A month of memories

by Phil Johnson

uly and August are looking impossible for me schedule-wise. Pecadillo is getting married in Seattle July 18 (I don't think he's coming back to the blogosphere for awhile; we're going to need a new mascot); I have two or three deadlines coming due within 2 weeks after that; and then I'm going to Cape Cod to speak at a conference there in mid-August. So I'm way overbooked and have no extra time to think about writing new blogposts.

Here's what I'm gonna do: For the next month or so, all my posts are going to be reposts of classic material from the original PyroManiac blog. (Warning: some of it is highly flammable.)

Salvaging some of the posts from my original blog and getting them into the permanent record here is something I have wanted to do since we moved to a gangblog. (To make that material searchable on one site with the rest of my bloggage.) Dan Phillips's repost of his "Sister, Have Mercy" post last week settled it in my mind. I've never before posted the same exact blogpost twice (at least not purposely), but Dan has given me the boldness to do it.

Yeah, I know all that stuff is already online (no fair rummaging through it now in quest of previews), but I'm going to pull as much of it as possible over here in the next couple of months. I know we have a lot of readers nowadays who don't remember the glory days of the original PyroManiac blog, so this will be fun and interesting. Back then I was still feeling my way around in the blogosphere, and believe it or not, I used to tick off a lot more people than I do now. So fasten your seat belts.

To take us back to the very start, here's my first-ever substantive blogpost, which for two years or so held the record for being my most commented-on post of all. I had announced my intentions to start blogging about 2 months before I posted this, so a lot of people prolly thought I had been tooling up for this opening salvo for all that time. Truth is, I was burdened with a similar time-crunch then, under a big deadline for a book manuscript coming due June 1 that year. I delivered the manuscript (on time) the day before this entry posted, and then I wrote this post in about 45 minutes' time before going to bed that evening.

Everything else is history.

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Quick-and-Dirty Calvinism

Bashing Calvinism is the latest fad in blogdom. My turn.

(First posted 1 June 2005)

hree years ago Rob Schläpfer had the best Reformed website and book business bar none. It was the place to go if you were looking for material responding to Dave Hunt. Schläpfer's online magazine, Antithesis, was the best-looking and most consistently interesting website I knew—and it was thoroughly Calvinistic.

Michael Spencer, aka the Internet Monk, runs one of the most successful group blogs around. It's a lively theological discussion cast as a virtual tavern. The iMonk gained fame earlier this year by "outing" Joel Osteen's frivolous non-gospel. One of the iMonk's famous early blog entries was titled "Why Calvin Is Cool." Judging from the network of links, the iMonk's group blog, The Boar's Head Tavern (BHT), has attracted a lot of Calvinist readers.

But last year with little warning, Schläpfer renounced all things Reformed and started giving rave reviews to almost every postmodern oddity and "emergent church" manual that the evangelical publishing houses could crank out. With a bit of fanfare, Schläpfer's mail-order company dropped some of the best Reformed books from their line. Meanwhile, Schläpfer was posting some fiery blasts both publicly and privately against Calvinists and Calvinism. (Some of them—including one sent to me personally—were pretty much in the spirit of Mark 14:71.)

Recently, the iMonk followed suit with a controversial essay, "I'm Not Like You . . . (Calvinists especially)." He closed it with a paragraph that began, "I am not like you. Every day I wander further from the safety of Calvinism into the wideness of God's mercy." Although the text is still in the process of deconstruction at the BHT, it seems like the iMonk and his drinking buddies have decided postmodernism is a lot cooler than Calvinism.

Schläpfer and the iMonk are by no means alone. More serious Calvinist leaders, including John Armstrong and Andrew Sandlin are saying similar things, albeit usually with just a smidge more subtlety.

Jumping off the Calvinist bandwagon and lobbing rotten eggs at the attitudes and culture of "Reformed" folk is clearly le dernier cri in the blogosphere and beyond.

Before we vivisect these gentlemen and their views (something I may eventually want to devote some bloggage to), I think it would be helpful to ponder why Calvinism, which seemed to be the flavor of the month not so long ago, has suddenly become so odious to so many of its one-time friends.

I have to say with all candor that I can somewhat understand the feelings expressed by some of Calvinism's recent critics. Sniff around some of the Calvinist forums on the Internet and it won't be long before you begin to think something is rotten in Geneva.

But I hasten to add that I don't think the problem really lies in Geneva, or in historic Calvinism, or in any of the classic Reformed creeds. I especially don't think the stench arises from any problem with Calvinism per se. In my judgment, the problem is a fairly recent down n' dirty version of callow Calvinism that has flourished chiefly on the Internet and has been made possible only by the new media.

Internet Calvinism and historic Calvinism sometimes have little in common. Consider:

1. Fanaticism. The strains of hyper-Calvinism that are flourishing today are more harsh and more hyper than any of the historic hyper-Calvinists ever thought about being.
   
   If you doubt this, check Marc Carpenter's infamous website and read his ridiculous "Heterodoxy Hall of Shame." Carpenter is so hyper-Calvinistic that he has even labeled Calvin a hell-bound heretic for not being Calvinistic enough! He damns Spurgeon, Iain Murray, and even Gordon Clark (whom no one during his lifetime ever accused of not being Calvinistic enough).
   
