December's Zygon

December's Zygon journal is now out. It has three articles from the 'Einstein, God and time' conference by John Hedley Brooke, Antie Jackelen and John Polkinghorne. Abstracts can be obtained from here.

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Philip Edgecumbe Hughes on Dooyeweerd

Of particular significance is the development of Herman Dooyeweerd - a work of immense erudition - constructed in loyalty to the principles of the biblical revelation which are also the principles of Reformed thought. (Dooyeweerd will frown at finding himslef placed among theologians in this volume; but his philosophy is erected upon a genuinely theological foundation.) His purpose has been to construct a philosophy, which being authentically Christian, penetrates to every sphere of human life and activity. In doing so, however, he has engaged in a transcendental critique of pilosophy as a science in its specific manifestations throughout the centuries and has shown how the only system which is not incapacitated by insoluble inner contradictions os that which is founded on the creation-fall-redemption ground-motive of the biblical revelation. Herman Dooyeweerd ahs given a notable lead as with singelness of purpose and intellectual integrity he has devoted himself to the creative task of the Christian thinker

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Philip Edgecumbe Hughes 'The creative task of theology' in Creative Mind in contemporary Theology (ed. Hughes). Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1966; p. 24.

F J Stahl Publishing Project

Ruben Alvarado of Wordbridge Publishing has completed a biography, and the first part of a translation, of Friedrich Julius Stahl. Details of the project are here and a blog dedicated to the stahl project is here.



Stahl (1802-161) was the founder of the antirevolutionry party in Germany and greatly influenced Guillame Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876).

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Worth checking out

Macht has a link to a review by Plantinga on Dawkins's God Delusion.



Rudi has two interesting posts on Jonathan Chaplin on liberalism and telerance.

The Evangelical Outpost declared it Atheism Appreciation Week.



Giveawayoftheday is a new(ish) site that offers a new piece of commercial software (legitimately) - the only catch is that is is only available to download in a 24 hour window.

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The Forgotten Ways

Alan Hirsch, author of The Forgotten Ways, has a blog here. In his book he poses the question:



How did the number of Christians in the world grow from as few as 25,000 one hundred years after Christ’s death to up to 20 million in AD 310? He then goes on to add:

And before you respond, here are some qualifications you must factor into your answer.

• They were an illegal religion throughout this period. At best, they were tolerated; at the very worst they were very severely persecuted.

• They didn’t have any church buildings as we know them. While archaeologists have discovered chapels dating from this period, they were definitely exceptions to the rule, and they tended to be very small converted houses.

• They didn’t even have the scriptures as we know them. They were putting the canon together during this period.

• They didn’t have an institution or the professional form of leadership normally associated with it. At times of relative calm, prototypical elements of institution did appear, but by what we consider institutional, these were at best pre-institutional.

• They didn’t have seeker-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, commentaries, etc.

• They actually made it hard to join the church. By the late second century, aspiring converts had to undergo a significant initiation period to prove they were worthy.

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H. G. Stoker translations in process

John Steyn, of the Omnipotent grace blog, is in the process of translatiing some of the South Afican H G Stoker's work. Hendrik Gerhardus Stoker (1899-199?) was born in Johannesburg and taught at the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education. He served on the board of the journal Philosophia Reformata; very litle of his work has been published to date in English. But hopefully that will soon change. John Steyn on his blog comments:

It is quite a process [translating Stoker]. Stoker, as did Dooyeweerd, made up their own terminology to get certain ideas across, and you have to try and understand the context to make sure you get an acurate translation done.

Furthermore, the parts that I have finished need to go for review with his son, and/or with one of the other professors in South Africa.

So I am sorry to say, I am busy, but there is nothing I can release yet. I am not the intellectual property right owner, so I cannot even publish an unofficial version.

I have reserved a website name already, and I am hoping that I can publish some stuff there pretty soon, in the form of my own commentary on his thoughts. Check back often, I will include it in my links as soon as it is up and running.

The book of nature

I have never really liked the metaphor of God's two books, ie, the book of scripture and the book of nature. Augustine was one of the first to formulate an early version of what could be construed as the two books metaphor:

"It is the divine page that you must listen to; it is the book of the universe that you must observe. The pages of Scripture can only be read by those who know how to read and write, while everyone, even the illiterate, can read the book of the universe” . Enarrationes in Psalmos, XLV, 7 (PL 36,518).

Robert Crease also has some qualms about it. In an article in Decemebr 2006's Physics World he looks at 'The book of nature' and concludes:

...the image of the book of nature can haunt us today. One reason is that it implies the existence of an ultimate coherent truth – a complete text or "final theory". While many scientists may believe this, it is ultimately only a belief, and it is far likelier that we will endlessly find more in nature as our concepts and technology continue to evolve. Furthermore, the image suggests that the "text" of the book of nature has a divine origin. The idea that the world was the oeuvre of a superhuman author was the precursor of the idea that it was the engineering project of an intelligent designer. This implication has led some contemporary sociologists of science to succumb to the temptation of characterizing scientists as behaving, and seeking to behave, in a priest-like manner.

