Justin Taylor's Blog, page 207

A Dangerous Set of DVDs

If you are around bookstores or blogging for very long, you are accustomed to the over-the-top, you-must-buy-this-book-it-will-change-your-life endorsements. But as I’ve mentioned before, the ones that stand out to me are where the endorser is not just saying that you should read it, but explains why it has moved or shaped or convicted him or her.

So, for example, I sit up and notice when someone like Chun Lai (the director of the Westminster Bookstore) writes:

Apart from the Bible, this could be the most important resource we have promoted in my eight years at the bookstore. Rarely have I seen a resource like Episode 2 that so clearly communicates something that our Lord cares so much about. The gospel transforming lives, the Church laying siege to the gates of Hell, and Christians living with a clear view of eternity—it was a profound reminder for me to reclaim my first love.

I am thrilled that WTS Books is now carrying the DVD series Dispatches from the Front. They are running a sale for 72 hours, ending on Friday (June 15) at 4 PM Eastern. The entire 5 DVD set is $30 (60% off), or you can get just episode 2 for $5 (67% off). You can also download a free study guide. The youth at our church are currently watching this series, and I’d recommend the same for other youth groups, small groups, families, etc.

You can watch some previews below, followed by some more encouragements to pick these up:

“Dispatches from the Front is a series of DVDs which show first-hand the work of missionaries and pastors in some of the tougher parts of the world. I have just watched the episode on Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro. The low-key presentation enhances the drama and the beauty of the stories told. But be aware: this is sobering stuff. I came away ashamed of my own lack of zeal for the Lord’s work and my ingratitude to him for all of the material comforts I enjoy. This is not a celebration of the pyrotechnic entertainment of the American church; it is an account of genuine works of God. It will convict you of your own sin, drive you to Christ, and encourage you to pray for Christians working on the front lines of the Kingdom and to reassess your own priorities wherever you are. ”

—Carl Trueman, Professor of Historical Theology and Church History and Paul Woolley Chair of Church History, Westminster Theological Seminary

“Beware of watching these Dispatches if you don’t like being moved and inspired and shaken out of the ruts of your life. My wife and I were riveted in watching the frontline reports of God’s work recorded in the Dispatches from the Front. This is the sort of information that builds faith in the present providence of God over his mission, and stirs up action for the sake of lost and hurting people near and far. I would love to see thousands of people mobilized as senders and goers for the sake of the glory of Christ and the relief of suffering on the frontiers, especially eternal suffering.”

—John Piper, author of Desiring God; Pastor for Preaching and Vision, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis

“Dispatches from the Front is a thoughtful, moving, understated, and ultimately convicting series of videos depicting the work of the gospel in some of the most challenging corners of the world. Far from glorying in celebrity missions, the stories in these videos depict the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, sometimes in the teeth of virulent opposition. Here are brothers and sisters in Christ who in God’s grace display faithfulness and transcendent joy, unflagging zeal to share the gospel, and an unfettered allegiance to King Jesus. To watch the kingdom advance in the teeth of these challenges is to learn humility and rekindle contrition, faith, and intercessory prayer.”

—D. A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; President and Co-founder, The Gospel Coalition

“I want, and I want my kids to have, a heart for world missions. These videos stir that passion. . . . I would highly recommend this series.”

—Joshua Harris, Senior Pastor, Covenant Life Church, Gaithersburg, MD

“Dispatches from the Front is a fascinating look at how the gospel is penetrating some of the world’s neediest places. These are regions where all the worst agonies of human life are multiplied and magnified relentlessly by war, extreme poverty, sex trafficking, drug dealing, false religion, and disease. . . . But your spirit will be encouraged by the triumphant power of Christ. ”

—Phil Johnson, Executive Director, Grace to You

“Who knows what might happen if churches and small groups and families were to watch these videos together, open to God’s leading for going and sending? It is a risk to watch them. But the motivation is Gospel grace, not guilt. I cannot recommend too highly these DVDs. ”

—Justin Taylor, Between Two Worlds

“Are you afraid to open your eyes and see death and destruction in the world? Dispatches from the Front will open your eyes to the great needs of the lost, enflame your heart to go to the nations, and give you the courage to carry on the ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the glory of God. This is a bold call to action. ”

—Burk Parsons, pastor, author, and editor of Tabletalk magazine

“Dispatches offers a potent reminder that in the darkest places, the gospel shines brightest. It should come with a warning label. Danger: Graphic scenes of mission reality that will disrupt your comfort and ignite your heart for God’s work on the frontlines. Pray, watch and act! ”

—Dave Harvey, Sovereign Grace Ministries, Church Planting & Missiology

“These videos are unlike any resource I’ve encountered. Rather than asking for financial contributions or embarking on an international guilt-trip they invite us to see the power of the gospel as it penetrates into even the darkest regions of our world. They invite us to meet and rejoice with our brothers and sisters who are part of the Kingdom’s “bold advance.” I was moved to tears as I witnessed the faithfulness and goodness of our God to change hearts and transform lives. I wish that individuals, families, and churches would “take up and watch,” having their hearts stirred and eyes opened to the glorious riches of grace and the saving power of Jesus Christ. I cannot commend these strongly enough—if you make only one purchase this year, make it these! ”

—Benjamin Thocher, Associate Director, Westminster Bookstore, 2012

Why the Reformation Is Not Over

Scott Manetsch (associate professor of church history and chair of the church history department at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and the associate general editor of IVP’s  Reformation Commentary Series) explains why it is “impossible to reconcile the classic Protestant solas with the teaching of the Catholic Catechism.”

For Roman Catholics, Scripture and Tradition are two distinct but equal modes of revealed authority which the magisterium of the Roman Church has sole responsibility to transmit and interpret.
For the early Protestant reformers, the holy Scripture provides final normative authority for Christian doctrine and practice, standing as judge above all institutions and ecclesial traditions.


For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified because of inherent righteousness.
For the mainstream Protestant reformers, sinners are accepted on the basis of the righteousness of another—namely, the alien righteousness of Christ imputed to them.


For Roman Catholics, sinners are both justified by unmerited grace at baptism and (subsequently) justified by those infused graces merited by cooperating with divine grace.
For the magisterial reformers, sinners are justified before God by grace alone.


For Roman Catholics, sinners are justified by faith (in baptism), but not by faith alone.
For the sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, sinners are justified by faith alone.


For Roman Catholics, justification is a process of renewal that affords no solid basis for Christian assurance in this life.
For reformers such as Luther and Calvin, justification is God’s decisive verdict of forgiveness and righteousness that assures Christian believers of the acceptance and love of their heavenly Father.

God Is Love Requires More Than One Person in the Godhead

C. S. Lewis:

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love.’ But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. (Mere Christianity [revised and enlarged edition, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001], ch. 2; pp. 160-161.

Richard of St. Victor, a 12th century Scottish theologian ministering in France, put it like this:

One never says that someone properly possesses love if he only loves himself; for it to be true love, it must go out towards another. Consequently, where a plurality of persons is lacking, it is impossible for there to be love. (De Trinitate, III.2)

The Right Perspective for All Who Teach God’s Word

Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 329-389/390), in the first section of his second theological oration (oration 28.1):

Let us . . . [dedicate] our sermon to our sermon’s subjects, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

that the Father may approve, the Son aid, and the Holy Spirit inspire it—

or rather that the single Godhead’s single radiance, by mysterious paradox one in its distinctions and distinct in its connectedness, may enlighten it.

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), concluding his masterpiece on the Trinity (De Trinitate):

O Lord the one God, God the Trinity, whatever I have said in these books that is of thine, may they [=my readers] acknowledge who are thine;

if anything of my own, may it be pardoned both by thee and by those who are thine.

Amen.

—St Gregory of Nazianzus, On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, transl. Lionel Wickham, Popular Patristics Series 23 (SVS Press, 2002), 37.

—Saint Augustine, The Trinity, 15.28.51.

