I get the fact that many Christians can use help in these areas. But is a “what wrong with _____” chapter or a “bed-in” really the solution? Do we need to add a class for our students counseling the sexually dysfunctional? Do pastors need to become sexperts?

How is it a nationally recognized speaker can excoriate a photographer in front of perhaps 500 witnesses for taking pictures during his public presentation, but that same voice can not withdraw his approval publicly from this kind of Christian voyuerism? I guess the gospel covers a multitude of sins! How is that we can get together for the gospel, but we cannot lift our voices together before a reprobate world that enough is enough! How about a conference on true spirituality? Where is Isaiah when we need him? Is there anyone who will throw the money changers out of the temple?

Maybe this is the real elephant in the evangelical room. We have no real voice in the darkening world, just a cacophony of confusion. Ichabod!

The popular definition of rhetoric includes, at minimum, the elements of bombast and verbal trickery. This understanding has led to a kind of pseudo-sophisticated distrust of rhetoric. A speaker’s or writer’s ideas can often be dismissed simply by declaring, “That’s not an argument, that’s just rhetoric.”

This mistaken understanding is unfortunate. Rhetoric, together with grammar and logic, is a basic tool of thought, a fundamental component of the life of the mind. The failure to master rhetoric cripples careful thinking by leaving people illiterate. Those who cannot critique rhetoric thoughtfully are typically the first to follow demagogues and propagandists.

Some displays of rhetoric are clearly unethical. These occur, for example, when a speaker uses flourishes to make himself seem impressive or half-truths to manipulate his listeners. At its worst, rhetoric can become mere propaganda. These uses are probably what the apostle Paul has in mind when he denounces “excellency of speech” and “enticing words” in 1 Corinthians 1 (a chapter in which Paul shows himself to be a master of rhetoric).

Nevertheless, these are the abuses and not the uses of rhetoric. Rhetoric has a vital role in both speaking and writing. It involves the skill of ordering ideas so that people are able to follow a sequence of thought. It includes the removal of obstacles that would impede legitimate persuasion. An effective rhetor is able to lead his listeners or readers to observe the world from a new and different point of view so that they can intelligently consider its legitimacy.

In other words, rhetoric has an ethic. Richard Weaver is a rhetor. He understands the use and abuse of rhetoric. As the title implies, in The Ethics of Rhetoric he inquires into the nature of ethical rhetoric, contrasting it with the unethical.

Weaver proceeds by way of analyzing historical examples. He begins with a discussion of Plato’s Phaedrus, employing the Socratic dialogue as an analogy for the right use of rhetoric. He contrasts the rhetoric of Bryan and Darrow at the Scopes trial. He critiques Edmund Burke’s argument from circumstances, and he offers a lucid glimpse into the thinking and speechmaking of Abraham Lincoln.

Having led his reader to distinguish ethical from unethical rhetoric, Weaver turns to his contemporary situation (1950s America). He discovers plenty of unethical rhetoric in both press and politics. He notes the tendency to vest secondary terms with ultimate importance, then to load these terms to “great advantage to a nation bent upon organizing its power to be able to stigmatize some neighbor” by employing “the term’s capacity for irrational assumption.”

This is the kind of thing that makes Weaver worth reading. He is another of those authors who deserves an entire shelf in your library—whatever he writes merits pondering. Here is one of his concluding observations.

An ethics of rhetoric requires that ultimate terms be ultimate in some rational sense. The only way to achieve that objective is through an ordering of our own minds and our own passions. Every one of psychological sophistication knows that there is a pleasure in willed perversity, and the setting up of perverse shibboleths is a fairly common source of that pleasure. War cries, school slogans, coterie passwords, and all similar expressions are examples of such creation. There may be areas of play in which these are nothing more than a diversion; but there are other areas in which such expressions lure us down the roads of hatred and tragedy. That is the tendency of all words of false or “engineered” charisma. They often sound like the very gospel of one’s society, but in fact they betray us; they get us to do what the adversary of human being wants us to do. It is worth considering whether the real civil disobedience must not begin with our language.

Steve and I were born but one year apart. I turn 55 next month, so Steve’s passing hits a little closer to home. It reminds me (as it should remind us all) that life is fleeting and we are mortal. Lord, teach us to number our days and apply our hearts to wisdom! What shall a man give in exchange for his own life?

As the world of Apple mourns the loss of their captain and commander (Steve formally stepped down as Apple’s CEO in late August), let us all remember that life is a gift from God and our days are in His hands. Let us live them for His glory and remember that it is appointed for a man once to die, and after this the judgment. Steve had everything that money could buy, but money cannot buy life itself. That is completely in God’s hands.

