Christianity Archives - James E Hartley

Crafting a New Evangelical Imagination

“All great systems, ethical or political, attain their ascendancy over the minds of men by virtue of their appeal to the imagination; and when they cease to touch the chords of wonder and mystery and hope, their power is lost, and men look elsewhere for some set of principles by which they may be guided.”
Russell Kirk wrote that in 1955.

Seven decades later, Karen Swallow Prior shows how prophetic Kirk was in her book, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis.

Evangelicalism was born in the early eighteenth century, but as Prior argues, it came of age in the Victorian Era. By the twentieth century, evangelical culture was so intertwined with Victorian culture that it became hard to tell the difference. The result is that the Evangelical Imagination, the set of metaphors and images which define the movement, was solidified in ways that would look very familiar to someone living in late nineteenth century England.

Read the rest at The University Bookman

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Prior, Karen Swallow On Reading Well “On Living Well”
Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy “Chesterton and the Elves”

No Creed But the Bible?

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

The Nicene Creed has been recited in churches all over the world for over 1500 years. (There are some small variations over time and across branches of the church, but the differences need not concern us here.) I grew up going to Protestant churches—many different ones. But, I had never even heard about the Nicene Creed, let alone recited it until I was an adult.

How did that happen? My experience is quite common. Of late in American evangelical churches there has been a massive rejection of the historical creeds. “No creed but the Bible!” is the rallying cry. My best guess about why this happened was that it was part of the rejection of all things Roman Catholic in evangelical circles—the baby goes right out with the bathwater. It’s a loss. I really like the Nicene Creed, both the content of it and the idea of it. I wish I had grown up with it as a part of my church experience.

Carl Trueman thinks the abandonment of the creeds is an even larger problem than simply missing out on something beautiful. He thinks churches which have abandoned the Creeds have taken a very wrong path. Crisis of Confidence: Reclaiming the Historic Faith in a Culture Consumed with Individualism and Identity (an update of his 2012 book, The Creedal Imperative) argues that if your church does not recite and teach the creeds, if it does not refer back to the historical confessions of the church, then your church is in serious danger.

First, though, why is reciting a creed like the Nicene Creed above such a valuable thing for a church?

“In reciting the creeds, the purpose is not simply to declare a set of propositional truths. Rather, the action is somewhat richer than that: to state the obvious, in reciting the words of the creeds together, each member of the congregation publicly identifies with every other member in expressing a corporate unity of belief in a common gospel. They are also expressing their common belief with every other Christian throughout history who has used these words to witness to Christ. Further, they are reminding themselves and each other of who God is and what he has done. In other words, the creeds, in liturgical context, become a means of fulfilling the public declaration that Romans 10 demands of believers: the confession (a document) becomes a confession (an act of pointing toward Christ before the church and the world).”

That is a perfect summary of what I have discovered to be true about reciting the Creeds in the decades since I found out about the practice. Reciting the Nicene Creed is the single best way to remind myself that I am united with Christians around the world and throughout time in a single universal catholic church, that this is what we, all of us, believe, that while we disagree on many things, we all share in believing this. The Nicene Creed is an incredible reminder that what unites Christians across the globe and across time is vastly more important than what divides us.

So, why did the Creed get abandoned? Why are there churches who feel virtuous in abandoning these historical statements of faith? Trueman believes it is a symptom of the modern age’s obsession with what he dubs “expressive individualism.” Look at society and it is hard to escape the fact that we have built an entire culture around the idea that you are in charge of defining every aspect of your own life and that nothing should get in the way of your ability to express your own individuality. Ironically, as Trueman points out, churches have embraced expressive individualism with their assertion that every local church congregation is free to set up its own list of maxims of what will define Christianity. Every local congregation stands alone.

This doesn’t mean every church has wandered into heresy. Many churches which have replaced a universal creed with an individualized statement of faith have merely replicated creedal theology with a freshly worded version of the same thing. Many churches have made minor modifications to the content of the historical creeds, but have stayed within the bounds of orthodoxy. But, even still, Trueman is concerned. Once a church or a pastor has set itself up as the sole definer of theological accuracy, it is in real danger of slipping into heresy.

