Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On May 28, 2014 By Kuyperian In Books, Scribblings 1

C. S. Lewis: Gender and Sex in Perelandra

by Marc Hays

C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy should be required reading, at least twice through, before graduating high school. While Lewis had many distinguishing characteristics that were and remain outstanding from his and our contemporaries, one that always brings me back to reading more and more of his work is simply his ability to think. That depth of thought allows him to see larger forests and additional trees that most folks miss; at least I know I often miss them. A festschrift for him could be entitled, Through New Eyes. I always see the world anew and afresh, larger and more glorious whenever I read Lewis. Here’s an example from near the end of Perelandra, the second book of the Space Trilogy:

Both the bodies were naked, and both were free from any sexual characteristics, either primary or secondary. That, one would have expected. But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try–Ransom has tried a hundred times–to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with the palms towards him. But I don’t know that any of these attempts has helped me much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and others feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us on planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, nor feminine attenuated female. On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are rather blurred reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, party exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity. All this Ransom saw, as it were, with his own eyes. The two white creatures were sexless. But he of Malacandra was masculine (not male); she of Perelandra was feminine (not female).

If you’ve been reading Narnia since you were a kid, you’re doing well. If you continue reading Narnia without moving forward into the Space Trilogy, you could be doing better. Here are some links to get you started:

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On May 28, 2014 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

A Time to Quit Searching

Guest Post by Justin Dillehay

“It’s about the journey, not the destination.”

This statement is one of the hallmarks of a certain type of religious person (though they would likely prefer to be called “spiritual”). This person is always searching, always asking, always roaming. If he hears you claim that you’ve found the truth–that you actually have the right answer–he will regard you as intolerant, closed-minded, and arrogant.

You can find an excellent depiction of this never-ending searcher in chapter 5 of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce. In this imaginative novel, people in heaven take a bus trip to hell in order to persuade their damned ghostly friends to repent and return with them to heaven. In the end, almost none of the ghosts choose to leave, but instead persist in the sins that brought them there. Listening to their self-justifications is both fascinating and disturbing.

Lewis casts our never-ending searcher in the form of an apostate Episcopal minister, whose friend “Dick” tries to show him the error of his ways. When Dick invites him to return with him to heaven, the ghost agrees to come, if–and only if–heaven is a place where he can continue his spiritual journey with an open mind. Only if heaven is a place of “free inquiry.”

“No,” Dick responds. “I can promise you none of those things…For I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.”

The ghost objects: “Ah, but we must all interpret those beautiful words in our own way! For me there is no such thing as a final answer…I am not aware of a thirst for some ready-made truth which puts an end to intellectual activity.”

Seeing hope begin to slip away, Dick reasons with him. “Listen…Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them…[But now] you have gone far wrong. Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.”

Lewis captures something profoundly biblical in this story. This is the type of person whom the Apostle Paul castigates as “always learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). Always asking questions, but never really wanting definite answers. Always comparing alternatives, but never willing to choose between them. Always deconstructing other people’s views, but rarely questioning his own mixed motives. Always searching for truth, but somehow resistant to finding it.

It seems rather odd, doesn’t it? The idea of searching for truth but not wanting to find it lest our search be over? You’d think that was the point of the search–to find what we were searching for!

So why would anyone do this?

Answer: because we love searching more than we love truth.

Truth requires us to submit; to stand under it and conform ourselves to it. Truth, we suspect, would require us to acknowledge a reality outside of ourselves that doesn’t depend on what we think and won’t simply be what we want it to be. But searching, at least the kind of searching that we prefer, allows us to chart our own course and act as our own guide, while also giving us the illusion of being more humble than the person who claims to have found the truth.

I say “the kind of searching we prefer,” because there is another kind of searching that God invites us to. The searching of a creature seeking to know his Creator; the searching of a servant seeking to obey her Master’s will. Those who seek like that will find.

But that’s the problem. Apart from the work of the Spirit, there is none who seeks like that, not even one (Rom. 3:11). Apart from Christ, we’re fools. We don’t want the Triune God walking with us on our journey, because he has an annoying tendency to steer us away from paths that seem right to us (Prov. 4:12) and toward paths that will make us wildly unpopular with the very people we want to please (John 5:39-44). So we prefer to walk alone. Or else to walk with peers who won’t “judge” us for the directions we choose to take.

We should ask ourselves the obvious question: “If I resist the very idea of finding truth and ending my search, am I really searching for it? Or am I actually evading it?”

