David Powlison articles

• Idols of the Heart and “Vanity Fair” Personal Reflection
• "God’s Grace and Your Sufferings" and "Don’t Waste Your Cancer" (co-authored with John Piper), chapters in "Suffering and the Sovereignty of God"
• What is wrong with the therapeutic approach to counseling?
• What Distinguishes Biblical Counseling from other Methods?
• What Questions Does a Biblical Counselor Suggest We Ask?
• Praying Beyond Health Concerns
• Looking at the Past and Present of Counseling
• The Therapeutic Gospel
• Sane Faith (parts 1-3)
• The River of Life Flows through the Slough of Despond
• Hope for a "Hopeless Case": A Case Study
• What Good Is "Don't Worry" in Times Like These?
• Facing Death with Hope: Living for What Lasts
• "Don’t Worry"
• I Am Making All Things New
• Does the Shoe Fit?
• "Peace, be still": Learning Psalm 131 by Heart
• Is Anger Morally Neutral?
• Affirmations & Denials: A Proposed Definition of Biblical Counseling
• Recovering from Child Abuse: Help and Healing for Victims - Part 1 and part 2
• Breaking Pornography Addiction - Part 1 and part 2
• Making All Things New: Restoring Pure Joy to the Sexually Broken
• "I Am Making All Things New (Enhanced Edition)"
• Praying Beyond the Sick List
• Peace, be still: Learning Psalm 131 by Heart
• A Personal Liturgy of Confession
• "Suffering and Psalm 119" from JBC 22:4, 2004, pp. 2-16.
• "Familial Counseling" from JBC 25:1, 2007, pp. 2-16
• Should We Really Call It a 'Quiet' Time?
• Cure of Souls (and the Modern Psychotherapies) Only a Teenager
• X-ray Questions: Drawing Out the Whys and Wherefores of Human Behavior
• Critiquing Modern Integrationists

Digging a god-shaped hole and filling it up again

"According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride... Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." (p.100, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity)

"unbelief alone commits sin, and brings forth the flesh and pleasure in bad outward works, as happened to Adam and Eve in paradise...Unbelief is the root, the sap, and the chief power of all sin." (p.100, Martin Luther, "Preface to the Epistle of St Paul to the Romans" in Timothy F Lull Ed, Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings)

So who's right; Lewis or Luther?

I think that Luther is right because, as David Powlison points out, unbelief is the act of erasing God from reality. And as GK Chesterton once observed, when we "cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything". If God is not king then perhaps I am, or perhaps my father is, or my boss, or cancer, or [fill in the blank]. Or perhaps they're all kings, with no one all-powerful or deserving of exclusive worship, but some are more powerful and worthy than others. Either way, whether it is ourselves, other people or any other created thing, all other sins are just trying to fill that imaged god-shaped hole in our heart. And often the thing we fill it with is not something we love, but something we're petrified of because it can take as well as give.

[Incidentally, if you're an economics geek I hope you appreciated the allusion in the title to John Maynard Keynes' oft quoted principle, that apparently he never said.]

Luther on the marks of the church

Luther argues that the church is best understood by the words "holy Christian people" (p.335-336). They are people who "truly believe in Christ" and "have the Holy Spirit against sin" (p.336). The Holy Spirit "sanctifies them daily, not only through the forgiveness of sin acquired by Christ (as the Antinomians foolishly believe), but also through the abolition, and purging, and the mortification of sins, on the basis of which they are called a holy people" (p.335-336 [surprised to read that by Luther?]).

The church is a people "in whom Christ lives, works and rules" and in whom the Holy Spirit "gives people faith in Christ and thus sanctifies them" (p. 336-337). This sanctification is the renewal of the whole person, soul and body, by the inscription of both tables of "the commandments of God not on table of stone, but in hearts of flesh" (p.337).

Luther criticises the Antinomians for making much of the first table and their knowledge of God by preaching "much about the grace of Christ", but displaying that they don't really understand Christ or the Holy Spirit by not not "practic[ing] the works of the Holy Spirit in the second table" (p.339). The Catholics he criticises for doing many holy works "of an external, bodily, transitory nature" but living "without faith, fear of God, hope, love and whatever the Holy Spirit, according to the first table, effects" (although actually he doesn't even think they teach the second table correctly, p.339).

