Justin Taylor's Blog, page 255

Becoming a Better Writer

In his memoir On Writing Stephen King writes:

While it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and

while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one,

it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

For those of us in that category—competent writers who want to become good writers—I would recommend Douglas Wilson's short new book, Wordsmith: Hot Tips for the Writing Life. You can read some samples at the link. It contains Wilson's trademark way of saying wise and insightful things in a punchy and memorable way. For example:

"If everything you write smells like a library, then your prospective audience will be limited to those who like the smell of libraries."
"Read until your brain creaks."
"Only an insufferable egoist expects to be brilliant first time out."
"The brain is not a shoebox that 'gets full,' but is rather a muscle that expands its capacity with increased use."

And that's just from the first two pages!

Modest Is Hottest?

Thought-provoking post from Sharon Hodde Miller at CT's Her.meneutics blog. A couple of excerpts:

Perhaps the phrase's originator hoped to provide a more positive spin on modesty. I sympathize with that. However, "modest is hottest" also perpetuates (and complicates) this objectification of women by equating purity with sexual desire. The word "hot" is fraught with sexual undertones. It continues a tradition in which women are primarily objects of desire, but it does so in an acceptable Christian way. . . .

. . . That is not to say that godly women will not attract godly men with their modesty. They might. But that is not the purpose of modesty. If "modest is hottest" encapsulates the message we communicate to young women about modesty, then we have missed the mark. "Modest is hottest" is foundationally human-centered, whereas biblical modesty is first and foremost centered on God.

Why There Is Only One Deathbed Conversion in the Bible

"It cannot be too often, or too loudly, or too solemnly repeated, that the Bible, which ranges over a period of four thousand years, records but one instance of a death-bed conversion—one that none may despair, and but one that none may presume."

—Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873), a Scottish preacher, in chapter 1 of Early Piety

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Christopher Hitchens died on Thursday night at the age of 62, after a 18-month battle with esophageal cancer.

He was a brilliant and entertaining man. He was enormously gifted, and in his final years he took those gifts and used them to mock God, using his considerable wit and sharp tongue to convince as many people as possible to do the same.

When I had a crisis of faith my freshman year at a secular university studying religion, I was deeply convinced that there were only two options: full-blown Christian orthodoxy or atheism. Liberal theology—with its fantasy of rescuing the "kernel" (or essence) of Christianity from the (disposable) "husk" of dogma—had no appeal to me. And this is one of the things I appreciated about Hitchens. He once expressed incredulity at the platitudes of a Unitarian minister who saw the beauty of Jesus' moral teachings while rejecting his divinity:

I would say that if you don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you're really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.

He was no admirer of C. S. Lewis, but he did agree with Lewis's statement about Jesus: "Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse." Hitchens wrote:

Absent a direct line to the Almighty and a conviction that the last days are upon us, how is it "moral" to teach people to abandon their families, give up on thrift and husbandry and take to the stony roads?

How is it moral to claim a monopoly on access to heaven, or to threaten waverers with everlasting fire, let alone to condemn fig trees and persuade devils to infest the bodies of pigs?

Such a person if not divine would be a sorcerer and a ­fanatic.

He saw the choice before him, and he rejected the Savior.

Hitchens suspected there would be rumors of a deathbed conversion—but even more he feared that he might actually call out to God. Speaking perhaps truer than he knew, he sought to give a preemptive strike against such a possibility, explaining that would not be the real Christopher Hitchens doing such a thing:

Even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it's hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be "me." (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)

The section that sticks with me most from the Hitchens/Wilson debate-documentary Collision is the final scene. It is a telling moment, especially given that the subtitle of his bestselling book God Is Not Great effectively summarized the thesis of the book: How Religion Poisons Everything. More specifically, he wrote that organized religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." But in the back of this car with Doug, he reveals a difference between himself and Richard Dawkins:

Our heart and prayers go out to Christopher's younger brother Peter—the author of The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith—in his time of grief and sorrow.

Douglas Wilson's obituary is worth reading, especially as he explores the possibility of Christopher turning to Christ at the end.

The Self-Emptying of Jesus = The Self-Adding of Jesus

Scott Oliphint:

It is not as though Christ emptied himself of something; that is not what Paul actually says.

His actual point is that Christ emptied himself by becoming something that he was not previously, something that, by definition, required humility and ultimately humiliation (Philippians 2:8).

For Christ to make himself nothing, says Paul, was for him to humble himself, and he humbles himself by being born in the likeness of men and by becoming obedient to the point of death.

So, as Paul describes it in this passage, the self-emptying is, in point of fact, a self-adding.

K. Scott Oliphint, God With Us: Divine Condescension and the Attributes of God (Crossway, 2012), p. 118 (HT: DG blog)

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

(Philippians 2:3-8)

Why It's Hard to Define Simple Terms

Augustine famously asked:

For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another. What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not. (Confessions, 11, XIV, 17; my emphasis)

Why are basic things difficult to define? Tom Morris, in his fine book Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology, has a helpful word on this:

The idea of a power is a very basic, fundamental idea. It is such a basic idea that it is very difficult to analyze or explain, since analysis and explanation typically break up the complex into the simple, or illuminate the unfamiliar by reference to the familiar. We normally give an account of one idea by explaining it in terms of more basic ideas. But the idea of a power is so basic in our conceptualization of the world that it is hard to find much to say in elucidation of it. (p. 69)

The Differences between the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith

A helpful tabular comparison chart (with color-coding) assembled by James Anderson.

An MIT Scientist Refutes Scientism

"Scientism" is not the same as "science."

Scientism is a philosophical belief about science, holding that science is the only rational approach to truth in the world, and that only scientific truths can be rationally accessed and believed. (A softer form of scientism would hold that the results of science are the most rational and most objective truths we can have or hold.)

I think it's safe to safe this is the dominant worldview of the secular scientific community—despite the fact that it is a self-defeating position (since "scientism" itself is a philosophical position and not a scientific truth).

Those seeking a refutation of scientism might be interested in a new book by Ian Hutchinson, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, entitled Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism.

You can also read quite a bit of the book online for free at the author's website.

HT: Chronicle of Higher Education blog (via Gene Veith)

Two Ways to Look at Christian Liberty

Douglas Wilson:

The way others are to view your liberty is not the same way that you should view your liberty.

Other Christians should let you do what you want unless the Bible forbids it. That's how we guard against legalism.

But you should use your liberty differently—you should be asking what the reasons are for doing it, and not what the reasons are for prohibiting it.

What a Wonderful World

David Attenborough on Planet Earth (at time of writing, the complete 5-disc set is selling at Amazon for $19.99, which is 75% off, for those looking for last-minute gifts):

HT: 22 Words