   There are some well-trafficked discussion forums out there that look like they're having a contest to see who can be most extreme in their condemnations of Arminianism or most overblown in their affirmation of über-high Calvinism.
   
   There is a radical extremism among hypers on the Internet that is utterly unheard of even in the darkest corners of hyper-Calvinist history. At least the early hypers like Huntington and Gill had some profitable things to say when they exegeted Scripture.
   
   
2. Non-evangelism. Among more mainstream Calvinists, there are certainly some outstanding men who are earnestly evangelistic (Piper, MacArthur, and even Sproul). But it would be stretching things more than a little bit to insist that modern Calvinism as a movement is known by its passion for evangelism. Where are the Calvinist evangelists? I can think of only one outstanding example: John Blanchard. (There are surely more, but at the moment I can't think of any other famous Calvinists now living who have devoted their ministries primarily to evangelism).
   
   Of course, I fully realize that the Arminian caricature of historic Calvinism as anti-evangelistic is a total lie. But one could hardly argue that evangelism is a key feature of modern Calvinism. Neither the writings we produce nor the conferences we hold focus much on evangelism.
   
   
3. Polemicism. Today's rank-and-file Calvinists are more in the mold of Pink, Boettner, and J.I. Packer than they are like Spurgeon or Whitefield. In other words, modern Calvinism is producing mostly students and polemicists, not evangelists and preachers. That's because Internet Calvinism is simply too academic and theoretical and not concerned enough with doing, as opposed to hearing, the Word (James 1:22). To a large degree, I think that's what the medium itself encourages.
   
   
4. Anti-intellectualism. This may sound like a contradiction of my previous point, but both tendencies contribute to the superficiality of Internet Calvinism. Want a sample? I recently received an e-mail inquiry that is all too typical of what I have observed for years among Internet Calvinists. Someone whom I do not know and whose name I will not divulge wrote me to ask:
   

   Can you explain in one paragraph or less how to make sense of the distinction you make between the "decretive" and "preceptive" aspects of God's will? Please don't give me a reading list of books and articles. One paragraph. One sentence if you can do it. Because the whole idea seems loony to me. So far, no one has been able to describe it in a way that makes any sense. I don't have time to read 10 volumes of dead guys' reflections in Puritan prose. And don't refer me to Piper's article on the subject. It's too long and convoluted. I just want a short answer.

   
   Right. The quick and dirty approach to untangling the mysteries of the universe. And every forum on the Internet, it seems, has at least one or two freshly-enlightened, beardless Calvinists who are convinced that their understanding of everything suddenly became perfect when they embraced the sovereignty of God. Some of them imagine that whatever difficulties they still can't explain can be easily solved by simply moving to a more extreme position.

The upsurge of Calvinism on the Internet in the 1990s seems to have spawned a large and unprecedented movement of jejune Calvinists who wear arrogance as if it were the team uniform. That kind of hotshot, shoot-from-the-hip Calvinism is ugly. I don't blame anyone for being appalled by it. I'm worried about those who think it's a good thing.

Obviously those criticisms are mostly generalizations, and they don't necessarily apply to every Calvinist on the Internet. But (and here's the hard part) I'm willing to admit that there have been times when every one of those criticisms could be legitimately applied to something I wrote or posted to a public forum somewhere. I'll especially confess to my shame that I'm too much of a polemicist and not enough of an evangelist.

Historic Calvinism is not supposed to be that way. Yes, Calvinism is virile; it's relentless when it comes to truth; and it's not always easy to swallow. But it is full of truths that should humble us and fill us with compassion rather than swagger and conceit. The best Calvinism has always been fervently evangelistic, large-hearted, benevolent, merciful, and forgiving. After all, that's what the doctrines of grace are supposed to be all about.

Until we get back there, some of the lumps the Reformed movement is currently taking are well-deserved.

And meanwhile, my advice to young Calvinists is to learn your theology from the historic mainstream Calvinist authors, not from blogs and discussion forums on the Internet. Some of the forums may be helpful in pointing you to more important resources. But if you think of them as a surrogate for seminary, you're probably going to become an ugly Calvinist—and if you get hit in the face with a rotten egg, you probably deserve it.

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Another addendum on evangelicals as a voting bloc

by Phil Johnson

ere's someone else who evidently disagrees with my opposition to transforming the evangelical movement into a political lobby:

Brian McLaren, a former pastor who spent 24 years in the pulpit and is now an informal adviser to the Obama campaign, believes that a significant portion of evangelical voters are ready to break from their traditional home in the the Republican Party and take a new leap of faith with Obama.

"I think there's a very, very sizable percentage—I think between a third and half—of evangelicals, especially younger [evangelicals], who are very open to somebody with a new vision," McLaren said.

I'm inclined to think McLaren's numbers are inflated ("between a third and half of evangelicals" voting for Obama)—unless you take George Barna's and Christianity Today's broad and fairly meaningless definitions of what constitutes an "evangelical." But I'm quite sure McLaren is right that the tide is turning, especially among younger churchgoers. No wonder. Evangelicals have been doing practically everything but teaching doctrine for the past 50 years—ranging from entertaining themselves to picketing Disney. So it's no surprise at all if the generation Brian McLaren appeals to most wants to look for deeper meaning in Obama's notions of "justice."

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Sovereign grace in Proverbs

by Dan Phillips

We recently looked at reflections on substitutionary atonement in (what many would see as) an unlikely place: the book of Proverbs. Does Solomon also say something about sovereign grace?

