The book again features hundreds of stories, poems and essays – some well-known, some not so much. It again features biblical and non-biblical material, Christian and non-Christian material. Again, each chapter is arranged from the easier to the harder material. And again, both children and parents will benefit greatly from all the great reading found therein.

I am always interested in alerting people to good books. One way to do this is through book reviews, of which there are now 725 on this site. And these reviews are most often of new books that I want to let people know about. However, sometimes various older works that might be regarded as modern classics also deserve a mention.
This article is another case in point. A few weeks ago I wrote about a book that appeared three decades ago: The Book of Virtues by William Bennett (Simon and Schuster, 1993). A number of people favourable responded to that piece. It is found here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/01/07/shaping-morality-through-story-telling/
In it I mentioned that Bennett had produced a companion volume two years later: The Moral Compass: Stories for a Life’s Journey (Simon & Schuster, 1995). In many ways it picks up on where the previous volume left off, and it very much follows the same format.
While it again covers the same key virtues (Responsibility, Courage, Perseverance, Honesty, Loyalty, Faith, and the like), it is arranged in terms of the stages of life, ranging from new life to old age. All up he has seven chapters dealing with these various stages.
The book again features hundreds of stories, poems and essays – some well-known, some not so much. It again features biblical and non-biblical material, Christian and non-Christian material. Again, each chapter is arranged from the easier to the harder material. And again, both children and parents will benefit greatly from all the great reading found therein.
One valuable aspect of the book – as with the previous volume – is not just the introduction to the book, but Bennett’s introduction to each chapter. In his general introduction he writes:
The basic assumption underlying this volume is that much of life is a moral and spiritual journey and that we undertake it, at least in large part, to find our way morally and spiritually. Thus it makes no sense to send young people forth on such an endeavor having offered them only some timid, vacillating opinions or options about conduct in the hope that in the course of their wanderings, they will stumble onto some more definite personal preferences which will become their “values.” We must give our children better equipment than that. We must raise them as moral and spiritual beings by offering them unequivocal, reliable standards of right and wrong, noble and base, just and unjust….
Of course, sound character education cannot come solely through hearing and reading stories, no matter how great they are. The training of the heart and the mind toward the good involves much more. (We would do well to remember that the Greek word charakter means “enduring marks,” traits that can be formed in a person by an almost infinite number of influences.) Moral education must involve following rules of good behavior. It must involve developing good habits, which come only through repeated practice. And character training must provide example by placing children in the company of responsible adults who show an allegiance to good character, who demonstrate the clear difference between right and wrong in their own everyday habits.
Nevertheless, the books and stories we share with our children can be important moral influences. They can be invaluable allies for parents and teachers; as President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard observed, “In the campaign for character, no auxiliaries are to be refused.” Literature can be a crucial part of a home, school, community, or culture’s ethos—another ancient Greek term meaning the distinguishing character or guiding beliefs, the habits of the denizens. As every parent and teacher knows, children love stories. Even in an age of computer games and electronic toys, there is still resonant power in the phrase “Once upon a time…”
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Written by O. Palmer Robertson |
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
The Word of the new covenant gospel must forever be proclaimed. Through all the ages and even into eternity, the gospel must be verbally declared. Particularly by those select people called and commissioned to the gospel ministry, the Word shall be spoken. It must be articulated for people to hear. But even further, by all the disciples, all the brothers and sisters, all the followers of Jesus as their Lord and Christ, the gospel must be spoken. Nothing can ever replace the speaking out of the good news of the new covenant. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” Speak it out! Proclaim it to the nations! This spoken Word embodies the true and abiding hope of the world.

