Gadfly's Muse

General Assembly 2019: Serious Issue, Serious Concern, Serious Discussion

 

https://www.crownandcovenant.com/product_p/ds535epub.htm

Yesterday the Overtures Committee on which I serve passed an overture that commends this report to the wider church as "as a work consistent with our standards and and helpful for answering questions arising in  the culture regarding same-sex attraction and how the church should minister to those who struggle with this sin."

I fully support this recommendation and indeed made the initial motion to adopt this position (slightly amended).  The complex questions that are hammering away at the Church of Jesus Christ in today's culture require clear sighted answers.  Some of the major headings are:

(1) Anthropology - should the church recognize homosexual attraction as an innate aspect of some human sexuality?  This is  a fairly modern challenge.  For most of church history, homosexual attraction was treated as a moral choice and thus was fundamentally no different in essence though greater in degree than other sinful tendencies.  There are many ramifications of this view.  

(2) Apologetics - how should the church answer the widespread cultural public relations campaign being prosecuted by the militant homosexual lobby?  This might seem not so complex after all since all we have to do is quote a few passages of scripture.  That simply cannot be the answer.  The wider audience to which we are speaking simply do not hear such arguments and the average lay person is not equipped to add the kind of sophisticated argumentation that has to accompany scriptural references.  The Church needs to clarify both content and form for its apologetic stance.

(3) Ministry - how is the church to minister to those who are facing this attraction, whether within the Christian "family" or who are trapped in the culture outside the church?  This is the question that occupied most of the discussion thus far.  There are serious differences with the PCA here.  The passion stems from a desire to build some bridges to those who want to know how to deal with their own passions.  This is especially serious to those pastors who are working with college students.  The knee jerk reactions that are being promoted by the homosexual lobby are a severe challenge.

These are just a few of the issues as well as an overview of the kind of speeches that are being made.  The small book that I reference above is a very good resource for all of these questions.  I endorse it (obviously) and recommend anyone who wants to be better grounded in these areas to read and study.

Our God-Given Right To Guns???? Really????

["Grumpy", 2015]

Exodus 20:13 (NKJV)

¹³ “You shall not murder.

Exodus 22:1–3 (NKJV)

22 “If a man steals an ox or a sheep, and slaughters it or sells it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep. ² If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. ³ If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed. He should make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.

In one of his more unguarded moments, then Senator Obama (April 2008) commented on how people frustrated with government's inability to deal with issues will often "get bitter" and when they do "they cling to guns, or to religion, or to antipathy...."  He backtracked a bit when his opponent (Sen. Hilary Clinton) took him to task but the remark probably reflects his continuing assessment of those who oppose additional government restrictions and regulations on the private ownership of firearms.

The Senator's (then) remarks are accurate in a broad sense though.  Many Americans, including Evangelical Christians, do hold some idea that private ownership of firearms is a God-given right.  As such, taken literally, this means that the ownership of weapons would transcend the constitution.  If the right to keep and bear arms is a God-given right then it would not matter, ultimately, whether the constitution authorized it or not.  

The question is worth exploring.  

I am restricting my thoughts here to private ownership of weapons for reasons other than recreation or hunting.  Hunting today is not really necessary to survival as it often was in 1791 though some die-hards would probably say that mental health would be endangered if they had to give it up.  The core issues in the current debate is ownership for the purposes of "self-protection" (life & property) and, at the extreme, as a check and balance against government tyranny.  Thus the question is "does the economy of God authorize or, in fact, require that His covenant people be adequately equipped for self-defense or for service in an ad hoc militia if necessary?"

There are a range of opinions on this and various theologians come down to different conclusions.  Most will say that the question is highly nuanced and therefore there is a certain degree of ambiguity in it.  Martin Luther went so far as to say that true Christians should always turn the other cheek.  He then went on to add that very few people, even in the Church, are true Christians.  Therefore, he said that God desires evil to be curbed or hedged in so therefore all those "other" people, especially when they are the magistrate, should be armed.  This is necessary to keep evil people from multiplying because, in his famous phrase, "frogs need storks."  (Storks eat frogs and hence keep them from over populating the pond.)  Luther thus planted his feet firmly on both sides.  His later support of the armed suppression of the Peasant Rebellion has clouded his reputation to some degree.

