August 27 dissertation notes

A little background:

My dissertation, to put it most concisely, is on Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c.390) and his theology of preaching. Since December 2013, I’ve written around 120 pages.

At my last advisory meeting, my professor didn’t have a good grasp of what the bigger picture of my dissertation actually is. In the course of that somewhat frustrating discussion, it became clear that the current structure of the dissertation was a relic from an older version of this project (there have been several), and it wasn’t necessarily serving my argument well. So I was asked to submit a detailed outline that better reflects what I’m actually trying to argue. This doesn’t mean I’ll end up having to rewrite large portions, necessarily, but that the way I’m fitting it together will need to be re-thought.

In the process of filling in the outline, I’ve basically been making an assessment of all the material I have so far, trying to determine where further research is needed, etc. To help myself out, I’ve also written a kind of mini-prospectus/summary of the project, which is around 9 pages or so. For better or worse, I need to submit this stuff next week.

Things done this week:

• Finished going through the research notes I currently have, noting things on my outline where appropriate
• Finished reading through relevant parts of Carol Harrison’s The Art of Listening in the Early Church.
• Revisited an article I read three years ago on the genre of the homily/sermon in late antiquity
• Typed up notes from a book I read earlier in the summer on John Chrysostom’s preaching method (not my guy, but still methodologically useful)

Other thoughts

With the outline, I feel like I’ve reached a point where I’m mostly spackling, trying to show that I really do have enough material, and might have passed the point where it’s actually a helpful exercise.

To be perfectly honest, I’ve never really gotten outlines. All the numbers and letters and Roman numerals really confuse me; I never remember what is supposed to go where, and it distracts me from the actual content. I’m not sure my brain is that logical.

Rare is the day that I can just “sit down and write.” I’m not sure how doctoral candidates do that, even. There are so many subsidiary tasks that set you up to write, and they’re not always a linear, predictable set of tasks. I’ve never mastered how to balance these effectively.

I have gotten better at breaking the big, overwhelming job down into smaller, more manageable bites. The problem with this is that I might actually be too good at it, and I lose track of the bigger picture and the relative importance of various pieces. What sounds like a simple step (reading back through my research notes, for example, or typing up and translating some Greek quotations) ends up expanding to consume more time than I had budgeted for it, and I end up feeling disoriented and farther behind than before. I’m sure I’ll have occasion to comment on this again.

Book Review: God's Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation

God's Battle Plan for the Mind: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Meditation by David W. Saxton
Reformation Heritage Books (2015); 160 pp.

What does the word "meditation" make you think of? Bible study might not be the first thing that pops to mind. But as David Saxton's book shows, meditation on Scripture is an integral part of Christians' spiritual heritage, and, in particular, it was the engine of the spiritual life for seventeenth-century Puritans. In fact, meditation could be simply described as "the doctrine of Christian thinking." Sadly, as J. I. Packer noted years ago in Knowing God, meditation has become a lost art in the church.

Far from calling for emptying one's mind, biblical meditation is the practice of filling it with the truths of Scripture -- "chewing on" and "digesting" the promises of God, rather than glancing over them in a superficial or merely intellectual fashion. This practice has countless benefits for the Christian, not the least being that, through it, "the Spirit slows down a worrying mind and restores order to the soul of His creatures." Of course, to receive this kind of food and restoration, we have to be willing to devote space in our schedules for more than a cursory reading of Scripture.

After defining meditation, Saxton quickly gets into the thick of its implementation. For this, the Puritans' counsel is often strikingly practical: e.g., the same time of day might not work for every person, but the important thing is to set a consistent time for regular meditation -- ideally when one is freshest. When beginning a period of meditation, choose a verse or theme small enough to dwell on fruitfully, instead of a lengthy chapter. And, of course, the entire exercise must be anchored in prayer, with an eye toward application in daily life. Sermons, too, call for follow-up in meditation, rather than being half-attentively taken in and then forgotten. Saxton has mined a vast body of Puritan literature on how to undertake the practice, and he includes a full bibliography for further study.

Saxton isn't under any illusion that Scriptural meditation comes easily to most modern Christians. But Puritan pastors didn't think any differently about their own congregations. They knew that people are busy, that distraction comes easily, and that the appetite for meditation is something which must be actively cultivated. They understood that meditation "is not a task to be...attempted in our own strength" and urged that Christians persevere in the face of setbacks; these are only to be expected in the process of sanctification.

To my surprise, this book follows up well on my previous book review, in that biblical meditation was viewed by Puritan pastors as a potent remedy for sufferers of depression or any kind of discouragement. As Oliver Heywood wrote, meditation "helps the Christian in sad pressures and soul-conflicts; good thoughts counterwork bad. David could out-argue his disquieting thoughts, so may a Christian."

