The Reader, the Bible & His Presence
The magic of literature’s influence can only come to realization in the life of the reader when the reader leaves the book behind. This may be true of literature, but it is not true of the Bible. The power of Scripture resides in an abiding presence, a presence which is neither imagined nor sentimental but a presence which is none other than He who is the subject of the biography. The Lord be with you. And, indeed, He is.
Recently, I have been reading Terry Eagleton’s book, How to Read Literature. Eagleton is as entertaining as he is insightful. He reminds us readers, for example, that Heathcliff does not exist outside of the pages Wuthering Heights or that if Ishmael is only a literary name, then he doesn’t have a real one, because Melville chose not to give it. Again, it’s not that we don’t know it. He does not have it!
But it’s another observation that caught my imagination. He cautions a reader not to confuse fiction with reality. Certainly this is something of a danger for the best of readers. There are women who long to recreate the culture of Pride and Prejudice within their home school coop while wistfully wishing such a thing could be extended even further. This is not to mention the men who sneak the “thee” and the “thou” into their prayers.
Into this context Eagleton reminds us of Prospero, the hero of Shakespeare’s, The Tempest, who comes forward at the end of the play to caution the audience of making a mistake. Listen to Prospero,
Now my charms all o’erthworn,
And what strength I have’s mind own,
Which is most faint. Now, ‘tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my hands
With the help of your good hands.
What is Prospero doing? He is asking the audience to applaud. Certainly that is what he means when he asks for release “with the help of your good hands.” But he is not simply asking for praise. Prospero is pleading with the audience not to confuse the play with reality. Why? If they fail to do so they will diminish the effect of the play on the real world. In other words, says Eagleton, the spell must be broken if the magic is to work.
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What Are the “Keys of the Kingdom”? — Matthew 16:19
The preaching of the gospel proclaims Christ’s kingdom has come to us, opening the hearts and minds of those who hear it to the glory of Christ and the good news of his salvation. On the other hand, binding something is to close it. In the context of Christ’s kingdom, it is to close the kingdom to unbelievers.
In Matthew 16:19, Jesus makes the following statement to the apostle Peter:
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
What was Christ Jesus referring to when he told Peter he would give him the “keys of the kingdom”? What is the meaning of this metaphor that our Lord is using in Matthew 16:19?
The Heidelberg Catechism, question and answer 83, states,What are the keys of the kingdom?
The preaching of the holy gospel and Christian discipline toward repentance. Both of them open the kingdom of heaven to believers and close it to unbelievers.Jesus Is Referring to the Kingdom of Heaven, His Kingdom That Is Not of This World
First, as the Heidelberg Catechism points out, it is important to note that in this verse Jesus is referring to the kingdom of heaven, his kingdom that is not of this world (John 18:36).
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Lessons from the Lutheran Tradition for 2024
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Lutheranism has much to offer the church catholic at this moment in time. Like all confessional Christianity, it is anchored in realities that transcend the political particularities of our day; and it also reminds us of the church’s true task and realistic expectations in a time such as this.This week I had the privilege of speaking at a seminar for the Collegium Fellows of Doxology, a group of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastors committed to spiritual care and counsel. There are serious theological differences between the Lutheran tradition and my own Reformed tradition, most obviously in the area of the Lord’s Supper. But there is an ethos that binds confessional Protestants together in a world where Catholics are in frequent turmoil over the actions of the present pope and where evangelicals are tearing themselves apart over attitudes to the current political malaise that has enveloped American public life.
Toward the end of the seminar, one pastor asked what I thought confessional Lutheranism could offer to the church catholic at this moment in time. My answer was threefold.
First, confessional Protestantism in general, when faithful to its defining documents, focuses the minds of believers upon the great truths of the Christian faith that take no account of the vicissitudes of the age. God, Trinity, Fall, Incarnation, redemption, and grace: These are truths that feed the mind and the soul, regardless of which side wins and which side loses elections. And they are the central concerns of the great confessional documents of Protestantism. Whether the Book of Concord for Lutherans; the Westminster Standards for Presbyterians; the Three Forms of Unity for the Reformed; or the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Homilies for Anglicans—all speak of the eternal weight of glory that is to come and thereby relativize the slings and arrows of this world as so many light, momentary afflictions. The implications of this are liturgical: The church goes about its ordinary work of proclaiming Christ in Word and Sacrament even as earthly regimes come and go. Thus it was in the time of Nero. So it is today.
I went on to say that confessional Lutheranism, more specifically, has two particularly important contributions for the church catholic today. First, the Lutheran distinction (echoing Augustine), between the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom. This distinction is vital, especially in a time of deep political division and seductive political temptation. Much has been made of Christian nationalism as an “existential threat” to the nation and to democracy. Setting aside the rather fluid definitions of Christian nationalism, even in its most extreme form it is unlikely to pose a significant threat to society at large. But it may well prove to be a threat in the much smaller world of our congregations and denominations, where a confusion between church and world and between the power of the Word and the power of the sword would devastate the gospel.
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What Is Sloth?
The Proverbs speak often about honest work and the importance of guarding against laziness and sloth (Prov. 12:24, 27; 15:19; 18:9; 19:24, 21:25; 22:13, 24:30; 26:13–15, KJV). And this is the type of sloth that most people think of when they think of sloth. Where the theologically slothful are misapplying doctrine, the proverbially slothful are choosing sinful foolishness over God’s way of godly wisdom. A man who doesn’t even work to take care of his basic needs is foolish and slothful.
When was the last time you used the term sloth? It doesn’t count if you talked to one of your children about a minor character in Ice Age or Zootopia. A quick Google Ngram search, which allows users to chart the frequency of words and phrases in literature, shows that the use of the word sloth peaked in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries. Now, let’s go one step further. When was the last time you repented of sloth as a sin? Maybe never. Should sloth even be a sin on your radar as something for which Jesus died, something for which we should repent?
What Is Sloth?
Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins in Dante’s famous work The Divine Comedy, and Dante considers sloth from the perspective of love. He puts three of the seven deadly sins under the theme of love distorted: pride, envy, and anger. He puts another three sins under the theme of love excessive: avarice, gluttony, and lust. In between the first three and the last three, Dante places a single sin, sloth, calling it “love defective.”1
With this theme of sloth as “love defective,” Dante comes close to a biblical definition of sloth. Sloth isn’t just laziness. There is a deeper inner motivation to sin that, at its core, is a defective love. Biblically speaking, sloth is laziness that comes from carelessness about the commands and priorities of God, a lack of love for God and His ways that undermines a biblical doctrine of vocation (Judg. 18:9; Eccl. 10:18; Matt. 25:26, KJV). For a working model of sloth, we can consider two different types of sloth—theological and proverbial.
Theological Sloth
The Christians at Thessalonica had what we might call an over-realized eschatology. It seems that someone had sent a Pauline forgery to the church at Thessalonica, teaching that the day of the Lord had already come (2 Thess. 2:2). And in the soil of false theology, sinful idleness had sprung up (2 Thess. 3:6).
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