Monday, January 17, 2011

Yet Another Radical and Respectful Response

If you read the post below, it was my personal response to both three-quarters of David Platt's book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, and JD Greear's tempered response to the book.

Here is yet another gracious response to some of the more challenging (and possibly guilt-inducing) assertions made by Platt. The exchange is between author/preacher Kevin DeYoung and Radical's author David Platt. The two men know and like each other personally, and in most every way, agree theologically. I appreciate their articulation of the finer points that I stumbled over in my heart, points that seem fine as grains of sand, but when that sand gets in your bathing suit at the beach and stays there all day till you walk away chafed, it can be easy to forget what a lovely day at the beach you had overall.

If I could say one thing to Kevin DeYoung, though, it's "Why in the world did you throw the word antinomianism into your review?" Man, I was cruising along, nodding with understanding, appreciating the prose as if on a tour of Italy, when all of a sudden--POW! Antinomianism rose up out of the concrete like a speed bump on steroids. I'm all about learning new vocabulary words, but I don't like to click out of the screen to check dictionary.com.

Okay, back to the review. I must say it's worth every bit of your time to read Radical, and then to read the balanced responses to it from Greear and DeYoung.

Oh, and just so that you can sail over that babble-icious, uber impressive theological term with a modicum of understanding before you read DeYoung's otherwise-comprehensible essay, you might want to get acquainted with antinomianism via the Berean Wife's blog. (I happened upon the blog in a cursory search for a quick explanation, but know absolutely nothing about the blogger or her blog, so this is not an endorsement. Just one wordsmith trying to show other wordsmiths where to find a satisfactory definition.)

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