For brevity's sake, I'll focus on one specific verse: Proverbs 20:12 —

The hearing ear, and the seeing eye,
Jehovah [Yahweh] hath made even both of them (ASV)

At first glance, the point of the proverb seems plain: Yahweh created the faculties of sight and hearing. The flows from the doctrine of creation, stressed often in the Canon as a whole, and in Proverbs in particular (cf. 3:19-20; 8:22-31, etc.).

But we remind ourselves that biblical proverbs are not meant to be skimmed, scanned, glanced at in passing. They are designed to be singled out, ruminated over, meditated upon. Does this proverb say more than the obvious?

The obvious is almost too obvious, to the point of being banal and insipid — and Proverbs is neither. So at the least, perhaps Solomon is saying that these faculties are creations of Yahweh, to be taken seriously and used in a way that pleases Him. Or he could be saying that, if we have these faculties, certainly Yahweh has them to a vastly greater degree, and hears and sees us. Both of these are Biblical thoughts (cf. Luke 12:48 and Psalm 94:8-11, respectively).

But I think Solomon's word-usage in Proverbs points us in a different direction.

"Hearing ear." For instance, the word translated "hearing" is from the verb šāma`. You know if from the "Shema": "Hear, O Israel..." (Deuteronomy 6:4). It does mean to hear. It also is the verb usually translated obey. šāma` commonly means not only to hear, not only to listen, but also to respond obediently, as in the phrase "to hear is to obey." Every parent (and pastor) knows that not all hearing is listening, and not all listening is obedience: but this word regularly takes in all three dimensions.

See this for yourself in its uses in Proverbs 1:5, 8, 33; 4:1, 10; 5:13; 8:33-34; 12:15; 13:1; 15:31-32; 19:27; 28:9. This list is not exhaustive, but you will readily observe that mere physical hearing does not satisfy the meaning of any of these verses.

Similarly the ear in Proverbs is meant to be employed not merely in hearing the birdies sing nor the brooks babble. The ear is to be used in accepting and accumulating God's wisdom, as you readily see in Proverbs 2:22; 4:20; 5:1, 13; 15:31; 18:15; 22;17; 23:12; 25:12; 28:9.

So both of the first two Hebrew words point strongly beyond a surface reading. What of the next two?

"Seeing eye." Similarly, the "eye" has many uses in Proverbs, but is also used of the organ of perception and evaluation. The "eye" is spoken of in warning (3:7; 5:21; 12:15; 16:2) and encouragement (3:4; 4:21, 25). We should use our eyes to perceive and learn wisdom (23:26). And the common verb "to see" (rā'â) is used of looking and learning, of picking up wisdom through the eye-gate (6:6; 7:7; 22:3; 24:32; 27:12).

Could Solomon have meant more? I've shown that Solomon's own usage heavily weights the case for thinking he means more than the mere physical powers of seeing and hearing. In fact, I'd say that if that's all he meant, this is actually an unusual use of the words, for Solomon.

But even more persuasive are some earlier Canonical uses he surely would have known: Deuteronomy 29:4 — “But to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.” Here are all the elements of Proverbs 20:12. Clearly, Moses is not speaking of the mere physical ability to receive and decipher light and sound waves. He's talking about responding to the revelation of God receptively, understandingly, believingly, and obediently.

Another verse may or may not have a bearing, depending on the date of Psalm 119. Verse 18 voices the prayer, "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." The writer is not asking for physical eyesight. He sees just fine. He is praying that he'll have the spiritual insight to perceive and receive what is already there in Yahweh's word — the ability, in other words to see what he sees.

Putting this all together, I might suggest this interpretive paraphrase of Proverbs 20:12 —

The ear that hears, listens and obeys;
speand the eye that perceives God's truth —
Are not even both of them direct acts of spcYahweh?

And thus I concur with Derek Kidner's characteristically pithy observation:

“Hearing is the Heb. term for ‘obedient’ (so translated in 25:12; cf. 15:31; I Sa. 15:22). It can also, like ‘seeing,’ express understanding: cf. Isaiah 6:9, 10. The proverb makes a constructive companion to verse 9, pointing with it towards Ephesians 2:8-10” (Proverbs, p. 138)

The doctrine of sovereign grace is called Reformed, or Calvinistic. But Calvin and the Reformers got it from the Bible — all of it.

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An Addendum on the Church and Politics

by Phil Johnson

Some additional thoughts on what it means to "Let your light shine."

ne of the greatest dangers of the political activism of the so-called "religious right" is this: It fosters a tendency to make enemies out of people who are supposed to be our mission-field, even while we're forming political alliances with Pharisees and false teachers.

To hear some Christians today talk, you might think that rampant sins like homosexuality and abortion in America could be solved by legislation. A hundred years ago, the pet issue was prohibition, and mainstream evangelicalism embraced the notion that outlawing liquor would solve the problem of drunkenness forever in America. It was a waste of time and energy, and it was an unhealthy diversion for evangelicals and fundamentalists during an era when the truth was under siege within the church. Lobbying for laws to change the behavior of worldly people was the last project evangelicals needed to make their prime mission in the early 20th century. Just like today. Remember Galatians 2:21: "If righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." And Galatians 3:21: "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law."

