A Portrait of God: Stephen Charnock’s “Discourses Upon the Existence and Attributes of God” Summarized for the 21st Century

By Daniel Chamberlain

I had the joy a few years ago to preach at a Bible Conference where both the author of this book and the penman of the Foreword (Ron Crisp), were also present. It was the first time I had ever seen this book, and I bought it immediately. 

The first line of the Foreword is, “This book is a treasure,” but that is in reality an understatement. Chamberlain has penned not what can really be classified as an “abridgment,” but what is more accurately a “summary,” similar to what Banner of Truth Trust has done in their “Puritan Paperback” series. He has distilled 1,146 pages of 17^th-century English (in small print!) down to 177 pages of modern, easy to read and absorb English.

While several writers have penned excellent works on the attributes of God (Arthur W. Pink, A. W. Tozer, etc.), Stephen Charnock’s (1628–1680) work is consider without equal. The Puritans, however, are not easy reading (although the effort will be greatly rewarded). But for those who struggle or simply lack the required time, Chamberlain has penned his own classic as a result of his immersion in Charnock for several years.

You can read the entire first chapter, “The Existence of God,” on Amazon.com (https://goo.gl/oXL2Ib) but here’s an example of what Chamberlain has done so well. In “Discourse IV: On Spiritual Worship,” Charnock wrote in one of his “General Propositions”:

“The service and worship the gospel settles is spiritual, and the performance of it more spiritual. Spirituality is the genius of the gospel, as carnality was of the law; the gospel is therefore called spirit; we are abstracted from the employments of sense, and brought nearer to a heavenly state. The Jews had angels’ bread poured upon them; we have angels’ service prescribed to us, the praises of God, communion with God in spirit, through his Son Jesus Christ, and stronger foundations for spiritual affections. It is called a ‘reasonable service;’ it is suited to a rational nature, though it finds no friendship from the corruption of reason. It prescribes a service fit for the reasonable faculties of the soul, and advanceth them while it employs them. The word reasonable may be translated ‘word-service,’ as well as reasonable service; an evangelical service, in opposition to a law service. All evangelical service is reasonable, and all truly reasonable service is evangelical.”

Charnock actually goes on for another 319 words, but Chamberlain boils down the whole section (469 total words) to this (52 words):

“The New Covenant is more spiritual in its worship than the Old. It is a state of more grace and more truth (Jn. 1:17). The perfections of God are revealed more clearly. We worship Him through His Son. The Holy Spirit is more plentifully poured out. We engage in a reasonable service.”

This book makes an excellent daily devotional, or you can read it straight through. Once done, it might even encourage you to tackle “the real thing.” I cannot recommend Chamberlain’s little masterpiece highly enough. Thank you, Brother!

Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith

By: Chad Van Dixhoorn

The Westminster Confession of Faith of 1643 has stood for centuries as the greatest statement of Evangelical Christianity. It is a sad reality that many (most, in fact) doctrinal statements used in churches and Christian organizations today are woefully short, and often equally anemic. Often, for the express purpose of openness, tolerance, and unity, such statements are purposefully kept vague. In stark contrast, our historical faith was once unambiguously delineated in historic statements such as the Westminster, as well as both the 1644 and 1689 London Baptist Confession.

Just as there have been great doctrinal statements, there have also arisen complementary explanations of such statements. Robert Shaw’s 1845 An Exposition of the Westminster Confession of Faith, for example, is a classic and is available online for free download. In our own day, Reformed Baptist Samuel E. Waldon has penned the excellent A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith (Evangelical Press, 1989).

Enter the new addition, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith by Chad Van Dixhoorn (Banner of Truth Trust, 2014, 484 pages). The author is singularly qualified to write this book, being Associate Professor of Church History at Reformed Theological Seminary (Washington, DC), as well as Associate Pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church (Vienna, VA). As an historian, he is also well known for his five-volume work on the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly (Oxford).

Let me say upfront that I am unapologetically baptistic, so there are things in both the WCF and in this commentary with which I do not agree, but none of that detracts from what one can glean from it or what one can balance with another exposition, such as the aforementioned one by Samuel E. Waldon, for example, or one’s own theological training.