Christians who grew up in church like I did are unaware there is even an alternative way to think about theological orthodoxy. Trueman’s book spends significant time giving an overview of the development of the creeds and confessions of the faith. This is not a side note to Trueman’s argument:

“Historical theology, the genealogy of doctrinal discussion and formulation, is thus an important part of Christian education and should be a part of every pastor’s and elder’s background. It should also be a central part of the teaching ministry in all churches.”

I have long lamented that such things were not a part of my education in the church.

In other words, I completely agree with Trueman’s argument. I completely agree that he is rightly emphasizing the importance of constantly acknowledging the central theological doctrines of the church and that the best way of doing so is by joining Christians around the world in churches very different than my own in reciting common language.

Since I agree so strongly with Trueman’s conclusion, I was quite disheartened about the manner in which Trueman made his argument. The conclusion is sound, but the arguments for his conclusion were shockingly weak. As a book preaching to the choir, it was nice, but I cannot imagine the book persuading anyone who disagrees.

Throughout the book, Trueman takes aim at pastors who proudly assert they have no creed but the Bible. Imagine you are trying to persuade such a person that the creeds are incredibly useful, that the pastor’s church would be stronger and healthier if it used the creeds. Imagine trying to convince someone that using an extra-Biblical text like a Creed is a way to strengthen, not weaken, the centrality of Christ and the Bible. How would you persuade such a person?

Trueman’s approach completely misses the mark. Consider some examples. Trueman points to 2 Timothy 1:13, where Paul writes “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” Trueman points to the fact that Paul emphasizes the form of words, not just the content of the words. Then in 2 Timothy 1:15, Paul writes “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” Trueman notes: “Here it seems abundantly clear that Paul is using previously established phraseology, a form of sound words, to capture in a nutshell the gospel.” Trueman points to many passages in the Bible just like that. Philippians 2:5-10, Romans 1:3-4, 1 Corinthians 8:6, 1 Peter 3:18-21.

Again, I don’t disagree with Trueman here. But, imagine someone who believes that Christians should have No Creed but the Bible. Does providing a list of passages in the Bible which seem to rely on other sources prove that there are things which are not in the Bible which are important? The whole argument of “No Creed but the Bible” is that if Paul wrote it, then it becomes authoritative. Similarly, “No Creed but the Bible” fully agrees that the form of words matters, and the right form is whatever is in the Bible. Similarly, saying “No Creed but the Bible” does not mean a dismissal of everything written in the past; the Bible was written in the past. Again, saying that churches need the creeds because they need something that explains what the church believes misses the point that every “No Creed but the Bible” church has a written Statement of Faith, based on the Bible, setting forth what the church believes.

Reading the book imagining I disagreed with it was a very unsatisfying exercise. I had a hard time imagining being persuaded by the arguments in this book. Trueman argues: “The question is not so much ‘Should we use them?’ as ‘Why would we not use them?’ They do nothing but ensure that biblical content and priorities are kept uppermost in the public worship of the church.” I love that way of framing the matter. I agree completely. But, if I didn’t, there is sadly nothing in this book that compels the conclusion that Trueman and I both believe.

Related Posts:
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich The Cost of Discipleship “Follow Me”
Eliot, T. S. Christianity and Culture “Preserving a Culture”

(Governments have things like creeds too. Here is one: Crossway sent me this book so I could review it. Not quite a beautiful as the Nicene Creed, is it?)

Schaeffer and the Modern Evangelical

“We live in a post-Christian world. What should be our perspective as individuals, as institutions, as orthodox Christians, as those who claim to be Bible-believing? How should we look at this post-Christian world and function as Christians in it?…The church in our generation needs reformation, revival, and constructive revolution.” (italics in original)

That is the opening paragraph of a book. In what year was this book written?

It seems like something that could have been written in 2024, but the actual date is 1969. Death in the City by Francis Schaeffer.

One of the huge advantages of reading older books is that they get us out of the mindset that what we see around us is somehow new and different. There are endless laments these days about the post-Christian society, the crisis in the church, the horrors to come if our course is not corrected. But, then we turn to Schaeffer, writing a half-century ago, and his language is every bit as Apocalyptic as anything you will find today:

[T]he whole culture has shifted from Christian to post-Christian.
Do not take this lightly! It is a horrible thing for a man like myself to look back and see my country and my culture go down the drain in my own lifetime. It is a horrible thing that sixty years ago you could move across this country and almost everyone, even non-Christians, would have known what the gospel was. A horrible thing that forty to fifty years ago our culture was built on the Christian consensus, and now we are in an absolute minority….
There is only one perspective we can have of the post-Christian world of our generation: an understanding that our culture and our country is under the wrath of God. Our country is under the wrath of God!

