Theology That Bites Back
The main category for book reviews and cultural interaction.
Dear Gavin, As we discussed on the phone, I think we have covered most of the waterfront. At the same time, as a matter of summarizing and wrapping up, I think I have two more letters in me. There may be some repetition here, but I want to come at a few things from a …
Now I really need to grant at the outset that this month’s selection is a wee bit off the beaten path. It is not the sort of book I would normally read, but at the same time, it is just the kind of book that I know I have to read just as soon as …
“To leave true spiritual blessings out of the equation is to place human beings on the level of swine in a sty—with blessings being understood as anything edible that can fit in the mouth, like mash or acorns. But the gnostic error, the opposite error, is just as filled with unbelief—ungratefully reducing human beings to the level of wraiths, ghosts, and spiritual wisps. It is not the case that God gave material blessings to the Jews in the Old Testament, while in the New Covenant, all the blessings have been transported beyond the stars, or somehow vaporized. On this view, God has apparently appointed a team of burly archangels to throw all of our material blessings into a Cosmic Nebulizer, which will turn every last one of them into a very fine spiritual mist, in order to make Heaven idolatry-proof.”
American Milk & Honey, pp. 150-151
“I pray that Your Spirit would direct my words,
Like an arrow, to a chink in the armor of fortune
That I did not know was even there.”
21 Prayers, p. 54
“Unleash Your Word in our midst, we now ask You.
Have it run free and mess up all our plans.”
21 Prayers, p. 54
“But just because we have left material blessings out of our thinking, they do not therefore disappear from the world. Somebody is always going to be better off. And when that happens, our evaluation of it will either be governed by the laws of gratitude, which are biblical, or by the laws of envy, which are demonic. Because Christians have not studied how covenant prosperity works, they have opened the door to all manner of biting, striving, scratching, and carping, and have thus unwittingly created an opportunity for antisemitism to arise.”
American Milk and Honey, p. 148
“Now this means that it is not possible to be in sync with the purposes of God in this world without loving the Jewish people. Christians who fall prey to antisemitism are trying to disrupt the grace of God for the whole world. It is counterproductive; it is anti-gospel. Gentiles who start boasting over against Jews are ignoring the plain warnings that Paul left for us. Boast not against the branches. At the same time, as other portions of this book make plain, loving the Jews as God does, for the sake of their fathers, is not the same thing as approving of whatever the Jews might do, or agreeing with Zionism, or agreeing with the present position of the current administration of the Israeli government, whatever it might happen to be. That is not the point. The point is that a peculiar animus against the Jews is out, and to give way to it is to rebel against God’s gospel strategy.”
American Milk and Honey, pp. 144-145
“Father and God, why are You so distant?
Why are You so far from delivering us?
Why does the Church continue to languish,
Lulled in our apathy, dead in our sleep?
Are You asleep too? Why hold back Your quickening?
Is it really Your will we continue to languish,
Enfeebled by all of our compromised thinking?” ().
21 Prayers, p. 52
Introduction: The Bhagavad-Gita is the most prominent of the Hindu sacred texts, and so it is not at all surprising that Kash Patel put his hand on a copy when he was sworn in as the newest director of the FBI. And I am really grateful that he did this because it gives us an …
