Solomon wrote, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Posts under this category mean that I’ve gotten to the end of another among the many.
Capon knows how to play. He cares without being pretentious, he laughs without being frivolous. His angle is almost always fresh air, a cold drink. He is anything but a wet blanket or a blowhard.
That said, he gives away too much in this book for me to dance and sing. Capon not only writes with allowance for lady preachers/priests, he writes with ambivalence on He or She for God’s pronouns. It isn’t clear that he isn’t a Universalist. He says he is liberal, I believe him.
As for preaching, studying to preach, and reading to study, he says he loves it, and I believe him. For all the practicals (i.e., less adverbs, except for the ones that make it conversational in tone, etc.), his ideas are fine. Most importantly, he does get to the real foolishness of the message and task, the thing we don’t want to hear or do: die. Our preaching is vain unless Jesus died, and rose again. We must die in Him and, after that, like Him. It’s either complete foolishness or the power of God to salvation.
I can’t recommend that you start this book, but I wouldn’t tell you to stop reading it either. It will never make my required list for homiletics class, and yet his joy in the task and his joy in preachers may be for your joy.
This book is about sports, leadership, winning, and statistics. I really enjoy three of those four.
The author has a lot to say about his statistics, in particular how he came to choose the teams, the dynasties, that warranted further consideration for what made them great. But all that did was provide some numbers to focus on what isn’t numbers at all: the commitment of one guy to drive a team to dominate.
A friend recommended this, and I’d recommend it to my friends, too. It was fun, and I learned about some teams I don’t typically come across in my normal viewing interest.
The lesson is, skill/talent is something, but not sufficient. Someone has to care, and be committed to pay the cost. Usually that guy becomes the captain. Be that kind of guy.
“the most crucial ingredient in a team that achieves and sustains historic greatness is the character of the player who leads it.”
“It’s not that having a captain of a certain kind was a bonus—it was the only common denominator.”
On my long list about Doug Wilson, near the top is thanks to God that Doug loves God’s Word. He urges, rightly, Christians to have no problem passages. He stands, rightly, against compromising exegetes that want to be cool in the eyes of cool people, so-called academics and such. Wilson gets in trouble for this, takes heat for it, and does a little jig around the corner for the privilege of receiving reproaches.
He has taken some hits for this book, and for pointing out from Scripture that God chose Israel, made promises to Israel, and intends to grant a coming generation of Israel repentance and faith in Christ. This will not just be okay, it is necessary according to the New Covenant, and it will lead to greater riches for the world.
He includes an entire appendix of Reformed men from previous centuries making the same point. This is because many who identify as Reformed in our century reject any expected and specific revival among the Jews.
I’ve thought about what to say at this point in my review for a while. I love so much of what I’ve learned from Wilson, and pray for the fruitfulness of his bright light and joyful testimony. And also, his supercessionism is as surprising and inconsistent as it is wrong.
Supercessionism is the teaching that God is fulfilling His promises to Israel in the Church. From Wilson’s glossary, he defines:
“Supersessionism is the belief that the Church is Israel now. All the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ, and only there (2 Cor. 1:20). This means that the promises given throughout the Old Testament are the present possession of Christians, not Jews.”
Some call this replacement theology, though of course those who believe it reject that it’s “replacement.” Wilson makes a distinction between hard and soft supercessionism, and claims to be a soft supercessionist, meaning that Wilson expects some of the promises to Israel to come about, especially those about a great Jewish conversion to Christ in Romans 11.
He also says:
“[Christians] have always considered ourselves to be in some sense the true heirs of the promises God made to His people. And this means that consistent Christians must always be supersessionists of some stripe.”
But how is it consistent to say that God will fulfill part of the New Covenant? If God will give the house of Israel and the house of Judah new hearts and cleanse them from all their iniquities, why wouldn’t God also cause their cities to be inhabited and the waste places rebuilt? It’s the same verse (Ezekiel 36:33)! There are promises for the nation of Israel, not just for Jews in it. At least a hard supercessionist is all the way wrong, not walking down the covenant street wearing one pant leg.
The fact that God will use Gentiles to make the Jews jealous is right in the text, Romans 11, verse 11 and verse 14. Our jealousability is more than our home Bible studies, it is our receiving of the blessings of God — Deuteronomic sort of blessings — that provoke Israel to repentance and faith. I happen to think this is well-nicknamed as Kuyperianism, and as a anti-supercessionist Dispensationalist, I think Kuyperian Dispensationalism is the right juxtaposition.
So I’ll recommend this book because it’s good to irritate hard supercessionists. And maybe the whole process will provoke the soft kind to examine whether they are really reading, as consistent Christians, what God says about the “true Israel of God.”
I read this book on how to read a book and I’ll be rereading it immediately. I’ll be assigning others to read this book on book reading. I was still reading it when I knew it was necessary to get others to read it.
I have never read Mortimer Adler’s book by the same name, though I have thought about it. I’d even say I wanted to, but apparently not strongly enough. Naselli’s book is shorter, it references Adler’s work and some of Adler’s categories, and it connects to at least a hundred more things I care about.
