Justin Taylor's Blog, page 187

Signature in the Cell: A Scientific Case for Intelligent Design

In November 2011 Dr. Stephen Meyer gave the inaugural lecture for The Centre for Intelligent Design (c4id) before a distinguished group of British political, cultural, and intellectual leaders in London. The theme was on his book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2009). He explains the problem of the origin of life and shows how the existence of biological information gives scientific evidence for intelligent design (ID).

The last 10 minutes or so contains some Q & A.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985)

The Role of Prayer in Biblical Interpretation

In an interview with Dale Ralph Davis on his Old Testament commentaries (which I warmly recommend), they asked him about the role of prayer in biblical interpretation. Here is his answer:

There’s not much I can say here except that the temptation I run into is ignore it. I’ve been so happy to run into the following quotation from Owen:

For a man solemnly to undertake the interpretation of any portion of Scripture without invocation of God, to be taught and instructed by his Spirit, is a high provocation of him; nor shall I expect the discovery of truth from any one who thus proudly engages in a work so much above his ability.

I originally came across this quote in Richard Pratt’s He Gave Us Stories. [Note from JT: You can find the source and the full original quote here.] All I can say is that’s where I have to come back to again and again. It is very easy for me to start in and pull the books off the shelf and so on and dive into the Hebrew text and not give even a thought to specific prayer about that. I’ve done that before and you’re in the middle of it and you think “Boy, what a Godless approach this is. Here I am dealing with syntax and interpretation and I haven’t even really sought the Lord’s face about it.” I know it is the proper thing to say—”you need to pray before you prepare”—but there needs to be a certain desperation about this which I’m not sure we normally have. Again, all I can really say is that I seek to catch myself in this area and repent and go back to that point and then start over again.

You can read the whole interview here, and see a deal for getting 60% off of the set of his six accessible OT commentaries. As I said in a previous post, these are “the best OT commentaries you’ve never heard of.”

A Conversation with a Woman of Whom the World Is Not Worthy

An hourlong interview of Joni Eareckson Tada by Nancy Leigh DeMoss:

How Did the Son of God Uphold the Universe by the Word of His Power If He Was a Babe in the Manger?

If “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), and if “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3) such that “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17)—then how was this happening when he was crying in a manger, or when he was a toddler and didn’t know how to read or write?

First, we have to remember that when the Son of God was incarnate, his divine attributes—immutability, immensity, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence—were not given up or diminished (even if they were veiled). The incarnation involves addition or multiplication, not subtraction or division.

But if this is the case, then his divine nature could not be limited to his human body.

The opposite, though is not true. As William G. T. Shedd explain, “The divine nature of Christ is present with his human nature wherever the latter may be, though his human nature is not, as the Lutheran contends, present with is divine nature wherever the latter may be” (Dogmatic Theology, 3d ed. [Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003], 656).

In critiquing Calvin’s understanding of this, that the Son’s divine nature also exists outside of [Latin, extra] his body, Lutherans labeled this view the extra Calvinisticum. But the doctrine was hardly a Calvinist invention. In fact, it could also be called the extra Patristicum or extra-Catholicum, as it was the standard teaching of the church throughout the century. (For a book-length study of this doctrine, including analysis of quotes from the early church on, see E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-called extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1966).

Here are some quotes from Calvin, building on Chalcedonian Christology and the fathers.

Calvin, Institutes II.13.4:

They thrust upon us as something absurd the fact that if the Word of God became flesh, then he was confined within the narrow prison of an earthly body. This is mere impudence! For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world as he had done from the beginning!

Institutes II.13.4:

But some are carried away with such contentiousness as to say that because of the natures joined in Christ, wherever Christ’s divinity is, there also is his flesh, which cannot be separated from it. . . .

But from Scripture we plainly infer that the one person of Christ so consists of two natures that each nevertheless retains unimpaired its own distinctive character. . . . Surely, when the Lord of glory is said to be crucified [1 Cor. 2:8], Paul does not mean that he suffered anything in his divinity, but he says this because the same Christ, who was cast down and despised, and suffered in the flesh, was God and Lord of glory. In this way he was also Son of man in heaven [John 3:13], for the very same Christ, who, according to the flesh, dwelt as Son of man on earth, was God in heaven. In this manner, he is said to have descended to that place according to his divinity, not because divinity left heaven to hide itself in the prison house of the body, but because even though it filled all things, still in Christ’s very humanity it dwelt bodily [Col. 2:9], that is, by nature, and in a certain ineffable way. There is a commonplace distinction of the schools to which I am not ashamed to refer: although the whole Christ is everywhere, still the whole of that which is in him is not everywhere. And would that the Schoolmen themselves had honestly weighed the force of this statement. For thus would the absurd fiction of Christ’s carnal presence have been obviated.

And here are a couple of quotes from the fathers.

