The Heritage Trees of the Church

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

I recently moved to a new area with my family, and we have been enjoying exploring the different parks and walking trails in the area.

On one of these exploratory walks, we came across an absolutely massive white oak. It’s found in the Westminster Ponds area of southeast London, and the age estimates for it range from 250 to 700 years old. Apparently, it’s tricky to date some of these trees.

What is agreed upon by all is that it is a magnificent and glorious tree. Local oral history says that escaped slaves from the South would meet here as a waypoint on the Underground Railroad.

I’m on record with regard to my great love for trees. So you can imagine how happy I was to spend a few minutes just gazing at this sublime sight.

One of the things that I learned from Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Hidden Life of Trees, is the important role these older trees play in the forest ecosystem. They shield the younger trees under them from dangerous winds and other dangers. In some old-growth forests, they even share nutrients with trees around them that are sick.

These trees got me thinking about the similarly important role that senior statesmen and stateswomen play in the church: men and women of importance within a local congregation, or perhaps with a public stature and ministry, with a long track record of faithfulness and fruitfulness.

In a lot of ways, these saints act like some of these beautiful, big old trees. They have a solidity to them, which means they cannot easily be toppled over by a sudden gust of wind. Even as their own energy levels and ministry output slow down, their presence continues to have an important impact on the ecosystem around them.

Godly men and women of integrity set the pace for others around them within the life of a congregation or denomination. The senior statesmen, if they are godly, also have a restraining influence on the young, brash, and impetuous ones around them, because they are so universally respected that their approval is rightly sought after.

Men and women of stature also quietly shape the landscape around them. Their root systems, their relationships, the institutions they helped to build and maintain, have all been shaped by their presence and character, similar to how a whole hillside can be shaped and the landscape of a whole town can be altered by the presence of one of these great trees.

We are all growing in and around the landscape that they shaped.

Of course, not everyone who reaches the age of seniority is spiritually healthy. In some cases, a tree might look impressive from the outside, but is consumed with rot on the inside, perhaps even a sickness which has tragically been spread to other smaller, younger trees around them.

We can all think of those examples. Some of them, if they are within our own spheres of influence, are particularly grievous and heartbreaking.

There’s another aspect to the presence of old trees that is worth mentioning. It has to do with the ideas of presence, witness, and testimony. This ancient tree has been present, standing there in the ground, for many human lifetimes. It has witnessed, in a way, the vast ebb and flow of generations, the rise and fall of neighbourhoods, the changing air quality, the nutrients in the soil, the quality of the water. It has witnessed the growth and expansion of the surrounding city. And it serves as a testimony, albeit a silent one in the case of the tree. And yet, even a silent testimony can be powerful.

As Chesterton quipped, “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” The presence of a tree which stood when our ancestors were born and lived and died is a powerful symbol that we are not so far removed as we think from those who came before.

This dynamic is why it is so captivating to listen to elderly veterans recall their experiences in World War 2. That generation now has all but passed away, and the few who remain are over 100 years old. They were really there during those epoch-making battles and great turnings of the tides, and somehow they are still here, still testifying to what they experienced. There are some who wish to deny the existence or severity of the holocaust; but their lies wither in the presence of the soldiers who came upon those cursed monuments of human evil and liberated those camps.

In a similar way, the presence of elderly saints who have been around for decades, or who personally knew the previous generation of leaders and founders, is a powerful testimony. They don’t have to say or do much—just their presence and a few timely words can make a big difference. That influence can be misused, of course, but I think it is part of God’s good design that we should honour these elders by adopting a default posture of deference.

Life is Full and Good

Turning 41 today, I am filled with gratitude for a full and good life. I write this to the background noise of three beautiful daughters playing together, imagining voices for their stuffed animals, and even working on my birthday cake. I received beautiful birthday cards from each of my kids, and my wife, and really I can’t imagine what else I could possibly want.

Gratitude is the proper response to God’s many good gifts to us. This doesn’t deny that there are many sorrows to be borne in this life. There is enough brokenness in everything, inside us and all around us, to fuel a lifetime of lament. But this is somehow mixed in with the goodness and blessing of every good thing that is.

I recognize today, in a way that I didn’t for most of my life, that existence itself is gift. Aquinas said something about that, I think. You know, ontology and stuff. To wake up and exist is something that calls for thanks. To wake up in a beautiful old house to a loving spouse and precious children is something that calls for an overflowing fountain of gratitude.

Sure, my vehicles keep breaking down, the grass needs to be mowed (again), something broke off from the top of the chimney in the last windstorm, the kids too often bicker, and there are some scary life decisions that still need to be made. There’s no end to the toil. You know, Ecclesiastes and all that.

But this morning, it’s good to stop and just be grateful for life. For my parents who loved me and made me who I am, for a legacy of God’s grace that I can trace through so many generations, and for the chance to do good work. For so many other things. For the cup of strong coffee, another beautiful day, and good books.