Calvin also straddled the fence to some extent.

I think that there is a clear teaching that "vengeance" (especially murder in pursuit of vengeance) is absolutely disallowed to the Christian.  Further, I think that it is clear that our Christian duty is to "love" them.  Those two guiding principles give a general framework in which to find some balance.

I don't believe we have to go as far as R. Rushdoony and discover that God's command to defend the helpless against violent injustice confirms every man into a "private police" force.  Certainly the negative command to "not murder" has the positive corollary that we must take every opportunity to defend life against unjust violence.  Does this mean that God has not only given us the right to have weapons but mandates that we do?  I don't think so.  Not every defense of life requires that a life be taken in prevention.  I do believe though that it is our God given duty to protect the lives of those under our care even if we have personal discretion over whether or not to exercise self-defense for our own persons.  I think it entirely within the bounds of our Christian freedom to own guns for self protection if we so desire.

Given that our religion allows us to own guns but does not require it of us, is it our Christian duty to submit to a government law that prohibits private ownership of weapons?  This is more tricky.  

Jesus' words do not completely resolve this situation.  In Luke 22 Jesus positively commends the ownership of swords and when asked by his disciples if they should resist the ones sent to arrest Him, he says "permit even this."  This cannot be taken any other way than Jesus saying, "In this situation, allow me to be arrested without violence."  Jesus does not condemn the disciples for asking the question and therefore seems to affirm the literal possession of weapons.  In the other Gospel accounts Jesus' actions fit into this framework.  Jesus' statement before Pilate that His Kingdom is not of "this world else my servants would fight" has to do more with the nature of His government and rule than the absolute proscription for weapon ownership.

That still does not give us absolute clarity with respect to any governmental sanctions against it.  

Thus, I have to conclude that the Scripture does not say that we have an absolute right to ownership of firearms and that Christians cannot appeal to Scriptures in that regard.  If a man is called upon to defend his home and is without firearms that doesn't mean that he cannot find other means of doing so.  It might require us to carefully consider how to equip our homes and possessions so as to minimize the necessity for firearms at all.  

But, do I believe that it is morally wrong for the government to so restrict the citizens?  Yes, I do.  But God, in His providence has established government over us and has given us instructions that we are to obey that government.  There are limits to this and civil disobedience is a Christian option with 3000 years of history to back it up.  It is foolish to believe that private ownership of weapons in today's society will ever, effectively, provide for a militia that could take on the Federal government in open warfare.  The idea of a private militia itself is also questionable.  To be part of a militia, a Christian would have to swear to take orders and work under that militia's authority.  That is not the same thing as giving allegiance to a new government.  Government is far more comprehensive than simply its armed forces.  The Colonials did it right.  They had a separate government in place when they declared their independence and therefore Christians could, in fact, give their secular allegiance to that cause.

So, I believe that Christians should resist the government's immoral and unconstitutional attempts to restrict private ownership of weapons but I do not believe they can argue that it is a God-given right for them to own them.  If the country divides and a separate movement is founded with the intention of over turning the government in some kind of coup, then Christians should be very careful in how they react to that.  At that point it is no longer a question of owning firearms, it is a question of submitting to God first and foremost.

I'll Take Jack Any Day...

[image: retro-spinnaker, 2009, JA Van Devender]

Psa 107:23
Those who go down to the sea in ships, Who do business on great waters,

(co-posted as a review on Amazon.com)

It has been my custom throughout my life to read (books preferably) prior to falling asleep.  With the dearth of constructive entertainment or interest, prevalent on the television, I now find myself resorting to this a bit earlier than previously on days when the press of duty frees my conscience to do so.  

I think reading fiction, especially historical fiction, is a very edifying activity.  I have encouraged this type of reading, along with poetry, to those over whom I have some discipleship privileges.  Reading, as opposed to the visual arts like movies, etc., helps develop our vocabulary but also trains the mind, perhaps sub-consciously, in communication skills.  This is especially important for those who aspire to the pulpit ministry because their goal is to engage the imagination as a means of touching the heart.  The imagined scene is so much more powerful than one projected on a screen behind the pulpit.  The hearer is engaged at a much deeper level as the words he hears communicates insights that simply cannot be projected.  I view with deep concern the diminished emphasis on reading in the younger generations.  I have met many, perhaps a majority, who have never read an adult novel.  It's a shame.

