Justin Taylor's Blog, page 117

How Can We Make Our Marriage a Better Friendship?

David Powlison of CCEF responds:

For counsel on building marital intimacy, see Powlison’s other videos below, where he answers questions like: how can we discuss our marriage with others? what questions can we ask our spouse to foster intimacy? how do you build intimacy with a spouse who has very different interests?

The Huffington Post Profile of Lecrae

Jon Ward—one of the best in the business—has a well-researched and thoughtful 3,300 word profile of Lecrae, with a number of videos embedded in the article. In particular, Ward explores Lecrae’s recent recording relationships, the question of whether one can be a Christian who is musical artist vs a Christian artist, and how some in evangelicalism have voiced their concerns.

Here is an excerpt:

The morning after [Billy] Graham’s birthday bash, Lecrae flew to Las Vegas to attend the Soul Train Awards. “That was completely different worlds,” he said.

He has been spending an increasing amount of time in the mainstream hip-hop world. He first burst the Christian bubble in the fall of 2011 when he performed in a freestyle showcase as part of BET’s annual awards show—”Hey, this what happen when hip-hop lets the saints in,” he quipped then—and the network has continued to promote Lecrae heavily.

“I will equate that feeling I got when we identified Kanye West,” Kelly Griffin, director of music programming at BET, said of the first time he heard Lecrae. “Like, ‘Wow, we want to take a chance on him.’”

In October, Lecrae found himself inside a cramped New York sound booth next to Sway Calloway, the 43-year-old MTV personality, rapper and journalist whose daily radio show, “Sway in the Morning,” is broadcast nationally on SeriusXM.

“We got a hybrid artist here,” Calloway told listeners. “Now, even I used to say he’s a Christian rapper. But he’s a rapper—who is a Christian.”

A quiet grin spread across Lecrae’s face. That’s a distinction he likes to make often. The way he explains it is you don’t call it Christian architecture, or a Christian pharmacy, or Christian pottery, when it is simply done by a Christian person. Rather, to be a Christian and also be an architect, or pharmacist, or potter, is supposed to mean that an individual performs those professions to the best of their ability, and with passion and excellence.

And as Lecrae points out, hip-hop is full of rappers who practice Islam or incorporate messages of the Five Percent Nation, such as some members of Wu-Tang Clan. They talk about their faith in their rap, but they are not labeled “Muslim rappers.”

Yet even as BET hailed him as the next Kanye, Lecrae drew a distinction between himself and the artist better known as “Yeezus.”

“I deeply respect what he’s doing artistically. I do think there’s a lot of brilliance,” Lecrae said. “There’s a line between being egotistical and being genius or great. And I think he plays with that a lot.”

Still, he continued, saying of Kanye’s most recent album, “I hear a broken person, if I’m going to be honest, when I listen to it.”

“I’d say even the writing, like, from my end, from my perspective it’s not as thought-provoking,” he said. “It feels a little hasty, a little like, ‘Let me just get this off my chest,’ versus, ‘How do I say this in a unique way?”

Uniqueness is a quality that has largely been lacking in Christian music. The genre didn’t really exist until the 1970s, some time after the advent of rock-and-roll. Its creation was the product of a desire among many evangelicals to resist a culture they felt was increasingly non-Christian. But the genre’s downfall—like many of the cultural artifacts that have come out of evangelicalism over the last several decades—was that instead of creating better alternatives, it just made knockoffs.

You can read the whole thing here.

The Man Who Invented the Jump Shot in Basketball

A brief, interesting, and surprising profile of 91-year-old Kenny Sailors:

HT: Brett Maragni

6 Quotes that Luther Didn’t Actually Say

Here are a few quotes you’ll often hear attributed to Luther, though none of them are exact actual quotes, and a few of them are things that Luther would have disagreed with!

Alleged Luther quote #1:

If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.

Luther didn’t say this. For a thorough discussion, see Martin Schloemann, Luthers Apfelbäumchen: Ein Kapitel deutscher Mentalitätsgeschichte seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 246-251 (via Frederick Gaiser, HT: Garrett Lee). Schloemann argues that it’s not only something Luther didn’t say but wouldn’t say, unless it was put into a Christocentric eschatology emphasizing “creaturely service of neighbor and world.”

Alleged Luther quote #2:

The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays—not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors.

The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

Luther didn’t say this. As with the quote from the first example, Gaiser argues that it doesn’t sit very well with Luther’s actual views on vocation. The idea that God is pleased with our work because he likes quality work “would be the American work-ethic version of vocation, theologically endorsing work as an end in itself. In the hands and mouth of a modern boss, good craftsmanship and clean floors (or a clean desk or a signed contract) to the glory of God could be a potent and tyrannical tool to promote the bottom line. . . . [W]hat marks Luther’s doctrine of vocation is the insistence that the work is done in service of the neighbor and of the world. God likes shoes (and good ones!) not for their own sake, but because the neighbor needs shoes. . . .”