Again, exclamations like that are now proclaimed daily by speakers who think they are saying something new. Schaeffer was there long before those modern unrelenting critics of the society. Schaeffer really does believe that there is death in the city. This books spends much time recrafting the language of Jeremiah and Lamentations, repeatedly arguing that we too should be denouncing the world with the same fury Jeremiah used.

First, we may say there is a time, and ours is such a time, when a negative message is needed before anything positive can begin. There must first be the message of judgment, the tearing down. There are times—and Jeremiah’s day and hours are such times—when we cannot expect a constructive revolution if we begin by over emphasizing the positive message. People often say to me, What would you do if you really met a modern man on a train and you had just an hour to talk to him about the gospel? And I’ve said over and over, I would spend forty-five or fifty minutes on the negative, to really show him his dilemma—to show him that he is more dead than even he thinks he is; that he is not just dead in the twentieth-century meaning of dead (not having significance in this life), but that he is morally dead because he is separated from the God who exists. Then I’d take ten or fifteen minutes to preach the gospel. And I believe this is usually the right way for the truly modern man, for often it takes a long time to bring a man to the place where he understands the negative.

There is many a speaker today who seems to be taking Schaeffer’s advice. Is it good advice? I have no idea what it was like in 1969, but there is something a bit strange in this advice in 2024. Schaeffer’s man on a train in 2024 already knows that he is condemned by Christians. He already knows that Christians think he is a terrible person living under the wrath of God. If you spend 45 minutes telling him that, then is he hearing anything he has not already heard many times? If the goal of the Church is to tell society that it is wicked and horrible and under the wrath of God, then I think we can all agree it has met its goal.

But is that the goal of the Church? Why is Francis Schaeffer advocating sending so much time on the negative? Would Schaeffer really be at home in the modern church?

Not at all. Just as you settle in to thinking Schaffer would fit right in among the Christians engaged in fear mongering about the horrors of modern society, a strange note creeps in. “I am convinced that one of the great weaknesses in evangelical preaching in the last years is that we have lost sight of the biblical fact that man is wonderful.” Wonderful? These people living in this really wicked post-Christian world are wonderful?

If people are wonderful, why is the world in such horrible shape? Why is there death in the city?

First of all, man is separated from God; second, he is separated from himself (thus the psychological problems of life); third he is separated from other men (thus the sociological problems of life); fourth he is separated from nature (thus the problems of living in the world—for example the ecological problems). All these need healing.

That man on the train with whom Schaeffer will spend 45 minutes talking about the negative, talking about the wrath of God, Schaeffer cares about that man.

[W]e must comprehend and speak of the lostness of the lost, including the man without the Bible. And like Paul we must not be cold in our orthodoxy, but deeply compassionate for our own kind even when it is costly.
If we are Christians and do not have upon us the calling to respond to the lostness of the lost and a compassion for those of our kind for this life and eternity, our orthodoxy is ugly. And it is ugly in the presence of anybody who is an honest person. And more than that, orthodoxy without compassion is ugly to God.

Orthodoxy without compassion is ugly. That is the important lesson for these days. If you are condemning the lostness of the word, if you are screaming about the wrath of God, but you do not have love, then your message is ugly, not just to those whom you are condemning, but to God. If you believe that there are people out there who are leading sinful lives and are leading others astray, and you do not have compassion for them, then you are missing the entire point of the gospel.

Death in the City is a book written over a half century ago, but it is a book that many people today need to read. The next time you hear someone denouncing their opponents, calling down the wrath of God, if you do not also hear compassion, then this is the book you should give that person. It is book perfectly crafted for the modern age; it starts out all fire and brimstone, and then slowly reminds us that God’s love is there even for those under God’s wrath. When we forget about the love, when we fail to communicate our compassion to those outside the church, then our message is ugly not just to them, but to any honest person and, most importantly, to God.

