I was in DC last night at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. They held a special event honoring the life of Jonathan Edwards and the guest speaker was...John Piper! Probably about 20 or so PHC students went and it was wonderful. Dr. Piper gave a brief history of the life of Edwards and then expounded upon his own encounter with the God-glorifying vision in Edwards's theology. The conclusion was the central point in all of Piper's works: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. He gave five points of application, and here is what I wrote down:
1. To spread the delight of God is our solumn duty. Truth from God produces right and full affections. Our spiritual appitites should not be bound, rather they should be enflamed. The object of our delight is infinitely greater than our longings.
2. It is hypocracy to make much of God only because He makes much of us.
3. The gospel is clarified: God is made able to be enjoyed by us. He is the treasure that we seek.
4. Christ died in order that we might come into God's presence to enjoy Him.
5. Love is doing whatever possible to enthrall people with the ultimate satisfaction of their souls, namely God.
6. Heaven is eternally enjoying God and that which displays God.
His presentation was compelling and inspiring. I especially appreciated two other points he made:
1. We should not hinder the pursuit of intellectual knowledge of God in order to maintain a level of mystery in our worship. Rather, diving into the depths of God's truth will enliven and enrich both our ability to and enjoyment of worship.
2. Seeking to find pleasure in God alone is an ongoing struggle. We must fight to make Him central to our affections.
Needless to say, I had a wonderful evening. It was the first time since I came to PHC that I went into DC and on the way to and from, I could see the Capitol building and some of the monuments. I was excited to realize how close I live to our nation's capital!
School has been great. I had my first Latin exam yesterday and I think I did well. This afternoon is the first Theology exam, so I'll be studying all morning. The sermon on Jonathan Edwards last night was very timely and not just because of Theology class. In US History, our next topic of study is the Great Awakening. Very apropos, wouldn't you say?
My old laptop was found in the San Diego airport lost & found department. My brother had borrowed it this summer to vacation in SD and apparently left it in the food court at the airport. It's been sitting in lost & found for something like 3 months, and they finally looked at the tag and called my house. Pretty weird.
This weekend I might be helping at the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign and will probably start working on some of the papers that are due in the next month or so. I'm also looking forward to reading Right Behind and Supergeddon, parodies of the Left Behind series written by Nathan Wilson. They are apparently hilarious. Thanks for visiting and reading!
5 comments:
Paul,This is a very interesting post. I am concerned... or maybe just interested about on of the final points Piper made.What was meaning of his point that "We should not hinder the pursuit of intellectual knowledge of God in order to maintain a level of mystery in our worship. Rather, diving into the depths of God's truth will enliven and enrich both our ability to and enjoyment of worship."?Is not mystery central to orthodoxy? In fact is not mystery one of the most wonderously joyful parts of worship?
oops, sorry Paul, forgot to put my name.-Brandon
I think you misunderstand Piper's point. He is not discounting the high value of mystery in worship. In fact, I think he would agree that "mystery is one of the most wonderously joyful parts of worship." His point is that we shouldn't use mystery as an excuse for stopping short in our pursuit of intellectual knowledge. In other words, we should never say: "I'm not going to study more about God's soveriegnty (or glory, or love, etc.). It's a mystery to me and since I can never fully understand it, I might as well stop now and just worship." Piper argues that the pursuit of the knowledge of God actually increases the mystery in our worship of God, because the more we study God, the more we realize how little we really know about Him. He used the analogy of climbing a mountain where you work and sweat and strain to finally reach the top and then as you gaze over to the other side, you see a huge mountain range that far surpasses the one you just conquered. After you climb this next mountain range, you see another even higher mountain to climb. In other words, our pursuit of the knowledge of God will never outrun His depth and complexity. He is ultimately incomprehensible. And the deeper we get, the more we see how much deeper He is. To summarize, the mystery and wonder in our worship will increase as we pursue knowing God, therefore we should continue pursuing the knowledge of God.
Hmm, even this seems a bit unsettling to me. I would agree that we should pursue intellectual knowledge, but only to a point. For example, I am not going to spend too much time pursuing knowledge of Christ's human/God nature. I think we should puruse understanding of it, that is, understanding of its importance and meaning, but I don't think we should seek to explain it rationally. God's soveriegnty would seem to be a similar area.Maybe the issue is this: if by pursuing knowledge of God Piper means that we should delve deeper and deeper into system making. (rational systems by which we can understand God like one might understand a vastly complex machine) then I would heartily disagree with him.If, on the other hand, Piper is saying that we ought to pursue an understanding of God in the way we would pursue the understanding of our spouse (a relational, rather then systematic knowledge), then I would agree with him. This last kind of knowledge of God is the kind I take Paul to be praying that the Ephesians will have in Ephesians 1:17-19 and Ephesians 3:16-19.
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