The cry [of lament] occurs within the context of the yet of enduring faith and ongoing praise, for in raising Christ from the dead, we have God’s word and deed that he will be victorious in the struggle against all that frustrates his desire. Thus, divine sovereignty is not sacrificed but reconceived. If lament is indeed a legitimate component of the Chris tian life, then divine sovereignty is not to be understood as everything happening just as God wants it to happen, or happening in such a way that God regards what he does not like as an acceptable trade-off for the good thereby achieved. Divine sovereignty consists in God’s winning the battle against all that has gone awry with respect to God’s will.

Wolterstorff, “If God Is Good and Sovereign, Why Lament?” Calvin Theological Journal 36 (2001): 42 – 52.

Sitting is Killing Us

(HT: Lifehacker)

“The various problems that I have so far discussed can best be understood, I think, as failures of discipline caused by a profound confusion as to the functions and the relatives values of means and ends. I do not suggest simply that we fall with the ease of familiarity into the moral expedient of justifying means by ends, but that we have also come to attribute to ends a moral importance that far outweighs that which we attribute to means. As though we have arrived in our minds at a new age of fantasy or magic, we expect ends not only to justify means, but to rectify them as well. Once we have reached the desired end, we think, we will turn back to purify and consecrate the means. Once the war that we are fighting for the sake of peace is one, then the generals will become saints, the burned children will proclaim in heaven that their suffering is well repaid, the poisoned forests and fields will turn green again. Once we have peace, we say, or abundance or justice or truth or comfort, everything will be all right. It is an old dream.

It is a vicious illusion. For the discipline of ends is no discipline at all. The end is preserved in the means; a desirable end may perish forever in the wrong means. Hope lives in the means, not the end.”

Wendell Berry A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (130-131)

Evaluating Models of Atonement

By and large, I don’t care for discussion about the atonement. They often slide into ideology, are often taken to represent the whole of Christianity, and can quickly lead to confusion. This post, however, by Macrina Walker is helpful, I think, in understanding what the topic is all about. She lists four questions we should consider when discussing the various models of atonement and while her evaluations are not comprehensive, they do provide a good starting point.

1. Does it envisage a change in God or in us? “Some theories of Christ’s saving work seem to suggest that God is angry with us, and what Christ has done is to satisfy God’s anger. But that cannot be right. It is we who need changing, not God. As St. Paul said, ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). It is the world that needs to be reconciled to God, not God to the world.”
2. Does it separate Christ from the Father? “Some theories seem to suggest that God the Father is punishing Christ when He dies on the Cross. I remember as a student in Oxford hearing that great evangelical preacher Billy Graham say, “At the moment when Christ died on the Cross the lightning of God’s wrath hit him instead of you.” I didn’t find that a very happy way of thinking of Christ’s work. Surely we should not separate Christ from the Father in that kind of way, for they are one God, members of the Holy Trinity. As St Paul states, in the words that I quoted just now, ‘God was in Christ’. When Christ saves us, it is God who is at work in Him; there is no separation.”
3. Does it isolate the cross from the Incarnation and the Resurrection? “We are to think of Christ’s life as a single unity. So we should not think only of the Cross, but we should think of what went before the Crucifixion, and of what comes after.”
4. Does it presuppose an objective or a subjective understanding of Christ’s work?“Does Christ’s saving work merely appeal to our feelings, or did He do something to alter our objective situation in an actual and realistic way?”

coal not dole

What’s the deal with Wisconsin?

If you’re going to read a single article on the recent discussions and protests over loss of public unions’ collective bargaining in Wisconsin (and other midwestern states), this one from the front porch would be a good option.

Remember at all times, that people must always come before ideas and not the other way around.

The Heartless Lovers of Mankind by Paul Johnson

The top choices among evangelicals for the chopping block are economic assistance to needy people around the world (56 percent), government assistance for the unemployed (40 percent), and environmental protection (38 percent). In each of these categories, evangelicals were more supportive of decreasing spending than are other Americans. In fact, evangelicals were more supportive of funding cuts in every area except military defense, terrorism defense, aid to veterans, and energy.

Evangelicals on Economics

Leithart on education.

One thought. Leithart talks about how education for liberty must be educating to love. We are forming the desires of students to love, and thusly to be truly free. Of course, the object of love is argued (which God is it?). But coming from the Christian perspective, our commands are clear: to love God and our neighbor. If our Framers were correct (and I’m not convinced they were) that church would train our souls (to love God) whereas education would arise from the other parts of life, perhaps the questions should be: what kind of education teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves? What do you think? What would such an education look like?

If you cannot remember everything, instead of everything, I beg you, remember only this without fail, that not to share our own wealth with the poor is the same as theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life. It is not our own wealth that we are clinging on to, but theirs.

-St. John Chrysostom