Compassion and acceptance

In Bangalore last week Robin and I visited Accept, a ministry to people with HIV/AIDS. This includes a hospice and a children's home. Their website has several challenging articles about practicing compassion and mercy, including one by John Piper and by the founder Raju K Matthew.

Proof texts for anti-intellectualism

In his book Think John Piper gives a detailed exegesis of two key passages that are often used to justify anti-intellectualism within Christianity

[Jesus said]
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children"
Luke 10:21-24

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 1:20-24

Piper's conclusion is that the real issue here is attitude, it not intelligence versus "simplicity" but rather pride versus humility. Children represent humility and dependance. Wisdom here represents the arrogance of Greek wisdom/scholarship which exalted man. There are intelligent people who are humble and "simple" people who are proud. It is also not an issue of educated versus uneducated.

The question is who is exalted: God or man? A key part of hearing and believing the Gospel means being humble enough to acknowledge that one cannot save oneself. Only God can save us.

John Piper plays Chinese whispers with Einstein

John Piper's book Think has an Appendix: "The Earth is the Lord's: The Supremacy of Christ in Christian Learning, Biblical Foundations for Bethlehem College and Seminary". In it he states:

Albert Einstein's indictment of preachers illustrates what I am trying to say. Charles Misner, a scientific specialist in general relativity theory, was quoted this way: 

     "I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious   question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business . . . It’s very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing. My guess is that he simply felt that religions he’d run across did not have proper respect . . . for the author of the universe."

Scientists know that light travels at the speed of 5.87 trillion miles a year. They also know the galaxy of which our solar system is a part is about 100,000 light-years in diameter-about 587 thousand trillion miles. It is one of about a million such galaxies in the optical range of our most powerful telescopes. In our galaxy there are about one hundred billion stars. The sun is one of them, a modest star burning at about 6,000 degrees centigrade on the surface and traveling in an orbit at 155 miles per second, which means it will take about two hundred million years to complete a revolution around the galaxy. 

Scientists know these things. Einstein was awed by them. He felt something like this: “If there is a personal God, as the Christians say, who spoke this universe into being, then there is a certain respect and reverence and wonder and dread that would have to come through when we talk about him. And certainly we would be talking about him all the time since he is the most important reality.”

Note that in the last paragraph Piper directly constructs what he thinks Einstein's views were.

I found it interesting to trace the lineage of these views attributed to Einstein. The Desiring God website shows three previous talks, going back to 1993, where Piper has used the Misner quote. A Google search on "Piper Einstein Misner" shows a lot of people  have picked up on Piper's argument.

For the Misner quote Piper references an editorial in First Things by Richard John Neuhaus.

That references an article by Daniel Kevles in the NewYork Review of Books.

Did Charles Misner discuss these matters with Einstein? Perhaps. Misner was a graduate student at Princeton beginning in 1952. Einstein died in Princeton in 1955.

Misner's thesis advisor was John Archibald Wheeler, who did have extensive interactions with Einstein over the years. Misner's views may have been shaped by Wheeler's view of Einstein's view.

But what did Einstein actually think, as opposed to what people think he thought or wished that he thought?
He did write about religion and his views have been analysed in detail in a book by Max Jammer. An earlier post Einstein on Religion contains an extensive quote from Einstein. It shows that his real problem was not the quality or passion of the preaching he heard but the concept of a personal God.

It is disappointing to me that Piper did not use primary sources to establish Einstein's actual views.

But, I have a larger problem with invoking Einstein in such discussions. It is really an argument from authority. Einstein is certainly an authority on theoretical physics.
But the problem is that Einstein is not an authority on preaching, theology, or ethics. So why should his view carry any more weight than other "wise" or "foolish" person.

Afterword: I really do still like the book Think. I am just practicing what it advocates: think and ask questions about what you read!

Think about it

My son and I are reading through Think by John Piper.
He considers the perennial question of the role of the intellect in Christian faith and life. He argues that reason, thought, and the intellect have a significant role to play when combined with faith and the emotions. It is not a case of either/or but both/and.

One of his main practical points is that thinking involves reading and asking questions about what one reads, particularly the Bible. This main seem a basic point but it is a valuable one, particularly because this requires discipline and practice. Piper acknowledges his debt to Mortimer Adler's classic, How to Read a Book.

Are you beavering away at work?

This week I am in a group that is looking at the chapter, "Making much of Christ from 8 to 5", from John Piper's book, Don't waste your life.

I like the following paragraph. He points out that beavers are diligent, industrious, purposeful, skilful, and "subdue the earth". How are we different?

No beaver or bee or hummingbird or ant consciously relies on God. No beaver ponders the divine pattern of order and beauty and makes a moral choice to pursue excellence because God is excellent. No beaver ever pondered the preciousness and purpose of God and decided for God’s sake to make a dam for another beaver and not for himself. But humans have all these potentials, because we are created in God’s image. We are created to image forth God in these ways. When God commissions us to subdue the earth—to shape it and use it—he doesn’t mean do it like a beaver. He means do it like a human, a morally self-conscious person who is responsible to do his work intentionally for the glory of his Maker.

John Piper, Don't waste your life, page 140.

                                                

Forthcoming talks in Brisbane

Tomorrow night I am going to hear Nancy Murphey speak on Did my neurons make me do it? There will be a response to the lecture from Peter Harrison.

At a different forum, Thursday night is John Piper on Don't waste your life!