God calls us to a different kind of searching. He calls us to search for truth out of love for truth. And at the end of the day, truth is a person (John 14: 6). To know Jesus is to know the truth, and he delights to be found by those who search for him. Indeed, when you find him, you realize that it was he who was seeking you all along.

When you find the truth as it is in Jesus, you find that it isn’t stagnant. Because he who is truth is also life (John 14:6). Rather than enslaving you, knowing this truth sets you free (John 8:31). Why? Because knowing this truth is what your search was designed for. It’s what your open mind (like an open trap) was meant to close on. To use Lewis’s graphic analogy, if endless searching is like masturbating all your life, finding Jesus is like finally getting married. It’s what your mind is for–a consummation devoutly to be wished.

And unlike the endless search, in which you are always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth, finding Jesus enables you to have the truth yet always to be learning. Because you are finite and Jesus is infinite, there is always room to go deeper. As a Christian, you can say “I have found him whom my soul desires” while also saying “Oh that I might know him!” Christ is both within us as our wisdom (Col. 1:27; 2:3), and before us, beckoning us on to greater knowledge. As Paul put it, “I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Phil. 3:12). It’s an upward spiral into a truth we have already grasped (or better, a Truth whom we have already been grasped by), rather than a downward spiral away from a truth we are seeking to evade.

So let us search well, but search rightly, remembering the goal of our search.

If I may appropriate the words of the Preacher for my own use:

“There is a time to search, and a time to quit searching” (Eccl. 3:6 NLT).

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Further reading: The End of our Exploring, by Matthew Lee Anderson.
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Justin and his wife, Tilly, blog at While We Wait.

This article was originally published here.

Click on the following link to read one of Tilly’s pieces:

5 Things I Wish I Could Say to Every 16-Year-Old Homeschooled Girl<>реклама окна

On May 23, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Their Muslim Problem

“This young man asked about the Ph.D. program, and I told him we don’t normally admit non-born-again believers to the seminary, but there is no reason we can’t,” said Paige Patterson, Southwestern’s president.

At Southwestern, if you agree to follow the seminary’s lifestyle covenant, which covers personal behavior such as smoking, drinking and sexual relations, you can enter as a student, even if you are a Muslim. So, let me get this straight: You cannot violate the 7th commandment, but you can violate the 1st anytime. Mormons, JW’s, Buddhists: I give you an open invitations.

Read the story.<>

On May 22, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

New Audio Recording of J.R.R. Tolkien Unearthed

That’s one way to get us Tolkien lovers out of our hobbit-holes–you tell the world there is a secret audio from the legend himself that will soon be made public.

Over 20 years ago, a lost recording of J.R.R. Tolkien was discovered in a basement in Rotterdam, but the man who found it kept this important reel-to-reel tape hidden away. Until recently, only he had heard the recording. But now, I am one of those lucky Middle-earth lovers who has listened to this magical magnetic tape, and I happily declare that it is awesome. For it proves once and for all that Professor Tolkien was, in fact, very much the hobbit that we all suspected him to be. What’s more, we get to hear Tolkien reading a lost poem in the Elven tongue which he translates into English. And to top it off, he states in unambiguous terms (cue Rohirrim war trumpets) the real meaning of The Lord of the Rings!

Legendarium and the Tolkien site MiddleEarthNetwork.com have partnered with van Rossenberg to raise both awareness and funds in order to remaster the original reel-to-reel tape, chronicle the event, and make it available to the world this fall via the Rotterdam Project. “Anything new from Tolkien is always exciting,” said Tom Shippey, author of J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, “but the Rotterdam Project is especially so. A speech from Tolkien, in the first years of his success with Lord of the Rings, when he was among friends, enjoying himself, and able to speak freely!”

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On May 22, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Throwback Thursday-St. Augustine on Easter

Here is another “throwback Thursday” post where we look back to a church father for their insights into the Christian life and the church year. The Western church calendar is coming up on the sixth Sunday in Easter and this week’s post comes from St. Augustine of Hippo (c. 354 – 430). It is an excerpt from of a sermon preached on Psalm 148 where Augustine speaks of the Lenten season (which “signifies troubles”) and the Easter season after it (which “signifies the happiness that will be ours in the future”).

