Justin Taylor's Blog, page 252

How God Can Use Books

Derek Thomas:

Books are essential to Christian growth. And, if there is one disappointment I have as I reflect on over three decades of Christian ministry, it is the declining appetite among Christians for good Christian literature. As a consequence, today's Christianity is less robust.

Read his testimony for an example of how giving a single book can change a life forever.

Why and How to Read Calvin's Institutes

If you haven't yet read C. S. Lewis's introduction to Athanasius's On the Incarnation, I'd highly recommend it.

He wants to refute the "strange idea" "that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books."

Lewis finds the impulse humble and understandable: the layman looks at the class author and "feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him."

"But," Lewis explains, "if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator."

Lewis therefore made it a goal to convince students that "firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire."

I suspect this holds true with respect to evangelical Calvinists and Calvin's Institutes. Are we in danger of being a generation of secondhanders?

Let me forestall the "I don't have time" objection. If you have 15 minutes a day and a bit of self-discipline, you can get through the whole of the Institutes faster than you think. Listen to John Piper:

Most of us don't aspire very high in our reading because we don't feel like there is any hope. But listen to this. Suppose you read about 250 words a minute and that you resolve to devote just 15 minutes a day to serious theological reading to deepen your grasp of biblical truth. In one year (365 days) you would read for 5,475 minutes. Multiply that times 250 words per minute and you get 1,368,750 words per year. Now most books have between 300 and 400 words per page. So if we take 350 words per page and divide that into 1,368,750 words per year, we get 3,910 pages per year.

The McNeill-Battles two-volume edition (for now the generally accepted authoritative standard) runs about 1800 pages total—so you could technically read it twice in one year at just 15 minutes a day!

Three reasons why this book in particular should be a particular object of serious study:

1. The Institutes may be easier to read than you think.

J. I. Packer writes, "The readability of the Institutio, considering its size, is remarkable."

Level of difficulty should not determine a book's importance; some simple books are profound; some difficult books are simply muddled. What we want are books that make us think and worship, even if that requires some hard work. As Piper wrote in Future Grace, "When my sons complain that a good book is hard to read, I say, 'Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.'"

3. The Institutes is one of the wonders of the world.

Karl Barth, the most influential theologian of the 20th century, once wrote: "I could gladly and profitably set myself down and spend all the rest of my life just with Calvin."

Packer explains that Calvin's magnum opus is one of the great wonders of the world:

Calvin's Institutes (5th edition, 1559) is one of the wonders of the literary world—the world, that is, of writers and writing, of digesting and arranging heaps of diverse materials, of skillful proportioning and gripping presentation; the world . . . of the Idea, the Word, and the Power. . . .

The Institutio is also one of the wonders of the spiritual world—the world of doxology and devotion, of discipleship and discipline, of Word-through-Spirit illumination and transformation of individuals, of the Christ-centered mind and the Christ-honoring heart. . . .

Calvin's Institutio is one of the wonders of the theological world, too—that is, the world of truth, faithfulness, and coherence in the mind regarding God; of combat, regrettable but inescapable, with intellectual insufficiency and error in believers and unbelievers alike; and of vision, valuation, and vindication of God as he presents himself through his Word to our fallen and disordered minds. . . .

3. The Institutes has relevance for your life and ministry.

It can be read as simply an exercise in historical theology, but it should also be read to further your understanding of God's Word, God's work, and God's ways. Packer writes:

The 1559 Institutio is great theology, and it is uncanny how often, as we read and re-read it, we come across passages that seem to speak directly across the centuries to our own hearts and our own present-day theological debates. You never seem to get to the book's bottom; it keeps opening up as a veritable treasure trove of biblical wisdom on all the main themes of the Christian faith.

Do you, I wonder, know what I am talking about? Dig into the Institutio, and you soon will.

If you are persuaded, here are a few resources you might want to consider:

As mentioned above, the McNeill-Battles two-volume edition is the most referenced standard edition. The one-volume Beveridge translation is much cheaper, and can also be found online. If you want the cheapest print option and want to get a good feel for the Institutes without reading the whole thing, consider this abridged version by Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne.