Augustine, Letter to Volusian (137), 22-23:

And we think that something impossible to believe is told to us about the omnipotence of God, when we are told that the Word of God, by whom all things were made, took flesh from a virgin and appeared to mortal senses without destroying His immortality or infringing His eternity, or diminishing His power, or neglecting the government of the world, or leaving the bosom of the Father, where He is intimately with Him and in Him.

Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word:

For he was not, as might be imagined, circumscribed in the body, nor, while present in the body, was he absent elsewhere; nor, while he moved the body, was the universe left void of his working and providence; but, thing most marvelous, Word as he was, so far from being contained by anything, he rather contained all things himself; and just as while present in the whole of creation, he is at once distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by his own power—giving order to all things, and over all and in all revealing his own providence, and giving life to each thing and all things, including the whole without being included, but being in his own Father alone wholly and in every respect—thus, even while present in a human body and himself quickening it, he was, without inconsistency, quickening the universe as well, and was in every process of nature, and was outside the whole, and while known from the body by his works, he was none the less manifest from the working of the universe as well.

For a helpful discussion in Paul Helm’s chapter “The Extra” in John Calvin’s Ideas (New York / Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 58ff.

There is much mystery here—not a puzzle to solve, but a reality to worship!

Historical Heroes and Slavery

Some wise perspective from historian Thomas Kidd:

-Reformed Christians, of all people, will understand that we are all sinners, and that sin imparts a disappointingly narrow vision about our own failings. It is very difficult for people morally to think “outside the box,” even with regard to barbarous practices such as the Atlantic slave trade and slave owning. We should all humbly realize, when criticizing slave owners, that if we were born into a white slave owning family in colonial or antebellum America, we almost certainly would have died as a slaveholder, too. There were exceptional slave holders who “saw the light,” sometimes via Christian conversion (a la John Newton), but not as many as we would like, especially in the American South.

-We do no service to forefathers such as Edwards or Whitefield — or, in a different strain, George Washington or Patrick Henry — by downplaying their complicity in this ugly, brutal institution. History that hides or explains away issues such as slavery can be misleading and dishonest. It can open fresh wounds for those whose ancestors were enslaved.

-We should recognize our very human need for heroes, exemplars of virtue and piety whom we can seek to imitate. The Puritans, and the leading preachers of the Great Awakening, can help put the riches of the Reformed and evangelical tradition in stark relief against the shallowness that all too often marks today’s pop Christian culture.  Yet we should never expect perfection from those heroes: we find phenomenal strengths in some areas, and disturbing blind spots in others. Realistic, flawed heroes are, in a sense, more edifying anyway: if God used “crooked sticks” in the past, then perhaps he can use me, too.

-American Christians should broaden their list of heroes, not only for historical breadth, but in this case to celebrate those Christians who resisted and spoke out against slavery. For evangelicals, two obvious choices are Lemuel Haynes and David George.

Even the Bible tells of no mere human perfect heroes. David, Peter, and Paul are excellent examples of godly men who committed terrible sins. The Christian faith has only one perfect hero. He is our proper object, not just of emulation, but of worship. We all fall far, far short of his example.

You can read the whole thing here, along with other links to the discussion of Propaganda’s “Precious Puritans” song.

Why the South Was Wrong on State Rights and the Role of the Federal Government

I have been enjoying Allen Guelzo’s new book Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2012).

The book’s description gives a nice overview of its distinctiveness: “In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. And unlike other surveys of the Civil War era, it extends the reader’s vista to include the postwar Reconstruction period and discusses the modern-day legacy of the Civil War in American literature and popular culture. Guelzo also puts the conflict in a global perspective, underscoring Americans’ acute sense of the vulnerability of their republic in a world of monarchies. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and especially the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South.”

On his Thinking in Public podcast, Albert Mohler had a good conversation with Guelzo. You can read the transcript or listen to the audio.

Here was an interesting exchange from their conversation on whether or not the South or the North had better arguments (apart from slavery) regarding the relationship between state rights and federalism.

* * *

Mohler: Who had the better argument in that particular debate? Not in terms of what the preferred outcome might have been in terms of the war and its aftermath, but just in terms of the argument about the essence of the American system of a republican government going back to the early nineteenth century into the early constitutional era. Did the Southerners have the better argument or did the North?

Guelzo: I don’t think the southerners did. I think that the American union as a federation of states was intended to be equipoise between entirely sovereign entities and an entirely centralized homogenous government. The idea being that the states were one more example of a system of checks and balances that were worked into the constitution. A check and a balance is supposed to be existing in relationship with another entity, which in this case was to be the federal government. It was not supposed to be something that led to the very destruction and break-up of the government, and I think that is illustrated in a number of ways in the constitution itself.

One is that the constitution contains no reversion clause. There is no description within the constitution about what to do in case of disaster, catastrophe, or flood or something else. There is no little glass to break marked, “Secession: This is how you terminate the constitution.” It is just not there.

