A Peek Into Reading Habits

For almost 30 years now I’ve tried to read a book a week and a book a month. This is incredibly modest compared to Rushdoony’s habit of reading a book a day. Usually, I’ve been able to exceed my goals but I’ve not increased the goals in order to stay realistic. I’ve also attempted to scatter my reading hither and yon. I try to read novels (last summer I read my first Jane Austen novels), history, theology, economics, sociology, anthropology, ethics, educational theory, political science, philosophy of science, philosophy, ontology, epistemology, hermeneutics, Worldview, presuppositionalism, etc.. In all my reading there is one emphasis I try to consciously return to frequently and that is some reading that concentrates on the person and work of Christ. Sometimes I get frustrated over not being able to read fast enough. My book queue mocks me all the time. One reason that it is difficult for me to write is that it takes away from my time to read.

My book of the month is generally a really fat book that goes into depth on some particular subject. These books are generally 400-700 pages long. My book of the week is generally a book that is shorter (200-400 pages) and deals with something in a less in depth fashion. The two to these combined I call my ‘deep reading’ (background reading). I also do a great deal of what I style, ‘wide reading.’ This is reading that is done out of journals, magazines, periodicals, online websites, and newspapers. I’ve never tried to keep specific track of the amount of wide reading I do.

As I read I talk back to my books with underlining, notes in the margins and asterisks in order to mark something especially striking.

Anyway, I thought that I would try to keep a running record here of what I am reading through the year. My book of the Month for February I completed last Sunday. It was Carl F. H. Henry’s first Volume in his God, Revelation and Authority series. It spend a good deal of time tracing the history of a-priorism distinguishing Christian a-priorism (Augustine, Anselm) from non-Christian expressions. While I didn’t understand all the explanations I did understand that the problem with non-Christian expressions of a-priorism is that they don’t anchor the a-priori in Biblical Revelation and the mind of God. They end up anchoring into subjective categories that can’t hold up under close scrutiny.

My book of this past week I finished today and it was Gene Veith’s ‘Modern Fascism.’ I had read this one once before several years ago but the recent release of Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ took me back to it. I wanted to refresh my memory before I picked up Goldberg. Veith examines Fascism and especially concentrates on how it purposely attacks Transcendence. Veith’s theme seems to be that much that grows out of the Fascist attack on Transcendence accounts for how Fascism takes place. Veith thus labors to show that Fascism is a self conscious attack on Christianity.

My book of the month for March will be Goldberg’s ‘Liberal Fascism’ and Henry’s second volume of ‘God, Revelation, & Authority.’ My book for the week next week is Neil Postman’s ‘The End Of Education.’

I also received the March issue of Chronicles so I will be filling up the corners with that as well for the next few weeks. I highly recommend Chronicles. They do a good job of cultural analysis and if you can re-interpret past the overtly Roman Catholic flavor that sometimes leaks through it is a fabulous magazine. I earnestly wish there was something of this quality that was being done by Reformed guys.

Wheaton, Wallis, Wilson & Buggery

Doug Wilson is linking to a report

(http://www.onenewsnow.com/Education/Default.aspx?id=67733)

that has Wheaton College inviting Jim Wallis to speak at Wheaton. Now the unique thing about Wallis is that he claims the effort to legitimize homosexual relationships in the law is “a justice issue.” This invitation to Wallis comes on the heels of a previous invitation to and appearance of a pro-buggery ‘Christian’ activist to speak to the student body.

Wilson’s take on this is that it is perfectly legitimate for Christian campuses to extend these kinds of invitations and on one level I understand Wilson’s view. Wilson believes that if Colleges invite these kind of people it should be akin to lions inviting the Christians over to their place for supper. Let the pagans come in and let them try and defend their paganism before a well educated Christian student body.

However there is another angle to this I want to briefly examine. Clearly when these kinds of people are given platforms in our Christian Colleges we are communicating some kind of tacit acceptability. We are admitting that the issue is now worthy of being discussed publicly in the Christian arena thus perhaps communicating a certain legitmacy to the perversion du jour.

Let me give an extreme example that I hope makes my point. What would people think if Wheaton College invited a pederast or pedophile or someone who like to bed farm animals to come and declare that these kind of perversions are ‘justice issues.’ Now I think (definitely not sure) that people would freak out over such an invitation precisely because such perversions are clearly beyond the pale. After all, who is nut case enough to actually want to listen to that kind of disgust? Is an invitation, to come speak at a Christian college, extended to somebody who is pro-buggery, indicative of the fact that among Christians Homosexuality is no longer seen as beyond the pale — every bit as detestable as pederasty, pedophilia, or bestiality?

Critiquing Veith From A Transcendent Reference Point

“The politicization of the Gospel is a project of both liberals and conservatives in American Christianity. While Biblical Christianity has a responsibility to bear witness to a transcendent ethic and on that basis to criticize social evils, the danger comes when that transcendent focus is lost and the Church sells out to a secular ideology. Today the ‘crude salvationism’ and ‘other worldliness’ of traditional religion are giving way to elaborate efforts to use Christianity to sanction a political agenda. Liberation theology promotes a socialist utopia; fundamentalists who follow ‘reconstructionism’ promote a theocratic state. The German Christians would be able to agree with both of them.”

Gene Edward Veith Jr.
Modern Fascism — Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview

I’ve been over this kind of thing before but since the mistake that it represents is so prevalent in so much literature I will deal with it again here.

