{"id":2455,"date":"2017-04-18T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T05:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w3.sonofcarey.com\/?p=2455"},"modified":"2017-04-18T07:59:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T05:59:06","slug":"the-book-i-wish-i-could-have-written","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/?p=2455","title":{"rendered":"The Book I Wish I Could Have Written"},"content":{"rendered":"

When writing The Conservative Church<\/em><\/a>, De Bruyn sang as he slew, especially in the last 100 pages. He argues: A church must have a care to preserve true doctrine and a holy lifestyle, but especially, in these days, ordinate affection.<\/p>\n

The book has three sections parallel to truth, goodness, and beauty. The first chapters deal with the gospel and sound doctrine including some insightful comments on Christian unity. In part two, he deals with morality in the church, but narrows his focus mainly to worship. There are helpful principles that stretch into preaching in these chapters.<\/p>\n

But he reaches his height when taking on the modern Goliath of the affections. \u201cProbably the greatest difference between thoroughly conservative Christian churches and more nominally conservative Christian churches will be their divergent views on the matter of beauty and the affections.\u201d (123) These four chapters are both readable and wise–a vital corrective to most seminary educations.<\/p>\n

Spurgeon said of Puritan Thomas Brooks, \u201cHe scatters diamonds with both hands.\u201d And there are a few passages where De Bruyn has plenty to give.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesires could be fitting\u2014ordinate, or unfitting\u2014inordinate. To put it another way, your affections were true or false.\u201d 130<\/p>\n

\u201cOrthodoxy cannot stand alone. \u2026 Ordinate affection is essential to knowing the truth.\u201d 135<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has an eclectic set of prejudices and sentiments, which he usually defends as vehemently as Laban looking for his idols.\u201d 150<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone who has learned to love the trivial, the debased, and the sentimental cannot unlearn those loves in a day. Nor will he do so easily, for your loves are just that\u2014the things you love, <\/em>and which seem to be a part of yourself. Not easily are our idols torn from us.\u201d 152<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot do in your church in a few years what is meant to be done through culture over centuries.\u201d 164<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we wish to love what God loves, we must pursue the art of true judgment. \u2026 No judgment or discernment will come to irreverent, flippant people.\u201d 177<\/p>\n

\u201cCulture cannot be divorced from religion.\u201d 183<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is something quite conceited and egocentric about members of a 2000 year-old institution who have no interest in its past, and a near-obsession with its present.\u201d 207<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen tradition preserves untruths, it becomes the guardian of a lie that will not die.\u201d 211<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do our people no favors when we deny them essential parts of Christianity simply because such things require patient and lengthy explanations or because such things require disciplined and intense study.\u201d 224<\/p>\n

In a very useful appendix he lists just under 100 books arranged in headings for further study as a basic curriculum for the subjects treated in the book. Even if this book merely serves as a sign post guiding us to these authors, it will have served a Samwise-like role in the completion of our quest.<\/p>\n

Because it meets such a contemporary need while still brimming with fresh use of Scripture, every pastor should familiarize himself with the arguments in these pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When writing The Conservative Church, De Bruyn sang as he slew, especially in the last 100 pages. He argues: A church must have a care to preserve true doctrine and a holy lifestyle, but especially, in these days, ordinate affection. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[206,39,417,359],"class_list":["post-2455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-orthopathy","tag-book-reviews-2","tag-de-bruyn","tag-ecclesiology","tag-orthopathy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QrZa-DB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2456,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions\/2456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sonofcarey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}