Alleged Luther quote #3:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Luther didn’t say this exactly, but this one is closer. Denny Burk looked into this one:

Most writers quote other writers’ use of the term. The few that credit an original source cite a letter published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works [D. Martin Luther's Werke : kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe) : [3. Band] Briefwechsel, ed. (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1933), 81-82]. Here’s a scan of the relevant text from the Weimar edition:

Here’s a rough translation:

“Also it does not help that one of you would say: ‘I will gladly confess Christ and His Word on every detail, except that I may keep silent about one or two things which my tyrants may not tolerate, such as the form of the Sacraments and the like.’ For whoever denies Christ in one detail or word has denied the same Christ in that one detail who was denied in all the details, since there is only one Christ in all His words, taken together or individually.”

As you can see, this does not match the first quotation, though the sentiments described in the former are similar to the latter.

Alleged Luther quote #4:

I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian.

Luther didn’t say this one, and wouldn’t have. Gene Veith offers an extended analysis. Here is his conclusion:

These statements by Martin Luther and their context within the various documents he wrote are more than sufficient to convince reasonable readers that Luther would never have uttered the falsely attributed quote and would never regard as a preferable desire or choice to be ruled by a Turk. [It] is not “Luther-esque” and in fact, it is diametrically opposed to the position on which we know from his writings Luther firmly stood.

Alleged Luther quote #5:

Justification is the article by which the church stands and falls.

This one is pretty close.

The first use of this exact Latin phrase (justificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae) seems to be by Lutheran theologian Balthasar Meisner—born 40 years after Luther’s death—who said that it was a “proverb of Luther” (Anthropôlogia sacra disputation 24 [Wittenberg: Johannes Gormannus, 1615]).

In 1618 Reformed theologian Johann Heinrich Alsted wrote articulus iustificationis dicitur articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (in Theologia scholastica didacta [Hanover, 1618], p. 711)— “The article of justification is said to be the article by which the church stands or  falls.”

We don’t have record of Luther using the exact phrase, but very close: quia isto articulo stante stat Ecclesia, ruente ruit Ecclesia—“Because if this article [of justification] stands, the church stands; if this article collapses, the church collapses.” (WA 40/3.352.3)

So the famous version is more like a summary of paraphrase of his actual quote.

Alleged Quote #6

Here I stand; I can do no other.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his magesterial work on the Reformation, says this is the “most memorable thing Luther never said.” Many scholars believe that it was first inserted at the end of Luther’s speech by the first editor of his collected works, Georg Rörer (1492-1557).

5 Quotes that Luther Didn’t Actually Say

Here are a few quotes you’ll often hear attributed to Luther, though none of them are exact actual quotes, and a few of them are things that Luther would have disagreed with!

Alleged Luther quote #1:

If I believed the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant a tree today.

Luther didn’t say this. For a thorough discussion, see Martin Schloemann, Luthers Apfelbäumchen: Ein Kapitel deutscher Mentalitätsgeschichte seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 246-251 (via Frederick Gaiser, HT: Garrett Lee). Schloemann argues that it’s not only something Luther didn’t say but wouldn’t say, unless it was put into a Christocentric eschatology emphasizing “creaturely service of neighbor and world.”

Alleged Luther quote #2:

The maid who sweeps her kitchen is doing the will of God just as much as the monk who prays—not because she may sing a Christian hymn as she sweeps but because God loves clean floors.

The Christian shoemaker does his Christian duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

Luther didn’t say this. As with the quote from the first example, Gaiser argues that it doesn’t sit very well with Luther’s actual views on vocation. The idea that God is pleased with our work because he likes quality work “would be the American work-ethic version of vocation, theologically endorsing work as an end in itself. In the hands and mouth of a modern boss, good craftsmanship and clean floors (or a clean desk or a signed contract) to the glory of God could be a potent and tyrannical tool to promote the bottom line. . . . [W]hat marks Luther’s doctrine of vocation is the insistence that the work is done in service of the neighbor and of the world. God likes shoes (and good ones!) not for their own sake, but because the neighbor needs shoes. . . .”

Alleged Luther quote #3:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Luther didn’t say this exactly, but this one is closer. Denny Burk looked into this one:

Most writers quote other writers’ use of the term. The few that credit an original source cite a letter published in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works [D. Martin Luther's Werke : kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimarer Ausgabe) : [3. Band] Briefwechsel, ed. (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1933), 81-82]. Here’s a scan of the relevant text from the Weimar edition:

Here’s a rough translation:

“Also it does not help that one of you would say: ‘I will gladly confess Christ and His Word on every detail, except that I may keep silent about one or two things which my tyrants may not tolerate, such as the form of the Sacraments and the like.’ For whoever denies Christ in one detail or word has denied the same Christ in that one detail who was denied in all the details, since there is only one Christ in all His words, taken together or individually.”

As you can see, this does not match the first quotation, though the sentiments described in the former are similar to the latter.

Alleged Luther quote #4:

I’d rather be ruled by a wise Turk than by a foolish Christian.

Luther didn’t say this one, and wouldn’t have. Gene Veith offers an extended analysis. Here is his conclusion:

These statements by Martin Luther and their context within the various documents he wrote are more than sufficient to convince reasonable readers that Luther would never have uttered the falsely attributed quote and would never regard as a preferable desire or choice to be ruled by a Turk. [It] is not “Luther-esque” and in fact, it is diametrically opposed to the position on which we know from his writings Luther firmly stood.