But I would recommend the full McNeill-Battles version, along with Tony Lane's reader's guide to the Institutes. In the introduction he explains the various options for using it:

The Institutes is divided into thirty-two portions, in addition to Calvin's introductory material. From each of these an average of some eighteen pages has been selected to be read. These selections are designed to cover the whole range of the Institutes, to cover all of Calvin's positive theology, while missing most of his polemics against his opponents and most of the historical material. My notes concentrate on the sections chosen for reading but also contain brief summaries of the other material.

Readers have four options:

Read only the selected material and my brief summaries of the rest.
Read only the selected material and use Battles's Analysis of the Institutes as a summary of the rest.
Concentrate on the selected material but skim through the rest.
Read the whole of the Institutes.

The notes guide the reader through the text and also draw attention to the most significant footnotes in the Battles edition. At the beginning of each portion is an introduction and a question or questions to focus the mind of the reader.

If you want to do more inductive work, or to use Calvin's work in a small-group or classroom setting, you might want to consider Douglas Wilson's Study Guide for Calvin's Institutes. (You can read the preface and a chunk of this online for free.) Wilson explains how this book can be used:

I would suggest reading the appropriate section in Calvin, then looking at the questions in the study guide, and writing down Calvin's answers in a separate notebook. The reader can then compare his answers with those that are provided in the guide. . . .

Another possible use is for a leader to utilize this guide for a group study. He can assign a reading, give the questions to the participants beforehand, and then use the guide to help conduct the discussion. The same can be done for classroom use.

For those who want to explore certain sections of the Institutes in greater depth, a fine collection of essays can be found in A Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis , edited by David Hall and Peter Lillaback.

Finally, here is a schedule of reading through Calvin's Institutes in a year.

Tolle lege!

Know What the Therefore Is There For

One of the principles I learned about Scripture memory from the Navigators is that is that verses should be memorized "word perfect." As Jesus reminded Satan by quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God" (Matt. 4:4).

Take the Golden Rule:

Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. (Matt. 7:2)

Right? Not exactly. It's missing the first word: "So" (Greek: οὖν).

More fully, Jesus said:

So [or therefore], whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them. (Matt. 7:12)

This little word signals that you can't understand this verse without understanding what proceeds it. Jesus made arguments, not bumper stickers.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I have known the Golden Rule for decades but failed to see the connection with the previous verse. At his new blog, Steve Fuller explains why the first word is actually the most important word in the Golden Rule if you want to apply it with gospel freedom.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. You'll know what the "therefore" is there for!

The Importance of Superficial Reading the First Time Through

Mortimer Adler:

Any book intended for the general reader can be understood if you approach it in the right way. What is the right approach? The answer lies in one important–and paradoxical–rule of reading. You should read a book through superficially before you try to master it.

Most of us were taught in school to go to a dictionary when we met an unfamiliar word. We were told to consult an encyclopedia, scholarly commentaries, or other secondary sources to get help with statements we couldn't understand. The rule to follow on tackling a difficult book calls for exactly the opposite procedure.

Look first for the things you can understand, and refuse to get bogged down in the difficult passages. Read right on past paragraphs, footnotes, arguments, and references that escape you. There will be enough material which you can immediately grasp, and soon it will add up to a substantial foothold from which to climb further. The amount you understand by a quick reading–even if it is only 50 percent or less–will help you to carry some light back to the places which left you in the dark.

The tremendous pleasure that comes from reading Shakespeare was spoiled for generations of high school students who were forced to go through Julius Caesar, Hamlet, or Macbeth scene by scene, looking up all the new words and studying all the scholarly footnotes. As a result, they never really read the play. By the time they got to the end, they had forgotten the beginning and lost sight of the whole.

Instead of being forced to take this pedantic approach, they should have been encouraged to read the play in one sitting and discuss what they got out of that first quick reading. Then they would have been ready to study the play carefully, for they would have understood enough of it to be able to learn more.

Adapted from How to Read a Book, p. 37.

Bible Reading Plans for 2012

There are lots of ways to read the Bible in a year, and I won't try to capture all of them. But here are numerous options, in no particular order. You may want to look through it and see what you think would work best for you.

First off, if you're not persuaded that having a plan is necessary and biblical in some sense, then here's a helpful piece from John Piper, written in 1984.

Stephen Witmer has a helpful introduction—on the weaknesses of typical plans and some advice on reading the Bible together with others—as well as offering his own new two-year plan.

The Gospel Coalition's For the Love of God Blog takes you through the M'Cheyne reading plan, with a meditation each day by D. A. Carson related to one of the readings.