The Gospel is bad news to the self-sufficient

Since this week I gave two talks based on Acts 17:16-34, I have followed my wife's honoured practice of seeing what John Piper has to say on the passage! He has a nice sermon Why God Cannot Be Served But Loves to Serve which focuses on verses 24-25

The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 

Piper makes two main points about the fact God is not Served by Human Hands.
1. It is bad news to the self-sufficient (particularly the morally "upright")
2. It is good news to the weak.

1. Was bad news to Saul (before he became Paul) because, "His whole identity hung on serving God with resolve and strength and rigor and accuracy and beyond all his contemporaries. This was his identity. This was his boast and significance."

Piper links the Acts passage to Mark 10:45, "Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Piper states:

God is so great and so self-sufficient that he cannot be served as though he needed anything, and his Son Jesus Christ is so great and so valuable that his death in our place is a sufficient ransom to pay all our debt to God. The question is, will we believe this, and will we receive God's service of us as the most precious gift in the world? Believing. Receiving. Not serving. That's the posture of a person who is right with God. God sets us right through the death of his Son in our place and we receive this right standing, this peace and acceptance and hope not by working for God, but by trusting in his work for us.

Why pastors should blog

Abraham Piper has a good post, 6 reasons why pastors should blog, on the Desiring God site.

Indeed, I think the same applies to anyone in leadership.

Is Academia paradise?

One thing that caught my attention and bewilderment in John Piper's talk The Pastor as Scholar: a Personal Journey was his discussion on his struggle to leave his position teaching at Bethel College and take a position as a pastor. He says,

I knew what this would mean to leave the world of academia.

• It would mean no more Summers free to read and study and write.
• It would mean endless administrative pressures and challenges.
• It would mean an uncontrollable schedule.
• It would mean an audience who would not want or reward academic prowess but pastoral warmth and presence.
• It would mean funerals and weddings and baptisms and counseling and hospital visitation and emergencies and conflict resolution and staff management.
• It would mean that the days of publishing articles in New Testament Studies and Theologische Zeitscrift and the days of being on the cutting edge of any scholarly discipline were over.
• It would mean pressure to write a sermon or two or three every week would be relentless.

I don't doubt that this is what it meant to Piper. However, for the record his experience in academia is anomalous. Be assured that in the twenty-first century in practically any university or theological college there is plenty of administrative pressure, staff management, conflict resolution, lack of reward of academic prowess, ...

John Piper's disillusionment with theological scholarship

In John Piper's talk at a symposium, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor, in Chicago, he gave this critique of the theological academy, largely based on his experience doing a doctorate at the University of Munich.

I was disillusioned by such scholarship.

• Driven by the need for peer approval.
• Using technical jargon that only insiders understand and that often conceals ambiguity.
• A speculative focus in object and methodology (Formgeschichte, Traditionsgeschichte, andRedaktionsgeschichte, and Sachkritik) that gave rise to scholarly articles which began in the mode ofWahrscheinlichkeit and by the end had been transformed into the mode of Sicherheit by the waving of the wand of scholarly consensus.
• Using linguistic skills to create vagueness and conceal superficiality.
• Not pressing the question of meaning until it yields the riches of theological truth.
• Not having the smell of heaven or hell, nor seeming to care much about lostness.
• Not letting exultation into their explanations, and therefore not being able to show the reality of things that cannot be illumined except in the light of exultation.
• Not seeing the incoherence between the infinite value of the object of the study and the naturalistic nature of their study. The whole atmosphere seemed unplugged from the majesty of the object.

The Pastor as Scholar: a Personal Journey

I wonder if this is also what Karl Barth would have said?

John Piper on true scholarship

Last year Don Carson and John Piper spoke at a symposium, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor, in Chicago.

I just read most of Piper's (rather long) talk, The Pastor as Scholar: a Personal Journey, which is worth wrestling with. Here is one extract, concerning his time as a student at Fuller seminary:

• Nobody pierced to the essence of true scholarship the way Dan Fuller did. In partnership with Mortimer Adler’s How To Read a Book, he taught me that true scholarship, whatever our vocation, was:
• to observe the subject matter accurately and thoroughly,
• to understand clearly what was observed,
• to evaluate fairly what was understood by deciding what is true and valuable,
• to feel intensely according to the value of what was evaluated,
• to apply wisely and helpfully in life what is understood and felt, and
• to express in speech and writing and deeds what was seen, understood, felt, and applied in such a way that its accuracy, clarity, truth, value, and helpfulness can be known and enjoyed by others.

When God spoke to John Piper

One morning each week my son Luke and I go out for breakfast together and discuss a chapter in a book we are currently reading through together. The current book is Guidance and the Voice of God.
Following this and a range of othe discussions this week about people hearing God's voice, God only working through the extra-ordinary,.. I recalled this great article by John Piper (of course, I must thank my dear wife for bringing it first to my attention). Make sure you read it to the end!

Don't waste your life!

My dear godly wife, Robin is a big fan of John Piper. We are currently reading together his book, don't waste your life. In chapter one, Piper recounts how as a searching young college student, discovering the books of C.S. Lewis changed his life:

He has made me wary of chronological snobbery ... he showed that newness is no virture and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern.... To this day I get most of my soul-food from centuries ago....
He demonstrated for me and convinced me that rigorous, precise, penetrating logic is not opposed to deep, soul-stirring feeling and vivid, lively -even playful- imagination. He was a "romantic rationalist." He combined things that almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclusive: rationalism and poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free imagination...