“My cup overflows,” and “the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance” (Psalm 23:5; 16:6).

Quotes for Pondering

A quick post today with some quotes I’ve been pondering.

First, from Carl Trueman’s excellent new book, The Desecration of Man, we have a thoroughgoing exploration of how a series of shifts over the centuries have fundamentally altered how we view the human person:

The old morality has not faded away. It has been overthrown in an instant. But such comprehensive change in social behavior indicates that there have to have been deep changes within the social imaginary. Now, the rapid change and violent transformation of social values may be shocking and sudden, but the underlying causes have been building for a long time. And the net result is that we now have a very different answer to the question “What is man?” than our ancestors did. The social imaginary has been completely transformed. (Kindle location 553)

The shifts have not only been intellectual, but technological:

Technology, more than anything else, has transformed the world into a place of dramatic flux and constant change. Ask me who I am and I will find it much harder to give an answer, for the only constants are those I have chosen for myself: my job, my partner, my location, my career. Yes, I have children, but I chose to have them. And even my own body now seems increasingly equivocal as a given: If I want to become a woman, why should I not choose to do so? My limits, my obligations, and my ends come down to my choice. I have to decide who I am. The “I” has been destabilized by forces beyond my control, because those limits, obligations, and ends have all themselves been destabilized. (Kindle location 781)

He specifically mentions the Methodist and pietist movements as part of the larger movement towards the internalization of the sense of self:

The rise of Methodism and Pietism, both movements with a strong experiential component, are also evidence of this inward turn toward emotion and feeling. With the church fragmented by the Reformation, the quest for religious certainty, like the quest for human identity, moved inward. The central importance of individual self-consciousness also continued in broader philosophical and cultural developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for example German idealism and Romanticism. As the outer world became more fluid, the inner space became more important as a source of stability and continuity. (Kindle location 831)

The book then traces how these shifts led to the artistic class seeing their mission as one of transgression and desecration, and what that steady cultural influence has yielded after a century or so. He explores the implications for our culture’s views of both sexuality and death. In both cases, he shows how the loss of a biblical anthropology and the fallen impulse to desecration has led us to where we are today. It’s a sobering but illuminating read.

In a somewhat related vein, I came across this quote from Abigail Favale, whose work on gender and feminism is excellent.

If the man has a primary role in preserving and safeguarding the dynamic of mutual self-gift and love between the sexes, in receiving the woman as a gift—the woman has a primary role in safeguarding the gift of the child, and protecting this dynamic of love from the threat of domination.

It is telling, perhaps, that the most damaging scandals of our time reflect a violent betrayal of both of these calls: the sex scandals within the Church reveal a perverse and total betrayal of the masculine mission to resist the temptation of dehumanizing sexual conquest; and the culture-wide embrace of abortion under the guise of protecting women’s rights is a betrayal of the feminine mission to safeguard the sanctity of hidden human life.

The idea of complementary and unique “missions” for each gender makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. This leads to the conclusion that we are most scandalized when men or women sin in ways that betray their particular missions. How could it not be so? For deep down we know that a man ought to protect the vulnerable, not abuse and exploit them sexually; and that women ought to love and nurture the children they conceive.

Remembering Holy Saturday (and an Announcement)

Today is Holy Saturday, the quiet day of grief and bewildered sadness among the followers of Jesus. Having seen their teacher and leader publicly executed, they retreated in confusion and fear. But out of sight, in the realm of soul and spirit, Christ descended to the dead. This is a doctrine we don’t often consider, and perhaps for good reason: the biblical evidence for it is nowhere near the level of the resurrection. In terms of relative importance, the propitiatory crucifixion and the epoch-changing resurrection are far more important and rightly deserve all the attention we give them. But that does not mean we cannot ponder the mystery of what Jesus was doing on that Saturday.

If you haven’t read my article on Holy Saturday, I commend it to you: “He Descended to the Dead? Recovering Holy Saturday.”

In my last post, I mentioned a pending announcement. It went out on April 1st in the TGC Canada monthly newsletter, though it was not an April Fool’s joke:

If you missed the newsletter and would like to see it, let me know and I’ll forward it to you. We’re still working out some of the details, but I’m very excited to step into this role as editor of TGC Canada and do what I can to continue the good work my predecessor Wyatt Graham started as well as the whole team, small and scrappy as we are, that have worked so hard to make TGC Canada a premier outlet for quality content.

I have a passion for quality writing, raising up and developing emerging writers, speaking to current issues with irenicism and historical perspective, small-c catholicity, historic Protestantism, and of course a relentless and unapologetic gospel-centrality. It’s a genuine privilege and a dream come true to serve in this capacity.

On Writing in the Age of AI (and a Pre-Announcement)

Things have been quiet—too quiet—over here on the blog. This is a big reason why I did not want to switch to Substack and try to get paying subscribers. Whatever gifts and abilities I have, productive regularity in my writing is not one of them. And I’ve seen too many ambitious Substackers get themselves in an awkward situation with regard to failing to crank out content for their paying subscribers.

