Mark Driscoll is a difficult figure for a lot of folks in the American church, for a lot of reasons, which mostly seem to boil down to him having a lot of difficulty keeping himself reined in in various ways; but for all that, I have a great deal of respect for him, because he’s been used of God to build a church and grow a lot of serious Christians on serious theology in a very, very difficult environment in which to do so. What’s more, in his writings, for all the complaints about his irreverence and his rough edge, he’s consistently made the case for Reformed theology in a context (the emergent and emergent-sympathetic church) which tends to slide in some very different directions.His latest book, Death by Love, looks like one I really need to get, going by Tim Challies’ review; it’s a book on the atonement that looks at the various different angles on our understanding of Christ’s work on the cross in their appropriate pastoral contexts. As Challies writes,
Following the model of the biblical epistles, Driscoll writes letters to his congregation—individuals who have come to him for pastoral counsel through the years of his ministry. He writes letters to address their issues in light of the gospel. “Our approach is an effort to show that there is no such thing as Christian community or Christian ministry apart from a rigorous theology of the cross that is practically applied to the lives of real people.”
This is an important thing to do, making biblical and systematic theology pastoral theology—giving counsel which is, to borrow Martin Marty’s phrase, “theologically practical.” I look forward to seeing what the Rev. Driscoll has done in applying this fundamental truth of the Christian faith to the fundamental realities of hurting people’s lives.HT: Justin Taylor