Alleged Luther quote #5:

Justification is the article by which the church stands and falls.

This one is pretty close.

The first use of this exact Latin phrase (justificatio est articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae) seems to be by Lutheran theologian Balthasar Meisner—born 40 years after Luther’s death—who said that it was a “proverb of Luther” (Anthropôlogia sacra disputation 24 [Wittenberg: Johannes Gormannus, 1615]).

In 1618 Reformed theologian Johann Heinrich Alsted wrote articulus iustificationis dicitur articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae (in Theologia scholastica didacta [Hanover, 1618], p. 711)— “The article of justification is said to be the article by which the church stands or  falls.”

We don’t have record of Luther using the exact phrase, but very close: quia isto articulo stante stat Ecclesia, ruente ruit Ecclesia—“Because if this article [of justification] stands, the church stands; if this article collapses, the church collapses.” (WA 40/3.352.3)

So the famous version is more like a summary of paraphrase of his actual quote.

Calvin’s Ailments: Pastoral Productivity in the Midst of Pain

It is humbling to hear stories of pastoral faithfulness, productivity, and joy in the midst of almost unimaginable pain. At the recent DG conference, Mike Horton, author of Calvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying and Enjoying God Forever, briefly tells his story:

Where Does “Separation of Church and State” Come From and What Does It Really Mean?

A good brief summary from Princeton’s Robert P. George:

The best resource I know on this question is Daniel Dreisbach’s Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (New York University Press, 2003).

For a good summary of this history and analysis, see his online piece, “The Mythical ‘Wall of Separation’: How a Misused Metaphor Changed Church-State Law, Policy, and Discourse.”

Professor Dresibach begins by observing:

No metaphor in American letters has had a more profound influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state.” Today, this figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed church-state arrangement, and it has become the sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma that champions a secular polity in which religious influences are systematically and coercively stripped from public life.

In our own time, the judiciary has embraced this figurative phrase as a virtual rule of constitutional law and as the organizing theme of church-state jurisprudence, even though the metaphor is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.

Dresibach sets out “to challenge the conventional, secular myth that Thomas Jefferson, or the constitutional architects, erected a high wall between religion and the civil government.”

“Although today,” he writes, “Jefferson’s Danbury letter is thought of as a principled statement on the prudential and constitutional relationship between church and state, it was in fact a political statement written to reassure pious Baptist constituents that Jefferson was indeed a friend of religion and to strike back at the Federalist-Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him as an infidel and atheist in the recent campaign.”

It’s not uncommon for advocates of the “high and impregnable wall” misunderstanding of the metaphor to suggest that Jefferson’s own policies were incompatible with his own principles (e.g., endorsement of federal funds to build churches, support of Christian missionaries among the Native Americans, etc.). But Dresibach shows that in Jefferson’s own thinking, the wall was not a separation between church and all civil government, but rather a wall between the national and state governments on matters related to religion.

For more on the metamorphosis of this metaphor in constitutional law and its repercussions, read the whole thing.

A Reasoned Case against the Prosperity Gospel and Mystical Guidance

Humble Beast:

An Interview with David Wells

I was recently able to sit down with David Wells to talk about his new book, God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World (Crossway, 2014). We talk about why this is the hardest book he has ever written, how it is different from what he’s written before, and why he spends so much of his time working with orphans in Africa.

Will This Be the Generation in Which “Pilgrim’s Progress” Disappears?

Today at 3:30pm EST pastor-theologian Dr. Derek Thomas will be doing a Google Hangout with Ligonier, talking about one of the most widely-circulated books ever published in the English language, John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. They plan to ask Dr. Thomas about the role of fiction literature in the life of a Christian and what’s so significant about this novel, one Charles Spurgeon said, next to the Bible, he valued most.

Dr. Thomas—who is writing Bunyan on the Christian Life for the Theologians on the Christian Life series with Crossway—has a new video & audio teaching series with Ligonier on Bunyan’s classic. You can watch the first installment below for free:

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J. I. Packer offers many of us a gentle rebuke:

For two centuries Pilgrim’s Progress was the best-read book, after the Bible, in all Chrisendom, but sadly it is not so today.

When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read Pilgrim’s Progress, not a quarter of the hands go up.

Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is ripe for us to dust off Pilgrim’s Progress and start reading it again.

Certainly, it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day.

Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?

—J. I. Packer, “Pilgrim’s Progress,” in The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics, ed. Kapic and Gleason (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press: 2004), p. 198.

If you’re looking for a classic and complete edition of the work, you can do no better than this edition produced by the Banner of Truth, which they describe as follows:

This de luxe edition of Bunyan’s great work comes as near as possible to the ‘ideal’—with the original marginal notes and references from Scripture, both parts of the Progress, and a series of magnificent and evocative etchings by William Strang. It is not a luxury to possess a de luxe edition of a work which, though we may not, like Spurgeon, read it a hundred times, ought to be the companion of a lifetime.

For those who want to study the book with a wise guide, note Leland Ryken’s forthcoming Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” in the Crossway Christian Guides to the Classics series.