Newark - Summer In The City 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Of Books and Studies
Toward Becoming a Bibliophiliac
Dear reader, let me welcome you into the company of bookmen of the past who did so much with head and heart and hand. People like Francis Bacon and John Wesley could think because they wrote it down, and they wrote it down because they could think—and by this they thought about us who would follow, that we might “read their minds.”
Kenneth Latourette said that the early Christians did “out-think, out-live, and out-die” their generation.” It is to our sorrow that we moderns know little of how to think, live, or die in that manner. Indeed, if we did, it would seem that there would be a concomitant effect. One part of the process of “out-thinking” should be study. There must be something to think with besides our brains. There must be content derived from a diligent application to the Book and to books as well.
John Wesley led a movement that was not borne of bare enthusiasm, for it moved a generation for God and set in motion a salutary social revolution that is yet with us. It was a book movement, and a reading revolution. He insisted that his helpers “steadily spend all morning in this employ, or at least five hours in the twenty-four.” A young evangelist says, “But I have no taste for reading.” Wesley answers with a “certain violence,” as William Barclay points out, that the young man should “contract a taste for it, or return to his trade.”
Incidentally, Wesley wrote a mere 371 books, thirty with his brother, and many hymns. It was not just biblical material, but historical, political, medical, and humane. For every fruitful book one writes, he must read forty or more. He must be, in the historical sense, a Christian humanist. Whence comes good grammar and the vocabulary that captures subtle nuances? And how may the imagination be developed but by books? The effect of television is the opposite, bringing deprivation to the right side of the brain (the imagination and creativity sector), as well as the left—where thinking should transpire. Yet Wesley was an activist, the world was his parish, and he rode over 80,000 miles and preached over 17,000 sermons.
Francis Bacon wrote in an essay of the above title that “studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.” The first is for solitude, the second is to beautify social intercourse, and the third is to bring sound judgment into the world for action. . . . For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars one by one . . . [but] the plotting and marshalling of affairs comes from the learned.” Thus the linear, one dimensional man is not the learned man. The secular generalist, such as Toynbee, and the Francis Schaeffer types, religiously speaking, are the need of the day.
Bacon warns us that “too much study is sloth,” and that there are some who use study for escape or mere external ornamentation, with little application to life. There is the requirement of “getting into life.” as he further states: “They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience...studies by themselves do give forth directions much too large except they be bounded by experience.”
An application for the scholarly pastor is that he have a discipline to be among people in common life, that he might preach and teach incarnationally—in the flesh and blood of life. Let none who take Jesus or Paul as examples of biblical thinkers deny themselves the privilege of a persistent peripatetic lifestyle. They wearily walked many a dusty road imparting their very being in word and deed.
Also from Bacon: “Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; wise men use them.”
“Read to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be digested--reading makes a full man; conference (dialog) a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
When Paul told Timothy to study, he was not talking about an arduous and unpalatable task. The Greek word means eager diligence, like an intrepid athlete ready for the race. To be approved of God is to avidly study the Word and study men, that we might “rightly apportion” the Word of Truth—meat for the mature, milk for the babies, honey for the unlovely. “Reading Christians,” said Wesley, “are knowing Christians.” He adds this cogent insight: “The work of grace would die out in one generation if the Methodists were not a reading people.
Read as though your life depended on it: “Histories make men wise, poets witty, mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral philosophy grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend...there is no impediment of wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies,” (Bacon)
Friends, if you love God with your mind then make an action study plan and do it now. In His light we see light, for He lights every man coming into the world____________________
For Monographs and Essays on Education, Evangelism. And Biblical Worldview:
wtiverson@gmail.com
Toward Becoming a Bibliophiliac
Dear reader, let me welcome you into the company of bookmen of the past who did so much with head and heart and hand. People like Francis Bacon and John Wesley could think because they wrote it down, and they wrote it down because they could think—and by this they thought about us who would follow, that we might “read their minds.”
Kenneth Latourette said that the early Christians did “out-think, out-live, and out-die” their generation.” It is to our sorrow that we moderns know little of how to think, live, or die in that manner. Indeed, if we did, it would seem that there would be a concomitant effect. One part of the process of “out-thinking” should be study. There must be something to think with besides our brains. There must be content derived from a diligent application to the Book and to books as well.
John Wesley led a movement that was not borne of bare enthusiasm, for it moved a generation for God and set in motion a salutary social revolution that is yet with us. It was a book movement, and a reading revolution. He insisted that his helpers “steadily spend all morning in this employ, or at least five hours in the twenty-four.” A young evangelist says, “But I have no taste for reading.” Wesley answers with a “certain violence,” as William Barclay points out, that the young man should “contract a taste for it, or return to his trade.”
Incidentally, Wesley wrote a mere 371 books, thirty with his brother, and many hymns. It was not just biblical material, but historical, political, medical, and humane. For every fruitful book one writes, he must read forty or more. He must be, in the historical sense, a Christian humanist. Whence comes good grammar and the vocabulary that captures subtle nuances? And how may the imagination be developed but by books? The effect of television is the opposite, bringing deprivation to the right side of the brain (the imagination and creativity sector), as well as the left—where thinking should transpire. Yet Wesley was an activist, the world was his parish, and he rode over 80,000 miles and preached over 17,000 sermons.
Francis Bacon wrote in an essay of the above title that “studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability.” The first is for solitude, the second is to beautify social intercourse, and the third is to bring sound judgment into the world for action. . . . For expert men can execute and perhaps judge of particulars one by one . . . [but] the plotting and marshalling of affairs comes from the learned.” Thus the linear, one dimensional man is not the learned man. The secular generalist, such as Toynbee, and the Francis Schaeffer types, religiously speaking, are the need of the day.
Bacon warns us that “too much study is sloth,” and that there are some who use study for escape or mere external ornamentation, with little application to life. There is the requirement of “getting into life.” as he further states: “They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience...studies by themselves do give forth directions much too large except they be bounded by experience.”
An application for the scholarly pastor is that he have a discipline to be among people in common life, that he might preach and teach incarnationally—in the flesh and blood of life. Let none who take Jesus or Paul as examples of biblical thinkers deny themselves the privilege of a persistent peripatetic lifestyle. They wearily walked many a dusty road imparting their very being in word and deed.
Also from Bacon: “Crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; wise men use them.”
“Read to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be digested--reading makes a full man; conference (dialog) a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
When Paul told Timothy to study, he was not talking about an arduous and unpalatable task. The Greek word means eager diligence, like an intrepid athlete ready for the race. To be approved of God is to avidly study the Word and study men, that we might “rightly apportion” the Word of Truth—meat for the mature, milk for the babies, honey for the unlovely. “Reading Christians,” said Wesley, “are knowing Christians.” He adds this cogent insight: “The work of grace would die out in one generation if the Methodists were not a reading people.
Read as though your life depended on it: “Histories make men wise, poets witty, mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; moral philosophy grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend...there is no impediment of wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies,” (Bacon)
Friends, if you love God with your mind then make an action study plan and do it now. In His light we see light, for He lights every man coming into the world____________________
For Monographs and Essays on Education, Evangelism. And Biblical Worldview:
wtiverson@gmail.com
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