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April 7, 2015

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“What Does the Bible Really Say About Homosexuality?” by Kevin DeYoung (Book Review)

deyoungObviously, one of the most contested and painful issues in the church and in the world today is the moral status of same-sex relationships. Within the publishing world, there’s been a blitz of blogs, books, conferences, and symposia on the subject, with no signs of abatement any time soon. In the middle of all of this muddle, faithful Christians are understandably confused.

Many are wondering where to look for resources. They’re thinking about that heavily-footnoted blog their friend shared that made them question what they’d believed before, or pastors are wondering which of the recent spate of works will be helpful to hand to the questioning college student, or the new elder, looking to shepherd that that student faithfully.

If that’s you, I’d like to commend to you Kevin DeYoung’s helpful, new book on the subject, What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality?

Now, I’ll be upfront and say I’m a Kevin DeYoung fan. I read his blog and I’ve read a number of books, my favorite being his work on the Heidelberg catechism, which was pretty significant for my move over into the Reformedish direction. So I’m obviously predisposed to be sympathetic to his work. With that in mind, take this post as you like. Also, know I got a free copy of the book, though I wasn’t required to say anything nice about it.

That confession aside, I’ll say it’s DeYoung doing what he does best: taking a complicated subject, and with clear, straightforward prose, reviewing significant biblical and theological material, asking the important questions, explaining it, and applying it.  In this case, DeYoung is very clear about his aim, which is to treat the specific question of “What does the Bible really say about homosexuality, or same-sex, sexual activity? Is it healthy, approved of by God in the appropriate situations, or is it sin to be avoided as the Church has said for about 2000 years?”  Unsurprisingly, DeYoung answers in favor of the latter. As he says, it’s a defense of the traditional understanding of marriage.

DeYoung’s structure is really rather basic. He doesn’t really get into sociological, psychological, or political questions (except for an appendix or two at the end). Instead, the first section focuses specifically on explaining the logic of the Biblical narrative and relevant texts (Gen 1, Leviticus, Rom. 1, etc), and the second half is devoted to answering key questions and challenges like the inconsistency of the church (what about gluttony?), the disputed nature of the same-sex activities in the NT times, and other popular, understandable questions.

So what are some of the highlights?

Well, first, this is not really aimed at specialized blogger debates, or niche scholarship. When DeYoung cites his sources, it’s clear he’s done his homework and read the big names on both sides, as well as the source material carefully. He tackles the main, exegetical, historical, and contextual challenges that need to be addressed. It’s solid work. That said, it’s meant for everybody. It’s a clear book for college students with questions, educated people in the pews, pastors, elders, and small group leaders. Which is so needed. I’ve read Robert Gagnon’s big book on the subject, and I think most pastors should, but there’s no way I’m handing my kids 500 pages of footnotes.

Next, it’s pretty calm. That’s kind of an odd thing to praise, but I get tired of the histrionic tones of some the people defending a classical position on the subject. It just gets shrill, depressing, and kind of unhelpful, especially if you’re going to be sensitive and pastoral towards those for whom the issue is a source of personal pain and struggle. DeYoung manages to stay away from the bluster, all the while driving home the weighty issues of sin, salvation, and the holiness of the church that are caught up in the question. For that, I’m grateful.

DeYoung also manages to set the stage well. I think my favorite section in the whole book was the intro chapter where he sets up the question of what the Bible says about homosexuality by talking about what the Bible says about everything; he basically goes through the story-line of creation, fall, redemption through Christ, and the goal God has for everything in the consummation of the ages. One of things I’ve told my students before is that there are some answers that Christianity gives that only make sense if you’ve understood its place within the whole. Yes, you need to tackle Greek words, Roman context, exegetical twists, but he says:

…before we get up close to the trees, we should step back and make sure we are gazing upon the same forest. As is so often the case with controversial matters, we will never agree on the smaller subplots if it turns out we aren’t even telling the same story. (9-10)

The most important part of that story, of course, is Jesus’ saving life, death, and resurrection. And that’s at the center of DeYoung’s little work. Pastors, small group leaders, and just Christians, realize that you cannot simply charge into conversations about these issues armed with a knowledge of key texts. You really need to soak in and connect these to the broader gospel realities, or the medicine simply will not go down.

A final plus, it’s only maybe 150 (shortish) pages. For those familiar with the arguments, it takes maybe an hour, hour and a half, and probably not a lot more if you’re not, which is surprising given the important ground it covers. I take this to be a strength. If you’re “not a reader”, I think you can make it through this book, and, at this point, most Christians really need to have read something solid on the subject.

