I finished Paul’s Theology of Preaching: The Apostle’s Challenge to the Art of Persuasion in Ancient Corinth by Duane Litfin. It’s a masterwork of biblical exegesis. He reveals a gospel-shaped rhetoric that is perfectly tailored for preaching. Loved it. 📚
This guy is perfectly mimicking our grape vine, just not on the grape vine.
Master, the scribes are getting restless.
Proverbs tells us that fools ignore the world God has made. They live their lives against the grain and then suffer for it. Wise people, on the other hand, reflect on the world, learn from it, and tend to succeed.
But you can’t reflect on something you haven’t observed. Wisdom starts with paying attention. You have to look around and spend time noticing things.
If that makes sense to you but you’re not sure what to look at, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, a U.K. graphic designer who founded the Cloud Appreciation Society, suggests in his TED talk that you look at—you guessed it—the clouds.
Most of us, he says, ignore the clouds until they block the sun. And then we notice them only as “annoying, frustrating obstructions,” before we “rush off and do some blue-sky thinking.”
That being said…
most people, when you stop to ask them, will admit to harboring a strange sort of fondness for clouds. It’s like a nostalgic fondness, and they make them think of their youth.
Who here can’t remember thinking of looking and finding shapes in the clouds when they were kids? You know, when you were masters of daydreaming.
It’s just that these days, us adults seem reluctant to allow ourselves the indulgence of just allowing our imaginations to drift along in the breeze. And I think that’s a pity. I think we should perhaps do a bit more of it.
I think we should be a bit more willing, perhaps, to look at the beautiful sight of the sunlight bursting out from behind the clouds. And go wait a minute - there’s two cats dancing the salsa, or seeing the big - the big, white, puffy one up there over the shopping center looks like the abominable snowman going to rob a bank.”
These were the clouds outside my study window tonight.
Excerpt: Notes Nearing Ninety: Learning to Write Less by Donald Hall (HT: aldaily.com)
I had planned to start teaching A Stronger Servant last week but had to postpone in order to prepare for my new sermon series on wisdom. These sermons and this class should be mutually reinforcing. I’m getting pretty excited about it.
Definition of the wisdom of God:
That perfection of God by which He uses His knowledge for the attainment of His ends in the way that glorifies Him most.
💬 Geerhardus Vos
I just noticed that the Kindle editions of Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics are 80% off right now, only $5.99 per volume! They’re usually about $25/ea. I bought all five and I’m so happy to finally have these.
Want free Greek/Latin lessons taught by an A+ classicist and educator? Check out latinperdiem.com by my friend, David Noe (Calvin College).
In that last Gregory quote, Gregory was commenting on the book of Jonah. I thought I was done preaching on Jonah for now, but a farmer asked me: Aren’t you going to preach on the last four words, “and also much cattle”? So, one more week. 😊
I’ll have whatever he’s having tonight 👉 @ayjay
For God alone of all things cannot be escaped from or contended with; if He wills to seize and bring them under His hand, He outstrips the swift, He outwits the wise, He overthrows the strong, He abases the lofty, He subdues rashness, He represses power.
💬 Gregory of Nazianzus
Headnote: This post talks about two different ways you can mark your work for re-use via Creative Commons. Here are summaries of CC0 and CC-BY, if you’re interested.
Originally I planned to use the CC-BY attribution license for my Westminster Shorter Catechism revision project (WSC-IV). The CC-BY license supports a culture of attribution on the web and makes the creation process more transparent. I like this about CC-BY, but for this project I decided on CC0 instead. I did this because CC0 doesn’t prohibit attribution, but by not requiring it CC0 removes every barrier to use.
My dream is that WSC-IV will be used, in part or in whole, to create a revised catechism that is authorized and shared by several denominations. And I want WSC-IV to be as useful as possible toward that goal. But in preparing the project I came to see that though the licensing requirements of CC-BY are really low, those requirements can still create barriers I don’t want.
For example, in a conversation on StackExchange, one person says they have worked for companies that by policy never use any kind of licensed material. And another person points out that the CC-BY license does have some additional hoops to jump through other than attribution (e.g. CC-BY also requires notification that attribution does not imply endorsement.) The basic concern is this: Any barrier to use is may slow down or stop use, and those who know that in advance may not even bother to begin. This doesn’t make CC-BY a bad license, just not the one for WSC-IV.
WSC-IV is a provisional project explicitly intended to be used by others. It’s like a generous community garden where the plants are grown by others specifically to feed the community. CC0 is the sign on the garden that welcomes you in and hands you a basket.
This seems like the best way to me to encourage church committees, or others working on their own revisions, to freely copy and revise without a second thought. CC0 is the best way I know to throw the gates open and encourage use and collaborative editing. So I hope you’ll use it, share WSC-IV with others, and contribute to the annotations. Soli Deo gloria.
📚 I loved Duane Litfin’s big-picture intro to Greco-Roman rhetoric in part one of this book. I’ve read a lot of other books on both ancient and modern rhetoric; I wished had read this one first. Oh well, now to part two: preaching and rhetoric according to Paul.
Use your frequent flyer miles to help families separated at the border (HT: Lifehacker)
My wife just turned a big dream into a reality and finished painting the first of THREE large murals at Tucson Dance Academy. So proud of her! See the progress shots at Della Chelpka Arts. She’s amazing! 🤩
It would be better for us to talk about attributes of canonicty instead of criteria of canonicty. Michael Kruger gives reasons for this in his book Canon Revisited, which he summarized on his blog today.
📚 Finished reading: Divine Covenants and Moral Order: A Biblical Theology of Natural Law by David VanDrunen. Theologians and ethicists, read this book!
Google has released its 2018 Scholar Metrics. You can see the most-cited articles from among the journals indexed by Google from Jan 2013 to July 2018. Here are the top 20 journals matching “theology” and the top 20 for “religion”.
A new version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is under way. And anyone can help. 🚀
⛪️ In my recent sermon on Psalm 139, I compare Jonah’s feelings about the presence of God to David’s. You can learn a lot about true spirituality this way.
My son wants to teach himself how to code. He’s eleven. Any suggestions?
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?”
— Wisdom in Proverbs 1:22
I’m planning to preach a series of sermons on the subject of wisdom. To prepare, I’m reading and thinking a lot about the book of the Bible called Proverbs. What else would you suggest?
“Like any other life-sustaining resource, language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants…. it needs the protection of those who recognize its value and commit themselves to good stewardship.”
—Marilyn Chandler McEntyre