World Magazine has now started a new blog solely devoted to the TNIV controversy. I encourage you to check it out.

And Vern Poythress--biblical scholar, linguist, Bible translator, and co-author [with Wayne Grudem] of The TNIV and the Gender-Neutral Bible Controversy)--has just written a new, helpful, clear review of the TNIV: TNIV's Altered Meanings: An Evaluation of the TNIV.

(By the way, to give you an idea of the sort of intellectual Poythress is, he has 3 masters degrees, and 2 doctorates--a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard, and a D.Th. from the University of Stellenbosch. And here's the sort of books he recommends that all pastors should own! I point this out because so people suppose that the negative reaction to the TNIV is a knee-jerk, unthinking reaction. But people like Poythress--and many others--blow that conception out of the water.)

Douglas Wilson posts a nice little primer on the various end-times positions.

Andrew Coffin writes in World Magazine about the upcoming Narnia films: "With promises to be faithful to C.S. Lewis, and a marketing campaign reminiscent of The Passion, Disney and Walden Media move ahead with plans to bring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to movie theaters."

The first of the seven movies opens December 9. It will probably be the most expensive movie ever produced by Disney.

One of my favorite films from a while ago—I haven’t seen it now for about 7 years or so—is Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray. As a freshman undergrad, it was required viewing for the course “Religion, Ethics, and Film.” People are usually surprised to hear that this film—among such somber films as Sophie’s Choice and Unforgiven—engendered the most serious and insightful discussion.

In a recent article for National Review, Jonah Goldberg writes on the popularity of viewing the film through spiritual lenses. Here are some quotes:

“One of the best films of the last 40 years. . . . will almost undoubtedly join It's a Wonderful Life in the pantheon of America's most uplifting, morally serious, enjoyable, and timeless movies. . . . Brilliant as both comedy and moral philosophy.”—Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online

Groundhog Day is "a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim's Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos."—Michael Foley, professor of theology at Notre Dame.

"“The movie ‘Groundhog Day.’ It is a brilliant moral fable offering an Aristotelian view of the world."—Charles Murray, author of Human Accomplishment, when asked what things in pop culture he would place in his top-20 list.

According to the New York Times, “Curators of the series [“The Hidden God: Film and Faith,” sponsored by the Musuem of Modern Art in New York], polling some 35 critics in the literary, religious and film worlds to suggest films with religious interpretations, found that "Groundhog Day" came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective's catalog.”

It's a movie worth rewatching and discussing. For more, see:

Phil’s Shadow, by Michael P. Foley (Touchstone)

A Movie for All Time, by Jonah Goldberg (National Review)

17.3 percent--the percentage of income a typical one-earner family paid in income taxes in 1955.

37.6 percent--the percentage of income a median family with one paycheck pays today.

39 percent--the percentage of income a median two-earner couple pays today.

Perhaps.

When I saw that Books & Culture editor John Wilson wrote a review of Greg Boyd's Repenting of Religion, I expected a largely positive overview. I judged incorrectly. While Wilson wants to affirm Boyd's positive vision, he also writes that the book is "riven by self-contradictions and flawed by a hermeneutic so naïve it beggars belief. Railing against judgment, Boyd issues sweeping judgments against the church throughout its entire history—judgments that rest almost entirely on sheer assertion."

With Minnesota's Mark Dayton announcing that he will not be seeking reelection, Al Franken plans to announce his candidacy this morning. Oh my. Let the circus begin.

Update: Thankfully, he announced he won't be running.

In coming days, I hope to put together an annotated bibliography on some of the best books on race and racism in America. I’ll say now, though, if you have time to read only one book in this area, I think it should be Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society.

D’Souza sets forth four possible policy remedies for dealing with persistent discrimination. The first two proposals embrace the “one-drop rule.” The other two reject it. (The “one-drop rule” was originally designed by slaveowners and segregationists to ensure that blacks as a group remained distinct and distant from whites. It is now the unifying principle that defines blackness in America. Ironically, as F. James Davis observes: “American blacks now feel that they have an important vested interest in a rule that has for centuries been a key instrument in their oppression.”)