We have the true and only answer to sins like homosexuality, divorce, drug addiction, and other forms of rampant immorality. It's the glorious liberty of salvation in Christ. It's a message about the grace of God, which has accomplishes what no law could ever do. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation—Good News that truly changes hearts—and we need to proclaim that message. Politically-driven hostility against our neighbors is not the best way to let the light of the glorious gospel of Christ shine unto them.

We're like lighthouse keepers in a dark and stormy world. We've been given a mission of rescue and mercy. We can't be like James and John, who in a moment of weakness and immaturity wanted to call down fire from heaven to annihilate some unbelievers who took an opposing stance. We are ambassadors of the true light, who came down to earth to seek and to save the lost—not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

There's a true sense in which we are not to love the world or the things of the world. But the people of the world are another matter. We're supposed to love them all, including our enemies. Scripture is clear on this. We don't condone sin, and we certainly can't pretend to let our lights shine if we're having fellowship with the deeds of darkness. But we should have a Christlike love for sinners, and that is an essential part of what He demands when He calls us to let our lights shine, so that people see our good works and glorify our heavenly Father. In this way, true disciples of Christ must be markedly different from the Pharisees.

If you don't have a sense of deep compassion and heartfelt benevolence toward sinners, you're not letting your light shine. If you, as a redeemed sinner, look on other sinners with no feeling but disgust, that's nothing but pride. That was the very sin of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11, who "stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican." And Jesus said that attitude is what kept him from being justified in God's eyes. Jesus, by contrast, "when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd."

That's the perspective it takes to be a true light in this world.

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A word about constantly-mutating evolutionists, skeptical philosophers, and speculative theologians

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. This week's excerpt is from a "My Own Personal Holdfast," a sermon first published in 1889 but originally preached in the Metropolitan Tabernacle at some undetermined time within the prior decade or so.

Evolutionists consider their theory: "If we can just prop it up, it'll be good as new again."

    Here's some background on Spurgeon's argument below. In 1890, William Platt Ball published Heredity and Evolution.; Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? An Examination of the View Held by [Herbert] Spencer and [Charles] Darwin. Ball was himself an evolutionist, but he (along with others in the same vein) departed from Darwin—and even more so from Herbert Spencer—on the question of whether and how our parents' and ancestors' behavior influences the characteristics we inherit from them. Will the offspring of a hardworking man who uses his muscles inherit any benefits from his working out? Or if the tails of Cocker Spaniels are clipped for enough years so that generation after generation of dogs never use their tails, will a breed of naturally tailless Spaniels eventually result through the evolutionary process?
    Spencer, for one, seemed to think so. He pointed to giraffes as proof of the "use and disuse" theory, claiming giraffes could never have evolved such long necks unless their tendency to stretch ever higher had some effect toward actually lengthening the necks of their offspring across many generations. Thus Spencer (and evolutionists who followed him) argued, evolution is a hopeful doctrine for the future of humanity. It suggests that humanity will eventually get better if we act better. That was the standard evolutionary doctrine of salvation through the 1870s or so.
    The actual progeny of that brand of humanistic optimism, however, was a whole new species of evolutionists, including William Ball. They pointed out a stubborn fact: the laws of genetics mitigate against our inheriting the effects of our parents' behavior through any kind of purely biological process. As an illustration, Ball pointed out that Jewish men have practiced circumcision from time immemorial, and Jewish infants are nevertheless still always born with fully intact foreskins. Ball insisted that evolutionary changes needed to be explainable by some more scientific means than the theory of use and disuse. He wasn't sure how animals evolved fantastic traits, but he insisted the process could not be explained by the use-and-disuse theory; that was simply unscientific.
    Those who held the older evolutionary opinions employed human morality as a counter-example. The use-and-disuse theory is the only way to account for human guilt in the evolutionary paradigm, they insisted. They pointed to the immoral proclivities so evident in human behavior as undeniable proof that we have inherited behavioral influences from our animal ancestors. Suddenly some of the same modernists who had long scoffed at the idea of original sin were now acknowledging the ubiquitous manifestations of original sin in order to prop up their now-outmoded evolutionary theories.
    That debate was raging when Spurgeon preached this sermon, and it explains the setting in which these comments were made. Spurgeon seems to indicate that he expected the theory of evolution itself to be debunked and replaced by some other fallacy in a very short time. If so, he would be disappointed by the tenacity of that theory today. In the most important respect, however, Spurgeon was exactly right: evolutionists have never found a stable, tenable theory to explain the most fundamental difficulty of their system: how did ordered information get programmed into the genetic code in the first place, and why are there zero observable instances of positive mutations in which additional information is added to a species' genetic code by some "natural" process? In their quest for answers to that question, evolutionists keep changing their story, and the textbooks still have to be completely rewritten every three years or so. Spurgeon observed this trend more than 130 years ago.
    And for good measure, he threw in a rebuke aimed at the trendy, emerging, modernist church leaders of his day who aped the style of secular scientists and philosophers by shifting their opinions every three years or so to suit the times. Don't miss that part in the closing paragraph of this excerpt.

he history of philosophy is in brief the history of fools. All the sets of philosophers that have yet lived have been more successful in contradicting those that came before them than in anything else.

