Reformed Learning

Tony Reinke Academics, Education, Reading, spurgeon ,

I doubt I’ve read a better-articulated summary of the Calvinist approach to learning than the one I recently came across while reading Scholarship and Christian Faith by Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (Oxford, 2004). On page 26 they write:

“…the academic disciplines are, for the most part, expressions of humanity’s sinful revolt against God. They are manifestations of human arrogance, symbols of humanity’s prideful claim that it can fully understand the world without any reference to God. But Calvinists know there is always room for surprise. Even the most mature Christians still harbor the seeds of sin within them and thus can be mistaken. What is more, God can, through the gift of common grace, sometimes allow the unregenerate to see truths that the righteous have ignored, overlooked, or misconstrued. Because that is the case, Reformed Christian scholars must be ready to be tutored on occasion by both their non-Reformed fellow believers and by their secular academic peers. This will surely be the case with matters of fact and sometimes even with regard to issues of philosophy and faith. Still, the assumption is that on most matters of scholarship Christians will see things more clearly than their non-Christian colleagues.”

Vocation

Tony Reinke Dorothy Sayers

From Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos? (Manchester, 1974), page 52:

“A very able surgeon put it to me like this: ‘What is happening is that nobody works for the sake of getting the thing done. The actual result of the work is a by-product; the aim of the work is to make money to do something else. Doctors practice medicine, not primarily to relieve suffering, but to make a living—the cure of the patient is something that happens on the way. Lawyers accept briefs, not because they have a passion for justice, but because the law is the profession which enables them to live. The reason why men often find themselves happy and satisfied in the army is that for the first time in their lives they find themselves doing something, not for the sake of the pay, which is miserable, but for the sake of getting the thing done.’”

HT: Ray Ortlund

Accustomed grace, how stale the sound

Tony Reinke BR > Reformation Trust, Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Grace, Sinclair Ferguson

From Sinclair Ferguson’s latest By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me (Reformation Trust, 2010), page xiv:

“A chief reason for the weakness of the Christian church in the West, for the poverty of our witness and any lack of vitality in our worship, probably lies here: we sing about ‘amazing grace’ and speak of ‘amazing grace,’ but far too often it has ceased to amaze us. Sadly, we might more truthfully sing of ‘accustomed grace.’ We have lost the joy and energy that are experienced when grace seems truly amazing.”

Ethics course with John Frame

Tony Reinke Ethics, John Frame

Thanks to Dr. Richard Pratt and his organization thirdmill.org a number of seminary-level courses are available online (for free) and ethics with Frame is one of the offerings. Titled “Making Biblical Decisions” the 10-part course is nearly 10 hours in length and includes the following sessions:

  • Ethics in Scripture
  • Normative Perspective: God and His Word
  • Normative Perspective: The Attributes of Scripture
  • Normative Perspective: Parts and Aspects of Scripture
  • The Situational Perspective: Revelation and Situation
  • Situational Perspective: Pursuing Our Goal
  • Situational Perspective: Understanding the Facts
  • The Existential Perspective: Being Good
  • The Existential Perspective: Intending Good
  • Existential Perspective: Choosing Good

The lectures are all currently available as video downloads and many of them are available as mp3 audio downloads, too. But getting to the files can be like buttoning the cuff of a shirt sleeve. Here’s how to find them: Click here and let the page fully load. Then look for the link that reads “Making Biblical Decisions” (see near the bottom of the left-hand column).

On a related note, Frame is the author of a very helpful textbook on ethics, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (1,100 pages!). It’s worth owning and reading carefully.

Cultural Progress and the Gospel

Tony Reinke Culture, Herman Bavinck

Many years ago Herman Bavinck wrote that as culture is cultured there will inevitably bring a realization that the progress of culture making cannot resolve man’s fundamental problems. In fact, he writes, as culture develops the problems of the human heart are left unresolved and ever more exposed. “For while all culture satisfies needs,” he writes, “it also creates and arouses needs.” Of course this cultural regress in the midst of assumed cultural progress sets the stage for the advance of the gospel. I think this is an apt idea that is worthy of further consideration. Here’s the relevant section from Reformed Dogmatics 3:32­7–328:

…human beings have at their disposal many means to maintain themselves in the struggle of existence and to protect themselves against the forces of violence. They are not alone but live in communities. They can combine forces with others and seek strength in union. They have brains to think with, hands to work with, and can by labor and struggle conquer, establish, and expand a place for themselves in the world.

It is noteworthy, however, that all theses aids and supports are not enough for them. However much people may have achieved culturally, they are never satisfied with it and do not attain the redemption for which they are thirsting. For while all culture satisfies needs, it also creates and arouses needs. While, on the one hand, culture prompts them to take pride in the great progress they have made, on the other, it gives them a progressively clearer sense of the long road they still have to travel. To the degree people subdue the world under their feet, to that degree they feel more and more dependent on those heavenly forces against which, with their limited power and puny means, they avail nothing. To the extent they solve problems, to that extent they see the riddles of the world and of life multiply and increase in complexity.

As they dream of progress and civilization, they at the same time see opening up before them the instability and futility of the existing world. Culture has great, even incalculable, advantages but also brings with it its own peculiar drawbacks and dangers. “The more abundantly the benefits of civilization come streaming our way, the emptier our life becomes.”

This is why, in addition to culture, there has always been religion. Rather, religion preceded culture, and culture everywhere came to birth and maturity under the influence of religion. If the ills of humanity were caused by culture, they could certainly be cured in no way other than by culture. But the ills we have in mind are native to the human heart, which always remains the same, and culture only brings them out. With all its wealth and power, it only shows that the human heart, in which God has put eternity [Eccles. 3:11], is so huge that all the world is too small to satisfy it.

Human beings are in search of another and better redemption than culture can give them. They are looking for lasting happiness, an enduring eternal good. They are thirsting for a redemption that saves them physically as well as spiritually, for time but also for eternity. And this only religion, and nothing else, can give them. God alone can give it to them, not science or art, civilization or culture. For that reason redemption is a religious concept, is found in all religions, and is almost always coupled with the idea of reconciliation. For the redemption that humans seek and need is one in which they are lifted up above the whole world into communion with God. [text boldness is mine]