Luther believes that Christians should be marked by the Holy Spirit sanctifying them (note the continuous tense) in both tables of the law, coram Deo and coram mundo, soul and body. Schaeffer was right that the position of the Reformation was that "God made the whole man and he is interested in the whole man" (p. 38, Escape from Reason).

We can recognize the church then by their possession of certain "external signs" through which the work of sanctification is performed by the Holy Spirit. There should be external signs of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit according to both tables of the law. However as we cannot see the hearts of people and many non-Christians practice works from the second table "and indeed at times appears holier than Christians", so it is not as "reliable" to look for the external signs of the Spirit's work according to the second table (p.359). Therefore the principal signs relate to the first table, although the signs relating to the second table have a secondary role.

Luther identifies "seven principal parts of the great holy possession whereby the Holy Spirit effects in us a daily sanctification and vivification in Christ, according to the first table of Moses" (pp. 357-358):

1. the "possession of the holy word of God" (p.340);
2. "the holy sacrament of baptism, wherever it is taught, believed, and administered correctly according to Christ's ordinance" (p.343);
3. "the holy sacrament of the altar, wherever it is rightly administered, believed, and received according to Christ's institution" (p.344);
4. "the office of the keys exercised publicly... where you see sins forgiven or reproved in some persons" (p.345);
5. men consecrated, called or having offices to "administer, and use the aforementioned four things or holy possessions in behalf of and in the name of the church, or rather by reason of their institution by Christ" (p. 346);
6. "prayer, public praise, and thanksgiving to God" (p. 356);
7. "the holy possession of the sacred cross [of enduring] misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil, the world, and the flesh [...] in order to become like their head, Christ" (p.356).

None of these things are in the first instance things we have done, or possess intrinsically, but all are gifts by which we are sanctified not the fruit of our sanctification (although sanctification always leads to the desire to be further sanctified and so more searching for the means by which that comes).

[Quotations from "On the Councils and the Church, 1539" in ed. Theodore G. Tappert, Selected Writings of Martin Luther, Vol.4]

Reflection on the five solas in John

Christ alone

The Father granted his Son to have life in himself (John 5:26). He is the bread of life sent by God and gives life to the world (6:33), but you will not find life anywhere else (John 6:53). Sure you may 'live' for a while, but the kind of life that you possess will be constantly running dry and you will be thirsty again, and the life that Jesus gives is inexhaustible (John 4, 6:26).

Scripture alone

The Scriptures bear witness about Jesus, and for that reason have eternal life in them (John 5:39, 46). Jesus is the content, but also the speaker of the word of God, and listening to him moves you from death to eternal life (John 5:24). The work of the Word of God has not been completed, and won't until Christ calls us from the grave at the resurrection of the dead (5:25), but it still performs that daily work in us now.

Faith alone

Jesus is the greater manna which God provided to the empty handed, starving Israelites in the desert. They received at as a gift and didn't even benefit from working harder than others in trying to gather up, and store the food they had been given (so they wouldn't have to trust entirely on God's provision the next day). Similarly, the one work we need to do is to believe Jesus is the Christ (6:29). This means simply to gaze on Christ, like the Israelites in the wilderness gazed upon the bronze serpent, to receive healing by God's provision (6:40; 3:14-15).

Grace alone

In Christ there is grace alone - he is bursting full of it (1:14). The law was given through Moses, and apart from Jesus it accuses us, but there is no accusation in Christ (5:45). If we set our hope on anything, even the good Christian gifts of church membership and knowledge of the Scriptures but have not got Christ we will only face accusation. Anything we do in our own flesh, will only turn to dust in our hands, but the Spirit resting on Jesus (1:32) and then poured out on us by his word gives us life (6:63).

To the glory of God alone

We seek recognition (respect/glory) from other people, but that is not really worth anything despite what the fashion shops are telling us. Jesus isn't in need of an ego boost from other people either, and we shouldn't think that our worship performs that purpose (5:44). Perhaps then a better way is the way of Oprah and L'Oreal - I'm worth it. Total self-respect might be the glory that is worth something, but really we know that is "nothing" too. Jesus doesn't glorify himself because he recognises that too (John 8:50, 54). He doesn't grasp the tree of life, or the manna in the wilderness, but gives up his glory and his life - trusting that God will give him life and glory 3 days later. Glory from God the Father is the only glory that is worth anything (5:44, 12:43). God the Father glorified the Son, because of the worthiness of the Son to receive glory (8:54; 16:14 17), and by grace that glory overflows to his church (17:22). But God the Father is himself glorified in this act of glory-giving so that he may be all in all (13:31-32; 14:13).

