October 2013 Ordained Servant

From the Editor: Long after the first electronic media began sending its messages via the Victorian Internet—the telegraph—and a decade before the modern Internet, in the heart of the television age, sociologist Jacque Ellul was a sounding an alarm. The Humiliation of the Word (1985 in English) warned the Christian community of the diminishment of the word in general and the Word of God in particular. Since then the great battle of Reformed churches ensues with increasing intensity. Electronic popular music along with general electronic distraction have made powerful inroads among the people of the Word. Worship has increasingly been disenchanted of the supernatural power of the preached Word. So, we celebrate Reformation month with the first of a three part article by Robert Letham, “The Necessity of Preaching in the Modern World.”

I have augmented this article with a review of two important aids to personal devotion with “The Rhythms of the Christian Life in Bible Reading, Prayer, and Poetry,” a book of prayers for each chapter of the Bible, and a weekly meditation on the best sacred poetry of George Herbert.

Douglas Felch reviews an important book by Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos. This work, by a highly respected atheist philosopher, takes exception to the materialistic naturalism of evolutionary science, by dissenting from its pretension to make its naturalism an explanation for everything.

David Booth reviews Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed. Booth claims that this important book replaces “John T. McNeill’s History and Character of Calvinism as the standard introduction to the origin and development of the Reformed tradition.”

Darryl Hart reviews John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? He demonstrates how Fea offers a third way of understanding America’s founding. “Fea allows for a different category that is neither holy nor profane, one by which Christians may recognize the United States as valuable, wholesome, and virtuous (with admitted defects) without turning the nation into a Christian endeavor.”

Finally, to convince readers of the unique devotional value of George Herbert, don’t miss his poems on Holy Scripture.

The web cover photo pictures the Reformed church in Huemoz sur Ollon, Switzerland, where L’Abri Fellowship is located.

Blessings in the Lamb,
Gregory Edward Reynolds

FROM THE ARCHIVES “PREACHING”

Subject Index

• “About Good Preaching.” (Andrew H. Selle) 14:1 (Mar. 2005): 4–7.
• “About Preaching.” (Mark Larson) 13:2 (Apr. 2004): 31–32.
• “Challenges in Preaching.” (James Visscher) 7:2 (Apr. 1998): 43–46.
• “The Divine Voice.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 17 (2008): 144–46.
• “Editorial [on Preaching].” (G. I. Williamson) 1:2 (Apr. 1992): 25–26.
• “Editorial [on Preaching].” (G. I. Williamson) 2:4 (Oct. 1993): 73–74.
• “‘Especially the Preaching of the Word’.” (Larry Wilson) 9:2 (Apr. 2000): 30–34. [reprinted 15 (2006): 46–51]
• “God Still Speaks: The Power of Orality.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 17 (2008): 25–31.
• “Hearing the Word in the Modern World.” (Gregory Edward Reynolds) 19 (2010): 16–21.
• “Some Thoughts on Preaching.” (G. I. Williamson) 3:2 (Apr. 1994): 42–43.

Ordained Servant exists to help encourage, inform, and equip church officers for faithful, effective, and God-glorifying ministry in the visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Its primary audience is ministers, elders, and deacons of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, as well as interested officers from other Presbyterian and Reformed churches. Through high-quality editorials, articles, and book reviews we endeavor to stimulate clear thinking and the consistent practice of historic, confessional Presbyterianism.