John Piper: Salvation Not 'A Decision'

[endingess]
Piper’s paradgm is entirely anachronistic …He reads a current emotional emphasis back into a culture that did not place the same value on emotions as we do because, quite frankly, that culture was no where near as individualistic and self-absorbed as ours is. So when Piper reads words that we see from an emotional standpoint from the beginning, he overlays that perspective onto them. I think this is no small error on his part for …

It’s funny how often I end up defending Piper at SI… I’m pretty ambivalent about him, at best. It’s just that so much criticism of him is exaggerated or just inaccurate.
In this case, I’d recommend reading Jonathan Edward’s Religious Affections and see if you still want to emphasize a view of devotion that is so lacking in feeling….

The Bible talks about what we DO in terms of our relationship with God, not about how we feel. I know people who FEEL they love God and engaged in illicit divorce and ended up excommunicated, all the while maintaining those feelings. Nonsense!

I’m quite low key about “emotions,” and really despise sentimentalism… but we need to be careful not to isolate feelings from devotion.
The reality is that whatever is supreme in our effections stirs us and we feel. If we’re not particularly expressive that way, fine I guess (I’m not very expressive myself), but no feeling = no devotion.
But it’s true that there is an error on the other end: feeling = devotion. Both of the following statements are false:

• Devotion is a feeling


• There can be devotion without feeling

Edwards sorts these out pretty helpfully. (In Edwards, “religion” means something like “genuine Christian devotion/living”)

A project I’ve been meaning to do for some time is to post an outline of sorts of Edward’s book. I think it would be helpful to people to have a better idea of what’s in it. He wanted to deal with what he saw has two extremes of his day: sensational/”enthusiasm” and dry intellectualism. These are mosty my terms, not his. He has some terms that seem pretty quaint to us today but the analysis is really insightful.

But it is good to be zealously affected [ζηλόω] always in a good thing(Gal.4.18)

[Aaron Blumer]

[endingess]
Piper’s paradgm is entirely anachronistic …He reads a current emotional emphasis back into a culture that did not place the same value on emotions as we do because, quite frankly, that culture was no where near as individualistic and self-absorbed as ours is. So when Piper reads words that we see from an emotional standpoint from the beginning, he overlays that perspective onto them. I think this is no small error on his part for …

It’s funny how often I end up defending Piper at SI… I’m pretty ambivalent about him, at best. It’s just that so much criticism of him is exaggerated or just inaccurate.
In this case, I’d recommend reading Jonathan Edward’s Religious Affections and see if you still want to emphasize a view of devotion that is so lacking in feeling….

The Bible talks about what we DO in terms of our relationship with God, not about how we feel. I know people who FEEL they love God and engaged in illicit divorce and ended up excommunicated, all the while maintaining those feelings. Nonsense!

I’m quite low key about “emotions,” and really despise sentimentalism… but we need to be careful not to isolate feelings from devotion.
The reality is that whatever is supreme in our effections stirs us and we feel. If we’re not particularly expressive that way, fine I guess (I’m not very expressive myself), but no feeling = no devotion.
But it’s true that there is an error on the other end: feeling = devotion. Both of the following statements are false:

• Devotion is a feeling


• There can be devotion without feeling

Edwards sorts these out pretty helpfully. (In Edwards, “religion” means something like “genuine Christian devotion/living”)

A project I’ve been meaning to do for some time is to post an outline of sorts of Edward’s book. I think it would be helpful to people to have a better idea of what’s in it. He wanted to deal with what he saw has two extremes of his day: sensational/”enthusiasm” and dry intellectualism. These are mosty my terms, not his. He has some terms that seem pretty quaint to us today but the analysis is really insightful.

But it is good to be zealously affected [ζηλόω] always in a good thing(Gal.4.18)

I do not disagree with your statements at all. My point goes to emphasis, not mere content. The emphasis on emotion seems to me to be overdone. Emotions have a purpose, in fact, a holy and good purpose, otherwise, they would not exist. Sorry if I contributed to confusion around the issue.

[Aaron Blumer] It’s funny how often I end up defending Piper at SI… I’m pretty ambivalent about him, at best. It’s just that so much criticism of him is exaggerated or just inaccurate.
In this case, I’d recommend reading Jonathan Edward’s Religious Affections and see if you still want to emphasize a view of devotion that is so lacking in feeling….

The charge that “so much criticism of him is exaggerated or just inaccurate” here at SI, are criticisms which are significantly the same criticisms reflected by Presbyterians, Reformed Baptists, Anglicans, Calvinists of various kinds, Lutherans and non-Calvinists, as I widely read them. Though you are dealing with criticisms at SI, again, these criticisms are of the same kind outside of SI and it seems to me that this charge, which points to a great population of various kinds of Christians, is easily made but has a substantial case to make before it convinces many that all these various brothers and sisters in the Lord and their similar objections are the results of either exaggeration or inaccuracy. I understand you making your case and taking your view but I do want to bring into view for the readers that those posting such objections to Piper at SI, though a sample, are representative of a substantial body of believers outside of SI who cover a vast theological range, demographic and scholarship.

[Aaron Blumer] I’m quite low key about “emotions,” and really despise sentimentalism… but we need to be careful not to isolate feelings from devotion.

Possibly this is where you, Aaron, may be misunderstanding the objections to Piper’s emphasis on emotionalism. Here is what I mean. You state we should be careful “not to isolate feelings from devotion”, but I see no one making that argument, that they are to be isolated. Rather, the argument is that emotions are anecdotal, not primary and Piper constantly treats them as primary definitions and identifications of true devotion.

[Aaron Blumer] The reality is that whatever is supreme in our effections stirs us and we feel. If we’re not particularly expressive that way, fine I guess (I’m not very expressive myself), but no feeling = no devotion.
But it’s true that there is an error on the other end: feeling = devotion. Both of the following statements are false:

• Devotion is a feeling


• There can be devotion without feeling

Edwards sorts these out pretty helpfully. (In Edwards, “religion” means something like “genuine Christian devotion/living”)

A project I’ve been meaning to do for some time is to post an outline of sorts of Edward’s book. I think it would be helpful to people to have a better idea of what’s in it. He wanted to deal with what he saw has two extremes of his day: sensational/”enthusiasm” and dry intellectualism. These are mosty my terms, not his. He has some terms that seem pretty quaint to us today but the analysis is really insightful.

But it is good to be zealously affected [ζηλόω] always in a good thing(Gal.4.18)

I will close stating that being zealous is a state of mind since all of our actions or dispositions must first stem from thought or else we are irrationally led. This is a prima facie fact, in my view, but one also reflected anthropologically and theologically. Of course one might ask for these arguments and then I am at a place where a treatise on the subject is required so I will simply encourage readers to do their research. Zealousness is treated as a disposition. The animation and/or possible demonstrated affections are not zealousness itself, though.

As to Edwards, I personally reject the binary construct that we are either or and we should be somewhat in between. I believe that emotions are always treated subordinate to thought in the Scripture, not isolated and not primary but responsive and subordinate. Hence, the construct is not one of two ends but one of subordination. And where emotions are used in the Scriptures, they are use descriptively, not prescriptively, assuming the understanding by the reader that it is not the demonstration of the emotions or even the having of them to which the appeal is being made is such tests, rather the thought behind them which produces the common anecdotes of things such as tears or laughter and so on. But these affects are not what is being prescribed, rather the appropriate frame of mind which often produces them, hence the reference to their common but not prescribed, affect.

We have discussed this before with no effective resolve and I recognize that but I wanted to make a contribution to all things considered.