Book Write-Up: The Alchemy Thief, by R.A. Denny

 R.A. Denny. The Alchemy Thief. 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

This book is the first of R.A. Denny’s “Pirates and Puritans” series. Whereas her previous series, “Tales of Tzoladia,” was fantasy, this book is a combination of historical and science fiction.

Two people from the twenty-first century end up in the seventeenth century. One is Ayoub, a member of ISIS. The other is Peri, short for “Experience.” They do not know each other and accidentally end up in the past at different times, with neither knowing about the other until later in the book. Ayoub is on a pirate ship with other Muslims, whereas Peri is with the Puritans, among whom her name “Experience” is not unusual.

Ayoub initially struggles to understand and to fit into his new surroundings. The Muslim crew finds him unusual and speculates that he is possessed with a jinn, especially when he tries to explain twenty-first century weaponry to them. They take him to an Islamic mystic, who proves to be a gentle presence throughout the book. Over the years, Ayoub comes to attain a prominent and respectable position among the crew. The question then becomes whether Ayoub will use his knowledge of the future to change history and establish a caliphate, right when America is in its infancy stage.

Peri confronts her own set of challenges among the Puritans. She is arrested for witchcraft due to the nature of her arrival and controversial things that she innocently says, but she is rescued by the Puritan leader John Winthrop, who is unsure what to make of her but has his own affinity with alchemy, which arguably overlaps with witchcraft. (Not that he would say that, but he would be more open to the bizarre or the paranormal than the average Puritan.) Peri also tries to adapt to a patriarchal society with stricter sexual and social mores.

Other characters are Peri’s love interests. In the twenty-first century, there is Liam. Unknown to Peri, Liam is a secret ISIS recruit, reaching out to her as part of a larger agenda whose intricacies are hidden even from him. He encourages her to take a class with Professor Bey, who turns out to have his own mysterious history. In the seventeenth century, there is Daniel, a gifted Native American convert to Puritan Christianity.

The struggles by Ayoub and Peri to adjust to new surroundings, and those surroundings’ attempts to grapple with them, are an asset to this book. Perhaps that element could have been enhanced had the Puritan characters not spoken in contractions (“can’t,” “don’t”). At first, they were formal in their speech, but their speech became less formal as the book went on.

This part of the book is profound, as it highlights the nuances of historical characters and how they are more rounded than their conventional portrayal suggests:

“[Willam] Harris had spoken up for some pacifists which caused Roger Williams to call him an anarchist. Peri had never heard of this controversy. She had been taught that Williams was the most tolerant of the Puritans. She wondered if Harris had hanged.”

Other noteworthy aspects of the book include how a conventional Western young man like Liam could become drawn to ISIS, and how God led Daniel, within his own Native American culture, to become open to Christianity. The latter will resonate with those who enjoy Don Richardson’s Eternity in their Hearts, which concerns how God reveals Godself in non-Christian cultures and thus makes them open to the Gospel.

The best part of the story itself is when Peri finally meets Ayoub, with each of them surprised to encounter another time traveler.

This book is clearer than Denny’s “Tzoladia” series. I was still confused in some places, perhaps because of my own struggle with reading fiction. Non-fiction is better at laying things out, whereas, with fiction, the reader needs to do more work on his or her own part. Not really understanding what a “bodkin” is may have sown some confusion on my part, as the bodkin plays a significant part in this book; there is also the factor, if memory serves me correctly, that there are two supernatural bodkins, yet both are the same one: the one in the museum, and that bodkin in the past.

I was a little unclear about how Peri could marry Daniel when she was Ayoub’s captive.

Then there is the identification of the mysterious Dr. Bey. He turns out to be another character who is in the book, but my response was “Who?” I do not think he was the Islamic mystic, since the Islamic mystic is a good person, but I am unsure. Sorry for the spoiler there. Perhaps that aspect of the book could have been resolved had Denny included in the back a guide about the main characters, like her excellent guide about the historical personages in the book.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author. My review is honest!

Book Write-Ups: The Servant of the Lord and His Servant People; Reformation Commentary on John 13-21; Every Leaf, Line, and Letter

Here are some reviews of IVP review books I was sent. The reviews will be succinct. These will be the last IVP review books that I review in a long time. I enjoy them, but there are other books that I want to read, without necessarily having to blog about them. In the near future, I will review R.A. Denny’s The Alchemy Thief, but that will probably be the only book review that I write in a long time.

A. Matthew S. Harmon. The Servant of the Lord and the Servant People: Tracing a Biblical Theme through the Canon. IVP Academic, 2020. Go here to purchase the book.

As the title indicates, Harmon goes through the concept of the “servant of the LORD” throughout the Bible. What stands out in my mind is his interaction with the scholarly argument that the New Testament rarely applies Isaiah 53 to Jesus, questioning whether Isaiah 53 was even significant in and formative of early Christianity. The reason that this stands out to me is that it was an issue that one of my advisors wanted me to engage in my M.Div. thesis, which argued that Isaiah 53 predicted Christ. (This was Harvard Divinity School, where such a thesis would be controversial.) Harmon contended that, indeed, the New Testament was significantly influenced by Isaiah 53.

B. Reformation Commentary on Scripture: John 13-21. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Like the other books in this series, this one quotes Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, and pre-Tridentine Catholic interpretations of biblical passages. In this case, the passages are John 13-21. John 13-21 is a fruitful section of Scripture. There are passages about God giving believers whatever they request in Jesus’s name, Jesus’s promise that the disciples will do greater things than Jesus did, the promise of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus’s statement that the disciples will be able to forgive and retain sins. I was edified in reading the book, but all I remember at this point is the interpretations of how the disciples will do greater things than Jesus did: that it applied to the first century apostles, not believers afterwards. I guess these Reformers were not Pentecostals.

The glossary in the back refreshed my memory about some things that I read in the previous Reformation Commentaries’ glossaries. For example, Henry VIII did not become a Protestant simply because he disliked his wife and the Catholic church would not grant him an annulment. Rather, he had an Old Testament reason for the annulment: “Believing his marriage cursed as it transgressed the commands in Leviticus against marrying a brother’s widow…” (What about Levirate marriage?) That was the official reason, but then I read in E. Michael Jones’s Barren Metal that Henry VIII was not even consistent in this stance.

C. Timothy Larsen, ed. Every Leaf, Line, and Letter: Evangelicals and the Bible from the 1730s to the Present. Go here to purchase the book.

Various scholars contribute to this book, which primarily concerns the interpretation and application of the Bible in eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century America. There are a couple of chapters that go outside of the United States, such as one on charismatic renewal in 1960’s Britain and New England, and another on evangelicalism in a global context. I will not go through each chapter but rather will comment briefly on select chapters:

Kristina Benham, “British Exodus, American Empire: Evangelical Preachers and the Biblicisms of Revolution.” Mark A. Noll, “Missouri, Denmark Vesey, Biblical Proslavery, and a Crisis for Sola Scriptura.”

I include these chapters together because both highlight a tension in attempts to apply the Bible. On the one hand, the Bible encourages submission to authority. Romans 13 comes to mind. The Bible also appears to condone slavery. On the other hand, the Bible condemns authoritarianism. American revolutionaries and abolitionists drew more from the latter strain of thought. How they sought to reconcile their views with the former is where they become interesting. One abolitionist, for example, sought to explain Leviticus 25’s statement that Israelites can hold non-Israelite slaves in perpetuity by referring to the circumcision of non-Israelite slaves in Exodus 12: when they are circumcised, they become Israelites and thus can be released on the seventh year, like Israelite slaves. Maybe, but does that not make Leviticus 25’s statement meaningless and unnecessary? Unless, I suppose, Gentile slaves in Exodus 12 could choose to remain uncircumcised.

Jonathan Yeager, “Faith, Free Will, and Biblical Reasoning in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards and John Erskine.”

Edwards did not see humans as automatons as much as I thought, and Edwards leaned, somewhat, towards a Catholic view on justification. At this time, I lean heavily onto the “Christ’s imputed righteousness” model, since my own moral thoughts fall dramatically short from where Christians say they should be. But there are a variety of views out there. That is why I cannot be dogmatic in sharing a canned “Romans Road” or “Way of the Master” Gospel with people.

Mary Riso, “Josephine Butler’s Mystic Vision and Her Love for the Jesus of the Gospels.”

Josephine Butler stressed the significance of suffering in spirituality. Such a message does not resonate with me currently, since things are going fairly well in my life: I take Zoloft, I have a job, and people there seem to like me, or at least they act like they do! The same incel (not violent incel, but just incel) feelings are still present, but I am living with them. Of course, there are other people who are suffering, and I should try to cultivate empathy. (Note: This is why I hate blogging. I write a thought, fear that people will call me self-centered, then feel a compulsion to qualify what I am saying, resulting in a jumbled mess.) Anyway, where this chapter resonated with me was when Riso started talking about Butler’s alienation from organized Christianity, particularly the doctrine of hell.

Timothy Larsen, “Liberal Evangelicals and the Bible.”

Larsen critiques Vernon Storr, a liberal evangelical Anglican in the early twentieth century. This chapter is effective in showing how Storr’s liberal evangelicalism is inadequate: Storr believes the Bible is errant and stresses its human aspect, with the result that he cannot provide a solid authoritative basis for Christian doctrine or theology. Larsen, however, seems to go to the opposite extreme, acting as if the Bible lacks problems and even seriously entertaining conservative attempts to reconcile how many animals went onboard Noah’s ark. Larsen has one humorous insight, though: when he observes that Storr appeared embarrassed when a biblical prophecy actually was fulfilled! Storr’s proposed approach to the Bible was essentially to look at the main idea rather than the details of biblical passages. That may be one way to reconcile the apparently problematic nature of the Bible with Christian faith, but it makes the Bible boring. One reason I like to read the Bible is to figure out why it says what it says, as it says it: it provides unending intellectual stimulation. If all I can get from the Bible is “be nice to people,” then it would be a dull book.