Our thoughts in this present life should turn on the praise of God, because it is in praising God that we shall rejoice for ever in the life to come; and no one can be ready for the next life unless he trains himself for it now. So we praise God during our earthly life, and at the same time we make our petitions to him. Our praise is expressed with joy, our petitions with yearning. We have been promised something we do not yet possess, and because the promise was made by one who keeps his word, we trust him and are glad; but insofar as possession is delayed, we can only long and yearn for it. It is good for us to persevere in longing until we receive what was promised, and yearning is over; then praise alone will remain.

Because there are these two periods of time – the one that now is, beset with the trials and troubles of this life, and the other yet to come, a life of everlasting serenity and joy – we are given two liturgical seasons, one before Easter and the other after. The season before Easter signifies the troubles in which we live here and now, while the time after Easter which we are celebrating at present signifies the happiness that will be ours in the future. What we commemorate before Easter is what we experience in this life; what we celebrate after Easter points to something we do not yet possess. This is why we keep the first season with fasting and prayer; but now the fast is over and we devote the present season to praise. Such is the meaning of the Alleluia we sing.

Both these periods are represented and demonstrated for us in Christ our head. The Lord’s passion depicts for us our present life of trial – shows how we must suffer and be afflicted and finally die. The Lord’s resurrection and glorification show us the life that will be given to us in the future.

Now therefore, brethren, we urge you to praise God. That is what we are all telling each other when we say Alleluia. You say to your neighbor, “Praise the Lord!” and he says the same to you. We are all urging one another to praise the Lord, and all thereby doing what each of us urges the other to do. But see that your praise comes from your whole being; in other words, see that you praise God not with your lips and voices alone, but with your minds, your lives and all your actions.

We are praising God now, assembled as we are here in church; but when we go on our various ways again, it seems as if we cease to praise God. But provided we do not cease to live a good life, we shall always be praising God. You cease to praise God only when you swerve from justice and from what is pleasing to God. If you never turn aside from the good life, your tongue may be silent but your actions will cry aloud, and God will perceive your intentions; for as our ears hear each other’s voices, so do God’s ears hear our thoughts.

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On May 20, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

The Importance of Reading Scripture in Worship

By Contributing Scholar, Timothy LeCroy

Al Mohler comments on a Mark Gali article in Christianity Today remarking on modern Christians’ lack of appetite for hearing passages of Scripture read in church.

This is why we keep the traditional set of scripture readings in our services at Christ Our King. I often tell our people that my opinion as an expositor and preacher may be informed by education, wisdom, and experience, but my sermons are not inspired by the Holy Spirit. We need to read and hear Scripture so that we can make space in our worship for the Lord to work in changing our hearts and lives.

One way to look at it is that the reading of Scripture should be the main event. The sermon is simply explaining and applying what we have just read from God’s holy and inspired Word. All too often, it is the sermon and not the Scriptures (or communion!) that is the main event. This is a modern aberration in the history of Christian worship. Christian worship has always made the reading of Scripture the primary event, as it should be. In the standard worship service of most of the 2,000 years of Christian worship, passages of God’s Word were read from the Old Testament, The New Testament, and the Gospels. These lessons, as they are called, are often thematic to the time of the church year. At other times they relate to each other as one main text is being moved through sequentially (the Gospels, for instance).

In the historical worship service, the reading of scripture is highlighted and glorified by being interspersed with the singing of Psalms, Scripture Songs, and Hymns. In this kind of service, it is God’s Word that is magnified and honored, not the opinions and self-importance of one person. Is it any wonder that as the practice of reading scripture has lessened in our churches that the cult of personality has increased with celebrity pastors and mega-churches? What would happen if we read more scripture, sang more scripture, celebrated communion more often and had a shorter sermon? GASP!

Are we afraid to let God’s word to take precedence in our worship? Isn’t it a bit conceited and even idolatrous to think that my sermon could ever do a better job of edifying and strengthening the flock than the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God?

Dr. Timothy LeCroy is a Special Contributing Scholar to the Kuyperian Commentary and is the Pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Columbia, MO.

This post originally appeared on Dr. LeCroy’s blog, Vita pastoralis.<>game list

On May 14, 2014 By Kuyperian In Family and Children Like

“The Good News About Marriage”

Guest Post by Ben Rossell

“Half of our marriages end in divorce.” No, they do not! The real numbers are in and it seems that little more than half of half end in divorce.

As a homeschool dad, I often refer to the “smell test” when reviewing math assignments with my sons. ‘Okay, if you multiply a big number by another big number, the answer is not going to be a small number, right?’

Well, perhaps we can do the same here. How many married people do you know? Okay, now how many divorced? This is a difficult thing to get our minds around, but try. Think about the sheer staggering number of married adults you know. It is far easier to list the unmarried adults than the married. Now think about the divorces. Do they even begin to approach half?

Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn are Christian marriage counselors, popular conference speakers, and family enrichment authors. This Month Shaunti released The Good News About Marriage reporting the findings of an 8-year research project reviewing the statistical data on marriage and divorce in America. Her conclusions are shattering many of our most common conjugal clichés.

Among her more noteworthy findings were:

– The divorce rate in America has never even been close to half. While the actual divorce rate is impossible to establish, [the Census Bureau stopped trying in 1996] realistic estimates put the societal divorce rate as low as 27% with almost every source reporting a decline in divorces for the last 30 years!

– College-educated couples, married after their mid 20s, who stay together for their first 5 years have a general divorce rate of only 5-10%.

– Almost 80% of married couples describe themselves as “happily married”.

– A statistical majority of those who respond that they are “unhappy” or “miserable” in their marriages, when willing to hang in there, rate their marriages as “happy” when surveyed 5 years later.

– Only around 33% of remarriages end in divorce, rather than the often quoted 60-75% figure.

– The vast majority of marital problems stem from accumulated minor offenses. Small, simple changes produce significant and lasting improvements for the majority of married couples in counseling.

– Christian couples who attend church weekly have a divorce rate 25-50% lower than the average.

After hearing these results, one reviewer commented, “Wow! You’re like the Snopes of marriage!”

Well, besides being interesting, does any of this matter?

The Feldhahns insist that these things matter a great deal and that falsely inflated divorce statistics have been deeply detrimental to our national morality. If young people take for granted that they have a coin-toss-chance of succeeding in marriage, they will be much more prone to accept divorce as an inevitable outcome. They will be more tempted to cohabitate rather than marry. And they will be discouraged from persevering and fighting for their marriages. Statistics of defeat rob us of hope. And as any counselor can tell you, hope is the single most important factor in making a marriage work.

Ben Rossell is the Senior Pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Fl.<>

On May 13, 2014 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Foundational prog albums – Moving Pictures

If you click and enlarge the picture you can see good ol’ Charlie Brown pulling out his well-worn vinyl copy of Moving Pictures.

Moving Pictures – Rush (released in 1981)

We’ve come now to the third album in our series on “foundational progressive rock albums,” Moving Pictures by the Canadian band Rush. Most progressive rock fans consider albums 2112 or Hemispheres to the prototypical Rush prog albums, and they would be correct. However, these articles are meant to be introductory and it is my feeling that albums like Moving Pictures provide a newbie with a better gateway into Rush’s music than beginning with other, more overtly progressive albums.

I will admit from the outset that talking about Rush’s music with any level of objectivity is difficult for me. I grew up listening to various album rock radio stations on my transistor radio, but I loved both the Jackson 5 and KISS. It wasn’t until 1982-83 that I discovered Rush. I was told by a classmate at school that MTV would feature the band in concert that Saturday night. I had a babysitting job that evening but, after putting the kids to bed, I flipped the channel over to MTV and my life changed forever.

Of course I loved all of the songs. But seeing guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Geddy Lee playing their double-neck guitars on the song “Xanadu” completely knocked me out. What I saw was similar to the picture below. Seriously! What could be cooler to a music-obsessed boy in Grade 8 than something like this?

I decided that very night I was going to learn to play the guitar (which I did) and become a musician (which I also did).

Rush’s music presents tremendous challenges to a young musician. Lee and Lifeson are both considered virtuosos on their respective instruments while drummer Neil Peart is widely acknowledged to be one of the finest drummers in rock music. The songs contain numerous unison passages that are difficult even for seasoned guitar and bass players. Peart’s drum tracks are very complex and the band is just as likely to write a song in and odd time signature (e.g. 5/8, 7/8, 9/16) as they are in 3/4 or 4/4.

Most young instrumentalists learn Rush songs in the privacy of their bedroom and that is that. Not so for me. I was blessed with two other friends who were as eager as I was to learn this complex music. And learn it we did. I will never forget the feeling of satisfaction when the three of us made it all of the way through “Fly By Night,” “Natural Science,” or “La Villa Strangiato” for the first time.

Ever since 1978-79, Rush has moved away from sprawling, epic compositions and toward shorter, more succinct musical statements. They have also expanded their palate to include synthesizers, sequencers, and electronic drums. These two developments have alienated some early fans of the band that prefer the longer works of the band’s early career as well as the purity of the guitar/bass/drums format minus all of the electronic extras. For most fans, Rush is a band that has held true to the “power trio” format while continuing to augment their core sound in exciting ways through technology.

