Meanwhile, Amazon got some more copies in, then sold them out and dropped the price a bit further. I hope that's good! Now the price is so low, I'm tempted to get a few copies, myself.
Very tangential and sad aside: I just read of the apostasy of a man whose name I know from enjoying many, many Adventures in Odyssey. The tale of his slide from being a Baptist, to being Anglican, to defecting all the way to Rome, is chilling and tragic. It really has me feeling low, honestly. I may devote a post to it. But if I may say so, candidly: this sad story underscores to me the vital and absolute necessity of a Biblical grasp of all that the Gospel entails. It was toward that very end that I wrote WTG.
Back to a happier note, so you're not as low as I feel at the moment: So far, I've gotten encouraging feedback on WTG from folks in five countries. To that, all one can say is...
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11 comments:
I'm glad for the endorsements and hope this book gets into the hands of many. This Gospel-centeredness needs to be infused into the Christian church.
Your noting of the man converting to Catholicism really disturbed me...even moreso after reading the linked article. I can understand being drawn in by some of the uniformity of the service in mass compared to the nonsense that goes on in some churches, but when he talks about church history and says that protestants are ignorant of it that blows my mind. I mean, for somebody to say that history is on the side of the RCC is just crazy. It is very sad. I wish that there were more sound churches and that people were more exposed to them than the seeker-sensitive types, but that is no excuse for hanging your hat on a church with bad history and, even worse, heretical theology.
I’ve been sort of blue too, but it had more to do with the news of John Stott. Interestingly it got me to comparing TWTG with Basic Christianity. I read BC after hearing numerous quotes from John Stott and so I went in search of something by him to read.
While it was good, it didn’t connect with me like TWTG did. The disappointment in BC was toward the end where he talked about man’s responsibility and used Rev 2:20 as his text. Really? Still, when John Stott is quoted, I listen.
That is at the same time extraordinarily kind, humbling, and encouraging of you to say, Jack. If WTG bore even a tiny fraction of the fruit that Basic Christianity has borne, I would be happy, grateful to the point of tears, and well-nigh speechless.
I think you've been way too calm over this book publishing thing. I think you should get a little more excited...
=P
I'm with you Robert. I'm a y00t desperate for a church that sees itself as part of the historic church. Not necessarily part of a denomination, but I want a church that will at least sing and learn from our past betters.
However the Council of Trent is a bit of a deal breaker.
Rather a step up from being a Baptist to being an Anglican in my experience. I am about halfway through WTG and so far find nothing in it to conflict with the Articles of Religion. In fact, unless you veer seriously off course in the second half I hope to take advantage of the price drop to obtain a few extra copies to give away.
Now I'm tense!
To your more serious point. Of course I knew I'd hear from you on this, and you didn't disappoint. And of course I'm aware of profoundly evangelical Anglicans, though mostly long-dead (Ryle).
HSAT, it's like the argument of whether X necessarily leads to Y just because it does 93% of the time.
Can you tell me you don't know folks who've come from some Christian background, stopped awhile in Anglicanism, then apostatized all the way to Rome? I surely can. I remember a dear friend, formerly Reformed, who because Anglican (as usual) primarily for aesthetic reasons. I was concerned, and told him so. Tosh, I was told; being Anglican made him far more fervent and spiritual and evangelistic.
Fast-forward: I inadvertently receive a CC of an email he did not mean me to receive, in which he lightly speaks of flirting with becoming RC, because the Episcopalian liturgy is so similar, and so it wouldn't be such a big transformation to go all the way to Rome. My alarmed response received an alarming surrejoinder, confirming my worst initial fears.
You want to tell me this is not a necessary progression, I will agree. You want to tell me that it is not a too-frequent and wholly-abominable progression, and I will not be able to do so.
Allow me to abandon my usual facetiousness and tell you that I think your point is valid, as far as it goes, but alas it goes not very far. Obviously X does not necessarily lead to Y if it only does so 93%, or even 99% of the time! But the problem really is that there are two strains of Anglicanism to be considered and you (quite innocently) are only looking at one. Yes, it appears to be almost a commonplace that Anglicanism can be a way station from generic protestantism to Romanism, but I would dispute (acknowledging the glaring exception of J. H. Newman and some of the Puseyites) the notion that Anglicanism "born and bred", as it were, has any tendency at all toward Papism. Eliminating, thus, the vast majority of Anglicans from consideration I am left to suggest that it is the liturgical bankruptcy of the generic protestants that leads to the phenomenon you rightly identify. If a person actually stumbles upon Christ in one of these assemblies it is little wonder, if he possesses any musical or asthetic taste, that he gravitates to a richer tradition. Now, despite admitting the anecdotal truth of your assertion in individual cases, my own experience (looking around my own church for instance) is that for many the move to Anglicanism is final. If there is a further move, then the individual was probably substituting liturgical usage for saving faith in the first place. I will make a confession: In my disgust with the social/political trend within the Episcopal Church I seriously considered converting to Rome. For me, however, despite my love, almost addiction, to the Anglo-Catholic liturgy, the Gospel and the liturgy are not concomitant. The liturgy, of course, contains and proclaims the Gospel but the dependency only runs one way. Consequently I obtained a copy of the new Roman Catechism and read it, cover to cover, annotating as I read. I remain a convinced Anglican and a reluctant Episcopalian.
As to your last assertion, I would say that once is "too frequent", so we are in agreement. As to the abomination of it I have to allow God to decide. I am not completely convinced that a truly saved person could not practice Christianity within the Roman framework. I think such a person would have to be both uninformed and unobservant, but I am not qualified to pronounce a final judgment.
Interesting tale, of the Baptist -> Anglican -->RC move.
"and that made me wonder about the authority of the church. Was church authority really supposed to be a whatever-you-think-best model? Who has the authority to speak for Christ?"
My best friend in college, a Baptist preacher's kid, fell in among Jesuits in his thirties, and converted. When I talked to him, all he seemed to fix on was the authority issue. That was 15 years ago. I hope I have a better answer if I run into him again this side of the eschaton.
"Some friends felt it was a betrayal of my Protestant faith."
Uhh, yeah.
I understand the disaffection with low church evangelicalism. I feel it myself. But there are other alternatives.
Vis-a-vis that, you might find this interesting, from Banner of Truth: Charles Hodge's Letter to Pope Pius IX. "We are not heretics, or schismatics..."
WTG -- I'm working my way through 3 different, fairly dense books. When I'm through with 2, I'll look at getting WTG.
Dan.
Maybe I missed it, your 1000 000 reader was who? I caught it at 1009 980 or there about congrats anyway.
I have still not seen any WTG in SA and Amazon doesn’t operate here.
RC guys are not very big here so my knowledge about them is very “holie”.
My biggest question how he reconciles the doctrine of salvation with the Bible, how does he answer the extra books in their Bible. How does he explain the whole Mary thing?
When a Biblically-faithful begins looking into Roman Catholicism, he virtually immediately realizes he's looking at an entirely different religion, apart from some merely formal similarities.
The winner was Ben Thompson.
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