Malcolm Foley, “‘The Only Way to Stop a Mob’: Francis Grimke’s Biblical Case for Lynching Resistance.”

Francis Grimke made a lucid and compelling case against lynching in the South. This may seem obvious, but if you read and listen to white nationalists, you get the impression that lynching was understandable because it was carried out against rapists. Grimke provides an effective counter-point to that position. Foley also notes James Baldwin’s observation that, notwithstanding southern whites’ condemnation of miscegenation, there were white slaveholders who had children by their black slaves. White nationalists can retort “But that doesn’t mean miscegenation is right,” but that inconsistency in white Southern culture should be addressed, somehow, considering the importance of anti-miscegenation arguments in defenses of segregation.

John Maiden, “‘As at the Beginning’: Charismatic Renewal and the Reanimation of Scripture in Britain and New Zealand in the ‘Long’ 1960s.”

Maiden talks about how charismatics were discontent with the overly intellectual nature of evangelicalism and sought (maybe even had) an emotional Spirit-filled faith. These days, the intellectual content of Christianity appeals to me. I am hanging onto my faith like a thread, but I can still enjoy Charles Hodge, with his dispassionate approach! When it come to the charismatic movement, I feel, as I long have, that either God is leaving me out, or that charismatics are too dogmatic about God’s views, or that charismatics show Christianity to be too “real” for my comfort.

Catherine A. Brekus, “The American Patriot’s Bible: Evangelicals, the Bible, and American Nationalism.”

This chapter is nauseatingly and predictably woke, but its critique of the American Patriot’s Bible does highlight nuances in American history and thus is an effective critique of “Christian right” conceptions of U.S. history. In my view, the secular humanist progressive conceptions are problematic, too.

Books Write-Up: Obadiah, Jonah and Micah; Letters for the Church; the Paradox of Sonship

I will be catching up on book reviews in this post. IVP Academic sent me complimentary copies of these books. My reviews are honest!

A. Daniel C. Timmer. Obadiah, Jonah and Micah. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Daniel C. Timmer teaches biblical studies at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and also in Montreal, Quebec at the Faculte de theologie evangelique. As the title indicates, this book is a commentary on the biblical books of Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah.

Some items:

—-The sections on Jonah and Micah are more interesting than the one on Obadiah. The Obadiah section still engages some intriguing scholarly views, such as one that the ancient Judahites hated the Edomites because the Judahites feared that the Edomites had replaced them as God’s people. Not surprisingly, Timmer rejects this view, but what is amazing is the ideas that scholars put out there in an attempt to be fresh and original.

—-The Jonah section is noteworthy because it treats the Book of Jonah as historically accurate and as pre-exilic. That contrasts with the picture I long got about the book in my reading of scholarship: that it is some post-exilic fable promoting inclusivism towards Gentiles when there was controversy about inclusivism and exclusivism within the post-exilic Jewish community. Timmer’s commitment to Jonah’s historicity is manifest in three areas. First, Timmer contends that the language of Jonah reflects pre-exilic Hebrew and defends the idea that the Hebrew is authentically archaic as opposed to being post-exilic archaizing. Second, Timmer notes the deterioration of the Assyrian empire in the ninth century, which would have made the Ninevites receptive to Jonah’s prophecy of doom. Third, Timmer harmonizes the text of Jonah with history. Jonah 3:6-9 mentions a king of Nineveh and, because Nineveh was not Assyria’s capital city prior to 705, Timmer concludes that this “king” is not a king of all Assyria but rather a magnate over one of the fragments of the Assyrian empire.

—-Timmer offers intriguing possibilities and engages scholarly speculation. He speculates that Jonah himself may have commissioned the ship that took him to Tarshish, meaning Jonah was more than a mere passenger. And, contrary to those who maintain that Jonah’s message to the Ninevites is solely one of doom, Timmer notes possible indications that Jonah preached repentance to the Ninevites.

—-In the section on Micah, Timmer attributes the false prophecies of the false prophets to demons. I am hesitant to accept Timmer’s conclusion here because I think that it projects later demonology onto a pre-exilic book. Plus, it brings to mind annoying tendencies of my religious background, which attributed anything supernatural outside of a rigid religious construct to demons. Still, Timmer’s conclusion does raise profound questions. First, to what did the Hebrew Bible attribute false prophecy? Were the false prophets lying? Did they receive their visions from a supernatural source other than God? There are places in the Hebrew Bible that appear to engage this question. Jeremiah 23:16 asserts that false prophets are speaking their own ideas, not the words of God; here, they are deluded or lying. I Kings 22:21-23, however, depicts God himself sending a lying spirit to the mouths of the false prophets. On a similar note, Deuteronomy 13:1-3 asserts that a false prophet may be part of God’s testing of the Israelites’ faithfulness, implying, perhaps, that God sent the false prophet to test the Israelites. Second, while I doubt that pre-exilic ancient Israelites conceived of an arch-enemy of God, Satan, having a retinue of demons seeking to undermine God’s plan, that does not mean that they lacked a demonology altogether, and they may have seen at least some demons as more than pesky spirits, which is how some scholars tend to portray the ancient conception of demons. Deuteronomy 32:17 states that the false gods to whom Israelites sacrificed were demons (shedim); these were more than pesky spirits but were able to impersonate deity.

—-Since I became aware of the historical-critical method, I have wondered how to approach the eschatological passages of the Old Testament prophets. Micah forecasts the dramatic, supernatural restoration of Israel and the Davidic king in reference to the nations of his time, such as Assyria. Micah 5, which Matthew 2:6 applies to Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, depicts seven princes defeating Assyria, a power in Micah’s own time that had largely vanished from the scene by the time of Jesus. Is Micah 5 Micah’s view about what would happen in his own day, within his own geo-political context, as opposed to being a prophecy about the distant future? Timmer engages this question, treating the references to Assyria in Micah 5 as paradigmatic and typological for Israel’s foes in general. Timmer states on page 181 that “this typological understanding of these two empires fits well with Micah’s use of Nimrod for Babylon (cf. Gen. 10:8-10).” As Nimrod in the Book of Genesis could foreshadow later Babylon, so could Assyria be a type for Israel’s eschatological enemies.

—-Timmer states on page 228: “‘Zion’ will no longer be limited in terms of space and geography, so will be able to welcome many nations (4:1-4) from across the globe (7:11-12). Her newly arrived citizens, particularly those of non-Israelite ethnicity, will radically expand her population (it is important that Daughter Zion identifies herself as Abraham’s offspring, rather than extending that title to all ethnic Israelites).” Timmer essentially sees continuity between Micah’s eschatology and the New Testament’s inclusion of Gentiles into the people of God. How convincing this is, is a worthwhile question. Timmer, of course, has to deal with Micah 4:5’s declaration that the nations may walk in the name of their own gods, whereas Israel will walk in the name of the LORD. Does this envision a time of eschatological tolerance and pluralism, when Gentiles will worship their own gods rather than becoming part of the people of Israel and worshiping the LORD alone? Timmer’s solution appears to be that Israel recognizes she had better be faithful because that would be what would attract the nations to the God of Israel; otherwise, the nations will continue to worship their own gods. There is also the focus on ethnic Israel throughout Micah and all of the Old Testament prophets, for that matter, which makes me question whether Micah is downplaying ethnic Israel in favor of a spiritual community that includes Gentiles. Moreover, one may wonder if the nations in the “inclusivist” passages of the Old Testament prophets are necessarily joining the people of God or rather are becoming subordinate to the Israelites, meaning that their honor for God is an aspect of their political subordination to Israel. If so, such prophecies may concern Israel’s political prestige in the eschaton more than the nations becoming closer to God.

B. Darian R. Lockett. Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude as Canon. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Darian R. Lockett (Ph.D., St. Andrews) teaches New Testament at Biola University. This book goes through the Catholic epistles—-James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude—-while noting themes that unite them.

A few items:

—-Lockett largely accepts the traditional views of authorship, as he engages scholarly skepticism about said authorship. Some of his solutions are predictable, in light of conservative scholarship: attribute stylistic features to a secretary, patristic support, etc. In his discussion of II Peter, though, he refers to elements of II Peter that appear to regard the letter as a sequel to a previous letter, meaning one person may have written I-II Peter.

—-Where Lockett may stray, somewhat, from conservatism is in his treatment of Jude’s quotation of I Enoch. He surveys conservative scholarly denials that Jude regards I Enoch as divinely-authoritative and simply does not find them convincing. If Jude does regard I Enoch as divinely-authoritative, then that has profound implications, including Christians having another book in their canon.

—-Love is a theme that recurs in the book. This troubles me, as a shy introvert with grudges and social anxiety who cannot bring himself to love people and questions whether Christians manifest the unconditional love they judge me for lacking. That rant aside, Lockett, in some cases, shows how love fits into the argument of the Catholic epistles: James opposes favoritism for the rich over the poor, and James’s stance, of course, is consistent with love. In some cases, Lockett perhaps could have more effectively showed where love fits into the equation. In II Peter 2:21, for example, the author criticizes those who turned away from the sacred command, and Lockett interprets that sacred command as the command to love. Yet, Lockett also regards the context for that passage as pertinent to apostasy: leaving the faith and returning to pagan sensualism and hedonism. How does rejecting love fit into that apostasy?

—-In Jude 9, Jude refers to Michael’s dispute with Satan over the bones of Moses. The interpretation that I usually heard of that incident is that Satan wanted to make Moses’s bones an object of worship. Lockett, however, offers a different interpretation: that Satan was saying that Moses did not deserve proper burial because Moses had killed an Egyptian. Whether there is a basis for this interpretation is a good question, especially since, as Lockett states, the story “most likely comes from the lost ending of the Testament of Moses” (199).

—-Lockett is especially effective in painting the perspective against which II Peter contends, one that draws together different elements of the book. Why does II Peter focus on the inspiration of Scripture and divine judgment? Because people were saying that the prophets were merely conveying their own ideas, not divine revelation, and they were denying that divine judgment was something to fear, since things have continued the same way for millennia.