Christianity 101 for Journalists

Tim Keller:

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

Read the whole thing here.

Beautiful Photographs for a Beautiful Cause

David Sacks is an award-winning photographer.

Covenant Mercies is a Christian ministry of compassion serving orphans in partnership with indigenous local churches in the developing world.

I am fans of both the photographer and the ministry.

David has recently produced a beautiful coffee table book of photographs he has taken there. It’s called True Africa. All of the proceeds go to benefit their work of partnering with churches to serve orphans in word and deed.

Art and Gospel

Daniel Siedell on some upcoming topics for the new Liberate website:

In addition, upcoming topics will include the importance of art for a theology of culture; an analysis of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Passion of Andrei Rublev; disruptive grace in Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66; the grace-filled theology behind the baptism scene in O Brother Where Art Thou?; icons and evangelicals; the unpreached God of Melville’s Moby-Dick; the importance of criticism; and an appreciation of the recent work of Los Angeles-based artist Robyn O’Neil.

It’s also been a few weeks since my first of two blog posts on Thomas Kinkade’s work, The Dark Light of Thomas Kinkade, generated considerable attention and many comments, quite a few of them negative. I’ve waited to respond in order to offer more thoughtful observations, and I will be doing so in the next few days. Visit my first post on Kinkade this weekend and join the discussion of a topic that continues to receive attention.

Christ the Hero of Every Story

Propaganda, for the Gospel Project for Students:

HT: Z

How to Write the Worst Possible Trinity 101 Book

Fred Sanders—who has written one of the best books on the implications of trinitarianism for evangelicalism—gives step-by-step instructions on how to write a bad introduction to the Trinity:

Start with the warning that readers’ eternal souls are at stake if they are wrong about the Trinity, and follow that up (on the same page if possible) with the admission that nobody can understand the doctrine anyway.

Then jump into a concordance-like review of the biblical evidence, starting with the Old Testament and emphasizing the most ambiguous elements of it (the plural form of Elohim, the “let us make” statements, the threefold repetition of “Holy”). Insist that these have the value of proofs.

Move quickly through the New Testament’s main story, lingering only at the triadic formulas, and then camp out in the statements of the ecumenical councils and church fathers, giving the impression that everything was unclear until smart people got creative in the fourth century.

Insist that majority ruled at Nicaea, so we should follow that.

Suggest that everybody had forgotten about the Trinity until your book came along, and finish off with a generous exploration of all kinds of analogies for the Trinity (iceberg, shamrock, apple, egg) before admitting that all analogies are kind of limited.

None of the Trinity books on my shelf are quite that bad. Not one of them commits every error! Nevertheless, these weaknesses are pervasive in the “popular Trinity book” genre.

This is in the context of reviewing a popular introduction to the doctrine: Philip Ryken and Michael LeFebvre’s Our Triune God: Living in the Love of the Three-In-One, which Sanders likes very much.

The good news—and what makes Our Triune God the best book to put in somebody’s hands if they’re asking for an introduction to the doctrine—is that Ryken and Lefebvre simply leapfrog over all those errors as if they never existed, and get down to the serious business of teaching the Trinity the right way. What constitutes “the right way?” Two things stand out: Ryken and Lefbvre’s presentation is biblical and gospel centered.

He concludes the review in this way:

This modest little book is a sign of great hope: the new normal in how evangelicals approach the doctrine of the Trinity. Apparently there is such a thing as evangelical trinitarianism: biblically articulate, gospel centered, and unharassed by side issues. It’s small and accessible; get it into as many hands as you can.

You can read the whole thing here.

Freud’s Last Session

Some clips from the Freud’s Last Session, an off-Broadway play currently showing in New York and Chicago:

“FREUD’S LAST SESSION centers on legendary psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud, who invites a young, little-known professor, C.S. Lewis, to his home in London. Lewis, expecting to be called on the carpet for satirizing Freud in a recent book, soon realizes Freud has a much more significant agenda. On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex and the meaning of life—only two weeks before Freud chooses to take his own.”