intrigued by the writer’s profound interjections for seemingly usual and common actions. Check out how McCarthy turns a very simple action about closing a photo album into a beautiful poetic outpouring of moral decadence and God-forsaken hopelessness:
He closed the cover on this picture book of the afflicted. A soft yellow dust bloomed. Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle. (130)
Why, Mr. McCarthy, are you so bleak? What profound hopelessness have you seen that beckons such horrid cogitations and despairing insanities?
I ask these question for you to share in thinking with me. I will not try to understand the man “Cormac McCarthy.” I will only engage his works. Yet, as I go deeper into my reading of his novels, this being novel four, I am more intrigued by this conceptual motif of hopelessness and despair, a pervading air of the dark and the despondent. This is southern gothic, and it is undoubtedly post-modern literature. It has the characteristics.
My Weapon of Choice
How does biblical worldview engage the worldview presented in these novels? Dare I go there in my thesis? I am beginning to think so, and I have only one weapon with which to dissect. Will I be warmly received for my proposed examination? Even at a ‘Christian’ school, I really don’t think so. Satan still slithers down the halls of our Christian schools. Nevertheless, the Deity of deities has no dementia, and he has crushed that serpent’s head.
The Lord has given me an opportunity to write a thesis, and with it, he has clearly commanded: “Don’t Waste Your Thesis; Make Much of Me.”
Working with you to delve intelligently and biblically into the art of a hopeless culture that needs Christ,
Vince R.
McCarthy, Cormac. Suttree. (New York: Vintage International, 1979).
If I had the resources, I’d be in Minneapolis, Minnesota in September. I look forward to the sermons on the internet after this occurs. As an English guy, this conference is causing my mouth to water. Words really are powerful enough to get us a man like Hitler. Don’t forget it. God’s words are really powerful enough to create the entire universe. Don’t ever forget that!
Working with you to comprehend the powerful tool of Words,
Vince R.
“And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:30
So says our Lord in his Olivet discourse which I finished reading this morning. As many have put it, much of our understanding of Hell has come from Jesus Christ. Without him, we would almost have no doctrine concerning it. Beware those who say there is only anihilation! There is a real hell, and in it “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” for eternity. No ceasing of existence, but eternal punishment apart from God’s presence.
This concept of “outer darkness” caught my eye this morning. I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s second novel Outer Dark this past Sunday. I have decided to write my undergraduate thesis on some aspect of this man’s novels. I am charged with reading all ten before January 2009. I have three down, Blood Meridian: Or Evening Redness in the West, The Orchard Keeper, and now, Outer Dark.
Outer Dark is one of the most disturbing books I have read. Not the most-that would go to Blood Meridian.
But why, Vince, do you engage in such dark and hopeless texts? Cormac McCarthy is notorious for his intense violence and heart-wrenching theses.
I approached this project after having seen the Cohen Brothers film version of No Country for Old Men. After seeing it once, I was hooked. I didn’t understand this man’s point very well, and I’m sure the directors added their own flair and tastes. But McCarthy is no author you hear of very much. He almost hides from the public eye (something I admire). He gave his stamp of approval on this project which I found interesting. The film is brilliant. If you don’t think so, see it again. It’s very close to the novel I understand. Thus, my interest came.
After much thought, I knew I wanted to engage in the man’s mind. I don’t know his mind, nor will I ever. But with 10 novels filled with violence and the good ol’ South, I’m entranced to see what compels him.
Speaking from the English Major side of my mind: This man’s prose is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever read.
Speaking from the closet-Theology Major side of my mind: This man’s worldview seems hopeless.
Note this comment from one of his characters in Outer Dark.
Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away (p. 192).
I don’t know with whom McCarthy identifies in his novels, but I suppose that his basic thesis for this novel is simply this: It’s better to blind than to have to view the outer darkness of this world.
There is so much imagery of a good darkness (ignorance) and bad darkness (reality). I will not give away the plot or the events, but his protagonists basically go through hell to no avail. It’s quite heart-breaking. Here’s one passage from a minor character on the long journey, a Reverend:
“I won’t tell it all. This blind feller hollered out one time and said: Looky here at me, blind and all. I guess you reckon I ort to love Jesus.
Well, neighbor, I says, I believe ye ort. He give ye eyes to see and then he tuck em away. And maybe you never was much of a christian to start with and he figgered this’d bring ye round. They’s been more than one feller brought to the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than blind? In a world darksome as this’n I believe it’s got a good deal to recommend it. The grace of God don’t rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and the blind, that’s who. Them is the ones scarred with God’s mercy. Stricken with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in the garden of God. Amen. I told him that.” 226
It is better to be blind, it seems to say, Jesus loved them the most. This discourse, I think, holds an element of his thesis. Lastly, we note a blind man answer to a question near the end of the book:
“I ain’t never prayed. Why don’t ye pray back your eyes?
I believe it’d be a sin. Them old eyes can only show ye what’s done there anyways. If a blind man needed eyes he’d have eyes.” 240-241
Interesting…these are just a few thoughts I had regarding my most recent reading.
Nevertheless, I look at this and wonder-were there no God, this thesis would be true.
Indeed, apart from God, what hope is there? The Outer Darkness of this world, hell on earth, might just make me want blindess. As Hemingway put it, “The world will kill you.”
Indeed, in my literary studies, I often see such hopelessness in the literature from the 1950s-today. Post-modernism has no hope in it. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, for instance, is brilliant, but completely hopeless. I’m mostly interested in this worldview because I know that it controls our culture in America today.
God’s people, however, have hope. When we face the seemingly hopeless incidents I read about, my one remembrance should be these words:
…hope does not put to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:5
Like that character and many of McCarthy’s characters, I often feel like an old world-wearied man (sitting on the porch in my rocking chair, shotgun across my lap, hound dog to my side) and wondering why God hasn’t just put out the sun and gone away considering how evil we are.
Thanks be to God. He’s staying right where He is, and He’s on my side in Christ Jesus. Whom shall I fear?
Working with you to see hope amidst the outer dark,
Vince R.
McCarthy, Cormac, Outer Dark. Vintage Books. New York. 1968