M-Dashes and the AI Temptation

The reason it’s been quiet here is—follow me closely here—I haven’t been writing very much. Now some astute readers may start to get suspicious at this point. I’ve used two sets of m-dashes in these first few paragraphs, and m-dashes are notorious indications of generative AI writing. But you know what? I love m-dashes. That’s why I quite loved reading this article, “I Love the Em Dash—Too Bad If AI Does Too.” (I found the link to it from this post from Tim Challies). I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding the m-dash for months—until reading the article and embracing my beloved punctuation friend again. Why the avoidance? Because in the back of every writer’s mind is the growing consciousness that something has changed in recent months. And what has changed? Namely that readers now read online texts with a suspicion that it was written by an artificial neural network and not a human person, and they don’t like it.

The writer’s awareness of the reader’s awareness drives the writer to avoid any indications of being artificial, even if that means changing the natural way they would normally write—which is ironic. But it makes sense when you realize that the AI models don’t have any writing ability or any style of their own, they only mimic and ape human writing with varying degrees of skill. So the programmers get the AI to write like good writers and good writers look in horror at the machine simulacra being churned out which most readers would not be able to distinguish from their own writing and the writers respond by changing the way they write to sound more human. The next step is inevitable: the programmers will teach the AI models to mimic this new, more human-style of writing, and the writers will resort to ever more extreme efforts to sound genuinely human.

As I’ve thought about this feedback loop dynamic and the profound challenge it poses to writers, I’ve concluded three things:

It will not be possible for human writers to outpace generative AI, nor for readers to reliably distinguish human from machine text.
Despite this, most readers will continue to strongly prefer human-written texts over AI texts for anything in the fields of journalism, opinion, creative non-fiction, or fiction. These are irreducibly human endeavours, and a reader rightly feels cheated and wronged when he or she discovers that a text of that nature was written by a machine.
Therefore, the only way through for all involved is to cultivate trust. Readers will gravitate towards writers and institutions that have gained their trust through a demonstrated commitment to keeping their writing genuinely human.

I don’t see any other way forward. Writers credibly accused of using generative AI to write for them ought to lose their readers’ trust. (Caveat: I think there is a legitimate place for AI in research and some of the more mechanical aspects of editing).

Sadly, the temptation to use generative AI to write more and better will be too strong for some. There will be more scandals, especially among Christian writers aspiring to greater readership, larger platforms, and more followers. My advice to writers is to tread extremely carefully and consider the realm of AI as a kind of forbidden-fruit temptation. Yes, you’ll surely gain something, but you’ll end up losing far more, even if you don’t get caught.

Related to this is growing importance of institutional stewardship. I see two factors coming together to create a severe challenge to any organization that publishes content. The first is the general decline of trust in institutions that has characterized the 21st century, a trend that was accelerated during the pandemic. The second is the temptation to pass AI-generated content as human-generated content in order to do more faster.

My most popular post of all time on this blog was a critical response to what I considered to be a grievous failure of institutional stewardship: “Yes, Jesus was Crucified with Nails (and It’s Irresponsible to Suggest Otherwise).” In that case, it was not the use of AI that was the issue but the undermining of readers’ trust in the truthfulness of the Scriptures that was the issue. Still, it was a stark reminder that trust is a precious commodity in the realm of readers, writers, and editors.

An Announcement of an Announcement

All this has been on my mind not only because I’m a freelance writer and editor, but also because of a new and exciting development in my life that will soon be public. When that happens, I’ll be sure to post an update here as well.

From the Archive: Our Trip to Target

The following article is one of my early attempts at a ‘humour column’, inspired by the likes of Dave Barry. It was first published here on the blog back in 2013. The two kids that feature in it are now 14 and 12! I hope it brings a laugh, or maybe just a smile, to your Monday.

We decided to go to Target. We had a two year old toddler and a three-week old baby, and we decided to go to Target. And not just to pick up a couple of things. No, we were going to “do a bit of shopping,” and “look around.”

Now before you come to any premature conclusions, let me stress one simple but important fact: it seemed like a good idea at the time – which I think is the single best catch-all excuse mankind has ever devised. To me, it provides a satisfying answer to two of the most perplexing questions that all people eventually ask themselves; namely why we started World War 1, and why Cheez Whiz was invented. Nevertheless, there we were, climbing out of the car, unbuckling a myriad of buckles, snaps, zippers, and locks, and walking towards the glowing red store.

Before this all began, I had imagined a leisurely stroll through the store, coffee in hand, casually picking out some fantastic deals and putting them in the bright red cart that held a sleeping baby in the car seat and a smiling, obedient toddler. In this fantasy, my two-year old, Jackson, is humming Mozart’s 40^th symphony and thinking about how content he is with all of his current toys, periodically tapping me on the forearm to let me know that he loves me and that I am a great father; my wife is happily shopping for clothes, those unicorn clothes that all womenfolk chase after, the ones that fit perfectly and always look amazing – she finds two of everything and they’re all half price.

