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Nobody knows - 23 June 2009
The first 4 chapters of John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker cover some fairly well-trodden methodological and philosophical ground, though with glittering clarity and fresh insights on almost every page.
Chapters 5 to 7 focus more specifically on evolutionary biology – conceding ground where appropriate while simultaneously asking some probing questions – on the fossil record, irreducible complexity, and especially the origin of life (as opposed to its subsequent development). Here’s Stuart Kaufmann, for example:
Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave. Nobody knows. (p. 126)
Mind-broadening - 18 June 2009
Some highlights from the first 4 chapters of of John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker.
- the roots of science in Christian theism (pp. 19-22).
- crystal clarity about the distinctions between naturalism and materialism (pp. 27-28)
- scientific method (pp. 31-34)
- materialism’s talent for begging the question (pp. 34-37)
- Laplace (pp. 44-45)
- against the ‘God of the gaps’ (pp. 46-47)
- God as Creator, and primary and secondary causation (pp. 47-51)
- the utterly mind-boggling improbability of our universe coming into being by chance (p. 70)
Keep your nose out - 17 June 2009
John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker recalls the well-known encounter between Napoleon and the French mathematician Laplace, which is ‘constantly misused to buttress atheism’ (p. 44):
On being asked by Napoleon where God fitted into his mathematical work, Laplace, quite correctly, replied: ‘Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.’ Of course God did not appear in Laplace’s mathematical description of how things work, just as Mr Ford would not appear in a scientific description of the laws of internal combustion. But what does that prove? That Henry Ford did not exist? Clearly not. (pp. 44-45)
Austin Farrer puts it wonderfully:
Laplace and his colleagues had not learned to do without theology; they had merely learned to mind their own business. (p. 45)
God’s undertaker - 15 June 2009
Too many reviews describe books as ‘vital reading’ – obviously an overstatement, because we get along perfectly fine without almost all of them.
But just occasionally a truly remarkable book appears. To my mind, John C. Lennox’s God’s Undertaker falls into that category.
A long time ago I used to be a scientist. Yeah, a long time ago. But, still, I quite often get asked to speak on ‘Science and Christianity’ and similar subjects, so I’ve read a fair bit on the subject. This one is something really special. Every chapter manages to say something new, and existing arguments are re-stated with greater clarity and cogency than I’ve ever seen before. With this book, John Lennox stomps into the heavyweight division of this rather tired old debate and flattens the opposition.
Any scientifically-minder Christian who doesn’t read this book is missing out. Any unbelieving scientist who hasn’t read it can safely be ignored.
Short-sighted - 9 June 2009
Yesterday I spent a very illuminating few hours at a study group hosted by London Theological Seminary discussing John J. Murray’s Catch the Vision: Roots of the Reformed Recovery.
One widely-held conclusion was that it is very difficult to write such a history of a ‘movement’ so soon after the event, when it’s far from clear what events/people/etc have had long-term significance. Consequently, such histories tend to overestimate the significance of the author’s own (small?) circle, practically ignoring other (possibly very significant) parts of the ecclesial landscape.
For example, the main text mentions John Stott three times, each time only in passing, and twice in relation to his public disagreement with Lloyd-Jones in 1966. Lloyd-Jones, on the other hand, is the focus of two entire chapters. Obviously, the great Doctor had a massive (and wonderful) influence in 20th-century Reformed evangelicalism, but one wonders whether Murray has got the balance quite right.
There’s an important lesson here for all of us contemporary evangelicals. We must not identify the growth/strength/fruitfulness of Christ’s church solely with those (socially defined?) streams of evangelicalism that we happen to be familiar with. Too often we get stuck in our own small corner, vastly overestimating our own significance and vastly underestimating the wondrous work the Lord is doing far beyond the circles represented by alumni of our University Christian Union.
The fact that yesterday I was introduced to a number of godly, wise, experienced ministers in thriving evangelical churches that I’d never heard of served to underscore this point. Thankfully, the Kingdom of Christ is larger than, and is growing faster than, any of our little networks.
Books on Hebrews - 28 May 2009
William L. Lane, Hebrews (WBC; 2 vols). Pretty technical. Surprisingly useful (for this series) in sermon preparation. Keeps the development of the argument clearly in focus. Helpful exposition of the development of OT themes (e.g. in 3:1-6). Evangelical. Pick of the bunch so far.
Paul Ellingworth, Hebrews (NIGTC). Lots of technical detail. Hard to read. Sometimes hard to see the wood for the trees. But, on the other hand, trees are often helpful.
F. F. Bruce, Hebrews (NICNT). Useful, though less detail than Lane and Ellingworth, and sometimes a bit more help with the flow of the argument would be useful. Evangelical.
John Owen, Hebrews (7 vols). Vast, slightly (!) overwhelming. Preterist reading, which may be unfamiliar to some. But I dare you to dismiss his interpretation without reading it. All of it. Or else he’ll not be happy when he catches up with you…
No one ever drifted into maturity - 12 May 2009
In 1 Kings 12, Rehoboam rejects the counsel of the ‘old men’ (v. 6) in favour of the advice of ‘the young men [hayladiym, lit. 'the boys'] who had grown up with him’ (v. 12). Rehoboam is 41 years old when he becomes king (14:21), so the description of his contemporaries as ‘boys’ is ironic, and deliberately insulting.