All this is to say that I recently have revisited the Jack Aubrey series written by Patrick O'Brian (RIP).  It is my admittedly amateur's opinion, that they are the finest volumes of nautical historical fiction ever written.  Horatio Hornblower (C. S. Forester) was OK, in his simple way, but I will take Jack any day over him.

It is often said of Melville's great work, Moby Dick, that if you read the unabridged version you will know more about whales than you know about the main characters.  There's some truth to that.  I found those sections tedious when I read it years ago.  I hear a similar complaint against O'Brian's work.  One of my sons said that he couldn't "get into it" because of the extensive descriptions of sails, tackle, ship designs, nautical terminology, etc.  To a mind trained by virtually unending car chase scenes in action movies, the desire for something to happen before interest is evoked, does pose a problem.  I do not think the nautical lore to be overly done in O'Brian's work as cetology (study of whales) was in Melville's.  It is there but it is not pedantic... it is often humorously rendered as the paternally minded seamen explain to the hopelessly land-lubbing Dr. Mataurin the things which, in their world, are as obvious and ordinary, as "physic" is in his.  

But what O'Brian does best, far better than Forester, is build his stories around real events from the point of view of those who were actually there.  O'Brian spent thousands of hours reading old ship logs from the period (turn of the century, 1800) and then incorporated the actual engagements and results into his plot.  In his own words, he could not, in all his imagining, come up with more exciting stuff nor more incredible.

A point in fact.  The first novel in the series, "Master and Commander", should not, in any circumstances, be confused with the movie of the same title.  They bear virtually no relation in fact.  In the novel, Aubrey's first command is of a little brig called the "Sophie" and she is modeled after the actual ship H.M.S. Speedy (see HERE for verification) and Aubrey, in this novel, modeled after Lord Cochrane (only as a nautical person, not in his personal history).  The crowning engagement that does in fact stretch a person's credibility was when this little 14 gun ship with its 50 or so men, willingly engaged and took a much larger, more heavily armed ship, manned by a crew of over 300.  Now folks, this almost defies belief, but there it is.  

O'Brian's novel stays close to the facts of the engagement but makes it come alive as his characters live the battle for us.  It's the second or third time I have read this particular novel and it is just as fresh and entertaining now as it was over 20 years ago when I first picked it up.

So, I think O'Brian's fiction stands on a par with any of the "great" writers.  His subjects are different than Dicken's but not less compelling.  His attention to detail, character development and nuances are there, sometimes subtle and at others not so.  He doesn't overly romanticize the era with its harsh reality (flogging at the grate, for example) but neither does he drown us in it.  The sailors of the day did in fact understand such things differently than we, even if they were on the receiving end of it.  What we do see is the seemingly infinite gap between a midshipman (perhaps 10 or 11 years old) and the captain in how they lived and died and ate their meals and what concerned their thoughts.  We are given insights into the politics of the mess decks and why the Navy mandated that every seaman must be allowed at least 14 whole inches to hang his hammock and why this required a "watch and watch", or two watch rotation for the crew.  

Like every military activity it was hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror, and so we are introduced to how a barely pubescent midshipman might, in boredom, carve his name in a foretop, only to visit that same ship, years later, as its captain and be overcome by nostalgia as he sat there in lonely isolation.  

This is the stuff of human life, no matter how or where it is lived, and Patrick O'Brian is an author that helps us live ours and be better for it.

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T. R.: Man of His Times, Preacher of "Righteousness", RIP

Book Review:  Edmund Morris' Trilogy - The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Rex, Colonel Roosevelt

Only America, and more precisely, only that America which existed between 1850-1918, could have produced Teddy Roosevelt.

Every once in a while a character springs to life about whom it can be said that he or she is truly an extra-ordinary person, and have that be, quite literally, true.  There is often much to admire about such a person, and that is true of T. R.  There is also, just as often, much which may be criticized, and that is true of T. R. also, and in spades.  However the net result of such a life is that it inspires the rest of us very-ordinary folk to shoot a little higher, strive a bit more and to recognize that, after all, one individual can make a difference.

