Justin Taylor's Blog, page 326

Old School Marriage

Douglas Wilson explains the old school (i.e., biblical) view of marriage.

A marriage requires two components or elements. The first is old school sexual intercourse and the second is a socially recognized set of vows, committing the couple to a legally recognized and protected state of marriage. If one or the other is missing, then so is the marriage.

To use the language of philosophy, each of these is a necessary condition for marriage (without which, not), but not a sufficient condition. In other words, you can't have a marriage without the presence of both of these elements, but the mere presence of one of them does not constitute or create the marriage. The absence of either will result in no-marriage, but the presence of either does not automatically result in marriage. You must have both together.

Read the whole thing.

Moral Reasoning in a Secular Age: A Conversation with Professor Alan Dershowitz

One of the things I appreciate Modern Reformation is that it often includes conversation and dialogue with unbelievers, or with believers outside of a conservative Reformed and evangelical perspective. I would love to see more of this.

I've mentioned before that Albert Mohler is doing this on his podcast Thinking in Public.

His latest conversation (audio and transcript) is with Professor Alan Dershowitz. I think it's a model of recognizing and commending common grace while also expressing significant differences.

Another Day Without the Return of the King

A good word in season from Mike Wittmer:

Even those who interviewed him didn't take him seriously. One anchor closed her segment on Camping with a knowing smirk, "Let's hope he's wrong."

That's where all who love Jesus must disagree. We are the first to say that Camping's aim and method were wrong. No one can predict when Jesus will return, and Camping's convoluted and implausible argument for May 21, 2011, was not particularly promising. We were right to declare that Camping was wrong, but we also should have wished that he wasn't.

Christians should feel a twinge of sadness every night when we turn in to bed, for we have lived another day without the return of our King. The Lord's Prayer includes the line, "May your Kingdom come soon" (Luke 11:2). As far-fetched as Camping's prediction was, his spectacular miss should prompt us to reassess our deepest longings. Will we only scoff at his delusion, or will we also remember that we should want our Lord to return?

Perhaps we aren't excited for Jesus' return because we're too easily pleased with the present. As one preacher said, "It's hard to pray, 'Thy kingdom come,' when your kingdom has had a good year." Thank God for the good life you presently enjoy, but don't allow his current blessings to distract you from the Christian's prayer: "Our Lord, come!" (1 Corinthians 16:22).

99 Balloons

I have posted this before but wanted to highlight it again. I'm so thankful for God's grace in the darkest hour, and this family's affirmation of the gift and dignity of life.

Psalm 22: The Silence and Salvation of God

Apart from the Psalms, C. S. Lewis's lament after the death of his wife is the most poignant expression I know of regarding the seeming silence and absence of God:

Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms.

When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms.

But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become.

There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in our time of trouble? (A Grief Observed [New York: Bantam, 1961], 4-5)

This is one of the themes of Psalm 22. And it couldn't be clearer that Jesus had this psalm in his mind when he hung on the cross, bearing his Father's wrath for the forgiveness of our sins. Matthew 27:46 says,

About the ninth hour [=3 PM], Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying [in Aramaic], "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" [Ps 22:1].

And Matthew obviously wants us to see Psalm 22 running all throughout Christ's sufferings on the cross:

Psalm 22
Matthew 27


v. 1: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
v. 46: And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"


v. 7: All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.
v. 39: Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads.


v. 8: "He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"
v. 43: He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, "I am the Son of God."


v. 16: "they pierce my hands and feet"
(Crucifixion)


v. 18: They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
v. 35: And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

As you read through the whole psalm, the problem and the pattern quickly emerges in the first two verses.

David groans to God . . . but there seems to be no salvation and none of God's presence.

David cries to God . . . but there seems to be no answer and no rest.

What I find fascinating about this psalm is the way in which David reasons his way from extreme pain to confident hope. There's an internal dialogue before God that swings back and forth from the present pain to God's past presence and faithfulness. The movement eventually propels forward into praise in the future. I've tried to illustrate below the way I see this structure and developed. The whole psalm repays careful and prayerful meditation and study.

Past (Presence)


Present (Plea)


Future (Praise)





(vv. 1-3)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.



(vv. 4-5)

YET you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.





(vv. 6-8)

BUT I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; "He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!"



(vv. 9-10)

YET you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother's breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother's womb you have been my God.





(vv. 11-21)

Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.

Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid! Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!









(vv. 22-31)

I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him, and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will perform before those who fear him.

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord! May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.

Posterity shall serve him; it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation; they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it.

N.T. Wright on Rob Bell, Hell, and American Fixations

N. T. Wright:

"Why are Americans so fixated on hell?" Far more Americans ask me about hell than ever happens in my own country. And I really want to know, why is it that the most prosperous affluent nation on earth is really determined to be sure that they know precisely who is going to be frying in hell and what the temperature will be and so on. There's something quite disturbing about that, especially when your nation and mine has done quite a lot in the last decade or two to drop bombs on people elsewhere and to make a lot of other people's lives hell. So, I think there are some quite serious issues about why people want to ask that question.

Trevin Wax responds:

When I lived overseas, I discovered Romanians to be very interested in future judgment. Visit Eastern Europe, Africa, China, and other parts of the world where there is a strong evangelical presence and you will find people grappling with these issues. The fact that few in the UK ask Wright about hell says more about the paucity of evangelical witness in England than it does any lopsided obsession with hell in the States.

Read the whole thing for Wright's full comments and Wax's full response.