Reading this book made me want to read more, more better, more broadly, more deeply. Reading this book made me more thankful for words and books and audiobooks and technology and the Kindle system and classical education. Reading this book should help a reader be more relaxed, more at liberty, and more attentive–at least selectively. So it makes readers who are less frustrated, less guilty, and less sloppy.
Again, highly recommended, for probably junior high and up, for book amateurs and accomplished bookies, for preferrers of fiction and non-fiction.
It doesn’t do any good to become a heretic when you’re heartbroken. When you read the early pages, remember that you are not finished, because Lewis wasn’t. I think he found his way back to orthodoxy by the end.
When faith is tested as by fire, the fire is hot. It can hurt. A lot. Knowing that God sends trials for the good of our faith does not mean that we feel any less heavy.
I’m glad I read this testimony, even while wondering if maybe some parts of a man’s testimony ought to be held rather than told. It is wise and not dishonest, necessarily, not to say it all. But we can learn from desperate men, and if they clean up the desperation we probably don’t learn as much.
There are a variety of losses to which this observation of grief applies. Those who feel it will not just be widows or widowers.
If you have never felt this low, you are blessed. If you have felt similarly, hold on to God in Christ. You are more blessed, though your burden for now is only light in comparison to coming glory.
I started reading this before Trump chose Vance as his running mate. I did give more effort to finish it after.
It’s a combination coming-of-age, father-hunger, hillbilly history, class struggle, political ad. And, it was fine.
The only part I struggled with was the repetition. That said, maybe the repetition was intentional on the visceral level, as in, trying to make one feel the frustrating cycles of reactivity where drugs and drunkenness and anger rise and fall, again and again. But mostly, it just felt repetitive.
I am from Ohio, as is Vance. In fact, many years ago when my wife asked my dad for some family history, he said, rather gruffly, “We’re from Ohio.” Turns out we do have family that arrived in Ohio in the early 1800s. My dad also fancied himself a hillbilly/redneck, though he definitely led us in a middle class life.
I’ve already recommended Hillbilly Elegy to a few people who can see the drag of their generational forebears and are trying to advance. Vance did advance, and, there was nothing easy about it.
Should you read it? Meh, it’s probably a good listen while driving (though some of the vocab is not what the middle class would consider acceptable), or maybe in your headphones mowing the lawn or folding laundry. It won’t take all your academic attention, but there is edification to be found.
The Reformed Pastor is a kick in the lazy pants. I’ve never read Baxter without profit, even if I don’t agree with every step he takes. His primary point in this book is on behalf of a pastor’s personal work, so more than just public preaching. The ground war complements the air war, so to speak, and discipleship “from house to house” is essential.
That said, his visit-every-individual-once-a-year proposal still isn’t quite life-on-life discipleship. His goal of more individual conversations is good, his strategy of trying to do it all himself (or of a couple parish pastors) isn’t actually as constructive as would be training some to reach more toward reaching the many.
BUT, Baxter cares, and urges pastors to care, and that is WELL DONE.
Gold. This is at least my fifth time through it, and it always pays. The final “law” is about the necessity of review because of the power of review, so this recent review really rocked.
JMG expects that good teaching (and learning) will happen when these laws are followed. It’s an objective standard, maybe even more an objective hope that doesn’t exist in our modern educational system. We’re supposed to have high esteem for our students, but almost no expectations that we can reach them, that they will learn, or care. This book hits different.
Anyway, much encouragement and conviction and opportunity to sharpen one’s teaching tools.
———- 2018 Absolutely fantastic. Makes me feel guilty in all the right ways every time I read it. As Gregory says, the ideal teacher is “an incarnate assemblage of impossible excellencies.”
———- 2013 Reread with the ECS school board in the first half of 2013; an invaluable vade mecumfor every teacher.
———- 2011 A brief, mostly common sensical, yet clear and convicting manual for teachers. Originally written for a Sunday school setting, Gregory’s “laws” apply to anyone trying to teach whatever to whomever.
Also, this particular, unabridged edition from Veritas Press is the one to buy/read. I started with a Kindle version that had been brutally cut of some of the ripest fruit. If “abridged” means to shorten without losing the sense, the abridged versions fail miserably.
I’d had this in my queue for a while. I almost did NOT get it when I found out that Bill Gates claims it as his favorite book. But I listened anyway.
It was…fine? Interesting? Encouraging? A helpful sort of distracting while I was walking up and down steep hills?
It definitely doesn’t acknowledge total depravity, as Gallwey claims that our inner/intuitive Self 2 is naturally good and just needs to stop getting lectured by the conscious/judgy-pants Self 1. That said, sure, there’s a way to overcorrect with constant self-criticism that would hinder improvement. Don’t do that.
It’s been a few years since enjoying my last Wodehouse novel. This one has much ado about the Empress of Blandings.
It wasn’t quite as fun-on-every-page as some of my previous reads, say, with Jeeves. And sometimes I did have trouble keeping track of the different antics of Mr. Fish, Mr. Carmody, and Mr. Baxter. But I got what I came for, including some new delightful analogies:
“a face like the Soul’s Awakening”
“a man who ought to have had the liver of the century”
“a look which would have aroused pique in a slug”
“acting like a barbed-wire entanglement in the path of true love”
as well as some vocabulary entries in my commonplace book:
