An excerpt from Ben Miller’s book, “The Kingdom Has Drawn Near: Studies In The Gospel Jesus Preached“, from chapter 3, “The Kingdom and the Church”:

The church is not a voluntary society. It is the sphere in which God’s loving, gracious, faithful rule of his people concretely operates through the keys of the Word and sacraments and discipline. I say it again: an indicator of how seriously you take the rule of God in your life is how diligently you bring yourself under the ordinances of the church of Jesus Christ, particularly in his gathered worship on his appointed day. Do not say you love the kingdom if you will not bring yourself under the King’s ordinances. The King’s rule is visible in the ordinances of his church.

Pastor Ben Miller, author of The Kingdom Has Drawn Near: Studies In The Gospel Jesus Preached, gives us his recommended readings.

Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments by Geerhardus Vos
Not always easy reading, but the foundational text of Reformed biblical theology. A must-read.

Paul: An Outline Of His Theology by Herman Ridderbos
A seminally insightful exploration of the structures of Paul’s conceptual world.

According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible by Graeme Goldsworthy
For anyone wanting to understand the “big picture” of the Bible, this is a good place to begin.

Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, edited by John T. McNeill (2 volumes)
Every Reformed Christian should read this work. Magisterial.

The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship by Robert Letham
An excellent overview of the history and significance of this distinctively Christian doctrine. Clear, well-researched, and worshipful.

By Faith, Not by Sight: Paul and the Order of Salvation by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.
Dr. Gaffin’s exegesis of the New Testament is a model for the church.

Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible by Stephen G. Dempster
Working from the order of books in the Hebrew Tanakh, Dempster brilliantly uncovers the narrative dynamics and themes of the Old Testament.

God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards by John Piper
Jonathan Edwards’ Dissertation on the End for Which God Created the World was revolutionary in my personal theological development.

The Confessions by St. Augustine, translated by Maria Boulding
A book (and translation) to be savored.

Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics I by John Webster
Everyone serious about Reformed theology should read this and Confessing God (below), if for nothing else than to imbibe Webster’s theological method.

Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II by John Webster
See above.

Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life by Ronald S. Wallace
A book that, when taken to heart, may properly be described as “life-changing.” I believe it is available as a reprint from Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Reformed Dogmatics by Herman Bavinck (4 volumes)
In my humble opinion, this is easily the greatest work in Reformed dogmatics since Calvin.

Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin by B. A. Gerrish
One need not agree with everything to profit much from this delightful study of Calvin’s sacramental theology.

Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary Theology: A Reader, edited by Paul Weston
An anthology of writings from one of the brilliant thinkers and theologians of the 20th century.

The Old Testament Explained and Applied by Gareth Crossley
This would be my first pick to help lay readers understand the Old Testament. A masterful introduction.

The Fabric of Theology: A Prolegomenon to Evangelical Theology by Richard Lints
Anyone concerned about the current state of evangelical theology, and seeking a way forward, should read this book.

Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old, edited by G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson
Those serious about understanding the Bible through the lens of its own self-interpretation should make this their next purchase. Technical at points, but extraordinarily useful.

Here are some interesting links that have been posted to SD News in the past week:

• John Calvin’s 500th – a superb collection of resources relating to John Calvin.  One could learn a lot just reading these articles.
• Books and Ideas That Helped Shape the Way I View the World – Six books that have shaped the worldview of one blogger.
• Presuppositionalism – K. Scott Oliphint explains presuppositional apologetics, and in the process makes a case for a terminology switch, a switch to a “covenantal apologetics.”
• The Case for Our Current Policy on Female Deacons – Ligon Duncan presents his views.
• The Merger of Calvinism with Worldliness – Dr. Peter Masters gives his (unsympathetic) take on the new Calvinism and the emergent church movement.  iMonk also weighed in with his thoughts on Dr. Masters’ article.

We are working on a new blog layout to coincide with the full release of The Kingdom Has Drawn Near.  Stay tuned.

It is not life’s busyness that eats the life out of the soul, if by “busyness” one means simply having a lot to do. To be human is to have a lot to do. What wears down the inner life is the near-impossibility of sustained concentration on any one thing in a world in which everything under the sun (or at least a bewilderingly large portion thereof) is unrelentingly, rapidly, even simultaneously presented to the senses with demand for some kind of response (even where no response is expected). It is the fragmentation of mind that accompanies unlimited access to all things. It is, moreover, the barrenness that results when one’s most significant contact, at least quantitatively, is with virtual reality, insulated from the solid pleasures and stubborn challenges of pre-virtual reality: back porch conversation, rainstorms, weeds, machinery parts, street beggars, and handheld musical instruments. It is the lethargy, the listlessness, which strangely breeds when everything is instant (or trying to be), when one has forgotten how to be deliberate, and to write in pencil. It is not life’s busyness that eats the life out of the soul; it is the acid of catered sovereignty, of dwindling finitude. Wretched souls! who shall deliver us from it?