This is roughly what I was picturing:

In and out in 35 minutes, under a hundred dollars, and we’re laughing all the way home before the bleary-eyed herd of 9-to-5’ers kick off a couple hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As you can tell, I have a rather loose grip on reality.

We had been in the store only five minutes and already the warning signs were everywhere. For one, our daughter Addilyn was wideawake. It’s been cold outside so she wears this fuzzy bear suit that leaves only about three square inches of exposed skin – you know, so that she can breathe – and wraps the rest of her little body tight like a hug. From behind, she looks just like a teddy bear, and whenever she is in it she sleeps like a rock. Or like a rock would sleep if rocks were alive and were heavy sleepers. The fact that she was awake did not bode well.

But as an eternal optimist, I held out hope that my fantasy shopping trip would come at least partially true. The breaking point, that moment when all pretense is finally and completely abandoned, happened about thirty-five minutes in, right around the time I had imagined we would be leaving. I was holding my screaming daughter with one hand while I pushed the cart with the other. My son had been helping me push the cart, but then he tripped and fell on his elbow, which set him off crying in a kind of call and response gospel moment with his sister. I wasn’t able to pick him up what with my arms full of screaming baby, so we set off down the interminably long and obnoxiously shiny aisle towards the women’s clothes section, towards our only hope: Mommy.

On that long walk, with shoppers and store clerks giving me a wide berth as if I was holding a couple of lit Molotov cocktails, I realized that it had been a bad idea to come here, and a very bad idea to think we could do anything more than run in and grab the bare essentials we needed to survive another week. Kind of like they do in those apocalyptic movies when the zombie infestation or tidal wave is coming; which, aside from the pushing of old ladies and the fear of imminent death, is my ideal way to shop.

Devastation was everywhere. The coffee we had brought in was lost long ago, set down on some shelf somewhere while we wiped a nose or patted a bum, and instantly forgotten like an important paper from the government about your taxes. The cart was literally full, what with the massive car seat in the main section, laden with all of our coats, mittens and hats, and our few purchases crammed into the nooks and crannies and the top section.

Kailtyn had apparently heard the wailing duo (I hadn’t yet joined in to make it a trio but I was tempted) while trying on clothes in the change room. She came out and administered the love and pity I had been unable to provide for Jackson. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been faring much better, finding no clothes that fit well and feeling worse about herself for the effort. I pleaded for us to surrender and go home.

We needed an exfiltration plan, to cut our losses and live to fight another day. We decided on a course of action. Kaitlyn took Addie to the family washroom to change her diaper while I took Jackson with me to go pay for our stuff. Well over a hundred dollars later, with no clothes to show for it aside from six pairs of baby socks, Jackson and I went to the family washroom to check on the girls.

I heard a familiar shrill scream as I walked towards the washrooms, and realized that Addilyn was making her displeasure known in the loudest possible manner. Then the screaming stopped. I tried the door but it was locked. Kaitlyn opened it with her one free hand and pulled me in while she held Addie up with the other. She was feeding Addie milk, and I’m not talking about the kind that comes from cows. This was a clear departure from our plan; an unexpected delay. I couldn’t cope – I panicked. Kaitlyn was stressed, and in the chaos and confusion, we decided, for some reason – probably because it seemed like a good idea at the time – that I should run to the car to drop off our bags, leaving Jackson with Kait and baby Addie in the cramped, overly bright, and not overly clean bathroom.

I ran to the car, dumped the bags of stuff I wished I had never heard about in the first place, and ran back to the family washroom. As I rounded the corner towards the bathrooms, I heard crying again. But this time it was Jackson’s voice.

I knocked and Kaitlyn opened the door again. This time she looked quite exasperated, like someone forced to stay in a tiny room the size of a Dilbert cubicle with two children under the age of three. She explained to me how Jackson had been walking around touching everything, the way toddlers do, and accidentally set off the motion-activated high-velocity hand-dryer, which sounds not unlike a Boeing 747 during takeoff. The poor kid had been startled half to death and started crying. I entered the fray and distracted Jackson from his recent trauma by getting him to put on his coat, hat, and mittens.

Kaitlyn, realizing that her own coat was still in the cart immediately outside the bathroom door and therefore perilously exposed to theft and, even worse, uninvited alterations, said accusingly, “You left my coat out there?!” I was completely overwhelmed by this point, and my reply was heavy on bite and light on grace. We had a frank exchange of views on the subject at hand, as married couples do from time to time, and in order to spare the reader the uninteresting details of our conflict, and to leave room for some doubt as to who acted more childishly (I will give you a hint: it wasn’t Kaitlyn), I will close this scene and move on to the brief finale.

There was a silence, a heavy silence, which enveloped the car as we started home. In these kinds of situations, it always takes a bit of time for things to cool down and for wisdom and perspective to take their place. Lucky for me I had plenty of time to come around to such a place because we were stuck in the stinking armpit of rush hour traffic for over an hour, but at least the kids were asleep.

