What I am up to

I'm off to the Lakes for a week with friends where I'll enjoy this view from our sitting room.

Unfortunately the weather will probably be slightly less pleasant in November and I've got to bring some law to study because I'm so far behind, but please pray it will be a good break and time of 'fellowship'. I'm confident it will be both.

Blogging will probably be light even when I get back though as things are busy, busy.

Things I would appreciate you praying for if you ever feel like it would be time to do Training Contract applications and organisation of a carol service for York lawyers, and then fruit from both (in particular: on the practical front we need a choir for the carol service and more importantly, with or without a choir, we'd like to see people come and then come to Christ).

Thank you everyone.

On special request

Pretty pictures without a concluding theological reflection.

For other readers, I apologise for the lack of blogging. I am really busy, other than when I'm going for lovely walks up the Thames from Oxford.... honest.

It may be a little while before I return to proper blogging.

What I'm up to

You are probably all very happy that things have gone quiet on this blog recently. Unfortunately I am busy at work at the moment and my law studies have restarted. This means I'll have less time to read, and blog, than God has graciously given me over the last few months.

However, I thought I'd let you know that I have decided after some deliberations to give the Puritans a second chance. I read a handful of books several years ago but could not understand what all the fuss was about. So I am joining the 2008 Puritan Reading Challenge, and going to try and get through 12 short Puritan books in 2008. Perhaps I'll give up half way through, but we'll see.

In preparation my commute has been to the sound of JI Packer's seriously English introductory lectures from 1988. Interestingly he relates how he had been trying to get a publisher to publish Richard Baxter's Christian Directory, which was one of just two books written by Puritans which was not occasional or based on sermons, and was actually designed to stand the test of time. The Banner of Truth apparently did not judge it sound enough! However it seems that he finally did manage to get someone to publish it in 1997.

On a more serious note, Packer makes a convincing case for understanding the Puritan movement as a revivalistic movement, which sheds a different light on things.

Meanwhile I'm also finding Lutheranism a strange and exciting new world of theology. The English-speaking evangelicalism that I know has always looked to the Reformed when it has got serious about theology. This seems clearest in that when people identify themselves as 'Reformed' in England they usually mean 'not Arminian', when of course the Arminians were 'Reformed' as well. Reading Lutheran theology I feel God confronting me, and interacting with me, in a way I have not felt since reading Calvin for the first time. Still I am not sure that I can agree with most of what distinguishes Lutheran from Reformed when it actually comes down to brass tacks. Nevertheless I can see the prophetic power that it must have had in the sixteenth century and still has now.

All very exciting but lots to do. Got to go.

Counting down

Most people are currently counting down to Christmas at the moment. I'm counting down to the New Year when I've got to start studying law again. Soon I'll be unable to read as much as I'm managing at the moment. My current wish list of things to read, on the doctrine of justification alone, include:

• The Way of Salvation: The role of Christian Obedience in Justification by Paul A. Rainbow
• Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin
• "Reflections on Salvation and Justification in the New Testament" by D.A. Carson JETS 40/4 (December 1997) 581-608.
• Justification: The Reformers and Recent New Testament Scholarship" by Gerald Bray Churchman 109/2 1995
• "'The Gift of Salvation': Its Failure to Address the Crux of Justification" by Mark A. Seifrid JETS 42/4 (December 1999) 679-688
• Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel: The Letter/spirit Contrast and the Argument from Scripture in 2 Corinthians 3 by Scott J. Hafemann
• Paul and the Jews by Andrew Das

It's unlikely I'll get very far! And then there's all the more important things I have to be doing.... the trouble is the more you read the more you want to read.

Personal notes

• I've recently realised again how good it is to simply read scripture (specifically the Psalms) to God, rather than to learn about him and his ways. My recent reading has included a book by John Barton (not very good by the way), and he reminded me the bible is not only prophetic (he said 'not always) but is also liturgical (he said 'sometimes liturgical'). I have found difficulties with my understanding of scripture force themselves before my eyes more when I make the words my own, but this really can lead to more praise. The imprecatory psalms have been particularly difficult (I'm looking forward to reading this), but it is releasing to not agonise over them, but pray them with the confidence that God is righteous and trustworthy.

• Another recent and happy event is introducing a friend to John Piper and his sermons on Romans 8:28. There is nothing like a great God to set a heart aflame.

• Also I'm finally getting into the habit of learning to play the piano/keyboard. I'm only taking my first steps but it is a nice thing to return from work and make music (even if its banal). I used to play the violin many years ago but it seems I can still read music quite well.

• There have been sadder notes in my life recently, but I am already boring you all I'm sure, and it's best not to dwell.