If you feel intimidated by the thought of taking on a deeper practice of Scriptural meditation, I would say two things, based on my reading of this book (and I am assuredly saying them to myself as well!): it is right to recognize the gravity of the practice and the likelihood that it will be a struggle at times. And yet, be encouraged by the fact that dwelling on God's Word is a refuge for the weary soul. If you need some direction on the journey, Saxton, along with the dozens of Puritan voices he shares, offer hearty companionship.

The publisher provided me with an electronic review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

Book Review: Spurgeon's Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression

Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression by Zack Eswine
Christian Focus (2014); 144 pages

By its nature, depression is a difficult experience to put into words, even to oneself. No matter how much one longs for companionship in the dreary, grey slog, it can be especially hard to describe it to those who have not experienced it—or even to those who have experienced it quite differently—in a way that they can relate to. That’s why I was so impressed with Zack Eswine’s little book, Spurgeon’s Sorrows: Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression. Eswine’s writing about depression is some of the most accessible—dare I say beautiful—that I have read.

The book is uniquely structured around the struggles of beloved nineteenth-century preacher Charles Spurgeon, who did not shy from speaking honestly about his depression. Spurgeon’s language about depression obviously doesn’t reflect modern psychological insights; but, on the other hand, there is a depth and frankness that our attempts to face this subject often lack. Finding such companionship in an earlier era of the church can be deeply encouraging to sufferers.

Eswine does not try to be comprehensive in his discussion, and certainly the book is no substitute for pastoral and other forms of professional counsel. But, weaving his own insights with generous excerpts from Spurgeon’s sermons, he packs a lot of wisdom into short chapters. The book is divided simply: Trying to Understand Depression, Learning to Help Those Who Suffer, and Learning Helps to Daily Cope with Depression. I want to offer a representative quote from each.

In the first section, Eswine discusses melancholy temperament and spiritual depression alongside more clinically recognized forms of circumstantial and biological depression. While one could raise good questions about the connections among these, I found his approach sensitive and very helpful. This certainly rang a bell:

Painful circumstances or a disposition of gloom within our chemistry can put on their muddy boots and stand thick, full weighted and heavy upon our tired chests [. . .] These kinds of circumstances and bodily chemistry can steal the gifts of divine love too, as if all of God’s love letters and picture albums are burning up in a fire just outside the door, a fire which we are helpless to stop.

Part Two asks, “How can we entrust our sorrows to the larger story of God?” Aimed particularly at caregivers, these chapters commend a biblical scope and vocabulary for talking about depression. This is far from simplistic, and accounts for the ways that we unwittingly cause harm with words and attitudes about others’ suffering.

When we grow numb toward god-talkers whose hope isn’t realistic or who know nothing of what we experience, we needn’t bypass Jesus. On the contrary, when we search for someone, anyone, to know what it means to walk in our shoes, Jesus emerges as the preeminent and truest companion for our afflictions. Realistic hope is a Jesus-saturated thing. Those who suffer depression have an ally, a hero, a companion-redeemer, advocating for the mentally harassed.

Finally, Part 3 offers simple, practical steps sufferers can take to strengthen themselves in the daily walk. This includes learning how to rest on God’s promises even when we can’t feel their truth or imagine their fulfillment. Eswine touches on a variety of other helps like medication, humor, and scheduling around one’s limited energy. I wished he had written more about different forms of counseling that are available, and that he had discussed the role of worship, the means of grace, and the larger Body of Christ in the depressed person’s healing. Still, this section was genuinely useful, venturing outside the box of standard depression-helps.

Sorrow teaches us to resist trite views of what maturity in Jesus looks like [...] It is the presence of Jesus and not the absence of glee that designates the situation and provides our hope. Spurgeon says it this way: “Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace; the very loss of joy and the absence of assurance may be accompanied by the greatest advancement of the spiritual life . . . we do not want rain all the days of the week, and all the weeks of the year; but if the rain comes sometimes, it makes the fields fertile, and fills the waterbrooks.”

I don’t think there is a single, must-read book that speaks to every person who suffers from depression, as everyone's experience is so different; but I hope many Christians will read, learn from, and treasure the hope celebrated in this book. It is a tenderly written book from the heart of one who knows that "the sorrowing have a Savior."

The publisher provided me with an electronic review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

When God feels distant and you're not sure you have faith...

