Training Pastors

My undergrad alma mater (Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, IN) just rolled out a five-year blended B.S./M.A. program for training pastors. B.S. or B.A. course work would be completed the first 3 years and the M.A. course work the last 2 years, with the final year's course work completed while ministering in a local church under the supervision of an assigned pastor.

That is the key. The local church has to be meaningfully involved with training pastors. Kudos, IWU.

This sounds like a great program. When IWU launched their Seminary a few years ago they were very innovative--the program required students to be engaged either in part-time or full-time ministry within context of the local church. I'm glad they've found a way to compress the overall time it takes to train ministers without compromising involvement in local church.

An Introduction to Systematic Theology - Van Til - Chap. 3

Notes on Preface and Chap. 1.
Notes on Chap. 2.

Chapter 3 - Christian Epistemology

What is the function of reason in Christian theology? Non-Christians fail to account for the effects of the fall upon human reason. These are the noetic effects of sin; the effects of sin upon our thinking and our minds. Human thinking, human reasoning do not exist as an “entity apart from God.” Non-Christians error because they think human reasoning is a valid starting point.

What is the object of our knowledge? “If we hold with Paul (Rom. 11:36) that 'of him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever,' we see clearly that the existence and meaning of every fact in this universe must in the last analysis be related to the self-conscious and eternally self-subsistent God of the Scriptures” (58). So, the only way our thinking and reasoning will make any sense is if we remember that, “to have coherence in our experience, there must be a correspondence of our experience to the eternally coherent experience of God. Human knowledge ultimately rests upon the internal coherence within the Godhead; our knowledge rests upon the ontological Trinity as its presupposition” (59).

What is the subject of our knowledge? Nothing is mysterious for God, for “God as the absolute Light is back of the facts of the universe. We hold that the atom [insert any mysterious thing about reality] is mysterious for us, but not for God. . . . non-Christian thought argues that, because man cannot comprehend something in its knowledge, to that extend his knowledge is not true. Christians say that we as creatures do not need to and should not expect to comprehend anything fully. God comprehends fully, and that is enough for us. God's full comprehension gives validity to our partial comprehension.” Van Til continues by relating this to Christian worship: “When a Christian sees the atom surrounded by mystery, he worship God; when the non-Christian scientist sees the atom surrounded by mystery, he worship the void” (61).

Creator. Creature. Acknowledge you are the latter, or kick against the goads and attempt to be the former: “All men are either in covenant with Satan or in covenant with God” (68). Those who are in covenant with God have their “Adamic consciousness restored and supplemented, but restored and supplemented in principle or standing only” (69). Those who are in covenant with God “confess their ethical depravity” and can “discern spiritual good” because God has regenerated them.

 
So, what is the place of reason in theology? (And we ask this question understanding that there is a difference between the thinking and mind of a Christian and non-Christian, a difference between those in covenant with God and those in covenant with Satan, a difference between those regenerated with the Adamic consciousness restored and supplemented and those with their fallen, depraved, and non-regenerate consciousness that is not restored and is without supplement.) God is changing our minds so that “every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” and “we use our minds, our intellect, our reason, our consciousness in order to receive and reinterpret the revelation God has given of himself in Scripture. That is the proper place of reason in theology. There is no conflict between this reason and faith since faith is the impelling power that urges reason to interpret aright” (69).

An Introduction to Systematic Theology - Van Til - Chap. 2

Continuing to read through Van Til's An Introduction to Systematic Theology.

Notes on Preface and Chap. 1.

Chapter 2 

Our method of systematic theology is foundational. Van Til says that Christian theism "has a methodology quite distinct from other general interpretations of reality" (27).

Nothing is neutral. This includes our methods. Christian theism presupposes the existence of God. Our initial position, our starting posture is founded upon the God who is there.

The God who is there has always existed. He existed before the world. A world that He created ex nihilo. God is God and we are part of creation, therefore, God is incomprehensible to us (but he is not incomprehensible to himself). "Man's inability to comprehend God is founded on the very fact that God is completely self-comprehensive. God is absolute rationality." To be more specific, the Triune God is full rationality. The Trinity has exhaustive knowledge. Nothing is a novelty to the Trinity. This God, the Triune God, reveals himself to the creation. By way of special revelation the Triune God reveals himself to the image bearers.