With that understood, Van Dixhoorn’s work is outstanding. After a solid “Introduction,” which deals with the history of the Confession and the Assembly itself, the work is divided into easily manageable sections (which actually lends itself to daily readings); each section begins with a side-by-side comparison of one or more paragraphs of the “Historic Text” of the WCF and the “Modern Text.” In his own words, Van Dixhoorn’s aim then is “to expound one late Reformation text and not Reformed theology generally conceived” (xxiv). In other words, we should appreciate the fact that he allows the Confession to speak for itself, no in the context of “a system.” He also addresses the texts the assembly cited to support a given statement. Interestingly, while more modern versions of the WCF sometimes use alternative texts that are actually better support, Van Dixhoorn chose to keep it historical and not use those texts (xxv).

Because one of my passions is the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, I offer an example of the author’s work using that part of the WCF. It reads, for example, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men” (1.6). At the end of a section headed “Scripture Sufficient,” Van Dixhoorn summarizes: “Scripture is sufficient in the sense that no further special revelation from God is needed to guide us through life other than the revelation graciously available to us in the Bible” (17). In the face of those who claim new revelation, the author goes on to comment on one of the assembly’s proof-texts: “If someone suggest that they have a new revelation of the Spirit, we are not to be rattled; in fact, we can ignore it (2 Thess. 2:2)” (18). Here is something extremely significant for our day!

Also helpful are the times when the author contrasts the Confession’s statements with the doctrinal error of the day, which obviously is of practical use in our own day because the same errors remain. The writings of the divines themselves are also referenced at times to help endorse the view of the Confession. Also very helpful are two indexes: Scripture and General.

A minor criticism is that the “Historical Text” has actually been updated according to current spelling and grammar, so we are not actually seeing the real “historical text.” Further, the “Modern Text” sometimes uses words that don’t mean precisely what the historical text means. For example, for the word “authentic” (original word “authentical”) in reference to Scripture, the word “authoritative” is used (20); these mean very different things.

One other “little” thing struck me, namely that the author is obviously using a modern translation that is substantially different at times than that used by the divines. In 8.1, for example, the Confession clearly refers to God’s “only begotten son,” but when the author quotes the proof text John 3:16, he uses one that reads “his one and only son” (107). I have written elsewhere on this issue and demonstrated that such a translation is wrong textually, theologically, and historically (click here if you care to read).

All in all, I recommend this book for its reverence, reflection, and readability. I fully expect it to be adopted as a standard textbook in many seminaries. It will also serve as a reference to pastors who wish to use the Confession in their preaching and teaching and even laypeople who want an understandable explanation of our historical faith.

[Note: The Banner of Truth Trust  (http://banneroftruth.org/us/) graciously provided me with a review copy of this book with no strings attached as to the content of my review.]

The Moody Handbook of Theology, Revised and Expanded

By: Paul Enns

I collect theology books. From the first doctrine book I ever owned—Great Doctrines of the Bible by William Evans, which I used in a High School course in 1970—I have built a fair collection of works on the five major divisions of theological study: Systematic, Biblical, Dogmatic, Historical, and Contemporary.

Recently added to that collection is The Moody Handbook of Theology, Revised and Expanded, penned by Paul Enns (Moody Publishers, 2014). While I stop short of calling it a “masterpiece,” a term that is somewhat subjective, I do view it as a contemporary classic. Webster defines the latter as something that has come to be considered one of the best of its kind, something that is an example of excellence, and that is exactly what this 800-page book is. It is a readable, rich, and reliable overview of the five major divisions of theological study.

First, it is readable. There is little jargon here. When theological terms are necessary (e.g., dichotomy, trichotomy, hypostatic union, imputation, etc.), they are clearly defined in simple language not only in the text but also in the excellent Glossary in the back pages. As I read it, in fact, I was reminded again of the clarity of William Evan’s book in my High School days. It is ideal for laymen but also a good tool for Bible college and seminary level because of the extensive documentation of the material in endnotes (although I personally would have preferred footnotes).

Second, it is rich. This massive work is a veritable treasure trove of biblical truth. While I respectfully disagree with the author that “Biblical Theology” should be the first division the student studies (I believe Systematic Theology comprises the foundational building blocks), Part 1 addresses the former. After briefly presenting the plethora of approaches that have been offered for studying OT Theology (pp. 33–37), Enns presents and defends his preference: a thematic approach that develops the concept of the Kingdom of God (pp. 37–39). He then moves era-by-era (Edenic, Noahic, Patriarchal, Mosaic, Monarchial, and Prophetic) through the OT, examining the main theme and others.

Enns approaches NT theology using what most conservatives consider the best approach: “systemiz[ing] the truth as it was progressively revealed through the various writers of the NT” (p. 80). He then presents the theology of the Synoptics, Acts, James, Paul, Hebrews, Peter and Jude, and John.