The other thing that is in the very warp and woof of the constitution is the way that the powers of the states are described with relationship to the federal government in Article 1, Section 10, in which the states, the constitution makes very clear, do not have the power to coin money, the power to keep permanent standing armies and navies, to conduct diplomatic relations. By the time you get down to the end of that list, we are not talking about the kind of sovereignty residing in the states, that is the same kind of sovereignty that an independent country has where a member of an existing state has, coming into a federation with others. It was a very different kind of federation than let’s say, the European Union today.

Now, beyond that, there are at least two other considerations that mitigate against the southerner’s argument.

One is the fact that the federal government itself, while it was composed in 1787 of representatives of various states, most of the states that were in existence at the time of the Civil War, had in fact been creations of the federal government. In other words, they were the states carved out of western territories that had been acquired by the United States. Those states didn’t have a prior independent existence, so to claim that they had in fact a level of sovereignty that permitted them to become independent was really begging most of the question that was involved in the secession.

Then the other thing was the practical sense that, suppose the southerners did secede. Where would they go exactly? There would still be southerners looking across the Ohio River at northerners or across the Potomac River, and what would be the result of that? Well, they would beggar each other through trade wars, and up and down the Mississippi, there would be trade wars even more violent. If that was the case, then why? Why secede at all? Because you would only be making yourself poorer in the process. There was no practical way that southerners could simply take their bat and ball and go someplace else.

The Paradox of Christopher Columbus and the Purposes of God

Steven Keillor, a Christian and a historian, writes:

A student of biblical prophecy, Columbus believed that by reaching new lands he was hastening the end of the world. The prophet Isaiah and Jesus the Messiah had stated that the end could not come until the gospel had been preached to all nations. Pauline Watts notes that “Columbus’s apocalyptic vision of the world and of the special role that he was destined to play in the unfolding of events that would presage the end of time was a major stimulus for his voyages.” Without justifying his actions, or those of other explorers and conquerors, we can say that Columbus was correct here. By starting the process whereby this dynamic  European culture became globally dominant, Columbus made global history an irretrievably linear history.

His advancing of God’s purpose in history was somewhat inadvertent, however, for he thought God’s purpose was inextricably linked to his and to Spain’s. It was not, for they were engaged in an argument with him. He used them to accomplish his purposes anyway but did not excuse their actions. Columbus’s view of biblical prophecy does not justify his actions toward the Taino, but neither do his actions make biblical prophecies erroneous. One can have a right idea and still do wrong. One can have truth and still rebel against it. Europeans were doing just that. God’s ends did not justify their means, even if they had been pursuing his ends, which they were not.

So, paradoxically, both Columbus and the revisionist writers who condemn him are correct. His voyages advanced God’s long-range goals and yet were profoundly ungodly. That is so because of a deeper paradox: the Christianity carried by Europeans to the New World was divinely revealed truth, yet those who carried it were in serious rebellion against it. As divine revelation, it provoked human rebellion. Exploration brought rebellion to a world that had not known rebellion as destructively dynamic as was Europe’s.

—Steven J. Keillor, This Rebellious House: American History and the Truth of Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), 37-38.

You can read the whole first chapter online: “1492: The Seven Deadly Sins Tumble out of Europe.”

When God Graciously and Generously Blesses Us in Spite of Ourselves

J. I. Packer:

“It is certain that God blesses believers precisely and invariably by blessing to them something of his truth and that misbelief as such is in its own nature spiritually barren and destructive.

“Yet anyone who deals with souls will again and again be amazed at the gracious generosity with which God blesses to needy ones what looks to us like a very tiny needle of truth hidden amid whole haystacks of mental error. . . .

“Every Christian without exception experiences far more in the way of mercy and help than the quality of his notions warrants.”

—J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 21-22.

Church History Made Easy

If you’ve ever wanted an informed but short and accessible fly-over view of church history, Church History Made Easy by Timothy Paul Jones is a great introduction. Dr. Jones is an energetic, engaging, and informed teacher. I’ve been enjoying it. It will help you avoid the functional narrative that treats church history as only having three acts: (1) Jesus and Paul, (2) Calvin and Luther, (3) Billy Graham and John Stott.

If you want to go through it with a small group or a Sunday School class, there’s a 12-session DVD with leader’s guide as well as a participant’s guide. There’s also a complete kit which contains the following:

Leader pack with the DVD of twelve 30-minute video sessions and PDF files for promotional posters, fliers, handouts, bulletin inserts, and banners for you to print.
One printed leader guide + PDF of the leader guide.
One printed participant guide with session outlines, discussion questions, definitions, and time lines. Buy an additional participant guide for each person.
One copy of the award-winning Christian History Made Easy book. This full-color, 224-page book by Timothy Paul Jones tells additional stories that shaped Christian history.
One CD-ROM containing the fully illustrated 100-slide Christian History Made Easy PowerPoint presentation to give the leader optional material such as additional images and information to go deeper into popular events and people.

You can watch the first half-hour segment below: