Review of 66 Love Letters: A Conversation with God That Invites You Into His Story

Note: Originally posted for the the Gospel Coalition.

Book Details

• Author: Larry Crabb, Ph.D.

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (2009) (400 Pages)

• Category: Christian Life, Spiritual Growth, Scripture

The Story God Is Telling

Over the past forty years, Larry Crabb has branched out from psychologist, to Christian counselor, to spiritual director. His latest book, 66 Love Letters, continues that trend as he offers a spiritual or practical theology of life based upon his reading of the Bible’s meta-narrative.

It was fascinating to read Crabb’s take on the grand narrative of the Bible while simultaneously reading Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. McLaren alternates between denying that there is a meta-narrative in Scripture, to saying that any meta-narrative is a power ploy of the majority culture, to stating (without any historic proof) that the historic Creation, Fall, Redemption, Narrative is diseased by Greco-Roman thought, to claiming that he has single-handedly discovered the Bible’s true meta-narrative (but that’s a review for another day).

Whether or not one agrees with Crabb’s summary of the grand sweep of the Bible, one must applaud Crabb and contrast Crabb with McLaren. For Crabb confidently and consistently clings to the sufficiency and authority of God’s Word for life and practice. He takes God at His word as he reads and attempts to comprehensively summarize His Word. He expresses dismay at “how fond we’ve become of receiving visions and hearing prophetic words . . . that bypass the Bible and diminish the importance of knowing its content . . . with little understanding of the larger story of the Bible (pp. xix-xx).

The Story of the Bible

Crabb’s focus is crystal clear. “I wanted to arrange summary sentences of each book into the story God was telling in the Bible. I wanted to know the plot and to see how each chapter (each of the sixty-six books) advanced the plot” (p. xvii). His summation of the Bible’s meta-narrative is equally unmistakable. “The Bible is a love story that begins with a divorce. Everything from the third chapter of Genesis through the end of Revelation is the story of a betrayed lover wooing us back into His arms so we can enjoy the love of family forever” (p. xviii).

Among those who accept the historic Creation, Fall, Redemption Narrative motif, some would argue about the “love story” conceptualization. However, Crabb is in good company here. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Boston, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Charles Hodge, and many other Church Fathers, Reformers, and Puritans taught the “love story motif.”

No one should imagine that this becomes, for Crabb, some “touchy-feely” focus on the self. Rather, Crabb repeatedly emphasizes that we must join God’s story, not the other way around. We sinfully assume that God’s agenda revolves around ours. Instead, God is not here for us, we are here for Him. Joy comes when we ask what holiness would look like as we follow God on each leg of our journey.

Nor does it become a focus on “wounds” and “therapy.” Crabb eschews that mindset. He sees our deepest problem not to be our “woundedness” but “evil unadmitted, unchecked, unforgiven, and unchanged” (p. 55). God refuses to fix all that we see as wrong and painful without first destroying evil.

The Story Developed in Individual Books

Throughout 66 Love Letters Crabb provides sentence summaries and chapter-length development of every book of the Bible. Of course, if any pastor, theologian, professor, or counselor were to write their summary of each of the 66 books of the Bible, everyone would disagree with at least some of those abridgments. The bigger question should be, “Is the movement of the summaries in line with an accurate interpretation and application of the big picture of the story God is telling in the Bible?”

While anyone might disagree with or word differently some of Crabb’s individual book summaries, it is easy to see Crabb’s fidelity to Evangelical thinking about the gospel. He repeatedly emphasizes God’s overarching message: sin, grace, repentance, brokenness before a holy God, self-worshiping rebellion, radical servanthood, self-denial, no gospel without the cross, no salvation without Christ, no spiritual formation without suffering, our root problem as idolatrous self-love and inexcusable self-centeredness.

It’s always a difficult process to move from accurately understanding the original context and message of a book, to the global theme/message of a book for God’s people, and then to specific application for today. Crabb’s goal is to do this with every book of the Bible while aligning with the theme of a narrative love story.

At times, he seems spot on, especially when he emphasizes the immediate historical context, such as with 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. As Crabb says, using God as the Narrator, “You will need a little background to hear Me well in Ezra. Never underestimate the value of studying My letters before meditating on them” (p. 69).

With Nehemiah, rather than seeing it as “leadership principles for today” (how many of us have heard sermons like that from Nehemiah?), he captures the immediate and enduring message of our role in God’s sovereign plan. “Whatever anyone does out of a sincere desire to know Me and draw others to Me is a great work” (p. 74).

Those times when Crabb doesn’t seem to nail it feel more like he is shoe-horning concepts important in his past writings into the Bible book he’s studying. A case in point is 1 Kings. For Crabb, Solomon’s prayer for wisdom was wrong because his desire to be effective in handling life was stronger than his desire to be holy in the middle of life’s challenges. “Prioritizing managerial efficiency over personal holiness opens the door to sin spinning out of control” (p. 50). It’s difficult to argue against this as a wisdom principle. However, it’s hard to find this in Solomon’s prayer for wisdom, especially since God Himself honors the prayer and Solomon for praying it.

While I’ve focused on the Old Testament, please don’t miss Crabb’s encapsulations of the New Testament. He’s right on target with his central themes for the four Gospels. His searing, convicting applicational summaries of the Epistles made reading that section time-consuming…lot’s of time for reflection and repentance.

He focuses consistently on doctrine applied to life. Abridging Romans, he writes, “Organize your thinking into clear doctrine. Truth matters. Doctrine matters. Orthodoxy matters. But keep moving, not beyond truth but into truth” (p. 238). Contrast that with the current “in” approach of ignoring doctrine and making up our own truth. Or, the equally extreme approach of truth and doctrine separated from life and relationships.

Listen to Larry and God “Chat”

Readers unfamiliar with Crabb’s writing style may be in for a surprise. He has always been one of the most “real and raw” Evangelical writers you’ll ever read. Reading Crabb in 66 Love Letters is like reading Jeremiah lamenting as he reads the entire Bible. Then for 66 books it’s like listening to God as he responds to Job. You’re listening in on Crabb’s intimate conversations with God where he’s asking deeply honest and personal questions, and receiving authoritative and loving responses.

Crabb is candid about his struggles. He’s honest about his questions. But what a huge difference between Crabb and questions and McLaren and questions. McLaren is candid about his questions, then basically makes up his answers. You get the gospel according to Brian. You get God in the image of Brian. Crabb is candid about his questions. Then he turns to God’s Word to listen and learn. You get the gospel according to God. You get God in God’s image.

In Summary

66 Love Letters is not a book to read in one sitting, no more than you would attempt to read the Bible in one sitting. It’s a book for reflection—deep personal reflection. You may not agree with every theme in every book. However, you will be challenged to read and apply God’s Word, book by book, in light of the grand theme, the great story God is telling.

I think of 66 Love Letters as something of Larry Crabb’s opus. Readers familiar with his writings will hear themes from his other books. Here they are even deeper, richer, and more closely connected to the text of Scripture. Larry Crabb is passionate about knowing the all-holy God of the universe through Christ and about entering into a humble, personal relationship—an eternal dance—with the Trinity. And he’s passionate about doing so through the all-sufficient, authoritative Word of God.

Join the Conversation

It could be easy to quibble with any of Crabb’s 66 summary sentences. It would be much harder to do it yourself. So… how would you write it? How would you summarize the grand theme of the Bible? How would you then condense the message of each of the 66 books of the Bible? Finally, how would you weave those 66 individual themes into the grand love story God is telling in His Word?

A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC

Book Details

• Author: John Piper 

• Publisher: Crossway Books (2010)

• Category: Christian Living, Theology

Recommended: John Piper’s A Sweet and Bitter Providence explores the book of Ruth to teach the powerful truth that God is at work even in the worst of times. In Piper’s able hands, we learn that God’s affectionate sovereignty brings glory to Christ, comfort to Christians, and hope that leads to risk-taking love for others.

God Is Good Even When Life Is Bad

Only a confident author like John Piper would begin his book saying he wasn’t “sure that you should read this book.” Of course, he then lists seven reasons why readers might be helped by the message of Ruth:

• Ruth is the Word of God which is our unwavering rock and anchor.

• Ruth is a love story—conveying the richest and deepest truths in the form of a passionate love story.

• Ruth is the portrait of beautiful, noble manhood and womanhood.

• Ruth addresses one of the great issues of our day: racial and ethnic diversity.

• Ruth’s most prominent purpose is to “bring the calamities and sorrows of life under the sway of God’s providence and show us that God’s purposes are good.”

• Ruth teaches risk-taking love—the gift of hope in God’s providence is meant to overflow in radical acts of love for hurting people.

• Ruth aims to show the glory of Christ—all of history, even its darkest hours, serves to magnify the glory of God’s grace.

God Is at Work in the Worst of Times

Piper gleans his title from Ruth 1:20-21, where Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, candidly laments, “The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty. The Almighty has brought calamity upon me.”

Summarizing his summary, Piper notes, “Here’s the question the book answers: Is God’s bitter providence the last word? Everywhere I look in the world today, whether near or far, the issue for real people in real life is, Can I trust and love the God who has dealt me this painful hand in life? That is the question the book of Ruth intends to answer.”

Piper’s answer, Ruth’s answer, Naomi’s answer, and God’s answer is clear: God is at work in the worst of times. The worst of times are not wasted—globally, historically, or personally. Piper’s quote of William Cowper’s verse says it well:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust him for his grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

Piper makes the additional, important point that the answer to this question is meant not merely to help us to think right thoughts about God, nor merely to give us hope in His good providence. “That hope-filled confidence is meant to release radical, risk-taking love. It’s there to make you a new kind of person—a person who is able to ‘do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God’ (Micah 6:8).”

A Journey with Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz

The book is a brief, but rich, four-chapter journey through the four chapters of the book of Ruth. The trek begins with the trials and travails—the bitterness and calamity—of Naomi, her sons, and her daughters-in-law. Piper rightly affirms Naomi for her acceptance of the sovereignty of God even in the darkest days of her life. “When the world is crashing in, we need assurance that God reigns over it all.”

Piper somewhat takes Naomi to task, perhaps more than I would, for not seeing with spiritual eyes God’s good purposes. I’m not sure that Naomi failed to see the goodness of God, so much as she was candidly lamenting the badness of life—a common theme in Job, Jeremiah, Lamentation, and the Psalms of Lament.

However, Piper is certainly not without feeling for Naomi and other sufferers. In fact, Piper obliterates the false stereotype that a Gospel-centered, Reformed focus on God’s sovereignty is somehow cold, calculating, and emotionless. Rather, A Sweet and Bitter Providence is an emotion-provoking, passionate, and compassionate read. Piper’s writing wraps the words of the Bible around the heart of the sufferer.

Piper is at his best in chapter two as he explores how God turns Naomi’s mourning into dancing. He describes the key to facing suffering face-to-face with God: take refuge under God’s wing (Ruth 2:12). As Piper puts it, “Seek refuge under the wings of God, even when they seem to cast only shadows, and at just the right time God will let you look out from his Eagle’s nest onto some spectacular sunrise.”

By esteeming God’s protection to be superior to all others, love-releasing hope develops. Humble confidence in the mighty and merciful wings of God leads to risk-taking love.

Chapter three is intriguing, with some interesting analysis of the plans of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, that some preachers, commentators, and theologians might disagree with at points. However, Piper’s overall theme is clearly biblical. He calls it “strategic righteousness.” Hope helps us dream. Hope helps us think up ways to do good. Hope helps us pursue our ventures with virtue and integrity. Hopeful people not only survive, they thrive. They not only don’t retreat, they advance; they strive. They strive for strategic righteousness as Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz did in pursuing the eventual marriage relationship between Ruth and Boaz.

It is in this chapter that the subtitled word “sex” enters the picture. Piper has strong, challenging, biblical words to share about sexual purity today in light of the choices Ruth and Boaz made in a situation fraught with sexual temptation.

In chapter four, Piper addresses the reality that life is not a straight line leading to glory. It’s a mountain road with switchback after switchback—winding and troubled roads. And God is in all these strange turns. He’s plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and Christ’s glory. We see this in Ruth, of course, when we realize that she, a Moabite woman, becomes one of the ancestors of Christ.

Piper explains that understanding this eternal perspective is crucial to address one of the great diseases of our day—trifling, or spending our life on the trivial. We were meant to live for magnificent causes. “The book of Ruth wants to teach us that God’s purpose for his people is to connect us to something far greater than ourselves. God wants us to know that when we follow him, our lives always mean more than we think they do.”

This is where the subtitled word “race” becomes visible. Whereas with chapter three and sexual purity, Piper spent a good deal of time highlighting modern-day applications, the same cannot be said for race relations. This was the one disappointing aspect of the book, especially given its inclusion in the subtitle. It was there, but more implicit than explicit, more “back then” than “here and now.”

Seven Final Appeals

Piper ends with seven appeals based upon his seven reasons to read the book.

• Study the Scriptures: May the Lord awaken in you an insatiable hunger for his Word.

• Pursue Sexual Purity: Choose seeing God and desiring God over sexual license and a mere collection of appetites.

• Pursue Mature Manhood and Womanhood: Affirm and pursue the differences.

• Embrace Ethnic Diversity: Explode the forces of ethnocentrism and racism.

• Trust the sovereignty of God: God is good even when life is bad.

• Take the Risks of Love: The sovereign goodness of God is revealed to us not only for our comfort, but also to free us from the fear and selfishness that quashes the radical risks of love.

• Live and Sing to the Glory of Christ: It’s all about Him!

A Sweet and Bitter Providence is a splendid exposition and application of the story of Ruth to our lives today. The story of Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz plays out under the invisible hand of God, as told by the skillful hand of John Piper.

Review of CrossTalk: Where Life & Scripture Meet

• Author: Michael R. Emlet

• Publisher: New Growth Press (2009)

• Category: Biblical Counseling, Christian Living, Spiritual Friendship

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, and free resources at RPM Ministries.

Recommended: Michael Emlet’s CrossTalk offers one of the most robust approaches yet to the biblical counseling process of relating the scriptural narrative to a person’s life story. Its Christ-centered, comprehensive, and compassionate approach powerfully and practically equips readers for the personal ministry of the Word.

Review: Relating Truth to Life

The publishers aptly promote CrossTalk with the phrase, “An antidote to ‘take two verses and call me in the morning.’” For far too long, some segments of current pastoral ministry and modern biblical counseling have practiced the idea that there is a simplistic one-verse, one-problem, one-solution method to every counseling and relationship issue.

Michael Emlet’s training as a family physician and as a seminary professor seamlessly equips him to teach a much more robust approach to changing lives with Christ’s changeless truth. In CrossTalk, he investigates the intersection of biblical truth and people’s lives by exploring how we understand people biblically and how we use the Bible in biblical counseling.

Speaking the Truth in Love

We have many books about how to interpret the Bible, but few address the topic of how to relate truth to life—how to connect Scripture to struggles. Or, if they do, they focus on the pulpit ministry of the Word—preaching and teaching, and not on the personal ministry of the Word—biblical counseling, one another spiritual friendship, and personal spiritual direction.

Emlet teaches us how to look at life experiences through biblical lenses. His focus is on the person and the passage, on how to read the Bible and how to “read” people biblically. You might say that he understands that hybrid Christians run on truth and love. CrossTalk promotes a gospel-centered, personally relevant use of Scripture in personal ministry. “It describes a way to use the Scriptures to help people to grow to love God and others more fully in the midst of their complex daily lives” (p. 4).

The Story of Suffering and Sin

CrossTalk also counters another all-too-frequent error in modern biblical ministry—dealing with sin but minimizing issues of suffering caused by sin. Historically, the church has always helped hardened (sinning) and hurting (suffering) people. Soul care through sustaining and healing has always related God’s hope to suffering people, while spiritual direction has always related Christ’s grace to people’s besetting sins. Emlet wisely continues this biblical, historical practice of Christ-centered, comprehensive, and compassionate biblical counseling.

Emlet connects the Bible to life—all of life in all its complexity. He does so by focusing on the “story”—the story of Scripture and the stories of people’s lives. CrossTalk equips readers to make meaningful connections between the two.

Connecting the Bible to Life

While emphasizing the connection between truth and life, Emlet refuses to make the process simplistic. He begins by explaining the nature of the Bible—what it is not and what it is. He correctly summarizes the Bible as a CFR Narrative—the story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption with a Christ-centered focused of helping people to become Christlike.

With this foundational understanding in place, Emlet begins to establish implications for reading and using the Bible. Rather than imagining that personal ministry involves finding the “right passage” for the “right problem” for the “right person,” truly biblical ministry thinks theologically about relationality.

 Creation: Who are we? What makes us tick? (People)

 Fall: What went wrong? Why is the world such a mess? (Problems)

 Redemption: What’s the remedy? How do people change? (Solutions)

Biblical counseling is more than looking for one verse for one problem. It is more than looking for theological categories to relate to life issues. It is exploring how a person’s dominant story (approach to life) intersects with God’s Christ-centered Creation, Fall, Redemption story so that people respond to suffering and sin in such a way that Christ is glorified as they become more Christlike.

Connecting the Stories

In simplistic biblical counseling, we connect the dots. We connect a problem to a passage or a principle.

In robust, rich, relational biblical counseling, we connect the stories. We connect a person and his/her dominant life story of suffering and sin to God’s redemptive meta-story of grace.

Emlet first offers some general principles for applying his approach to personal ministry. These seem a tad brief while at the same time being a tad technical—not as full of “real and raw life” as the preceding buildup. However, Emlet subsequently takes an in-depth look at this model, thus breathing life into the skeletal outline. He offers insightful questions for saints, sufferers, sinners, and Scripture which serve as foundations for relating truth to life.

Even more helpfully, CrossTalk introduces Tom’s story and Natalie’s story. He teaches readers how to read the person, how to connect the person to the Old Testament narrative, and how to connect the person to the New Testament narrative.

We “read” a saint’s story by looking for marks of grace. Where is the person living true to his identify as a child of God?

We read a sufferer’s story by pondering what circumstances impact his or her struggles. Here Emlet looks predominantly at “level one suffering”—what is happening to the sufferer, and less at “level two suffering”—what is happening in the sufferer. An in-depth look at such internal suffering could have added more richness to this overall valuable approach.

We also read the story of sinning by probing what desires (relational), thoughts (rational), emotions (emotional), and actions (volitional) are out of line with kingdom values and therefore compete with the biblical story. Here Emlet models a thoroughly comprehensive approach to spiritual direction through reconciling and guiding.

Perhaps the most powerful and practical chapters are the two (chapters 9 and 10) in which Emlet demonstrates how to use an Old Testament and a New Testament passage with Tom and with Natalie. Talk about rich! The dialogues of applying scriptural narratives to life narratives are worth the proverbial price of the book. And, quite importantly, Emlet emphasizes that once we understand the grand biblical narrative and the person’s dominant life narrative, there are a host of potentially applicable intersecting passages. He offers samplers to whet our appetite and to model what it looks like in “real life.”

While the purpose of CrossTalk was not to focus on the “relational element” in biblical counseling (no one book can cover everything), Emlet’s approach is clearly relational. He emphasizes that ongoing relationship is the context for personal ministry and that multiple conversations over time provide a natural framework to relate the biblical story to a person’s dominant life story. Growth happens in community.

A Watershed Book

CrossTalk is one of those watershed books. It has the potential to help move the modern biblical counseling movement into the next generation. Its dynamic incorporation of truth and life in the context of scriptural and life narratives is a rare blend. Everyone interesting in understanding where life and Scripture meet should read and apply CrossTalk.

CrossTalk

Reivew of Adrian Warnock’s Raised with Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything

Book Details

• Author: Adrian Warnock

• Publisher: Crossway Books (2010)

• Category: Christian Living, Theology, Christ

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommended: Adrian Warnock’s Raised with Christ presents theological truth in a first-rate communication style. His compelling message is straightforward and profoundly life-changing. Jesus is alive. His resurrection changes everything for everyone.

Review: Resurrection Power

The Christian community knows Adrian Warnock as an avid Evangelical Christian blogger. With the release of Raised with Christ, Warnock will also be known as an accomplished theologian who understands how to relate truth to life. What Warnock shares in his Conclusion, aptly summarizes the power and point of his entire book.

“Christians have the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead living inside them. One day that power will complete the work of saving us, but in the meantime the normal Christian life can be one in which we are very aware of the change that the resurrection brings. We are citizens of the age to come, living in a world that is dead to God. But we are not dead to him. We live to him. May God help us live in the light of that fact more each day. One day we will all see that, thanks to the death and resurrection of Jesus, everything really has been changed. The whole creation will have been renewed, and we will be like him.”

In Christ

Warnock’s consistent message proclaims that because Christians are in Christ, Christ’s resurrection implies our resurrection. Raised with Christ unpacks the massive implications of this spiritual reality. His commensurate premise states that while the early Church and believers throughout Church history emphasized Christ’s death and resurrection, Christians today tend to highlight Christ’s death for our sin, while minimizing the importance of, or being ignorant about, the implications of Christ’s resurrection.