Last night, some friends and I were enjoying the late spring night while discussing the current economic situation.  One fellow was lamenting the loss of manufacturing jobs to countries like Mexico and China, jobs that created the middle class of this country not too long ago.  America is becoming less and less a nation that produces “things”.  This was brought home to me during my time working on Wall Street, where I was often struck by the fact that the investment bank I worked for didn’t produce anything tangible.  You can’t hold a derivative in your hand, can you?  As a programmer, I found this even more fascinating, since what I worked on could be seen on a screen, but not actually touched.  Pixels were generated, data was moving around on hard drives in a datacenter somewhere, but I couldn’t touch what I made.

We may not often give thought to the implications of this move from an economy which produces physical goods to an economy of, for lack of a better word, “knowledge workers”, where work has been abstracted from the physical realm to the metaphysical realm.  William Barrett, writing in his excellent book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, offers a very insightful take on this abstraction:

Every step forward in mechanical technique is a step in the direction of abstraction. This capacity for living easily and familiarly at an extraordinary level of abstraction is the source of modern man’s power… But it is also a power which has, like everything human, its negative side, in the desolating sense of rootlessness, vacuity, and the lack of concrete feeling that assails modern man in his moments of real anxiety.

I am no scholar, but speaking from my own experience, even as a believer, I can relate to the feelings of rootlessness and vacuity that Barrett describes.  There have been countless times, sitting on an LIRR train at 10:00 at night, an hour from home, after a long day of under-the-gun programming, where I asked myself what I really accomplished, what did I produce?  It was as though some latent desire or need was gnawing at me from the inside: the desire to create.  I didn’t understand it then, but I understand it now, illuminated by Bruce Hegeman’s Plowing In Hope: Toward a Christian Theology Of Culture:

Culture is an essential outworking of mankind’s unique place within God’s creation as image-bearer of God.  Man’s cultural activities grow out of his special relationship to the earth (adamladamath) to work and keep it.  Man is commanded to utilize his innate skills to develop the potentialities “hidden” in the earth waiting to be discovered and realized.

I am not disparaging any job; indeed, I work with computers all day, and I run a publishing company and a number of websites on the side.  However,  I have found that the antidote to the feeling of rootlesness that Barrett described is to shut off the computer and the TV, put on some boots, and go into the garden and get dirty.  Play with my kids outside.  Enjoy the creation and try to improve it any way possible.  I am still learning how to work this out in my life, but I think as children of God we should be aware of the subtle power that the abstraction of work can have on our soul, and, as much as possible, get outside and build something concrete.

Since the first book we are publishing is about the Kingdom of God, I have veered away from the Covenanters and have been digging into books related to Kingdom theology and eschatology.  If you want to experience a paradigm shift in your thinking, not only about Paul’s theology, but your entire concept of the Kingdom of God, it’s nature, and the implications thereof, I would highly recommend Paul: An Outline Of His Theology by Herman Ridderbos, particularly chapter one, “Fundamental Structures”.  In the next few posts I will elaborate on some of the passages I found helpful.  In this short excerpt, Ridderbos is making a point about the dichotomy of the different ages or epochs of the world, and how we who are born again are members of the new epoch, of which the seed is now, but the full “blooming” of that age is still to come:

It is a matter of two worlds, not only in a spiritual, but in a redemptive-historical, eschatological sense.  The “old things” stand for the unredeemed world in it’s distress and sin, the “new things” for the time of salvation and the re-creation that have dawned with Christ’s resurrection.  He who is in Christ, therefore, is new creation: he participates in, belongs to, this new world of God.

In this time of a co-mingling of the ages, Christians are already partakers of the “powers of the age to come”.

As an aside, there’s a really good post, made on the occasion of his passing, about Ridderbos over at Between Two Worlds.

The question of how to turn fools into sages may not be particularly interesting to those unable to discern the difference. To those, however, who understand what scripture is talking about when it uses such terms, the question is one of some urgency. For fools, to state the thing plainly, are odious, and their end is destruction if they will not turn from their ways. Christian leaders are called to turn themselves from all foolishness unto wisdom, and to turn all whom they lead from foolishness unto wisdom. (This is one of the functions of the prophetic office.)