The most important lesson to be found in Galileo's image is the need to keep developing and revising the metaphors with which we speak about science.

My problem with the metaphor is it seems to sugest that science is a neutral activity and that it is independent of any religious belief. Frank Manuel in his The Religion of Isaac Newton (OUP, 1974) pp. 27-8, sums it up well:

Those who inclined towards developing the idea of neutrality, or separateness, or autonomy, of science took a position that became epitomized in the metaphor of the two books, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature, both created by God as manifestations of His omnipotence and omniscience, but books different in character that had to be kept apart.

And why only two books? Isn't God active in history and other areas as well?

Newbigin also has some pertinent things to say about it:

Graf Reventlow's [Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, London: SCM Press,1984] study shows how, during the latter part of the seventeenth and through the eighteenth centuries, while ordinary churchgoers continued to live in the world of the Bible, intellectuals were more and more controlled by the humanist tradition, so that even those who sought to defend the Christian faith did so on the basis that it was "reasonable", that is to say, that it did not contradict the fundamental humanist assumption. Reviewing the story, one can see how the defence moved through successive tactical retreats. There was, to begin with, the view that God has provided two ways of making himself known to us: the book which we call the Bible, and the book of nature.

Truths which we cannot by the exercise of reason read from the book of nature, are provided for us as a sort of supplementary source, from the Bible. We are not, in this view, part of a story, a drama of creation, fall, redemption and consummation. We are in a timeless world where timeless truths, valid for all times and all peoples, are being communicated in two different ways. As the eighteenth century rolls on, we find that the really essential truths are available to us from the book of nature, from reason and conscience; the truths which we can only learn from the Bible are of minor importance, adiaphora about which we need not quarrel. But inexorably we move on to the point where the Bible is subjected to the scrutiny of reason and conscience and is found to be full of inconsistencies, absurdities, tall stories, and plain immorality.

"What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defence is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can - if repeated often enough - begin to look more like a rout."

(Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, London: SPCK, 1989, pages 2-3)

Dooyeweerd from Nelson's New Christian Dictionary

Dooyeweerd, Herman (1894–1977) Dutch Calvinist philosopher. Dooyeweerd spent his entire teaching career (1926–1965) at the Calvinist Free University of Amsterdam. He taught that religion is at the heart of all human activities, that Christians need to be guided by the Holy Spirit in their efforts to be engaged in social reforms, and that diversity of gifts must be respected and encouraged. He set forth these ideas in A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (4 vols., 1953–1958), The Twilight of Western Thought (1960), and Roots of Western Culture (1979).



From Kurian, G. T. 2001. Nelson's New Christian Dictionary: The authoritative resource on the Christian world. Thomas Nelson Pubs.: Nashville, Tenn.

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'The Nativity Story': a review

There is a good review of The Nativity Story by Mark Goodacre on the Society of Biblical literature website here.

Epiginoskein on why he's a neocalvinist

Epiginoskein refelcts on his journey from fundamentalism and pentecostalism to Calvinism and neoclavinism:

After high school I enrolled at Dordt College because it seemed to be a good solid Calvinistic Institution. Imagine my shock when many of these Dutch "Calvinists" had no clue what the five points of Calvinism were. However, by God's grace I had come to study history, and the entire history department was filled with Neo-Calvinists who confessed the Canons of Dordt but also pushed me to think about the goodness of creation and the need for a Christian worldview. It was here that I read books by Al Wolters, Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, etc. Keeping in mind my essentially gnostic background, Neo-Calvinism liberated me to think as a Christian and live as a true human being (no more ranting about how horrible it was to be a "soul trapped in a body!").

Happy Christmas

It’s amazing that God should come to earth in human flesh: he became one of us. Too often Christians are the victims of dualism: a sacred/ secular; grace/ nature; spirit/ matter dualisms; and yet here is God becoming matter! Matter matters!

God is endorsing the creation – it’s not about escaping to heaven! It about bringing heaven, the kingdom of God, to earth. Happy Christmas!

Living with liberalism

Jonathan Chaplin examines how tolerant is liberal toleration in this week's Comment.

The Nativity Story

We went to see The Nativity Story today. It was much better than I anticipated. It set the political background and the Roman occupation extremely well and bought home the shame that Mary's family must have felt. Herod was well played and his paranoia came over well. I'd certainly recommend seeing it. It seemed to be pretty faithful to the Gospels. Though I'm not sure that the magi would have arrived so soon after the shepherds.