One word, though: the book’s title really is what the book is about. It’s a book for people for whom the Bible is the sine qua non of spiritual authority. DeYoung’s polemic is mostly about answering revisionist reinterpretations of the texts that try to get around traditional interpretations. He also spends time defending what the Bible says in the objections section, but for those who have to wrestle with more complex questions of hermeneutics, the authority of Scripture, and so forth, you’re probably going to need a more heavy work. Which is probably why DeYoung included a helpful annotated bibliography at the end.

Well, there you have it. Some of my posts are just encouragements to pick up helpful resources. This is one on a key subject that most of us are wrestling with. I hope you find it as helpful as I did.

Soli Deo Gloria 

 

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March 19, 2014

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cultural commentary

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Was Jesus a Celebrity Pastor?

Jesus and the crowdsThe apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things –Mark 6:30-34

There’s been a lot of talk about “Celebrity Pastors” lately, especially in light of all the recent Steven Furtick/Mark Driscoll shenanigans. While most of the criticism remains needed, solid, grounded, and helpful, Kevin DeYoung had a few thoughts yesterday, 9 to be exact, that I thought were helpful correctives. (Of course, some might write this off as DeYoung defending himself in advance as a somewhat well-known, well-published, and popular pastor-blogger. I don’t, so I’ll move on.) The first one in particular caught my eye:

The term “celebrity pastor” is decidedly pejorative. I don’t know anyone who would be happy to own the phrase. That doesn’t mean we can’t use it. But it means we should not attach it to pastors in a knee jerk way. A Christian with some combination of influence, social media followers, books, a large church, and speaking engagements may be a public Christian or a well known individual, but let’s not use “celebrity pastor” unless we mean to say he relishes the spotlight, has schemed his way into the spotlight, and carries himself as being above mere mortals. Does this fit some popular preachers? Probably. Does it fit all of them? By no means.

This is important to say: just because so and so happens to be very popular, have a big name, sell books, and so forth, that doesn’t mean they’ve fallen into the celebrity pastor trap. They may just be attracting a lot of attention in the midst of a faithful and smart ministry. I’m struck with the fact that the for the first part of Jesus’ ministry, judging by numbers and popularity alone, Jesus was a celebrity pastor–for a bit.

People crowded towns to see him. They filled up countryside hills like amphitheaters to hear him speak. Everybody wanted him at their dinner parties. They wanted his opinion on important subjects. His ministry was the subject of controversy and great furor…you see where I’m going. Popularity and controversy alone doesn’t make a “celebrity pastor.” What are his practices? Does he seek out the fame? Does he avoid speaking the whole Gospel in order to keep the crowd?

What’s more, the inverse is also true: obscurity and the lack of a New York Times Bestseller is not an automatic badge of righteousness. (Actually, I had one chap boasting at me the other day that he never had a Bestseller. Now, that might have meant something if he had actually written a good book, or really, any book.) DeYoung is insightful here as well:

Let us also acknowledge that one can become something of a “celebrity” critiquing celebrity pastors. This doesn’t make the critiques wrong or inappropriate. But it does mean we aren’t out of the Woods of Pride just because we’ve aligned ourselves against the proud. Besides, are pastors the only Christians susceptible to these pitfalls? What about celebrity professors or celebrity pollsters or celebrity social justice advocates?

Again, the celebrity pastor phenomenon is not a good thing. This is NOT defense of Driscoll or Furtick whose behavior needs to be called out. We need the faithful critics. We just may need to be careful about assuming our own righteousness because we’re so good and ferreting out the wickedness in the hearts of others. I know I’ll probably be a little more careful about the conversations I have around this subject matter.

How about ya’ll out there? What do you think?

Soli Deo Gloria

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January 29, 2014

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Calvin

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Can Calvinism Accommodate Other Systems of Thought?

Kevin DeYoung had an interesting little post last week. He essentially riffed on E. Brooks Holifield’s contention that, to a large degree, American theology for the first couple of centuries, “was an extended debate…about the meaning and the truth of Calvinism.” After filling out the historical picture a bit, DeYoung then gave his own four reasons why it’s unsurprising that American theology still is consumed with wrestling with Calvinism, or rather, Reformed theology:

1. It is an all-encompassing worldview which, when handled with consistency, does not easily accommodate other intellectual rivals.

2. It is a scandalous theology, utterly at odds with later American ideas of egalitarianism and self-determination.

3. It is so absolutely other-worldly–either in glory or in shame, depending on your perspective–that it begs for a response. It’s almost impossible to be indifferent to Calvinism.

