Brian McLaren’s new book of said name prefaces darkly: “the Christian faith in all its forms is in trouble“, da-da-da-duuuuuuh. But don’t worry: “the Christian faith in all its forms is pregnant with new possibilities.” And since one can’t be a little bit pregnant, it looks like McLaren will unpack a lot of possibilities. Will they be legitimate spawn, or pomo orphans? Will they be embraced by the church or made victim of choice? I wonder if he will address the issue of abortion. But I’ll hold my horses.

I’m here to witness this birth, midwiving as he pushes away. He begins with a testimony (where else for an evangelical to begin?) that he grew up in conservative evangelical churches, passionately committed through the ’70s Jesus movement, did a stint in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, married a Catholic woman and has been around the globe loving every tradition on the various continents. Still, he believes in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” So this book is written from the inside by one who happily embraces the Apostles’ Creed. Ten questions, five “profound and critical” with the “potential to unlcock us from a prison in which we have been held for a long time”, and five “less profound or theologically radical” but still important as they address “down-to-earth practicality”, comprise the book.

The first three chapters are preparatory for the questions. Think of them as quiet contractions. I’ll tackle them all next post. Remember the breathing exercises.

Nate Wilson’s Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is now out and is fantastic thus far. From an early part:

There are Christians in the world who bemoan the absence of God’s speech, who cry out for personal communication with God Himself. They want cues for their lines. They want explanations and specific direction from the Artist.

And God, as far as they can tell, is ignoring them. They feel neglected–because they weren’t cast as Moses or Elijah or Enoch or Gideon.

Tell me what you want me to do, God. speak to me (in English please) and tell me if I should take the job in Des Moines or stay closer to my mother.

Then, because their part in this story does not include cosmic voice-overs in English, they enter into an existential crisis. They begin to “doubt.”

What kind of story do you think this is? I have no problem with the pettiness of your Des Moines dilemma. The world spins on through space, bowled by its Maker. The sun burns on, hot with His words, and yet He still crafts every snowflake without digital shortcuts. He knows that you want to move to Des Moines and yet you feel guilty. He wrote the story. He crafted your character. He gave you life and a plot of your own. Even simple character stories, the kind with no special effects, put together by one lonely producer and starring unbeautiful people, even those are not beneath Him. Infinite reaches all the way up into the transcendent epic of the stars, and all the way down into the ant hill where one loyal worker spends his life toiling, from its first day after the larval stage to its noble end, killed by a ladybug while defending the colony’s vulnerable herd of aphids.

The ant’s story may be more dramatic than yours, but it’s not bigger. And don’t worry, some day you’ll play for keeps too. Some day, even in slow, suburban stories, there will come a death scene.

But why would any Christian claim that God has stopped talking? Did He speak the world into existence? Does matter exist apart from Him? Is it still here? Are you still here? Then He is still speaking?

Calvin was therefore right to say that “no other faith justifies ‘but faith working through love’ [Gal. 5:6]. But it does not take its power to justify from that working of love.” This second sentence is more important and needs to be stressed. Turretin makes the same point in the passage cited above when he says that “[faith] alone concurs to the act of justification,” and “The coexistence of love in him who is justified is not denied; but the coefficiency or cooperation in justification is denied.” To say that faith working through love justifies does not mean for Paul, or Calvin, or Turretin, or Shepherd that works become the ground or instrument of justification. Godfrey, however, thinks that it does, because he cannot see works as functioning in any other away than as the ground or instrument of justification. For him, and contrary to Turretin, coexistence implies, even requires coefficiency. This is a basic mistake that Godfrey makes. That is hwy he cannot really agree with Calvin or Turretin, because from his perspective Calvin and Turretin are mixing a toxic cocktail of faith plus works for justification.  –Norm Shepherd, “Faith and Faithfulness” in A Faith That Is Never Alone, ed. by P. Andrew Sandlin

If you want to understand the disagreement among those claiming to uphold the Protestant understanding of faith and works, A Faith That Is Never Alone is an outstanding resource. It’s a response to Covenant, Justification and Pastoral Ministry put out by the staff of Westminster Seminary California, and although it will run you twenty-five clams, you will have a well-rounded understanding of the southwestern Reformed who are far more Lutheran in their understanding of justification than anything else, and seemingly as equally suspicious of anyone else as Luther tended to be. Sandlin’s brief preface helpfully touches on various movements in the recent past–the Lordship Salvation controversy of the 70’s and 80’s, the Law and Gospel divided sparked by Daniel P. Fuller of Fuller Seminary, the Shepherd Controversy, New Perspective on Paul and Federal Vision–and how they relate to this volume. The whole thing is very good and some of the essays simply outstanding.