Related Posts
Schaeffer, Francis The Church Before the Watching World “The World is Watching the Church
Chesterton, G. K. The Ballad of the White Horse “Yea, Faith Without a Hope”

(We can thank Crossway that this book is still in print. They sent me a copy so I could l review it here. I had no idea when I got it that this message from the 1960s would have such importance for today.)

Identity: Christian

Wander onto a college campus these days, and you cannot miss the zeitgeist. The single most important thing to know about any person you meet, any speaker you hear, or any author you read is that person’s identity. “I identify as…” has become a ritualistic phrase, rattled off in the same bored tone that characterizes formal expressions of gratitude in mass-market fundraising letters. (“Thank you for all you do for our cause. Please send us a check.”)

Imagine the question on a form: “How do you identify yourself?” The first reaction could well be that there is not enough space on the form to list all the aspects of your person that make up your identity. “When I was young, I owned a plastic model of a pteranodon.” (The one in this picture! Google is amazing—it took me two minutes to find a picture of something I owned 45 years ago and have not seen since.) I am not sure anyone will think that is an important part of my identity, but it truly is something that distinguishes me from others who might be a lot like me but were not so blessed.

So, instead, imagine you can list only six aspects of your identity. Which do you choose? Now, imagine you have to pick one, the one thing that is the most important part of your identity.

According to Kevin Emmert in The Water and the Blood: How the Sacraments Shape Christian Identity, if you are a Christian, then not only should you have listed that as the single most important part of your identity, but you should have listed it as the only thing even when you were allowed to have a list of multiple overlapping identities. Another way of putting it: if you are a Christian, intersectionality is out, and unisectionality is in.

Emmert drives toward this conclusion via an exploration of baptism and communion, the water and the blood of the title of his book. These sacraments of the Christian church are not merely pro forma rituals of the Church; they are the “means of grace,” the “instruments through which God makes himself known and communicates his goodness to us.”

“Baptism reinforces the truth that our identity is not self-generated or determined ultimately by our own personal narratives and achievements or by our failures, mistakes, and unmet expectations. Nor is our identity reduced to the basic elements that distinguish us from others, as significant as those may be. Rather, our identity as persons in Christ, no less our very existence, is a gift from God, determined ultimately by Christ’s life story and his accomplishments.”

As Emmert explains, both baptism and communion shape the Christian identity because they are the means by which God joins with us in putting to death our old identity and giving birth to our new identity. “The baptismal font, therefore, is not just a tomb in which our old selves are buried and left to rot but also a womb from which our new selves emerge.” Baptism marks the birth of a new identity; one is born again (to use the well-worn phrase) into a new family, the Church. The old self, and whatever identities it had, are put to death, and the new self is born with a new identity.

Communion is the continual repetition of baptism. Once again in the presence of one’s family, the Church, Christ’s death and resurrection are reenacted in bodily form. Christians consume Christ’s flesh and blood, literally reenacting your grandmother’s phrase “You are what you eat.” Death to the old self; resurrected in Christ. That is the message of both baptism and communion.

The Water and the Blood often wanders from a focus on the sacraments into a broader discussion of Christianity. The final chapter, for example, reads like a sermon on 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (ESV).

From these wanderings, it becomes obvious as the book goes on that Emmert’s concern is only in part explaining “how the sacraments shape Christian identity.” His real concern is Christian Identity itself. This is most obvious when he explains what it means to become part of the church:

“To be an ecclesial being is to be committed to the church, to participate in the life and work of the body, and to live in communion with other persons united to Christ. Fundamentally, this entails making the church the primary people group with which we associate.”

Unfortunately, it is easy to misunderstand what Emmert is saying there. I am a Christian and I am a college professor, so I spend time associating with Christians and with my colleagues and students. Which should be the primary people with whom I associate? There are many Christians who assert that in order to be a faithful Christian, one must spend more time with Christians than non-Christians. Even if there is some concession to the need for employment, obviously one’s social life should primarily be at church activities. Churches fill the week with “opportunities” for Christians, where “opportunities” really means “things you need to attend unless you want everyone questioning the depths of your faith.” This is a rather superficial approach to the Christian life.

But when Emmert emphasizes “make the church the primary people group with which we associate,” he is not talking about it being the place we spend the most time. He means something deeper.

