You don’t have to buy a fire pit, but you must find ways to invest in your kids; to teach them diligently as you sit and as you walk and when you lie down. Remember, you have 936 Saturdays. Unless you are reading this today with 9 year old, in which case you have half that many. Time is fleeting. You have opportunities and responsibilities, but you don’t have forever.

The days are long, but the years are short.
These are wise words that were spoken to Angela and I when our kids were younger. Our oldest son turned fifteen last week, and I was reminded again of the sage wisdom. Some days as a parent seem to last a month. And yet, as holidays roll arounds or birthdays are celebrated, we all find ourselves sounding more and more like our parents, “they sure do grow up fast.”
My days are numbered with my kids. From birth to eighteen (when we sort of hope they will begin to leave the nest), I have about 936 weekends. 936 Saturdays. 936 Sundays. Actually, I don’t even have all of those. Of the 936 Saturdays that my kids will spend on this earth during their first 18 years, many of them will be spent away from me. I may travel, they might go to a friend’s house or visit with grandparents.
My 936 gets cut down to 836 or 736. If you happen to be a family separated by divorce, you may only have your kids half of those days. Maybe your number is 400 or 425.
Depressed yet?
I hope not. I’m not writing to depress anyone, just to remind you all that the days may be long, but the years are short. Because the years are short, it is imperative that we invest all we can in the years that we have.
In our family, one of our efforts at investment is to get away from screens regularly and spend time enjoying each other. That means we love walks and sports. It also means that we have to double-down on entertainment ideas that keep us away from the television.
That’s why we bought a fire pit.
Angela and I wanted to create an excuse to be outside together. But, we also are realistic. Sometimes, our kids find us boring and sometimes getting them away from screens is a fight.
But, kids don’t find fire boring.
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There is no doubt that Peckham is a gifted writer, and his intentions motivating his work are noble. He seeks to provide an account of the divine attributes that is biblically faithful and theologically coherent in hopes that readers will be drawn to worship and praise for God. Unfortunately, Peckham’s unique formulation of the doctrine of God has far too many deficiencies to overcome. Rather than pointing readers to the God of Scripture, Peckham has breached the Creator/creature distinction and created a God made in the image of man.

Following up on his introductory work, The Doctrine of God: Introducing the Big Questions (2019), Adventist theologian John C. Peckham has published Divine Attributes: Knowing the Covenantal God of Scripture. In this work, Peckham aims to give an account of the divine attributes that are thoroughly biblically grounded over and against models of classical theism which he believes undervalue the plain meaning of Scripture in favor of Greek philosophical presuppositions. As Peckham writes in his introduction, his goal is to “offer a careful theological analysis of divine attributes” that would uphold the “unique normativity of Scripture, in dialogue with core issues in the contemporary discussion of classical theism” (17). Following the introduction, each chapter focuses on a particular attribute in order to show that the covenantal God is one who is dynamic in His relationships and experiences genuine movement and emotions.
Overview
Following the introduction, chapter one surveys various models of theism, including that which Peckham identifies as strict classical theism, process theology, moderate classical theism, and a small section on the God of Greek philosophy. Readers of this review may be most interested to see how he defines and contrasts the strict and moderate conceptions of classical theism. Strict classical theism holds that God must possess the attributes of “divine perfection, necessity, pure aseity, utter self-sufficiency, strict simplicity, timeless eternity, strict immutability, strict impassability, omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence” (20-21). Moderate classical theists, however, differ by understanding that God, “engages in genuine relationships with creatures that make a difference to God” (23). According to Peckham’s view, each model surveyed in the first chapter falls short of doing justice to the God of Scripture.
For a model of God to be biblical and true, it must account for the dynamic back-and-forth relationship in which God engages with creatures. Thus, Peckham offers covenantal theism, which “affirms God’s aseity and self-sufficiency, qualified immutability and passibility, everlasting eternity, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence and sovereign providence, covenantal action, omnibenevolence, and relational triunity” (37). Chapter one closes with an overview of Peckham’s view of canonical theology, which is tied to the belief that Scripture is a “unified corpus of writings that God has commissioned as the uniquely normative rule of faith and practice and the final form of theological interpretation, to be understood in subjection to guidance by the Holy Spirit” (29).
Chapters two through six address various attributes of God, such as aseity, qualified passibility, and others. Each attribute defined by Peckham is rooted in the belief that Scripture is to be exegeted on its own terms without any external metaphysical presuppositions. In other words, Scripture alone provides the necessary metaphysics to understand and account for the divine attributes.
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While the temptation is to marvel at the lives of the saints listed in Hebrews, John Owen notes, “Until now he had suggested that they look to people who had professed the Christian faith in the past, but now the focus is on him who is the author and perfecter of our faith. Thus the Apostle urges them to persevere in the faith and obedience of the Gospel.” What about Christian biography? In the same way that Hebrews 11 is designed to inspire us toward godliness, directing our gaze toward the Lord Jesus Christ, Christian biography should encourage us to examine our own lives.

The blessings that come from reading Christian biography cannot be fully enumerated or overstated. There is a measure of comfort, joy, and inspiration that comes from beholding the hand of God in the lives of His flawed yet faithful servants. So inspiring are the lives of believers in history, in fact, that even the world often takes note and admires the remarkable fortitude and towering influence of Christian heroes. And while there is tremendous benefit from reading the many secular biographies available, I want to argue for the specific value and practice of Christians writing Christian biographies.
The Theological Reason
While it does not take any specific spiritual insight to retell historical events, it certainly takes a Spirit-filled person to understand and appreciate God’s providential hand throughout human history. Theologically, we understand that every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19; Eph. 1:13–14.) and perceptive to the things of God. In fact, the Apostle Paul notes that “we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). Further, he notes that “the natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (v. 14). Unbelievers cannot and do not accept the things of God.
We see this when we read biography and history written by secular scholars. While their research may be impeccable, their historical retelling brilliant, and their writing sublime, they lack the spiritual insight to understand the doctrinal convictions of their subjects, often treating them as anachronisms. I recently read a historian liken John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrims, not to a shepherd but to a cult leader. However, the biographer was doing nothing more than trying to explain to a secular audience Robinson’s understanding of pastoral ministry.
This is common in the unbelieving world. To the Spirit-less mind, Jesus was merely an altruistic Jewish rabbi, the Bible is a collection of revered writings, the Holy Spirit is a mythical force, evangelism is religious zealotism, sovereign election is loveless and strange, complementarianism is arcane, the gospel is foolishness, and so on. However, Paul is clear that believers “have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16) and therefore understand the basic Christian truths and beliefs that are common to all saints in history.
The Practical Reason
It seems axiomatic that biographers stand a better chance of understanding their subjects if they share common experiences. Who better to understand Christians than other Christians? While the events of a person’s life are unique, there are common realities shared by all Christian believers—common experiences to every Christian like regeneration, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the empowering by that same Spirit (Eph. 4:4–6).
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