This symposium at Indianapolis Theological Seminary opens with a promotion of the seminary's local, church-based training model, then features a lecture by Dane Ortlund on his book Gentle and Lowly. Ortlund argues that knowing Jesus as gentle and lowly in heart is the core of knowing him at all, defending this from Matthew 11 and Old Testament texts (Exodus 34, Isaiah 55 and 57, Lamentations 3, Hosea 11) and from Puritans such as Goodwin, Owen, Sibbes, and Bunyan. He maintains that God's mercy is more natural to him than judgment without denying wrath, hell, or divine simplicity, and distinguishes his view from liberal writers who downplay wrath. In Q&A he addresses preaching, besetting sin, assurance, spiritual disciplines, recommended Puritan books, and the church's need for a culture of grace alongside the doctrines of grace.
Reviewed
Its text teaches none of the positions Doxa lists.
Keyword counts
Woke keywords
Counted50.2 points from 21 keywords, 49 matches in 12,913 words
- lament… 8
- justice 6
- collins 1
- confess… 3
- cultur… 3
- white… 3
Doxa counts words and phrases from a fixed list, each worth some points. It doesn't read context, so a word counts however it's used, and a keyword ending in … counts every word that starts with it.
Indianapolis needs a Bible-believing, evangelical, and Reformed seminary that works with local churches to train leaders locally, rather than sending its best students away.
Many seminaries unintentionally draw students out of their local churches, whereas theological training should push students back into local church ministry and teach them to pastor, not just to have right answers.
Christ's ongoing intercession shows how personal salvation is, and it reflects the warmth of the Son rather than any reluctance in the Father, whose deepest delight is to say yes to the Son's pleading.
Outwardly faithful, orthodox Christians can know a great deal about Jesus yet not truly know his heart.
Christ's riches are unsearchable, so there remain regions of who he is that believers have not yet explored.
If we do not know Jesus as gentle and lowly in heart, we do not know him at all, because gentleness and lowliness is the core from which everything else about him flows.
Jesus is the most tender and most approachable person in the universe; sinners need not clean themselves up before coming to him.
In Scripture the heart is not merely emotional but the very core of a person, what decides, directs, and drives why one does what one does.
Building on Matthew 11:29 is not cherry-picking, since the whole of the Gospels shows Jesus reaching out, touching, forgiving, and healing, and the Old Testament flows into the same text.
God's tender heart is not merely a New Testament idea; the God of the Old Testament is the same, and he does not become less grumpy from Malachi to Matthew.
- Adopts· Jonathan Edwards
Creation is the overflow of the love within the Trinity, not the result of any need in God.
God loves to forgive sin but is not morally mushy; he will not clear the guilty, yet his love vastly outlasts his judgment, rolling down a thousand generations versus three or four.
God's anger requires provocation while his mercy flows out at the slightest prick; humans are the opposite.
Sanctification is, from one angle, letting the Bible deconstruct and reconstruct our view of who God most deeply is, because God is not who we think he is.
Isaiah 55's 'my ways are not your ways' is about God's abundant pardon, not mainly mysterious providence, so the instinct to hold back from God after sinning is bad theology.
God dwells with the contrite and is irresistibly drawn to lowliness.
God is sovereignly behind affliction but does not afflict from his heart; his heart is compassion.
The Hebrew poets constructed Scripture with meticulous care, so the structural center of Lamentations (3:33) is its high point and matters for interpretation.
According to Hosea 11:9, God's holiness and otherness lead him not to come in wrath, which corrects our intuitive picture of God.
- Rejects· popular stereotype of the Puritans
The Puritans did not enjoy life.
- Adopts· Richard Sibbes
Preachers should preach the gospel and the free grace of God rather than battering consciences with law; people are calmed and freed into change, not crowbarred, though strong exhortation has its place.
- Endorses a source· Thomas Goodwin, The Heart of Christ
Thomas Goodwin's writings show that mercy is God's nature and more natural to him than acts of justice, and that Christ in heaven is closer than ever to his people through the Spirit.
- Endorses a source· John Owen (with Roger Nicole and J.I. Packer)
John Owen is the greatest theologian ever to write in English, and his Communion with God shows that seeing the Father's love draws believers to delight in him and that Christ's joy is to take poor sinners into relation with himself.
- Adopts· C.S. Lewis
Reading old books lets us escape the wrong presuppositions of our own age.
- Rejects· Rob Bell and similar popular writers
Divine justice, wrath, and eternal conscious torment in hell should be downplayed to exalt divine love.
Emphasizing God's tender heart is fully compatible with affirming divine wrath and hell, as shown by Goodwin's central role in crafting the Westminster Confession.
Divine simplicity is orthodox and true, but theology should speak as the Bible speaks, being balanced where Scripture is balanced and imbalanced where it is imbalanced.
It is in our deepest regions of sin, shame, and regret that God loves us most; Christ is fully present, not a detached auditor of our lives.
The recent resurgence of warm, broadly Reformed, gospel-focused ministry through books, conferences, and coalitions is wonderful.
Healthy discipleship needs both the objective gospel formula of justification by faith alone, recovered in each generation, and a personal knowledge of Christ himself.
- Adopts· Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ
Pastors convey what Jesus is like by how they conduct themselves, so orthodox truth delivered coldly from the head undoes what it teaches.
Someone who excuses ongoing sin by appealing to gospel truths like Christ's heart is in perilous territory and hardens himself; the comfort is for the penitent.
Practical steps like accountability software and community help with besetting sins such as pornography, but real heart change comes from knowing Christ's heart; we are melted into change, not pep-talked into it.
A person troubled about whether their faith is presumption is likely on safe ground, because ungodly presumption is not self-aware.
Ordinary Christian practice consists of daily Scripture reading turned into prayer, plus walking in the light with at least one other person before whom one takes off the mask.
- Endorses a source· Richard Sibbes, William Bridge, John Bunyan, John Owen
Puritan works such as Sibbes's The Bruised Reed, Bridge's A Lifting Up for the Downcast, Bunyan's Christ a Complete Savior and Come and Welcome, and Owen's Communion with God show Christ heals and does not crush the weak and downcast.
Christ's nearness to us at our worst is a matter of relief, not a motivation to sin; there is a real category of pleasing Christ, and the gentle Christ is also the glorious, not domesticated, Christ of Revelation 1.
- Adopts· Francis Schaeffer
Churches that hold the doctrines of grace without a culture of grace become harsh; the remedy is not to subtract doctrine but to add a culture of grace.
- Rejects· popular saying 'preach the gospel, use words if necessary'
Christians can preach the gospel without words, using words only if necessary.
Words are necessary but not enough; Christians must adorn their gospel words with beauty of person, especially in a divided culture.
- Adopts· Francis Schaeffer
The church should do the Lord's work in the Lord's way, in the power of the Spirit rather than the flesh, and not seek success as the world counts it.
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