They are boys … in their youthful folly and adolescent bravado … Rehoboam’s folly is a characteristic folly of a ‘boy,’ a young man who chooses advisors full of youthful pride, cockiness and crudity, the type of companion against whom Proverbs warns repeatedly (13:20; 28:7; cf. Ps. 119:63). (Leithart, 1 and 2 Kings, p. 92.)
Christian men must heed this warning, or we shall very likely repeat Rehoboam’s stupidity. Unless we pay careful attention to our godliness, it’s possible to still be boys in our early forties, being ‘men’ only in the sense that we’re now big enough to do damage. Boys will be boys; men must not be. But the example of Rehoboam and ‘the boys’ reminds us that this won’t happen automatically. No one ever drifted into maturity.
A finished work of art - 2 May 2009
More on Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative:
Chapter 4, ‘Between Narration and Dialogue’ explores how the biblical writers do their business ‘when the narrative tempo slows down enough for us to discriminate a particular scene’ (p. 63). In contrast to ‘Greek epics and romances and … much later Western literature’ (p. 64), the Hebrew writers make extensive use of direct speech. Just read some Austen, then read 1 Samuel 21. Weird.
Chapter 5, ‘The Techniques of Repetition’, explores an oft-cited feature of the Bible, whose presence is generally obvious, but whose significance is often missed.
Chapter 6, ‘Characterization and the Art of Reticence’ shows how the Bible manages to say so much by saying so little.
Chapter 7, ‘Composite Artistry’, explores the conundrums arising from apparent or alleged ‘internal contradictions’ (p. 135) in the biblical narrative. Alter is less pessimistic than most scholars about the number of such ‘insoluble cruxes’ (p. 133) in Scripture. Personally, I’m less pessimistic still – I don’t think anything in the Bible is ‘insoluble’ in principle, though I readily grant that there are plenty of things that are ‘hard to understand’ (2 Peter 3:16). Credit to Alter for at least throwing a spanner in the works of liberal OT scholarship; shame he didn’t go all the way.
Chapter 8, ‘Narration and Knowledge’, explains how and why the biblical narrator keeps us in the dark about something he knows, or tells us something the characters in the story don’t know, or plays some other trick on us. Shame he keeps banging on about ‘fiction’. Sigh.
Interesting, though. For example, at what point in the story of Ehud are we supposed to realise that Eglon is going to meet a messy end (Judges 3:12-30)? Dunno, but we certainly find out before the King’s attendants – much to their embarrassment, and our amusement (vv. 24-25). Again, why don’t we discover that Adam was standing right next to Eve until after the conversation with the serpent had finished (Gen 3:6)? And so on.
Finally, Alter devotes an entire chapter (9, ‘Conclusion’) to helping the man in the street work out how to make practical use of the book in reading and understanding Scripture. Now there’s a rare thought.
Marrying a foreign woman - 2 May 2009
The pace of Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative hots up in chapter 3, ‘Biblical Type-Scenes and the Uses of Convention’. Observing ‘the perplexing fact that in biblical narrative more or less the same story often seems to be told two or three or more times about different characters, or sometimes even about the same character in different sets of circumstances’ (p. 49), Alter sets about uncovering some of the conventions followed by the biblical authors. He takes the example of ‘the betrothal’ (p. 51) type-scene, drawing attention to the skill of the biblical authors in narrating the betrothals of Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah, and a whole load more besides.
Did you notice how all the action seems to take place at a well in a foreign land?
‘We must keep in mind’, he insists, that this is ‘not merely the technical manipulation of a literary convention for … sheer pleasure’; it is also intended to convey ‘a larger pattern of historical and theological meaning’ (pp. 59, 60). The Bible is beautiful; but beauty does not exclude utility.
It’s just a shame Alter wrote as a non-Christian. A believer might have recalled another account of a Man meeting a foreign woman at a well. And before long they, too, were talking about marriage.
The most beautiful story in the world - 1 May 2009
There’s always a fly in the ointment. At at the risk of overstating the case (and mixing metaphors), chapter 2 of Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative (’Sacred History and the Beginnings of Prose Fiction’) is a real bluebottle in the honey.
It would be unfair to suggest that Alter denies the historicity of the Bible. His discussion is more nuanced than that. There is, however, an underlying methodological issue that I want to take issue with.
Alter seems to assume that there is a trade-off between a narrative’s literary artistry and its historical accuracy. The more a writer seems to embellishes details, portrays the psychological features of the protagonists, draws attention to word-play and repetition, alludes to other narratives and so on, the more (it seems) we are forced to concede that he has fiddled the facts. We can admire his elegance and subtlety, we can be drawn my them more deeply into the story, but we cannot finally believe that it all actually happened this way. Literary beauty and historical veracity is a zero-sum game.
This assumption evaporates completely once we step back for a moment and ask ourselves who the real storyteller is. God can not only write a story with the literary beauty that Alter describes; he can make it all come alive. Men and women write books; God creates worlds. Why should the literary beauty of the Bible not be a precise reflection of God’s sovereign power?
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