C. R.B. Jamieson. The Paradox of Sonship: Christology in the Epistle to the Hebrews. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

R.B. Jamieson (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is associate pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

When the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to Jesus as God’s “son,” what does it mean? On the one hand, Hebrews appears to manifest a high Christology: Jesus is Son of God in that Jesus is God. Through the Son, God made the worlds (Hebrews 1:2). The Son’s word sustains all things, and the Son is the brightness of God’s glory and the image of God’s person (Hebrews 1:3). The Son is called God in Hebrews 1:8, and the Son is superior to Moses because Moses was a servant in the house, whereas the Son built the house, and the ultimate builder is God (Hebrews 3:1-6). The Son also, like God, lacks beginning of days and end of life (Hebrews 7:3).

On the other hand, Hebrews seems rather adoptionistic, in some places, meaning that the man Jesus became God’s Son rather than always possessing that status by virtue of inherent divinity. Hebrews 1:5 appears to suggest that God begot Jesus as Son on a specific day, which differs from God the Son being eternally begotten. Hebrews 2:10 affirms that Jesus was made perfect through sufferings. Does that imply that he was not perfect before? Is not God eternally perfect?

Jamieson’s solution is that there are two types of Sonship in Hebrews. First, Jesus has always been God’s Son in the sense that he himself is divine: he is, and always has been, God. Here, Jamieson rejects the conventional scholarly tendency to divorce the New Testament from Nicaea and Chalcedon, as if the latter cannot be used to understand the former. The latter, for Jamieson, is what makes sense of the former. To quote Jamieson on page 146, “Hebrews is not merely a significant step along the way to Nicaea but is, in a crucial sense, already there.”

But, second, being the Son of God also means being the Messiah, God’s chosen ruler. The Davidic king was considered the son of God (II Samuel 7:14), ruling on the throne of God (I Chronicles 29:23). The king became God’s son at his coronation (Psalm 2). Jesus, likewise, became God’s Son, the ruler of the cosmos, at his resurrection. Jesus attained a rulership and Messianic status that he lacked before. What, then, does Hebrews 2:10 mean when it says that the Son became perfect? Jamieson interprets that to mean that the Son, through suffering, qualified to become the high priest of humanity. By becoming human and suffering as a human, Jesus atoned for sin and became better able to understand Christians who struggle with sin (Hebrews 2:17-18; 4:15).

Some items:

—-Jamieson elucidates how Melchizedek fits into Hebrews’s argument. When Hebrews 7:3 affirms that Melchizedek lacked beginning of days and end of life, what does it mean? Was Melchizedek eternal? Was Melchizedek Jesus? Jamieson, of course, replies that Hebrews 7:3 is noting that Melchizedek lacks a genealogy: his mother and father are unmentioned in the Old Testament. How, though, does that fit into Hebrews’s argument? Jamieson’s response is that, according to Hebrews, Melchizedek is a type of Christ. What is true of Melchizedek merely on paper is true of Christ in reality.

—-Ordinarily, Jamieson is judicious and detailed in his argumentation. One aspect of his interpretation of Romans 1:3, however, is a stretch. Jamieson, echoing other scholars, argues that Jesus was Messiah due to his descent from Mary, who was a descendant of David. That was how Jesus was of the seed of David according to the flesh. Here, he is trying to reconcile Romans 1:3 with the virgin birth. If Jesus were not the seed of David through Joseph, since Joseph was not his biological father, then Jesus had to be the seed of David through Mary. But questions need to be addressed. Can Messianic status pass through the mother rather than the father? If Luke 3’s genealogy is indeed Jesus’s genealogy through Mary, does that not disqualify him from being the Davidic king, since the Davidic dynasty was through David’s son Solomon (II Samuel 7:14), not Nathan, the son of David mentioned in Luke 3? And is there any evidence that Mary had Davidic descent?

—-Jamieson at one point seems to deny that Hebrews envisions Christians reigning with Christ, as it focuses on Christ as king. That could be: from a historical-critical standpoint, one should focus on what the text says rather than importing what it does not say. But does not Jesus in Hebrews bring many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10)?

—-Where I am unclear, and this may be rectified through a rereading of the book, is where Jesus’s divinity fits into Jesus’s Messiahship. On some level, Jamieson appears to go an Anselmian route: only God could atone for the sins of all of humanity. Jamieson also seems to think that, according to Hebrews, Jesus’s divinity is part of his qualification to rule, and that it even elevates the concept of Messiahship beyond that of a mere Davidic king.

Common Dreams: Biden Applauded for Executive Order Targeting ‘Insidious’ Anti-Worker Practices

“‘The measures encouraged by this EO represent a wish list progressives and other pro-competition advocates have been promoting for years, and in some cases decades,’ David Segal, director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement.

“‘From a ban on non-compete agreements that suppress wages and keep employees tied to jobs they would rather leave, to pushing for importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada—and from helping people switch between banks to addressing anti-competitive behavior in online marketplaces, these initiatives would improve the wellbeing of workers, small and mid-sized businesses, and consumers across essentially all major sectors of the American economy,’ Segal added.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/09/biden-applauded-executive-order-targeting-insidious-anti-worker-practices

Booknotes: Shanghai Conspiracy, The Mission of Demythologizing

Some booknotes:

A. Major General Charles Willoughby. Shanghai Conspiracy: The Sorge Spy Ring. Western Islands, 1965.

This book was originally published in 1952. Charles Willoughby served as chief of intelligence under General Douglas MacArthur, who writes the introduction to this book.

This book is about the Communist spy ring of Richard Sorge, a Communist agent who was part of the Nazi government in Germany. The book focuses a lot, however, on his espionage towards Japan. Another figure in this book is Agnes Smedley. Willoughby argues that she was a Communist, her denials notwithstanding. Part of her job was as a propagandist for the Chinese Communists, portraying them to the West as agrarian reformers. A significant part of the book is Sorge’s own account, which includes how he became a Communist, effective techniques of espionage, and the goals of the espionage.

Some items of interest:

—-Sorge’s discussion of the techniques of espionage sounded like common sense. First, you want to be educated about the region where you are conducting the espionage. Sorge states that he was not particularly popular among his fellow Communists, but they still came to him because he knew a lot. Second, Sorge often used intermediaries in Japan. It would look suspicious to the Japanese if a white guy like him were going around asking questions. Consequently, he relied on native Japanese. Some of these native Japanese became Communists because they were discontent with the Japanese oligarchs. The Communist network, according to Sorge, was vast: one person would report to someone, who would report to someone else, and so on.

—-Some of the Japanese Communists whom Sorge profiles were interested in internal subversion, but the focus of this book is more on Russia’s geopolitical interests. One purpose of espionage towards Japan was to see what Japan would do so that Russia could act accordingly. Japan and Russia were enemies. When Russia learned that Japan was going against China or the U.S. at Pearl Harbor, it could breathe a sigh of relief, because at least Japan was not going after Russia at that time. Russia could then focus its resources on other goals. Sorge occasionally mentions his personal knowledge about Nazi deliberations. Nazis were debating, for example, whether to pursue an alliance with Japan or China.

This book is not as juicy as a lot of John Bircher-type books. Russia does not come across so much as a monster trying to care over the world but as a nation seeking to preserve its own interests; other reviewers on Amazon, however, arrived at a different impression, as might I were I ever to reread the book. Perhaps Willoughby’s point is that the Communist network does exist, and the very existence of such a network should be cause for alarm.

B. David W. Congdon. The Mission of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology. Fortress, 2015.

I bought this book for a low price in 2015. It was selling like hotcakes! I decided to read it years later.
As Congdon narrates, Barth and Bultmann were estranged from each other because they felt that their theological approaches were different. Barth thought that Bultmann’s demythologization was an attempt to keep Christianity up with the times. But Congdon argues that their approaches actually overlap and complement each other. Barth’s approach focuses on the divine side of the equation: God uses the Bible to act as the Word of God, challenging and transforming the hearer. Bultmann’s focus was on the human side of the equation: the person’s existential response to the revelation, after grasping its core.

Part of the problem, according to Congdon, is that people misunderstand what Bultmann’s demythologization was all about. It was not about keeping Christianity up with the times, as if modern science deserves a privileged status. Rather, it was about translating the Gospel for moderns and unveiling to them its essence. Many people today have a different worldview from the original historical audiences of the Gospel, due, in part, to new scientific knowledge. The message underneath the myth needs to be uncovered, both as a missionary and translation endeavor, but also so that Christianity can focus on its essence as opposed to idolizing and absolutizing its mythical trappings. This essence is an existential encounter with God’s grace, which frees people to live for others.

The book is over eight hundred pages. It was repetitive in making its points, but I still feel it was worthwhile to read. Perhaps this is because it came across as meaty and deep. The biographical aspect of the book is engaging, as it chronicles the views of Barth and Bultmann towards each other; the book also goes into the background and the influences on their thought. A brief appendix discusses examples of demythologization, for example, with the atonement. The book could have used more of this.

Book Write-Up: The Path of Faith, by Brandon D. Crowe

Brandon D. Crowe. The Path of Faith: A Biblical Theology of Covenant and Law. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Brandon D. Crowe has a Ph.D. from Edinburgh and teaches New Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary. This book, The Path of Faith, is part of IVP’s Essential Studies in Biblical Theology series. This particular book traces the concept of God’s law and the importance of obeying it through the Old and New Testaments.

My post here will not be a comprehensive summary and analysis of the book but rather will identify points that stood out to me and intersected with what I have been thinking about lately.