It is well when the children of Ammon and Moab stand up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir utterly to slay and destroy them; the enemies of God are good at the business of destroying each other. Within a few years [today's] evolutionists will be cut in pieces by some new dreamers. The reigning philosophers of the present period have in them so much of the vitality of madness that they will be a perpetual subject of contempt; and I venture to prophesy that, before my head shall lie in the grave, there will hardly be a notable man left who will not have washed his hands of the present theory.

That which is taught to-day for a certainty by savants will soon have been so disproved as to be trodden down as the mire in the streets. The Lord's truth liveth and reigneth, but man's inventions are but for an hour. I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet; but as I have lived to see marvellous changes in the dogmas of philosophy, I expect to see still more.

See how they have shifted. They used to tell us that the natural depravity of our race was a myth—they scouted the idea that we were born in sin, and declared with mimic sentiment that every dear babe was perfect. Now what do they tell us? Why, that if we do not inherit the original sin of Adam, or any other foregoing man; yet we have upon us the hereditary results of the transgressions of the primeval oysters, or other creatures, from which we have ascended or descended. We bear in our bodies, if not in our souls, the effects of all the tricks of the monkeys whose future was entailed upon us by evolution.

This nonsense is to be received by learned societies with patience, and accepted by us with reverence, while the simple statements of Holy Writ are regarded as mythical or incredible. I only mention this folly for the sake of showing that the opponents of the Word of God constantly shift their positions, like quicksands at a river's mouth; but they are equally dangerous, whatever position they occupy. In the announcement of heredity philosophical thought has deprived itself of all power to object to the Biblical doctrine of original sin. This is of no consequence to us, who care nothing for their objections; but it ought to be some sort of hint to them.

According to modern thinkers, what is true on Monday may be false on Tuesday; and what is certain on Wednesday it may be our duty to doubt on a Thursday, and so on, world without end. Every change of the moon sees a change in the teaching of the new theology. A good stout hypothesis in the old times served a man for a hobbyhorse for twenty years; but nowadays their sorry jades hardly last twenty months. Said I not well that the smallest promise of God is worth more than all that ever has been taught, or ever shall be taught, by skeptical philosophers and speculative theologians? Let God be true, but every man a liar. Whatever may be the truth in science, God is true, and on his promise we build our confidence. We will distrust the witness of all men and angels, but we cannot, we dare not, distrust the Lord.

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Airborne Pyro, part three

by Dan Phillips

The third of three segments I recorded for the "Bible Burgh" radio program is to be aired tomorrow, June 28 [— er, 29th], at 9pm ET; you can listen to it streaming here; or download it Monday hence.

It was a good experience. Hope we can do it again sometime!

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Buncha Stuff

by Phil Johnson

Friday Afternoon Bonus: Great post at Piper's blog today. He nails it. Don't miss it.

    I've had about fifteen mostly-trivial things floating in my brain that I want to blog about but no time to write much, so I'm going to deal with as many items as possible from my "To Blog About" list today in one post, if you'll bear with me.

I've been traveling more than usual this summer. I was supposed to be on sabbatical, and before those plans got rearranged, I had accepted several invitations I simply couldn't back out of, thinking I would be free to travel because I wouldn't be juggling deadlines and whatnot. But the publishers who govern my deadlines refused to let me take any extended time off this summer, and now I have to meet the deadlines plus fulfill most of those other commitments I made. (The sabbatical will have to wait till next year. Or the next.)

That, plus a spate of odd and unusual computer problems (mostly network issues, surely related somehow to the activities of demons), have kept me from putting much serious time into the blog lately. Sorry.

Anyway, last week I was at Cornerstone Seminary in Vallejo, CA, teaching a week-long summerim session on the life and ministry of Spurgeon, with special emphasis on his preaching and the controversies he provoked. While preparing for those sessions, I read all at once through all the past weekly doses of Spurgeon, and it gave me a whole new appreciation for Spurgeon's courage and steadfastness. I recommend the exercise.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a church in the Atlanta area. My reputation for eating odd delicacies has got around, and when I travel, people frequently offer me challenging, barely-edible tidbits to see how far I will go with it. In Atlanta a dear woman (Marie, if I recall her name correctly), gave me a package of squid jerky (yes, I'm serious) plus a bag of freeze-dried anchovies. Great salad toppers. Thanks.

Also, during one of my recent trips I had the inestimable pleasure of meeting (for the first time in person) our long-time friend and honorary PyroManiac Todd "Freakishly Tall" Friel. In the picture there, we're both standing on a level floor. He really is tall. He's the same in person as you hear on the radio, and irrepressibly funny. I wish we'd had a few more days to talk, but one of us would probably have got the other one in trouble somehow. If you've never heard Todd on Way of the Master Radio, you're missing the best daily live show on Christian radio. Get the podcast. Also, if your cable company carries Familynet, check out Todd's daily television program, Wretched. That's the name of the show, not an evaluation of it.

Speaking of evaluations, my next item for today is a brief book review. I got my copy of The Last Men's Book You'll Ever Need from David Moore, the book's author, who kindly sent me an autographed copy with a courageous invitation to review the book candidly.

I would have loved to give the book my unqualified endorsement. Indeed, there is much positive to say about it, and Justin Taylor has covered most of that ground. In addition to what Justin wrote, I would add that I appreciate Dave Moore's resistance to the therapeutic approach to human relationships that dominates so much of evangelical discourse nowadays. Moore points out that everyone is "wounded" and we don't really deserve merit badges or undue sympathy for our personal hurts when we ourselves are guilty of waging war against righteousness. Also, while we're carefully nursing our personal wounds, "we need to remember that we inflict our fair share of them" (p. 118). That's wise advice, especially in our culture where so many men (and women) "focus on the hurt they've received [and] tend to discount or diminish the hurt they inflict on others" (p. 114)—not to mention the sins against Almighty God we're guilty of. Moore calls us back to a more biblical (and manly) view of our own sin.