Part 2 turns to Systematic Theology and is the lengthiest part of the book (184 pages). After the customary Introduction, Enns chooses to start with Bibliology (with which I totally agree) and then moves through the other eight major subjects. I was disappointed in the former because of a lack of presenting the difference between “inerrancy” and “infallibility,” a flaw of several contemporary works (IMHO), in contrast to old ones (Turretin, Hodge, Westminster divines, etc., which is not just my opinion).

Part 3 moves on to Historical Theology, a much neglected area in our day, the result of which causes much error. As Enns notes, the purpose of this aspect of theological study is “to describe the historical origin of the dogma of the Church and to trace its subsequent changes and developments” (p. 439). Its four chapters survey the major theological teachings of the Ancient, Medieval, Reformation, and Modern eras.

Part 4 addresses Dogmatic Theology, which the author correctly differentiates from Systematic Theology by describing it as the theology of a particular group or system. The five chapters here are Calvinistic, Arminian, Covenant, Dispensational, and Catholic.

Part 5 is a survey of Contemporary Theology, an extremely important area of theological study that addresses ten of the major theological systems that have arisen in the 20^th-century, most of which are seriously aberrant. Among several others, these chapters cover: Neo-orthodoxy, Evangelical Feminism, Charismatic Theology, and the Emerging Church.

Scattered throughout the book, there are also 55 charts and tables, just a few examples of which include: Comparing the Gospels; Order of the Decrees; OT Prophecies of Christ; Theories of the Atonement; Forms of Church Government; Views of the Lord’s Supper; Views Concerning Last Things; Perversions of the Doctrine of Christ; and Calvinism and Arminianism Contrasted. In addition to the aforementioned Glossary, there are also three excellent indexes: Persons, Subject, and Scripture. Also, each chapter concludes with a “For Further Study” section listing both beginner and more advanced works for students who wish to go deeper. Occasionally (IMHO), the number of works listed is just a little overkill (come to think of it, this review probably is too).

Third, it is reliable. It was interesting to read some reviews of this book on Amazon, some of which criticized it because the reviewer was obviously a member of one of the aberrant theologies addressed in Part 5. This book is thoroughly evangelical and solidly orthodox. It is young earth oriented, “mildly” Calvinistic, dispensational, and (thankfully) cessationist. Obviously, no reader is going to agree in every jot and tittle, but he can use it with full confidence of its roots in biblical and historical Christianity. And please, even if you differ on the aforementioned subjects, you should not avoid this book, for it will thoughtfully challenge you.

I would also interject that the author is for the most part quite unbiased, honestly presenting conflicting views of theological issues. A case in point is the extent of the atonement (pp. 340–41); he fairly presents the arguments for both definite and unlimited (although experienced reviewers will get a sense of which one he holds). Likewise, he objectively presents the differing views of Eschatology (pp. 408–425). When it comes to the seriously aberrant theologies of Part 5, however, Enns speaks the Truth in love and exposes clear biblical error.

I cannot recommend this classic highly enough. It is hands down the best one-volume survey of theology ever penned. The only improvement I think could be made is a Study Guide (and I for one would love to write it).

[Note: Moody graciously provided me with a review copy of this book with no strings attached as to the content of my review.] 

The Church Effeminate and Other Essays

By: John Robbins, et. al.

The instant I saw the title of this book, The Church Effeminate and Other Essays (Trinity Foundation, 2001), I was immediately curious. The cover art quickly gets your attention; it is the painting, Mary Queen of Heaven, by the unidentified Early Netherlandish painter Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy (fl. 1480–1510), who worked in Bruges, now a city in Belgium. When I then read the book description, I was charmed:

This anthology of the best that has been written on the purpose, structure, and function of the Christian Church in the past five centuries is an indispensable resource for the 21st-century Christian. The authors analyze and refute the errors of feminism, popery, clericalism, Episcopalianism, Erastianism, ecumenism, experientialism, revivalism, aestheticism, fundamentalism, and irrationalism; and they sketch a revolutionary blueprint for a Christian church modeled according to the Scriptures.

But when I then started reading this book, I was captivated. Here is a no holds barred examination of today’s church from some of the greatest pens in her history.