Edmund Morris' trilogy is superb.  I read them as they were published though with a bit of a delay.  Biographies fall into that category of "night-time, before I go to sleep, read a few pages and turn off the light", reading.  When each book runs upward of 700 pages of tightly constructed prose, it takes a bit of time to get through on that type of schedule.  Each of these books however are amenable to that approach.  One must be able to "pick up where one left off" without having to go back and review.  The writing must stimulate mental images which involve the reader in the material.  The subject matter must be interesting and personal and not just endless recounting of facts, figures, policy details, etc. which numb the mind and break the concentration.  These books all possess those qualifications and are highly readable.

But if Morris' writing is the proper instrument to convey the information, it is ultimately the subject which determines the worth and no mortal sinner ever walked this earth who was more interesting than T. R.

The man was simply prodigious.  How do you encompass a man who: (1) wrote a detailed study of the Naval War of 1812 before he was 25, a work which continues to this day to be a primary reference for any scholarly commentary on that subject, (2) was a recognized expert naturalist who not only wrote regular articles on various aspects of it but was also commissioned by the Smithsonian to supply samples, specimens and analysis of flora, fauna and geography across the globe, (3) was a cowboy & deputy sheriff in the still wild west, (4) raised the "Rough Riders" and lead them in battle in Cuba, (4) was an effective and energetic Police Commissioner in New York City, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, Vice-President and then President of the United States, (5) winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and was actually deserving of it, (6) was the organizing power and principle for a serious third party alternative to the Democrat and Republican political system, (7) carried an assassin's bullet in his chest until he died, (8) fought off multiple bouts of malaria contracted in his explorations in South America and Africa, and .... well, it goes on and on.  T. R.'s correspondence ranged from kings to plumbers.  He was never late for a publishing deadline and had a nearly infallible memory for details of reading, conversations and acquaintances.  His preserved correspondence numbers in the hundreds of thousands of pages in a day when hand writing or dictation was all that was available.

No one was neutral about T. R.  His infectious charm made him at home with virtually every head of state in his life-time and many sought his advice even after he had passed his political zenieth.  He was a man to be reckoned with in whatever he undertook to do.

The best description of him, I suppose, is that he was a boy who never quite grew up.  Whether playing with his kids or his beloved grand-children, he delighted in energetic activity.  Passionate in everything, he was explosive in his anger, mostly controlled to some extent in his public dealings but never so in private.  His disgust, mostly well merited, with Woodrow Wilson verged on mania.  

One of his first public actions was to propose, as a brand new, virtually unknown delegate, that a black man be nominated to the chair of his state political convention.  This was unheard of in the late 1800's but it is representative of T. R.'s mind-set.  He was a compromiser par excellence in pursuit of objectives but he never abandoned those objectives and saw compromise as only a step in the process.

T. R. was not religious and hence there was lacking in him that spiritual depth that would have, perhaps, reigned in some of his more egregious characteristics.  He was, in his own terms, an advocate of "righteousness" (hence my title above).  But T. R.'s brand of "righteousness" took Stoic, Spartan pride to new heights.  He was fiercely moral but only according to his own defintion of it.  There was a blood-thirsty tinge to most of his life and he thought war a means of purifying the national character and developing its virtue.  This lead to him flinging his four sons off to the front in WW I and using all of his political skill to get them posted to combat elements.  His sons served with distinction but one, his youngest, did not survive and the others were all deeply affected by the horror that they saw.

T. R. never quite recovered from that.

I do not agree with all of T. R.'s political agenda but his far sighted vision and impact cannot be denied.  Perhaps his greatest legacy, humanly speaking, is the National Park system and the present ecological emphasis.  He was an elitist in virtually every aspect of his personal life but he never lost sight of the common man during a time when the common man was not very high in political concerns.  His brand of Progressiveism is foundational to that which goes by the name today but I doubt seriously that he would agree with where it is now registering.  His nationalism would place him far afield from the present advocates of that system.

All in all, this is a man who registers most vividly what America once was and will never be again, for good or for evil.