A. Crowe talks about the Reformed concept of the “covenant of works.” Adam and Eve were under a “covenant of works” in the Garden of Eden: obey God and they will live, disobey God and they will die. Well, they disobeyed God and, under the “covenant of works,” they deserved death. That is why God inaugurated another covenant, one of grace, which would allow Adam and Eve to live and have a relationship with God, even though they had sinned. When I first looked up this concept, it somewhat baffled me, as it appeared to limit a significant concept, a covenant of works, to Adam and Eve, and that covenant did not even last that long, at that. But Crowe highlights that the “covenant of works” has continued relevance. Those who are saved are under the covenant of grace, whereas the unsaved are under the covenant of works: as with Adam and Eve, God judges the unsaved according to their obedience and, of course, they fail, which is why they need a savior.

B. But Crowe says more about the covenant of works, as he addresses Christian critiques of the concept. Crowe rejects the idea that, under the “covenant of works,” Adam and Eve needed to earn eternal life in the Garden. Rather, they, too, were the recipients of God’s freely imparted gifts in the Garden. In my daily devotions, I read Scripture and ask what the passage I am reading says about God’s love, grace, sovereignty, presence, and hope (by which I mean eschatology and New Testament application of Old Testament passages). Often, it is difficult to identify how a passage relates to God’s grace because it appears to reflect God’s law: God judges a sinner for sin or God stresses the importance of obedience. But a thought occurred to me: God’s grace is still present even in passages about law. God established the covenant with people by grace: God took the initiative, and they did not qualify for it through any merit on their part. They may have had to obey rules under the covenant, and consistent violation of those rules could bring peril, but their relationship with God existed because God chose to establish it, before they had done anything good or bad. Moreover, God’s law was itself a gift of grace, something that God freely gave people and that they did not earn. Crowe makes similar points in his book. Where this idea gets thorny is that Paul in Romans and Galatians seems to distinguish grace from law.

C. Crowe engages the question of what exactly makes the new covenant new. That is a question that I have long had. Christians make a big deal about how Jesus gave people access to God and brought them divine forgiveness, but people, particularly Israelites, had that under the Old Covenant, too. I can think of ways that the New Covenant is an advancement on the Old Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, God related primarily to Israel; under the New Covenant, God relates to Gentiles as well, through Christ and the church. In the Old Testament, God’s Spirit empowered people for great works in specific circumstances: kings, judges, prophets. In the New Testament, that is the case, too, as occurs in Acts and in the spiritual gifts given to believers, but the Spirit also plays a role in the spiritual regeneration and practical sanctification of Christians. The New Covenant also lacks many rituals of the Old Covenant, as the New Covenant is a more spiritual covenant. Moreover, while people under the Old Covenant had a relationship with God, in which they could pray to God and receive divine forgiveness, Jesus eventually had to come and do his work for those things to exist in both the Old Covenant (in that case, retroactively) and the New Covenant. The access that people had to God under the Old Covenant, in short, was due to Jesus. Those are the results of my grappling with the question, which nevertheless lingers. How does Crowe address the question of what the New Covenant brought that was new? Essentially, he says that the New Covenant brings people a greater level of access to God and experience of the Holy Spirit than existed under the Old Covenant. I will need a separate item to address the topic of access to God. On the topic of the Holy Spirit, what is interesting is that Crowe believes that spiritual regeneration existed under the Old Covenant. Many Old Testament Israelites were unregenerate, according to him, but some were regenerate.

D. Before I get into the topic of access to God, I want to say that Crowe’s chapter on Hebrews is very good. It is largely in that chapter that Crowe addresses the question of what makes the New Covenant new. Crowe focuses on the text of Hebrews to identify where the author believed the Gospel was present under the Old Covenant, and what the New Covenant brought that was new. Crowe in that chapter also engages Hebrews interaction (8:10; 10:16) with Jeremiah 31:33, where God promises a new covenant in which God will write God’s laws on the hearts and minds of the Israelites. Crowe quotes someone who looks at Hebrews itself and concludes that this does not mean the author expected Christians to observe the entire Torah literally. Some laws, primarily moral ones, are still binding, whereas ritual ones centered on the sanctuary are null and void, as far as God is concerned.

E. Now to the topic of access to God. My struggle with this topic is twofold. First, what did the Tabernacle in the Old Testament bring that the Israelites did not already have? Israelites could already pray to God and receive answers to prayer, right? Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24 did so. What access to God, therefore, did the Tabernacle provide that the Israelites lacked? Second, what access to God did the new covenant bring that was lacking under the Old Covenant? Evangelicals sing the song “Take me into the Holy of Holies, take me in by the blood of the Lamb,” assuming that Christians have the kind of access to God that Old Testament priests had. Do Christians have that kind of access, or is their access—-the right to pray to God and receive answers to prayer—-something that all Israelites, not only priests, had under the Old Covenant? Something that the Tabernacle brought, of course, was God’s actual presence in the midst of the Israelite community, and that is why the ritual system and the restrictions were set up: to protect the Israelites from a pure and holy God, and to encourage the pure and holy God to continue to live in the midst of the Israelites and bring them physical blessings (i.e., agricultural abundance) rather than departing from them in response to their moral or ritual defilement. Does a similar concept exist under the New Covenant? Well, one can make a case that God is actually and physically present with people under the New Covenant: I Corinthians 6:19 affirms that the Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and more than one passage treats the church itself as a temple of God (e.g., I Corinthians 3:16-17; II Corinthians 6:16; Ephesians 2:19-22; I Peter 2:5). One can even argue that, in light of God’s presence with believers individually and communally, believers should seek purity, as the Old Testament Israelites were to purify themselves so that God’s presence would stay with them and would not destroy them. Paul in II Corinthians 7:1 exhorts Christians to purify themselves in body and spirit, and Paul also speaks of the inappropriateness of joining Christ’s body with a prostitute (I Corinthians 6:15). Death can even result from failure to treat God’s presence with respect, for Paul in I Corinthians 11 speaks about people who ate the Lord’s supper in an unworthy manner and became sick, died, and perhaps even brought on themselves damnation. I guess my problem here is this: it does not feel as if the situation today is similar to the Israelites’ experience of God’s presence in the Old Testament. God’s presence does not necessarily bring material blessings under the New Covenant, as it did under the Old, but, what is more, carnal Christians are not dead at higher rates due to their spiritual and moral impurity. Does Christ’s blood protect them from that?

F. Crowe highlights how God under the Torah was establishing a holy and righteous order, in which God was worshiped and honored and people respected their neighbors enough to avoid harming them and to give to them in time of need. A question occurred to me recently: was it really that difficult for Israelites to obey the Torah? Was God seriously asking that much of them? Many Christians would answer “Yes, it was difficult, even impossible, and that is why God sent Jesus to be the savior.” But how difficult was it for Israelites simply to participate in the righteous system that God established: to bring their sacrifices when they were supposed to bring them, to leave the corners of their field for the poor, to refrain from retaliatory vengeance? If God was requiring utter spiritual and moral perfection from them, that would be a different story, but what God required of them under the Torah seemed manageable and doable. Yet, the Israelites did not do it, and here Christians maintain that this was because their human nature was sinful.

G. Crowe in one place emphasizes the importance of finishing strongly. He contrasts David and Solomon, who started well but ended poorly, with Paul’s statements about running the race and persevering until the end (I Corinthians 9:23-25; Philippians 3:12-4:1). Two things come to mind. First, there is the Reformed concept of the perseverance of the saints: true saints will persevere in the faith until the very end. Yet, we have Solomon, who may not have. John MacArthur’s response to that is that Solomon may very well have persevered, however, for Ecclesiastes was probably written near the end of Solomon’s life, as Solomon reflected on the futility of his earlier years and recognized the importance of revering God. On a related note, some Christians present spiritual growth as inevitable for the true believer. Is it, though, if spiritual giants like David and Solomon regressed? Second, it is easy for Christians to lose the simplicity of their faith as they are battered by life, with its suffering, temptations, and betrayals. They can become jaded and their faith and love for God and others may weaken.

H. Crowe states on page 162 that “The cubic dimensions of the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:16) recall the dimensions of the holy of holies and Ezekiel’s temple (Ezek 40-48): the whole city is a temple where God will dwell with his people.” This interested me because I have been curious as to how the New Testament engages Old Testament eschatological expectations, which largely focus on Israel and assume Old Covenant institutions (i.e., temple, sacrifices, priesthood). According to Crowe, the New Testament embraces some of those expectations, while modifying them.

This book does not answer every question I have to my satisfaction, but it was refreshing to read someone at least asking those questions and trying to engage them.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

Book Write-Up: The Whole of Their Lives, by Benjamin Gitlow

Benjamin Gitlow. The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America—-A Personal History and Intimate Portrayal of its Leaders. Western Islands, 1965.

This book was originally published in 1948. Benjamin Gitlow was a former member of the Communist Party in the United States.

Among the topics of interest in this book:

—-As the subtitle indicates, the book is a portrayal of the leaders of CPUSA. If you saw the 1981 movie Reds, starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, you know about Jack Reed, an American journalist who supported the Soviet Union. He is featured in this book, as Gitlow had interactions with him. Reed was initially enthusiastic about the U.S.S.R. but became disillusioned with its authoritarianism and how its leaders enriched themselves and preserved the oligarchies. Gitlow presents some of Reed’s eccentricities, such as his delight in showing Marxist know-it-alls how better versed in Marx he was than them. Also discussed is how William Z. Foster rose to high position in the Party from obscurity and Earl Browder’s ultimate marginalization within the Party.

—-A key point that Gitlow makes is that the CPUSA takes its orders from the Soviet Union, with sometimes awkward results. The U.S.S.R. opposed Hitler, then sided with him, then sided with the United States against Hitler, then opposed the United States in the Cold War. The CPUSA tried to keep up with these trends and adjust its political strategies and message accordingly. Gitlow states that the CPUSA had so infiltrated U.S. military installations, that it could have significantly undermined the U.S. war effort in World War II had Russia not joined with the Allies.

—-The Soviet Union’s geopolitical strategy is discussed in this book. Stalin was shy about exerting power against other nations when Russia lacked sufficient military and economic resources. Yet, Stalin had a stake in the Spanish Civil War because of Spain’s strategic location and resources.

