Last night I had the privilege of participating in a good discussion about "food issues" with a number of men. That discussion was wide-ranging, so there will be no attempt to reproduce it here. But it did jog me in a couple of areas, and you are about to read the results of that.

First, it is not possible to talk about food production without assuming something about the production of eaters. One of my concerns about what (I think) underlies concerns about sustainability is that at the end of the day somebody is going to suggest that we should stop having kids. If I lived back in the day on my nice little sustainable farm, and had the same number of kids and grandkids that I have now, what would that mean? Say that we wanted to live as our agrarian ancestors had done, close to the land, laughter around a rough-hewn dinner table, and green beans to die for. That's all good, but say in the early days I was supporting myself and the fam on 100 acres. I have three kids and they each have five kids. Divvying everything up so that they can support themselves too means that by the time I am putting on my waders to cross over the Jordan, we have nineteen families with just over five acres each. In other words, the main pressure on sustainability is not caused by a nearby burgeoning city, but is rather caused by the attractiveness of a particular farm wife.

Nate is on what they call a "blog tour." He will be on a different blog every day for the next six days, and the first one can be found here . It contains some material not found in the triology (a first installment of Richard's notes on his own attempts at cupboards adventure), and then after that an interview with Nate on his writing.

"The wedding is simply a doorway into the house of the marriage. There is no problem with "decorating" this doorway -- the practice of adorned brides and plenty of wine for the guests is certainly biblical -- so the parents of the bride should fee free to spend some money and have a joyful wedding. But many are so attached to "weddings" that they may find themselves frantically trashing the inside of the house for the sake of decorating the doorway" (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 79).

The next article in Tabletalk, by Thomas Schreiner, is the best one thus far. Schreiner advances his argument carefully, and does so without yelling "Great is the Diana of Geneva." Moreover, the argument he advances exposes the glaring problem with Wright's treatment of imputation. That problem is that Wright treats it as a problem between judge and defendant, and insists that the righteousness of the judge is not imputed to the defendant. Wright correctly points out that justification is a forensic and legal declaration, and he argues that the righteousness of the judge doesn't float across the courtroom like a gas, in order to settle on the defendant. This is quite true, as far as that goes, but neither do judges arrange to be born of a virgin so that they could become the chief representative of the defendant. But that is exactly what Christ did.

I have argued this point before, but Wright talks as though the Reformed believe that the covenant faithfulness of the Father (the judge's righteousness) is the same thing as the obedience of Christ (the defendant's righteousness, when imputed to him). Wright is exactly correct that the righteousness of the Father is not imputed to us. But no one that I know of ever claimed that it was. It is the obedience of Jesus Christ, the new and perfect man, that is credited to all who have faith in Him. When we trust in Him, He is thereby our representative and head, and all that He is and did is credited to my account. Because Christ is the last Adam, imputation is inescapable.

Schreiner did an outstanding job here. Thus far (and I wish I didn't have to say this), the critics of Wright that I have seen that make the most telling points, and who at the same time give him the fairest shake, tend to be baptists. I will advance a theory about it sometime.

INTRODUCTION:
Paul’s response to the very dense theology he has been working through is to break out into song. His theology bursts forth into doxology. These are not two unrelated things—rightly done, rightly understood, theology leads inexorably to praise. Let’s consider why.

THE TEXT:
“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom. 11:33-36).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:
The wisdom and knowledge of God have deeps that cannot be comprehended (v. 33). His judgments and His ways are beyond finding out (v. 33). Who could begin to undertake such a search (v. 34)? Who has known the mind of the Lord (v. 34)? Who could dare to volunteer to walk into the throne room of God to give Him advice (v. 34)? Who is able to give to God in such a way as that God needs to repay him? Who can place God in debt (v. 35)? These are all rhetorical questions, the assumed answer to which is no one.  And the reason the answer is no one is that all things are of Him, and through Him, and to Him (v. 36). He is the one responsible for all that is, and He is the one who receives glory for all that is (v. 36). And amen.

ALL THINGS:
Take a glance at the number of stars revealed in a photograph from the Hubble telescope. The God we worship knows every one of those stars by name (Ps. 147:4). The hairs on every head are all numbered (Matt.  10:30)—about 7 billion people are alive today, and the average number of hairs on a head range between 90,000 for redheads and 140,000 for blondes. God numbers them all. Not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from the will of the

One of the central aspects of the ministry of Jesus—one that is continued here—was the fact that He ate with sinners.