Several books have been written in the last 20 years or so that address what their authors feel is the steady decline of the Church. The “problem” with these (in the minds of critics, that is) is that they are just coming from the pens of men who are narrow-minded, intolerant, change-phobic, or just simply curmudgeonly in their old age. Such critics, however, refuse to take their heads out of the sand long enough to look honestly at what is happening today, which in turn in the result of the past. That’s what this book is about. As the back cover describes with unflinching bravery:

The churches at the dawn of the new millennium bear little resemblance to the model institution authorized by Jesus Christ and founded by the Apostles and Prophets. Its doctrine has been corrupted and perverted; its function, distorted; its government, subverted; so that today’s churches hardly deserve the name “Christian” at all.

These 39 essays all call the Christian church back to its pristine purity and power—to be the spotless bride of Christ. The work of the Reformation was not completed in the Sixteenth Century, and the churches of the Twenty-first Century require an even more thorough Reformation. Far from being the Church Militant, today’s church is the Church Effeminate.

Part 1, “The Church Belonging to Jesus Christ,” consists of three chapters: “The Church” (John W. Robbins); “The Apostolic Church” (Thomas Witherow); and “The True Church” (J.C. Ryle). While you might disagree with some points in these chapters because of your denominational distinctives, the need for such foundation cannot be ignored, and that is the point to glean here.

Part 2, “The Purpose of the Church,” begins with an article by my personal hero, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, whose book, Preaching and Preachers, changed my ministry some 30 years ago; my personal opinion is that no man is qualified to stand in the pulpit until he has read and absorbed this book. The article from that work reprinted here is, “The Primacy of Preaching,” a truth that has all but vanished in our day. Following this article is a wonderful one by Jay Adams, “Preaching to the Heart,” which examines the false notions of what “heart” refers to in Scripture and then challenges us to preach to what it really is. Other articles include “The Fallibility of Ministers” (J.C. Ryle), “Scripture and the Ordering of Worship (The Geneva Service Book of 1556), and others.

Part 3, “The Officers of the Church,” was the heart of the book for me. Its first four chapter—“The Teachers of the Church” (John Calvin); “The Presbyterian Doctrine of Ordination” (Gordon H. Clark); “Paul on Women Speaking in Church” (Benjamin B. Warfield); and “The Ordination of Women” (Gordon H. Clark)—slowly build to the article from which the book title is taken: “The Church Effeminate,” by the book’s compiler  John W. Robbins.

I will warn the reader upfront that this chapter might knock you for a loop. Most of what it says I had already discovered in my own study, but I have never read anything that puts it as succinctly and as articulately than does this essay. Much of my own study would have been rendered repetitive had I read this first. Robbins first documents the rise of Mary in Catholicism and the resulting feminizing of the church (not to mention the blasphemy of Christ). He then goes on to recount that “during the 19th-century, there were three major movements in American Protestant churches that began the process of feminizing their leadership” (p. 238): the Sunday School Movement; the Foreign Missions Movement, and the Deaconess Movement (see TOTT #21). While Robbin’s discussion will definitely upset some readers, his history and arguments are unimpeachable. These movements, he insists, blatantly disregarded the clear biblical precedent of male leadership and have slowly eroded the leadership of the church.

The last two articles in Part 3 are: “On the Councils and the Church” (Martin Luther) and “The Relation of Church and State” (Charles Hodge).

Part 4, “Autocrats in the Church,” includes articles such as: “The Roman Church-State” (John Calvin); “The New Babylonian Captivity of the Church” (Godwell A. Chan); “The Reconstructionist Road to Rome” (John W. Robbins); and others.

Part 5, “The Growth of the Church,” will also rattle some cages and challenge some of the sacred cows that have been venerated in supposedly orthodox Christianity. The essence of these articles is again based on history and Scripture, challenging the so-called idea of “revival” and even what is biblical evangelism. These articles include: “Ought the Church to Pray for Revival?” (Herman Hanko); “The Great Revival of Religion, 1740-1745” (Charles Hodge); “The Power of the Word” (Martin Luther); “What is Evangelism?” (Gordon H. Clark); and “Art and the Gospel” (Gordon H. Clark). I urge the reader to read these before jumping to any conclusion, such as,  “I already know what they’re going to say.”