Moore makes a number of helpful, insightful, and thought-provoking points like that. The book definitely has its fair share of high points.



As much as I'd like to stop with that, however, the manly candor Dave Moore rightly solicits compels me to say that I think the book also has too many shortcomings to fulfill the promise of its own title (which title, David Moore assures me, is supposed to be tongue in cheek). If I were looking for just one standalone book to recommend to your men's fellowship for group study, I'm sorry to say this would not be it.

Let me keep my remarks about the book's shortcomings as brief as possible by simply saying that in one way or another, all my criticisms are related to the fact that Moore brings up some very serious topics without handling them very seriously. Several of the topics that are especially crucial for men in these post-modern times warrant much more thoughtful and sober-minded analysis than Moore gives them.

In a section on the struggle with sexual lust, for example, Moore leaves the impression that prudery and sexual addiction are equally serious dangers. He describes them as "both deadly extremes" (p. 104). Now, I have counseled a lot of men who are struggling in areas related to sex, the thought life, single-mindedness, and relationships, and I can't honestly say that I have ever met one man who fell into trouble spiritually because he succumbed to the deadly danger of prudery. Virtually every man I know who is seeking to live a godly life in the Internet age actually wishes he could recover some of his pre-adolescent innocence. Prudery of the right sort is actually a virtue (Romans 16:19).

At that point in the book, where many men would be most eager for Moore to give truly practical help, he has surprisingly little to say. And he quotes without attribution from "one very wise writer" (I Googled and discovered he was quoting Doug Jones), with some intriguing lines about how porn divorces beauty from goodness and therefore turns true beauty on its head, peddling a concept of beauty that is really ugly in the extreme (pp. 106-7). But despite Moore's confident assertion, I don't think that brief thought from Doug Jones is going to "change" many struggling readers' lives.

Moore clearly knows the lives of sinners are changed only when the Holy Spirit applies the Word of God to hearts, and I wish he had followed the ramifications of that truth when dealing with (of all things) men's battle against lust. He could have—and should have—handled such topic a lot more seriously.

I won't belabor the point further, but this book would be much better if it were twice as long and ten times more serious. For my money, Justin Taylor's edition of John Owen's Overcoming Sin and Temptation is a better, richer summary of what the Bible says about "Guy Stuff." Not as funny, perhaps, but much better for men who are seeking help with the problems of being men.

Still, there's help to be gleaned and good thoughts to be found in David Moore's book, and for some men (if taken with a dose of biblical discernment) this might be a good starting point if they are seeking to understand their manhood in a spiritual and biblical light. But by no means is it the last book on manhood any man will need. (In all seriousness, as someone who has been involved in Christian publishing for more than 30 years, if I had been on the titling committee during the concept phase of this book, I would have lobbied hard for a different title, no matter how much marketing appeal this title might have.)

Oops. Dave Moore e-mailed me to correct one detail in my review. I said he quoted Doug Jones without attribution. Not true. The book uses those new-fangled end-notes where there is no documentation or note-number in the actual text itself, but if you go to the end of that chapter there is indeed a full footnote. It isn't signified anywhere in the actual text, but the documentation definitely is there. Sorry about that. Incidentally, Dave Moore took my critique like a man and sent me a kind note of thanks, which exemplifies the manly courage he wrote about. For the record, he also tells me that his publisher had imposed on him a strict word-limit, which prohibited from the get-go his aiming for an Owenesque style. Perhaps he can do a sequel or two that will fill in the some of the gaps. I'd definitely read it.

Thanks again to David Moore for his kindness and courage in submitting his book to PyroManiacs for review. To other authors out there: feel free to send any of us your books, but we can't promise to review any particular books, and we especially refuse to try to coordinate our reviews with any publisher's promotional timeline. Generally, we review books we either really like or truly, absolutely hate—and we leave the tepid reviews to Justin Taylor and Tim Challies. Book reviews are relatively rare at our blog anyway, but don't let that discourage anyone from sending us free books.

Enough about book reviews. I've run out of time and space in what was supposed to be a short post.

One last thing: Whatever else you do today, don't neglect to read about the importance of being "missional," succinctly explained by the enigmatic Dissidens.

Have a great weekend, and remember to spend the Lord's Day with the Lord's people.

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Sister... show mercy! (Annual repost #1)

[With some encouragement, I've made an executive decision to make this post from 2006 a yearly thing — with any editing I see fit to make — until I think the message has gotten through. It hasn't, so... Here y'go!]

Preface: "What are you? Nuts?!" Just thought I'd lead with the question you'll be wondering in a few minutes. I am about to stick my finger in the fan, about up to my elbow, and I know it. But I really think someone needs to say this — and why not me? I have less to lose than many who've thought the same thing, but daren't say it.

So here we go.

What will change, and what won't. Spring's sprung, and summer looms. Mercury rises, fashions change. But one thing that won't change, unless I'm happily mistaken: some good Christian sisters will not dress as helpfully as they could.