Nature and grace in the nativity

Dualism has distorted most of Christian thought. From Aquinas onwards it was the dualism of nature and grace. This battle between nature and grace can be seen in nativity art (see Francis Schaeffer's Escape from Reason IVP, 1968).


Here grace subsumes nauture - there is nothing natural in this twelfth century icon.


In Van Eyck's Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin (1435) Rolin is facing Mary and he is the same size: there is a battle between nature and grace - no side is dominant.



In Fouquet's painting the king's mistress is painted as Mary with one breast exposed - nature has swallowed grace.



Schaeffer points out:

... when nature is made autonomous it is destructive. As soon as one allows an autonomous realm one finds that the lower element begins to eat up the higher.

The Christians worldview knows nothing of dualism - there is no battle between nature and grace - no one aspect is greater than the other. In the Christian worldview grace restores nature.

Xmas or Christmas?

A Lost Chapter from Herodotus

by C. S. Lewis

And beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and the north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, and though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark. It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from other barbarians who occupy the north- western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language. These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs.

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they callExmas , and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called anExmas-card . But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival, guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards the market-place is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness.

But having bought as many as they suppose to be sufficient, they return to their houses and find there the like cards which others have sent to them. And when they find cards from any to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks to the gods that this labour at least is over for another year. But when they find cards from any to whom they have not sent, then they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for him also. And let this account suffice about Exmas-cards.

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, sell as an Exmas gift. And though the Niatirbians profess themselves to lack sufficient necessary things, such as metal, leather, wood and paper, yet an incredible quantity of these things is wasted every year, being made into the gifts.

But during these fifty days the oldest, poorest and the most miserable of citizens put on false beards and red robes and walk in the market-place; being disguised (in my opinion) as Cronos. And the sellers of gifts no less than the purchasers become pale and weary, because of the crowds and the fog, so that any man who came into a Niatirbian city at this season would think that some great calamity had fallen on Niatirb. This fifty days of preparation is called in their barbarian speech the ExmasRush .

But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with theRush , lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and on the wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated.

Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas , which is on the same day as Exmas. And those who keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.)

But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and theRush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left. And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, It is, O Stranger, a racket ; using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for aracket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game calledtennis ).

But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For the first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and participate in theRush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb.

[Nicked from here]

Foy Vance - Gabriel and the Vagabond

Winter holidays?

There has been a tendency at the college where I teach to speak of the winter holidays rather than of the Christmas holidays. I can only assume that this is not to upset the secularists as a large proportion of the Moslems I teach wish me a Happy Christmas! If they wished me a happy eid it certainly wouldn't upset me.



There are even happy winter holiday cards:

It reminds me of the story Paul Marshall told (I can't find the original source for this and have forgotten the details): three people were arguing over which game to play - one wanted to do nothing, one wanted football and the other hockey. They agreed they couldn't agree and so played nothing. But in doing nothing they were actually doing something - what the first person wanted.



The term winter holidays also reminds me of what Tumnus tells Lucy of the White Witch:

"It's she that makes it always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!

Gideon Strauss on living with liberalism

This week's Comment has a wonderful piece by Gideon Strauss on living with liberalism. By liberalism he means 'the modern ideology commited to individual freedom above all else'. He reminds us that cultural transformation in the form of Schaeffer, Rookmaaker, Dooyeweerd and Kuyper is not an overnight sensation - we have to work at it:

The kind of cultural renewal that will move North American culture beyond the liberal hegemony is the work of more than one or two generations. With this in mind, and without giving up the long-term dream of transforming the culture, Christians must learn how to live with the reality of a liberal cultural hegemony—with authenticity and integrity, but at the same time with prudence and patience, courtesy and civility.

Pray for Fiji

Please pray for Fiji. Bruce Wearne writes on thinknet:

Fiji's so-called coup is by no means a fait accompli.There is stern resistanceof a peaceful and courageous kind stirring from the villages and islands.Suva may be under the Military's heel but they do not have it their own way. Not at all.Please keep this matter in your prayers and bring it to the attention of your churches, associations, schools.

Details can be found on the Fiji Times website and in some of Bruce's recent Nurturing justice articles here.

Comment: Living with liberalism

This week's Comment is by David Koyzis and Brian Dijkema and looks at the issue of liberalism and outline six strategies for faithfulness:

• Nurture marriages for the long term
• Have children and raise families
• Become committed, active members of your church community
• Join a Christian labour or another work-related association
• Become involved in your country's political life
• All all your work to be influenced by your faith:

"If liberalism attempts to force issues of faith into private compartments, and if this curtails the scope of the redeeming power of faith in Christ, integrating our work with our faith is perhaps the best way to address the deficiencies of liberalism."