—-The alliance between the New Dealers and the CPUSA is another topic. The CPUSA was initially quite vocal in its criticism of the New Deal, believing that it upheld and benefited wealthy capitalist interests. But the two struck a secret alliance. The CPUSA came to see the New Deal as preferable to a lot of other alternatives, and the New Dealers thought that the CPUSA could be a valuable ally because it could mobilize grassroots support for the New Deal; this would be important because Southern Democrats were opposing the New Deal effort.

—-The ouster and execution of Trotsky is covered. Trotsky was an effective military strategist and public speaker, but he was politically naive. Stalin sought to eliminate Trotsky as a competitor. Trotsky fled to the West and sought to undermine Stalin from the outside. Stalin had him killed in Mexico, and the assassin, in prison, enjoyed a life of luxury. Trotsky reminds me, of course, of Snowball in Animal Farm: a rousing speaker who was accused of trying to sabotage the farm after his ouster. In Gitlow’s portrayal, Trostsky was much more vain than Snowball. Gitlow does not really talk about the supposed ideological differences between Trotsky and Stalin, i.e., Stalin being nationalistic and wanting to focus on industrial development of the Soviet Union, whereas Trotsky was cosmopolitan and sought to encourage world revolution. Perhaps that is because Gitlow thought that Stalin, too, supported world revolution.

—-Gitlow talks about CPUSA strategy. They may consider a strike a success, for example, even if it fails, and the reason is that the strike at least inspires workers to rebel.

Wikipedia’s article on Gitlow says that some doubt the accuracy of this book because it is juicier than Gitlow’s autobiography, written earlier. The book did not strike me as particularly juicy, though, and its presentation of Communist goals and strategies made sense: I can realistically picture people acting in such a manner.

Glenn Greenwald: Questions About the FBI’s Role in 1/6 Are Mocked Because the FBI Shapes Liberal Corporate Media

Glenn Greenwald’s take on Tucker’s claim that FBI infiltrators instigated the January 6 capitol invasion. Two passages in particular stood out to me.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/questions-about-the-fbis-role-in

“This reaction is particularly confounding given how often the FBI did exactly this during the first War on Terror, and how commonplace discussions of this tactic were in mainstream liberal circles. Over the last decade, I reported on countless cases for The Guardian and The Intercept where the FBI targeted some young American Muslims they viewed as easily manipulated — due to financial distress, emotional problems, or both — and then deployed informants and undercover agents to dupe them into agreeing to join terrorist plots that had been created, designed and funded by the FBI itself, only to then congratulate themselves for breaking up the plot which they themselves initiated. As I asked in one headline about a particularly egregious entrapment case: ‘Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?'”

“If the FBI had advanced knowledge of what was being plotted yet did nothing to stop the attack, it raises numerous possibilities about why that is. It could be that they just had yet another “intelligence failure” of the kind that they claimed caused them to miss the 9/11 attack and therefore need massive new surveillance authorities, budget increases, and new Patriot-Act-type laws to fix it. It could be that they allowed the riot to happen because they did not take it seriously enough or because some of them supported the cause behind it, or because they realized that there would be benefits to the security state if it happened. Or it could be that they were using those operatives under their control to plot with, direct, and drive the attack — as they have done so many times in the past — and allowed it to happen out of either negligence or intent.”

Books Write-Up: Worshiping with the Reformers; Understanding Gender Dysphoria

Here are some new book reviews. I received complimentary copies of these books from the publisher. My reviews are honest.

A. Karin Maag. Worshiping with the Reformers. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

Karin Maag has a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews and teaches Calvin Studies at Calvin University. This book is one, among other, companions to IVP’s excellent Reformation Commentary on Scripture series. As the title indicates, the book discusses and describes how the Protestant Reformers, including Anglicans and the Puritans, worshiped in church assembly. Among the topics addressed are preaching, prayer, baptism, communion, the visual arts and music, and worship outside of the church (i.e., pilgrimages, family devotion).

Many of its details are not salient in my mind right now, but here are some prominent things that I got out of this book:

—-Church attendance was mandatory throughout Europe. The rationale was that God would bless the region if people there attended church and possibly curse it if they did not. An Old Testamenty concept, for sure. Church affiliation was by region, so you could see, say, a Catholic attending a Protestant service, performing his Catholic rituals during them. The Reformers considered this to be a problem.

—-There were different views among the Reformers about whether Jesus Christ was physically present in the communion elements. Many already know this, but Maag’s description of a prominent Calvinist view stood out to me. Calvinists largely rejected the “real presence,” on the one hand, and treating communion primarily as a memorial, on the other. For Calvinists, the Holy Spirit was present at communion, so it was a spiritual experience, not a mere memorial of the past.

—-People wanted to be buried underneath the church. A question that occurs in my mind is whether the Reformers sought to reconcile this practice with the Levitical desire to strictly separate the holy from death. Reading this book in conjunction with the P-parts of the Torah generates those types of questions.

—-Protestant sermons could last an hour-and-a-half.

The book has an engaging prose and draws on primary sources.

B. Mark A. Yarhouse. Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture. IVP Academic, 2015. Go here to purchase the book.

Mark A. Yarhouse has a PsyD from Wheaton and teaches psychology and mental health practice at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Gender Dysphoria is a clinical term for people who feel alienated from their biological gender and identify more with the opposite gender, or who feel alienated from the gender spectrum, period.

Some thoughts and observations:

—-Yarhouse does not believe that transgender people choose to have the feelings that they have. He goes into various scientific attempts to root Gender Dysphoria in biology. Yarhouse promotes a compassionate approach on the part of the church and believes that, unfortunately, conservative churches have fallen dramatically short of this.

—-According to Yarhouse, there is diversity among people with Gender Dysphoria. Some may identify with the opposite gender, in areas, yet choose not to undergo surgery in an attempt to change their gender. Others have issues with the idea of gender distinctions, gravitating towards gender fluidity.

—-Another topic that Yarhouse engages is how people categorize Gender Dysphoria. He relates a case study about a transgender person whose sister sees the Gender Dysphoria as a disability deserving compassion, whereas the transgender person embraces a “diversity” and “identity” model that treats the Gender Dysphoria as part of the rich diversity of life.

—-Reading and listening to right-wing media (e.g., David Limbaugh, Ben Shapiro, etc.), one gets the impression that psychological and educational professionals rush to change a child’s gender at even a hint of gender confusion. They tell anecdotes and maybe this happens—-I do not know. Yarhouse denies, however, that “we”—-by which he probably means psychological professionals—-rush to do so. (UPDATE: This book was released in 2015, so the situation may have changed since then.) In terms of dealing with Gender Dysphoria, as far as Yarhouse is concerned, there is a spectrum between surgically changing one’s gender, on the one hand, and leaving the person with Gender Dysphoria to suffer in silence, on the other.

—-Some conservatives, or professionals conservatives interview, point out health risks that come from changing one’s gender. Yarhouse weighs in on this in an endnote, saying that taking the medication poses little risk but provides space and time for people to make a decision.

—-Yarhouse attempts to relate to the Bible with subtlety and nuance. He is hesitant, for example, to relate the “effeminate” in I Corinthians 6:9 to transgender people. At the same time, he also appears hesitant to render the Bible irrelevant to contemporary Gender Dysphoria. In discussing the Torah’s prohibition on cross-dressing, he acknowledges that the author may be criticizing pagan practices, yet says that the author may also find cross-dressing to be an insult to God’s created order.

—-Something that I wondered about in reading this book, and I do not know if I got this from Yarhouse or it was swimming in my mind in response to what Yarhouse was saying: there is talk about giving estrogen to biological boys who want to be girls, and testosterone to biological girls who want to be boys. Could not one use a similar approach to treating the Gender Dysphoria: give the testosterone to the boy who wants to be a girl, for example, and that may enhance his masculinity? On a side note, Yarouse, overall, appears optimistic that Gender Dysphoria can be treated.

—-In terms of where Yarhouse lands, he wants churches to welcome people with Gender Dysphoria while still upholding what he considers to be biblical standards on gender, and he distinguishes biblical standards from cultural standards. He is not overly specific about what this would look like. Presumably, the effectiveness of such a model would depend on how receptive the person with Gender Dysphoria is to conservative Christianity: does the person with Gender Dysphoria see it as a disability to be rejected or as an aspect of diversity to be embraced? If the latter is the case, then the person may not find conservative Christians’ “acceptance” (i.e., we accept you, but you must repent before you truly are part of us) to be that accepting. If the person is an adult, then that person can simply choose not to attend a conservative Christian church. If the person is a child with conservative Christian parents, or even an adult with long-standing conservative Christian connections, then the person will probably have more of a struggle.

—-In one of the anecdotes, Yarhouse refers to a conservative Christian who told a transgendered person that the person may find God in an unconventional way, and that encouraged the transgender person, who previously thought that the only option was to choose between transgenderism and God. This caught my eye. One may ask how the conservative Christian roots that view in conservative Christianity, however.

The book is informative, particularly about the scientific attempts to root Gender Dysphoria in biology. Yarhouse vacillates, somewhat, between being open and embracing a conservative Christian rejection of transgenderism.

Book Write-Up: The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards, by William J. Dahaner Jr.

William J. Dahaner Jr. The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004.

This book is about the role of the Trinity in Jonathan Edwards’s thought.

Some items:

—-Jonathan Edwards employs a psychological analogy for the Trinity, likening it, like Augustine, to the different dimensions of the human soul (i.e., rationality, etc.), which are various, yet one. But Dahaner also seems to show that Edwards has another model for the Trinity: the Father and the Son love each other, and that generates the Holy Spirit, a product of their mutual love. Dahaner has a related discussion about the significance of the filioque in Christian ethics.