Of course, unless the tomb truly was empty, our claims of resurrection power today are equally empty. Thus, Warnock begins by exploring the biblical evidence for Christ’s resurrection. After this opening section, Raised with Christ addresses “two essential questions that will occupy us throughout the rest of the book: Can we believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ? And, what does it mean to live in light of the implications of that event?”

In laymen’s terms, Warnock addresses every common and uncommon argument against the resurrection of Christ. He concludes this impressive section with N. T. Wright’s conviction that, “The only possible reason why early Christianity began and took the shape that it did is that the tomb really was empty and that people really did meet Jesus, alive again.”

Sadly, those prone to disbelief will likely be left unconvinced by these two foundational chapters, no matter how well-written and researched. Nonetheless, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, Warnock builds the rest of Raised with Christ on this platform of biblical truth, reliable historical evidence, and logical rational suppositions.

Resurrection Accepted and Applied or Neglected and Ignored

Perhaps equally sad is the realization that motivated Warnock’s writing of this book. Even among those who accept the reality of Christ’s resurrection, our daily lives all-too-infrequently evidence a depth acceptance and application of that earth-shaking, heaven-invading actuality.

Warnock encapsulates his message beautifully and powerfully when he states:

“I am not concerned that there is too much emphasis on the cross. I am, however, anxious that as we “survey the wondrous cross” we also study the resur¬rection. We must remember that the cross is just as empty as the tomb, and Christ is now glorified, having completed his work. The truth is, we cannot be truly cross-centered without also being empty-grave-centered! Jesus was not just our prophet and priest—he is our reigning King.”

If you forget everything else, remember this about Raised with Christ. We must be empty-grave-centered!

After a brief summation of why we tend to neglect the resurrection, Warnock returns his readers to the first-century Church to expose their resurrection-centric theology and lives. Additionally, he traces the theme of resurrection throughout the Old Testament. Clearly, the Bible is resurrection-centric.

What Did the Resurrection Ever Do for Us?

To motivate believers today to become resurrection-centric, the rest of Raised with Christ emphasizes the with Christ aspect of the resurrection. Bravely, Warnock introduces this essential topic with an illustration from Monty Python’s Flying Circus (you’ll just have to buy and read Raised with Christ). He derives from this the principle that we can assume things without ever realizing their full impact on our lives.

So, for the next 150 pages, Warnock delineates the impact of Christ’s resurrection on our lives by answering the fundamental question, “What did the resurrection every do for us?” His answers comprehensively apply resurrection truth to our complete salvation. Unlike some Evangelicals who seemingly stop at justification (as vital as this spiritual truth is), Warnock addresses justification, reconciliation, regeneration, and redemption. What has the resurrection ever done for us? It has given us new pardon, peace, personhood, and power.

It is impossible in a review to capture all the theological truth packed in these 150 pages. Plus, it is important to realize that with each theological truth, Warnock offers not only personal application, but realistic biblical principles for practically applying the resurrection to our daily lives, relationships, and ministries.

One “motif” or running theme Warnock conveys throughout Raised with Christ is “revival.” Christ’s resurrection results in a revived new creation and it ought to result in revived prayer, revived relationships to one another and to Christ, revived application of the Word, revived unity in the Body of Christ, revived assurance of eternal salvation, revived filling of the Spirit, revived fulfillment of our mission, and much more.

The Resurrection of All Things

The Bible tell us that, “He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything” (Acts 3:21). Christ’s resurrection not only has individual and corporate implications; it has universal repercussions. Powerfully, Warnock tells the tale of those everlasting ramifications. Then, as he consistently does, he addresses the “So what?” question. How do we live today in light of our eternal resurrection living? In his own words:

“God himself is living inside us! We experience the power and pres¬ence of a Jesus who is living, active, and doing things today. In every cir¬cumstance of our life the resurrection can make the difference, bringing hope when things are hard and joyful deliverances when the power of the age to come breaks through. The kingdom really is now and not yet!”

Adrian Warnock’s Raised with Christ presents theological truth in a first-rate communication style. His compelling message is straightforward and profoundly life-changing. Jesus is alive. His resurrection changes everything for everyone.