[prompted by Glen and Pete's comments]

James KA Smith - Desiring the Kingdom

Worth a watch. Jamie Smith summarises much of his recent book Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. You can get an overview of the book on his blog. I think he massively over-states his case, but it's interesting. Spot the brief mention of York Minister towards the end.

James K.A. Smith - Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation from Calvin College on Vimeo.

MP3 of lecture here.

Interpreting the gaps

We look at a sliver of moon and surmise that we're seeing part of an orb, not all of a crescent. Part of an orb, not all of a crescent! The crucial difference is that we see the empty space as something hidden. Quite literally, in the case of the moon, we trace an outline, and at the point of the gap in the outline, we say that the pattern is there, but hidden. And this is what you would expect from a three-dimensional orb only one of whose sides is reflecting the light of the sun.

To see that an empty space is really a hidden portion is to give meaning to that space in light of the larger pattern. Our coherences have gaps, but the gaps, once they are embedded in the coherences, eloquently testify to the profound three-dimensionality, the coherent unity of our pattern, a center of agency that now responds to us.

... When it comes to knowing God ... I hardly consider the fact that I rarely see him. Of course I don't see him. God "lives in unapproachable light," the apostle Paul says indicating God's power and goodness. Jesus told his disciples, "I am going [to my Father's house] to prepare a place for you ... I will come back and take you to be with me." Of course I don't see him now. The hiddeness confirms his greatness.

... Why doesn't God punish evildoers immediately? ... Peter says he is being patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but wanting everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come, he says. A misinterpretation of this gap will be your eternal ruin.

...The focus has turned the tables on me on a cosmic scale.

(pp. 121-122, Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people)

Some rough notes on knowing, and dealing with doubts

Esther Meek, drawing on Michael Polanyi, argues that we know people and things as we focus on them by integrating particular clues into a pattern. For example we know God by connecting together numerous dots into the pattern of a person who we commit to in faith.

In apologetics the clues may be personal experience, arguments, historical evidence, and even the Scriptures itself, but the focus is God himself. In discussions about assurance of salvation the clues may be good works you have done, the promise in the sacraments, the words of absolution of a brother, but the focus is the cross and resurrection for your salvation. In leading bible studies the clues may be literary structure, historical details, personal experience, but the focus again must be Jesus.

Both the clues and the focus are important to our act of knowing, as can be seen when we examine doubts in particular.

Doubts arise when we focus on the clues, or fail to focus through the clues:

I think we can distinguish two doubt-producing movements in connection with the clues of our integrations. One is reverting to focus on the clues. The other, closely related one is feeling like, in our integration, that we are not in touch with our clues.

How we respond to the doubts depends on which mistake we are making.

There are two ways to respond to doubts, and those responses, on the surface appear to contradict each other. One is to try once more to look through the clues, reintegrate to the focus. The other is to take some time to look at the clues. In the end, I think that we cope by alternating these two movements, and that they are just the movements that make up good learning.

If we are obsessing with the clues, we may need our gaze lifting. To reintegrate the focus. We can help people do this by pointing out the beauty of Jesus, and relating to him in our daily life and worship.

First, we should try once more to look through the clues. We know enough about the act of knowing to see that it ought to feel uncomfortable to look back at the clues. When we look back at the particulars, we can feel that in themselves they don't account fully for the pattern we have seen in them. Of course they don't, for it wasn't looking at them in themselves that prompted our integration; it was living in them and looking through them. To look at them is not to see the things on which our pattern was based. We access truth, and can only properly assess it, as we live in the pieces of the pattern in our bodies. If looking at the pieces makes us feel doubtful, there is good reason for it: the pieces, without our living in them, aren't the starting point of our successful effort.

[...] So, one remedy for doubt is to stop looking at the clues, striving again to look through them, to get back inside them.