Gisbertus Voetius in Spiritual Desertion, first published 1646:

"[O]ne's faith is definitely not gone as a result of the . . . assaults of temptation when one's conscience fails to feel and taste the sweetness of God's grace and of justification—for which it nevertheless yearns and which it continually pursues with much sighing. On the contrary, faith is like a smoldering piece of charcoal covered with ashes . . . The case is that in this state of numbness faith itself is not so much diminished as concealed and obscured, as concerns its functions, when the black cloud of depression or spiritual abandonment interposes itself between the two. One's faith, in that condition, has retreated into some corner of the heart and stays there . . . Faith and assurance are then still found as it pertains to the root, the ground, the state, and the possession of it . . . but not as it pertains to the outflow and influence of the manifestation and assurance, the emotions, the consolation, the joy and serenity, as it was experienced earlier."

Emphasis mine.
Now this is one reason I love reading older works.
They tend to remind me that I'm not a special snowflake with unique spiritual struggles. Also, they contain precious pastoral truths that our age is often slower to recognize. The communion of saints is a beautiful thing.

Johannes Hoornbeeck, in the same work:

"Apart from the general necessity of worship, in the situation in which the soul now is [feelings of spiritual desertion], the person has a greater need for worship than ever in order to return to the earlier joy that God will again grant through a diligent practice of worship . . . And the worship that one practices in the midst of spiritual abandonment and dryness is rooted more deeply and is more disciplined than that which is experienced under the precious feeling of God's grace; it is proof that the person has come far in the denying of self and in the pure love of God and of worship—proof that what counts is God and not self."

 How painfully and beautifully counter-cultural is this?

Book Review: Bitesize Biography: Samuel Rutherford

Samuel Rutherford (Bitesize Biographies series) by Richard M. Hannula
EP Books (2014); 140 pp.
Cross Focused Reviews Blog Tour 

When my husband and I were newbie Presbyterians, we became acquainted with a haunting adaptation of the hymn “The Sands of Time Are Sinking” and soon learned that its lyrics consisted of strung-together quotations from the letters of Samuel Rutherford. We did a little research on this seventeenth century Scottish pastor and came to love his passionate and pastoral style of writing. (Note the title of my blog, and the quote along the side!) We were also surprised to find that Rutherford wasn’t exactly a household name, even among lifelong Presbyterians.

This little book by PCA elder Richard Hannula tries to remedy that, and it does so admirably. Like the other books in the Bitesize Biographies series, it pretty much offers just that: a major figure from history in easy, accessible morsels. At the same time, though, it’s not insubstantial: the reader gets an excellent survey of Rutherford’s life from his rural ministry in Anwoth, to his exile for opposing episcopacy, to his contributions in the Westminster Assembly, and places all of it within the wider religious and political controversies of the day.

It’s not just Rutherford’s name that’s little known, however. There are stories from his era that many Christians will only tend to hear if they have a penchant for history—such as the stories of pastors who were maimed, exiled, and martyred for writing and preaching in favor of Presbyterian polity and practice; and the great love for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that both Rutherford and ordinary congregants wrote much about. These are not just “history,” but big pieces of a heritage that should still be formative today.

One of the best ways that Richard Hannula draws readers into that heritage is by packing the book with quotes from Rutherford, in hopes that they will be enticed to read the letters and sermons for themselves. He does this seamlessly and without distracting from the flow of the narrative. He also provides a list of Rutherford’s writings at the end of the book, as well as suggestions for those who are interested in doing more in-depth and scholarly reading about the man and his times.

In closing, here are a few of my favorites of those quotes. I hope that getting to know Samuel Rutherford will bless you as it has blessed my family.

“Grace tried is better than grace, and it is more than grace. It is glory in its infancy. Who knows the truth of grace without a trial? And how soon would faith freeze without a cross!”

 “Know therefore that this is a race of God’s choosing and not of our own; and the ill roads, the deep waters, the sharp showers and the bitter violent winds that are in our face, are of God’s disposing. We will not get a better road than our Lord allows us. He has called us to suffering, and not a stone is in our way by chance.”

 “Believe Christ’s love more than your own feelings. Your Rock does not ebb and flow, though your sea does.”

The publisher provided me with a review copy of this book, and I was under no obligation to give a favorable review.

A Quotation I Wanted to Share

It is a devastatingly painful thing to be a weak Christian in the American evangelical church today. So much emphasis is put on . . . victory that there isn’t much room left for those God is holding on to with a strong arm, but who may know little of the joy of full assurance of faith and the satisfaction of growth in grace and obedience—at least in this life. . . They limp through life barely able to remember the truth or connect the mighty doctrines of the faith to their struggles in a way that would calm their fears and quiet their hearts. . .They cling to God desperately, but without ever feeling an assurance of his presence or an ability to rest in the love that surrounds them. . .I am convinced that these precious saints are among those Christ died for and are in their own way heroes of the faith, clinging to God in spite of the weakness of their faltering faith. They are the bruised reeds that we must not break and the smoldering wicks that our triumphalism would so easily extinguish. . .Can you imagine the surprise and delight on their faces to find themselves in heaven after all? On earth they could barely hope that the promises of eternal life were true and that God had actually saved them, and they never felt the joy of it during their lifetime. But once they get to heaven it will all change, and I imagine that they will perhaps spend the first millennium or two in heaven surprised and delighted simply to be there.