George Guthrie has a very helpful Read the Bible for Life Chronological Bible Reading Plan. Guthrie has also made a a booklet version of the Read the Bible for Life 4+1 Reading Plan. The plan is similar to the Discipleship Journal plan, but in addition to reading in four different places in the Scriptures, you also read a psalm a day, cycling through the psalms twice in the year. This plan is semi-chronological, placing the prophets and the NT letters in rough chronological order.

The Bible Reading Plan for Shirkers and Slackers (Pastor Andy Perry explains the plan and why he recommends it.)

Before I mention some of the ESV plans, here are a few other options that aren't one-year-plans per se:

Don Whitney has a simple but surprisingly effective tool: A Bible Reading Record. It's a list of every chapter in the Bible, and you can check them off as you read them at whatever pace you want.

For the highly motivated and disciplined, Grant Horner's plan has you reading each day a chapter from ten different places in the Bible. (Bob Kauflin read the whole Bible this way in five and a half months and explains why he likes this system a lot.)

Joe Carter and Fred Sanders explain James Gray's method of "How to Master the English Bible." My pastor, David Sunday, told me that "the plan they recommend is, from my vantage point, the most productive way to read and to master the Bible's contents (or more importantly, to let the Bible master you!)."

There are 10 Reading Plans for ESV Editions, and the nice things is the way in which Crossway has made them accessible in multiple formats:

web (a new reading each day appears online at the same link)
RSS (subscribe to receive by RSS)
podcast (subscribe to get your daily reading in audio)
iCal (download an iCalendar file)
mobile (view a new reading each day on your mobile device)
print (download a PDF of the whole plan)




Reading Plan
Format


Daily Reading Bible

Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Outreach Bible

Daily Old Testament, Psalms, and New Testament
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Outreach Bible New Testament

Daily New Testament. Read through the New Testament in 6 months
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


M'Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan

Daily Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms or Gospels
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


ESV Study Bible

Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Literary Study Bible

Daily Psalms or Wisdom Literature; Pentateuch or the History of Israel; Chronicles or Prophets; and Gospels or Epistles
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Every Day in the Word

Daily Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Through the Bible

Daily Old Testament and New Testament
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Chronological

Through the Bible chronologically (from Back to the Bible)
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print


Book of Common Prayer Daily Office

Daily Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospels
Web
RSS
iCal
Mobile
Print

You can also access each of these Reading Plans as podcasts:

Right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) the "RSS" link of the feed you want from the above list.
Choose "Copy Link Location" or "Copy Shortcut."
Start iTunes.
Choose Advanced > Subscribe to Podcast.
Paste the URL from step three into the box.
Click OK.

The entire Bible on audio is usually about 75 hours (or 4500 minutes). If you commute to work 5 days a week, that's about 260 days a year. And if it takes you, say, 17 minutes to commute each way to work—and if you listen to the Bible on audio during your drive each way—you'll get through the entire Bible twice in a year. This probably isn't the only way to do Bible intake—but it's one most of us should take advantage of more.

Here's some more detail on these plans (some from Crossway, some from elsewhere).

ESV Study Bible (The ESV Literary Study Bible contains the same plan)

With this plan there are four readings each day, divided into four main sections:

Psalms and Wisdom Literature
Pentateuch and the History of Israel
Chronicles and Prophets
Gospels and Epistles

The introduction explains:

In order to make the readings come out evenly, four major books of the Bible are included twice in the schedule: the Psalms (the Bible's hymnal), Isaiah (the grandest of the OT prophets), Luke (one of the four biblical Gospels), and Romans (the heart of the Bible's theology of salvation).The list of readings from the Psalms and the Wisdom Literature begins and ends with special readings that are especially appropriate for the opening and closing of the year. The list of readings from the Pentateuch and the History of Israel proceeds canonically through the five books of Moses and then chronologically through the history of the OT, before closing the year with the sufferings of Job. The list of readings from the Chronicles and the Prophets begins with the Chronicler's history of the people of God from Adam through the exile, followed by the Major and Minor Prophets, which are organized chronologically rather than canonically.

You can print out this PDF, which is designed to be cut into four bookmarks that can be placed at the appropriate place in your Bible reading. There are boxes to check off each reading as you complete it.