I chose that word with care: "helpfully." I am not talking about sin, shame, indecency, wantonness, or the like. Perhaps I could, with some justification. But that's for another time — and probably another writer. At this point, I just want to talk about being helpful.

Sister, if there's one thing you and I can certainly agree on, it's this: I don't know what it's like to be a woman, and you don't know what it's like to be a man. We're both probably wrong where we're sure we're right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.

"Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man" (Proverbs 27:20). Solomon doesn't use the Hebrew words that would indicate males exclusively, so this and Ecclesiastes 1:8 may apply across the gender-board. Libbie pointed out very ably that we men wrongly assume that we alone battle with temptations entering through the eye-gate.

But. But if men aren't alone in the battle, they may have a particular weakness for this aspect of it. Consider passionately-godly King David, whose psalms express aspirations after God beside which our own are pale, bloodless things. One day King David is in the wrong place, at the wrong time; sees a naked woman bathing next door, and boom! — he's gone (2 Samuel 11). Family, kingdom, God — all forgotten, consumed in the flash-flame of a lust that was only visual in its inception.

And what of that Israelite Philistine Samson and his own "eye trouble?" He sees a fetching young pagan, and bellows at his dad, "Get her for me, for she looks good to me" (Judges 14:3 NAS). Where did Samson's passions take him? How did his course end?

Unless all the men I've known personally or at a distance are completely unrepresentative, it's a lifelong struggle, a lifelong weakness. As I recall from a Proverbs lecture on mp3, Bruce Waltke says that his dad, at around age 100, told him, "Bruce, I still have the same struggles I did when I was 50." It was sobering for Dr. Waltke to hear; sobering for any man! (In fact, put me down for "disheartening.")

Where am I going with this? Oh, don't try to look so innocent. You know exactly where I'm going.

This is... church? So here comes this brother into the assembly of the saints, hoping for a rest from the battles of the week, a moment to regroup, sing, pray, get the Word, fellowship. He looks up to the choir, or to his left or his right — and in a tick of the clock, he's facing the same struggle he faced every time he turned on his TV, opened a magazine, or went down a city street. He's seeing things that make it far too easy for him not to keep his mind focused where it needs to be focused.

And he's not in a nightclub, he's not at a singles' bar, he's not at the beach. He's in church.

Now, some very direct disclaimers:

• Every man's sin is his own, and every man's struggle is his own (Proverbs 14:10)
• No one makes a man think or feel anything (Proverbs 4:23)
• It is each individual's responsibility to guard his own heart (Proverbs 4:23)
• Beauty is a wonderful gift of God (cf. Exodus 28:2; Song of Solomon 1:8, 15, etc.)

Having said all that: while it may be true that I'm the one holding the matches, you won't help me if you pile twigs all around my feet and douse them with lighter fluid. To be a little more specific: if you know I've had trouble with drunkenness, you won't offer me a glass of wine. If you know I battle covetousness, you won't take me window-shopping in high-end stores I've no business frequenting.

That is, you won't do those things if you love, if you care for me.

So I put this question: what are some sisters thinking, in how they dress?

"Attractive"? As the ladies pick clothes, they'll consider what's pretty, what's flattering, what's attractive. Who could blame them? But, "attractive" to whom? In what way? To what end? With what focus?

I want my lure to attract trout so they will bite and get hooked, and I can kill them and eat them.

A business wants to attract buyers so they will spend money and acquire their product or service and make them rich.

By that blouse, those pants, that skirt — what are you trying to attract? Attract to what, so that they will feel what, and want to do what?

Consider the questions again. "Is it pretty?" Fine question, no evil in it. "Is it comfortable, is it complimentary, is it fun?" No problem. I'd just suggest you add one more question: "Is it helpful, or is it hurtful, to my brothers in Christ? Will this unintentionally contribute to their having a focus that is harmful to their holy walk?"

Now, lookie here:

In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; 19 the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves; 20 the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; 21 the signet rings and nose rings; 22 the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; 23 the mirrors, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils (Isaiah 3:18-23)

...likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works (1 Timothy 2:9-10)

Do not let your adorning be external--the braiding of hair, the wearing of gold, or the putting on of clothing-- 4 but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious (1 Peter 3:3-4)

What it isn't. Immediately we'll swing in, as we always do, and say, "Now, the writer's not saying that women can't dress nicely, or wear jewelry, or blah blah blah." And we'll all disown our Fundie forebears who focused on nylons and lipstick, and came up with precise hemline measurements. We'll want to make sure that we're not advocating a new line of Bible Burqaware™ for evangelical women. All that will be true and valid enough.But... what is it? But I'm concerned that, in our anxiety to be sure to prevent the wrong interpretation, we effectively cut off all interpretation. We have swung from making the passages say silly things, to not letting them say anything. These passages have to mean something! They must have some application! What is it?

Surely the passages warn against vanity, externality, sensuality; and promote a focus on a godly character as true beauty. Who you are; not just what you look like. Remember: "As a ring of gold in a swine's snout, So is a beautiful woman who lacks discretion" (Proverbs 11:22 NAS).

Oh boy, I'm going to make it worse now. Deep breath....

Say what? What are your clothes saying about you, sister? What are they supposed to say to your brothers? "Hey, look at this?" Well, they actually are trying to look at the Lord; it's not good for them, not helpful for them, to be looking at that. No, it's not your fault that they have a problem. We established that. And it's really great that God has made you beautiful. May your husband (present or future) celebrate your beauty.

But, please hear me: you can help the brothers who aren't your husband, or you can not-help them. Which are you doing? If you're not married, and a man looks at you, is he thinking, "What a great character"? Or are you giving him reason to think something else about you is "great"?

I know many of the responses. I've heard them. "You don't know what it's like to buy women's clothes, you ignorant man!" Mostly true. My first just-for-fun purchase of (what I thought was) a pretty blue dress for my wife was, well, it was appalling. What a good sport my wife was. I took it back to the store immediately, and made a much better choice.

"I caaaan't." But this: "I can't find anything modest! It's all too revealing! It's impossible to get something that looks nice, yet isn't too tight, or too short, or too-something / not-something-enough!"

Sorry, but baloney.

I put "modest women's clothing Christian" in Google, and 43,200 pages come up. Yes, some are funny and quaint at best. But are they all Amishwear? "Can't find?"

More fundamentally: I do not accept that anyone has to wear clothes that are too tight or too sheer or too short — unless you are the largest and tallest woman living in the hottest part of the planet. Because I see larger, taller women than you walking around in hot weather, and they're all wearing clothes, every last one of them. They got those clothes somewhere, I reason. You could too.

"But — but they won't look good on me! The shoulders will be wrong!"

Need-to-not-know. I'm not sure that's necessarily true, but let's accept it and pose a counter-question. You tell me. Which is worse: your shoulders hanging a half-inch too low? Or a blouse/skirt that simply (shifting into turbo-delicate) provides need-to-know information to those with a need-to-not-know?

I'm sure we all agree that there are clothes that show off what others have no helpful business seeing. Here's what to show, in clothes-selection: show a Godward focus, discretion, a godly character.

And show mercy.

Parting thought. Darlene pointed me to a statement by Arthur Pink, which makes everything I've just said look awfully mild. But there's no denying that Pink has a point. I'll close with it:

Again, if lustful looking be so grievous a sin, then those who dress and expose themselves with desires to be looked at and lusted after-as Jezebel, who painted her face, tired her head, and looked out of the window (2 Kings 9:30)-are not less, but even more guilty. In this matter it is only too often the case that men sin, but women tempt them so to do. How great, then, must be the guilt of the great majority of the modern misses who deliberately seek to arouse the sexual passions of our young men? And how much greater still is the guilt of most of their mothers for allowing them to become lascivious temptresses?

Now, note, Pink and I speak to different ends. I speak to those who I charitably assume are inadvertently dressing in an unhelpful manner. Pink speaks to those whose intent is to allure. Between the two of us, I can pray we've provided food for thought, prayer, reconsideration, and needed change.

One last thought: it is a mistake to think I have church-attire in mind. I am thinking of anywhere where both sexes are present.

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The Spirit, and Power

by Frank Turk

I'm majoring in drive-by blogging these days due to circumstances at work and at home (as in, I have to go home when I'm not at work, and "going home" implies that I am mentally there when I am physically there), so this post and the ones which will follow it will be brief, if not an actual drive-by.

Our spiritual friend John Piper has been podcasting an older sermon series over the last two weeks regarding the spiritual gifts, and as I start writing this I admit that I have only listened to them through 6/17/08 -- so if my comments today will be answered in his future podcasts on this subject, I am ready to post corrections or retractions as they are necessary.

Overall, I think I like his spirit in these messages, even if (as you might suspect) I think he has made some mistakes in his reasoning from the text. I appreciate that he approaches this subject with the fact clearly in mind that his father, whom he loved deeply, believed he was flatly wrong about his position.

But, speaking broadly, I think Dr. Piper makes two mistakes in the messages I have heard so far -- and they are really foundational to the gap between the cessationist and the continualist.

[1] He overlooks or underplays the cessationist admission that God still works miracles today. In all seriousness, there are no cessationists that I know who would say flatly, "No: God works no miracles today." None. And in missing this, Dr. Piper's messages seem to argue against someone who doesn't exist.

Yes: he does frankly say with words that the cessation view is that the gifts are not normative. The problem is that what we mean by that looks a lot like what he means by that in saying, for example, that his father (a cessationist) would admit that only about 5 times in his life could he look back and say that he had prayed a "prayer of faith" in which he knew for certain God would do something specific.

"Not Normative" means "rare, and not an experience around which to build the life of the church". The Lord's table is normative; Scripture is normative; church discipline is normative; prayer itself is normative. The Gifts as Dr. Piper explains them are frankly not normative.

And in that, I credit him for saying in one of his intros to these messages that both cessationists and continualists can be distracted by from the Giver of all good gifts by seeking the gifts and not the Giver. That, to me, is a very serious admonition.

[2] He also, I think, misses the difference between (on the one hand) corporate prayer and even the prayer of the elders and (on the other) passages like Acts 3 (Peter heals the beggar), and Acts 9 (Peter raises Tabitha). It is one thing to say that the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, and another to say that every prayer should be made with the kind of command authority demonstrated in these passages -- especially, I would add, when even Dr. Piper admits that many of these supplications will go unanswered.

Yes, I know this opens up a can of worms. I will listen to the rest of these sermons and come back with more thoughts. Your thoughts, insofar as they are on-topic and not linked to questionable site content, are welcome in the meta.

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