Barbara R. Duguid, Extravagant Grace: God’s Glory Displayed in Our Weakness, pp. 150–152.

Oh, friends, if you recognize yourself as one of these “bruised reeds,” I hope you will draw some comfort from these words. He created your soul and wired your mind with unimaginable specificity; He has sovereignly allotted the strength of faith you will have, the things that will cut you to the heart or batter your conscience, the emotions you can’t even explain to yourself. This isn’t the last word about what He might accomplish in your life through sanctification, but it is always true that His grace is sufficient for your most particular weaknesses.

More Thoughts on Identity; or, the Thirties Are Still Weird

"[D]espite having invested so much of ourselves in what we thought would provide a lasting sense of meaning, we hardly know ourselves in the midst of it…And the things that we once looked to for stability and identity begin to feel like burdens and obligations instead of blessings.” --Hannah Anderson

Reading Made for More kicked up some questions that have been naggingly persistent since I hit my 30s. Somehow I'd gotten the idea that once you achieve age 30, most of the "who am I, and what am I here for?" questions magically resolved themselves. Apparently, that is not so. Alas.

I wonder, though, if such questions are partly a function of privilege. Because I grew up under particular expectations, with the freedom to devote my early adulthood to certain pursuits -- i.e. academics, and perhaps more broadly to "finding my niche" vocationally -- I've been afforded the leisure, and the shelter, to think about these things. Arguably too much. And having spent my 20s that way -- dreaming vaguely of becoming a writer, then navigating the endless stream of applications, exams, and other qualifying events to prove myself worthy of being called a scholar -- it's little surprise that it's taken years to realize that those things aren't me. That they might be part of the work to which I'm called, but they are not where my real identity and worth reside. And then to wonder where, and who, is the "self" underneath all that. What does it really mean to find an identity apart from those things?

Whatever their source, the questions assume greater urgency when the things I've invested myself in reveal themselves to be unstable and not life-giving in and of themselves. When writing loses the joyful savor it held through all my growing-up years, and there is no promise I will ever get that back again. Or when I hit the first major academic crisis of the past two decades, and realize I've come so far only to question whether college teaching is truly my work. No matter how diligently I've resisted being one of "those" grad students whose studies consume their life, is it any wonder I've emerged with a shaken sense of self? And I don't think I'm alone.

At moments like these, hearing that my true identity is found in Christ does feel like a hollow platitude. I know that it's truth. I don't want to feel disappointed by that exhortation; believe me. But it doesn't necessarily help me understand how that truth works itself out in me. Maybe it says too much too soon, kind of like promising a grieving friend that God is in control, in a way that only tends to underscore His seeming absence.

One thing that bugged me about Hannah Anderson's book, yet also encouraged me, was that she doesn't try to answer the "yes, buts" in a definitive way. Coming from her, though, the "identity in Christ" refrain doesn't fall as flat. Her understanding seems to be both more mundane and more expansive. As long as we are fulfilling the tasks of reflecting God's image -- living in close communion with Him, being in relationship with other people, and participating in the stewardship of God's creation in some way -- all these things done through Christ by the power of the indwelling Spirit -- then we ARE living out our "true identity." Because we are made in His image, we have the freedom to live out that identity in any way that faithfully represents His character. That is liberating news to hear. It lifts some of the burden of, "But I didn't achieve X by age 30; therefore I'm a failure," or "That other person does Y and Z so well; why can't I?" (Or the far uglier versions that too often inhabit my mind.)

On the other hand, it's also a bit terrifying. When you've spent most of your life working to establish yourself on the approval of others, more or less following their scripts for what counts as success, the prospect of living differently can feel crushing. Coming to know yourself as Known -- created to be such -- is hard, humbling work. It can feel like inching along a cliff in the semidarkness, unable to discern how far the drop might be, or whether there's a safety net. (Oddly, clinging to my well-worn, familiar supports, those incomplete versions of "me" I've worked so hard to construct and maintain, doesn't make me feel as secure as I thought they would.)

It is good to remember that He is kind, and more patient than I am. And the things He makes reflect His beauty, which is more solid and abiding and glorious than we can imagine.