Man does not have comprehensive knowledge. A Christian theist believes in the Trinity and knows that in order to have any knowledge it must be analogical to the knowledge of the Triune God. "The distinguishing characteristic between the very non-Christian theory of knowledge, on the one hand, and the Christian concept of knowledge, on the other hand, is therefore that in all non-Christian theories men reason univocally, while in Christianity men reason analogically" (31). By this Van Til means that non-Christians assume that space, time, man, and God are on the same plane, and that God and man are correlative, both working beneath a higher system of logic, etc. That is false. God existed before everything created; God is "self-conscious and self-consistent" and the created beings (creation) "cannot furnish a novelty element that is to stand on a par with the element of permanency furnished by the Creator" (32). To elaborate, "Christians believe in two levels of existence, the level of God's existence as self-contained and the level of man's existence as derived from the level of God's existence. For this reason, Christians must also believe in two levels of knowledge, the level of God's knowledge, which is absolutely comprehensive and self-contained, and the level of man's knowledge, which is not comprehensive but is derivative and reinterpretative. Hence we say that as Christians we believe that man's knowledge is analogical of God's knowledge" (CCS emphasis) (32).

"As man's existence is dependent upon an act of voluntary creation on the part of God, so man's knowledge depends upon an act of voluntary revelation of God to man. Even the voluntary creation of man is already a revelation of God to man" (34-35).

Van Til, therefore, calls our method for systematic theology a method of implication. "It is really only the Christian who can speak of implication, because no one but him really takes the idea of an absolute system seriously" (35). This method of implication may be referred to as transcendental, but not in the modern philosophic sense. It is a transcendental method because God is the method's point of reference. "It is only the Christian who really interprets reality in exclusively eternal categories because only he believes in God as self-sufficient and not dependent upon time reality" (36).

This analogical knowledge is theological knowledge. Analogical knowledge makes God the point of reference, and all other knowledge and methods make man himself the final point of reference. Analogical knowledge is the only true Christian position or approach to true knowledge--"When consistently expressed, it posits God's self-existence and plan, as well as self-contained self-knowledge, as the presupposition of all created existence and knowledge. In that case, all facts show forth and thus prove the existence of God and his plan. In that case, too, all human knowledge should be self-consciously subordinated to that plan. it's task in systematics is to order as far as possible the facts of God's revelation" (42-43).

Systematics does not, however, attempt to make an exact delineation point-by-point of the doctrine of the knowledge of God. That is not the point of systematics. If you collapse the sign of human knowledge into the signified (God's knowledge), you break the proper relationship between the creature and the Creator. It would no longer be derivative but one in the same, "And when this dependence is broken man's knowledge is thought as self-sufficient" (43). The method of systematic theology must be harmonious with the world-reality of the creature conducting the method, a creature (servant) who's life and knowledge is derivative.

As John Frame put it, a servant-thinker is one who “adopts God’s world as his own." Therefore, “the believer [servant-thinker] . . . is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is" (The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 28). That is our method of systematic theology. A method of implication, a method of transcendence, a method that accepts the creation of the world that God made.

LOL: Mustache

Dad watched the kids tonight.

First Rule of Courtship

Excerpt from Peter J. Leithart's Miniatures and Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen. I know I will circle back to this in a few years. My son is three but I already know I will frame future conversations around this "first rule of courtship."

Even without considering her strong male characters, Austen's novels are highly instructive for men. The mere fact that her novels give men an opportunity to see romance through the eyes of an uncommonly perceptive woman should be enough to recommend them. Even if we men do not want to see courtship through a woman's eyes, who can say we do not need to? She has a strong sense of a man's role in courtship and his responsibility for the course that a courtship takes. More than one male character in her novels proves himself a scoundrel by playing with the affections of a woman. Austen's first rule of courtship is one I have frequently repeated to my sons: Men are responsible not only for behaving honorably toward women but also for the woman's response; if a man does not intend to enter a serious relationship, he has no business giving a woman special attention or encouraging her to attach herself to him. Austen sees clearly that men who play with a woman's affections are fundamentally egotistical. They want the admiration and attention of women without promising anything or making any commitment. Few lessons of courtship are more needed in our own day (19).