I would most highly recommend Morris' work.  Too many Americans today are ignorant of their history and their heritage.  These books will acquaint the reader with not only a man but the nation in which he lived and one cannot help but gain from having that additional depth in his perspective.

 

Nothing New Under The Sun: A Book Review of "Christianity and Its Competitors"

Author: James McGoldrick, Professor of Church History at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

ISBN: 1845501403, available generally and at Amazon.

Any lay person who takes their faith seriously should thoroughly acquaint themselves with this book. Any Evangelical pastor who recognizes the idolatry and heretical formulations which comprise the religious cultural landscape facing his flock, should seriously consider this text as a primary resource for officer training as well as instruction for the wider congregation.

Prof. McGoldrick quite accurately defines a major problem facing the Evangelical church in the US in his opening comments. "In the religious climate of the early twenty-first century, there is a tendency to regard as Christian any school of thought which professes allegiance to the teachings of Christ, no matter how vaguely it may do so."

Amen! Though the word "tendency" might be an understatement. Perhaps more accurately it might be replaced with "powerful pressure"

The pervasive and intentional social imperatives pressing upon American Christians are the inevitable fruit of fundamental shifts in philosophical and moral perspectives. Though beyond the scope of this review to survey, I do not think it too far fetched to assign these shifts to a central uniting thread: "distrust of certainty." Americans, at every level, find that "certainty" is equated with "narrow-mindedness", "arrogance", "bigotry" or other such dismissive condemnations. The outworking of this cultural imperative is that the vigorous defense of "truth" is viewed as socially disruptive and, in some instances, subject to judicial action.

Therefore Christians as a group are pressured to be more and more reductionist in their "essential" theology. The naive cry "Can't we all just get along" has passed from being a somewhat amusing cynical platitude to the status of spiritual affirmation. One is simply "not Christian" unless one is tolerant of all those "others" who think differently about religion and especially about Christ Himself. It is difficult, in the modern landscape, to imagine another time (the era of the Reformation) when the nuances of the Protestant claims against the Roman religion were passionately debated by butcher and tailor alike. Yet, it was so and the present state of the Christian witness in this country suffers in comparison.

Truth is worth defending. Christianity is and has always been, a struggle against the "wolves" (Acts 20:29, et al) who seek to devour the flock. A consistent polemical theme is present throughout the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. The Kingdom of God stands over and against the Kingdom of this world and the mandate to clearly distinguish it in contrast to its opponent, is inherent in the Great Commission's requirement teach disciples to obey. But in order to distinguish the Kingdom of God it must first be clearly demarcated. There is no neutral ground, no "no-man's land", the essential mastery of which is the object of their struggle. Spiritual warfare is a "zero-sum" conflict. The advance of the Kingdom of God is always to the detriment of and exact reduction of the Kingdom of this world.

Thus those who are outside the Kingdom must be recognized and distinguished. Prof. McGoldrick's book, in an accessible and somewhat comprehensive fashion, does this. His objective is to demonstrate the truth that modern apostasy is essentially just the recasting of older lies in new molds. He systematically traces the various essential deviations from Orthodox truth as they have woven themselves into the "progress" of history and then clearly identifies their modern distillations.

Many books have done this but Prof. Mc Goldrick's major contribution is his spare, non-technical, prose. He writes powerfully and well and retains the reader's interest regardless of prior acquaintance with the subject or technical sophistication.

There are "organizing themes" that can be used to group the various deviations from truth. Prof. McGoldrick sorts these themes under the headings of his chapters: (1) Ebionites and Judaizing Christianity, (2) Montanism, (3) Arianism, (4) Pelagianism and (5) The Completion of Revelation. In my opinion these are a good place to start but my one criticism of the book is that it tends to leave a somewhat reductionistic perspective in the reader. They give the impression that these are all the "competitors" to the claim of "Christianity." Absent from this book are those, somewhat more subtle, heresies that have arisen from errors in hermeneutics. An example would be the "over spiritualizing" of the texts that we find in Origen and the semi-gnostic search for "meaning" which only a select group (such as Harold Camping) have been privileged to understand. One can easily see the range in which hermeneutical error has afflicted the church in the rise of preterism and the denial of a future historical content to Scriptural prophecy including the return of Christ and the bodily resurrection of the dead.