“When a man and woman bind themselves in marriage, they vow to forsake all others, meaning that their spouse is their first commitment and that all other relationships are measured by their marital union. So it is with our union and communion with Christ and his body. The world offers us endless counterfeits of the communion we were created for. Political parties, false religions, activist groups, social clubs—the list could go on—promise a sense of belonging and thus self-understanding, but they promise more than they can deliver and thus, in the end, offer us nothing at all.”

Again, it is unfortunately easy to misunderstand what Emmert is saying. Is joining a social club really akin to committing adultery? Is feeling like one belongs in a political party or activist group the same thing as breaking one’s marriage vows to forsake all others? If I say that I belong at my job, does that mean I have abandoned Christ?

I don’t think that is what Emmert is saying. (And, I think I am reading him accurately and not just charitably.) Think about the question this way. Compare the following two accurate statements I could make about myself:
1. I am a Christian who works as a college professor.
2. I am a college professor who is a member of the church.
Both true, but the change in emphasis is notable. If I am reading Emmert correctly, then the primary message of his book is that if the first statement is true, then the second statement should feel like it is an error.

The statement “I am a Christian who works as a college professor” is a way of shaping my identity as a college professor. I am not a college professor who is merely incidentally a Christian. On the other side, when I participate in the life of a church, does the statement “I am a college professor who is receiving communion” seem like the focus is a bit off? Being a Christian shapes the way I do my job as a professor. Being a college professor is incidental to the way I take communion.

This is what the Identity Game gets wrong. Everyone recognizes that all the aspects of my identity are not equally important. But when we think about what is the most important part of our identity, we should realize that if we profess to be Christians, there really isn’t any other aspect of our identity that is on the same level. I am a Christian Former Owner of a Plastic Dinosaur. That seems like a strange way to assert my identity. I am a Christian College Professor should seem equally strange. One of these things is vastly more important than the other. Much better is “I am a Christian who works as a College Professor.” That gets the emphasis right. My identity is Christian; everything else is something incidental about me.

Extending Emmert’s argument into society writ large has enormous implications. When you look at the church in America today, you see many people proudly proclaiming their Christian Identity, but often with an equal partner in the Identity. Christian Nationalist. American Christian. Progressive Christian. Open and Affirming Christian. Far too many people are in desperate need of grasping the importance of Emmert’s book. The Water and the Blood are what shape our identity. What unites all those who have joined the church in baptism and participate in the church in communion is more important than what divides them. Indeed, compared to that thing that unites the church, what other incidentals matter at all?

Related Posts:
Schaeffer, Francis The Church Before the Watching World “The World is Watching the Church”
Ortlund, Gavin Humility “Finding Joy Through Humility”

(Legal codes have rituals too. One of which is to say: I received a copy of this book from Crossway so that I could write this review. Some rituals truly are empty and devoid of any importance.)

Christmas All Year Round

“The angel called for joy, and I ask for it too, on this ground, that the birth of this child was to bring glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men. The birth of Christ has given such glory to God as I know not that he could have ever had by any other means.”

Charles Spurgeon thought Christmas should bring you joy. Not just in December, but all the time.

He wasn’t wrong.

What was the most important day in human history? I think it is safe to say that there are three candidates: Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. But, the latter two could never happen without the first. By any measure, the Incarnation is an extraordinary event. As Augustine says:

That infirmity might be made strong, strength has been made weak. Let us, therefore, admire the more His human birth instead of looking down upon it; and let us in his presence try to realize the abasement that He in all His majesty accepted for our sakes. And then let us be kindled with love, that we may come to His eternity.

Or, if you like your description in a poetic vein, here is Milton:

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
      And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heav’n’s high council-table,
      To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
      He laid aside, and here with us to be,
            Forsook the courts of everlasting day,
            And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

But, of course, there are also the more well-known songs, like:

Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king
Peace on earth and mercy mild
God and sinners reconciled”
Joyful all ye nations rise
Join the triumph of the skies
With angelic host proclaim
“Christ is born in Bethlehem”
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the new-born king”

The Incarnation has generated a wealth of fascinating and exciting and deep-moving expressions. This prompted Leland Ryken to put together a book for you to enjoy: Journey to Bethlehem: A Treasury of Classic Christmas Devotionals. All of the above passages are in this book

You will be forgiven for thinking he edited this book so that you would have something to read in December. Ryken doesn’t mind you reading it then (of course), but “I hope that the readers of this anthology will reread it many times and do so year-round.”