Brian McLaren and Son

nytimes has a write up about Brian McLaren's homosexual son's marriage. Even more saddening, after the wedding ceremony, "Later in the day, the Rev. Brian D. McLaren, Mr. McLaren’s father and the former pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., led a commitment ceremony with traditional Christian elements before family and friends at the Woodend Sanctuary of the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Md."

Tuesdays with Blaster at Tree & The Seed: TMWAJ - Linear Notes

I am going to blog through the songs and lyrics of Blaster the Rocket Man’s album Blaster the Rocket Man in "The Monster Who Ate Jesus". Blaster was a punk rock band formed in the 1990s. They were from Indiana. I started listening to their records in middle school, while they still performed under their original moniker Blaster the Rocketboy. Their name changed to Blaster the Rocket Man for their 1999 release TMWAJ.

TMWAJ is my favorite Blaster record. Unarguably a punk rock record, but it has influences ranging from country/western to surf rock. Some of the songs from TMWAJ can be streamed on the band's myspace page. Finally, the following excerpt is from the album’s linear notes.

"These pages rustle with the stealthy movements of strictly orthodox, old-fashioned monsters: werewolves and horrors spawned by the great deep; quasi-humans and robots, vampires and fearsome survivors from the dark abysm of the remote past, abortions from the scientist’s laboratory. Such creatures present a wholesome, indeed a cheerful contrast to the psychological deformities of contemporary sick humor, the pretentious sadism of the latest modern Gothic tale, the revolting hokum of television.”

So said Clifton Fadiman in his foreward [sic] to the 1967 anthology, Famous Monster Tales. In the same spirit, Blaster offers these humble and horrific songs of wholesome, orthodox monsters to cheer you and, hopefully, to edify you as well. These stories are essentially creature features that eerily illustrate a simple fact: human beings are creatures designed by a Creator. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27)

Because we are created in His image, we understand that God is Holy and Just and that we have become abominations in His sight because of our sin. “There is none righteous, no, not one . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:10, 23) “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6)

All we like monsters have shed innocent blood. “Their throats are open graves. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their feet are swift to shed blood. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:13-18)

But thankfully, He is the God who loves monsters. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:16-18)

These words were written concerning the real, historical Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the Earth in space and time. “For I delivered to you first the of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” (I Corinthians 15:3-4)

Thus, those monsters who have confessed their sin to God and believed in His Son, Jesus Christ, have become truly Orthodox Monsters. They are the New Creatures, the Unvamps, the Aliens and Strangers. Indeed, I am the monster who ate Jesus. For He said, “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me.” (John 6:54-57) This saying offended the people of Jesus’ day and is still doing so today. Nevertheless, we love and serve the Living Lord of the universe, Jesus Christ, because He first loved us. What are you eating? (What’s eating you?) “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

Next Tuesday I will blog through the TMWAJ's first three tracks: Deploy All Monsters Now!, It Came From Down South, and Hopeful Monsters are Dying Everyday.

An Introduction to Systematic Theology - Van Til

Beginning to read through Van Til's An Introduction to Systematic Theology. The plan is to jot down brief thoughts, quotations, etc. I do not intend for this to be a review per se, therefore, it will probably be a fragmentation of loose thoughts.

Preface

This book is a published syllabus that "has an apologetic intent running through it. A Reformed theology needs to be supplemented by a Reformed method of apologetics. This involves relating the historic Christian position to that of modern philosophy, as well as theology" (12). Author admits his indebtedness to Louis Berkhof, Herman Bavinck, and Abraham Kuyper.

Chapter 1

Systematic theology seeks to teach truth about God taught in the Bible in a unified system. Theology is about God, that is, the Trinity, therefore, it theology should be God-centered (contra Barth's Christomonism).