4. When pastors, theologians, churches, denominations, and movements are gripped by the vision of Reformed theology, they tend to be dogged in their persistence to perpetuate it, defend it, and celebrate it.

The whole thing’s worth reading. I find myself mostly nodding my head at his four observations. Reformed theology is pretty comprehensive, definitely scandalous, demands a response, and commands loyalty. That’s part of what has drawn me in. I do find myself wondering about part of the first point, though, as to Reformed theology’s inability to easily accommodate other intellectual rivals.

I guess I’d have to ask, which rivals are we speaking of here? Are we talking about rival systems of thought in general like Buddhism or Marxism? Or just rival systems of theology like Thomism, or, Lutheranism, or something? If the first, well, yes, but then again, I’d say that’s a feature of Christianity in general, not merely its Reformed iteration.

If the second, then I’d say, well, maybe. From what I’ve come to understand (and I’ll easily concede DeYoung’s expertise here) certain types of Reformed theology are a little more open to taking on shared insights and emphasizing commonalities with, say, Thomism on the doctrine of God, or Lutheranism in justification and so forth. So, a post-Van Tillian, or Kuyperian might really emphasize the distinctness of the systems, while those steeped in post-Reformation orthodoxy might want to emphasize the catholicity and continuity of thought at points. Also, it may depend on what we’re referring to when it comes to the term “Calvinism.” Is it only Dordtian soteriology, or the broader framework of thought? Either way, that shifts the discussion. Again, these are just my novice impressions.

Certainly, I won’t dispute DeYoung’s closing judgment:

Although Calvinism is certainly not the dominant theological tradition like it was in the early days of this country, it continues to be a potent strain of religious devotion. Read through the most popular blogs and you’ll see the debate has not died down. When it comes to assessing Geneva, one person’s city on a hill is another person’s pit of hell.

Final question: What do ya’ll think? I’m particularly interested in those of you who have some familiarity with the Reformed tradition. How accommodating can Calvinism be?

Soli Deo Gloria

Update: My buddy Dr. Brian Mattson weighed in on the question here. The response is excellent and worth the read. His big takeaway:

Calvinism, as an all-encompassing worldview, and when handled with consistency, is superior to its rivals in the act of accommodating rivals.

 

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September 25, 2012

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Bible, theology

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The Beauty of the Impassible God (Or, Is God an Emotional Teenager?)

For some reason I’ve become interested in the much-maligned doctrine of the impassibility of God over the last couple of years. What is the doctrine you ask? Simply put, it is the idea that God cannot be made to suffer change from without or be overcome with passions. Ever since the early Fathers this has been the standard teaching of the Church: God is not subject to passions. I first found out about this idea in college when reading Jurgen Moltmann’s classic, The Crucified God in which he argues, among other things, that for God to be impassible in light of the world’s suffering and evil would make God wicked. In fact, in light of the cross of Christ where the Godman suffers death and alienation, it’s absolutely blasphemous. Instead, the Bible presents us with a passionate God who suffers alongside of us, who bleeds, who dies, and who understands our pains–because isn’t that what love does? In this account, impassibility is a hold-over from Greek philosophy that crept in and corrupted the pure, Hebrew view of the dynamic, living God of Scripture and turned it into the conceptual idol of the frozen absolute valued by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

This view, that of the passible God, has become the “New Orthodoxy” that has been growing apace in academic and popular theology since the earliest part of the 20th Century, especially with the rise of process theism, open theism, and panentheism. Impassibility is also generally rejected in various quarters of Evangelical theology that cling to largely traditional doctrines of God, with John Stott citing Moltmann on this point with approval in his great work, The Cross of Christ. Now, given that I first came across the doctrine of impassibility at the tender age of 20, without any real knowledge of historical theology, or most of the reasoning behind the thinking of the Fathers in articulating this doctrine, it’s not hard to imagine that I whole-heartedly rejected it as nonsensical and the silly invention of “Greek” theologians and their systematizing ways.

Luther said that for the Christian all of life is repentance. I’ve come to find out that holds true not only in moral terms, but also intellectual ones. Suffice it to say that after reading some significant criticisms of passibilist criticisms from biblical, theological, philosophical, and historical-theological angles, I’ve come back around to affirming a form of the doctrine of impassibility. Key thinkers who helped me along this path have been Kevin Vanhoozer, David Bentley Hart, and Paul Gavrilyuk.  Kevin DeYoung also has a helpful article summarizing key points.