As Ryken explains in a strikingly sharp tone at the outset of the Editor’s Introduction:

This book is an anthology of classic Christmas devotionals. As I did the research for this book, it quickly became obvious that the Christian world needs an alternative to the lightweight Christmas books that flood the market. The classic texts that I’ve brought together in this volume have stood the test of time and for discernible reasons.

Now far be it from me to disparage all those lightweight Christmas books; I have a soft spot for the sappy reminders of the most important day in the history of the world. But, Ryken is correct that there is a virtue in the weightier reflections as well, that if your entire consumption of Christmas ephemera is the cheesy and garish trappings of the Season, then you really should also spend a bit of time with Athanasius and Calvin and Charles Wesley and T.S. Eliot.

That being said, the book has an odd structure. There are 30 selections, divided into three sections: Songs, Prose, and Poems. Billed as a “Treasury of Classic Christmas Devotionals,” there are indeed 30 classic bits. But, following each song, poem, or excerpt from a prose work, Ryken provides a discussion of the passage, which is longer than the excerpt being discussed. As a result, if you pick up the book to read the classics, you get a whole lot of Ryken tossed in.

The book thus succeeds or not depending on how much you like the Ryken commentary. That’s a mixed bag, and I think deliberately so. Ryken has pitched his commentary for a very wide audience, so I cannot imagine a reader who will find it all equally interesting. If you are not familiar at all with Athanasius or find reading Milton to be rough going, Ryken has commentary for you. If you are familiar with such things, much of the commentary will seem obvious, but then Ryken suddenly tosses in an interesting observation, and you are glad you read it.

The observation that surprised me the most:

There is no scarcity of Christmas poems, nor anthologies of them. But there is a scarcity of Christmas poems of sufficient quality and depth to make a significant impact on us. The majority of Christmas poems belong to the “bits and pieces” variety—brief and fleeting observations about a tiny aspect of the nativity or incarnation. The need for the entries in this anthology to yield a five-hundred-word analysis served as a sieve in which the inferior candidates fell through and the really good Christmas poems—the classic ones—remained.

Surely, I thought, Ryken is wrong about this. Obviously, there is a wealth of great poetry about Christmas. Then…I had a hard time thinking of a wealth of examples by poets who aren’t in this volume. There is lots of great Christmas poetry set to music; but poems which you read and don’t sing? Eliot, Milton, Donne, Chesterton, Rossetti are obvious. Then add in Ben Jonson, Richard Wilbur (in a wonderful poem I had never seen before), Edward Markham, and the rather prolific Anonymous. (The Magnificat is the 10th poem in the book, but honestly that feels like cheating. The rest of Luke and Matthew don’t get an entry in the prose section.) So, Dear Reader, can you think of another great Christmas poem? In casting about, I’ve discovered less than a dozen other authors which could be easily added to this list; I am genuinely surprised that it is so few.

The important lesson from this book: you don’t think about Christmas often enough. None of us do. If Ryken is right, and I think he is, spending more time thinking about Christmas will bring us great joy. It is, after all, an event that can cause one to burst out in song, “Joy to the World! The Lord is come!”

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Leeman, David & Barbara Hosanna in Excelsis “Here We Come A-caroling”
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[The Mandatory Note: And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Washington that all the world should declare when a publisher sends a reviewer a book to be reviewed, the reviewer is obligated to note that fact. And so this reviewer is adding this Note to fulfill Said Obligation.]

Be Like Aquinas

“St. Thomas was willing to allow the one truth to be approached by two paths, precisely because he was sure there was only one truth. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately contradict the Faith. Because the Faith was the one truth, nothing really deduced from the Faith could ultimately contradict the facts. It was in truth a curiously daring confidence in the reality of his religion.”

That is G. K. Chesterton, in his book St. Thomas Aquinas. Chesterton is clearly concerned that the world is slipping back into a pre-Aquinas age.

Before Aquinas, Christian theology was heavily influenced by Plato. We can thank Augustine for that fact. As Augustine unfolded the meaning of the gospel of John’s opening line, “In the beginning was the logos,” Christianity ended up looking very Platonic. Plato believed there is an overarching logic and reason of the world, which he called the logos. There are what we now call the Platonic ideals, these perfect forms of things. There is the perfect form of the tree and of love and of friendship. All of these ideals exist up there in some abstract world. We are mucking around on Earth and can see pale reflections of all these things. We see a tree here or there, but they are not the ideal tree. We have friends, but they are not ideal friends. What we are constantly doing is seeing the things on the Earth and thinking about these perfect forms.