To state this is still to be a very long way from knowing how to do it. It may be helpful initially to reflect on the character of those we regard as wise. Usually (though not always), they are older folk; and what strikes a thoughtful observer is that their lives bear the stamp of long seasoning. What is it about older men and women that is so deep, so rich, so full, so noble, so respectable? When they speak, what they say is worth hearing; and one has ever the sense that not all has been heard, that much more could be profitably said. Often it is what is not said that is most telling for those who have ears to hear. The words of such persons give light and perspective; they open new horizons of thought, new frontiers for consideration, far beyond the subject matter at hand. Here are thoughts well formed, full-bodied, like well-aged wine. Here are ideas that have been forged, tried, tempered, and refined; they are neither recent nor cavalier, neither silly nor superficial.

And these qualities, these features, can exist without a hint of fussiness or stuffiness. Most of us have met an older man or woman who is positively delightful, full of humor and fun, well up on the times and able to engage the present; but with a deep sense of what is past, and of its worth.

Contrast this with the pervasive foolishness of youth! The talk of the young (not always, but very often) is trite, shallow, and whimsical, precisely because this is the state of their ideas. A gang of youngsters can talk boisterously about nothing (substantively speaking) for hours on end; and it is astonishing how much they enjoy it. They are well informed about things of recent origin and ephemeral significance; beyond this, they are ignorant and unashamed.

But how does one impart the wisdom of the old to the young? A short and direct route to wisdom is, of course, suffering. Nothing seasons a soul like affliction. But there is no biblical call to seek and secure suffering; it tends to take care of itself. Is there another way by which wisdom may be imparted? To answer this question requires a closer look at the character of the wise.

Among wise souls (again, they are usually of the older generations) there exists a deep awareness of what we might call “something more” – something more than, something beyond the self, and what the self is presently doing. With this transcendent something, as it stands above and beyond the self and the moment, the lives of the wise are a kind of continual “conversation.” There is the ever-present consciousness, among the wise, of being “situated,” of being located in a context, in a place . . . of being rooted, we might say, in a story.

And here perhaps is the genius of true wisdom. If it is the blight of folly (too often characteristic of youth) to be entirely absorbed with the self, and more narrowly still, in the present moment of the self; it is wisdom’s genius to view the self (and especially the moment) as one very small and slightly significant part of a very large and grandly significant whole. For the wise man, every moment of the self stands “within” a larger moment that itself stands “within” a grander series of moments – what we call a “history.” To put this another way, for the wise man each self-moment is part of a community-moment, which in turn is part of a historical movement (or better, a number of historical movements); and only as such does the self-moment retain significance.

It is but a slight step from this to the idea that wisdom is inextricably grounded in narrative. The absence of a well-formed sense of narrative and a well-formed sense of identity in a community defined by a particular narrative, will usually explain the pervasive foolishness of youth. What is particularly frightening about this absence in the modern context is that modernity has, for many generations, self-consciously rebelled against the ancient narratives that once defined all human community. In bygone centuries, there existed religious narratives, or at least tribal and national narratives, which defined and shaped the human community, and in which young ones might be schooled. Now the religious narratives are simply “myths”; now the tribe is a “neighborhood” in which all are functionally strangers, and the nationhood of nations is rapidly washing away into the global sea. Now the best one can hope for is a “Facebook community” a year or two old, or perhaps a “readership community” built (the word is too strong) around the latest Twilight novel.

The Christian scriptures are violently subversive of our modern foolishness. To us they present the grandest of narratives: the story of the kingdom of God stretching back to Eden, the story of God’s covenant community stretching back through Abraham to the creation-kingdom, and past that to the inner life of the Triune Creator. The surest way for us to impart wisdom to the youth of Christendom is to brand this story upon their consciousness. The result of such inculcation is what Saint Paul called in his native tongue sophrosune – sobermindedness. The “sober” soul is aware; he has his wits about him; he is able to pull his head out of the present moment, to look about and orient himself to the larger community and story of which he is a part. He lives out of the wisdom and insight lavished upon God’s covenant people in Christ, a wisdom in which God has made known to us “the mystery of His will, according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:8–10).

Regrettably, much of Christianity’s contemporary reading of its own scriptures has missed this narrative-dimension of the biblical wisdom. Christians read the Bible as a moral handbook, or a springboard to mystical experience, or a compendium of “timeless” propositions or truths. Even a cursory survey of scripture shows that it is, fundamentally, none of these things. It is the story of everything, and the Christian church is faithful to its scriptures only as it proclaims and lives this story.