Exegesis takes the Scriptures and analyzes each part of it in detail. Biblical theology takes the fruits of exegesis and organizes them into various units and traces the revelation of God in Scripture in its historical development. It brings out the theology of each part of God's Word as it has been brought to us at different stages, by means of various authors. Systematic theology then uses the fruits of the labors of exegetical and biblical theology and brings them together into a concatenated system. Apologetics seeks to defend this system of biblical truth against false philosophy and false science. Practical theology seeks to show how to preach and teach this system of biblical truth, while church history traces the reception of this system of truth in the course of the centuries (17).

Van Til clearly believes in doctrinal development. However, for this to occur the exegetical and systematic work must be accomplished up front, leading to additional clarity and precision to the creeds of the church. Doctrinal development is invalid if it is "retrogressive", a stripping away creedal tenets.

Ministers need to be students of the Bible and systematics. "But systematics helps minsters to preach the whole counsel of God, and thus to make God central in their work" (22). And, "Well-rounded preaching teaches us to use the things of this world because they are the gifts of God, and it teaches us to possess them as not possessing them, inasmuch as they must be used in subordination to the one supreme purpose of man's existence, namely the glory of God" (22).

Commenting on modern antithesis, "The fight between Christianity and non-Christianity is, in modern times, no piece-meal affair. It is the life-and-death struggle between two mutually opposed life-and-world views" (22). We must know our systematics because "When the enemy attacks the foundations, we must be able to protect these foundations" (24). Therefore, ministers and theologians must "undertake [their] work in a spirit of deep dependence upon God and in a spirit of prayer that he may use [them] as his instruments for his glory" (25).

Logan & Modern Theology

My brother in law, Logan Hoffman, graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in the Spring, and last month he and my sister relocated to New Zealand to be Wesleyan church planters. You can keep tabs on them at The Well. Before leaving Logan told me about a new book co-edited by Bruce L. McCormack, the well known Barth scholar who teaches at PTS. The book is Mapping Modern Theology: A Thematic and Historical Introduction. This week I read the first four of the book's fifteen chapters. It is a slam dunk. So much information and the articles are really well written, complicated information but clearly communicated.

Steven R. Holmes' contribution maps the modern development of the doctrine of the divine attributes. At points a mind-bender, and at other points your skin crawls as he talks through some of the blasphemies of modern theology. What a brain full of information to process. And as if that wasn't enough, Daniel J. Treier's chapter on scripture and hermeneutics is easily the best summarization I have read; again, what a brain full of information to process.

The title really does describe what the book aims to accomplish . . . thus far the authors really do "map out" for the reader the past 200 years of theology. I am looking forward to the remainder of this book.

Call to Confession for September 30, 2012

Proverbs 20:22 – Do not say, "I will repay evil"; wait for the LORD, and he will deliver you.

In our passage of confession this morning we are told to not repay evil with evil but to wait on the Lord who is our deliverer. Because of our sinfulness and corruption, our natural instinct when someone has wronged us is to act in kind, to complete the circle, as it were, and to repay them the evil that they first paid us.

In the third chapter of 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter, who initially is addressing husbands and wives but then expands his exhortation to the entire body, urges them to “live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble,” and, echoing our passage of confession from Proverbs, he instructs them, “do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because of this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

This is not only Godly instruction but it is wise counsel for people who live at length and for duration within close proximity of one another. For example, if you have a family, and you repay a family member's evil with evil, then you are not only being disobedient before God but you are also setting yourself up for hard times. You do, after all, live in shared quarters with that family member. The same can be applied to our relationships with our neighbors. Unless one of you pulls up roots and leaves the community you will for all intents and purposes remain neighbors (geography being the static thing that it is), and if you repay evil with evil to your neighbors, then you are setting yourself up to be locked into the determinism of “feuding families”--and anyone who has read any of the books by Mark Twain which depict such things knows that this quickly becomes nonsensical.

See, the issue is this. When we repay evil with evil and think to ourselves, “I'm going to complete the circle, I'm going to finish this,” what we are actually doing is perpetuating the presence of evil. Christians, however, are called to break this cycle. We don't return evil but blessing. Why? Because that is what God has done towards us. We were evil, we betrayed God. God, however, gave us Christ. He gave us The Blessing. When family or neighbors, government or foreign nations, when the world gives you evil, do the right thing and be a Christian—be shaped by the activity of God—don't respond with evil, rather, give a blessing and wait on God's deliverance, wait on God's providential justice. All of us have failed to do this perfectly, and this reminds us of our need to confess our sins, so if able, please kneel as we confess our sins together.