But, as an introduction to the landscape and as a clarion call for Christians to take up again the sword of truth, comprehensively revealed in the Scriptures and comprehensively commanded to be preached by Christians as foundational to their witness, Prof. McGoldrick has done good work.

I would recommend it to all Christians and to any secular reader who is interested in understanding what differentiates the various Christian denominations from their competitors.

 

What You See Is Not ALL You Get!

[photo: Stark Reality, JAVanDevender, 2012]

Values, life meanings, purposes, and qualities slip through science like sea slips through the nets of fishermen.  Yet man swims in this sea, so he cannot exclude it from his purview.  This what was meant when we noted earlier that a scientific world (emphasis his) view is in principle impossible.  Taken in its entirety, the world is not as science says it is; it is as scienc,e philosophy, religion, the arts, and everyday speech say it is.  Not science but the sum of man's symbol systems of which science is but one, is the measure of things.

Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religions, p. 16

Smith's book is a refreshing non-Christian assessment of the irrational consensus stretching across the various segments of American culture, at least as far as I can see it.  Over the past 50 years, with greater or lesser intensity, Americans have grown cynical and suspicious of any claims to truth other than that which their senses can validate and their perceptions confirm.  

This is not an entirely new phenomenon in absolute essence.  From the arrival of the Puritans right up throgh the classical enlightenment of Colonial times and extending even, though significantly lessened, through the Romantic 19th century, and certainly in the early Modernist 20th century, Americans have always prided themselves on being "practical."  Our approach to religion, politics, art and literature has been influenced, if not conditioned, by the screening grid of "what works?"  

But within that prevailing practicality Americans had certain values, misplaced perhaps but real, that limited that practicality.  Though not a philosophical community, Americans were yet disposed toward the idea of "the beautiful", the pursuit of "quality", the social imperative of the American "Dream", the unquestioned assumption that we had "hit" upon that blend of freedom/responsibility/encouragement which was the key to human development and future prosperity.  We were unabashedly evangelistic.  Promoting our ways and our ideas, with some success and with too much arrogance, and exporting our institutions throughout the world.

In other words, we had a "world view" that formed a central unifying idea.  Immigrants were "assimilated" into this view.  Cultural distinctives were precious but subordinate.  To be "Southern" was to embrace secondary ideas about life in these United States that were never-the-less absolutely subordinate to the higher claim of being an "American."  I submit that even the shameful issue of race relations was characterized by this approach and I would submit the evidence of the proud performance of non-whitee Americans in ALL the wars of the period.

But that changed.  The common embrace of intangibles dissolved under the influence of vicious political power plays, the dedicated strategy of radical elitist academics and intellectuals, and the rise of "selfish me-ism" sensuality that characterized the masses of the post-1960's populace.  

Something had to fill the void created by the dismissal of abstract "values."  That which was confidently advanced was "scientism" - the belief that the only true "truth" is that which can be established by the principles of formulaic validation and predictive behavior.  It showed up across the board.  Education theory became the subject of endless, repetitive, and often contradictory "studies."  "Studies prove..." became the unquestioned warrant for whatever hare-brained agenda some demagogue wanted to advance.  "Prove it" was the underlying demand that opened the door for the idea that everyone's opinion is of equal value no matter what their qualifications on the subject being discussed.

Consensus dissolved, intellectual and moral anarchy has prevailed and now, simply, there is no dream.  All we have left is the sterile imbecility of moral license and the reductionist straight-jacket of impressionist thinking.  In a social structue where in "quality" is not recognized, where "advancement" in personal virtue is not celebrated, and where transcendent goals are not pursued, there is and must be a corresponding despair - the sense that "something is missing"  - and the resultant flattening of human existence.

Smith is on to something.  He is too much a product of those same trends to be able to critique his own observations.  He cannot find a measure (scientism) to be able to distinguish, among the commonly held values of the world's various religions, any which are to be elevated as the repository of "truth."  He still treats the facts of human religions as the data from which conclusions are to be drawn.