Raised with Christ

Book Review of Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don’t Like Religion (or Atheism), Author: Frank Schaeffer

Technocratic Claim Code: 6T6HCXV4SV3

Book Details

• Author: Frank Schaeffer

• Publisher: Da Capo Press (2009)

• Category: Faith, Christianity and Atheism

Reviewed By: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, Author of Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses. Find all of Bob’s book reviews, blogs, and free resources at www.rpmministries.org.

Recommendation: For insights into the fallacies of the “new atheism,” Frank Schaeffer’s Patience with God makes a valuable contribution. However, his views on Evangelicals, the Bible, God, and salvation are disturbing. And, there are better books critiquing the “new atheism” (find dozens of suggested titles here).

Review: God’s Patience with Us

Frank Schaeffer is the “prodigal son” of Francis and Edith Schaeffer—leading Evangelical thinkers of the 1970s and 80s. Among his earlier books, Frank’s Crazy for God is his tell-all, exposé of everything he thinks is wrong with the “Religious Right.” The sub-title of that memoir says it all: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take It All (Or Almost All) of It Back.

Having deemed the faith of his parents hypocritical and unreasonable, Frank now journeys to discover a faith of his own. Like all people, Frank sees his own faith as the happy medium between competing extremes. Thus, Patience with God unfolds in a three-fold way.

1. It deconstructs the “new atheism” declaring its logical and experiential fallacies.

2. It deconstructs “modern Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism” declaring its logical and experiential fallacies.

3. It constructs Schaeffer’s new faith system declaring the higher virtues of his way of believing.

Choosing His Extremes

For “new atheism,” Frank includes representative authors Sam Harris (The End of Faith), Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great). These new atheists have been called “fundamentalists” for their insulting attacks, their intolerance of anything spiritual, and their absolute certitude—“We’re right and you’re wrong!”

For “modern Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism,” Schaeffer chooses authors Rick Warren (A Purpose Driven Life) and Jerry Jenkins/Tim LaHaye (the Left Behind series). (I know, many would be hard-pressed to label these authors as “Fundamentalists,” but Franky does.) For him, Fundamentalists/Evangelicals practice intolerant, politicized, ugly religion with absolute certitude—“We’re right and you’re wrong!”

Faith as certainty—logically being able to prove your view and disprove the views of others—is the link Schaeffer makes between new atheism and Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism. Both, according to Schaeffer, are old fashion, modernist or pre-modernist, and thus literalist. They both seek to pronounce grand, final theories about life. They both follow:

“…the impulse to find The answer, a way to shut down the question-asking part of one’s brain. Fundamentalists don’t like question marks. Fundamentalists reject both Christian humility and postmodern paradox. In that sense an atheist too may be a fundamentalist. And a fundamentalist wants to convince others to convert to what fundamentalists are sure they know” (p. 9).

How Many Ways Are There to Say “There Is No God!”?

After introducing the two enemy combatants, Schaeffer spends chapters 2-6 exposing what he sees as the errors of new atheism. Many Evangelical believers will likely be right there with Schaeffer cheering him on.

Schaeffer exposes new atheism’s faith—faith in science. He exposes their tactic of taking the worst of religious history and bigotry, ignoring the best, and then building a caricature of faith in general and Christianity in particular. He exposes their dogmatic, demeaning, “my-way-or-the-highway” childish mentality. With great humor and tragic reality, Schaeffer also reveals the monetary motive behind much of the new atheism. “Huckster” is too kind a word for what Schaeffer describes in chapter 3.

While Evangelicals might applaud Schaeffer’s brief exposé, there are better, more detailed responses. I’ve outlined a few dozen of the best books that defend Christian faith against the new atheism—you can find my bibliography here.

What’s His Beef with Fundamentalist/Evangelicals?

To understand Schaeffer’s issues with Evangelicals, it would be best to read the aforementioned Crazy for God. There truly isn’t a lot of substance in Patience with God that explains Schaeffer’s beef with Evangelicals. Schaeffer spends less than half-a-page “engaging” Rick Warren and The Purpose-Driven Life before he launches his diatribe against him.

I’m no apologist for or against Warren or this particular book, but for someone (Schaeffer) who is so anti-judgmentalism, he sure makes a number of unsubstantiated judgments about the motives of Rich Warren’s heart. “His church is very much about him.” “He’s the star in a cult of personality that fits the celebrity-worshipping temper of our times.”