M'Cheyne One-Year Reading Plan

With this plan you read through:

the NT twice
the Psalms twice
the rest of the OT once

The plan begins with the four great beginnings or "births" of Scripture: Genesis 1 (beginning of the world), Ezra 1 (rebirth of Israel after her return from Babylonian exile), Matthew 1 (birth of the Messiah), Acts 1 (birth of the body of Christ). John Stott says of this reading schedule: "Nothing has helped me more to gain an overview of the Bible, and so of God's redemptive plan."

If you go with this route, I'd recommend D.A. Carson's For the Love of God (vol. 1 and vol. 2 are available–vols. 3 and 4 are forthcoming). Carson's introduction and preface—which includes a layout of the calendar—are available for free online.

Since there are four readings each day, it's easy to modify this one so that you read through the Bible once in two years, by reading just the first two readings each day for the first year and the second two readings each day for the second year.

Here's a plan from NavPress, which is used each year at Bethlehem Baptist Church:

The Discipleship Journal Reading Plan

With this plan you read through the entire Bible once.

With this plan there are "catch-up" days:

To prevent the frustration of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only 25 readings. Since you'll have several "free days" each month, you could set aside Sunday to either not read at all or to catch up on any readings you may have missed in the past week.
If you finish the month's readings by the twenty-fifth, you could use the final days of the month to study passages that challenged or intrigued you.

Bethlehem makes available bookmarks that you can place in the relevant parts of your Bible:

Bookmarks for 1st half of the year
Bookmarks for 2nd half of the year

The Journey Engage Scripture Reading Plan

The Journey, an Acts 29 church in St. Louis pastored by Darrin Patrick, is doing a church-wide reading plan this year.

This plan has you read whole chapters (a feature I like):

one New Testament chapter
two Old Testament chapters

They also have a couple of features designed to help those of us who have trouble persevering through a schedule like this: (1) there are lots of reflection/catch-up days; (2) they have pulled from the daily plan some of the slower-paced, harder-to-understand books. These then become "Monthly Scripture Snapshots" that are to be speed-read, along with online videos and overviews to put these books in context. See their website for more resources related to this plan.

Two Quotes to Stir Your Love for Others

The first, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together:

The beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.

We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks, as the priest passed by the man who had fallen among thieves, perhaps—reading the Bible.

The second, from C.S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory:

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.

We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.

And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

The Sin of Listening to Gossip

Charles Spurgeon:

Would it not be a great degradation of your [pastoral] office if you were to keep an army of spies in your pay to collect information as to all that your people said of you?

And yet it amounts to this if you allow certain busybodies to bring you all the gossip of the place.

Drive the creatures away. Abhor those mischief-making, tattling handmaidens to strife.

Those who will fetch will carry, and no doubt the gossips go from your house and report every observation which falls from your lips, with plenty of garnishing of their own.

Remember that, as the receiver is as bad as the thief, so the hearer of scandal is a sharer in the guilt of it.

If there were no listening ears there would be no talebearing tongues.

While you are a buyer of ill wares the demand will create the supply, and the factories of falsehoood will be working full time.

No one wishes to become a creator of lies, and yet he who hears slanders with pleasure and believes them with readiness will hatch many a brood into active life.

—Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 328.

Evangelicals, Race, and Politics

If the sin of racism is indeed a gospel issue, and if Ron Paul is an evangelical, and if evangelicals were rightly bothered by the racist remarks of President Obama's pastor—then wouldn't it be a good idea for evangelicals, at the very least, to ask some questions about Ron Paul's defense of his racist friends and racist newsletter that went out under his name?

Theology of the Reformers: Free Online Course

BiblicalTraining.org has now added a new free class by Timothy George, on the Theology of the Reformers.

See also his excellent book by the same name, as well as the more recent Reading Scripture with the Reformers.

John Wesley on Grace

John Wesley, from the first paragraph in the Standard Sermons:

All the blessings which God hath bestowed upon man are of his mere grace, bounty, or favor; his free, undeserved favor; favor altogether undeserved; man having no claim to the least of his mercies.

It was free grace that "formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul," and stamped on that soul the image of God, and "put all things under his feet."

The same free grace continues to us, at this day, life, and breath, and all things.

For there is nothing we are, or have, or do, which can deserve the least thing at God's hand.

"All our works, Thou, O God, hast wrought in us."

These, therefore, are so many more instances of free mercy: and whatever righteousness may be found in man, this is also the gift of God.

(HT: Fred Sanders)