Here are the four possible policies, as expressed by D’Souza, along with his analysis.

1. All racial groups should receive proportional representation.

There are at least four problems with this approach:

• It is incoherent—there is no reason whatsoever to believe that in the absence of discrimination, all groups would perform equally in every area.
• It fails the test of social justice.
• It erodes the principle of merit (which constitutes the only unifying principle for a multiracial society).
• It assures an unceasing racialization of American society.

2. Racial preferences should be abolished for all racial groups except one: African Americans.

• While it has a chance of working in a black-and-white milieu, it is increasingly unsustainable in a multiracial society.
• Furthermore, the moral and psychological damage wrought by such an approach would almost certainly outweigh any tangible short-term benefits.

3. There should be a blanket nondiscrimination rule that establishes a right not to be discriminated against, and consequently requires the enforcement of color-blind principles in both the private and public sector.

This is the approach favored by Martin Luther King and enshrined in law with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.

• One difficulty is that a broad-based color-blind rule is not easy to enforce. Private discrimination is hard, though not impossible, to prove.
• A more serious problem is that if applied consistently and even-handedly, it would require the government to make it illegal for minority companies to give preferences to members of their own group (e.g., a Korean grocery store that insists on hiring Korean workers).

4. There should be a long-term strategy that holds the government to a rigorous standard of race neutrality, while allowing private actors to be free to discriminate as they wish.

Hence, the government should be uncompromisingly color blind in its hiring and promoting, criminal justice, and the drawing of voting districts.

And yet individuals and companies should be allowed to discriminate in private transactions such as renting an apartment or hiring for a job.

Is this a call for a repeal of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964? Yes. The law should be changed so that its nondiscriminatory provisions apply only to the government.

Americans, as Richard Epstein argues, have a deeply held belief that they have a right not to be discriminated against. But in a free society, people have a right to enter into voluntary transactions that other parties should be at liberty to accept or refuse.

D’Souza writes:

The issue of private discrimination is important, but whichever way it is settled, the central choice facing American society is whether its agencies of government are going to embrace the one-drop rule and practice racial discrimination, or reject it and treat citizens equally under the law. The one-drop rule reveals the way in which our current antidiscrimination policy is premised upon the ideological foundation established by the old racists. It endorses and perpetuates racial discrimination, even while purporting to fight it. Although current policy professes to promote “benign” discrimination, all discrimination is benign for its beneficiary and invidious for its victim. America will never liberate itself from the shackles of the past until the government gets out of the race business.

Why is there a form of “separation of church and state” in the United States? Not because religion doesn’t matter, but precisely because it does matter. What we need now is what Jennifer Roback calls “separation of race and state.”

In Dinesh D'Souza's The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society, he quotes Christopher Jencks' book Rethinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass to the effect that three principles constitute the basic minimum of an American civilizational code:

1. working men are generally expected to keep steady jobs;
2. women should not bear illegitimate children they cannot support;
3. everyone should refrain from violence.

Obviously these three norms are not sufficient conditions for a civilized society; but they are necessary. If this is true, our society is in obvious trouble.

With regard to the issue of how crime and dependency should be tackled? There are a number of proposals:

1. Criminals should pay mandatory restitution to those they have wronged; if they lack the resources, they should be required to do physical labor.
2. Parents should be held partly responsible for the crimes of their minor-age children.
3. Welfare benefits should be limited for mothers who continue to have children on welfare.
4. Teenage welfare mothers should take up education, training, or work.
5. Paternity and child-support laws should be strengthened.
6. The tax code should be modified to strengthen rather than penalize two-parent families.

Which of these proposals does D'Souza think should be implemented? All of them.

He writes: "we have to recognize that poverty and pathology today do not merely arise from the absence of opportunity but also from the inability or refusal to take advantage of opportunity. There is a dynamic interplay between external incentives and cultural responses to them. What we have now is a downward spiral produced by dysfunctional cultural orientations and destructive social policies. We need to revers the trend, to generate an upward spiral in which social structures and cultural habits work together to generate great productivity and social responsibility. This should be the test of every public policy measure: the degree to which it expands opportunity while at the same time fostering productive and responsibile behavior on the part of citizens."

