Are you Bi ? Or are you Tri ?

Or maybe you’re mono. What am I talking about, you ask? I am talking about a seemingly minor point of doctrine that in the case of a few of my readers (a quick check of my blog stats indicates that I do indeed have few readers) is so trivial and inconsequential that it really isn’t worth the time of day. But for me, having been fully indoctrinated into a teaching that [on further review] turns out to be very suspect, discovering the reformed teaching on this point has elevated this minor point into a cause celebre, if you will.

The doctrine of man, among other things, addresses the question: Is man a bi-partite being or a tri-partite being? Before diving in, I guess it is only fair to consider the mono option. You may be a mono in either of two ways. Atheists are mono in that they maintain that man, in fact everything in the universe, is physical. There is no immaterial thing whatever. On the other hand, the Hindoos (don’t you like the way they formerly spelled that word) maintain that man, indeed the entire universe, is entirely immaterial and the physical world is an illusion. [I could be corrected on that point, but it doesn't matter - pun intended.]

But for the rest of us, the question comes down to this: Is man a bi-partite being or a tri-partite being? As you might guess, all the while I was in the pentecostal non-denomination world, I was told that man is a tri-partite being. Man consists of a body, a soul and a spirit. The Reformed position on this doctrine is that man consists of exactly two parts, the material and the immaterial. I will weigh in with a subsequent post. Meanwhile, comments are open for your thoughts.

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Movie Night

As I reported a long while back, we hosted movie nights for seminarian friends from our church on alternate Sunday nights over the last 12 months. These are the movies we watched in no particular order:

Gladiator
Tombstone
Last of the Mohicans
3:10 to Yuma
Batman Returns
World’s Fastest Indian
Ground Hog Day
North By Northwest
Witness for the Prosecution
Quiet Man
Hot Rock
Billy Budd
The Rundown
Martin Luther
The Drunken Master
Harry Potter 1-4
Stardust
Brother Wherefore Art Thou There Will Be Blood
Two Steven Spielberg Stories - The Mummy and The Train

Here’s my top five from the above list (in order)

1. Billy Budd
2. Witness for the Prosecution
3. Brother Wherefore Art Thou
4. World’s Fastest Indian
5. Groundhog Day

Honorable mention: Tombstone, There Will Be Blood

Disappointments were the Harry Potter series, Last of the Mohicans, Gladiator

These are Deborah’s top five:

1. Quiet Man
2. Witness for the Prosecution
3. Hot Rock
4. Stardust
5. Groundhog Day

Honorable mention: Brother Wherefore Art Thou

Disappointing was: Last of the Mohicans, There Will Be Blood

How could I not like the great bluegrass music in “Brother” and featured song “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” sorta resonates, ya know.

One thing to note is that of all these movies, only one appears on the so-called top 100 movies of all time. So it’s not like we are going to run out of material any time soon.

We are resuming movie nights again, but one thing that happened along the way was three pregnancies. So with all the little ones, it gets harder and harder for all to want to drag the babies out for a late night of fun and food.

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Was It a Sermon?

There is a difference between a recitation and a speech; there is an indescribable difference between that which we recite from our memory and that which God creates for us in our heart and enables us to hurl from our lip with ringing and gracious power.

I think the above quote sort of gets at the basic problem I had with my "sermon". There is a great big caution that must be slapped on the quote, however. What is not in view here is the idea of just getting in the pulpit and letting fly with what is on one’s heart. That won’t do. That won’t work because our hearts are in fact black with sin. Nothing good can come from winging it with what is on our hearts.

What is in view for me at least is the challenge of getting over the bridge that brings the preacher from merely regurgitating the prepared understanding of the text to actually delivering the truth to the people of God that takes the people out of the classroom into God presence. Means of grace, not means of information, in other words.

The seminary has a policy of disallowing students to read their sermons in the class "dry runs". Their rationale for this policy is quite good. They need the experience of delivering a sermon in order to develop skill in rhetoric so as to eliminate glaring problems that invariably surface when preaching with out a written script.

This does not preclude the practice of reading a written sermon when the candidate actually becomes ordained. So, the question becomes is it possible to read a written sermon and bridge the gap from information to grace? The answer is that, of course, it is possible.

There is no question that one can come across as a teacher even though not reading a script. It equally certain that one can preach (provide the means of grace) even though the preacher is reading from a script. I certainly came across as a lecturer in my sermon. Were I given a second chance on my sermon, I believe I could take some good steps in the right direction, since I can so easily see where I went wrong.

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Many of you will know that basically all of my background with respect to sermons is listening to them. And 99% of those sermons were topcial sermons. The overwhelming majority of sermons preached in reformed churches are expository sermons. It goes without saying then, that it was an expository sermon that was mandated for this class. So, this was my first attempt at an expository sermon.