Veith in his book is warning about the possibility for Fascism to come to the fore once again in the West. Much of what he says in this regard is simply outstanding, though this quote leaves much to be desired. The problems with it are as follows,

1.) I agree that because of the Transcendent reference point that we find in the personal God of the Bible we must criticize social evil. However criticizing is not enough. It is not enough to say, that something is wrong without offering a Biblical alternative. A Transcendent reference point not only provides us the ability to critique social evil but it also provides the ability to promote social good. If on one hand we are allowed to criticize evil political agendas then on the other hand we must offer something that approximates a Christian political agenda.

2.) It must be agreed that the politicization of the Gospel is a project of both liberals and conservatives. The question we must ask is whether or not it is possible to have a politics from nowhere. Is it possible for a Politics to exist that is not beholden to some faith or belief system? The problem isn’t that people want to derive a politics from Chrisitianity. This is unavoidable and inevitable. The problem is when we politicize a Gospel that is not the Gospel and end up with a politicization of some other belief system that we wrongly say is expressive of the Gospel (Veith’s ‘selling out to secular ideology’). We will be forever in the position of criticizing social evils unless by God’s grace we get a politics that grows up out of the soil of Christianity.

3.) While we must continue to emphasize the ‘other worldliness’ of Christianity we must not emphasize it in such a way that it becomes disconnected from this world. It remains possible to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Certainly Jesus saves us from our sin (Veith’s ‘crude salvationism’) and makes us fit to live with Him in heaven but between then and now lies a tract of time that needs to be spent on doing His will here as it is done in heaven, and God’s will applies to every area of life, including politics. Let us remain other-worldly and let us bring that other-worldliness and incarnate it into this world.

4.) When Veith talks about ‘German Christians’ agreeing with the notion of a Theocratic State he isn’t being complimentary. But the problem with the German Christians wasn’t that they had a Theocratic State the problem is that the Theocratic State was beholden to the wrong God. Veith seems to think that having a Theocratic State is avoidable but this would be to introduce neutrality in to our thinking. Every State is Theocratic. The State we currently live in is Theocratic. It is never a question of being Theocratic or not being Theocratic. It is only a question of which Theocracy that a people are going to have. Currently we are governed by the God of the people. We call this Democracy but that is just a Theocratic system where Demos is God (The voice of the people is the voice of God). Veith, like many in the West, seems to think that a State can be set up that isn’t in service to some God somewhere. We fault the German Christians for setting up the Theocratic State that they set up. We fault them because the God of the Bible was pushed aside for a false God in that Theocratic State. Their mistake wasn’t a Theocratic State. Their mistake was idolatry.

No Longer A Center To Hold

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

Wm. Butler Yeats

Over at the Bayly Brothers blog they are arguing against egalitarianism. In the recent past they have argued, along with J. P. Moreland, that the Church is over-committed to the Bible. At Greenbaggins it is always Federal Vision and its errors that have the Church in grave peril. At Heidleblog people who hold to post-millenialism are said to have the same eschatological doctrine of the Pharisees. Post-millenialists talk about the lack of testosterone in the diet of a-millenialists. At Mablog Wilson repeatedly has his spin-cycle in full gear against the ‘TR’s’. Federo Schism is always happy to tell us the evil machinations of Christ Church in Moscow Idaho while many people root him on. Westminster East is in danger of going ‘fundamentalistic’ according to the ‘Save Our Seminary’ website, while those who like Westminster East just the way it is insists that those who oppose it are closet liberals. Natural theology tries to make a comeback while MARS Seminary seeks to shoot it out of the air before it can take wing.

Wilkins has fled the PCA. Horne calls his enemies everything but ‘white men.’ In the Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the PCA it sounds like they are beginning to investigate Peter Leithart for doctrinal inaccuracies (Can Robert Rayburn be far behind?). James Jordan’s vitriol is so acidic that Terrorists are trying to figure out how to bottle it so they can wipe out a few cities. Westminster West hates Theonomy and Theonomists don’t think to highly of Westminster West. Reformed people are now beginning earnest arguments over whether union with Christ is logically prior to justification or justification is prior to union with Christ (yes, there are real implications). The Enlightenment Theologians (Rationalists) in Reformedom can’t live with the Romantic Theologians (Romanticists) and the Romanticists swear that Ichabod is written over the Rationalist denominations.

Examples could be repeated ad nauseam reciting the conflict that is currently taking place in the Reformed World. Maybe it has always been this way, but my instincts tell me that this seems to be time where the center cannot hold. Maybe all of this is the legacy of the Postmodern virus which has the capability of eating away at meta-narratives, leaving in its wake division among people who used to be able to live with their differences. People don’t typically know this but it used to be the case that if you were attached to a Reformed denomination you could walk into one of those congregations anywhere in these United States and you would find little difference in the liturgy and service of that worship. Post-modernism has made it so every Church’s liturgy and service are as different as the different warring parties in every denomination. Maybe it is more benign then that. Maybe it is as simply a case where we are living in a time that is calling for the Reformed faith to be re-interpreted, and re-applied. There are always people who prefer the status quo to any perceived innovation. Maybe it is as simple as our ability to instantly communicate has caused us to realize just how many differences we have — differences we otherwise wouldn’t have known that we had if it weren’t for the ability to instantly communicate.

People often don’t realize the kinds of times they are living in until they are already on the other side of those times. I would have to say, like it or not, that our times are times for fighting. It is quickly getting to the point where there is no broad consensus that can be appealed to in order to find compromise on a host of different issues. This is a time where a new consensus must be created and not when consensus is returned to. Inevitably that means conflict.

I have to believe that once all this washes out the Reformed World in America is going to look very differently than it currently does.

By way of postscript, I can’t help but note that in the 19th century the warfare and division of denominations in America served as harbinger for the coming warfare and division in the Nation as a whole. Sometimes I wonder if we are on the edge of that kind of cultural division.

Not a prediction… just an observation.