Let us all, therefore, with our whole heart covet [the Word of God], let us embrace it, let us continually occupy ourselves with it, let us fondly kiss it, at length let us die in its embrace, let us be transformed by it.
Paraclesis, in Christian Humanism and the Reformation, 3rd ed., ed. by John C. Olin (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987), 108.
I’m a little late in getting this posted. Then again, I haven’t exactly been posting regularly since beginning doctoral study. Two years of PhD work have been completed which means that this summer marks my last of guided reading.
In light of that reality, behold my list of books to read for the summer.
There are two things which are very hard to tolerate in the mistakes people make: presumption, before the truth is clear, and defense of the false presumption when it has become so. No two vices could be more of a hindrance to discovering the truth or to handling the divine and holy books.
The death of Christ is a subject of so much importance in Christianity as to be essential to it. Without this, the sacrifices and prophecies of the Old Testament would be nearly void of meaning, and the other great facts recorded in the New Testament divested of importance. It is not so much a member of the body of Christian doctrine as the life-blood that runs through the whole of it. The doctrine of the cross is the Christian doctrine. . . . There is not an important truth, but what is presupposed by it, included in it, or arises out of it; nor any part of practical religion but what hangs upon it.
Andrew Fuller, Conformity to the Death of Christ in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, I:310.
For almost three years I have been serving as the Editorial Assistant for the Southwestern Journal of Theology and the Assistant for the Center for Theological Research and Oxford Study Program. I have had the honor and opportunity to work alongside scholars such as Drs. Terry Wilder, Madison Grace, and Malcolm Yarnell. And while I have enjoyed every moment in this position, I am looking forward to a new venture.
Beginning in February, I will begin working with the B&H Publishing Group of LifeWay Christian Resources as the Institutional Relations Manager for B&H Academic Digital. This means that I will be stepping down from my posts at Southwestern Seminary at the end of this month.
In this new role, I will be joining the B&H Academic Digital team as we come alongside churches, colleges, universities, and seminaries and help them provide the digital resources their students need. I will also have a role to play in acquiring new content for churches and schools, as well as for those who use MyWSB.com for sermon or lesson preparation.
Ten years ago I received my first digital sermon resource, WORDsearch 5. I remember discovering the benefit of an indexed library (which held more volumes than my office bookshelves could) and the hours of preparation time that were saved. I could not have imagined that WORDsearch would be purchased by LifeWay Christian Resources and that I would have the opportunity to join the team to help put this resource in the hands of pastors, faculties, and students.
Due to the travel that this new venture will require, our family will be able to stay put in Fort Worth where we are blessed to be a part of a great church, a tremendous homeschool co-op, and a supportive community at the seminary. Speaking of which, I have been assured that I will have the opportunity to continue my pursuit of a doctorate at Southwestern in this new role. The new flex-access option for PhD students will allow me to be in the classroom in person when possible and to join the class digitally when necessary. This past November, I was unable to join our seminar in person, so I joined from 29,000 feet.
Any change causes disruption. For the next few months, our family will go through something similar to breaking in a new pair of boots. No new pair of boots fits the first time. It will pinch here and there and feel a bit uncomfortable, but eventually the leather stretches, conforms to your foot, and fits perfectly. Please pray for our family as we move into this new season and search for a new normal.
If we study Divine subjects merely as ministers, they will produce no salutary effect. We may converse with the most impressive truths, as soldiers and surgeons do with blood, till they cease to make any impression upon us. We must meditate on these things as Christians, first feeding our own souls upon them, and then imparting that which we have believed and felt to others; or, whatever good we may do to them, we shall receive none ourselves. Unless we mix faith with what we preach, as well as with what we hear, the word will not profit us.
Andrew Fuller, Preaching Christ in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, 1:501.
The preaching of Christ will answer every end of preaching. This is the doctrine which God owns to conversion, to the leading of awakened sinners to peace, and to the comfort of true Christians. If the doctrine of the cross be no comfort to us, it is a sign we have no right to comfort. This doctrine is calculated to quicken the indolent, to draw forth every Christian grace, and to recover the backslider. This is the universal remedy for all the moral diseases of mankind.
Andrew Fuller, Preaching Christ in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, I:504.
I am not going to alarm you with any idea that the church is in danger; no, my brethren; the church of which we, I trust, are members, and of which Christ, and Christ alone, is the Head, is not in danger; it is built upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. . . . Nevertheless, it becomes us to feel for the souls of men, especially for the rising generation; and to warn even good men that they be not unarmed in the evil day.
Andrew Fuller, The Nature and Importance of an Intimate Knowledge of Divine Truth in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, I:172.
(c) The University of Edinburgh Fine Art Collection; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
It is also to be remarked that the clothing which God provided was in itself different from what man had thought of. Adam took leaves from an inanimate, unfeeling tree; God deprived an animal of life, that the shame of His creature might be relieved. This was the last thing Adam would have thought of doing. To us life is cheap and death familiar, but Adam recognized death as the punishment of sin. Death was to early man a sign of God’s anger. And he had to learn that sin could be covered not by a bunch of leaves snatched from a bush as he passed by and that would grow again next year, but only by pain and blood. Sin cannot be atoned for by any mechanical action nor without expenditure of feeling. Suffering must ever follow wrongdoing. From the first sin to the last, the track of the sinner is marked with blood. Once we have sinned we cannot regain permanent peace of conscience save through pain, and this not only pain of our own. The first hint of this was given as soon as conscience was aroused in man. It was made apparent that sin was a real and deep evil, and that by no easy and cheap process could the sinner be restored. The same lesson has been written on millions of consciences since. Men have found that their sin reaches beyond their own life and person, that it inflicts injury and involves disturbance and distress, that it changes utterly our relation to life and to God, and that we cannot rise above its consequences save by the intervention of God Himself, by an intervention which tells us of the sorrow He suffers on our account.
For the chief point is that it is God who relieves man’s shame.
There are two things which are very hard to tolerate in the mistakes people make: presumption, before the truth is clear, and defense of the false presumption when it has become so. No two vices could be more of a hindrance to discovering the truth or to handling the divine and holy books.
The death of Christ is a subject of so much importance in Christianity as to be essential to it. Without this, the sacrifices and prophecies of the Old Testament would be nearly void of meaning, and the other great facts recorded in the New Testament divested of importance. It is not so much a member of the body of Christian doctrine as the life-blood that runs through the whole of it. The doctrine of the cross is the Christian doctrine. . . . There is not an important truth, but what is presupposed by it, included in it, or arises out of it; nor any part of practical religion but what hangs upon it.