But he says and sees many good things.  All that is lacking is the insight, that what you "see" is not ALL there is.  Among the world religions, only Christianity can claim the priority of "truth."  That statement is not proved by the data of the Christian religion itself... it is furnished by the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit... a Person who is not contained in human equations nor constrained by human conceptions.  He is the validation of all that is transcendent for in Him is beauty, peace, joy, life and truth.

The Jihad Germ: No Tom Clancy But A Good Read

The Jihad Germ: T. N. Rivers, Pirate Island Press, $12.95 on Amazon.com

See all my reviews on Amazon.com

FOUR STARS (of a possible five)

Rivers' book is a page turner. The fast paced action keeps the story moving but is also that which makes it the least realistic. The reader is very aware that what he is reading bears as much resemblance to how a full scale bio-terrorism attack would be handled as an Indiana Jones movie bears to actual archeology. Which is not to say that Rivers' primary thesis and the events/responses which are depicted are out of the question. They are not. It is just that the attack, if it was actually mounted, would have been far more devastating because the government response could never rise to the efficiency River's recounts.

The best aspect of the book is the detailed account of how the attack was formulated and executed. The degree of detail given was indeed scary and, since I am not qualified to speak to the technical details of the biological/genetic possibilities, I assume it is feasible. Rivers' descriptions and identification of the various organizations which would be involved in combating such an attempt were also helpful

Where Rivers' needs to grow as an author is in making his characters less stiff and robotic. When Dr. Ron Raines loses his live in girl friend, for whom he presumably had great affection, he accepts it with what seems to be no more than a passing thought - "I should have been with her when she died." That's about it. All of the other characters are sketched at about the same level. All it takes for the bad guy terrorist scientist to suddenly change his mind about the Great Satan Americans is for Dr. Raines to show him a little love. That's a bit of a stretch.

So... five stars for technical background and plot outline, three stars for character development averages out to four.

Good summer beach read. It'll take you 3-4 hours straight through.

Turning Points: Decisive Moments In The History of Christianity

By Mark A. Noll

Noll's book is well worth the cost and the time to read. It is a fine resource for teaching in the local church or for individual study. Written in plain prose with adequate explanation of the technical theological terms that must be considered, it is easily accessible by the average reader today. If for nothing else, this book will acquaint or re-acquaint us with the importance of doctrines, Evangelical piety no matter in what tradition it is found, and how the world can be changed. It is implicitly, a call to return to our roots.

Noll's major contribution in this work however, may very well be how he demonstrates to us that crucial turning points in the progress of history are often the consequence of intense, penetrating debate concerning rather precise and difficult concepts. These debates may be acrimonius and there may be many dark episodes that accompany them, but Noll's synopsis makes us realize just how vital those debates are, even when so accompanied. We often consider the ancient thinkers as being somewhat primitive because their technology was not as advanced as ours. A survey of history such as this will quickly disabuse us of this notion and cause us to reflect upon the paucity of such thinking around us now as was evidenced in these debates.

I highly recommend reading the book. It would be good to pay attention to the names and dates but the real teaching, for me, is that we moderns need to get back to thinking deep thoughts about our time and place as these men and women did in theirs.

A Study In Leadership

                                                                            Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor
                                                                                                        Biography by Anthony Everitt
                                                                                                                2006, Random House

This is a well written, anecdotal history of a complex and pivotal life, a study in how a single man can be the focus of world changing significance.  Anthony Everitt’s disciplined recounting of the events and manner of Gaius Octavius Caesar (Augustus) allows for more than a pleasant re-acquaintance with important historical facts.  Fundamental to the author’s approach is the manner in which he allows us to see parallels to our own time and culture in the issues confronted by nation whose very success surpassed its political structures’ capacity to resolve.  Furthermore, at a bit further distance, this book supplies a study of the nature, perils, rewards and costs of unwavering ambition when it controls a capable, energetic and charismatic leader.  When read with an eye toward this aspect, it is a sobering reminder that a person must count the cost of significance.  If any aspire to greatness, the pathway they must walk, the cost they must bear and the steel resolve they must demonstrate, cannot be far removed from that we see in Augustus.  The book is an excellent critique of ambition even as it clearly demonstrates that which can be attained through it.