What do you think?

In John Piper’s recent biographical address on Athanasius (the “Father of Orthodoxy”) he draws these seven lessons for today:

1. Defending and explaining doctrine is for the sake of the gospel of Christ’s glory and our everlasting joy.

2. Joyful courage is the calling of a faithful shepherd.

3. Loving Christ includes loving true propositions about Christ

4. The truth of biblical language must be vigorously protected with non-biblical language.

5. A widespread and long-held doctrinal difference among Christians does not mean that the difference is insignificant or that we should not seek to persuade toward the truth and seek agreement.

6. Don’t aim to preach only in categories of thought that can be readily understood by this generation. Aim at creating biblical categories of thought that are not present.

7. Finally, we must not assume that old books, which say some startling things, are necessarily wrong, but may in fact have something glorious to teach us that we never dreamed.

Piper also thinks that point #4—which has tremendous application to many contemporary theological debates—has some implications for what the sufficiency of Scripture does and does not mean. (Hint: It doesn’t mean “no creed but the Bible.”)

Could podcasting transform radio and music consumption and distribution as we know it? USA Today looks at the issue on its front page today.

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.[1]

—Joseph Joubert

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. . . . It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. . . . We all . . . need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. . . . We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century . . . lies where we have never suspected it. . . . None of us can fully escape this blindness. . . . The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. [2]

—C. S. Lewis

In my library I have profitably and pleasantly dwelt among the shining lights, with which the learned, wise, and holy men of all ages have illumined the world.[3]

—Richard Baxter

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.[4]

—René Descartes

—I have a peaceful study, as a refuge from the hurries and noise of the world around me; the venerable dead are waiting in my library to entertain me.

—Samuel Davies[5]

It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make one wise, but the well-reading of a few, could they be sure to be the best.

—Richard Baxter

Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why should a man, except for some special reason, read an inferior book at the very time he might be reading one of the highest order?

—John Foster

We should accustom the mind to keep the best company by introducing it only to the best books.

—Sydney Smith

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.[1]

—Mark Twain

Read the great books! That is worth repeating: Read the great books! . . . You should bear in mind why they were written: great books were written to show a great God and a great Christ to the people of God. You must never be tricked into reading lesser books about great subjects when you are perfectly capable of reading great books about great subjects![2]

—Sinclair Ferguson

To turn to the works of the [Puritans] is like entering a new world; one’s vision is cleared, one’s thoughts are purged, one’s heart is stirred; one is humbled, instructed, quickened, invigorated, brought low in repentance and raised high in assurance. There is no more salutary experience.[1]

—J. I. Packer

Not many believers seem to read the Puritan reprints that are nowadays happily available. I believe that this neglect impoverishes us grievously, and I would like to see it end.[2]

—J. I. Packer

The daily practice of reading the Puritans can be used of the Lord to accomplish a reformation in one’s soul. . . . The reading and study of the Puritans will serve to critique and exhort our generation perhaps more than any other generation of Christians since the closing of the New Testament canon.

—George Higginbotham, Jr.[3]

You can read a summary of Michael Medved's new religious-political-autobiography here.

Anti-Intellectualism in the Western World

Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.

—Os Guinness[1]

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization. . . . We must have passion—indeed hearts on fire for the things of God. But that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world.

—R. C. Sproul[2]

The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.[3]

—Neil Postman

Anti-Intellectualism in Evangelicalism

I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough.[4]

—Charles Malik

Former President of the United Nations General Assembly

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.[5]

—Mark Noll

We speak of “the modern mind” and of “the scientific mind,” using that word mind of a collectively accepted set of notions and attitudes. On the pattern of such usage I have positied a Christian Mind, chiefly for the purpose of showing it does not exist. . . . There is no Christian mind. . . . the Christian Mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness unmatched in Christian History.[6]

—Harry Blamires

The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small, impoverished souls.[7]

—J. P. Moreland

Anti-Intellectualism No Virtue

God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers.[8]

