Who are the strong and who are the weak in the faith? The strong are the more mature, it seems to me. I had a friend once tell me the strong had better understanding. Perhaps, but it is not knowledge alone. Knowledge puffeth up but charity edifies. And it is the insight of love that gets past the superficial. I think the hangup of the one who is weak in the faith is in dealing with appearances and phaenomena and not getting to the inside of things. Why is it that in two out of three major passages on the theme of Christian liberty Paul mentions that God’s commands are summed up in loving? Why does he come to that unifying point on the inside of all the particular manifestations? It is an understanding, a more fundamental understanding, but one achieved not by a fragmentary knowing about, but by knowing the heart of the matter.

I am going to mention that on Sunday, and if anybody afterward is intrigued, I am going to recommend they read Plato.

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I’ve been preaching from Romans 12 forward. Never thought I’d do something like that, but I was so tired of doing long book studies after Luke and Genesis that I could not contemplate anything else. So I’m in paraenesis and the struggle there is to make it interesting. I still can’t even figure out how to make an outline for my sermons without killing them dead. Which is why I prefer narrative, because the emotional climax is so easy to find, work toward, and be the place where the applications are made, before you wind up the story. I’m enjoying Daniel.

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Daniel, now, was picked to make me get into eschatology. I suppose I really never was much of a dispensationalist to begin with. Hard to be, when it has no positive associations for one. I was established in progressive dispensationalism by witnessing one Burgraff attack it. I knew I wanted to be whatever he was not, but I didn’t realize at the time that I could be a covenant theologian (the rigidities I have shed over time—I didn’t even realize I didn’t have to be a fundamentalist then). One of my worst dispensationalist teachers was always complimented for being consistent. Where is the appeal in that? I was always embarrassed for him that the best thing these people could say was that he was consistent. He was a nice chap too and was rather fond of above average buffets—several of which he treated us to more than once.

Speaking of that, the hermenutical differences between dispensationalists and the people of God (that’s a joke, for those with too literal a hermeneutic) are set forth in a book by Peter Masters called Not Like Any Other Book. He’s not the clearest, most scholarly, or even the most precise; in fact, he’s sometimes aggravating, but he does understand the difference between how Calvin interpreted, how Spurgeon interpreted and how the dispensationalist interprets the Bible. He’s not into single meaning, not into abandoning allegory, not into limiting parables. He’s not into irresponsible hermeneutics either . . . much. I love him, mostly.

Not the first author I usually turn to, and certainly not an evangelical celebrity author, but we have a book dealer here who’s friends with Masters’ daughter and gets fresh translations sent direct; which is why I have ended up reading two of his books, neither of which I have found all that great but both of which have been useful for conversations, for starting a bit of thinking. The bookseller here is going to write the daughter and ask her to please tell her dad to be a bit more precise and careful in the future. We’ll see how that goes.

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You know, I wonder about that. I wonder about the value of the chap who gets a bit of thinking started. He doesn’t get it right, he doesn’t even do that great a job, but he puts his finger on the issue or at least eliminates possibilities unintentionally so that somebody after him comes up and reaps the benefits of seeing at last what the problem is. It is part of the historical process of things, it seems to me.

It happens to you all the time when you know how to teach and you’re listening to somebody else do it. With the benefit of that person’s study you can sometimes move ahead of the guy as you listen to him speak on a subject. I don’t doubt it happens when I teach to other people. At least I hope so, sometimes it is my only consolation.

Anybody with a sizeable collection of books has had the experience of some twit of a non-reader looking over the collection with no real discernment and wondering if the owner has read them all. The tone–or something about the way–in which the question is expressed seems to imply that the best answers would be either a Yes or an Almost.

Of course, that isn’t the answer they get, at least not from this reader. They get a No. One doesn’t acquire all one’s books with a view to reading them in the immediate future: that isn’t the way things are done. It isn’t the way things are done because all books are not read the same way. Certainly some are read immediately, especially if you’re the kind of reader who never has and never will use lists to read by. But some are acquired with a view to filling up a spot in a life that would drag on tediously should one ever run out of things to read, say a year from the day, or five, ten or twenty. And yes, there are people who worry about running out of good books to read and tend to hoard.

It does puzzle me to know there are people who read by lists, because I do not find that I understand when I read strictly under compulsion. I read well when I am interested, but not so well when I am compelled. And I have, somewhere, a quotation from Dr. Johnson corroborating the general idea too.

To what is this due, this triumph of desire over duty? One doesn’t read all books similarly, for one; and for another, there are seasons to reading. The true, hard-core, binge-reading reader is not a person with a simple insatiable desire for books of any sort whatever. Is the true, hard-core, binge-eating eater a person who shoves food down his throat indiscriminately, or does said person sometimes crave chicken, sometimes pizza and chips, from time to time a vegetable? I think it must be the latter. I think a person for whom eating is a true pleasure, to relinquish some of the exaggeration, has seasons to his eating, he enjoys things severally and in variety: today an omelet, tomorrow a potato. Would one not be surprised if said person’s refrigerator were on the whole kept always empty?

Which is why an avid reader has a sizeable collection of books on hand, many of which are unread and must remain so for years; various: for the various seasons of desire, for the various ways of reading, for savoring for the first time or reading again after a sufficient pause.

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Note on something else that occurred to me: it ought to be considered that I am not speaking of the personal library of one who does research which must sometimes grow exponentially. When the non-reading twit comments on such a library in such obtuse insinuations it is also impertinent because he is telling someone who knows how to do what he does what to do. That is the philistine streak, I’m afraid.