The last section, Part 6, “The Purity and Peace of the Church,” includes the final 10 chapters: “The Necessity of Reforming the Church” (John Calvin); “Idolatry” (J.C. Ryle); “Pharisees and Sadducees” (J.C. Ryle); “The Good Fight of Faith” (J. Gresham Machen); “Apostolic Fears” (J.C. Ryle); “The Seperateness of the Church” (J. Gresham Machen); “The Sin of Signing Ecumenical Declarations” (John W. Robbins); “Fundamentalism and Ecumenism” (Thomas M’Crie); “The Unity of the Church” (John Calvin); and “The Church Irrational” (John W. Robbins). The latter, for example, is another critical call to discernment, a steadily vanishing attribute of today’s church. As Robbins writes:

To fail to object when error is being taught and truth denied is to condone error by treating error and truth as if they were the same. If Christ is under attack and a Christian keeps silent, he has not maintained neutrality; he has denied Christ. (p. 660)

I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough. I have never seen a compendium on the church that equals it. It should be required reading, if not part of the core curriculum, in every Bible college and seminary that claims to care about the Church, both its history and its contemporary meltdown. For those already in ministry, if you care at about our Lord’s Church, you will get this book and devour it.

“Pocket Dictionary” Series from IVP

InterVarsity Press has done something that publishers love to do: find a niche and fill it with a book series. Who hasn’t heard of the “Dummies” series of books (IDG), for example? (I pitched one myself back when I was writing computer books years ago and almost landed it). Well, InterVarsity has found a nifty little niche with their “Pocket Dictionary” series. Check out their list at www.ivpress.com/cgi-ivpress/book.pl/code=2700. They kindly sent me three for this review.

Pocket Dictionary of Church History

This a handy little volume by Nathan Feldmeth. It’s one of the few dictionaries one might actually just sit down and read straight through. It’s also, of course, a quick reference for people, places, events, movements, and ideas that have occurred through the ages. With more than 300 definitions, it includes: terms from ad fontes to via media; leaders and theologians from Abelard to Zwingli; “isms” from Arminianism to Unitarianism; places and events from the Azusa Street Mission to the White Horse Inn; and councils from Nicaea to Vatican II. It also includes a nice chronology of the Church History on the back pages.

Picking a few of my personal interests that I’ve researched and written on, I found pretty good summaries of Athanasius, Calvin, Cranmer, Huss, Luther, Machen, Savonarola, and Tyndale, but only fair ones of Finney (soft on his horrendous weaknesses), Gottschalk (uses the unfortunate term “double predestination”) and Wyclife (omits that his remains were dug up and burned). Appallingly, Spurgeon is not even mentioned while Barth, Freud, Plato, and Billy Graham are!

A few other oddities include that while “dispensationalism,” “covenant theology,” “fundamentalism” and “liberalism” do appear, there is no entry for other movements, such as: reformation (shocking!), ecumenism, evangelicalism, modernism, neo-orthodoxy, charismatic movement, and others. This is only a 150-page book (4-1/4 x 7 inches), so another 25, or even 50, pages could have easily been added.

Bottom line, for only $8.00 retail, this is a handy volume. Even with its weaknesses, it does a fairly good job as a quick reference or basic overview of Church History.

(In a future post, I will review and recommend one of my favorite Church History texts.)

Pocket Dictionary of the Reformed Tradition

There is no question as to the richness of the Reformed tradition of Christianity. Whether one is reformed or not, he cannot ignore its influence and critical relationship to biblical doctrine.

Written by Kelly Kapic and Wesley Vander Lugt, this excellent little reference provides quick access to more than 300 entries, including: Latin terms such as ad fontes and the five solas; theologians from Calvin to Torrance; confessions such as the Belgic and Westminster; doctrines such as atonement and sanctification; and apologists such as Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van Til. It, too, like the above, could actually be read through at one’s leisure.

Other critical terms covered in this reference are: Arminianism, Baptists (Reformed), Calvinism, common grace, grace, lapsarian views, doctrines of grace, federal vision, Pelagianism, presuppositionalism, Puritanism, Reformed Theology, TULIP, and of course all the key individuals.

I was also pleasantly surprised at the “dispensationalism” entry; while containing the typical Reformed rhetoric of its introducing “discontinuity into the biblical story,” it is honest enough to add that even some Reformed theologians are dispensational. This pleased me since I am mildly dispensational but also reformed (little “r”), not Reformed (capital “R”).

In many ways, this volume is a must-have companion to the above book. What is not in one is often in the other. For example, while “ecumenism,” “evangelicalism,” “neo-orthodoxy,” “reformation,” and “Spurgeon” are not in the above, they are all here. In fact, IMHO, instead of separate volumes at $8.00 each, these two should be a single volume for $12.00. Nonetheless, I recommend it.