Rush’s scaled-back approach first appeared on record on the 1980 album Permanent Waves. But it was on the 1981 album Moving Pictures where the band fully hit their stride and produced one of the finest progressive rock albums ever released.

After the jump you will find a track-by-track exploration of Rush’s Moving Pictures.

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On May 10, 2014 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

150th Anniversary of the Death of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson

KC Guest Contributor, Thomas Kidd, summarizes the life of Jackson:

This week marks the 150th anniversary of the tragic death on May 10, 1863, of Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson from wounds sustained at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Along with Robert E. Lee, Jackson occupies a special place of veneration in the memory of the Confederate cause. It is hard to say how many southern boys today share a childhood like Don Williams’s, who sang in “Good Ole Boys Like Me” about growing up “with a picture of Stonewall Jackson above” his bed. But for many boys (mostly white boys, I assume?) of my generation, male relatives and friends still spoke of Stonewall as one of our heroes, whenever the topic of “The War” came up.

Aside from his tactical brilliance, the most fascinating aspect of Stonewall’s character was his intense Presbyterian faith. Having been baptized an Episcopalian, Jackson joined the Presbyterian Church after thorough study of the Westminster Confession of Faith, becoming “the bluest [most traditional] kind of Presbyterian,” according to one newspaper account. Jackson was rigorously principled and devout, assiduously avoiding activities on the Sabbath whenever possible. He saw his army as fulfilling God’s purposes, whether in victory or defeat, telling his wife that his men could become “an army of the living God.” He prayed for outpourings of the Holy Spirit on his army for revival.

Jackson’s biographers have tended to see faith as Jackson’s animating force. Frank Vandiver wrote in Mighty Stonewall that “Christianity was to Jackson a great cause, and to it he gave his whole allegiance.” Other historians have suggested that Jackson’s faith veered toward militaristic “fanaticism.” Harry Stout says in Upon the Altar of the Nation that his soldiers “absorbed [Jackson’s] almost manic obsession with destruction and glory even at the cost of unprecedented casualties.”

Southerners, especially Virginians, came to respect and love Jackson, sometimes to excess. One Virginia woman wrote that “I believe that God leads Jackson and Jackson his men, just where it is best they should go. My only fear is that people are in danger of worshiping Gen. Jackson instead of God, who rules over all. If we idolize him, he will be taken from us.” And taken he was, struck down by a volley of Confederate fire from sentries who mistook Jackson and his men for a Union detachment.

Memorials to Jackson began even before his death, including the famous 1863 photo taken a week before his fatal wounding at Chancellorsville.

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On May 9, 2014 By Kuyperian In Books, Scribblings Like

Logic or Dialectic? Which one? When?

Logic or Dialectic? Which one? When? These terms are not mutually exclusive and must, in fact, be employed in conjunction for either to function properly, but in the book Norms and Nobility, David Hicks points out that emphasis may be laid on one or the other depending on the accepted concept of “truth” in a particular cultural climate. The epistemological trends of a people will necessitate whether “dialectic” or “logic” is most often employed, stemming from which one carries the most weight in public discourse.

“The seven liberal arts of antiquity included the four preliminary studies of arithmetic, geometry, harmonics, and astronomy, followed by three advanced disciplines of grammar, which combined literary history and linguistic study, rhetoric, and dialectic. This curriculum passed through the Romans to the Latin West and formed the basis for the medieval quadrivium and trivium. During the Middle Ages, the trivium was generally taught first, with logic taking the place of dialectic. This substitution was not accidental. For an age that possessed the Truth, the dialectical search for truth was a fruitless and even frivolous, irreverent endeavor. When one knows the truth, one has no need for dialectic – all one needs is logic. Yet to an age like ours, lacking the confidence (some would say the complacency) of the early Christian era, the dialectic holds out a serious method of study imbued with a noble purpose.” (p. 66)

No single book, much less a single paragraph, even asks all the questions, much less answers them, and David Hicks does not even remotely pretend to do that, but we would do well to listen when he offers his finely honed opinion on education. The really exciting thing about this quote is that it is only the first paragraph of an entire chapter brimming with both information and provocation–answering old questions and prompting many glorious new ones. It is a book to be read, studied, treasured, and implemented.

Follow this link to a much more thorough review of David Hicks’ seminal work, by Jennifer Courtney.<>tokarevsound.com тест интернета пинг