In the chapter (entitled Spaceship Jesus Will Come Back and Whisk Us Away) on Jenkins/LaHaye and the Left Behind series, one of Schaeffer’s primary gripes is the huge marketing thrust of the series. So Schaeffer rips the new atheists and the modern Evangelicals for their penchant for pushing their wares, yet, he mentions his previous books scores of times and makes it plain where you can purchase them…

His Personal Journey

In the second half of Patience with God, Schaeffer shifts from his two-fold deconstruction of the new atheism and modern Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism to his construction of his own faith. It is in this section that most Evangelicals will likely have the most problem with Schaeffer. He can pick apart our own failures and fallacies, but when he picks apart the Bible…that’s another matter. (I know, I’m a Fundamentalist/Evangelical for even saying that!)

Having said that, there are some things I appreciate about Schaeffer’s personal journey. He’s not afraid to talk about doubt. Honestly, his candor is refreshing. I agree with him—by definition faith is not certainty. So we have questions. We doubt. We wrestle with God. The Bible depicts this—in the Psalms, in Lamentations, in Ecclesiastes, in many places. I applaud Schaeffer for his honesty and I resonate with many of his struggles and questions.

However, Schaeffer’s answer to his doubt is to deny that any answer whatsoever is ever possible. In fact, he concludes that new atheists and Fundamentalist/Evangelicals alike are “dim.” Anyone who thinks there is a “truth” that we can count on to find answers within the midst and mist of our doubts lacks intelligence.

The really smart person, the really post-modern person, according to Schaeffer, eschews rational answers and instead pursues experiential meaning. Schaeffer’s basic message in Patience with God is, “I know there’s something more than me, something grandly spiritual, because I experience it when I hold my precious infant granddaughter.”

I neither decry nor deny experience. It is one of the ways of knowing that Frank’s father, Francis, taught about: revelation, rationalism, experience, and empiricism. But what makes Frank’s one way—experience—superior to any of the other ways of knowing? We’re never really told. Plus, isn’t the whole point of Patience with God to expose the evil of anyone who claims that his way is superior?

Knowing God

It is Frank’s views on revelation that will most irk, irritate, and infuriate most Evangelicals. He does not believe the Bible is inspired, inerrant, literal, accurate, dependable… He deconstructs the God of the Bible, including Jesus, until He becomes unrecognizable. He then attempts to legitimize this by “cherry picking” select quotes from select Church Fathers to attempt to link his views of the Bible and God to their views.

Yes, some of the Church Fathers talked about “mystery” and the paradoxes of faith. However, it’s a long road from the paradox of an infinitely holy God revealing Himself in the mystery and paradox of the Cross—of a suffering Savior—to the road that Frank Schaeffer suggests is the only valid route to knowing God.

Frank Schaeffer is welcome to wrestle with his beliefs about God. But once he’s done that outside of the context of Bible, it seems odd that he insists on retaining the label “Christian.” Once you strip away the Bible’s revelation of God in Christ, is what’s left “Christian”?

When the Apostle Peter struggled with many of the same struggles that Frank Schaeffer experiences, Peter’s response was, “To whom shall I go? You alone have the words of life?”

Either Jesus speaks authoritative, sufficient, inspired, inerrant words of life, or He doesn’t. Either we cling to faith in the One Who claimed in the Bible that He was the way, the truth, and the life, or we don’t. Either we believe that we cannot live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, or we don’t.

Why do we have to make knowing God truth or experience? Why can’t knowing God be truth and experience? I take my experience of doubts, struggles, questions, and concerns personally to God through His Spirit, by His Word, in the company of His people. If that makes me “dim,” so be it.

Believing the Bible to be true does not eliminate paradox, confusion, questions, thinking, mystery, or doubts…at least not for me. It does offer faith in the midst of my doubts. Nor does believing the Bible mean that I worship the Bible. It means that I worship the One Who has chosen to reveal Himself in the Bible. Nor does saying that I believe the Bible to be true imply that I’m claiming that my interpretation of the Bible is inerrant. It means that I recognize with humility my own finite, person-specific, culture-saturated interpretations of the inerrant Word of God.

Believing the Bible to be God’s revelation of Himself to humanity doesn’t eliminate my experiential relationship to God. It maximizes my experience of God Who says His Word is our bread of life which we are to feast upon by living the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), with our love abounding more and more in knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9-11), as we share together in the Body of Christ both Scripture and our own souls (1 Thessalonians 2:8). 

Patience with God