I’m not going to attempt to cover all the relevant points or even come up with as helpful of a summary case as DeYoung has. I simply wanted to offer up some quick, semi-connected, but inevitably unsystematic correctives of popular perceptions about the doctrine as well as offer some reason to find this doctrine beautiful along the way. In doing so, I will be depending heavily on the account offered in Vanhoozer’s Remythologizing Theology, pp. 387-468. Needless to say, this will be hopelessly incomplete. Any insight that is helpful or intelligent is probably his. Anything silly or reductionistic is probably mine.

Clarifying Thoughts on Impassibility

Not a Rock – It is often charged that the doctrine of impassibility leaves us with an emotionless rock of a God. From the outset it ought to be made clear that to teach that God is impassible is not to deny that God has an emotional life with cares, joys, loves, and so forth. Impassibility does not mean impassivity any more than immutability means immobility. Both are caricatures and misunderstandings of the classical doctrine. Just as the doctrine of God’s immutability or changelessness is not a teaching about a static, stone God, but a God so perfectly overflowing with life that any “change” could only tend towards a lesser state, so the doctrine of impassibility is statement about the perfection of God’s emotional life, his sovereignty over it, not its absence. Anybody who teaches otherwise, both critic and advocate, has been misled on the subject. In the early Fathers, to teach that God was impassible was to teach that God did not have “passions”, or unrestrained feelings ungoverned by reason or will that could simply sweep over him. A passion was thought of as a sort of violent, semi-physical force that could move a person without the consent of their reason or will, or a sinful inclination. To deny that this can happen is to say that God’s emotional life is under his own control and will not erupt violently in irrational or sinful ways. God is not an emotional teenager.

The Bible? – What about those passages in the Bible that talk about God’s very strong feelings about things? What do they point to if God is not a passionate God? Are they “merely” anthropomorphisms that don’t “really” mean what they say? The Fathers and the medieval tradition made a distinction between ‘passions’ and ‘affections.’ An affection is a sort of controlled emotion that is subject to the will and mind of the one having it. It is a rational emotion that does not overcome the person, but is in line with the will. God has affections such as kindness, anger, etc. which he can display. The passages in the Bible talking about God’s anger, kindness, grief, and so forth are pointing to something real in God–his affections, the emotional life of the God of Israel. They are not “mere” anthropomorphisms, even though they are anthropomorphic. They are real descriptions, though not to be taken in a literalistic fashion, of God’s emotional life.

What’s An Emotion Anyway? – One point that clouds this discussion and makes it hard to conceive of God having emotions that are not passions, is that often-times we don’t have a clear understanding of what an emotion is. Kevin Vanhoozer draws attention to the fact that there are various theories on offer as to what an emotion is, but the split is between two basic types: non-cognitivist and cognitivist understandings. Non-cognitivist theories of emotion stress the pre-rational nature of an emotion such as the physical rush associated with fear or anger, which we then attach to cognitive content. Vanhoozer points out a few problems with that. First, God is spiritual, not physical. He cannot have an adrenaline rush with a flush of the face, a flaring of the nostrils, or moistening of the tear-ducts. For us to ascribe emotions to him on this view is to ascribe a body. The second problem with this is that with fear or anger, I feel the rush precisely because of what I believe about a certain situation or action. Third, a lot of emotions “feel” the same physically, like anger and fear, but the only thing distinguishing them is the cognitive content. Fourth, it’s hard to ascribe praise or blame to the way people feel if it’s just a physical reaction. But we seem to think that some feelings are praiseworthy and others are blameworthy. For these reasons, (and a few others), its best to opt for a cognitivist understanding of emotion.

On a cognitivist view, an emotion is a judgment or an attitude that one takes about something.  It is a concern-based, value-laden judgment about a state of affairs. My fear and happiness are flavored understandings about situations or persons that I am concerned with. Given my humanity my loves, jealousy, or fear can be both passions that I suffer as well as affections. We are both patients and agents with respect to them. God has perfect emotions, affections not passions, because his value-laden judgments are true and accurate ones. God’s love, jealousy, wrath, compassion, and kindness are involved judgments, ways of “seeing” with the heart that inclines him towards action of some sort but do not overwhelm him.  They do not incline him towards evil and they cannot sweep over him because they are fully-consonant with his perfect knowledge and will.