The Pleasures of Good Reading—My 15 Best Reads of 2025

What a delightful year of reading it has been. Despite travels for work and other responsibilities, I always found time to read (surpassing my reading goal of 52 books this year). Perhaps too much time! For me reading is like eating or sleeping—a necessity without which I shrivel up and die. I know not everyone feels that way, and that’s good. It would not be good if everyone was like me.

I’ve collected 15 of the best reads from this year (in no particular order), along with some brief thoughts from my Goodreads reviews (where I track all my reading). For longer reviews, I cut it short and put a link to the full review.

Let me take this opportunity to say thank you for reading and subscribing to my little blog.

I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas season and a Happy New Year.

Mere Christian Hermeneutics – Kevin Vanhoozer

This is a game changer, on my short list of life-changing books. I have so much to say about it, but I am trying to gather my thoughts and write something coherent about it elsewhere. For here, I will simply say that I listened to it twice and then bought a paper copy to re-read again. It answered a lot of lingering questions for me and renewed and deepened my love for the Word. Reading it was so very edifying. You get the idea. I loved it.

The Genesis of Gender – Abigail Favale

This is a very fine contribution to the growing body of work by Christian (or Christian-adjacent) women who are confidently standing up to the feminist dogma that has deceived and disappointed generations of women. Included in this list would be Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Erika Bachiochi.

The book is both positive and negative in its approach: positively building a vision for gender and femininity in particular from the basis of the book of Genesis; and negative in critiquing at a profound level the reigning views of secular feminist and gender theorists today. …

Full review here.

Why Liberalism Failed – Patrick Deneen

I’ve had this book on my radar for some years, but until now haven’t found the opportunity to read it. I was happy to find a copy in a library and pick it up. As a novice in the field of political theory, I feared the book would be confusing, boring, or some mix of the two, but it really wasn’t. In fact, it was very well written, with long flowing sentences that were easy to follow, sprinkled with some advanced vocabulary fitting for a distinguished professor at an elite University.

So what is this book? It is a diagnosis and critique. But not just any critique; Deneen offers a radical-to the roots-critique of liberalism as an ideology. For that is exactly what he claims it is. Born out of the myth of the autonomous individual freely choosing to form a state by way of the social contract, it was in fact a revolution in anthropology, he claims. The free market was devised to serve the telos of this new project: the emancipation of the human person, not from vice and passions, but from any unchosen external restraint or limit. …

Full review here.

A Learned Discourse on Justification – Richard Hooker

This is my first reading of Richard Hooker. Very impressive. I resonated deeply with his demeanour and approach to the topic of what divides Protestants from Roman Catholics, and the irenic way he went about clarifying those differences. He by no means blurs the differences or downplays their significance, but he does make a compelling argument about the fact that people can be truly children of God while being simultaneously mistaken on some serious doctrinal errors, not because those errors are no big deal, but because they do not directly deny the foundation of the faith.

Rather, they affirm things that undermine the foundation by necessary logical implication, but, as he points out, and as anyone who has gone back and forth with a muddle-headed person knows, not everyone has the cognitive ability to see logical inconsistencies that are one or two or four steps removed from the starting premises. …

Full Review here.

The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben

An enjoyable read that will re-enchant your experience of trees and forests. It demonstrates that everything Tolkien wrote about trees in The Lord of the Rings is basically true.

The Harvard Psychedelic Club – Don Lattin

Lattin tells the compelling story of four pioneering figures who shaped not only the 60s counterculture movement but also American society since then. Their lives were, on the whole, chaotic. Their relationships? Enlightened and harmonious, of course, glowing with the unity that psychedelic revelations of universal oneness has enshrined in their souls. Actually, not quite. Their relationships were fractious and troubled; all too human.

The book is well written and researched, with copious insights and quotes coming from Lattin’s own interviews with the subjects of the book. Lattin’s journalistic prose is very easy and pleasant to read. And although he puts his cards on the table in the Afterword—as a baby boomer former psychonaut still quite positive on psychedelics—I always got the sense he was playing it fair with his portrayals of people and events.

In a time when pro-psychedelic writing often has a strong bias driven by a sense of mission to advance the cause, this book was not at all like that. It helped me tremendously to understand the 60s better.

The Collected Writings of Stanley K. Fowler

Dr. Stan Fowler may not be a household name among evangelicals, but he was a faithful voice of biblical wisdom in the Canadian evangelical church and beyond for decades. This handsome set of his shorter writings makes his thought available to a whole new generation.

Some of the pieces that are decades old have an uncanny relevance today. The lack of historical roots in evangelical churches? Check. The resulting wave of interest in more historical, liturgical, and sacramental forms of worship? Check. Baptists debating ecclesiology and membership? Check. Baptists converting to Anglicanism? Check. Evangelicals converting to Eastern Orthodoxy? Check. And all of it happening fully a generation ago in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Fowler was on the vanguard of formulating cogent answers to these challenges, answers which remain relevant and helpful to this day.