I left the meeting, however, working through the emotions of listening to Jim and Susie Goodew talk about the loss of their 21 year old son Titus in February of this year. Everyone present was touched by the pain of their loss as the Goodews opened their hearts in a transparency seldom seen. Titus’s life and suicide have touched many lives. Jim and Susie expressed with unusual clarity the depth of their personal sense of loss, and also the ways in which their own healing process has helped numbers of people. The support of their church, encouragement from other brothers and sisters in Christ (over 600 cards), and the prayers of many helped them through a healing process that is still ongoing.

I am reminded to continue to pray for the Goodews and “to weep with those who weep.” Their recovery continues and so should our prayers.

We will meet in Room 241 (the room where we have chapel). We want to see what is working and what we need to improve, and we will exchange mentoring ideas that have proven beneficial. Additionally, I want to encourage the pastors to find ways to help our students’ wives in the mentoring process.

Our Mentoring Partnership is designed to enlist the help of area churches in training men for the ministry. This partnership is founded on the seminary’s commitment to the local church and is designed to strengthen the relationship between its students and area pastors. The design is to meet the needs of students to learn the ministry from first-hand practitioners in the church while simultaneously learning skills in the classroom.

Please review the mentoring section of our website and come with suggestions. Contact me if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing you on Pastors’ Day after lunch.

Typically, when we receive a donated book, we check first to see if it is needed in our own library, either to add to our collection or to replace a book that has been heavily used. Then we check our collection in Romania. If the book is in both collections, we offer it for sale to area pastors and our students at our annual book sale. These books are all reasonably priced: from $.50 for some paperbacks to $1, $2, $5 or $10. Only rarely will any book be priced over $5, and there are several sets that are being sold for less than $1 per volume.

Not all of these books are older and less useful books. Many are still being used in discussions of church history, systematic theology, and biblical exegesis. So make your plans accordingly! The annual seminary library book sale promises some real bargains for the avid Christian bibliophile!

Dates: Monday and Tuesday, October 10–11

A Review.

In general, the Contours of Christian Theology series (ed. Gerald Bray) is thoughtful and well-done. The volumes in this series form a rather complete systematic theology. Sinclair Ferguson’s book on the Holy Spirit is one of the better contributions.

The tendency of systematic theologies is to look and feel like catalogs of ideas. Ferguson’s treatment is structured as a systematic theology of the Spirit, and he moves through the traditional loci. The “catalog of ideas” phenomenon is definitely present in the book.

The work is unified more by author’s overall theological perspective than by any other factor (except, of course, the topic of pneumatology). Ferguson’s perspective is definitely Reformed, but without being uncharitable. At one point he even recommends the work of Leon Wood, who was a rather traditional dispensationalist.

Ferguson handles the traditional topics well. For example, in his discussion of procession, he notes that contemporary Protestantism “tends to be impatient” with the subtle distinctions that the discussion requires, not to mention suspicious of the exegesis that has led to Western conclusions. His unpacking of the topic, however, is both competent and informative, even if brief (as the series format doubtless dictates). Not surprisingly, Ferguson ends up defending filioque.

If the economic relations of the Trinity illumine the ontological relationships within the Trinity (which is the case throughout the New Testament), then, since the Spirit proceeds on his mission from both Father and Son, it is appropriate to think of him as proceeding personally within the Godhead (ontologically in this sense) from both Father and Son. (77)

On the question of miraculous gifts, Ferguson lands firmly among the cessationists. He ties these gifts to the presence of apostles, making the classic argument that with the apostles off the scene, the miraculous gifts cease. He argues that the tongues of Acts and the tongues of Corinth were the same gift, that of speaking in unlearned, foreign languages. Surprisingly, he is one of the few who still finds a cessationist text in 1 Corinthians 13:8-12. He also discusses and rejects Wayne Grudem’s theory of prophecy.

Dispensationalists of the more traditional variety will be unhappy with a few aspects of Ferguson’s treatment. For example, since he affirms an inaugurated eschatology, he naturally ties certain ministries of the Spirit to eschatological fulfillments. If one is aware of Ferguson’s commitment to Reformed thought, however, such matters can be taken in stride.

This book would make a decent textbook for a seminary course on pneumatology, particularly if it were supplemented with other materials. It is (or should be) well within the competence of an ordinary pastor. By its nature it is not a page-turner, but it does repay the effort spent in grasping its thought.

Gary T. Meadors, ed. Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009. 369 pp. with indices.

