THE END FOR WHICH GOD CREATED THE WORLD[1]
WHY PUBLISH AN OLD BOOK?
In 1765, Jonathan
Edwards published his work “The
End For Which God Created The World”.
Though rarely asked today, the question of why God created the world
captured the thought and imagination of Jonathan Edwards, one of history's most
profound thinkers. Using both reason and Scripture, Edwards determined that God
created the world primarily as an arena for his eternal and innate glory to
flow outward like a fountain, and for his emanating glory to be received,
praised, and enjoyed by the creatures he made.[2]
In 1998, Dr. John Piper
published the book, “God’s
Passion For His Glory”, which is an essay on Edwards’ work. Here Piper
passionately demonstrates the relevance of Edwards’s ideals for the personal
and public lives of Christians today through his own book-length introduction
to Edwards’s The End for Which God Created the World.
In the first chapter, entitled: Why Publish an Old Book?,
Piper includes these insightful, challenging and important thoughts from Mortimer Adler. Here is an excerpt from that chapter:
Mortimer Adler on
the Necessity of Hard Books Mortimer
Adler would use another argument to persuade us. In his
classic, How to Read a Book, he makes a passionate case that the books that
enlarge our grasp of truth and make us wiser must feel, at first, beyond us.
They “must make demands on you. They must seem to you to be beyond your
capacity.” If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions
and thought forms, then you
It may be entertaining, but not enlarging to your
understanding. It’s the hard books that count. Raking is easy, but all you get
is leaves; digging is hard, but you might find diamonds. Evangelical
Christians, who believe God reveals himself primarily through a book, the Bible,
should long to be the most able readers they can be. This means that we should
want to become clear, penetrating, accurate, fair-minded thinkers, because all
good reading involves asking questions and thinking.
This is one reason why the Bible teaches us, “Do not be
children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature” (1 Cor.
14:20 RSV). It’s why Paul said to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord
will grant you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7). God’s gift of
understanding is through thinking, not instead of thinking.
Adler underlines his plea for the “major exertion” of
reading great books with the warning that such mental exercise may lengthen
your life, and television may be deadly.
The
mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. . . . And this is a
terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the mind is a mortal
disease. There seems to be no other explanation for the fact that so many busy
people die so soon after retirement. . . .Television, radio, and all the
sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are .
. . artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active;
because we are required to react to stimuli from out-side. But the power of
those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We
grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually,
they have little or no effect.
Here’s some summary points that I think are worthy of
consideration:
1. Books, sermons, studies that
will cause us to grow MUST, at first, feel beyond our capability.
2. Material that will improve us IS
HARD WORK.
3. The Bible is a Book and must be
read as a book – an old, sometimes, difficult book
4. We must learn the art of
thinking – thinking deeply, thinking provocatively.
5. All amusement (from the French, amuser -- "to divert the
attention, beguile, delude") is mindless.
Piper concludes: “Making the effort to read Jonathan Edwards
merely for the sake of living longer would be a great irony. His aim is not to
help us live long, nor even to live forever, but to help us live for God and
that forever. And since our media-intoxicated culture is neither given to
thinking, nor to straining Godward, the challenge and the potential of reading
Edwards is doubled. The End for Which God Created the World may prove to be a
life-giving fountain in more ways than we know—all the better for its
mountain-height, and all the strain to climb worthwhile.”[3]
[1] John
Piper with Jonathan Edwards. God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of
Jonathan Edwards (With the Complete Text of The End for Which God Created the
World) (Kindle Locations 353-371). Crossway Books.
[2] https://www.amazon.ca/End-Which-God-Created-World-ebook/dp/B00R0FQVR4
[3] John
Piper with Jonathan Edwards. God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of
Jonathan Edwards (With the Complete Text of The End for Which God Created the
World) (Kindle Locations 373-377). Crossway Books.
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