If we are feeling our focus on God is lacking connection to our thinking and experience we may need to examine these clues close to hand.

We are most familiar with this effort as plain old study and analysis, examining the underpinnings of our claims and actions to understand the what and the how of the whole thing. Analysis is not all there is to knowing - identifying knowing with analysis, I believe, has been the central mistake of the modern model of knowledge. Clue scrutiny is not an end in itself, nor can it or should it be lifted out of the context of the larger picture that is knowing: humans engaging the world through patterns. But seeing analysis as a key instrument for the sake of a larger reintegration to a focus actually reinstates it, no longer as master, but more helpfully as servant.

Why is studying the clues valuable and important, if real knowing is living them, not looking at them? The clues that make up our integrations, you might say, are liable to get their feelings hurt if you forget them. They are happy being subsidiary, but you ignore them or take them for granted to your peril. We vector through them, but we never leave them behind.

We can also see how knowing happens well by thinking about playing an instrument:

It happens on the piano bench. I've watched my [daughter begin] cranking out a Scott Joplin rag with her usual confidence [and then] she must have stopped and thought what she usually never though about: How do I figure out what the note is?

[...] Piano teachers have told my daughters: Don't stop thinking about what you are doing when you are practising. Plan for what to do if autopilot fails you under pressure. Scrutinize your fingers and your fingering carefully in problem passages. Then put it back together. [Mature musicians] have a well-developed connection between the artistic and analytical sides of their brain.

Good connections and continual movement is the key to a growth as a Christian. So in knowing "we move back and forth between both directions, from the clues, and to the clues... back and forth, back and forth". I would argue that this reflects much of what the Christian life is. A continual back and forth and building of connections until they meet completely in the cross and resurrection of Jesus where everything meets. Another example would be law and Gospel, repentance and faith, death and life, OT to NT.

(Quotations from pp. 169-172, Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people)

Engaged, not married

I recently gave my first ever children's talk at my church on the Isrealite elders' meal with God in Exodus 24:9-11 and its connection with the table of the bread of presence! The elders' meal is a typical ceremonial OT covenant meal following the inauguration of a covenant (cf. Genesis 26:30). I drew a parallel with photos we take to remember a wedding (the bread was a memorial, for God to remember his covenant). After all, the inauguration of the Sinai covenant was the marriage of God to Israel. Sadly the marriage was not a happy one.

Ezekiel 16:8-15 graphically describes the story of Israel's marriage.

"When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendour that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord God.

But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his." (cf. Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 3:20, Hosea 2)

Of course, the theme of marriage of God's people is strong in the NT too. In the NT Jesus is regularly referred to as the bridegroom set to marry the bride of the church (Matthew 9, 25, John 3:29, 2 Corinthians 11:2, Ephesians 5:21-33, Revelation 18-22).

But I think I made a little misstep in my children's talk in drawing a parallel to our marriage to Christ. Because it is striking that in the NT our marriage is always future (when Christ returns), in comparison to the OT where the marriage is always past (at Sinai).

I need to think on this much more but I am increasingly convinced the as a conservative evangelical I (for great reasons) focus on the finished work of Christ, but forget that this is a promise of a still future glorious relationship that I currently only taste. There is so much more to come... while it was only downhill for the Israelites (that is until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in).

Imitating the Trinity?

I've been listening to a lecture by Graham Cole, Trinity without Tiers (HT Mike Bird). He made one point which really struck a cord with me:

There is a way of doing Christian ethics that actually leaves the Gospel out. That is you reconstruct the inner life of the essential Trinity and then draw applications to family life, marriage, the church, even for some the wider society. And yet I believe the genius of the NT is to always go through the narrative of Christ and what he has done for us.

[...] instead of trying to imitate the inner life of the essential Trinity, I think Thomas a Kempis got it right - we imitate Christ. Did Jesus say: "this new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I love the Father"? No, "as I have loved you". And behind that is the footwashing of John 13 and the self-sacrifice and the humility that represents.

1 Corinthians 11:1: Paul says "imitate me as I imitate Christ".

1 Peter 2:21 says he left you an example to follow in his steps when it comes to unjust suffering.

1 John 2:6 says we're to walk as he walks.

I could show this over and over again that that is where the accent in our NT falls. The narrative of Christ is crucial to the shape of a cruciform Christian life. A life that is shaped by the cross.