For a quick picture of T vs. E, a topical sermon is one where the preacher has a topic in mind. He preaches what he wants to say about the topic and in order to defend or verify that his statements are biblical, he then refers to texts, or individual passages. In this way he proves that what he is saying is correct. An expository sermon, on the other hand, is completely different. Here, the preacher is already in the text, he is preaching from within a passage. In T, he speaks his mind and derives the validity from scripture. In E, being already in a text, he is saying "THUS SAYETH THE LORD".

One mistake I made, then, in my sermon is that, even though I was in principle expositorally preaching my assigned passage, I carried the topical preacher’s mindset into the pulpit. I improperly made use of other scriptures. I in effect came across as apologetic (not in the good sense, but in the sense that I showed a complete lack of having the authority of the office). There was no "thus sayeth the Lord". It was "thus sayeth Bruce". And in all cases my references to other passages were employed in the identical way that the T preacher would. I was in effect saying, "look over here. See? Is not what I am saying correct?"

This may seem like hair-splitting. But it is actually more than that.  I do believe that topical sermons are fundamentally flawed. When the T preacher refers to other texts as proof, there is a great danger. By eliciting truth from them as proof texts they are lifted out of their proper context.  The referenced scriptures are themselves subject to an expository sermon. When they are preached, they also require an expository sermon. Used as proof texts, an overly facile approach to scripture results. You can see what is happening. With the T preacher, you never get to "thus sayeth the Lord". Put another way, the T preacher, by referring to other texts as proof, is tacitly admitting that the authority of the expository "thus sayeth the Lord" is really the only way to preach.

Admittedly, there is a problem here for the student preacher. By virtue of his being a student, he necessarily has not yet been granted the office of preacher, and thus lacks the authority to say the "thus sayeth the Lord" that comes with it. In reformed churches there is an incredibly rigorous external call process through which the candidate preacher must go. So how does the student preach as if he already has the office? I was clearly neither ready for that, nor was I really even cognizant of this dynamic.

That was by no means my only shortcoming. More later.

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Coming Soon

Here’s a heads up. I will be posting a short series of comments about the sermon I gave for my recently completed Sermon Prep and Delivery class. You won’t want to miss this. The quick summary of the class itself. GREAT. The quick summary of the sermon I preached as part of the requirements for the class can be summed up in one word. BAD.  The first installment will be up over the week end.

Calling All Scholars

"Paul was a man of the schools with the best theological training of his day at Tarsus and Jerusalem. The chosen vessel of Christ for the conquest of the Roman Empire was the ablest mind of the age with Hebrew, Greek and Roman culture and not the fishermen of Galilee, who had courage but lacked the special scholastic equipment that Paul possessed. Paul was a linguist at home in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and probably Latin and did not need an interpreter like Mark was for Peter. Paul wrote and spoke the vernacular Koine, but did so as an educated man in touch with the intellectual life of his time. Paul knew the power in a word and in a phrase and was able to write 1 Cor 13, the noblest prose poem in all literature. Man of genius that he was, he was also a man of the schools as Peter and John were not. He became the great preacher, missionary and theologian of the ages. Linguistic learning is not all that the preacher requires, but the supreme preacher like Paul does need it.

"The physician has to study chemistry and physiology. Other men may or may not. The lawyer has to study his Blackstone. The preacher has to know his Bible or the people suffer the consequences of his ignorance, as in the case of the physician or lawyer. [Editor's note: A defining moment in my developing call was when I realized that that book in the zippered leather case stuffed with bulletins and other junk is not the Bible. It is an uninspired attempt by fallible men with agendas - committees of scholars in most cases - to render what they think is contained in the extant copies of the original.]

"The preacher can not get away from the fact that the New Testament was written in the Greek language of the first century A.D. The only way for him to become an expert in this literature of which he is an exponent by profession is to know it in the original. That this may be a difficult task is not to be considered a valid excuse. One will not tolerate such an excuse in a physician or a lawyer. The preacher lets himself off too easily when he asserts that he is too busy to learn his Greek New Testament. He is saying he is too busy with other things than to do the main thing, to learn his message and tell it. When asked what he thought about the neglect of  ministers to learn Hebrew and Greek Carlyle declared, ‘What! Your priests don’t even know their own sacred texts?’

"One is familiar with the retort that the preacher must not be a doctor ‘dry as dust’. It is assumed that technicalities sap the life out of one’s spirit. The famous German professor who lamented on his death-bed that he had not devoted his life to the study of the dative case is flaunted in our face. This the preacher proudly reminds us while he preaches live sermons to moved audiences. ‘Grammar to the wolves.’ He will be a preacher not a scholar. He will leave scholarship to the men who cannot preach. Such a preacher seems to rejoice in the fact that he cannot look into his Greek grammar or Testament and make any sense of it.