This is actually one of the most striking things about the story that the gospel writers tell about Him. Not only did He eat with sinners, those who had been exiled from the ranks of the pious, He often did so in a celebratory way. Not only did He eat with them, but He failed to require them to maintain an appropriate demeanor for sinners in search of forgiveness. Perhaps we could understand His condescension if He agreed to eat with them while they all sat in the dark, nibbled on a cracker, and had a small glass of tepid water. But no, He ate with them in such a way as to earn for Himself a reputation for being a glutton and a drunkard. The slander was indeed a slander, but it began somewhere. It was not manufactured out of whole cloth.

When we are in the grip of the really dangerous sins, we think that the other person is the one with the problem. When you lie, or lust, or steal, these things are of course bad, but you usually know that they are. But when you are bitter, or envious, or competitive, or angry, or prideful, it is perilously easy to think that the problem lies elsewhere.

When you are bitter, you think of the sin they committed that embittered you. When you are envious, you think of how they provoked you with that swagger. When you are competitive, all you can think about is how they dared to get out ahead of you. When you are angry, they started it. When you are prideful, those others are obviously not motivated the way they ought to be.

Our Father and God, You have established Your Church as a royal priesthood in this world, and so we intercede for the nations of men now, confessing on their behalf so that the grace of Your forgiveness will soon be extended to them all.

Father and God over all, we confess to You now that we have been a people who have taken our great wealth for granted. We confess to You that we have not been wary of the dangers

C.S. Lewis noted in his essay on the reading of old books that one of the great blessings of doing so is that it gets you out of your chronological provincialism. When you are stuck in your small town mentality, small differences are magnified and treated as though they were everything. But when you get out a bit more, you realize how much was held in common by everyone in that small town. The problem is that of the "invisible shared assumptions," which do not become visible until you get out into the wider world, and get a larger perspective. Old books, or books of history, help with this important task enormously.

This larger perspective is most necessary on the question of food and health, food and economy, and food and . . . food. Americans have been food faddists for a long time -- centuries. And I am not speaking of splinter groups and odd communes. This is a mainstream phenomenon; it is what we do. Whenever the newest fad hits, we think it is really new because of the small differences between it and the previous fad, which previous fad had the misfortunate of being successful enough to become the establishment. But if we walk up on the ridge outside this small town, we see how much this fad actually has in common with the one before it, and the one before that, and the one before that. It is our tradition to set up establishments, so that we can knock them down. And we invariably knock them down for the sake of the next establishment -- diligently hiding from ourselves the manifest and plain realities of what we are doing. And the coming establishment will be every bit as temporary. How could it not be?

In the next Tabletalk article, Derek Thomas asks whether N.T. Wright is a new Luther, whether or not he comes in the spirit and power of Luther.

He begins by noting that the accusation that systematic theology distorts exegesis is not a new accusation, and he quotes a sample from Wright's book on justification. And, as far as it goes, Thomas does not differ with Wright on the point. "And who could disagree with that?" Sola Scriptura means nothing if we do not bring our systematic forumlations back to the Scripture routinely and constantly. Thomas does not differ with that call.

Wright wants to review the context of the Reformation, and ask whether certain battles of the time unduly affected them, and caused them to miss certain themes in Paul. "The 'bias' forced upon exegesis by social, ecclesiastical, and political concerns of the time forces us, Wright insists, to ask, 'Why did they emphasize that point that way? . . . Which bits of the jigsaw did they accidentally-on-purpose knock onto the floor?'"

Thomas makes a sound point when he says that the same questions must be asked of Wright's critical-realist approach. It is not as though the Reformers had to deal with social, ecclesiastical, and political concerns while Wright, the bishop of Durham, floats serenely above all three. "What pre-considerations does he employ when getting at the meaning of a text?" Fair question. It is Bulverism to point out contextual motivations for every position held out there except for your own. Thomas tags Wright for assuming that his view is the view from nowhere -- a "fair-minded, non-prejudicial view that reads Paul firmly within the setting of the time rather than through the (distorted) lens of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century squabbles." Thomas hints that this "sounds too clean, too innocent" but leaves that case to be made by the other articles in Tabletalk. That, alas, given the disparate places those other articles come from, is "too clean, too innocent."

This was the thrust of Thomas' argument in the bulk of his article, which I appreciated. Just a few criticisms though.