Dr. Fowler’s work is always thoughtful, irenic, and worthwhile. I really enjoyed this collection of his shorter writings, especially his thought on sacramentalism for Baptists.

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

Third time through, and I feel I’m starting to understand why I love this book so much and the effect it has upon me. Much of it comes down to a kind of sacramental view of Creation; or a participatory aspect to existence — that we might participate in God’s goodness in some way simply by enjoying what He has made. It teaches me to see, to look and really see what is there.

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.”

Click here to read my recent personal essay over at Front Porch Republic: Gilead Reveals a Gilded World.

To Gaze Upon God – Samuel G. Parkison

This book is a great achievement. It succeeds in its mission, which is to retrieve the doctrine of the beatific vision for evangelicals, and in so doing, reintroducing new generations of Protestants to the riches of their own tradition. The introduction and opening chapters do a great job situating the modern reader in terms of where we are in late modernity and how that relates to the metaphysical foundations that undergirded earlier eras of Christian thought. The book self-consciously situates itself within the ‘Great Tradition’ and calls evangelicals back to classical Trinitarian theism from the barren wilds of modernist biblicism.

Having been thus oriented, Parkison takes the reader through a number of major figures from the early church, the middle ages, and the Reformation, and explores how the church’s view of the beatific vision has evolved over the centuries. The author then attempts to synthesize the best of these views into a coherent whole that is digestible for modern readers. His distinctive contribution seems to be a more thoroughly trinitarian formulation of the beatific vision, drawing on and continuing the work of Protestant giants such as John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.

One of the book’s strengths is the affective tone, the marriage of academic and spiritual concerns. In other words, the book is edifying and, when rightly read, is sure to bring the reader to worship. That being said, it is still quite dense, and some of the middle chapters felt like a bit of a slog at times. Perseverance, however, is richly rewarded. I recommend it most heartily.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples (4 volumes) – Winston Churchill

On the one hand, I want to think it’s an achievement to have completed the four volumes of Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, but on the other hand, it took no great effort at all, such was the pull of the unfolding narrative in Winston’s characteristic voice.

One of the notable elements of Churchill’s treatment of the history is his detailed interest in the particulars of wars. There is a story told about his childhood, where his father was unconvinced that Winston was well suited for the usual aristocratic occupations. Then he came upon him with his lead soldiers, which numbered over a thousand, all lined up upon the (living room) battlefield, with infantry and cavalry divisions clearly delineated. And so it was decided: Winston would become a soldier. This childlike delight in the organization and movement of troops upon the field never left Churchill.

It is this fascination with the minutiae of troop movements which gave his historical treatment a bit of a lopsided feel. He spilled much ink tracing the marches, maneuvers, and munitions of both sides of the American Civil War, to such a degree that it was a bit comical. One feels that the author was indulging his own interest at the cost of the book’s narrative flow, but this can be forgiven.

The impression I am left with at the conclusion of volume 4 is that this is a momentous achievement of popular history, and with prose of such a quality that it must be considered a triumph of the English language.

From Bauhaus to Our House – Tom Wolfe

Similarly to The Painted Word (about modern art), Wolfe hilariously pokes the pretenses of modernist architecture. And again it is quite informative and insightful. The cataclysmic break with everything past was driven by the same revolutionary spirit that animated the radical politics of the early-mid 20th century.

Sex and the Unreal City – Anthony Esolen

While the book certainly deals with sex in a broad and philosophical way, it’s probably a lot less than a casual reader might expect from that clickbait of a title. What it really is is a loosely-connected series of essays that all revolve around the central idea of the Real, and the degree to which our current hollowed-out culture is in a futile war against it.

Mythmakers – John Hendrix

Dang. I did not expect this graphic novel to so good or so moving (especially the ending). It provides a great introduction to the biographies of Lewis and Tolkien, their fruitful but troubled friendship, and the themes of myth that guided their fictional writing.

Nuclear War – Annie Jacobsen

The style of this book was very creative – using a plausible scenario as a spine from which to educate the reader on countless aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. I thought it was generally very well done; indeed I could hardly stop listening to the book. There were a few twists to the scenario that did stretch credulity, but overall it was all too believable.

The message, of course, is dire, troubling, and urgent. If Jacobsen (and her sources) are correct, then nuclear war is un-winnable, and preventing the use of nuclear weapons is unspeakably important. The scale of destruction from just one of these warheads is truly unimaginable; the consequences of an escalatory exchange of such weapons is apocalyptic.

In these matters, concern and advocacy goes well with a secure trust in the providence of God.

Delighting in the Trinity – Michael Reeves

Simply fantastic. Somehow manages to be both readable and very profound. The church is seriously in need of a revival of trinity-shaped piety among the laity. There has been a heartening renewal of classical trinitarianism among scholars and pastors, but I don’t think it has properly filtered down into the lived spirituality of normal Christians yet. This book ought to be in every church library and be considered a ‘standard’ along with Packer’s Knowing God and Sproul’s The Holiness of God.

