Book Recommendation
I know most of you are probably enjoying your vacation without books, but I was talking with a friend about lots of different stuff the other night and one of the things we talked about for a minute was sin and pride, and it made me think of the book, "Not the Way It's Supposed to Be" by Cornelius Plantinga. So I went back and looked at it and realized how well-written and timely it is. If you are going to read one theological book this year, I would recommend it. Here is an excerpt, with a link to an extended excerpt:
A proud person tries to reinvent reality. He tries to redraw the borders of human behavior to suit himself, displacing God as the Lord and boundary keeper of life. At bottom, the fool is out of touch with reality. For, of course, our wills are not sovereign. We are not really our own centers, anchors, or lawgivers. We have not made ourselves, cannot keep ourselves, cannot ultimately oblige or forgive ourselves. The image of ourselves as center of the world is fantasy - perhaps, in its sheer detachment from reality, even a form of madness. This is especially clear at the most ruinous levels of evil. Only a fool, Milton believed, would rise from his flaming ruins, look out across a "dismal Situation waste and wild," filled with "huge affliction and dismay," and declare: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n."
Check out an extended exerpt here.
A proud person tries to reinvent reality. He tries to redraw the borders of human behavior to suit himself, displacing God as the Lord and boundary keeper of life. At bottom, the fool is out of touch with reality. For, of course, our wills are not sovereign. We are not really our own centers, anchors, or lawgivers. We have not made ourselves, cannot keep ourselves, cannot ultimately oblige or forgive ourselves. The image of ourselves as center of the world is fantasy - perhaps, in its sheer detachment from reality, even a form of madness. This is especially clear at the most ruinous levels of evil. Only a fool, Milton believed, would rise from his flaming ruins, look out across a "dismal Situation waste and wild," filled with "huge affliction and dismay," and declare: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n."
Check out an extended exerpt here.