The task of doing theology requires us to move beyond the bare statements of Scripture. At minimum, we must take account of different scriptures that address the same topic, and we must try to understand how supplementary and sometimes seemingly-contradictory statements are related to one another. We are also required to find answers to questions that the Bible does not address directly. Occasionally we need to consider why the requirements of some biblical texts seem different and even opposed to our moral commitments today.

In short, no one develops an understanding of Christian faith and life that stops with the bare statements of the biblical text. The question is not whether we should move beyond the Bible to theology—we all do. The question is how we can move beyond the Bible while remaining faithful to it and continuing to recognize it as our sole authority for faith and practice.

That is the question that Gary Meadors is trying to answer in Moving Beyond the Bible to Theology. The book is part of Zondervan’s Counterpoints series, and Meadors has brought together four authors who articulate four answers to this question. These include Walter J. Kaiser Jr., who advocates a “principlizing” model, Daniel M. Doriani, who argues for a “redemptive-historical” model, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, who articulates a “drama-of-redemption” model, and William J. Webb, the principal salesman of the “redemptive-movement” model.

Unlike some of the Counterpoints books, this volume does not necessarily pit views against each other. The four models often turn out to be supplementary rather than contradictory. Each of the authors recognizes considerable value in the approaches of the other authors.

Not unexpectedly, the most controversial model is Webb’s. While it may be possible to see some sort of redemptive movement within the text of Scripture, the question is whether Webb’s applications of this movement actually go beyond the implications of the text. At this point I register personal reservations. It seems to me that Webb has not found any effective way of regulating his method. In the wrong hands (which may be Webb’s), the redemptive movement hermeneutic could be used to justify applications that are actually contrary to the conclusions of Scripture itself.

At any rate, the interaction within the volume makes for a very interesting read. Moving from biblical text to doctrinal or ethical formulation is one of the key problems of theological method. While I find myself in complete agreement with none of the four authors, each of them contributes something useful to the discussion.

–E. M. Bounds (d. 1913), The Essentials of Prayer

Owen Barfield. The Rediscovery of Meaning. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1977. 263pp.

We read some books for information. We read others for amusement. Still others we read for provocation—they are designed to open doors in our minds, doors through which we pass into new ways of thinking. Occasionally, we discover an author whom we can read for all these purposes at once. Owen Barfield is such an author.

Barfield was one of the Inklings, the group of literary enthusiasts who gathered around C. S. Lewis at Oxford for discussion and encouragement. He was one of Lewis’s closest friends. According to Lewis, Barfield’s arguments were the thing that goaded him beyond philosophical idealism and even bare theism into an embrace of Christianity.

Barfield was a barrister by vocation (a barrister is the rough equivalent of a trial lawyer). By avocation, he was a philosopher, intellectual historian, and writer of fiction. It was through his avocation that he made his most enduring contributions.

Much of Barfield’s work anticipates and dovetails with discussions of contemporary hermeneutics. His more significant works include Poetic Diction, Speaker’s Meaning, and Saving the Appearances. The present volume, The Rediscovery of Meaning, is a collection of short essays dealing primarily with questions of meaning and the emergence of consciousness. These essays are genuinely trans-disciplinary, combining elements from epistemology, philosophy, psychology, and intellectual history.

Barfield’s work draws upon several influences. His theory of knowledge is selfconsciously premodern. His esthetic is largely Romantic. Barfield also had a fascination with the writings of Rudolf Steiner’s so-called “athroposophy,” and this fascination is reflected many of his works. It is particularly prevelant in The Rediscovery of Meaning.

All of which is to say that one must read Barfield thoughtfully, engaging his ideas and rejecting some of the more eccentric influences. Still, The Rediscovery of Meaning has the value of offering shorter presentations of the same ideas that Barfield elaborates in his longer works. In fact, one of the essays in the book is a deliberate condensation of Barfield’s argument in Saving the Appearances (perhaps his best book). Those who struggle with the longer treatment will find some help in the summary.

Barfield also deals extensively with questions related to the imagination. He devotes an entire essay to the distinction between imagination and fancy, using Coleridge as his main foil. One fascinating chapter selects the Aeolian harp and the camera obscura as metaphors for different philosophies of imagination. Central to Barfield’s thought is an understanding that the world does not simply exist, but that the world is imagined, and that it has been imagined differently by different people at different times.

For those who are not used to him, Barfield can be tough sledding. A bit of effort (such as Mortimer Adler’s three readings) invested in understanding him, however, will repay dividends. In my opinion, Barfield is one of those authors who deserves an entire shelf in your library. Read everything of his that you can get your hands on.