—-According to Edwards, the members of the Trinity derive pleasure from their love for one another. Similarly, believers’ love for God is like their taste for honey: they experience God’s sweetness and gain pleasure from that. This reminds me of John Piper’s Christian hedonism. Does this conflict, though, with Edwards’s emphasis on true virtue being disinterested?

—-Edwards seeks to distinguish natural human love from the supernaturally-generated love that believers possess. Natural human love is extended towards one’s friends, loved ones, and acquaintances. Divine love is extended towards the whole and is disinterested. Dahaner discusses Edwards’s thought on this within the context of his contemporaries and also subsequent Christian thinkers. Some, for example, do not see natural human love as necessarily in conflict with divine love but as part of it. Incidentally, Edwards, according to Dahaner, believed that divine grace transformed humans to who they were created to be, their original nature, rather than being something utterly foreign to human nature.

—-The question of whether there is a distinction between natural human love and supernaturally-generated love is of personal interest to me. Edwards does well to ask: if humans can generate acceptable love for others on their own, or if the love that humans naturally show to each other is adequate, then why would God give the believers the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit contribute, that humans do not already possess on their own? I wonder: How do I, as a Christian, process the love that non-Christians show to me and others, love that is sometimes sacrificial? I am not comfortable dismissing it as sub-standard. I think that such love is an indication of what God’s love is like: concern for other people and their well-being. Moreover, I question whether Christians truly possess the disinterested, holistic love that Edwards sees as a sign of grace: Christians, like everyone, have affection for some people more than others and may even have negative feelings towards certain people.

—-There is also the issue of people loving others in spots, inconsistently. Edwards talks about how the Holy Spirit creates a new ethical foundational principle in believers, one that is loving towards all. I think of Joab in I-II Samuel, though, who, on the one hand, could demonstrate concern towards David, and, on the other hand, could slaughter people (even on his own side) without thinking twice. We are inconsistent. Edwards would probably say that Joab had natural love: he was devoted to David because David was his friend yet lacked the disinterested supernatural love (however that existed in believers in the Old Testament) that is a mark of supernatural grace. At the same time, Edwards sometimes acknowledges that even believers are incomplete in their sanctification and are a mixture of good and bad.

—-There is a lot of emphasis in this book on interpersonal love: doing deeds of love for other people. One might think that this conflicts with Edwards’s reclusive, sometimes misanthropic, tendencies. Thinking back to George Marsden’s biography of Edwards, though, there were good things that Edwards did for people. He counseled people, and he even continued to preach at the church that expelled him, whenever it lacked a preacher. That takes a special kind of love: I would tell the church to kiss off.

—-One thinker Dahaner discusses argued that love for people is part of love for God. Edwards had a similar concept: when God loves the church, God loves the Son that he sees in the church. God marvels at the church’s likeness to his Son and appreciates her beauty. God’s love for the church, and for others, is related to God’s love for Godself. Edwards is known for his depictions of God as a wrathful deity, but Edwards also talked a lot about God’s kindness to all. God’s kindness to all is related to God’s kindness to Godself, among the members of the Trinity.

—-Love for people is part of love for God. Remember Jesus’s statement in Matthew 25 that helping the least of these is helping Jesus. But there are times in Scripture when love for God appears to supersede regard for the well-being of others. Abraham in Genesis 22 was commended for being willing to sacrifice his son out of piety towards God. The Israelites were to turn in idolatrous friends and relatives. God’s holiness supersedes regard for human life, as when Uzzah died for touching the Ark of the Covenant.

—-John Hick treated suffering as character-producing, yet he believed that such an explanation falls short when it comes to especially serious suffering. Dahaner thinks such a concession undermines Hick’s explanation, period. It is a difficult issue: there are incidents of suffering so heinous that one struggles to find any explanation or silver lining in them. How much suffering is truly necessary for humans to develop character?

This book is more involved than my post may imply. Dahaner, if he reads this, may respond that he addresses such-and-such a concern on page such-and-such, and that may be. Reading this book is somewhat like reading Barth: there is a lot of intricacy and complexity, but, overall, I have a general idea about what Edwards is saying and where he is going.

Book Write-Ups: Sacco-Vanzetti, The Red Web

Here are some notes on two books from the Americanist library, published by the John Birch Society.
A. Robert H. Montgomery. Sacco-Vanzetti: The Murder and the Myth. Western Islands, 1965.

Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian immigrants and anarchists, who were convicted of murder in the 1920’s and executed by the state of Massachusetts. Governor Michael Dukakis later pardoned them to clear their name.

I first learned about Sacco and Vanzetti as a junior in high school. We were learning about modern American history, and the spiel that we got was that Sacco and Vanzetti were wrongly convicted and were the victims of anti-immigrant and anti-radical prejudice.

I first learned of this book when I was browsing at my local public library. I noticed that this book was published by Devin-Adair, which published conservative books, including a compilation of Ronald Reagan’s speeches that I read in elementary school. I put this book on my mental shelf, recognizing it as a different perspective from the spiel that I got in my high school history class. This book would argue that Sacco and Vanzetti indeed were guilty of murder.

Over two decades later, I finally read this book! I doubt I would have stuck with it as a teenager, but, as an adult, I can read with more discipline and understanding.

The book’s author, Robert Montgomery, was an attorney. His book attempts to accomplish four tasks. First, Montgomery presents evidence that, in his mind, points to the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti. There is the ballistics evidence: that the bullet was rare and matched the bullet in the gun. There were also witnesses, who saw Sacco and Vanzetti in the area of the murder, contrary to their stated alibi. And, according to Montgomery, Sacco and Vanzetti simply acted guilty, as if they were trying to cover up the murder. There is also evidence that they sought to return to Italy shortly after the murder occurred.

Second, Montgomery seeks to refute the criticisms of the trial. As far as Montgomery is concerned, the trial was fair and above board. The judge allowed considerations in the trial that would help Sacco and Vanzetti. The jurors, contrary to allegations, were not anti-immigrant bigots. Some were rather cosmopolitan and had even been to Italy, appreciating Italian customs and people. The allegations of salient impropriety and prejudice at the trial are false. They contradict what occurred in the case, according to records; they were impossible in Massachusetts, according to established legal protocol. The radicalism of Sacco and Vanzetti was not mentioned by the prosecution at the trial. And, if the people making the allegations of impropriety indeed saw what they did, why did they not report that to the authorities soon after it occurred, rather than waiting decades? Far from criticizing the conduct of the trial’s prosecutors and judge, Montgomery points to the flaws of the defense and the devotees of Sacco and Vanzetti. They intimidated witnesses, promised favors to influence testimony, and bullied and physically threatened those conducting the trial.

Third, Montgomery attempts to refute the argument that somebody else, particularly  members of a prominent gang, committed the murder. The gangsters  appeared to know nothing about it, and the gang itself was not murderous, in a mafia sense. And, fourth, on a lesser note, Montgomery comments on the attempts to manipulate the trial for political purposes. Montgomery sees this as part of a Communist plot, designed to treat Sacco and Vanzetti as poster-children for revolution.
Montgomery is somewhat nebulous about the motive behind the murder. He is open to the possibility that they committed the robbery to raise money for the revolution, but he is uncertain.

Just sharing with my impressions right now, I will say four things. First, just going with what Montgomery presents, there were aspects of the trial that strike me as fishy. When there finally was a line-up, the other people in the line did not remotely resemble Sacco and Vanzetti. Witnesses would pick the only one with a mustache, since the person they saw at the murder scene had a mustache. Second, Montgomery seems to downplay or massage details that run contrary to his position. For example, against the charge that there was massive anti-red hysteria, Montgomery notes that Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, not communists. Does that really matter, though? They were revolutionaries, and that would have been controversial in the 1920’s. Montgomery seeks to refute the idea that Sacco and Vanzetti appeared evasive because they were trying to conceal their radicalism from the police, as opposed to covering up a murder. Montgomery denies that the police asked them about their radicalism, even though, in the interview that he quotes, they briefly did. Third, I question whether Sacco and Vanzetti should have been executed, based on the evidence that was presented at the trial. The evidence strikes me as circumstantial. Some of Montgomery’s ballistics arguments are based on findings after the conviction. And, in critiquing witnesses who placed Sacco and Vanzetti away from the scene of the crime, Montgomery questions whether they would have remembered such details so long after the event. Why not, though, since the days they recalled were close to the holidays, meaning they could have stood out more in their memories? Fourth, on a positive note, Montgomery is effective in refuting the accusation that the jurors and the judge were irrational bigots.

The above are merely my impressions, and my summary above is far from comprehensive. Were I to reread the book, Montgomery’s arguments might make more sense to me, and I might remember details that are currently vague in my mind. The book, overall, is an engaging read. Montgomery is judicious in his presentation of considerations. Of particular interest were the political beliefs of Sacco and Vanzetti: they were anarchists—-like libertarians—-and they explained why they liked Italy more than the United States.

B. Blair Coan. The Red Web. Western Islands, 1969.

This book was originally published in 1925. Primarily, it is a defense of Harry Daugherty, who served as Attorney General under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. Daugherty left the post due to accusations of corruption. For Coan, Daugherty was framed. The Communists wanted to take Daugherty down because Daugherty went after them and their web. The Senators who conducted the investigation, particularly Burton Wheeler, had ties to radicals, along with corruption problems of their own. One of the key witnesses to Daugherty’s corruption, the wife of someone Daugherty mentored, had personal animus towards Daugherty, since Daugherty sought to deny her the money of her husband after the husband’s death. And there were people who claimed that they were approached by people who wanted to take down Daugherty.

Coan goes into the Red Web. The red web, according to Coan, was making advancements in Mexico, close to setting up a Communist dictatorship in America’s backyard. Communists and socialists are more allied with each other than is commonly thought. Their divisions are largely rooted in conflicts over power and prestige within the movement, not overall goals. The Red Web also sought to instigate a strike against the railroads so as to make the railroad into a paragon of collectivism, bringing America closer to Communism. In Coan’s telling, Woodrow Wilson was naive about Communism, trying to play nice with them and to win them over with kindness. By contrast, his Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, was effective in combating the Communists, as was Harry Daugherty.

