“So I point out that the Bible does contain a theory of reality. And this theory of reality is that of two levels of being, first, of God as infinite, eternal, and unchangeable and, second, of the universe that is derivative, finite, temporal and changeable. A position is best known by its most basic differentiation. The meanings of all words in the Christian theory of being depend upon the differentiation between the self-contained God and the created universe” (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith (4th Edition by P&R Publishing, 2008), 237).

“Let us ride the eruption of Easter” (N. D. Wilson, Notes From the Tilt-A-Whirl, 197).

“Christ’s sacrifice and death for sinners, and Christ’s kingdom and future glory, are the light we must bring to bear on any book of Scripture we read” (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, 312).

http://andrew-luttrull-news.blogspot.com/

Take a break from Facebook, or whichever Internets-of-choice you prefer, and spend time enjoying images of art created by my friend Andrew. He recently completed his MFA examination.

Congratulations, Andrew!

A meaningful warning to those who have “zeal for orthodoxy and neglect for daily practical godliness,” myself included. Believe you me; there is nothing orthodox about neglect or, as they use to say, Acedia.

On Sunday our church has a family study before the Covenant Renewal and Worship Service. I recently taught a two week course for the family study on the relationship between Worship, Worldview, and Christian Character. I leaned heavily upon the thinking of J.C. Ryle’s Holiness, James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, Jeff Meyers’ The Lord’s Service, and N. T. Wright’s After You Believe. If you care to listen, you can find audio at http://trinity-evangelical.org/blog/.

“… Christ must subdue us in order to give us knowledge. But this subduing of us by Christ is done through his Spirit. It is the Spirit who takes the things of Christ and gives them unto us.” …

“For this reason we must observe at this juncture that the Spirit who applies the work of Christ is himself also a member of the ontological Trinity. He would have to be. Unless he were, the work of salvation would not be the work of God alone. If God was to be maintained in his incommunicable attributes [the attributes of God that cannot be communicated or gifted to objects or persons in the universe; e.g., the aseity of God, immutability of God, omnipresence of God, etc.], the Spirit of God, not man, had to effect the salvation of man. The only alternative to this would be that man could at some point take the initiative in the matter of his own salvation. This would imply that the salvation wrought by Christ could be frustrated by man. Suppose that none should accept the salvation offered to them. In that case the whole of Christ’s work would be in vain, and the eternal God would be set at naught by temporal man. Even if we say that in the case of any one individual sinner the question of salvation is in the last analysis dependent upon man rather than upon God, that is, if we say that man can of himself accept or reject the gospel as he pleases, we have made the eternal God dependent upon man. We have then, in effect, denied the incommunicable attributes of God. If we refuse to mix the eternal and the temporal at the point of creation and at the point of the incarnation, we must also refuse to mix them at the point of salvation” (Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of The Faith, 40).

“What are we here for in the first place? The fundamental answer we shall explore in this book is that what we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on the one hand and in mission, in its full and large sense, on the other; and that we do this not least by “following Jesus.” The way this works out is that it produces, through the work of the Holy Spirit, a transformation of character” (N.T. Wright, After You Believe, 26).

“How do we not only think clearly and wisely about what to do, in our personal lives, our church lives, and our entire public life, but also discover how to do it” (12)? … “Interestingly, Jesus seems to have given both sides of this question the same answer: “Follow me!” That is both what you should do and how you should do it” (14).

“You can divide theories about human behavior into two: either you obey rules imposed from the outside, or you discover the deepest longings of your own heart and try to go with them.” … “But what we notice in Mark 10 is something which seems to operate in a different dimension. For a start, it is a call, not to specific acts of behavior, but to a type of character. For another thing, it is a call to see oneself as having a role to play within a story-—and a story where, to join up with the first point, there is one supreme Character whose life is to be followed” (17).

“My contention in this book is that the New Testament invites its readers to learn how to be human in this particular way, which will both inform our moral judgments and form our characters so that we can live by their guidance. The name for this way of being human, this kind of transformation, is virtue” (N.T. Wright, After You Believe, 18).

Robert Haldane quotes from Bell’s On the Covenants in his opening remarks on Chapter IX of Romans: “The sinner’s right to Christ turns not at all upon any inward gracious qualifications, but purely on the Divine warrant revealed in the word. Faith is not a qualification in order to come to Christ, but the coming itself; it is not our right to Christ, but our taking and receiving Him to ourselves on the footing of the right conveyed by the Gospel offer” (Exposition of Romans, 433).