—C. S. Lewis

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to Jesus’ two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds.[9]

—Os Guinness

Anti-intellectualism is quite simply a sin. Evangelicals must address it as such, beyond all excuses, evasions, or rationalizations of false piety.[10]

—Os Guinness

Anti-Intellectualism as a Hindrance to the Gospel

False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel.[11]

—J. Gresham Machen

Towards a Solution

The Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness but in the light. Intellectual slothfulness is but a quack remedy for unbelief; the true remedy is consecration of intellectual power to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.[12]

—J. Gresham Machen

I'm sometimes asked about recommended reading lists. Here are a few, covering various topics:

• New Testament commentaries/exegesis (Craig Blomberg and William Klein)
  
• Old Testament commentaries/resources (M. Daniel Carroll and Richard S. Hess)
• Old Testament commentaries (devotional) (Simon Gathercole)
• Recommended books from Desiring God
• World Magazine's List of 50 great 20th-Century Books for Children
• World Magazine's List of Top 100 Books of the 20th Century
• World Magazine's List of Western Culture's Top 50 Books
• Chuck Colson's Favorite Books
• Breakpoint's Young Adult Reading List
• Breakpoint's Classic Children's Literature List
• John Mark Reynold's Pre-School to High School Recommended Reading List

Last but not least, I came across this superb theology class taught at Trinity Presbyterian Church (a new congregation in Providence, Rhode Island). The reading is broken down into four levels, and contains links to scanned photocopied of some of the best theological readings available. Definitely worth checking out.

This is the final installation in a continuing series on Martin Luther and his marriage, exerpted from the forthcoming book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ.

The Impact of Luther on Marriage and the Home

Few marriages have had a greater impact upon the church and upon the culture than that of Martin Luther and Katherine von Bora. Luther himself marveled at the transformation he had witnessed in his lifetime:

When I was a boy, the wicked and impure practice of celibacy had made marriage so disreputable that I believed that I could not even think about the life of married people without sinning. Everybody was fully persuaded that anyone who intended to lead a holy life acceptable to God could not get married but had to live as a celibate and take the vow of celibacy. Thus many who had been husbands became either monks or priests after their wives had died. Therefore it was a work necessary and useful for the church when men saw to it that through the Word of God marriage again came to be respected and that it received the praises it deserved. As a result, by the grace of God now everyone declares that it is something good and holy to live with one’s wife in harmony and peace.[1]

It is not as though distortions of the marital institution disappeared because of the marriage of Martin Luther to Katherine von Bora. But they helped to lay a theological foundation and an exemplary model that would forever impact how we view marriage. Marital laws were changed[2] and the understanding of the Protestant family was transformed

In assessing Luther’s cultural impact with respect to marriage, Bainton writes:

The Luther who got married in order to testify to his faith actually founded a home and did more than any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations for the next four centuries.[3]

Thomas Miller comes to a similar conclusion:

Luther established marriage as a centerpiece of evangelical social organization in a remarkably brief time. The changes he introduced, however, altered permanently Western attitudes toward marriage. . . . [O]ur civilization has been shaped by the pattern of family life that he established.[4]

Luther preached passionately on marriage for years as a single man. And likely he would have left an impact on the state of marriage even if he had remained single. But the fact that he did enter into marriage made his teaching and preaching on these issues all the more significant. It enabled Luther not only to teach God’s Word on this subject, but to model it as well. We must therefore look to God and thank him for Martin Luther—but also for a young nun who had the grace and courage to follow her convictions, her conscience, and the authoritative word of Christ.

---

[1] LW 1:135.

[2] For a detailed study of the Lutheran reformers’ transformation of the Roman Catholic theology and law of marriage, see John Witte, Jr. “The Reformation of Marriage Law in Martin Luther’s Germany: Its Significance Then and Now,” The Journal of Law and Religion 4, no. 2 (1986): 293-351.

[3] Bainton, Here I Stand, 233.

[4] Thomas F. Miller, “Luther: Father of the Christian Home,” Christianity Today (October 21, 1983): 17.