Two Articles for Your Reading Enjoyment

Merry Christmas to all! I have two articles that were recently published that I want to let you know about.

The first is a little Christmas essay over at TGC Canada which reflects on the moral power of our Christmas stories, their irreducibly Christian shape, and why their enduring moral power can serve as a signpost, a lighthouse, a pathway back towards Christianity.

The Enduring Moral Power of Christmas

The second article is at a new publication for me, Front Porch Republic. This is a lesser-known outlet that features some really thoughtful writing on the themes of place, limits, faith, liberty, and literature. I thought it would be a good fit for an essay I wrote after recently re-reading Marilynne Robinson’s great novel, Gilead. I have some personal history with the novel, since it was my late mother who first gave it to me. I weave some of this into the article, making it more of a personal essay. I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it’s a blessing to you.

Gilead Reveals a Gilded World

The Real Reason Many Reject Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Ever since Bible College almost 20 years ago (gasp!), I have wondered why there is so much argument and furor over “theories of the atonement.” I remember seeing an essay in the student paper that questioned penal substitutionary atonement (hereafter PSA) and put forward an argument for Christus Victor. It revealed a clear aversion to PSA and this mystified me. Why, I wondered, would someone be so motivated to deny something which seems to be the plain teaching of the Bible?

Over the years I came to better understand the issues at stake, but I admit I still had trouble making it make sense. I could understand why some progressive Christians refused to believe in a God who poured out wrath and judgment (due to liberal theology’s allergy to descriptions of God that went against the grain of respectable modern moral sensibilities), but then what about those who had no problem with those parts of the Bible but who still seemed to have so much animus against PSA? I recently heard Derek Rishmawy make a comment on an episode of the Mere Fidelity podcast that struck me as an excellent answer to that question.

Here is the point he made: penal substitutionary atonement gets pulled out of shape and distorted when the categories of classical theism are not there. The prevalence of modernist metaphysics throughout the 20th century gave us a strange mix: conservatives held onto supernaturalism (like the virgin birth and the resurrection) but unwittingly lost the doctrinal substructure that served to keep PSA in its proper shape. Rishmawy observed that many conservatives in the 20th century (and into the 21st) were defending what they rightly thought of as a doctrinal core (PSA), but doing it in ways that would be contrary to earlier advocates in the tradition who had certain doctrines in place that protected them against the severe distortions. The most obvious stabilizing doctrine would be a classical view of the Trinity. He added that “substitution is an extraordinarily powerful doctrine that, without the right machinery around it, creates severe shearing forces in preaching that can go wrong.”

This seems quite right to me, like a key piece of the puzzle going right into its place. This insight explains some of the dynamics at play in these discussions and debates. For instance, without a clear understanding of the inseparable operations of the one triune God, then there is no guardrail to keep a preacher from describing the cross as the Father over here pouring his wrath out on the innocent and reticent Son over there, introducing a firm separation between Father and Son, as if they were not together fulfilling the plan of redemption they drew up before the foundation of the world. And without divine impassibility—the idea the God is without passions—then any talk of the wrath or punishment of God conjures images of uncontrolled anger or passionate revenge. But this is not the way to understand the wrath of God.

Here is a possible sequence of steps to summarize this process:

Modern metaphysical assumptions seep into theology —> classical trinitarian theism is revised —> loss of doctrines like divine impassibility and inseparable operations —> PSA language gets pulled out of shape by many of its proponents —> people react against the distortions of PSA by energetically rejecting PSA and pursuing alternative understandings of the atonement.

This would explain the strong overlap between those who reject classical theism and those who reject PSA, of which John Mark Comer would be one obvious example. Without the former, the latter is too easily distorted into absurdity (”cosmic child abuse”). So a twofold dynamic happens: proponents of PSA who haven’t got a firm grasp on classical theism tend to present it in distorted ways since they lack that doctrinal framework, and those who have rejected classical theism have a hard time conceiving of PSA without it quickly devolving into something grotesque, making it easier for them to reject PSA.

The parallel track that runs alongside this, mentioned above, is the rejection of wrath and judgment as fitting for God, a hallmark of liberal theology. Even the great evangelical stalwart John Stott seemed to be affected by the sense that it was not respectable, and perhaps unthinkable, to claim that God would pour out his wrath in judgment for all eternity. Stott’s case was mild — preferring annihilationism to the idea of eternal judgment. But the same impulse has pulled many a Christian to rethink PSA on the grounds that the idea that God’s wrath against sin must be satisfied is beyond the pale.

Even without a thoroughgoing classical trinitarianism, the best exegetes throughout the 20th century always managed to avoid serious problems in their description of the atonement by sticking close to the text of the Bible and letting their preaching and teaching reflect the overall balanced emphasis of the Scriptures. This is a point that D.A. Carson has made repeatedly, and it is worth bearing in mind: it is not enough to find something true that the Bible affirms and then proclaim it from the rooftops. There is a matrix of truths that are all interconnected, and the careful student of the Scriptures pays attention to the relative emphasis and the context of those truths as found in the whole Bible.