Bad Postmodern Models by Christians

From William Edgar's Introduction to the Second Edition of Van Til's An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God:

Various post-evangelical Protestants espouse their own versions of these schools [Christian alliance with kinds of post-Kantian views, that is, postmodern philosophy]. Stanley Grenz was drawn to postmodern models advocating, as he did, a christological center and a "non-linear" outline for redemption, over against the older creation-fall-redemption ground motive. The problem with such accommodations is that they are not able to relate the human creature with God the Creator in objective categories. Lacking a true theology of the Creator-creature relationship, they cannot assert the historical nature of the fall into sin from the state of integrity. And because of this they cannot fully appreciate the moral revolution that led to the fall, and so the problem in the human condition is not so much moral guilt as it is finitude, at least to some extent. As a result, redemption is not fully of God's mercy, with a transition from wrath to grace in history, through Christ. Instead they must grope after divine liberation, turning revelation into a project of the self, rather than seeing it as God's merciful self-disclosure to fallen humanity (3).

OT: Christ Jesus

Christ Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Christ is the fulfiller of Law and Prophets. Christ is the Prophet of Prophets. There is a need, therefore, for us to keep Matthew 5:17 in our minds whenever we take up and read the older Testament, for it was "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Hebrews 1:1, 2a).

Joseph Addison Alexander noted, in the Introduction to his translation and commentary of Isaiah, that the role and function of a prophet was tied to the general design of the old economy; the office/institution was "no after-thought" but was provided for by the Law. Deuteronomy promises that in time a prophet like Moses will come--Deuteronomy 18  "comprehends the promise of a constant succession of inspired men, so far as this should be required by the circumstances of the people, which succession was to terminate in Christ" (Isaiah: Translated and Explained, 3). Christ is the Prophet of the constant succession of Prophets tied to the general design of the old economy, whose message was, as John Frame has said, "God is Lord"--that message dovetailing into the newer Testament's message "Jesus is Lord!"

Christ Jesus is Lord. Lordship is the final reference point in all predication (Van Til), therefore, Christ is Center. If Christ is not at the Center, if Christ is not the hub of the wheel whose stories/spokes connect back to the Center, then we have made a grave mistake, and this mistake can occur even when the storytellers tell the individual stories about the world, which include the stories about the prophets (e.g.,  Joshua, the prophets of the Book of Judges, the prophetic ministry of the "eminent prophet" Samuel, the establishment and disestablishment of the Monarchy, and the exile in to and return from Babylon) chronologically! We may know all of words to the song, we may understand the Syntax just fine, but if Christ is not Center then our Semantics are off, our meaning is off, and this means the tune is off, too.

The Old Testament is never just a story about God revealing himself to Israel in such and such a fashion at such and such a time. The message and oracles of the older Testament was revealed to Israel by prophets who were servants of and whose office terminated in the Prophet of Prophets. Many teachers of the Bible today do not have Christ at the Center, and this is why they think Scripture is inharmonious, fraught with errors, not inerrant/not infallible, self-contradictory, etc. Utter nonsense, that. If you understand that the linear and merciful story of the law and prophets terminate in Christ Jesus, if you understand that the old economy was designed with the institution of a a succession of prophets that both developed and applied the law/grace of the old economy, and if you understand that in the old economy everything pointed towards the prophet greater than Moses, the Person in whom the prophets terminated and were fulfilled, it is only then that you can rightly read and interpret History, the stories about the linear and merciful Story of King Jesus and His beautiful, perfect Bride, the Church.

American Churches: Unchurch Christians

From the Conclusion to Part I - Empires in Scripture:

God's empire is founded on the self-sacrificial death of Jesus and of the firstfruits of His people. It is renewed by ritual commemoration of Jesus in Eucharist, which forms a community readied for martyrdom [Leithart uses this term in its original sense of "witness"]. God's empire is not a transhistorical aspiration, an ideal, or a sentiment of fellow feeling among nations. It takes concrete form in a catholic church, where rival rulers and emperors, rival nations and empires, become table fellows and, under the church's discipline learn the Lord's ways of peace and justice. Under Jesus and filled with the pentecostal Spirit, the ecclesial empire is a historical form of international community. The church is the eschatological empire already founded (52).