Christian leaders, then, must understand the scriptures as they present themselves. They must, in view of the story presented in scripture, interpret the history of the world and come to understand their own identity, place, and calling (and that of those they are leading) within world history.

One immediate outgrowth of this will be a renewed interest in biblical community – doing “real things” with the real people of God, sharing life together face to face. The kingdom of God is not something virtual; and therefore the shared life of His people in His kingdom will not be virtual.

And in the context of this face-to-face community living, saturated with awareness of the biblical history of all things, young ones will quickly imbibe the wisdom of their fathers. They will see in the lives of those around them the glory, beauty, goodness, justice, and truth that are the organic fruit of the wisdom of God. They will learn the fear of the Lord through word and deed.

A handful of practical suggestions might here be offered:

1. Heads of Christian households need to recover the art of storytelling. We are to shape the imaginations of our families. We should be constantly reading or narrating to them all the wonderful stories of God’s kingdom-people since the beginning of time (including stories of contemporary heroes of the faith).

1. Heads of Christian households need to recover an aggressive hospitality. We are to shape the social lives of our families. Our sociality should reflect the fact that we are Christians, kingdom-people who delight in the saints precisely because they are “our people,” part of our story. As much as we can, we should work alongside the saints, play with the saints, eat and drink with the saints, read aloud with the saints, explore creation with the saints, sing and pray with the saints, laugh and weep with the saints. This should be especially true on our Sabbaths.

1. Heads of Christian households need to recover a sense of holy obligation in the arena of Christian education. We are to shape the minds of our families. If every thought must be taken captive to the obedience of Christ, then (even if we do not home educate) it falls to us to teach our children how to think about everything within the context of the narrative of God’s kingdom and God’s covenant. Geography should be the study of the movement of God’s kingdom throughout the earth; history should be the study of the movements of God’s kingdom through time; science and mathematics should be the study of the genius of God in His creation, and of the tools He has given us to build culture from the stuff of creation for His glory; athletics should be a tribute of praise to His image in humankind; art and music should be self-consciously devoted to reflection upon His glory; language and logic should be learned as tools for edifying His people and assaulting the strongholds of His enemies.

1. Heads of Christian households need to recover the centrality of worship. We are to shape the allegiance of our families. More will be said about this in the following essay.

Two things should be said before beginning to unpack the concrete implications, for the head of the household and his family, of God’s call to prophetic, priestly, and kingly service. The first is that, while in one sense all of the Lord’s covenant households share the same covenant identity – that is, they are all His households, over which He rules, whom He delights to bless and call His own, and through which He wills to extend His kingdom – it is equally true that no two covenant households are just alike. All of the Lord’s households share the same covenant identity, they all participate in the same covenant story and calling; yet each household has a particular identity, a particular history, a particular makeup, particular dynamics, distinctive features. Any notion that to be a covenant household – conforming to Christ, maturing as the Lord’s prophets, priests, and kings – is to fit some kind of wooden mold, is simply false. One need look no farther than the various blessings on the tribes of Israel (e.g., Genesis 49) to see that each covenant household is unique, not only in fact but also in the purpose of God. It is important that our children grow up saying with confidence not only, “I am a member of God’s covenant,” but also, “I am a Smith, a Sanchez, a Sorgen, or a Sung.” God’s call to conformity is not a call to uniformity.

Second, as we face the daunting task of leading our households in responding to God’s call, it is vitally important not to think of leadership as something we do in abstraction from who we are. Leading is an action-word, certainly, but a leader is and must be a certain kind of person; or put another way, leadership both requires and flows out of a certain kind of character. Perhaps this explains why leadership is so hard: it is not merely a matter of following a checklist. Of this we shall have more to say as we proceed.

Prophetic Objectives

In his cultic (God-ward), communal (man-ward), and cultural (creation-ward) relations, man is to be God’s prophet. The prophetic office is largely concerned with knowing what God has said and speaking what He has said. We will explore the implications of this prophetic office for the head of the household as both an individual man (a prophet before God himself) and as a familial head (one called to form his household to be prophets).

The Individual Man

In order to lead his household as a prophet, a man must himself be one who knows the speech of his God, conducts his thinking within the framework supplied by that speech, and orders his own speech in accordance with that framework. It is imperative that the head of a Christian home be seeking from God “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Eph 1:17). A head of a Christian home must be a student of scripture, a student of theology, and a student of redemptive history as it comes down to our present time (in order that he may learn from those who have listened to the speech of God before him, may imitate their knowledge and piety, and may avoid their errors and sins).