As a child, I read a book by James Draper and Forrest Watson, entitled If the Foundations Be Destroyed. The book was essentially a conservative revisionist history. It defended Cortez and the Puritans, while criticizing FDR. In criticizing Wilson, Draper and Watson depicted Wilson as an authoritarian, who undermined the First Amendment by putting socialist Eugene Debs in jail. Warren Harding, by contrast, released Debs from prison. That was a surprising aspect of the book: criticizing Wilson for being too tough on leftism. Coan defends Harding on this this by saying that the Red Web actually preferred for Debs to remain in jail, since that made Debs a martyr for the cause.

I’ll stop here.

Book Write-Up: France, the Tragic Years, by Sisley Huddleston

Sisley Huddleston. France, the Tragic Years (1939-1947): An Eyewitness Account of War, Occupation and Liberation. Western Islands, 1965.

This is another book from the John Birch Society’s Americanist Library. Originally, it was published in 1955 by Devin-Adair, a conservative publishing house. Sisley Huddleston was a British journalist, who later became a citizen of France. As the title indicates, the book talks about France from 1939 to 1947, which includes the years leading up to World War II, the war itself, and the aftermath of the war.

I glazed over much of this book. There were many technicalities about French politics, both internal and also external. (“External” refers to France’s relationship with other nations.)

But the book still has many gems. Huddleston, at times in the book, takes a moment to talk about French culture or political theory, to respond to critics, or to offer historical insights that may be classified as historically revisionist. Some items:

—-France traditionally was not a warlike nation. Overall, Huddleston sympathizes and roots for France.

—-Franco was not eager to side with Hitler and stalled in doing so.

—-Mussolini invaded Ethiopia as revenge for what Ethiopia did to Italy in the late nineteenth century.

—-Russia instigated Hitler to invade Russia by making outlandish demands. Russia’s goal was to get that invasion over and done with, before Hitler had the time to make Germany even stronger such that it could defeat Russia.

—-The U.S. sided with China over Japan prior to World War II because FDR previously had successful business dealings in China. Consequently, FDR sought to contain Japanese imperialism, leading to the sanctions that provoked Japan’s attacks on Pearl Harbor. Huddleston thinks that the U.S. should have been friendlier to Japan.

—-Huddleston speaks highly of WWII historical revisionists William Henry Chamberlin and Harry Elmer Barnes. In many respects, he overlaps with World War II revisionism. He believes that peace could have been accomplished with Hitler in the years leading up to World War II, making World War II unnecessary. Huddleston criticizes the Allies for attacking France, including French civilians, in an attempt to weaken Germany. The aftermath of the war, in which the Allies sought to decimate Germany and prevent it from becoming a significant power ever again, was not only cruel but also prevented a counterweight against Bolshevism in Europe from emerging, resulting in the fall of Eastern Europe to the Soviets. For Huddleston, the atomic bomb was utterly unnecessary to end World War II. The Allies were wrong to demand unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan, who were already willing to surrender. Where Huddleston diverges from WWII historical revisionism is that he is not entirely pro-German, anti-French, and anti-Churchill. Huddleston narrates that Hitler attacked civilians in other countries, was cruel to France, and lacked any right to Vichy France.

—-Huddleston defends Philippe Petain, a leader of Vichy France, against charges that he was a dictator and a traitor. This can get tedious, but there are times when the defense comes alive, as Huddleston depicts Petain as a republican.

—-Huddleston’s political philosophy is difficult to pin down. On the one hand, he laments that the Cold War undermined the cultural distinctiveness of European countries by pressuring them to conform to either Soviet or American political culture. In light of this, he does not seem to think that certain European authoritarian system are necessarily bad. On the other hand, Huddleston is a bit of a libertarian, so he prefers democratic capitalism to authoritarian and collectivist systems. Huddleston’s stance towards war is also difficult to pin down. He laments that the U.S. permitted the Soviets to gain a foothold in Europe by failing to be tough, yet he also seems to oppose American participation in the Cold War.

—-The John Birch Society published this book because Huddleston, in significant areas, agrees with its ideology. Huddleston is anti-Communist. He bemoans that FDR gave ground to Russia during and after World War II, along with the Communist influence in the French Resistance and de-Gaulle’s government. In contrast with the Birchers, Huddleston does not come across as a conspiracy theorist. He acknowledges that industrialists supported Hitler and the Bolsheviks, but he does not see that so much as a conspiracy as an understandable attempt on the part of industrialists to protect themselves: German industrialists sought protection from the Bolsheviks and thus supported Hitler, and some industrialists wanted protection from Hitler and thus supported the Bolsheviks.

Book Write-Up: Postmortem Opportunity, by James Beilby

James Beilby. Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death. IVP Academic, 2021. Go here to purchase the book.

James Beilby is professor of systematic and philosophical theology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was written books and articles about Christian apologetics, epistemology, philosophy, and theology.

This book addresses the question of whether God will provide people with an opportunity to be saved after they die, particularly if in this life they failed to hear the Gospel, lacked the mental capacity to respond to the Gospel, or heard it in a distorted fashion. Those who heard the Gospel in a distorted fashion includes African-American slaves who heard a Gospel that promoted their oppression or people raised in abusive religious environments. Will God offer them a postmortem opportunity to hear the Gospel and be saved or simply damn them to hell because they failed to believe in the Gospel in this life?

Beilby affirms that, yes, God will provide people with a postmortem opportunity to be saved. He contends that God in Scripture loves all people and desires their salvation. Within the New Testament and ancient Jewish and Christian tradition is a concept of postmortem opportunity; in the case of Christianity, Jesus went to the realm of the dead between his death and resurrection and preached the Gospel, and ancient Christians sought to account for people who lived in pre-Christian times who failed to explicitly hear the Gospel.

Beilby engages questions about postmortem opportunity. If God will save people in the afterlife, why preach the Gospel in this life? After all, God will do it better than we possibly can, since we will present the Gospel in a flawed manner! And, if God offers people an opportunity to be saved in the afterlife, will not everyone be saved? If God presents them with such an opportunity, they will know that God exists and that Christianity is true and, naturally, they would rather not go to hell. Does postmortem opportunity render our decisions in this life and the warnings in Scripture irrelevant?

Beilby, in part, responds to these questions by restricting the range of postmortem opportunity, treating it as an exception to the rule: God will offer it only to people who failed to receive a sufficient chance at salvation in this life. Beilby still believes in missionary work because God commands it and it allows believers to be part of God’s work in redeeming people and saving them from the power of the devil. Beilby is still open to inclusivism: the idea that God can save people in other cultures who may lack explicit knowledge of the Gospel but recognize their need for grace or respond in faith to whatever light of divine revelation that they have. What Beilby rejects is universalism and annihilationism as defined as God killing sinners in the afterlife. For Beilby, sinners in hell exist but with their humanity destroyed.

Regarding the question of whether anyone would say “no” if God offered them a postmortem opportunity to be saved, Beilby replies that, just because people will know God is real in the afterlife, that does not automatically mean that they will reject sin and self and embrace God, especially if they have been hardened in this life from a lifetime of sinful decisions. Beilby rejects the idea that beholding the “beatific vision” of God will result in the salvation of those offered a postmortem opportunity. Beholding God did not help Satan when he rebelled in heaven, plus Beilby disputes that what people see of God at the judgment is the full “beatific vision.”

Reading this book brought to my mind discussions I have had with people about this topic, from those in favor and those opposed. There are people in my family who take a belief in postmortem opportunity in almost universalist directions, asserting that no one can be lost in this life because they lack a genuine opportunity to be saved here and now. One argument they make is that God in the New Testament attested to the truth of the Gospel with miracles, but God does not do so today, so Christianity looks merely like one philosophy among many. Why would God damn them on the basis of that? The response I hear to that from restrictivist Christians, of course, is “Why, then, does this life matter? Why preach the Gospel to others? Where is the sense of urgency to accept the Gospel or to live it out?” Then I recall a conversation I had with a Calvinist about the topic. For him, the issue of “those who never heard” is a moot point, since, if God chose people not to be saved, what does it matter if they heard or not? This is the conclusion at which Beilby essentially arrives when he discusses whether postmortem opportunity is more compatible with monergism or synergism.

This book is a careful and judicious examination of the topic of postmortem opportunity. It is informative when it comes to ancient Christian conceptions of this, as Beilby discusses voices in favor and against. Beilby’s discussion of the beatific vision and eternal torment is enlightening as well. Regarding eternal torment, Beilby questions that God would torment people in hell, seeing the eternal torment as flowing from people’s postmortem sin and rebellion against God. As Beilby astutely asks, even if God were justified to torment sinners, why would God choose to do so?

The book falls short, in my opinion, in its treatment of Romans 1:18-20, where Paul states that God wrath is on the Gentiles because they have rejected the light of God’s general revelation. Does that not imply that all people, even those who have not heard the Gospel, are guilty before God and deserving of hell because they have rejected whatever light they have been given? Perhaps a way to get around this is to say that, even if God would be just to damn them, God in God’s mercy might offer them a postmortem opportunity to be saved.

In addition, I think that a lot of emphasis has been placed in these discussions on “those who never heard.” There are plenty of people who are familiar with the teachings and doctrines of Christianity, yet they reject them, while still living rather moral lives. Why should they be damned? I can somewhat sympathize with my quasi-universalist family members who assert that God in Scripture often confirmed God’s message with a visible demonstration of its truth before holding people responsible for accepting it. At the same time, I find problematic a notion of Christianity that renders this life, or this day and age, irrelevant. One way a family member gets around this is to suggest that this life is “ground preparation”: God, in this life, can be preparing all people to learn lessons that can make them more receptive to God in the next life. That makes some sense, and yet the continual warnings in Scripture give me the impression that the decisions we make in this life, for or against God, matter in terms of the last judgment and eternity.