Pocket Dictionary for the Study of New Testament Greek

Penned by Matthew DeMoss, there is only one word for this book: excellent. Now, to be clear, this is not a dictionary of Greek vocabulary (as some users have misunderstood). Rather, it is dictionary of the technical terms of the language. For example, you can quickly lookup “case” or any one of the cases, “tense” or any one of them, and so forth. If I may interject, there could have been a little more concerning the “definite article.”

This is not only great for the beginner but also for those whose seminary days are past and they just need a quick reminder. For example: “I just can’t remember the contrast between the perfect and imperfect”; or, “What is that pesky predicate nominative?”; or “What’s that Granville Sharp Rule again?” or, “Don’t even get me started on all those genitives!”

I was also pleasantly surprised by the usually non-partisan definition of terms related to textual criticism, such as: Byzantine text type, codexes, conflation, critical text, eclectic text, majority text, and Textus Receptus. For the most part, it is just the facts with no agenda, although bias does show through in the pericope adulterae (Jn. 7:53–8:11) and the Johannine Comma (1 Jn. 5:7-8).

Because of my passion for the critical importance of the biblical languages for proper “exegesis” (yes, that’s in there, along with “eisegesis”), I highly recommend this little reference.

Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal

By: T. David Gordon

As I wrote concerning the predecessor of this book, Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers (reviewed above), the same goes for this one: I cannot recommend it highly enough (P&R Publishing). I have read several books addressing this issue, but this one is especially good. Gordon makes some observations that others overlook, which we’ll come back to in a moment.

Gordon again knows what he is talking about, since in addition to being currently professor of religion and Greek at Grove City College, he has also taught in the humanities and media culture. So, he doesn't make flippant remarks after a quick glance, rather observations based on careful scrutiny.

The observation that struck me the most profoundly was when Gordon pointed out today’s “insistence that many, most, or all forms of worship,” especially music, must “be contemporary.” This attitude is, in fact, unique to our day. Gordon goes on to make his point, a point I've not heard anyone else make:

My father’s generation did not demand that all hymns be written in big band idiom, and mine did not demand that they be written to sound like Eric Clapton or The Who. So why do we now find something unique in the history of the church: a considerable number of people who appear to believe sincerely that it is not merely permissible, but in some sense necessary or preferable to jettison hymns that previous generations employed? Why? (pp. 42-43).

Now, taking that to its next logical step, Gordon submits, in thirty years, when “the prevailing popular musical idiom of our culture” might very well be “gangsta rap,” will we then “be required to worship exclusively in this idiom” (p. 43)?

In the same vein, Gordon makes another observation I've not read elsewhere, namely, “the criterion of contemporaneity trumps all the criteria of all the hymnal-revision committees that ever labored.” With very few exceptions, such committees throughout history have weighed several factors in considering the merits of hymns, including:

theologically orthodox lyrics; theologically significant lyrics; literarily apt and thoughtful lyrics; lyrics and music appropriate to a meeting between God and his visible people; well-written music with regard to melody, harmony, rhythm, and form; and musical setting appropriate to the lyrical content (p. 47).

Most, if not all those, however, are thrown to the wind in today’s obsession with contemporaneity. “Only the most artistically gifted (or arrogant) of generations could possibly imagine that it could, in a single generation, be expected to produce a body of hymns that surpassed all previous hymns and rendered them obsolete” (p. 47). As Gordon observes elsewhere, “Ours is a contemporaneous culture—hook, line, and sinker. Nearly all the mediating institutions of our culture regard the past with contempt; the past is passé. We don't disagree with the past; we just pay it no attention at all. It was primitive, it was pre-electronic, and ‘wouldn't understand us today’” (p. 172). As is also true of historic doctrines, historical truths, and historic texts of Scripture, the common attitude of our day is that history is irrelevant, but we ignore it at our peril.

In an Appendix (pp. 187-88), Gordon also includes an extremely helpful and revealing table, taken from Kenneth A. Myers’ book, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Crossway, 1989). In a two-column comparison, he dramatically demonstrates the many differences between “Popular Culture” and “Traditional and High Culture.” Just a few include: focusing on the new vs. focusing on the timeless; emphasizing information and trivia vs. emphasizing knowledge and wisdom; celebrating fame vs. celebrating ability; appealing to sentimentality vs. appealing to appropriate, proportion emotions; and, most notably, tending toward relativism vs. tending toward submission to standards.