He then discusses the wonderful text of Philipians 2:1-11, before concluding:

notice he doesn't say be other person centred like I have always been in the eternal godhead. He goes through the story of Christ, the evangel, to make his point. The imitation of Christ is, I think, the NT accent.

I don't think it is an either/or but I agree that we ought to accent the cross. More generally I disagree with Cole on quite a bit, not least in being more positive about a strict ruling of Rahner's rule and its application to ethics. I loved Tom Smail's Like Father, Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity. Maybe some kind of distinction between (creation?) ethics based on being created in the image of God, and (redemption?) ethics based on how we engage a fallen world like Christ did in dying for his enemies (although creation and redemption is all of one piece [thanks Isaiah, Ienaeus, Wingren, Wright etc] there is some kind of differentiation)?

More thought required.

"People shouldn't try and share their beliefs." Discuss

I have never been so thankful for the RE curriculum...

My little (probably not a Christian) sister had something like the title to this post for homework. I'm still happy that she rung me up to ask for help and I got to share more of the Gospel with her than I have for ages (and with her actually listening carefully too!).

I'm also thankful for God actually giving me the words to communicate relatively clearly for once (ala Mark 13:11). He gave me three points off the top of my head, and some good verses to back it up (she wanted sources!):

1. There is one God for everyone, because he created everyone: "is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one" (Rom 3:29-30)
2. The Gospel is good for everyone (cure for cancer argument): "'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.' How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?...'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!'" (Rom 10:13-15).
3. We're commanded to tell everyone: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Matt 28:19-20).

Anyway, that's not really a usual post. And I'm sorry for the lack of blogging recently. But opportunities with my family are rare, and I just feel compelled to share it (bit like you should burst to tell the gospel - although I too rarely do). And I suppose I'd like to ask for quick prayers for her if you get a moment. Thanks!

You can always tell me what I should have said too, because I guess I only focussed on giving an answer from a Christian point of view - but I'm not really sad about that.

FD Maurice's famous dictum

"A man is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies." Why is that?

I was recently skim reading a bit of Lesslie Newbigin in which he makes two great statements we could all do with absorbing, but commits the error Maurice saw so often:

"election is for responsibility, not for privilege"

[Christ] bears witness to the presence of the reign of God, not by overpowering the forces of evil, but by taking their full weight upon himself"

Surely in both instances it is both!

I admit I often do the same though. Why do the best of us, make this mistake over and over again?

Why the deepest truth has to be mythic

Listening to: Laura Marling: I speak because I can

Why don't we abstract all the truth found in the Bible and cast of the 'husk' of story, and 'myth'?

CS Lewis argues that the mythic elements of Christianity are actually the "vital and nourishing element in the whole concern". The story of the Bible is the "substance", and not "vestigial".

"And yet the human intellect is incurably abstract. Pure mathematics is the type of successful thought. Yet the only realities we experience are concrete - this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify. This is our dilemma - either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste [...] As thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyse the nature of humour while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? [...]

Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction. [...]

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact."

("Myth became fact" in CS Lewis: Essay Collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church)

Knowing we're not dreaming

Esther Meek defines Knowing as "the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality". We integrate subsidiary clues, but only as we focus on a pattern and not the clues. But how do we know that the pattern we focus on is actually real? Meek suggests that in all knowing two accompanying experiences make us feel that our focal pattern is a discovery and not an invention.

1. Growing out of our past - the profundity of the pattern. We "sense the richness, the profundity, of the pattern [that is] grander than the clues on which it relies." We find the pattern "more than makes sense of the clues [it] unites and transforms them into a fresh center, in light of which the clues gain profounder meaning. The pattern evokes uncanny harmonies and resonances between things that once appeared disparate. The gaps become meaningful hiddennesses."
2. Growing into our future - unspecifiable future prospects. "In the moment of a profound integration, we experience a sense of the future possibilities, prospects, horizons of the thing we have encountered. There are sides we cannot currently see, behaviors we suspect but could never predict, implications only some of which we can reason out, but which in their inompleteness may lead us to uncover new and transforming dimensions."

[Notes on Chapter 16 of Longing to Know: The philosophy of knowledge for ordinary people]