Beilby’s synergism and belief in libertarian free will somewhat troubles me, since I have become rather jaded and hardened over the course of my life to conservative Christianity, towards God, and towards my neighbor. I find myself saying in response to the biblical God and his commands (as I conceive them): “Even if that God is real, why would I want anything to do with him? There are a lot of assholes who are real: them being real does not make me accept them!” I still have enough faith to continue reading my Bible, but I would hope that God would soften my heart in the afterlife. Unfortunately, the way Beilby presents the matter, me in my hardened state can easily say “no” to God in the afterlife, and that would be that!

The topic of evangelism was in my mind this week. A fellow employee asked me, “Why are you so positive?” Of course, Christians are trained to see that as an opportunity to evangelize, and perhaps the employee, who knows I have degrees in religion, hoped for something substantive and spiritual. But I chose to answer honestly: “because this is a positive place to work.” Believe me, I have had the opposite, and I was not so positive in those situations!

Beilby may have added to my repertoire on these issues, and, for that, the book was worth the read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.

"The New War on Terror"

 https://counter-currents.com/2021/06/new-war-on-terror/

“The Tulsa Libel”

Controversial site, but a different take on what happened in Tulsa, 1921.

“The Tulsa Libel”

UPDATE: Here is another article, from another controversial site:

“The Tulsa Myth”

 

Book Write-Up: Biblical Doctrine, by John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue

John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue. Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Study of Bible Truth. Crossway, 2017. See here to purchase the book.

In this nearly 1000-page book, Pastor John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue extensively go through biblical doctrine. The topics covered in this book include the inspiration of Scripture, the nature of God, Christology, the Holy Spirit, the nature of human beings, sin, salvation, angels, the church, and eschatology. Not surprisingly, considering this is a book by MacArthur, it embraces the verbal inerrancy of Scripture, TULIP, cessationism, the pre-tribulational rapture, and pre-millennialism.

Here are some items, which are a mere sample of what I got out of the book:

A. MacArthur and Mayhue acknowledge that there is no perfectly accurate manuscript of the Bible on earth. Still, on the basis of such passages as Psalm 119:89, which states that God’s word is fixed in the heavens, they believe that there is a perfect version of the Scriptures in heaven. Over time, the jots and the tittles of the law and the prophets are being fulfilled (Matthew 5:18).

B. MacArthur and Mayhue appeal to Acts 19:14-16 and Jude 8-10 in arguing for cessationism, the idea that God no longer performs miracles through human agents. In these passages, unqualified people presume to cast out or to rebuke demons. Whether that supports cessationism is a good question. When those men in Acts 19 presumed to cast out demons, the time of miracles had not yet ceased, even in MacArthur’s reckoning; the apostles performed them, after all. At the same time, Acts 19 may demonstrate that not just anyone can perform miracles.

C. MacArthur and Mayhue hold that the miracles of the first century were designed to confirm the truth of the Christian message. Indeed, they cite biblical passages in which people are amazed after seeing Jesus or the disciples perform miracles. Nowadays, according to MacArthur and Mayhue, the Bible is sufficient by itself, for II Peter 1:16-21 states that the prophecies of Scripture are even surer, more certain than the Transfiguration. There are reasons that Scripture is conceivably preferable to the Transfiguration: Scripture is available to a lot of people, whereas the Transfiguration was only witnessed by Peter, James, and John; Scripture also conveys more detail and context than a brief miraculous event. But is II Peter 1:16-21 necessarily saying that we no longer need miracles to confirm the faith, since Scripture is enough?

D. Related to (C.), what support for the Christian faith do MacArthur and Mayhue offer? They are rather skeptical that classic apologetic arguments can lead a person to the God of Jesus Christ, plus they contend that God in Scripture hardly ever attempts to defend his credibility: he just speaks authoritatively, and that’s that! The inner witness of the Holy Spirit is also instrumental in bringing people to faith.

E. MacArthur and Mayhue argues that the tongues of I Corinthians 14 are human languages, like the tongues of Acts 2. They draw parallels between the two chapters: in both cases, outsiders are baffled by what they are hearing, as observers in Acts 2 think the disciples are drunk, and Paul fears that people hearing tongues in I Corinthians 14 will think that the Corinthian Christians sound like barbarians. Of course, MacArthur and Mayhue think that people speaking in tongues in these passages do so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; they were not merely trained to speak foreign languages. The implication may be that Christians in I Corinthians 14 are getting carried away with a gift that God gave them, using it in inappropriate ways and settings. On the basis of I Corinthians 14:21, which quotes Isaiah 28:11, MacArthur and Mayhue conclude that tongues are a sign to the people of Israel, perhaps that the Gospel is going to the Gentiles.

F. Overall, MacArthur and Mayhue effectively survey different Christian perspectives, discuss what they consider to be their strengths and weaknesses, and offer their conclusions. Their discussion of when the soul enters the body comes to mind as an excellent example. Their discussion of preterism, however, was a little lacking: one can read that section and wonder why anyone in his or her right mind would want to become a preterist! MacArthur and Mayhue contend that preterism is wrong because Christ did not come back in the first century, and the cataclysmic heavenly signs of Matthew 24:29 did not occur then. MacArthur and Mayhue ignore that preterists have answers to these arguments: God’s “coming” can refer to a divine act of judgment (see Genesis 11:5-7; Exodus 12:12), which is what occurred in 70 C.E., and heavenly signs are not necessarily literal but are used to describe even historical events of divine judgment (Isaiah 13, which concerns the fall of Babylon). At the same time, MacArthur and Mayhue inspire a good question: when do preterist arguments become a stretch? Matthew 25 occurs after Matthew 24, and it depicts God judging the nations and sending some people to hell. Can that cogently be interpreted as a first century event?

G. There are cases in which MacArthur and Mayhue let the Hebrew Bible be the Hebrew Bible, rather than projecting their Christian beliefs onto it. They interpret “Elohim” (plural), for example, not so much in reference to the Trinity, but rather as a way to express God’s awesomeness: God is too great to be expressed in the singular. At other times, MacArthur and Mayhue think that Jesus in the Hebrew Bible is unavoidable: the Angel of the LORD in the Hebrew Bible, for them, is not a mere messenger but is a member of the Godhead, since this messenger receives worship and has the power to forgive sins (Joshua 5:13-15; Exodus 23:21; Zechariah 3:3-4), which are divine prerogatives. MacArthur and Mayhue also interpret Daniel 9 in light of the New Testament, without considering non-Christian interpretations (i.e., that it relates to the time of the Maccabees). That is understandable, since they are Christians, and they present a fairly decent case that the Book of Revelation envisions the seventieth week of Daniel 9 to take place in the eschaton.

H. MacArthur and Mayhue observe details in Scripture that appear to support their positions. In favor of their Calvinist belief that divine grace is what causes a person to have faith, they refer to Acts 18:27, which refers to people who came to believe through grace. That does not mean that Christians were never under divine wrath, for they were before they believed; Ephesians 2:3 makes that clear, as MacArthur and Mayhue contend. MacArthur and Mayhue embrace infralapsarianism rather than supralapsarianism: they hold that God’s predestination of some to life and some to damnation logically follows his predestination of the Fall. They refer to Romans 9:22-23, which presents God forming vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy. Wrath and mercy presume the existence of sin, which came as a result of the Fall, so, for MacArthur and Mayhue, God’s predestinating choice in Romans 9 logically follows and assumes the existence of the Fall.

I. MacArthur and Mayhue meticulously go through the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated as “soul” and “spirit.” They acknowledge nuance in the words: nephesh in the Old Testament, for instance, can refer to a person, but also to what gives the person life.

J. MacArthur and Mayhue say that impeccability, the idea that Christ was unable to sin, is the majority position within Christianity. Why would Christ be tempted, though, if he was unable to sin (Matthew 4; Luke 4; Hebrews 4:15)? Is not the temptation a waste of time? Can Jesus even be tempted, if he was unable to sin? MacArthur and Mayhue refer to this point of view but do not successfully respond to it.

K. Related to (J.), there are times when MacArthur and Mayhue chalk things up as mysteries. In explaining passages that appear to suggest that Jesus is the savior of all, MacArthur and Mayhue meticulously go through those passages, look at their contexts, and they conclude that the “all” in those cases are specifically believers rather than everyone, in accordance with their belief in TULIP. At the same time, they deny that God desires or delights in the death of the wicked, since such a notion would contradict such passages as Ezekiel 33:11. They say that God may have two desires: God would like the wicked to be saved but chooses the option that brings God more glory, which includes the damnation of the wicked. Ultimately, they settle on saying that we see in Scripture that God desires the repentance of the wicked, but also that God chooses the specific people who will be saved and does not select everyone.

L. MacArthur and Mayhue make the interesting point that John the Baptist, in baptizing people, was implying that the Israelites were not truly part of the people of Israel and needed to become Israelites through baptism. Baptism, after all, was a Jewish rite by which Gentiles converted to Judaism. And John in Matthew 3:9 warns the Israelites not to place their trust in Abraham being their father. History rarely comes into play in this book, but there are key moments when it does, with profound results.

M. MacArthur and Mayhue argue that II Peter 3:10 does not depict God destroying the old heaven and earth then creating a new one, but rather God purifying the old one (cp. Malachi 4). David Jeremiah makes a similar argument in a book of his I am reading, The Book of Signs.

Overall, this book is an interesting, edifying, and biblically-based work on biblical doctrine. In contrast to many of MacArthur’s works, this one lacks anecdotes. But it draws heavily on the details and implications of Scripture. Some discussions are more interesting than others. I, for one, thought that the book spent more time than I liked on divine simplicity. Even in that discussion, however, MacArthur and Mayhue are unafraid to tackle tough questions, such as the question of whether divine simplicity (i.e., God does not “possess” attributes because they are who he is, and God does not consist of parts) contradicts the doctrine of the Trinity. This book is a rewarding read.

I checked this book out from the library. My review is honest.