So, why does contemporaneity trump everything else? Even more to the point, however, Gordon submits, “Why does contemporaneity deserve to be included as a criterion at all, much less a criterion more important than all of these?” In fact, he goes on to ask something that is a truly scathing rebuke to the church today:

Why are there no signs outside churches that read: “Theologically Significant Worship,” or “Worship Appropriate to a Meeting between God and His Assembled People,” or “Worship That is Literarily Apt and Thoughtful”? Why do the signs say “Contemporary Worship,” as though that criterion were itself worthy of promoting? (p. 48)

Gordon also addresses the issues of form and content. Can anyone honestly deny that most contemporary music is basically superficial, often even trivial? Is such superficiality, therefore, appropriate to such subjects as: “repentance, sacrifice, obedience, and selflessness” (pp. 60–61)? “Would it make good sense, for instance, to take the lyrics of something like ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ and put it into a contemporary-sounding musical form” (p. 60)?

This is, I am convinced, a crucial point. I once heard Ligon Duncan ask a similar question: “Did you know that metrically you can sing ‘Amazing Grace’ to the tune of the old TV show ‘Gilligan’s Island,’ but would that be appropriate?”

Gordon also makes a powerful point when he reminds us: “The very existence of the expression sacred music once conveyed the notion that some music was different from other music, intentionally different, different precisely because it was devoted to a sacred (not common) cause” (p. 68, emphasis Gordon’s).

Gordon also takes on the popular adage, “This is just a matter of style. We like our kind of music, and older people like their kind of music.” But, as he well states, “traditional sacred music is not older people’s ‘kind of music.’” Such music remained unchanged no matter what the popular music was (such as the aforementioned big bands and The Who). “Such traditional forms are not ‘our’ music; they are the church’s music, and they antedate us by many generations” (pp. 75-76. emphasis Gordon’s).

Now, I have only one major criticism of Gordon’s work. While I most certainly agree that the guitar is the number one instrument of contemporary music, and while I also agree that it is overused (that is, almost exclusively) and misused (as in unskilled rhythmic strumming), I respectfully disagree that it is to be anathema, a point he makes several times. (I would also certainly agree, however, that the kazoo would be inappropriate, p. 50.) I have played the guitar for 40 years and have used it respectfully and reverently in churches. Gordon admits that he is not a musician, so to say that Martin Luther’s great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is our God,” cannot be accompanied on a guitar (p. 99) is a bit silly. It most certainly can, and I have done so. It is written in 4/4 time and a soft, smooth pick-pattern is quite reverent.

This reminded me of a situation a preacher friend of mine once faced. Part of his ministry at the time was music, of which his guitar was a part. A certain pastor came to him one day and said, “I couldn't allow you to come to my church because you use a guitar.” My friend asked why and the answer followed, “Oh, because it's a stringed instrument, and we feel that those are worldly.” My friend lovingly asked him, “Well, then, do you have a piano in your church? It, too, is a stringed instrument.” The pastor was noticeably taken off guard and blurted out his answer, “Well . . . yes, but you can't see the strings.”

I would humbly submit here that the problem often is not the instrument itself, but rather the incompetence of the one playing it. I am by no means a great guitarist, but I do know how to play it appropriately. Is the piano a classical instrument? Of course it is, but can it not also be used to play honky-tonk? Likewise, in the right hands a guitar is also a classical instrument, while, granted, in the wrong hands it is worse than inappropriate.

That aside, Gordon’s overall arguments (IMHO) are compelling. He recounts an incident with which I will close this review. His former colleague, author and professor David Wells, encountered a seminary student one day at the photocopier. Wells was copying a draft of the book he was writing: Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern Word (Eerdmans, 2005). The student thought the title interesting so Wells told her it was from Luther’s hymn, to which she replied that she was not familiar with it. “Imagine,” Gordon writes incredulously, “a student at a theological seminary who has never heard ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God!’”

That does, indeed, underscore where the church is headed. If we keep going the way we are now, how long will it be before other great hymns not only vanish from use but even from our memory? 

Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers

By: T. David Gordon

Let me say right out of the gate that I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It should be mandatory reading both for men training for the ministry and men already there. It is among the most important books of its kind to be written in our modern era.