The members of a Christian family should observe in their household head a passionate hunger for knowledge (indicated, among other things, by the avidity of his reading habits) and, no less important, a definite orientation of his knowledge toward the framework supplied by the Word of God. There should never be any question that his ultimate reference point for true knowledge is the speech of God in holy scripture; nor that his certainty begins with humility and submission before this God who speaks. The Word of God is truth, precisely because He is God; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; and a biblical leader will not blush over the fact that his final appeal in questions of truth is to the One who is the Truth, from whose mouth alone come knowledge and understanding.

In connection with this, it should be noted that an indispensable component of a biblical leader’s character is conviction. A biblical leader is passionate about the Word of his God – passionate to know it, and passionate to follow it. Lack of passionate conviction ruins would-be leaders. One who believes slightly and adheres loosely cannot lead others to faith or faithfulness. Many other weaknesses in a leader can be made up for by his profound conviction about the cause he serves. God save us from slightly convinced men! They are unworthy of the kingdom of God.

The prophetic calling, however, extends beyond one’s cultic relation to God. The prophet-leader must be a “student of everything”; he must be a student of humankind and all creation. He must be a contagiously interested man, always curious, always exploring, always wondering, always wishing to know more. He must be a man whose senses are awake, who notices things. He must not be drugged by inanities and lusts, or by self-absorption or self-importance; rather he must be oriented to all things “other,” because he is oriented to the great “Other” whose are all things.

This kind of knower will be a speaker, but it may be well to take up the issue of prophetic speech in connection with the calling and work of a familial head.

The Familial Head

In order to form his household as prophets, a man must not only be a knower, but also a teacher, an educator who directs his household toward that which he himself has learned (and is learning) and beyond.  Far more is involved in this prophetic work than mere transmission of information; it is often more a matter of gesturing toward a horizon the leader himself is pursuing. It is calling others to join an expedition, and guiding them along paths already explored, but only so far. The prophet calls his hearers to join him in pressing on to know the Lord and His works (Hosea 6:3).

A classic text that describes this prophetic work in the home is, of course, Deuteronomy 6:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

The immediate reference here is to the law of God; and certainly every head of a Christian home must teach the whole counsel of God revealed in scripture to his family. But he must also teach his household to view all created things (as he himself does) from within the framework supplied by that Word. He may be assisted in this task by schoolteachers and church leaders, but he may not simply abdicate the responsibility for educating his family to others.

Already we have moved from prophetic knowledge to prophetic speech. But there is more to the speech of a prophet-leader than teaching. A prophet is a communicator in the broadest sense; he is deeply, passionately committed to that strange and wonderful occurrence wherein hearts and minds are “connected” through the God-created vehicle of language. It may be said that language – or more precisely, communication by means of language – is the glue that binds the household together. God is constantly speaking to His household and urging them to open their hearts and speak to Him; and the head of each covenant household is to imitate and image Him in this. (We might add to the conviction aspect of a Christian leader’s character the communicative aspect.)

It is worth pondering the simple fact that a biblical leader speaks to those who are to follow him. Men need to hear this – a lot. Men are by and large terrible communicators. For whatever reason (fear, insecurity, lack of practice, pride, self-absorption, etc.), men are very slow to open up their souls to others, and (no surprise, in view of this) they are generally quite bad at eliciting such an opening of soul from others. “Talk with me,” wives plead. “Talk with me,” children plead (until they are become so distant from their father that they are glad when little passes between them). And the husband/father goes on burying himself in his schedule, his hobbies, or his inner world.

Once in a great while, one meets a man in the presence of whom one feels deep personal interest – that he actually wants to hear what one has to say. One senses in such a man an open heart and an engaging mind; one is welcome into his soul, and he respectfully (though persistently) seeks a welcome into yours. It should be noted that such men are not simply born. They are made, they are formed in the crucible of vulnerable, difficult, conflicted, but dogged communication. Good communicators have learned to communicate by communicating. They have kept at it when it has hurt, and hurt badly. They have almost certainly had someone else lovingly beat down the door of their heart, and they have tasted how good it is to know and be known.

It should go without saying that deeply implicated in all of this is how the man of God speaks. It is possible to speak in such a manner that the result is greater distance, alienation, woundedness, and resentment. To have certain people barge in the front door of one’s mind and “rearrange all the furniture” is to devoutly wish they may never visit again. The speech of the prophet-leader is always “seasoned with grace,” even when it is confrontational. In this he images the glory of the One who spoke with authority (Matt 7:29) and yet never crushed a bruised reed or extinguished a smoking flax.