"It is not argued here that the preacher should bring the dust and debris of the workshop into the pulpit, only that the workman shall have a workshop and that he spends time in it. There is music in the ring of the hammer on the anvil when the sparks fly under the blows. Certainly the iron has to be struck while it is hot. No parade or display of learning is called for. Results and not processes suit the pulpit. The non-theological audience can usually tell when the sermon is the result of real work. The glow is still in the product. There are men who study grammar and never learn how to read a language, men who cannot see the wood for the trees, who see in language only skeletons and paradigms, who find no life in words, who use language to conceal thought, who have only the lumber of learning. These men create the impression that scholarship is dry. It is ignorance itself that is the driest thing on earth. One does not become juicy by remaining ignorant. The mind that is awake and alert leaps with joy with every scholarly discovery that throws light on the thought of a passage."

Excerpted from A.T. Robertson The Minister and His Greek New Testament

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Again I Quote: #7

” But how can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand times. He is wise in heart and mighty in strength- who has hardened himself against him, and succeeded? he who removes mountains, and they know it not, when he overturns them in his anger, who shakes the earth out of its place, and its pillars tremble; who commands the sun, and it does not rise; who seals up the stars; who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea; who made the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the chambers of the south; who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number. Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him. Behold, he snatches away; who can turn him back? Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?’ “God will not turn back his anger; beneath him bowed the helpers of Rahab. How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him? Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser. If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause; he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness. If it is a contest of strength, behold, he is mighty! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him? Though I am in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse. I am blameless; I regard not myself; I loathe my life. It is all one; therefore I say, He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.”

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

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Again I Quote #6

O LORD, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you.  Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry!  For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol.  I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a man who has no strength,  like one set loose among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.  You have put me in the depths of the pit, in the regions dark and deep.  Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves. Selah  You have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a horror to them. I am shut in so that I cannot escape;  my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O LORD; I spread out my hands to you.  Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you? Selah  Is your steadfast love declared in the grave, or your faithfulness in Abaddon?  Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?  But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.  O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?  Afflicted and close to death from my youth up, I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.  Your wrath has swept over me; your dreadful assaults destroy me.  They surround me like a flood all day long; they close in on me together.  You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.

Psalm 88

Again I Quote #5

“When his wife wept loudly he comforted her, ‘Think where she is going. She’ll get along all right. Flesh is flesh, spirit is spirit. Children don’t argue. They believe what they’re told. All things are simple for children. They die without anxiety, complaint or fear of death, and they have little physical pain, as if they were falling asleep’.

“When the illness of his daughter became graver he said, ‘I love her very much. But if it is your will to take her, dear God, I shall be glad to know that she is with you.’ Afterward,he said to his daughter, who was lying in bed, ‘Dear Magdalene, my little daughter, you would be glad to stay here with me, your father. Are you also glad to go to your Father, in heaven?’ The sick girl replied, ‘Yes, dear father, as God wills.’ The father said, ‘You dear little girl. [Then he turned away from her and said] ‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. I love her very much. But if this flesh is so strong, what must the spirit be?’ Among other things, he then said, ‘In the last thousand years God has given to no bishop such great gifts as he has given to me (for one should boast of God’s gifts). I’m angry with myself that I am unable to rejoice from my heart and be thankful to God, though at times I do sing a little song and thank God. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s (in the genitive singular and not the nominative plural).

“When his daughter was in the agony of death, he fell on his knees before the bed, and weeping bitterly, prayed that God might will to save her. Thus she gave up the ghost in the arms of her father. Her mother was in the same room, but farther from the bed on account of her grief. It was after the ninth hour on the Wednesday after the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity in the year 1542.

“Often he repeated the words given above, ‘I’d like to keep my daughter because I love her very much, if only our Lord God would let me, however, His will be done. Truly nothing better can happen to her, nothing better.’ While she was still living he often said to her, ‘Dear daughter you have another Father in heaven. You are going to go to him.’ His friend [PM] said to him, ‘The feelings of parents are a likeness of divinty impressed upon the human character. If the love of God for the human race is as great as the love of parents for their children, then it is truly great and ardent.’

“When his dead daughter had been placed in the coffin, he said, ‘You dear little Lena, how well it has worked out for you.’ He looked at her and said, ‘Ah, dear child, to think that you must be raised up and will shine like the stars, yes, like the sun.’

“The coffin would not hold her, and he said, ‘The little bed is too small for her.’ He said, ‘I am joyful in spirit but I am sad according to the flesh. The flesh doesn’t take kindly to this. The separation caused by death troubles me above measure. It is strange to know that she is surely at peace and that she is surely at peace and is well off there, very well off, and yet to grieve so much.’

“When people came to escort the funeral and friends spoke to him according to custom and expressed to him their sympathy, he said, ‘You should be pleased. I have sent a saint to heaven - yes a living saint. Would that our death might be like this. Such a death I would take this very hour.’ The people said, ‘Yes this is quite true. Yet everybody would like to hold on to what is his.’ He replied, ‘Flesh is flesh and blood is blood. I am happy that she is safely out of it. There is no sorrow except that of the flesh.’ Again, turning to others, he said, ‘Do not be sorrowful. I have sent a saint to heaven. In fact, I have sent two of them.’

“When she was buried, he said, ‘There is a resurrection of the flesh.’

“When he returned home from the funeral, he said, ‘My daughter is now fitted out in body and soul. We Christians now have nothing to complain about. We know that it should and must be so, for we are altogether certain about eternal life.’ Thereupon, he consoled himself by saying, ‘I am very glad to give my daughter to our Lord God. According to the flesh I would gladly have had her, but since he has taken her away, I am thankful to him.’

Martin Luther in Table Talk

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Again I Quote #4

“My dear friends, come here to grieve with this stooped father at the grave of his beloved child, I know you are not come with the intention of seeing a reed shaken by the wind. But what you find is in truth only an old stalk, which yet does not break even from this gust of wind that has suddenly struck him from on high, out of the blue. Thus it is. For a happy household, cared for and spared by Heaven for twenty years, I have God to thank; for a much longer pursuit of my vocation, accompanied by undeserved blessings; for a great abundance of joys and sorrows, which in my calling and as a sympathetic friend, I have lived through with others. Many a heavy cloud has passed over my life; yet what has come from without, faith has surmounted, and what from within love has recompensed. But now, this one blow, the first of its kind, has shaken my life to its roots.

. . . . .

“This charge, important above all others for the remainder of my life, to which my heart clung to full of love, is now ineradicably stricken through; the friendly, refreshing picture of life is suddenly destroyed; and all the hopes that rested upon him lie here and shall be buried with this coffin. What should I say?

“There is one consolation, with which many faithful Christians soothe themselves in such a case, which already many beloved, friendly voices have spoken to me in these days, and which is not to be simply dismissed, for it grows out of a correct assessment of human weakness. Namely, it is the consolation that children who are taken away young are in fact delivered from all the dangers and temptations of this life and are early rescued into the sure Haven. And this boy would certainly not have been spared these dangers. But, in fact, this consolation does not want to take with me, I being the way I am. Regarding this world as I always do, as a world that is glorified through the life of the Redeemer and hallowed through the efficacy of his Spirit to an unending development of all that is good and Godly; wishing, as I always have, to be nothing but a servant of this divine Word in a joyful spirit and sense; why then should I not have believed that the blessings of the Christian community would be confirmed in my child as well, and that through Christian upbringing, an imperishable seed would have been planted in him? Why should I not have trusted in the merciful preservation of God for him as well, even if he stumbled? Why should I not have trusted securely that nothing would be able to tear him out of the hand of the Lord and Savior to whom he was dedicated, and whom he had already begun to love with his childlike heart.

“Thus I stand here, then, with my comfort and my hope alone in the Word of Scripture, modest and yet so rich. ‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but when it shall appear, we shall see him as he is.’ And in the powerful prayer of the Lord ‘Father, I would that where I am, they also may be whom thou hast given me.’ Supported by these strong beliefs, then, and borne along by a childlike submission, I say from my heart, the Lord has given him: the name of the Lord be praised, that he gave him to me; that he granted to this child a life, which, even though short, was yet glad and bright and warmed by the loving breath of his grace; that he has so truly watched over and guided him that now with his cherished remembrance nothing bitter is mixed.

“Now, thou God who art love, let me not only resign myself to thy omnipotence, not only submit to thy impenetrable wisdom, but also know thy fatherly love. Make even this grievous trial a new blessing for me in my vocation. For me and all of mine let this communal pain become wherever possible a new bond of still more intimate love, and let it issue in a new apprehension of thy Spirit in all my household. Grant that even this grave hour may become a blessing for all who are gathered here. Let us all more and more mature to that wisdom which, looking beyond the void, sees and loves only the eternal in all things earthly and perishable, and in all thy decrees finds thy peace as well, and eternal life, to which through faith we are delivered out of death. Amen.”

Friederich Schleiermacher - Graveside sermon on the death of his son.

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