Aquinas comes along and says Christians are spending too much time thinking about Plato, about lofty things. Instead, they should be reading Aristotle and thinking about grounded things. The distinction between them is captured really nicely in Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens.” In the center, Plato and Aristotle are talking. Plato is pointing up because that is where the important things are. Aristotle has his hand flat pointing down at the ground, because that is where the important things are.

Aquinas comes along and says that the Church has been thinking way too much about Plato, the lofty stuff, and way too little about Aristotle, the grounded stuff. What we need to start doing is paying attention to the grounded stuff, the things of the world. Chesterton notes:

In a word, St. Thomas was making Christendom more Christian in making it more Aristotelian. This is not a paradox, but a plain truism, which can only be missed by those who may know what is meant by an Aristotelian, but have simply forgotten what is meant by a Christian. As compared with a Jew, a Moslem, a Buddhist, a Deist, or most obvious alternatives, a Christian means a man who believes that deity or sanctity has attached to matter or entered the world of the senses.

That’s what being a Christian means. It means we believe the logos was made flesh.

We can see the tension in churches today. You can walk around churches and say, “Christ is God,” and everybody will say, “Yep, that is right.” Nobody will ever once correct you. But if you walk around churches and say “Christ is man,” everyone will instantly correct you and say, “Oh that’s not all; he is also God.” When we say, “Christ is God,” nobody ever says, “Oh, and he is man too.” But Christ is both fully God and fully Man

That is what Aquinas is driving at. The incarnation means those two statements, “Christ is God” and “Christ is man,” are identically true. They are both imperfect, neither captures the totality of Christ. But one of them is not more true than the other. Christ is fully God. Christ is fully man. Can we learn about God by looking at both the things of heaven and the things of the world? Aquinas is saying we really need to be doing both of those things.

Aquinas says that if you want to learn about God, you can think about the Bible. It’s great to think about the Bible. You learn a lot about God in the Bible. But you can also think about the things of earth. Both are ways to ultimately find out about God, because in the end, there is only one truth. God is discoverable by revelation, but God is also discoverable by reason.

We have to keep this paradox constantly in mind. Christ is both divine and flesh, the logos is both with God and made flesh. Our temptation is to get off this balance beam entirely. We read the Bible to learn about God. We read other things to learn about things other than God. We make sure those things are totally separate in our lives. We can talk about the Bible, but if you’re going to talk about God in the Bible, you certainly don’t want to talk about Plato or Aristotle. Then we can talk about Plato and Aristotle, but don’t ever bring the Bible into those discussions.

Aquinas is arguing that these things are not separate. We learn about God by reading the Bible and through divine revelation. We also learn about God by thinking about all the other things we see. This idea that we learn about God in all these ways is not a shocking statement to Augustine. It is not a shocking statement to Aquinas, It is also not a shocking statement to the Apostle Paul.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (ESV). Paul says everywhere you look, there’s God. We, on the other hand, always want to rip the world in two. We show up on a Sunday morning to think about God. Then we walk out of church and we go through the rest of our life. If we remember to do a Bible study or a daily devotion, then we think about God again. But what about the rest of all the stuff you are learning and doing in your life? Does that have anything to do with God? We’ve completely separated all that stuff out.

The challenge of thinking about the Logos made flesh is to realize whatever you are seeing and doing Tuesday at 3:00 is somehow a reflection of the work of God. Christ really was a man, and what that means is he was a person like us. We think, “Sure, he was human, but he was a perfect human. Not like me.” The classic example is “Away in the manger.” “No crying he makes.” He was a baby who never even cried. But that is wrong. Christ really was a person like you. He went through life like you did. He pounded nails in boards, just like my friend Bob, who is a carpenter, does. Christ stood around and argued with people. That is what I do. Christ slept and ate and walked and laughed just like we all do. He also, not incidentally, created the world.

We need to get rid of this division in our mind that the things of God and the things of the world have no connection. They are very tightly connected. As Aquinas teaches us, that is the point of the Incarnation.

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