At this point some people might be thinking that this makes a sort of sense, but not something you’re willing to buy into too quickly. These highly cognitive emotions seem too distant from our everyday human experience.  In response, Vanhoozer would remind us that “the similarities between God’s emotional life and ours exist in the midst of an even greater dissimilarity, one that marks the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creation, Author and hero.” God is God. We might be made in his image, but God’s reality is a whole ontological step up from ours. We should expect things to be a little different up there. Just as God’s sense of personhood will be different than yours given that he exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while you exist as you, it’s unsurprising that his emotional life is a little beyond us.

Sovereign Relationality – A further consideration connected to impassibility is that there is nothing outside of God that is beyond his control. Those agents or situations about which he feels things are not outside of his will or agency. Given creatio ex nihilo, even with a strong view of libertarian human agency, God is not subject to his human creations. His feelings in relation to them are not things which he must passively suffer but ones which he actively chooses to endure. They are not imposed on him from without, but sovereignly accepted. Passibilists might point to passages like Hosea 11:8, where God speaks to Israel, saying that he cannot bear to be parted from him, that his heart recoils within him at the thought of extinguishing him in judgment. The thought is that here human subjects exert a force and cause a change, or suffering in the emotional life of God from without. It must be remembered that these statements are uttered within the context of a covenant relationship which God freely and sovereignly entered into without force or compulsion. God did not have to save Israel. God did not have to covenant with a people. God was not forced to create. He is under no threat to save. Therefore, the situations that he involves himself in, about which he has these value-laden judgments like anger, sadness, etc, are situations over which he is sovereign and in control.

The Incarnation–Chalcedonian Solutions  – “All this theological logic-chopping and conceptional analysis is fine, but what about the cross? Doesn’t that show that God suffers? What sense does it make to say that God is impassible if Jesus is God and Jesus truly suffers on the cross?” This is where a little Chalcedonian christology comes to the rescue.

The classic answer developed by theologians like Cyril of Alexandria is that while it is appropriate to say that the Son suffered on the cross, we make it clear that God the Son suffered in his humanity, which is capable of suffering. Because we confess the unity of the Godman, that this man, Jesus Christ, truly is the Eternal Son, it is true then, to say that God suffered, but only in the soul and flesh of the Godman. If we begin to take suffering up into the divine nature, then we begin to render the incarnation a pointless gesture. If God can suffer in his own nature, then why assume human nature at all? In a sense, it is true to say that the lover wills to suffer alongside the beloved. But without impassibility we lose the wonder of what God has done in Christ–he who knew no suffering in himself, willed to become as we were so the he could experience it alongside of us. We too often forget that nobody takes Jesus’ life from him–even in his humanity, the Son lays down his life of his own accord. (John 10:18) He is sovereign even over his death and “suffering” at the human hands he empowered to crucify him. (John 19:11) What’s more, he did so, not just to “feel our pain”, but in order to end it. There is some comfort when we read that Christ is a sympathetic high priest who knows of our temptations (Heb 4:15), but as Vanhoozer reminds us, the true comfort of the verse comes when we read that he did not give in to the temptation, but overcame it for our sake in order to cleanse us from our sins giving us free access to the throne of grace. (4:16; Heb 2:17-18)

The Beauty of the Impassible God

In the end, the doctrine of impassibility affirms that God did not incarnate himself of necessity to relieve his own unbearable suffering. His existence as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one of perfect, unconquerable, and impassible “light, life, and love.” (Vanhoozer) Instead, in Christ, he freely, willingly, and sovereignly endured suffering, actively making it his own, so that ours would be put to an end. To affirm God’s impassibility is to confess that God’s action in Christ is nothing other than the beautifully gratuitous outpouring of his invincible, unsurpassable, enduring love for his wayward creatures–it’s the foundation of grace itself.

Soli Deo Gloria

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August 13, 2012

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devotional literature, discipleship, personal narrative, spirituality, theology, Uncategorized

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Beefing Up Your “Quiet Times”: Catechisms and Confessions as Devotional Literature

A little bit ago, a buddy of mine was musing about the fact that he doesn’t connect to most devotional literature of the type that truly “spiritual” people normally rave about. His critical, analytical mind and personality just doesn’t connect with warm meditation, but rather with critical analysis of history and culture.

For a while I’d found myself in a similar place. After seminary, my devotional life became a bit trickier. I find that my mind comes most alive to God when I’m reading systematic theology, or wrestling with some interesting piece of biblical theology, but when I try to slow down, pause, and meditate on something like My Utmost for His Highest, I just can’t do it. (That’s not to disparage Chambers. I loved it in college. The sad thing is, most current, popular stuff doesn’t even come close to his depth.) Because of this, finding good devotional material has been a challenge.