Introduction
In the progress of redemptive history, the preaching of the Apostles preceded any writing of new covenant scriptures by at least a generation. The apostolic preaching of the gospel began immediately after the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, which would have been about 33 A.D. But the first writings of new covenant scriptures came approximately twenty years later, with Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians in about 50 A.D. For approximately a whole generation the newly forming church of Jesus Christ depended for its inspired directives primarily on the preachings of the Apostles. The God-inspired new covenant canonical writings were not completed for another 40 to 50 years, until about 90 to 100 A.D. The extent to which this original proclamation of the gospel permeates the book of Acts testifies to its significance.[i] The writings of the old covenant scriptures continued to provide direction for the church’s self-definition. But the proper application of these prophetic scriptures in a new covenant context depended heavily on the ongoing analysis of their significance as provided by the preaching of the Apostles.
The question may be appropriately asked, Why did God order that these years must pass before the inspired scriptures of the new covenant could finally be produced for the direction of the church?  Several observations may be offered in response to this question.
(1) Time for “Occasions” (“Situational Circumstances”) To Arise
The new covenant documents, even the four gospels, must be read as occasional documents. That is, each of the writings of the New Testament were composed in response to certain concrete circumstances in the life-experience of God’s new covenant community. Paul’s letter to the Galatians addresses in the most stringent terms one of the first and most persistent heretical challenges to the true Christian gospel. His first letter to the Corinthians deals with numerous problems related to a proper Christian lifestyle, including party spirit which divides the body, sexual immorality, discipline in the church, the use and abuse of spiritual gifts, the freedom of the Christian conscience, order in worship, the nature of the bodily resurrection, and the collection of offerings. His later pastoral epistles address the question of the maintenance of the “faith once delivered to the saints” as well as church traditions that must extend beyond the apostolic age. 
All these challenging circumstances would not present themselves within each of the various churches immediately upon the first re-formation of a people of God under the auspices of the new covenant. Lengths of time would have to elapse before all the “occasional” challenges of the emerging church would present themselves. In its proper time, the apostolic response to differing challenges to the well-being of the church would anticipate many aspects of the subsequent, prolonged history of Christ’s church. In the meantime, the public proclamation of the basic apostolic gospel could and must run to the ends of the earth.
(2) Time to Allow the Old Testament to Establish Its Foundational Role
As the speeches of the Apostles demonstrate so clearly, the faith and life of the new covenant people of God must rest squarely on the revelations found in the old covenant scriptures. With few exceptions, the messages of the Apostles recorded in the book of Acts look back to the prophecies of the Old Testament as the basis for their proclamation. A delay in the formation of the canonical scriptures of the new covenant would keep the way clear for this principle to be firmly established in behalf of future generations living under the new covenant. If the significance of the old covenant scriptures is widely ignored or altogether lost among numerous groups of Christians today despite the clear directives found in the preaching of the Apostles, how much more would their significance be obscured if the new covenant people of God had had access to a completed new covenant canon immediately upon the birth of the church? So it was quite appropriate that the gospel found its first formation through the apostolic preaching of the gospel in clear dependence on the old covenant scriptures apart from a completed canonical scriptures of the new covenant. 
(3) Time for “Chosen Witnesses” to Confirm Their Testimony
So long as eyewitness reports by “chosen witnesses” of the realities of the gospel were still available, the need for an inspired, written record of the new covenant regarding the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Christ was not so pressing (Acts 10:39-41).
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One of the greatest assurances of salvation that we can have during our pilgrimage in this world comes from our knowledge of the definitiveness of our redemption in Christ. The fact that Jesus’s death actually atoned for our sins, produces a confidence in believers that nothing will separate them from the love of God. If Jesus died for us, who can undo what Christ has done?

What is the central message of Christianity? This is a subject of timeless importance in a day when many insist that the central message is kindness in interpersonal relations; or that it is justice in its variegated societal implementation. However compelling the case may be made for either of these, the Apostle Paul gave us the divinely inspired center of the Christian message when he wrote, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
It is quite clear that the atoning death of Jesus stands at the center of the Christian message. “Christ died for sinners” is, in the words of Geerhadus Vos, “the center of gravity” in Christianity. But, this opens another question, namely, “How then should we view the resurrection?”
As a young Christian, I had a number of impassioned conversations with close friends about this subject. I would insist that the message of the cross was the center of the Gospel. They would insist, with the same emotional forcefulness, that the resurrection stood at the center since it culminated in the new creation. Citing Romans 4:24-25, one friend went so far as to say that the resurrection of Jesus was more important than His death on the cross. A number of years later, several colleagues in ministry encouraged me to read more Richard Gaffin, since he argued more persuasively that the resurrection, rather than the crucifixion of Jesus, was the epicenter of the Christian message. Interestingly, as I read Gaffin, I came across statements that seemed to go against that idea. Reflecting on Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 1:18-3:22 and Galatians 6:14, Gaffin makes the following assertion: “Paul’s exclusive and comprehensive epistemic commitment is to the crucified Christ.” This, of course, doesn’t mean that the cross is more important than the resurrection. In fact, I was imbalanced in my own understanding of the central message as a young Christian, because I didn’t yet understand that the saving work of Christ couldn’t be bifurcated without doing damage to the message of Christianity as a whole. This is why the Apostle Paul summarizes the heart of the Christian message in the following way when writing to the church in Corinth:
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3).
The wrath-propitiating, sin-atoning, Satan-conquering death of Jesus on the cross, together with His burial and His resurrection form the central message of the Christian faith. When the Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you expect Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” he was utilizing a theological synecdoche (i.e. the part for the whole). Apart from the death of Jesus, the resurrection is a legal fiction. Apart from the witness of His resurrection, the death of Jesus is a tragic failure.
One of the greatest assurances of salvation that we can have during our pilgrimage in this world comes from our knowledge of the definitiveness of our redemption in Christ. The fact that Jesus’s death actually atoned for our sins, produces a confidence in believers that nothing will separate them from the love of God. If Jesus died for us, who can undo what Christ has done? Jesus would have to be dethroned and His body put back in the tomb, for His saving work to be emptied of its efficacy. The work of redemption can never be reversed or overthrown because it was accomplished by the infinite and eternal, sinless Son of God whose death on the cross was a perfect sacrifice of infinite and eternal value. The efficacious death of Jesus is captured by the writer of Hebrews in the benediction he pronoucnced over the members of a church that was tempted to turn away from Christ.
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