Talk of the various theories of the atonement seems to me to start the whole conversation off on the wrong foot. Let us rather seek to understand and rightly represent the multifaceted glory of the atonement. Wonder of wonders—our God has reconciled us to himself through the cross! And how? Let me count the ways, for the Scriptures unfold and tease out multiple threads of wondrous truth about this singular moment in history. One of these, among others, is the idea that in our place condemned he stood, becoming sin for us, bearing the punishment our sins deserved, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Our triune God planned and accomplished this for the fame of his name among the nations, and because he loves us. He redeemed us from the curse of sin, becoming a curse for us; he ransomed us, buying us with a price; he defeated the powers of darkness, triumphing over them and disarming them. Yes and amen.

The insight from Rishmawy is helpful because it reminds us that our theology is a complex matrix of interrelated truths. And there are some, it must be said, that are foundational, load-bearing truths. They keep the whole superstructure balanced and strong in ways that are not immediately obvious. And once they are removed or compromised, the whole building may not immediately fall down, but it may sway and wobble and buckle in unhealthy ways. I think this is what we’ve seen with popular-level representations of PSA, with lamentable results in driving people away from any kind of penal substitutionary element in their understanding of the atonement. The answer to overcorrections and pendulum swings, however, is careful and loving attention to the holy Scriptures.

Two Types of Book Reviews

Writing a book review is a little bit like brushing my teeth at this point; I do it without thinking. Ever since I discovered the wonder that is goodreads.com and got a bit more serious about tracking my reading and setting reading goals, I’ve gotten into the habit of writing at least something about every book I read. And so whenever I read something particularly interesting or engaging, I tend to write a lengthier and more detailed review.

My approach to writing reviews is definitely more whimsical than a typical academic book review. I like to focus in on a few salient points that struck me particularly and then to engage the book via reflection, sometimes bringing in another conversation partner as well. The classic “summary plus evaluation” equation for book reviews has always been rather unsatisfying to me because I enjoy a writer who involves himself or herself more directly in the review. Context matters here. For some publications, such as academic journals or professional association publications, it makes sense for the reviewer to fade into the background. But frankly, the kind of depersonalized prose this approach produces is so stripped of human vitality that no one would ever be able to tell if it was written by ChatGPT or not.

In contrast to this, I prefer to read (and write) reviews that emphasize the reviewer’s encounter with the book. One label for this is the review essay: a piece of writing where the reviewer uses his or her encounter with the book as a launching point. This means the resulting piece has a lot more personality in it; more of the writer and slightly less of the book. Sometimes such an essay can actually take two books and put them in conversation with each other. When done well, this approach makes for a compelling piece of writing.

Lately I’ve had a couple of book reviews published. First, at Faith Today, I have a review of Harold Ristau’s book, Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance: How to Minister to the Demonically Oppressed and Possessed. Faith Today has a very limited word count for their reviews, so I wouldn’t say this piece manages to feel like the kind of review essay I prefer. Nevertheless, I’m always grateful for the chance to be published in a print magazine, and the book was very interesting. Second, at TGC Canada, I have a review of Brad Littlejohn’s book Called to Liberty: Retrieving Christian Liberty in an Age of License. My editor at TGC, Wyatt Graham, prefers the review essay, so I appreciate the freedom to do those.

In an earlier piece, I reflected on the contents of the opening chapter of Samuel G. Parkison’s book To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice. I have since finished that book, and I gave it 4.667 stars over at goodreads. Here is the brief review I left there:

This book is a great achievement. It succeeds in its mission, which is to retrieve the doctrine of the beatific vision for evangelicals, and in so doing, reintroducing new generations of Protestants to the riches of their own tradition. The introduction and opening chapters do a great job situating the modern reader in terms of where we are in late modernity and how that relates to the metaphysical foundations that undergirded earlier eras of Christian thought. The book self-consciously situates itself within the ‘Great Tradition’ and calls evangelicals back to classical Trinitarian theism from the barren wilds of modernist biblicism.

Having been thus oriented, Parkison takes the reader through a number of major figures from the early church, the middle ages, and the Reformation, and explores how the church’s view of the beatific vision has evolved over the centuries. The author then attempts to synthesize the best of these views into a coherent whole that is digestible for modern readers. His distinctive contribution seems to be a more thoroughly trinitarian formulation of the beatific vision, drawing on and continuing the work of Protestant giants such as John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.

One of the book’s strengths is the affective tone, the marriage of academic and spiritual concerns. In other words, the book is edifying and, when rightly read, is sure to bring the reader to worship. That being said, it is still quite dense, and some of the middle chapters felt like a bit of a slog at times. Perseverance, however, is richly rewarded. I recommend it most heartily.