I have read many books on preaching (e.g., Preaching and Preachers by Martyn Lloyd-Jones literally changed my life and ministry), but this one is unique. Though barely 100 pages, it directly confronts the lack of good preaching that characterizes the Church today and provides reasons why this has occurred. Gordon claims, in fact, that of all the sermons he’s heard in the last 25 years, only 15% had a discernible point and that of these less than 10% based their point on the text that was read. While some readers would immediately scream, “Oh, that’s just anecdotal evidence!” such evidence cannot be avoided (or ignored) here; trends must be observed and reported on, and that is what Gordon is doing. (A. W. Tozer, for instance, did the same thing in his day.) Besides, this would still be a sad condition if the first percentage where “only” 50 and the second was any number.

Gordon also reports something he has encountered about 100 times and which I too have heard uncounted times in my own almost 40 years of ministry, namely, church members who verify that their pastor doesn’t preach very well. When asked, “What do you think of your minister,” the reply is usually, “Well, he’s not a good preacher, but . . .” (22). The answer I have heard repeatedly is, “Well, he’s not a very good preacher, but he has a pastor’s heart,” which of course totally ignores the one specific requirement of a pastor as far as his job description is concerned: he must be a skilled teacher (1 Tim. 3:2; cf. Acts 20:27–31). This is non-negotiable.

The first fundamental reason for this breakdown in preaching, Gordon insists, is that men can’t read, that is, they can’t read texts (chapter 2). “There is a profound difference between reading information and reading texts,” he writes, “reading a text is a laboriously slow process” (42). Many ministers “read the Bible the same way they read everything else . . . for its most overt content . . . but they don’t raise question about how the passage is constructed” (46, emphasis Gordon’s). Why? Because our electronic media culture has trained them to do this. Gordon should know of what he speaks, since in addition to being currently professor of religion and Greek and Grove City College, he has also taught in the humanities and media culture.

The second reason, Gordon contends, is that neither can men write anymore (chapter 3). While we once had a culture that was demonstrably “articulate, thoughtful, and well-composed” in its writing (67), look at where we are today. (If I may interject, Facebook, Twitter, IMing, and texting are graphic examples; that is, of course, in my humble opinion—oh, I meant to type IMHO.)

I especially appreciated Gordon’s emphasis on the great 19^th-century theologian Robert L. Dabney and his classic book on homiletics, Sacred Rhetoric: or a Course of Lectures on Preaching (1870). In it Dabney delineates “The Seven Requisites of Preaching,” of which Gordon comments: “These seven requisites (not excellencies, but requisites) are seven minimal requirements that Dabney believed (and his reviewers agreed) were essential to every sermon. None of these categories is subjective; each is perfectly susceptible of objective evaluation.” Gordon then goes on to list and briefly summarize them: textual fidelity; unity; evangelical tone; instructiveness; movement; point; and order (23–28). As he also observes, and which is again demonstrably true, these are “manifestly absent” in most pulpits today.

A final problem in preaching today, Gordon submits in chapter 4, is that preaching is often not Christ-centered, having been replaced by four flawed alternatives: moralism, how-to, introspection, and social gospel/so-called culture war.  He also adds a brief note on “the contemporaneist/emergent alternative, which is to dispense with expository preaching altogether, since it is regarded by them as passé” (79[f11]). None of this truly feeds God’s people (74), which again is the pastor’s function.

I do have some criticisms of the book, and while they are minor I think they are worth noting. First, as a former professor at Gordon-Conwell Seminary for 13 years, Gordon insists that the fault of all this does not lie at the doorstep of our seminaries (34–41). Granted, there are many good men in our seminaries, such as Gordon-Conwell’s own Haddon Robinson and others elsewhere. But I humbly submit that this is simply not true across the board. First, I have heard men fresh our of good seminaries who are not good preachers. Second, I have also many times over the years been able to know where a man went to school just by hearing him preach (and that often was not a good thing). I would also submit that even if a school teaches homiletics flawlessly, it still must assume part of the responsibility if it goes ahead and graduates a man who can’t preach. Second, I am also a bit troubled about Gordon’s suggestion that churches should perform an “annual review” of the pastor using “carefully designed survey questions” or even by phone calls (97–99). This simply is not biblical and is a non-issue if a man is truly anointed of God. Third, I just cringed when in reference to when writing “one begins a sentence, partway through realizes that it cannot be successfully completed, and therefore begins again” Gordon dubbed this with the “inelegant” term “sentence f---” (39). Sorry, but I think that comes from the very culture he criticizes. A wordsmith (which Gordon clearly is) can do better than that.

Minor criticisms aside, this is an extremely important and pertinent book for our day. I recommend it highly.

NOTE: My next post will review Gordon’s second book: Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal.