Stephen Arterburn

Wow! Every once in a while you come across a book that causes something inside you to transform. This book has done that for me.

In my opinion, the author, Stephen Arterburn, is exceptional at relaying a message and conveying emotions, and even displaying Christian principles, without sermonizing the story. What I mean by that is, while reading this book, I don’t feel like I’ve been preached too – yet I feel the internal warmness of a day at church.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a show more good sermon—on the contrary! But when I’m reading fiction, I want to be entertained. The Encounter is just that. Entertaining, moving, and even life-changing.

This story is told in two viewpoints:

The main viewpoint is that of Jonathan “Gold” Rush. Though a wealthy and famous business man, he has battled with inner-demons most of his life. After a recent suicide attempt, Jonathan agrees (with a little prodding from his counselor, Tim Moser) to revisits his birthplace, Fairbanks Alaska, to face the past that has haunted him for so long. He harbors so much anger and hurt toward his mother who abandoned him when he was four.

The second viewpoint is that of Ada Rose Guthrie, Jonathan’s birth-mother. She too was troubled by the past. Decisions she made long ago sent her life on a different course than she’d planned. Harboring years of regret and pain, she retreated into somewhat of a recluse.

I highly recommend this book. Although it is a fictional story, the author reveals it is based on two true stories combined into one. The characters are not saccharine or unrealistic. They have real problems, strong emotions, and life-long issues that feel authentic. This is a short read, but the message will stay with you for a long time.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Blogsneeze. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 show less

Karl Barth rounds out his exposition of the doctrine of God under two heads: the election of God and the command of God. In his first self-consciously significant break with John Calvin, Barth here unfolds his highly idiosyncratic doctrine of election.

In his view, although the Reformers did much to rescue the doctrine of sovereign election from a Roman Catholic neo-Pelagianism, they failed to recognize that election is more primal than an arbitrary selection of individuals for salvation and show more a corresponding rejection of others to damnation. Rather, Jesus Christ himself, the second person of the eternal triune Godhead, is the original and proper object of the Father's election. He is chosen before time to be the original Elect Man, and he also is chosen before time to be the original Rejected Man. As he bears the Father's rejection to damnation, so he receives the Father's redemptive election to salvation.

We have no part or parcel in this two-fold work accomplished on our behalf, and solely by the Father's good pleasure, before time and in time. Our role in salvation is either through repentant faith to embrace the Son's election as our own through his work on the cross, or to embrace his rejection as our own in a stubborn insistence on our individual sovereignty. In reality, this is an impossible and impotent choice since Christ has already borne that rejection fully; it is not ours to choose. This is a choice that leaves us in Satan's powerless shadow kingdom, a choice that leads nowhere but to the eternal destruction which awaits all that exists in the impossible unreality outside of Christ's dual role as Elected and Rejected Man.

Again, this is certainly an idiosyncratic view of election. To me, it seems to flirt with the edges of universalism. If we all in some sense exist in a state of election that we have only to accept in repentant humility or (impossibly) to reject in stubborn pride, could one argue that the very impossibility of choosing a rejection that Christ has already fully borne might ultimately lead to universal salvation? Barth himself refers frequently enough to the notion of eternal destruction that he seems still to be within the guardrails, but it would be helpful to get a better grasp of what he means when he speaks of eternal destruction. Perhaps he gets to that later in the series; this is, after all, a twelve-volume theology.

The second head, that of God's command, is concerned with Christian ethics. Here Barth helpfully grounds ethics in the acts of God himself. As God has met and meets us with boundless compassion through his son Jesus Christ, so too we are to meet with others on that same basis of boundless compassion regardless of their disposition toward us or toward God. Here again, though, Barth's idiosyncrasies surface in his insistence that revelation is inherently an historical act of God toward specific individuals in concrete and unrepeatable situations. Revelation can only be attested in the pages of Scripture, not repeated over and over again as general rules for us to interpret and apply in our situations by our own lights (i.e., no Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation). The Bible, therefore, in passages such as the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, does not constitute a rulebook for life so much as it indicates the outer boundaries within which our response to God's command, our execution of Christian ethics, must take place as we respond to that concrete command of God in our own specific historical circumstances.

I appreciate Barth's emphasis on constant and fervent prayer as the means by which, in communication with the Word of God through the Bible, we live in vigilant attendance on God's commands for us from day to day. The urge to prayer is both salutary and welcome. I am less clear on what exactly to do with this on a day-to-day basis, or how I'm supposed to distinguish God's command from my own baptized feelings. I'm not certain Barth manages to extricate himself from the charge he elsewhere lays against Pietism for being too mystical, since the decoupling of the command of God from the specific written commands of Scripture seems to leave the door ajar for the very mysticism Barth otherwise decries.

Still, there are a lot of tough nuts to crack in the question of how exactly to apply Scripture when so much of it has no obvious translation into a modern context (e.g., what to do with slaves captured in regional wars). Whether or not Barth's contribution to this conversation ultimately makes any sense in terms of daily Christian living, he raises good questions and provides thoughtful answers that certainly give the thoughtful reader much to chew on. show less

I'm generally not a fan of books that are co-written by a therapist (see the "R" series by Karen Kingsbury - blaugh). I'm also typically not a fan of books that flip between first person and third person - I consider it cheating. But by the time I had finished this book, I'd forgiven Nancy Rue both and am glad to see that Sullivan Crisp will be resurrected again.

Rue is not your typical Christian author. She errs on the side of grace, not judgement and she is truly taking her life in her show more hands when she tangles with the touchy subject of adultery on a Christian campus. While not condoning the actions of her characters, she does show us the emotional toll their actions take and ultimately, there is redemption. I wish more movers and shakers in Christendom would take up that message. show less

Every Man God's Man has a very admirable goal: to discover and develop godly character in men. I do not believe that it reached it. While some readers will undoubtedly be helped, the book really fails to address the issues from a gospel-oriented, Christ-centered perspective. It relies heavily on personal testimony and narrative stories to illustrate the need for purity and devotion. The biblical exposition seems to be tacked on to fill in the gaps.

One major issue that I have with the book is show more the absence of any clear gospel articulation and how it impacts the lives of believers. A person grows in holiness in the same way that he was saved: by acting faith in a crucified and risen Savior (cf. Gal. 3:1-6; Col. 2:6). Every Man God's Man seems to relegate this fundamental truth to the sidelines, spending most of its time in the Old Testament. Surely, there is help to be found in the Old Testament, but it must not be the primary tool that we use to try to formulate godly character. We need the grace of the new covenant and the working of the Holy Spirit to make progress here.

Every Man God's Man also seems to minimize the relationship of Christ to the believer. Christ is set forth more as an example than as an expiator. The authors write: "If God alone measures our lives, we are free to live for God without apology or reservation. That's when we feel most like Jesus" (p. 29), and "On that dark evening, the most important thing Jesus might have ever shown us was how to completely let go of our hearts to God" (p. 30). This sounds much more like Jesus our model, than Jesus our Substitute.

I am grateful for the Every Man Series. We need more books that deal directly and bluntly with the issues that men face. But the books that address these issues must not rely on story and psychiatry over and above the gospel message. May God give us books that are firmly rooted in the sin-destroying and heart-sanctifying power of the cross of Christ. show less