The Bible on Mediated Communication Technologies

I like book reviews that don't merely summarize the book but engage the book's arguments and advance the conversation. I think Eric Eekhoff's review of Tim Challies's The Next Story is a good example of providing helpeful summary and then seeking to do some iron sharpening iron.

I appreciated this section in particular:

Another concern I had with the book was how Challies talked about mediation.  As stated earlier, for Challies a medium is something that stands in between.  What he doesn't quite get right here is that media don't just stand in the way, they are enablers.  Phones don't just stand between you and me, they enable us to have a conversation.  To view media as something that enables rather than something that stands in between allows us to see mediation in a more positive light.  For Challies, mediated communication is worse than unmediated or immediate communication.  He says that unmediated communications is the ideal to strive for and anything mediated is only second rate (at best).

There are a number of things wrong with this position.  First, Challies provides almost no argument for why mediated communication is worse than unmediated communication.  He mentions one Biblical reference (Gen. 3:8) where Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the garden.  Challies interprets this to mean that Adam and Eve enjoyed face-to-face, unmediated communication with God before the fall.  But Genesis 3:8 occurs after Adam and Eve had already sinned.

Second, it isn't exactly clear what Challies means by unmediated or immediate communications.  Presumably, given his definition of medium, unmediated communication means any communication where nothing stands between two people.  But how far do we take this?  Does clothing stand between two people?  How about cultures?  Or language?  Or air molecules?  Challies never indicates what he means by this or where the line should be drawn.

Third, the lack of nuance in this position is unhelpful.  Challies even (briefly) mentions a tool elsewhere in the book that would help him better evaluate communications technologies but unfortunately decided not to use it in this case.  The tool I'm thinking of is McLuhan's tetrad.  The tetrad is a set of four questions to ask of any technology.  These questions help determine what the technology enhances, what it makes obsolete, what it retrieves and what it reverses into.  As Ian Bogost points out**, the tetrad helps us resist "our temptation to pass judgment on [technology] crudely – as merely good or bad, productive or distracting, enabling or dangerous.  Such an analysis also reminds us that no technological object can be seen as a simple force of either progress or destruction."

I'm not sure the reductio ad absurdum about clothing and molecules is all that compelling (except to point to the absence of a clear definition), but the lack of a biblical case for this is interesting. I wonder if Challies would say that having written Scripture—surely a mediated communication—is itself a concession to the Fall?

What do you think? Is the issue of mediated communication technology something addressed by Scripture, and if so, how does it impact the way in which you view and use technology?

How to Read a Book

Mortimer Adler, in his classic How to Read a Book suggests that there are three main stages for analytical reading, which can be seen in these three questions: (1) What is this book about as a whole? (2) What is being said in detail, and how? (3) Is it true? What of it?

Here are the rules. Adler occasionally restates the rule, so I've included both versions when necessary:

Stage 1: What Is the Book About as a Whole?

Rule 1. You must know what kind of book you are reading, and you should know this as early in the process as possible, preferably before you begin to read. / Classify the book according to kind and subject matter. (p. 60)

Rule 2. State the unity of the whole book in a single sentence, or at most a few sentences (a short paragraph). State what the whole book is about with the utmost brevity. (pp. 75-76)

Rule 3. Set forth the major parts of the book, and show how these are organized into a whole, by being ordered to one another and to the unity of the whole. / Enumerate its major parts in their order and relation, and outline these parts as you have outlined the whole. (p. 76)

Rule 4. Find out what the author's problems were. / Define the problem or problems the author has tried to solve. (p. 92)

Stage 2: What Is Being Said in Detail, and How?

Rule 5. Find the important words and through them come to terms with the author. / Come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words. (p. 98)

Rule 6: Mark the most important sentences in a book and discover the propositions they contain. / Grasp the author's leading propositions by dealing with his most important sentences. (p. 120)

Rule 7: Locate or construct the basic arguments in the book by finding them in the connections of sentences. / Know the author's arguments, by finding them in, or constructing them out of, sequences of sentences. (p. 120)

Rule 8: Find out what the author's solutions are. / Determine which of his problems the author has solved, and which he has not; and as to the latter, decide which the author knew he had failed to solve. (p. 135)

Stage 3: Is It True? What of It?

General Maxims of Intellectual Etiquette

Rule 9: You must be able to say, with reasonable certainty, "I understand," before you can say any one of the following things: "I agree," or "I disagree," or "I suspend judgment." / Do not begin criticism until you have completed your outline and your interpretation of the book. (pp. 142-143)

Rule 10: When you disagree, do so reasonably, and not disputatiously or contentiously. (p. 145)

Rule 11: Respect the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion, by giving reasons for any critical judgment you make. (p. 150)

Special Criteria for Points of Criticism

12. Show wherein the author is uninformed.

13. Show wherein the author is misinformed.

14. Show wherein the author is illogical.

15. Show wherein the author's analysis or account is incomplete.

For more detailed notes on the book, see Brian Fulthorp's series.

Behold Our God!

From Sovereign Grace's excellent album Risen:

Homosexuality, Marriage, and the Law

John Piper outlines some thoughts on the homosexuality, marriage, and the law in response to the proposed Minnesota Marriage Amendment:

There is no such thing as so-called "gay marriage."
Same-sex sexual relations are sin.
Not all sins should be proscribed by human law, but some should be.
The legal significance of marriage makes a statutory definition necessary.
It is wise that our laws define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Read the whole thing for an explanation and defense of each point.

(For a compelling natural-law argument that "it is in the public interest for law and policy to take cognizance of [marriage] and support it," I recommend this article by Robert P. George.)