 From the Conclusion to Part II - Americanism:

Checks and balances among the branches of the federal government are an inadequate guarantor of liberty. No American church is allowed to become independent or powerful enough to challenge American policy effectively; few try. . . . When was the last time an American politician was excommunicated? When was the last time an excommunication had any effect on American politics? . . . Individual Christians do not have the virtues necessary to function as citizens of God's imperium because American churches have discipled them to function as citizens of the American imperium instead (111).

Americanism: Freelance Imperialism

In Chapter 5 ("Chanting the New Empire") of Between Babel and Beast, Leithart strings together a summary of the American "small wars" (e.g., the multiple U.S. Marine landings/deployments of the 1800s, the Commercial Wars/Barbary Pirates, and the 19th century "butcher and bolt" South Pacific hostilities), ending the survey with a sobering reflection (partially comprised of a quotation from Boot's Savage Wars): "'No matter how tiny, the navy had little trouble overawing pirates and tribesmen with its vastly superior technology and training. With the navy's help, U.S. exports soared from $20 million in 1789 to $334 million in 1860. In short, naval captains were doing more or less the same job performed by the World Trade Organization: integrating the world around the principle of free trade.' Freelance imperialism has been a recurring feature of American history" (103).

American Eschatology: Nationalist Typology That Infused American Rhetoric and Damaged Catholicity

"By the time of the Revolution, the residual ecclesial sensibility among the original Puritans had nearly vanished. A sense of national unity was strengthened by the Great Awakening and the French and Indian Wars, and the possibility that the church might function as a counterweight to national sentiment or state power was drowned in waves of revivals, each of which further damaged the catholicity of American Christianity" (Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective, 72).

LOL: Collective Soul Cat

I was a teenager in the late 1990s and listended to Indianapolis based alternative rock radio station X103. Collective Soul was one of my favorite bands. This video makes me laugh so hard.

Peter J. Leithart: Trinity Institute

Peter J. Leithart just announced that he will be relocating to Birmingham, Alabama, to assist others with the founding of the Trinity Institute ("a study and theological training center"). Go here to read the announcement published on his personal blog.

Book: This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought by Thomas J. Davis

I just finished This is My Body by Thomas J. Davis. It is an "academic" book; the author has taken a series of prior essays, presentations, and articles and redrafted and compiled them for publication in a single volume. The book does not, however, feel regurgitated. As I read each of the chapters got better and better.

The last chapter, Hardened Hearts, Hardened Words: Calvin, Beza, and the Trajectory of Signification, is absolutely fantastic. Davis' aim is to "undercut stereotypes" of Reformers (Calvin, Beza, & al.) by arguing that "a basic change in the orientation of signification occurred . . . as early as the thirteenth century . . . which did not begin the process of gaining cultural hegemony until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." Which means that "[s]ignification made a shift toward the literal, where direct lines were drawn between sign and thing signified, and both were drawn into closest relationship until one observes almost a collapse of distances between sign and thing signified" (172). Interestingly, Davis appeals to and comments at length on the woodcuts and paintings of Albrecht Durer, Leon Battista Alberti, and Leonardo da Vinci as evidence of his thesis.

This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.

The Minister as Mirror

"As God is loving, as God is paternal, as God moves in all gentleness, so too should the minister mirror all that, so that not only the words but also the life of the minister reflect God's goodness as in a mirror" (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Baker Academic, 2008), 125).

The Christ Who is Present

"Christian preaching cannot be about a future that does not impinge on the present. Eschatology is less about the future per se than it is about how God's future works itself into present experience and expression. I think this corresponds well to Calvin's understanding: in the Christ who is present, Christ's past action is wed to his future kingdom, and the Christian finds oneself in a community living out God's purpose with Christ as one's head" (Thomas J. Davis, This is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought (Baker Academic, 2012), 111-112).