This didn’t trouble me much at first. I would simply pray, read my Bible, and then move on to my academic reading. Still, after a while I realized that I need a slowing down, a place for a more contemplative, heart-oriented approach to God in my devotional life. When I “just read my Bible” I found it hard to turn off the analytic mode. When I did, I didn’t really find my heart moved, but rather just bored.

The Good News We Almost Forgot

Just when I thought all was lost, I got my hands on The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th Century Catechism by Kevin DeYoung. The book is basically a commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, which you can read for yourself here. For those of you unfamiliar with catechisms, they are a series of questions and answers designed to be memorized by either new believers, old believers in need of depth, or children in order to teach them the content of the Christian faith. They’re employed across various confessional church traditions and they usually they have scripture references attached to the answers for believers to look up and study as well.

The Heidelberg Catechism was written at the University of Heidelberg at the commission of Elector Frederick III and was approved by the Synod of Heidelberg in 1563. The Catechism has 129 questions and answers that are basically commentary on the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 10 Commandments, but it is divided into fifty-two sections, called “Lord’s Days,” so that pastors could preach through them on each of the 52 Sundays of the year.  It is one of the most universally recognized pieces of Reformed theology across confessions and was adopted by the great Synod of 1618-1619, as one of the Three Forms of Unity, along with the Canons of Dort and the Belgic Confession.

How exciting!!!

Now for myself, having been raised in a barely-denominational Friends church, I hadn’t spent more than a minute with anything like a catechism, except to know \the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s famous first question and answer: “Q. What is the Chief End of Man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”  To my less-than-enlightened mind that was great, deep, but spare stuff.  The thought of spending a whole book reading about a catechism didn’t originally strike me as an edifying experience, because at that point, “I already knew that stuff.”

Still, my buddy told me that he’d been using DeYoung’s book as a devotion because it breaks up into 52 short chapters (2-3 pages) commenting on each of the Lord’s days.  I figured, why not? It can’t hurt.

After a short introduction to the catechism much more exhaustive than my paragraph, I got to the first Lord’s Day and read Question and Answer 1:

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

When I read this I nearly started to tear up immediately. The first sentence alone gripped me: “I am not my own.” There is nothing sterile, dry or impersonal about this answer. At the same time, it deploys in a matter of sentences the doctrines of atonement, providence, adoption, union with Christ, the Holy Spirit, assurance, and sanctification, in order to draw me into the saving reality of the Gospel. As you read through the rest of the catechism, there are other questions of similar depth and power. DeYoung’s commentary each day was solidly theological, scriptural, and very pastoral. For the next month and a half I found myself daily edified by the truths encapsulated in the short answers and the meditation that followed.

I had finally found something to found the devotional gap in my life.

Why Read Catechisms– After this I went on a search and started reading through the different catechisms and confessions I could find, (Westminster, Luther’s, Belgic, Scots), as a part of my daily time of prayer and scripture. I found myself time and time again, blessed, challenged, and moved to worship and delight. I also found myself wondering why I had never done this before.

If you’ve never spent time with a catechism, here are three reasons you should in no particular order.

1. Hearing voices from other centuries– Christianity has been around for 2,000 years. This means that Christians have been reading, praying, thinking, and writing about the Gospel for 2,000 years. It is foolish to not pay attention to what our mothers and fathers in the faith have said in past generations as if the truth of the Gospel had a 2 month shelf-life. Their voices are needed if we are to hear the Gospel in all of its fullness in our own day. Catechisms  are a great way of doing that given that most of them were written centuries ago and have still been found spiritually beneficial after all of these years.

2. Deep truths; short phrases. Most catechisms and confessions are doing serious theology and yet condensing it down into short, memorable phrases that are perfect for meditation and contemplation throughout the day. They are perfect for engaging the mind as well as the heart with the truth of God throughout your day.

3. Know Your Bible- Finally, most catechisms and confessions are packed to the gills with scriptural references backing up every statement. You can trace them down as a devotional exercise that can help you get to know your Bible better than you did before, as well as learn the deep, biblical basis for what we believe. It also can help you get into the scriptures in a focused, guided way that is less intimidating for some people than just opening the thing up and reading it.

Where Do I Start?

Honestly, I think DeYoung’s book, The Good News We Almost Forgot is a great place to start. I don’t have a copy of my own any more because I keep giving it away. When one of my college students asks me if I know of a book they should read, it’s one of the first two or three that I recommend.

If you want to start checking out catechism right away, you can start here.